River Running

by Eden Reign

  And her eyes, brilliant, and so like Lige’s, had blinded him with blue fire when she’d declared her competence for the position. Her hand, so delicate—but capable—had stroked Grey’s curls gently even as her temper had flared.

  Grey already loved her, that was plain to see.

  Jackson’s magemark seared beneath his clothes, and he sucked a harsh breath. Glancing back at the house windows, he ran across the grass toward the verandah, desperate for refuge from anyone’s sight.

  Instead of taking the stairs like a civilized person, Jackson went the way he had often used for secret escapes in his youth, when he’d snuck away to Lakewood, the neighboring Lake Family estate where Lige had lived. Jackson’s mother had caught him climbing the second-floor trellis once when he was hardly tall enough to stretch between the top of the roof and the gable window on the third floor. He vividly remembered her horror. Jackson Coal, get down from there this instant! He’d done as she asked, and when he’d landed safely on the ground, she had folded him in her arms and hugged him so tightly, he couldn’t breathe.

  Sometimes, she’d said, pulling back and smoothing his wild hair from his face, a mama gets to where she can’t stand the thought of what might happen if … She’d trailed off, her gaze searching his. But you’re a free spirit, aren’t you, Jack? A wildfire on the mountains. Though her dark eyes still shone with moisture, she smiled. Don’t ever let anyone quench you, Jackson Coal.

  He nearly had. Henry Coal, firebrand though he was, had almost been the water to Jackson’s flame.

  Jackson pushed the angry thoughts away, surveying the climb. He began at a column near the corner patio. As he shimmied up the straight shaft, he thought of the last time he’d done this: the night he’d left home for good. Then, he’d been sliding down this column, his back bleeding and burned from his father’s fire-lash, his left eye blackened by the man’s fist. All because Jackson had dared to utter the ideals Lige had been whispering to him, the creed that had become the founding tenets of the Levelers: Equal rights for all, mage, mundane, or mixed.

  I’ll hear no more of that, young man. Haven’t I told you never to speak such heresies? Do you want to feel my fire-lash again? Henry Coal had been unable to open his ears, much less his mind.

  No, Father, Jackson had replied, stumbling backward at Henry’s twisted, angry expression.

  There is a proper order, Henry had raged, his heavy, square face taut with disapproval. Mages above men. These are the privileges our powers have given us. No son of mine is a pansy halfbreed-lover, nor a friend to mundanes. Remember what you really are—your powers, our powers, place us above them. Say it, Jackson: mages above men. Say it! The lash had struck with each demand, scoring defiance of everything his father believed deeper into Jackson’s soul. He’d never said the words. Not to appease his father, not to stop the pain.

  That had been his fifteenth birthday.

  Jackson crab-crawled sideways from the column to the wisteria trellis hanging beneath the third-floor bedroom he’d had Mr. Stone prepare for him. Not the master suite where his father’s soul still haunted every corner. He moved fluidly up the vines, pushing aside the lingering furry pods that had opened and emptied their seeds months past. The trellis bent beneath his weight. Last time he’d climbed, he’d weighed a few stone less. Life after leaving the plantation had layered muscle over his slender boyhood frame. Cut off from the privileged life of a High Family scion, as a teen runaway he’d worked—day-laboring with mundane croppers in rice swamps and indigo fields, bellowing for a blacksmith, hauling as a stevedore to load the massive Arcanan export ships, and finally scraping together enough money to purchase a small farm near Chalton. Then the war had started, and he’d been one of the first to offer his fullmage skills to the Levelers’ cause.

  Coming home was bittersweet. The beauty of the plantation grounds seduced Jackson with whispers of ease and peace. He could see that shadow life just in front of him, beckoning like the blurry veils of the Indigo Wells. But the past shaped that future, too, and almost all of Jackson’s memories of Coalhaven were tainted with pain and hatred.

  He shoved the window sash up, though it creaked in protest, and Jackson emerged into the bedroom he hoped would serve as his refuge. Compared to the rest of Coalhaven, it was spare and empty. The bed was hardly better than his army cot, though twice as wide, and the fresh Chalton cotton sheets were a luxury even Jackson had to allow. He hauled off his boots. The going was slow with his bandaged hand, which complained after the reckless trellis climb.

  A washstand with a white porcelain pitcher stood beneath a large mirror in a cracked, gilded frame. Jackson had requested that it be placed in his room along with a handheld looking glass that had remained untouched, along with everything else in his mother’s chamber, for the past twenty years, since her death during the initial outbreak of the same cholera epidemic that had killed Grey’s mother a decade and a half later.

  Squaring off to face the mirror, Jackson wriggled free from his coat and awkwardly unbuttoned his shirt. He unwrapped the bandages on his left hand and gingerly flexed his remaining four fingers. They worked fine, but the skin was still a bit ravaged. Next he unlaced his nankeen breeches, peeling them off until he stood, naked as a babe, in front of the mirror. His body had grown leaner during the war, further defining the muscles gained during his hardworking youth. The privations of army life had whittled away any excess. He could count every divide on his abdomen, every seam that cut between the muscles of his arms. Hard new shrapnel scars sprinkled his chest and shoulders.

  A flash of black swirled over his left shoulder and then vanished. Slowly, keeping his gaze fixed in the large mirror, Jackson angled his body and picked up his mother’s looking glass to get a full view of his back. He had not examined the magemark in days.

  It had grown. When he’d first seen it after the explosion in Chalton, it had been about the length and thickness of his forearm, a spiked, flame-like serpent that bent and writhed in a set pattern across his abdomen and lower back, traveling up over his shoulders before settling near his waist again. At this moment, the mark ran from the top of his left hip, across his waist, up the breadth of his back, and to his right shoulder, where it twisted and then coursed halfway down his right upper arm. If Jackson watched it too long it made him feel ill. The mark’s edges glowed like embers at times like this, when it actively roved over his flesh. Other times, it lay still and dull.

  Rumors said that every mage left his own unique magemark. His father’s marking had been the final, deliberate act of a bitter and angry man. Henry Coal had trapped all his fiery feelings in his curse; the mark bit and burned as much as the man’s lash ever had.

  Somehow, since that terrible day of the explosion under Chalton’s clouds, Jackson had been managing. He’d managed to protect Lige by concealing his identity beneath a makeshift pyre. He’d managed to return to Savana and perform his duties as a surrendered officer of the Leveler Army, despite his despair at the war’s outcome. He’d managed to speak the words of allegiance that brought him back into the fold of society, though he despised the ethos they espoused. He’d managed to secure Grey; managed to hire a governess, troublesome as she was; managed to return to Coalhaven and play the part of its master.

  He’d managed to keep the memories of war at bay, managed to present a calm and composed face to the world.

  But inside, he was crumbling. Inside, the scream of war never ended.

  The air felt thick. The darkening sky grew heavy. A sudden pain lanced his head and bent Jackson double. He pulled at his hair as he crouched before the mirror, head down, eyes squeezed shut.

  The mark burned and burned, cutting swaths of fire across his back, his shoulders, his chest.

  Gunshots, smoke, screams. Mud, thunder, ash. The dull thud of the surgeon’s ax, hewing blackened limbs. The pitiful wails of boys, shrieking for laudanum, bourbon, mercy.

  Lige wasn’t the only dead man Jackson had burned, not by a long shot. How many of the
men in his battalion had he burned or buried? And those he’d fought on the battlefield had still been living, as his father had been, when the explosion consumed him.

  So much pain. So much blood. So much mangled, scorched earth. All for nothing.

  “Nothing,” he muttered. He yanked his hands from his hair, formed them into fists. “Good for nothing. Vermin. Filthy.” He slammed his maimed hand into the mirror, once, twice. The glass cracked in a thousand seams, tiny shards flying, some cutting his knuckles, others falling harmlessly to the floor.

  “Killer!” he raged at his fractured reflection. One more sharp punch, and the entire mirror shattered and fell from the wall with a great crash, raining broken glass all over Jackson’s bare flesh.

  Stumbling backward in a dazed lurch, he collapsed onto his spartan bed. He curled into a ball and clutched his own arms. The magemark writhed on his back, cutting its burning tracks over and over again.

  “What am I going to do?” he whispered into the darkness. “How am I going to live like this?”

  And, like a war drum beating through his head— what if someone finds out, what if someone finds out, what if someone finds out ...

  What you really are.

  Vermin. Killer. Marked.

  Jackson woke the following day with a dry mouth and foggy vision. A slice of sunlight cut through the window—still open from his climbing escapade—and a gentle breeze billowed the voile curtains softly over his face. His entire body hurt, but the pain centered in his left hand. The bandage was gone; he vaguely recalled removing it the evening before. His knuckles and fingers were covered in cuts and dried blood.

  A double image shimmered in the air in front of that appendage: his bloody, burned hand as he’d sent his fire at Lige’s remains, trembling like a dead leaf barely clinging to its branch in a strong breeze. He slammed his palm down and heaved to his feet. He wore nothing. His head felt stuffed with cotton, as bad as in those final days of the fight at Shay Loche, when the cannons had fired for so long no one could hear for days even after the silence of death had stilled the battlefield.

  He stumbled to the washstand, ignoring the shards of the mirror on the ground, paying no heed to the sharp stabs of glass in his bare feet. Every pain was a penance and a reminder. He could not fall apart. Others—Grey, and now Miss Rivers, his croppers and his new servants—depended upon him.

  The thought of Miss Rivers lightened his steps as he washed away the blood and dressed in fresh clothing. He even ran a comb through his too-long hair, thinking of the tendrils that wouldn’t stay pinned in her chignon.

  The magemark had settled on his back; he’d seen no trace of it as he dressed, and he did not crane his head to try. He would not poke the coiled, resting serpent again, not until he was prepared for it to strike. He would learn to control the thing until it could be removed. And it would be removed.

  Because it would kill him if it remained. And he could not die. He’d promised Lige, and Grey needed him, even if the boy didn’t know it.

  Then there was Miss Rivers—it was possible, he thought as he recalled her delicate hand and gentle touch, that he needed Miss Rivers. As a reminder that there was goodness in this troubled world.

  He strode out of the bedroom to find his governess and his ward, making a mental note to clean up the shattered mirror later.

  Chapter 8

  Manda

  Manda arrived in the kitchen on the first morning of her new position, searching for breakfast—preferably something already cooked—for Grey, who had yet to rise. Finding nothing in the tea kitchen, she stepped out the back door and walked to the outdoor kitchen. She hoped Rose Westerly was already working on breakfast.

  When she entered, she stopped short. Miss Westerly was nowhere in sight, but Master Coal huddled over the counter, struggling to cut linen strips with one hand and wrap them around his maimed appendage with his other.

  After a moment, Manda stepped forward. “Here, sir, let me help.”

  Master Coal dropped the scissors onto the counter with a clatter, glancing up at her. “Miss Rivers. I thought you weren’t up yet.”

  “I’m an early riser, sir,” she murmured as she leaned over his hand. The skin across his knuckles was shiny with burn scars, but they were mostly healed. A stump where his little finger had been was also healed, covered with ribboned scarring. But there were many fresh cuts all over his hand.

  Master Coal waited patiently until she finished her inspection. His dark eyes shuttered when she looked up. “Are you familiar with wounds inflicted by elemental powers, Miss Rivers?”

  “Some,” she answered noncommittally. She couldn’t tell him about the wounds she had tried to heal, the old scars on her mother’s legs and back from time spent in the High Families’ circles. Her mother had never told her who had cast the curses, but Manda wasn’t a fool. “I can help these.” She lightly brushed her fingers over the fresh cuts. “I handled many scrapes and bruises at the orphanage.”

  She cupped Master Coal’s hand, longing to heal the elemental burns completely, but knowing it would be a death warrant to her position at Coalhaven if she used her recognizable halfmage healing magic on him.

  She leaned closer, so close her nose nearly touched his hand. “Sir, there—there are glass shards in your knuckles!”

  He jerked his hand away, lowering it to his side. “Yes, I—cracked my lamp chimney last night.” He yanked his coat sleeve over his wrist, tugging on the cuff. “Please stop your fussing. I’ll remove the glass myself. Did you need something from the kitchen? For my ward, perhaps?”

  Manda flushed, stepping back. “Yes, I—I was looking for breakfast for him.”

  “This is why I was hoping you could cook,” Master Coal said. “With staff so limited, we’re all doing for ourselves for the time being.” He preceded her to the ice box. “Eggs, Miss Rivers,” he said, opening it and motioning toward the stocked shelves. “The milk has been skimmed and is in the bucket at the back. Help yourself. What’s left of the winter onions are there.” He pointed at tall baskets in the corner. “Staples are in the pantry—grits, oats, flour, and the like. Mr. Reed has a greenhouse and brings in fresh vegetables and fruit in the afternoon.” He bowed and exited the kitchen, his burnt fingers clutching the edge of his coat sleeve.

  Manda watched him go. She wondered briefly where he had lost his finger and what poor mirror he had smashed. Those glass shards in his knuckles hadn’t come from a cracked lamp chimney. The shards had been reflective and silvered.

  She sighed as she turned to the pantry. Grits she could manage. At least she hoped she could, in an unfamiliar kitchen. She eyed the stove warily. It was cast iron and nickel, large and elaborate, very different from the small one she’d labored over with Enid at the orphanage.

  After bringing a pot of water to boil on the stove, Manda stirred in the grits and pushed the pot toward the back of the stove where it wasn’t so hot, for it to simmer. She drifted over to the kitchen door, gazing wonderingly over Coalhaven’s gorgeous grounds. The white house rose proud and pristine to preside over the green lawns. To the right, the tree-lined drive curved into the distance. Closer, a swing waved gently in the morning breeze, hanging from the hefty bough of an old magnolia. Manda tamped down the temptation to slip outside and try the swing, but she closed her eyes and dreamily imagined herself in a beautiful sprigged lawn dress—with hoops—doing just that.

  A sharp, acrid odor brought Manda out of her reveries. She whirled as two young women entered the kitchen.

  “What’s burning?” asked the blonde with brown eyes who Manda recognized as Miss Abigail Windham, the maid who’d made up her room the day before.

  “Oh, by the Good Waters, the grits!” Manda exclaimed, darting for the stove.

  The other girl, with Akwa skin the color of milky tea and an unexpected smattering of freckles across her nose, grabbed a mitt and hauled the pot off the stove. She set it on the table and poked at it with a spoon. “Burned nearly solid,” she commented, c
rinkling her nose. “How’d you manage that, standing right beside it? Ruining grits takes work.”

  Manda flushed. “Well, I—I seem to have a talent for cookery disasters.”

  The freckled girl laughed. “That must be why Master Coal just gave me the official position of cook. You must be the governess. I’m Rose. Rose Westerly. I’m new, too.”

  Abigail Windham sniffed as she searched in the ice box for milk. “Honestly,” she said, giving both Manda and Miss Westerly scornful looks. “I don’t know what Coalhaven is coming to, with a darkling for a cook and a governess who can’t even make her own grits. If I didn’t need the money, I’d have left along with the others after the previous Master Coal died.” She swished out of the kitchen, her blonde curls bouncing with every step, taking all the milk with her.

  “I don’t think Abigail is pleased to be working for the new Master Coal,” Miss Westerly said, watching her go. “Or maybe she’s envious that I get to cook. I’d much rather cook than clean, and the Master said I should do it, as I have some experience cooking for numbers.”

  Manda suppressed a giggle. “I, for one, am extremely glad you’re the cook. It would be a hazard if I had to do it.” She pointed at the burned grits. “That’s one of my better efforts, Miss Westerly.”

  “Oh, in private, call me Rose,” the friendly girl said. “Miss Westerly sounds like someone’s spinster aunty.”

  “Then you must call me Manda.” She and Rose laughed together, and hope blossomed in Manda’s chest. Perhaps this position at Coalhaven wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

  The first days of Manda’s position as governess soon settled into a routine. There were more rough beginnings: Grey would sometimes burst into tears in the middle of a lesson—Manda had caught great splashes of moisture dripping from his cheeks onto his paper as he struggled to work a sum. If Master Coal looked into the schoolroom while Grey was busy reading aloud from the Bard’s sonnets, Grey grew sullen and quiet, refusing to speak, even to Manda, for hours afterward.