by Cait Spivey
Aradia had assigned a detail of witches to assist the transportation of goods and the extending of docks, and launched an investigation into the cause of the lowering sea. Her personal attention, however, had quickly been consumed with another problem, this one on land.
Much of the crop had been washed away by flooding. The following harvest was pitifully small, and this season did not show much promise. Aradia was reluctant to admit it, but something was very wrong. The blight—whatever it was—was creeping northward. The crops in Neva, situated on the peninsula’s border with the mainland, were beginning to fail as well.
Gwanen’s gardens had thus far been unaffected, and Aradia had planted every square inch of them in a final effort to bolster their stores before what appeared to be imminent famine. When her grim-faced captain came to her in the hothouses and asked that she come inspect one of the outdoor gardens, Aradia feared that her initial misgivings had proved true: in over-working the gardens, she sapped them of the magic that protected them.
Aradia followed Jaela over to the garden, where a withered and blackened tomato vine stood out sharply even from a distance. As she approached, she could see the plants around the dead one withering as well, decay radiating out from the point of impact. She gasped; Jaela squeezed her hand.
“This is the first?” she asked.
“Yes. But there are others that aren’t far behind. Many of the plants are still young. We’re gathering them and moving them to the hothouses. Hopefully we can repot them and the soil we have stored will be good until they mature.”
Aradia nodded. She picked her way carefully through the garden and knelt at the edge of the plant. She ran her hands carefully over the dead leaves. They felt strange, with the musty softness of dusty velvet and cobwebs. Her lip curled in disgust. She turned her attention to the soil.
“The soil is black,” she murmured. She gathered a handful and turned it over in her hands. It crumbled, becoming finer with every abrasive pass of her fingers, and sifted out of her hands like sand. A small cloud of black dust rose as the dirt hit the ground again. “Black and dry.”
“We’ve tried everything we can think of to re-irrigate,” Jaela said. “Hewyna even took a bowl of earth and poured a whole jug of water on it. The water just pooled on top!”
“Did you see how deep it goes?” Aradia asked. Jaela nodded.
“As deep as our instrument, at least five feet.”
Aradia pondered this. That meant that it would soon go deeper than all the roots in the gardens. All plants but the trees would starve. She sighed and pressed her hands flat against the dead soil, routing her fingers into it. Closing her eyes, she pushed into the ground with her magic, going straight down. She would see how deep the blight really was.
Jaela was right; it was deeper than five feet. The contamination continued past ten feet, twenty, thirty, and even further. With each foot that passed, Aradia felt colder, heavier. The energy that buzzed within the soil grew weaker and weaker, until there was no movement in the earth at all. Aradia pushed down until she hit dense, dark rock hundreds of feet below the surface. She pulled back at once, ripping her hands from the earth and standing in one smooth motion, dusting the dead soil from her hands viciously.
“This sickness comes from the very core of the earth,” she said with a shaking voice. Her eyes met Jaela’s. Her own fear reflected back at her.
“Lady Aradia!”
She turned in the direction of the shout. A young witch ran toward them.
“A ship’s run aground at Port Feronia,” the child gasped. “The sea’s down another three feet and it’s a big ship—it’s the grain shipment from Xian Su.”
Aradia’s heart sank. Xian Su, a country across the Sea of Dalia to the southeast, was one of Arido’s allies and the one with which they did the most trading. Aradia had applied to the Sunese mystics when she realized how serious the South’s situation was, and they’d promised to send the Aridans a shipment of much-needed grain. If the ship had run aground, there might be damage to the hull—which meant the grain was at risk.
She began shouting orders. The witches in the gardens stopped what they were doing and followed her, rushing into the castle to get their sails, the green silk sashes they used to fly. Within moments, Aradia and twenty other witches were speeding through the air to the port a few miles down the coast.
The ship was still half a mile from shore, caught on shoals that once wouldn’t have been a threat. Every longboat and rowboat at port clustered around the stranded ship. On board, the crew members rushed to bring all the cargo to the deck. As she circled the ship in the air, Aradia spotted frothing at one spot where water met hull. It was as she’d feared; the ship was flooding. She signaled three witches and pointed the spot out to them. They nodded and flew down to patch the hull. Aradia took the rest and landed on the water, solidifying the surface into a platform which they eased up to the edge of the ship.
“How much is left?” she called up to the captain.
“About a third!” he shouted down to her. Aradia frowned. It would require a huge effort, but they could maintain the water platform under such a load and move it to the closest pier. They would have to. She looked at the sixteen witches with her. They nodded.
“All right, lower the rest down to us! We’ll move it all at once. Waterproof the sacks as they come down! Keep the boats close!” A heavy feeling settled in her chest. Witches didn’t believe in luck, but the eldest Kavanagh wished in that moment that long-gone Seryne would bring her some of the good to replace the bad that plagued her now.
It took them several agonizing minutes to ease the water platform up to the closest pier. The citizens waiting at the docks swarmed out to them, taking the heavy grain sacks and passing them overhead along the crowd all the way back to shore. Aradia and her witches let the humans move everything. They focused their power on keeping the platform steady.
Finally, the last sack was in safe hands.
Aradia grinned. “All right, it’s done! Release!”
As one, the witches cut off the power to the platform and took to the air.
“Well done, sisters, well done! You four, get back to the ship and help them dock! Jaela, with me. The rest of you, return to the palace!” Aradia shouted over the din of the crowd below.
The witches dispersed according to her direction. Aradia and Jaela flew back down to the docks. In the confusion of unloading, Aradia had lost track of the grain, and she wanted to make sure that it had gotten to Governor Kestran Lot. She spotted the orange livery of the Lot family and flew down to them.
Kestran ran over as soon as they touched down. He was a tall, thin man with the dark skin common in the South and a thick head of dark curly hair. His blue eyes stood out against the rest of his coloring, as did his broad, white-toothed grin. He reached out and squeezed first Jaela’s hand, then Aradia’s, making quick, shallow bows.
“Lady Aradia! Thank you so, so much for arriving so swiftly. You have saved us all,” he said, breathy with relief.
Aradia smiled back. “Of course, of course. I am so very glad everything was recovered safely. All the grain is accounted for?”
“Yes, my men are collecting it all now,” Kestran said.
The two leaders turned from each other and surveyed the scene with pleasure, watching the orange-clad guards load the grain sacks into carts to be taken to the public silos. It would be inventoried, and rationed appropriately if famine did strike the peninsula. Aradia glanced down, her heart heavy with that thought. Famine was unavoidable, and soon she would have to write to the southern governors and instruct them in the necessary preparations.
Shouts rose up. Aradia hurriedly scanned the crowd, trying to locate the commotion.
Kestran pointed. “There!”
He took off toward the scuffle. Aradia and Jaela followed, moving as quickly as they could through the throng of people who were now gathering to see whatever was going on.
Jaela cursed under her breath. “Mila
dy . . .”
“I know. Stay close, and be ready,” Aradia said quietly.
“Get back! Get back, get back!”
The witches broke through the crowd. Kestran and his guards stood in a clearing, blades drawn against a man wildly swinging a short sword. The man was broad and leathery tan, clearly a farmer of some kind. Behind him stood a lad of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, sagging under the weight of a grain sack as big as his own torso. The boy looked afraid, as afraid of his father as he was of the governor’s guards.
“Just put the sack down, boy, or hand it over to my men,” Kestran said. His gaze was fixed on the boy, his voice low and steady.
“It’s our grain, it’s owed us! It’s owed!” the man said. His eyes were wide.
“This is the crown’s grain, sir, sent by our allies,” Kestran said. “Whatever debt is owed you, something else must settle it.”
Aradia sighed. She’d thought something like this would happen; that was why she’d come back down, to check and make sure that all was well on the ground. This man had undoubtedly heard rumors from the far south, had possibly seen some of his own crops fail, and was trying to ensure his family’s survival with this stolen sack of grain. Aradia understood the impulse.
“No! Stop!” Kestran shouted.
A man came up behind the boy and grabbed him by the throat. The new man shouted something almost unintelligible. He may have been calling the man and the boy greedy. The governor’s guards tried to move in on the new man, but the first man was still waving his sword with dangerous imprecision. More people were starting to press forward to join the brawl. The boy dropped his sack of grain, which split and spilled the precious food onto the paving stones.
Aradia put a hand to her chest. This had gone on long enough. She made eye contact with Jaela, who nodded.
The witches lifted their hands and chanted quietly. Green light drifted from their palms across the clearing and into the nostrils of the squabblers. Their movements slowed. The first man lowered his sword; the second released the boy. Steadily, they all laid themselves down on the paving stones and went to sleep. The light drifted out of the circle on all sides, making people shake their heads, blink, and sneeze. Aradia pointed at the spilled grain and it floated back into the bag. The seam restitched itself.
Kestran watched them work their magic carefully. When they were finished, and the light disappeared, he signaled for his men to pick up the grain and to seize the first man.
“Do not arrest him. Please, Kestran. He won’t remember his folly,” Aradia said.
Kestran squinted at her. He sighed and walked over.
“We cannot make every frightened farmer sleep through these troubles,” he whispered.
“Force and cruelty will do nothing to comfort them!” she said.
“What would you have me do, Aradia-lami? I can’t put them to sleep, I can only put them in dungeons. And you can’t fly over the peninsula breaking up quarrels. You must solve this. You must fix it. That is the only way to keep peace.”
Aradia smiled, even as her heart sank. He was right. “I will be in touch soon, Kestran. We will get through this.”
She nodded to Jaela, and they took off, headed back to Gwanen Palace.
Chapter Twelve
Night had fallen an hour past when a sharp knock broke Guerline’s concentration. The jeweled dagger tumbled from her hand and thudded against the carpeted floor. A quick examination of her fingers showed no cuts; she flexed them, then looked up at the door with trepidation. She’d spent the last half hour staring into the fire and twirling the dagger in her hands, a trick she’d gotten quite good at since Alcander’s ominous visit. She was not in the mood for company.
There had been people knocking all day—Undine, Theodor, Jon—ever since the sun was full in the sky that morning, but Guerline had ignored them all. She’d even blocked the door, since Undine and Bartlett, head of the household, each had keys to the room. Perhaps it was childish of her to hide in her rooms, to refuse to engage in her imperial duties . . . but how could she hold a court before her people when she felt so hollow inside?
Eva had not come. Not once; or if she had, she had not spoken, which seemed impossible because Eva had to know Guerline would have admitted her at once. She had made it through last night without screaming aloud, but she had not slept well, and when she’d finally given up and left the bed for the day, it was as if something had been taken from her during those dark hours alone. Some essential aspect of her was absent; Guerline felt sure that whatever it was, it was with Eva.
Yet Guerline could not go to her. That was how it would have been before, when they fought; Guerline was the one to approach and seek to mend, while Eva was too proud to give way even if she was deeply sorry. But that was no longer how it could be. Guerline was the empress now, and she must gather a little of that strength to her. Especially in this case, when Eva was. . . . Could such social views be wholly wrong or right?
It was not unwise for Eva and the others to suggest that Guerline take stock of her relationship with the witch leaders, whom she had not even met—they had not come to her coronation. Whatever wisdom was in their caution, though, for Eva to suggest that Fiona Kavanagh was preparing to murder them all? That Morgana Kavanagh, with whom Guerline had corresponded, sought to usurp her? There was no sense to it. She had been crowned. If the witches had wanted to stage a coup—if they had murdered her family, as some whispers had suggested—why, why would they wait until she was legally crowned? Why not strike in the two months when the crown remained formally unclaimed?
And how could Eva claim to love her, and then strike out at her so unexpectedly in front of her council?
These thoughts kept Guerline pacing in her rooms, refusing company and food, through the sun’s whole journey across the sky from mountain peaks to crumbling cliffs. She felt untethered; she had clung so much to Eva in recent weeks that to be thus cleaved from her left Guerline reeling. She must center herself again, steadily . . . alone. Tears welled in her eyes and she covered her face. How happy she’d been when Eva kissed her, how much joy filled her when they touched! But Guerline was empress, and she was beginning to understand that the love of an empress for her consort could not be what she wanted it to be.
Her visitor knocked again. Whoever it was, they had waited quite a long time; everyone else had given up hours ago. Her curiosity piqued, Guerline rose from her chair, plucked her dagger off the carpet, and crossed to the door. She lifted the latch and pulled it open, then gasped.
Eva stood outside, her new courtly vestments abandoned. She looked as she always had before, wearing a fine but simple linen dress. Her black hair was bound in a single thick braid, and her expression—small smile, eyebrows raised pleadingly in the center—sent a jolt through Guerline, who had been musing all evening on an entirely different look on her friend’s face. Guerline stepped back and opened the door wider. Eva’s eyes flicked to the dagger hanging loose in Guerline’s hand, then back up at her face.
“Lina. Will you . . . come for a walk with me?” she asked.
Guerline took a deep breath, but couldn’t keep the waver of a restrained sob out of her voice. “Of course.”
She turned and set the dagger on a small table, then slipped out into the hall with Eva, shutting the door behind her. Eva seemed subdued, and though all Guerline wanted to do was throw her arms around her, she held back to wait for a cue. Eva offered Guerline her arm, and the empress took it, at once disappointed and relieved, resting her hand lightly in the firm crook of Eva’s elbow. The hall was empty around them, bathed in the warm yellow light of the Adenen lamps along the walls.
They walked for a minute in silence, heading down the stairs from Guerline’s tower into the main part of the palace. Eva remained silent, though she sometimes glanced over at Guerline and smiled a very small, contained smile. Guerline felt her heart speed up. Though Eva’s expression lacked an air of mischief, this excursion reminded her of the many nights they’d snuck out
of their rooms as children to explore the kitchens, the dungeons, even the palace green. They’d pass whole nights in the garden and return to their beds with the dawn. It was always Eva’s idea. Guerline would wait, wide-eyed, until Eva knocked and signaled that it was time for her to come out. Her grip on Eva’s arm tightened, and the other woman reached over and put her free hand over Guerline’s.
“Close your eyes, Lina.”
Guerline raised an eyebrow but did as Eva asked. Eva curled her fingers around Guerline’s hand and pulled it off her arm, which she then slipped to Guerline’s lower back.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where we’re going?” Guerline asked.
Eva only laughed, and after a moment, so did Guerline. With every step, with the familiar press of Eva’s hand on her back, her stress melted a little more.
“Not far now,” Eva said.
They stopped, and Guerline listened to a scraping on either side of her. Doors? Heavy ones, most likely to the throne room or perhaps—
“Open your eyes!”
The ballroom. Guerline opened her eyes and saw that they were indeed in the ballroom. She hadn’t set foot in it since her coronation, though it had long been one of her refuges in the palace. Her parents had only rarely held balls or large events, so it had been largely unused and therefore a perfect hiding spot for Guerline and Evadine. She looked up at Eva, a wide smile stretching her cheeks. Tears pricked her eyes when she saw the matching grin on Eva’s face.