by Susan Forest
“Of one of the Great Houses, plainly,” Artem said quietly.
Of course.
As if the Great Houses had not been accounted for. The magiels of the Emerald and the Azurite were women, and neither had sons. The magiel of the Amethyst and his sons had been put to the executioner in Coldridge. The magiel of the Citrine and his family had committed suicide before the fall of Midell. Kraae Elder, Wenid’s predecessor, had been hunted down and killed in a remote valley, and his children belonged to the magiel of the Amber, Talanda Falkyn, who hid in Archwood; they had only daughters. The magiel of the Chrysocolla had died of a curse in prison but his son—a boy, but old enough—had left Holderford in the middle of the night last fall and disappeared into the masses of refugees roaming in displaced bands across the countryside.
“And, there is the issue of compliance,” Artem continued. “With two unwilling participants, getting your successor becomes more and more difficult.”
A male heir to one of the great magiel houses. There was only one.
“You said once you had a spell that could compel any magiel. I suggest you use it.”
Son of the magiel of the Chrysocolla in Gramarye. Still alive? Unless he had met with accident or disease. Somewhere in Shangril. Likely posing as a village magiel or half-born.
“Wenid.”
Wenid reached for a biscuit. The prisoners. One would know him, or would know someone who knew him. What was the boy’s name?
“Wenid.”
Wenid had a weakness for jam. He spread a thick glob on his biscuit, and the name came to him. “Gweddien Barcley.” Wenid’s biscuit paused before reaching his lips. If the boy hadn’t changed it. He bit into his biscuit. It was worth a try.
“Who?”
“Give me four weeks.” Wenid smiled to himself and added honey to his tea. “I may be able to find such a magiel.”
“Gweddien Barcley,” Artem Delarcan mused. “Of the Chrysocolla?”
“The same.” Wenid sipped his tea.
“You know where he is?”
“No. But I think I can find him. I’ll want spies and money for bribes.” His mind worked. How best to winnow out information from unsuspecting dupes. The challenge piqued his interest.
“Very well.” Artem rose. “Keep me informed.”
Wenid rose as well. “One last thing, Sire. I’ve been meaning to bring this up.”
“Yes?”
“With the term, ‘magiel’ out of favor, you might wish to change my title.”
Artem hesitated. “Oh? To what?”
Wenid shrugged. “Chancellor.”
“Ah.” The ghost of a cynical smile touched the king’s lips. “The ascetic exemplar desires something worldly. We shall discuss it. When you present me with your child.”
CHAPTER 17
The candle guttered, and Wenid lit a new taper from the flame, pressing its butt into the soft wax. A dozen other candles stood at various stages of depletion, dripping wax around the perimeter of the large oak table. Once polished smooth, the surface was now a map of nicks and spilled ink tracing the work of decades—possibly centuries—of scholars and magiels. Dusty scrolls and thick bound books lined the shelves and filled the bins and chests, and now, lay scattered on the table. Wenid had taken to war at his king’s side immediately upon assuming Kraae Elder’s position as magiel of the Ruby, and it was only now, half a year later, he’d ridden to Holderford and begun to explore this chaos that was his predecessor’s library.
He’d sent his spies out, hunting, listening, tracking down rumors of magiels. Half-borns and magiels of lesser ability he’d found and sequestered, but the Barcleys of the Chrysocolla still eluded him. The attack on Gramarye had been botched from the beginning. Gramarye’s king had escaped, though not the prince; while his magiel had been imprisoned early in the war and was now dead, the magiel’s wife and son had disappeared from their summer sojourn in Holderford immediately thereafter.
But, Artem’s men would track down rumors of a shifting-skinned man of nineteen years with a talent for spells.
In the interim, Wenid need a charm. There was only one certain to compel a magiel. Glim. Wenid pushed his tongue over his mouth in distaste.
Of course, it was possible that subterfuge would suffice; that imprisoning the Barcley heir with a woman and leaving them alone—perhaps with some threat of a short life, to speed things up—nature would take its course, and Wenid would only have to harvest the child. The boy was nineteen, after all.
But Wenid’s plans were larger than this; he wanted not one child, but a selection. Life, especially in times of war, as Artem had pointed out, was too precarious to depend on a single successor. And, Wenid did not trust the women he had selected—particularly those he had attempted to impregnate himself—not to be uncooperative, guessing his plan. They might poison Gweddien against the thought of fathering a child. And he did not want to enchant the woman in case taint spread to the child in her body. No, just a spell for Barcley. In case nature did not take its course.
And so, he hunted. The library at Holderford was extensive.
His search had, finally, borne fruit. A scroll locked in a box ensorcelled with invisibility.
Down of a snowcock, plucked under Ranuat’s apogee. He could send a soldier to comb the mountains above Fairdell and shoot one; Ranuat would reach her apex in a week; the scroll said nothing about the feathers being fresh, though Wenid could make them so.
Beetle wings dried in Black Willow smoke. Easily done. There were large, iridescent beetles in the mud near the river with strong magical properties that would do very well.
Three drops of ice melt. At this time of year, he’d have to send a man to the mountains. Winter marigold root and bud. A pestle of eagle bone for the grinding and mixing. Yes, all of this was doable. The spell words, the time bending. Wenid nodded.
A spell to make the glim visible. Then, the finding.
He would need to travel, himself, to the mountains to harvest the delicate, rare plant. Only a magiel, with the help of the finding spell, could see the glim. With his increasingly fragile bones and wasted muscle, that would prove the challenge. He could send no one in his stead.
The woman with the burn scar on the left side of her face must be an upriser, Rennika decided. Almost every day—often several times a day—the woman came to the only tavern with an inn for travelers in Silvermeadow. She idled in the street or near the bridge over the steep gorge, scanning those who approached the tavern, passing subtle signals to some with her eyes. But the woman turned away or averted her gaze whenever a soldier in green and gold appeared. Rennika told Meg her suspicions, and Meg said the woman was probably a strumpet.
But Rennika didn’t think so. Strumpets liked soldiers. Besides, once, she overheard the woman’s speech. It was as though—like Gweddien and Janat and Meg—she copied the coarse accent but didn’t always remember to use it.
Of late, one particular soldier had taken to watching this woman, and Rennika wondered how long it would be before there was a confrontation.
Rennika sat on a stump, her back propped against the tavern’s clay daub wall one evening after sunset, weighing the three coins in her purse and watching spears of rain pock the dirt. The tavern, Gweddien had pointed out, was the best place in Silvermeadow to beg, and with her unagitated skin she could linger there without being chased off. Rennika pulled her hood over her head. She hadn’t seen Gweddien for three days. She wished he’d come back from wherever it was that he’d gone so they could gather live spider legs like he’d promised. Besides, his mother was sick to distraction, hunting furtively for him.
Rennika tried to shake the worry away.
Twilight succumbed to an approaching squall. Beyond the candlelight that leaked, along with raucous singing, through the public house’s windows, the street was dark. Would the soaking she’d get by loitering be worth the chetram or two she might earn—candlemarks from now—from tipplers leaving the tavern? Those who drank spirits, Rennika found,
were usually more generous or more careless with money. If they weren’t too drunk.
Wind gusted along the deserted street, slapping her with a handful of cold spring rain.
The three chetra she’d already earned telling Tarots would be enough. She’d go back to the shanty before the storm. Still she sat, shivering in her thin cloak, too cold to move. Anyway, the shanty would be wet, too.
There was a movement on the road on the far side of the bridge. A traveler. No, two.
Very well. With an effort, Rennika pulled herself to her feet. A glance told her these two would not give her money. The man was already drunk enough to stumble, and the woman staggered under his weight. But Rennika would try to beg a chetram off them, then make her way home.
As the two crossed the bridge, Rennika recognized the woman with the scarred face, so perhaps she was a strumpet, after all. At that moment, the suspicious soldier emerged from a side street.
The woman and her burdensome companion saw the soldier, but could neither retreat nor pass before the king’s man accosted them. Over the rush of the river and the patter of the rain, Rennika could not hear what the soldier said, but—
The man.
It was—
“Sulwyn!” Rennika leapt to her feet and dashed through the rain, onto the bridge to fling her arms about his waist, almost knocking him off balance. He gasped and looked down at her, his face invisible in the shadow of his hood.
The soldier grunted.
The scarred woman had abandoned Sulwyn, who now steadied himself against the railing of the bridge. The woman seemed to hug the soldier to her as he made choking noises and grasped her shoulders. They danced for a moment, teetering on the slippery boards of the bridge until, like a felled tree, the soldier toppled over the railing and into the canyon, almost pulling the woman with him.
“Are you all right?” Sulwyn’s croak was nearly overwhelmed by the rain.
“Ranuat.” The woman’s voice shook as she peered over the edge of the bridge. “He’s—” She held something dark in one hand, a knife—
“Go!” Sulwyn rasped. But with his free hand, he gripped Rennika’s shoulder as though she were a charm that decided life and death.
“Sulwyn?” It was him, wasn’t it? His voice had changed and his features were indistinct in the dark, yet Rennika was sure she’d recognized his form, despite his gait.
The woman tore her gaze from the black depths and, propping herself beneath the man’s armpit, continued their interrupted journey toward the inn. Rennika clung to Sulwyn—if it was him—and he gripped Rennika’s shoulder painfully.
Sulwyn leaned against the jamb, wheezing, as the woman opened the door. The three of them staggered in from the rain to light and warmth. Someone near the door sprang from his chair and accepted—Sulwyn’s—weight.
Rennika peered up, under the man’s hood. He was more than thin. Gaunt. His face sprouted a straggle of beard, and his eyes were dark with liquid pain.
He looked down and smiled at her.
Sulwyn. She grinned back.
The patrons parted in faltering silence as the woman and the second man, the father of a boy Rennika played with, bore Sulwyn unsteadily to the kitchen. Then the music recovered with a lively jig as though the musicians had only forgotten their role momentarily, but now resumed a sham meant to swallow Sulwyn’s passage, as though he’d never been amongst them.
Sulwyn’s fellows eased him down a steep, narrow stairs, and another man accompanied them with a candle. Rennika followed. The flicker of light illuminated barrels along one wall of the cellar, and a rack of wine bottles against another. Between these and the shelves of root vegetables, a pallet lay on the floor, and the woman and man eased Sulwyn onto it. The tavern patron set his candle on the hardpack beside Sulwyn, his breath visible in its glow, and Rennika squirrelled herself into a corner, out of the way.
“Will he live?” The woman loosened Sulwyn’s cloak and pushed his hood back.
Something in Rennika’s chest flipped. Sulwyn could die? She flattened herself into the shadows to give the woman room to kneel by his side. That was why he couldn’t walk—he wasn’t drunk—
The man who’d borne him down the stairs loosened Sulwyn’s boots. “This is the one the king’s men hunt?”
Sulwyn’s body shook with cold. The woman covered him with a blanket. “He needs warmth. We need a brazier.”
“He needs to be hidden,” the man with the candle corrected. Rennika’s friend’s father. Fearghus, she thought his name was, a hawklike man who’d always frightened her. “And medicine.”
Meg. The feverfew.
“He needs a magiel,” the woman rebuked.
“I’m a magiel,” Rennika blurted, disobeying Meg’s warning.
The man with the candle startled, seeing her for the first time. “How did she get in here?” He whipped his head angrily to the woman. “Nia?”
Nia—the strumpet with the scarred face—shot a frightened look at Rennika. “She knows Sulwyn.”
The candle man, Fearghus, leaned his fist on his thigh. “That’s no—”
“She helped us,” Nia stopped him. “I don’t know how she knew—”
“Get her out of here!” the candle man said.
“She’s a magiel,” Sulwyn whispered.
The others turned to him.
“Listen to him, Fearghus,” the man holding Sulwyn’s boots said.
“Her skin’s as still as mine,” Fearghus growled. “This is no place for children.”
With an effort, Sulwyn turned his head and opened his eyes a slit. “Your sisters are here?” His voice was papery and weak. “Janat? She’s—”
Rennika wished she could reach out and touch his forehead. “We have a shanty,” she said helpfully.
Nia crouched across the pallet from Fearghus. “This little girl distracted Artem’s soldier. She gave me the chance to gut him and drop him in the river.” The scarred lady held her bloody hands up in the light.
Fearghus frowned at Rennika in surprise.
“My sisters are magiels, too.” Rennika edged into the ring of light. “They have healing herbs.”
“Bring them.” Sulwyn’s teeth chattered with cold, his eyes pressed tightly in pain.
Fearghus closed his mouth and sat back. “Beorn.” He spoke to the boot man, his voice softer. “Bring the healing women here.”
Beorn rose. “Will there be time?”
“Not if you stand there, gawking,” Fearghus snapped, and Beorn rose to leave. “Shantytown. Meg.”
“Can I—” Rennika reached out a tentative hand. “Can I touch him?”
The others stilled in silent assent. Nia gave her a small nod and a smile.
Rennika laid her hand on Sulwyn’s forehead, which was uncomfortably hot. She didn’t know why she wanted to touch him, or what she hoped to do. Something about the way he felt was wrong, though. She closed her eyes. But the hurt did not come from Sulwyn’s head.
Nia breathed audibly, and Rennika opened her eyes. The grimace of pain had left Sulwyn’s features.
“Where is he hurt?” Rennika asked.
“His leg.” Nia turned to Fearghus. “The man who brought him from Theurgy was only candlemarks ahead of a troop of Artem’s men, them mounted, and him with a cart. He had to press on. He barely stopped to let Sulwyn off.”
Rennika lifted the blanket from his leg and pulled the cuff of his breeches up. She felt the flesh above Sulwyn’s knee.
“Led them away. Good thinking,” Fearghus approved. “The king’s men followed him?”
Sulwyn’s leg was bloated and spongy, and the skin was hot.
Nia nodded. “Yes. But I had to get Sulwyn away from the road. There was no time to send for help. So I brought him here from the rendezvous myself.”
At Rennika’s touch, Sulwyn flinched and drew a sharp breath. A rope of hard skin wound across his leg. The wound was not fresh, but it had closed without healing. A heavy curse lay in the wound.
She closed her e
yes and felt back in time, searching for a moment when his flesh was whole and healthy. There. Days ago. Weeks, maybe. She pulled bits of clean muscle and unknotted skin forward, tugged it into the present. But the cut was large and the curse within had spread through his body, too diffuse for her to track down. At least, not without potions.
She opened her eyes. Beneath her cloak, her robe was drenched in sweat and she shivered, chilled, and tired. The injury on Sulwyn’s leg still felt swollen and scarred, but its heat was less, and his face was peaceful now. He had drifted into sleep.
The woman with the scar, Nia, placed a hand on her arm. “Thank you,” she said softly.
But Sulwyn was not healed. “He needs my sisters’ herbs and spells,” Rennika said, suddenly very weary. They weren’t here yet. Hadn’t Beorn gone to get them?
“Come.” Fearghus touched her shoulder, and she saw that he wasn’t as frightening as she’d once thought. “I’ll take you home.”
The squall had subsided to a steady rain, and Rennika shook with cold as she walked in silence by Fearghus’s side. The streets were empty and dark, and her feet were numb with the chill of splashing in icy puddles—
And then she lay on dewy grass on a warm night. Black trees, rattling with restless twigs, blotted out a lightless sky.
Where—
—was the street? Fearghus?
She reached out and ran her fingers through the grass. She was—here. Wherever “here” was. Delicate perfumes of poplar and spruce, frost and glacier, wafted on the air. She sat up. The last embers of a cook fire had died some time ago. Dark forms slept just beyond its ashes. Silvery dew etched each branch and unfurled bud on aspens rising out of a predawn mist.
This couldn’t be real. How could she walk and dream at the same time? And...she touched the grass, smelled the sweet air, listened to the chirp of morning birds—
But she had known something like this before, a sudden daydream, intensely real. She’d had them all her life.
Then—
She was in a dark lane, faintly visible in the gray of approaching dawn. Snow, hard and trampled to ice, dirty with frozen offal, lay underfoot. She leaned against a stone wall and her body was cold, shivering, her feet bare and lacerated. She wore an elegant robe...silky on her skin, beneath a good woolen cloak, but something was wrong with it...torn. The front of her dress was open to her waist, and she held the cloak tightly closed over breasts as large as Meg’s.