by Barbara Howe
Horizontal rays of sunlight struck the far wall. Hiding in the guest room wouldn’t solve any of my problems. I was a warlock and had to face facts. Even facts the great Flame Mage Jean Rehsavvy didn’t want me to face. I had lost my breakfast, skipped dinner, and had no appetite for supper. He would be expecting me at the aerie for the evening’s practice, and I had no energy for it.
I flicked my wand at the fireplace, returning to the conversation between Granny Mildred and Maggie Archer. Tears slid down Maggie’s cheeks.
The old earth witch said, “This is the big secret the magic guilds don’t want you knowing. There’s a lot of magic at work to keep commoners and noblewomen from finding out. I guess they figure law and order would break down if all the commoners knew. And the noblemen don’t want their mothers, wives, and sisters finding out. There’d be hell to pay if they did.”
Maggie said, “But you told me.”
Mildred shrugged. “You and Fiona were going to find out one way or another. I reckon it’s better you find out from me than from a trial, and I’ve got enough magic to let an occasional mundane in on it.”
Maggie said, “What’s to keep me from going and telling everybody else I know?”
“Won’t do any good. The magic has caught you now, too, and you don’t have the magic to expand the net. If you tell anybody that doesn’t already know, either they’re not going to believe you, or what comes out of your mouth won’t be what you wanted to say.
“But why? How did it get this way?”
The old witch chewed on a thumbnail. “Damned if I know. A water witch told me what she thought, but I don’t know if I trust her. It makes sense, and I wish it didn’t. I like fire wizards more than I like water witches.”
“What did she say?”
“She blamed it on the Fire Warlock. The one that just retired, that is.”
An Honourable Man
I flew through the kitchen, grabbing bread and a chunk of cold ham. I was still forcing the food into my protesting stomach when I arrived at the aerie.
“Hey, Lucinda,” René said, “Are you okay?”
“No. Leave me alone.”
“But I—”
“René,” Jean said. “It is time to begin. You first.”
René looked affronted, but after another glance at me, shrugged and left me gnawing at my tasteless crust.
When it was my turn, I stood on the rim of the crater with my hands in Jean’s, and struggled to focus my attention on getting through the practice session safely. It was hopeless. After all the pain I had witnessed and experienced that day, all I wanted to do was hurt someone.
Not just anyone. I wanted to hurt the man with me—the man who, at that moment, seemed a stranger, not my loving husband. Ignoring everything I’d learned about safety in the past two years, I pulled on Storm King as hard as I could. Harder than I’d ever done before.
Some jerk splashed water in my face. I sputtered and snarled. My eyes were dazzled, but I made out Jean and René leaning over me. I lay on the rocks, aching all over, as if I’d been on the rack.
“Wow, Lucinda,” René said, “that was awesome. You made real lightning. Not like Jean or Beorn—it was just a little bit that didn’t reach the ground—but it was real. I saw it.”
Jean’s eyes glittered. “Indeed, and almost killed yourself. If you had done that on your own, rather than through me, you would have. Do not ever do that again.”
I glared at him. He was uninjured. It wasn’t fair.
They left me lying on the ground, and went on with René’s exercises. After a while Jean came back and knelt beside me. “I sent René home. We are through for tonight.”
I rolled over and pushed myself upright, ignoring his outstretched hand. “One more. I’ve only done one tonight.”
“One was more than enough,” he said, taking my arm. I grabbed his other arm and pulled on Storm King. The feeble spurt that was all I could produce in my exhausted state darkened my vision, and I fell. He caught and held me. I pushed against him, but he wouldn’t let me go.
“Stop it,” he rasped. “You should thank me for not letting you fall on the rocks, and from blocking a surge of power that would have killed you. Your reserves are gone. You cannot hurt me. You can only hurt yourself.”
I sagged against him as he called up the fire to take us home. In our bedroom he steered me towards the bed. I grabbed the bedpost to keep from falling, and lurched towards the wall. Leaning against it for support, I staggered down the hall and into the guest bedroom. I locked the door behind me, and toppled face down onto the bed.
Jean had been wrong. A glance at his face had confirmed that. I had hurt him more in our bedroom than I could ever have hurt him calling down the lightning.
I woke from a muddled nightmare of Lord Edmund stalking Claire as a hunter stalks a deer, and lay for a time in a state of half-wakefulness, wondering why I was lying on the bed with my clothes on. I hadn’t even kicked off my shoes.
Hunger forced me awake, and I shuffled towards the kitchen. At the foot of the stairs, lamplight streamed from the open door of Jean’s study. I would have to pass the door to get to the kitchen. I retreated and descended the servant’s stairs. A ham-and-four-egg omelette, several slices of melted cheese on toast, and half a pint of fresh strawberries comforted my body. My soul was not comforted at all.
The hall clock struck two. The lamp still burned in Jean’s study. What could I say to him?
I sat down before the kitchen fire, determined to take my mind off Jean by answering a less important question. How had Claire, with a milksop of a husband, avoided Lord Edmund’s attention?
“The wench was pretty, and I wanted her.” Lord Edmund, aged about sixteen, was on his feet, sweating, before an older man in an upholstered armchair. “I wanted her so bad, I thought I’d die if I didn’t have her.”
“So why didn’t you pay her?” the older man snapped. “Or even better, seduce her and have her for free? You’re good-looking enough—why couldn’t you do that?”
“I tried, but she kept saying she was respectable, like she thought she was somebody, but she was just a commoner. I got tired of her playing hard to get, so I offered her money, and she slapped me. I had to make her pay for that.”
“So, you let a chit of a girl get you into real trouble. If you’d handled it better, it would have just cost you some pocket money. Now it’s likely to cost me a purse full of gold to buy her and her father’s silence. I should take it out of your hide, you ungrateful whelp.”
The third man in the room, Lord Richard, listened to this exchange with hooded eyes. “Why bother?” he said. “Let them take him to the Frost Maiden. She’d teach him to behave himself, where you couldn’t.”
“No! Anything but that,” Lord Edmund pleaded. He dropped to his knees and tugged at the older man’s sleeve. “Please, Father, you will pay the hush money, won’t you? I’ll do anything you want, just don’t let them—”
“Will you swear,” Lord Richard said, “to never—”
“Shut up!” the earl said. “You are both damned fools. The stories about the Frost Maiden gelding gentlemen are nonsense—lies to keep the commoners quiet.”
Lord Edmund gaped. “You mean I was worried over nothing?”
Lord Richard glared at his father. His father glared at Lord Edmund. “Not over nothing, fool. We have to keep this quiet.”
“Why? What will happen if they take me to court?”
The earl shrugged. “You wouldn’t even get a slap on the wrist. The girl would have to pay a trifle for slandering you, that’s all. That keeps the Queen and the duchesses happy—if some tart has a duke’s baby, the duchess will believe the wench seduced him, not the other way around.”
Lord Edmund sprang to his feet, eyes alight. “Well, if that’s all…”
Lord Richard glowered. His father grab
bed a cane hooked over the chair arm and pounded it on the floor. “It’s not all, you idiot. I’m trying to line up good marriages for both of you, but the girls’ fathers know what goes on. The best families will cut us dead, the bastards, if they hear you’ve been through a rape trial. His grandfather—” He waved at Lord Richard. “—doesn’t have a high opinion of you or me to start with. Do you think his cousin’s fortune will go to you if the old man suspects? Get out of here. I don’t want to see you again until this mess has quieted down.”
Lord Edmund bolted with a grin on his silly face. His brother watched him go with a corded neck and bared teeth.
The earl tottered towards the door with his cane. “Come on, Richard. It’s time you met my bastard nephew in the Water Guild. We’ll send him to convince these troublemakers they don’t want to press rape charges.”
His elder son didn’t move. “You owe me an apology.”
The earl turned an astonished face towards his eldest son. “What for?”
“You could have summoned your nephew, and gotten him to extract a binding promise from Edmund that he would never assault a woman again. Instead, you gave him free reign to do as he pleases, knowing you’ll pay to cover it up. And you called me a fool.”
Two men faced each other, identical scowls strengthening the family resemblance. The earl, propped up on pillows in a huge bed, snarled at Lord Richard standing at its foot.
“Edmund’s wedding to Lady Jane is off. You told your grandfather about Edmund, didn’t you? Where’s your respect for your family?”
His son said, “I have more family feeling towards my cousin Jane than I do towards Edmund. She’s a sweet girl. I couldn’t stand to see her in that brute’s power.”
“How will either of you make an advantageous marriage? You ruined your best chance by offending the Green Duke’s daughter.”
“You are mistaken. Edmund poisoned her affection for me.”
“Nonsense. You blame all your problems on your brother.”
“No, I blame most on my father.”
The earl grabbed his cane and flailed at his son. “I’ll teach you to be impertinent, you ungrateful whelp.”
Lord Richard, out of reach, didn’t budge. “And I’m not interested in your ideas of an advantageous marriage. The Red Duke’s daughter Susan has a tongue like a whip, and Lady Margaret makes me cringe. I’ll marry someone I won’t mind coming home to, even if she is a commoner.”
The earl dropped his cane. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you spend so much time with your grandfather. He’s given you some damned impractical ideas. Are you talking about a real girl, or are you dreaming again?”
His son flushed. “A real girl.”
“A penniless nobody?”
“She has no money, but she’s related to top-ranking members of the Fire Guild.”
“I don’t believe it. If she were, she wouldn’t be penniless. Forget the wench—I won’t let you marry beneath you.”
Lord Richard walked away. “You can’t stop Edmund’s criminal behaviour. You’ll not stop me from acting honourably.”
“I could send Edmund to call on her. Would you still want her after that?”
Lord Richard froze with his hand on the doorknob, his shoulders hunched as if his father had struck him in the back. After a long pause, he spoke without turning around, his voice thick. “You win. I’ll court Lady Susan.”
The earl relaxed into the pillows. “Good. Make the girl your mistress. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, if she’s more pleasant than Lady Susan.”
His son glared venom over his shoulder. “Fine. But remember this—my grandfather’s opinion of you is much too high.”
I was an idiot. I had made assumptions, and Claire would pay for my mistakes. Even with Lord Edmund dead, she would be in danger while her father-in-law lived. Any man wicked enough to threaten his son’s sweetheart with rape would have other nasty tricks up his sleeve.
I owed Lord Richard an apology for the threatening letter I had written, but what could I say that wouldn’t give away what I knew? Or that wouldn’t make Claire feel worse than she already did?
Problems swarmed like locusts. I batted that one aside for the moment and went on watching Lord Richard.
“You would turn your own brother over to the Water Guild?” The water wizard gawked. “Have you considered what that would do to your family’s reputation?”
Lord Richard looked as if he was sucking a lemon. “It would ruin it. I abhor such desperate measures, but he’s a menace to every woman in Gastòn. Besides, he’s making my life hell.”
The wizard shook his head. “I’d love to make an example of him, but it won’t work. The stories you’ve heard are true. We can’t inflict any punishment on him, and a trial would make life unbearable for any woman brave or stupid enough to bring a complaint.”
“Isn’t there anything someone can do? If not the Frost Maiden, perhaps the Fire Warlock?”
“As long as he’s only attacking women in your family’s domains, the Fire Warlock can’t interfere. If he attacked women in some other lord’s domains, and if that lord complained, then the Fire Warlock could get involved. Those are a couple of big ifs, and I don’t know what the Fire Warlock could or would do even then. King Stephen could stop your brother.” The wizard shrugged. “But he won’t.”
The wizard leaned closer, his voice dropping. “You really want my advice? Hurry up and get married. Make a son as fast as you can, so he’s out of the line of succession. If you think he’s bad now, imagine how much worse he’ll be if he’s ever earl.”
Lord Richard’s long, thin face would tend towards the morose or melancholy even at the best of times. This was not the best of times. In his privileged life, few would have dared scold him, but he sat silent, head bowed, while the earth witch berated him.
“I don’t like your kind. I don’t like your brother. I don’t like you. You’re all the same, all you think about is sex, and taking advantage of poor women who don’t have magic shielding them. If you can’t get what you want for free, you take it by force, and turn the unlucky girl into a laughingstock for not being able to fight off somebody twice her size.”
She flung open the boarding house door. “I’ll not help you or any of your kind. Not with Claire; not with any of my girls. If the Fire Office wasn’t shielding you, I’d put a curse on you for having the frostbitten gall to ask for my help seducing her. Go away.”
Lord Richard didn’t move. “My apologies, Mrs Wetherby. I did not explain myself well. I want to protect Miss Nelson, not seduce her, and you’re supposed to be the best hand in Gastòn at the Earth Guild’s protective spells.”
The witch sneered. “Your manor is crawling with guards. You don’t need my help to protect her.”
“Those guards answer to my father. Without orders from the earl, they’ll do nothing to protect her from my brother, my father’s favoured and over-indulged son.”
“So? All the more reason I should talk her out of having anything to do with you.”
“And if you do, then what? Will she marry that annoying silversmith who’s also courting her? If she marries a wealthy merchant or craftsman—you don’t think she’ll settle for anyone who isn’t wealthy when she could have me, do you?—she’ll live in the middle of town, almost under our eaves. Among the merchants we frequent. Don’t delude yourself that my brother won’t see her.”
Mrs Wetherby’s expression dissolved from contempt into horror. She closed the door, and dropped into a chair. “Go on. I’m listening.”
“The only way I can see to protect her until Father dies, and the guards answer to me, is to ring her and her home around with protective spells like the ones you’ve put on this boarding house and your guests.”
The witch growled, “Who told you about those?”
“It wouldn’t be proper for me to tell.”
“Why don’t you talk the earl into sending your brother abroad for a few years? You can afford to let him tour the world.”
Lord Richard’s knuckles tightened. He stared out the window, away from the witch. “I don’t know if that’s enough. I’ve heard rumours about some of the other, lesser nobles. You would know better than I.”
The witch stared at him through narrowed lids. “The spells you’d need for year-round, complete protection would cost you. A lot.”
“How much?”
She named a figure that made me whistle. My estimate had been a mile low. Lord Richard didn’t blink. “I’ll pay it.”
“Not so fast. I still don’t trust you. If you want to convince me you’re really trying to protect Claire and not just get on my good side, you’ll pay in advance—”
“Of course.”
“—regardless of who she decides to marry.”
Lord Richard buried his face in his hands.
“And,” the witch went on, “you’ll pay for the spells’ upkeep for ten years.”
I had to strain my ears to hear Lord Richard. “I will pay for their upkeep for the rest of her life. Because, if she marries someone else, I couldn’t bear to ever see her again.”
Jean’s study was dark. I sat down at his desk in the still-warm chair. A strong sense of his presence surrounded me in the quiet room.
Would sleep come for him? Probably not.
Were Claire and Lord Richard sleeping well? He might sleep better now with his brother dead, but his wife didn’t understand what he had done for her. Not a good basis for a happy marriage.
I crossed my arms on the desk and laid my face down on them, tears seeping out unheeded. I wept for myself, for Claire, for all Frankland’s women injured by this dreadful secret eating away like termites at the structure of our society. I even wept for Lord Richard, a decent, honourable, and intelligent man among a class I had had nothing but contempt for.
How many others had I misjudged?