Bursts of Fire

by Susan Forest

  The guard looked skeptical. Beyond him, inside the castle gate, a scullery maid hovered.

  “Still warm.” Xanther’s voice overflowed with good cheer.

  Nothing from the guard. And then, “I don’t rightly know as you should be bringing the milk without Gwynne giving leave. You only started with him a week ago.”

  “He’s pukin’. Ain’t fit to come.”

  Meg bit her lip, trying to keep her breathing regular, trying to keep her smile from congealing on her face, gawking at the castle courtyard like a rube. Her life might depend on its geography later. They’d looked at a sketch Xanther made and compared it to hers, as they came down from the hills. It showed Wenid Col’s suite, and it was consistent with, and refreshed, her memory. Had she played on these cobbles, on her visit with Mama? Nothing—and everything—looked familiar. The door to the kitchen, the scullery maid approaching. The kitchen garden, not yet planted. The smithy, stables. Familiar.

  “Do you want the milk?” Xanther sounded impatient. “We can unload and be gone. Or we can take it to market and sell it.”

  The guard grunted. Assent?

  Xanther took it as such. “All right, then. Kilovan—”

  Kilovan clucked and the wagon jerked as the pony clopped toward the kitchen door.

  Meg allowed herself to breathe. By the Many Gods, she was sweating despite the cold.

  But they were only in the bailey, not the great hall.

  She and Kilovan climbed down from the wagon and unloaded the crocks as Xanther gave mugs of the wonderful spell-laced milk to the scullery maids and cooks. She and Kilovan put yesterday’s empty jugs back onto the cart. A job to focus on. It steadied her.

  Kilovan touched her arm.

  The maids and cooks were chatting jovially, mugs in their hands.

  The two of them slipped through the kitchen into the servants’ wing as Xanther drove away.

  Meg and Kilovan stepped into a smaller eating area for servants, separate from the room bustling with cooks and scullery maids that they had just left. It was empty, an organized chaos of tables, work benches, chests, cupboards, and the like, with a fire glowing beneath a soup cauldron on the hearth. Besides the door to the castle kitchen, there was a landing leading to a servants’ stairs and a corridor at the end of the room that might lead to servants’ chambers. Meg hadn’t been in this room before.

  “Who are you, then?”

  Meg whirled, panic in her throat.

  A grizzled man in the dress of a laborer stood behind Kilovan in the opening to the garden, brushing soil from his hands. He held no mug of charmed milk.

  Meg’s knife with the poisoned blade was in her purse. She had no wish to hurt a gardener.

  “Ah!” Kilovan said in relief. “Maybe you can help us. We’re looking for Jory.”

  “Who?” the old man frowned, stepping inside.

  “You know, Jory.” Kilovan fumbled with his handkerchief, approaching the man.

  Meg understood and pulled out a phial. Gods, they’d barely started, and they were using more potions than enough.

  Kilovan’s gaze darted to her closed hand. He lifted his head to the old man, his wrapped knuckles smashing the gardener’s face. With a grunt, the man crumpled to the ground.

  Before he could regain his feet, Kilovan and Meg rolled him onto his back, and Meg poured a sleeping potion into the man’s sputtering mouth. They held his struggles, muffling his shouts, for interminable moments, until he relaxed beneath them. Then Meg pocketed the empty container, and the two of them pulled the man back from the entry before any of the charmed scullery maids or cooks thought to wonder about the masked scuffling sounds. Kilovan closed the garden door.

  Meg waited by the gardener’s side as Kilovan silently ran to the bedroom corridor. He returned after an agonizing several minutes to squat by her side. “Four rooms,” he breathed. “Two might be occupied, not sure. We’ll put him in the first one on the left.”

  She nodded, and they each grasped an arm and dragged the sleeping man—surprisingly heavy—into the chamber. Meg found a towel and swiped as best she could at the streak of mud his legs had left on the floor. Kilovan shut the door, screening them from observation.

  Meg’s heart pounded against her ribs, and she clamped back on the sudden need to jump, dance, laugh. She forced her focus to the task.

  The room was simple. A window, admitting cold air and early morning light; a pallet with a chest at its foot; a brazier, cold now; a rickety table with a pitcher and a basin, a knife, and a brass mirror; a chair; several pegs on one wall with clothing.

  Meg opened the chest, found small clothes and stockings; from the pegs on the wall, she pulled pants, a shirt and a doublet in Delarcan livery and threw them on the pallet. No boots. Their own would have to do.

  Kilovan stripped out of his wet jerkin. “No good.”

  She glanced at him. He’d squeezed himself into the shirt, but the pants were clearly too small for his tall frame. Whoever used this room was small.

  “We might not find anything for me, and we might not find women’s clothing.” The sounds of undressing underlay his voice. “Can you disguise yourself as a man? With your magics?”

  “Yes.” One thing Meg had not stinted on was spells. As he flung the clothes at her, she pulled them on, stockings and pants, shirt and vest, keeping her own underclothes with the pouches of vials. She ripped a hole in the pockets of the pants, so she could reach the magics beneath. The fit was surprisingly acceptable.

  A knife on the table by the basin. Sharp, used for shaving. “Cut my hair.”

  Kilovan wasted no time hacking it short, stuffing handfuls of long strands into the chest with Meg’s clothing. She squeezed her wet hair to flatten the unkempt locks into something resembling a proper man’s coif, wishing she had a bit of kitchen grease. As she cleaned her boots, Kilovan crept from the room to find clothing to fit him.

  She swallowed a potion to age her already calmed skin and hair. From the silence, Kilovan must have found what he was looking for. Next, they’d need to find something, a tray of meats or a jug of water, to give them purpose to go to the royal suite. Meg had never been in the servants’ quarters, but Uther Tangel had chased her into the large kitchen once, playing a game of Catch Thief. And, she’d been there the day she tried to ask King Larin for refuge. She knew the way to the royal apartments.

  Kilovan hadn’t returned.

  The morning was lengthening. Tonight in the dark, the upriser troops would march onto the field of battle. They must do what needed to be done and be gone.

  Where was Kilovan?

  She picked up the brass mirror. Her skin had eased to the waxen color of age, drooping about her rough chin and sprayed with a web of wrinkles. Her hair was flecked, gray and black, and her arms were corded with stringy muscles. She tested the voice, and it came out low, with a bit of a croak. She would do, for several candlemarks.

  “Hey! You!” The voice came from the corridor.

  Meg flattened herself behind the door.

  The sound of scuffling broke out, and feet—may sets—running into the servants’ area.

  A cry, and then an instant of silence.

  “...get in here?”

  Voices.

  “Better see if there are any more.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Nowhere to hide in the servant’s quarters. Reflexively, Meg squeezed through the window, thankful she was small about the hips and shoulders. The escape left her clothing dusty, with a tear on the hip of her pants. It was mostly covered by her vest.

  The garden before her provided no cover. She flattened herself into a niche in the castle wall, blinking in the cold mist, heart pounding.

  Kilovan. That cry had to have been his. By Kyaju. Kilovan had volunteered to be the assassin, not her. Xanther was a soldier. He had killed. But she was the only one left.

  And she looked stupid and obvious, huddled against the castle wall. She needed to look busy, purposeful. She pulled the knife from her pu
rse and scanned the garden.

  Daffodils. She blinked. Early spring daffodils.

  She sliced their stalks and shook off the raindrops. There. Busy.

  A gardener’s work. She was not dressed as a gardener, and though the drizzle now lightened to a soggy mist, she was getting wet.

  What was she to do, walk out through the tradesman’s gate, dressed as a servant for the great hall? What questions would be raised, then? By the Many, she had not got very far.

  Flowers. She cut more flowers.

  She could use one of her spells of Confusion or Memory Loss, perhaps—she still had several hidden in the quilting of her small clothes. But then what?

  Someone over by the kitchen door was calling a name. The voice came closer.

  The gardener—asleep on the floor in the servant’s chambers she’d just vacated. Was someone looking for him?

  And the soldiers who’d—presumably—caught Kilovan. They might be satisfied their captive explained the sleeping gardener, but she would be a fool to operate on that assumption. All men broke under questioning.

  She shoved her knife in her pocket and gripping the daffodils like a lifeline, skirted the outside of the castle along a gravel path, away from the voices. It would be some time until her earlier spells of Confusion and Well-Being wore off and the cooks and scullery maids began to piece together that Xanther had not taken his passengers, but those questioning them might deduce the facts earlier.

  The stone wall was long and unbroken, and the garden disappeared in favor of storage sheds and outbuildings. Smithy, butchery. Luck was with her, and no one was about. Yet.

  A door. Into the back of the great hall.

  She tried it. A simple thing to open with magic, but no need. It was unlocked. She stomped the muck from her boots.

  The bakery, full of bakers and their helpers. Piss.

  She turned—

  A servant’s stairs. Yes!

  Someone called to her.

  “I’ve been summoned to Lord Wenid’s suite,” she responded in her new voice, and ran up the stairs. This body, however, did not run three flights of stairs as Meg would have wished. She’d slowed considerably—and was panting—by the time she reached the top. She wiped her boots on a carpet and shook off the dampness clinging to her clothes.

  A corridor. A vase on a table. She shoved the daffodils into it.

  Kill the magiel? The thought made her mouth go dry.

  Kill.

  How she had wanted to. Kill the magiel who’d stolen her life. Kill the king who’d permitted it. Kill the soldiers who’d followed such foul orders without question.

  She had wanted to, when she was safe in her hovel, when she was in a tent on the mountainside. When there was no chance of her being able to do it.

  But now, the castle crawled with those who would imprison her. Behead her.

  Her mission would fail.

  Meg picked up the vase with the flowers. Her feet moved with false confidence down the wide corridor.

  A maid servant came out of a room carrying a chamber pot and closed the door behind her, turning purposefully the other way.

  Meg walked, taking in everything before her, around her.

  A guard, bored, stood before another door.

  The corridor echoed with the scuff of her boots on marble. A voice carried from some distant room.

  There was nothing to do but find Wenid’s chambers. What came after...she would face when she got there. If she got there.

  She remembered this corridor. But somehow, it didn’t seem to align with Xanther’s sketch. Gods, why? A finding spell would only work with—

  And then, the magiel was in front of her.

  Emerging from the top of the wide stone steps, slowly, leaning on a cane, two attendants by his side.

  Why did he look so frail?

  When she saw him a year ago, he had no cane. But he walked—toward her—as if he were in pain.

  Oh, how could she kill a helpless old man?

  He stopped at a double door, and she set the vase on a ledge in front of a glassed window. She pretended to arrange the haphazard stalks, one eye following the magiel’s movements.

  Guards opened double doors, and he and his attendants entered. The doors closed.

  She’d found his chamber. Yes! If that was his chamber.

  She took a deep breath, biting back her grin, her insides vibrating.

  One step at a time. Don’t think.

  Meg turned back to the flowers. She had no idea what to do. All the plans she’d come up with. All the eventualities she’d discussed with Kilovan and Xanther. None had come close to the situation she was facing now. She was not Kilovan, strong enough to throw a curse into the guard’s face and drag him inside a door. She had...daffodils.

  Taking a breath to calm herself, she squared her shoulders and lifted the vase. She strode up to the guards at Wenid’s door. “Fresh flowers for the chancellor.” The voice she used was pleasingly gruff.

  One of the guards put his hand on the knob. The other frowned. “Now?”

  Hurry. What to say? “They are fresh now, Sieur.” Although, to be truthful, they were beginning to wilt. Her poisoned knife.

  Another spell of Confusion? She had one left.

  At the far end of the corridor, near the servant’s stairs she’d run up, the baker, covered in flour, pointed to her. “That’s the one.”

  Weeks. Weeks, Janat had lingered in the cell. Like the others, she’d tried her hand at manipulating the door’s locks, but a magiel of some power had warded them. Artem’s magiel, Wenid Col, no doubt; reinforcing his spells, knowing he was detaining magic wielders. Without knowing the magiel’s work, Janat could not guess how to go about breaking it.

  She’d missed the equinox. Lost her opportunity to learn what Mama had wanted for them. The opportunity to right the wrongs that had turned her world upside down.

  Had Meg or Rennika kept the rendezvous? It seemed unlikely. How could they? Two women in a world of thievery and war. And...nothing, as far as she could tell, had changed. No great magic had been wrought.

  Now, it was hard to convince herself that anything mattered.

  She and the other women were not treated badly, only confined. Their food was meagre but healthy and varied, they were not left in manacles, and they were allowed a few minutes of well-guarded exercise above ground each day. Their captors told them nothing but appeared to want them able-bodied. At random times, one was taken, and that one did not return. The women speculated on the fate of the selected ones, but that’s all it was. Speculation. New captives were brought; always, the one with the most capricious skin was taken.

  Today, though, in Janat’s case, they appeared to make an exception, perhaps because she’d been here, now, longer than any of the others.

  Her hands were bound and the door behind her clanged shut.

  A soldier on either side grasped her upper arms. She swallowed back her apprehension and schooled herself to observe their route, to orient herself to the geography. She’d been in Larin’s castle before, the summer Mama toured the seven countries. She took note of where they were taking her, of hiding places and ways out.

  They climbed from the underground cells and crossed the bailey in the rain to the great hall, going in through a servants’ entrance by the kitchen garden. They climbed servants’ stairs and came to a plain but comfortable suite, such as she had not been in since leaving Archwood. The room was dominated by a canopy bed which, she guessed, held a feather mattress. A sitting area, with table, chairs, and a couch before a fireplace, was warmed by a fresh blaze. Glass-paned windows overlooked the stables. In an attached room, a handful of maids poured hot water into a bath.

  A bath. How Janat had longed, this past year and more, for a bath.

  The soldiers unbound her and were gone, locking the door.

  The decanter was metal, as were the goblets. There was no poker or candlestick or plate of sufficient heft to use as a weapon.

  Janat w
asn’t daft. She hadn’t refused the bath or the scents or the supple robe, nor had she refused the hot and tempting meal. She had declined the wine in favor of water. But now, beneath the watchful eyes of the maids—who, she had no doubt, would intervene if she chose to do something to alarm them—she roamed the suite hunting, hunting for anything to use in her escape. Part of her wanted to pour a goblet of wine to calm her nerves, but yet, she held back.

  Doubtless all the magiel women brought here before her had done the same. There was not even a whiff of any herb that could be manipulated into a charm.

  But unlike the lesser magiels, Janat could likely make her way to the great halls’ doors; and as a daughter of one of the Great Houses, she could, with an effort, call forth magic without the use of ingredients. Even throw spell words a short distance. All she needed was a chance.

  The sun had long set and the room was dark but for the glow of a few soft candles and the flicker of the fire, when the door to the corridor opened.

  Soldiers, again. This time, they stood aside as a hazy-skinned man, dressed in a clean, decent shirt and pants, entered.

  “Gweddien?” The name escaped Janat’s lips before she questioned the wisdom of revealing herself.

  It took him only a moment. “Janat?”

  She blinked.

  “Leave us.” He flicked a finger and the soldiers withdrew. “All of you,” he barked, and the maids scurried away. The lock snicked behind them.

  How it was possible, she didn’t know, but the unexpected sight of someone she knew released a surge of grief. Without warning, tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Shh, shh.” He rushed to her and gathered her into his arms.

  “Oh, Gweddien—” She wept on his chest. How long had she known him, on the road, and in Silvermeadow? Maybe half a year, at most? She’d had eyes only for Sulwyn then and couldn’t remember...had Gweddien and his mother left Silvermeadow before she and her sisters went to Kandenton, or after? And what had brought him here?

  No...he’d gone missing. She remembered. His mother had been beside herself.