by Anna Sheehan
His mates came forward to collect him. ‘So much for Lesli’s protection,’ one of them said. ‘I told you it wouldn’t work.’
‘Do you want to be the one to tell him that?’ his friend said.
‘No!’ said the other with feeling.
They frowned at their sleeping comrade. ‘Let’s leave him here. Let someone else tell the old windbag his charm’s not working.’
‘Better them than us. Let’s finish quick.’ He laughed. ‘Without Levi counting every strand, what do you say you and I each …?’
‘Just one or two, eh?’ They hurriedly stuffed a few skeins of gold into their pockets, and finished the rest so quickly that it never occurred to them to even glance at the shadow that Levi had been trying to warn them about.
I was left staring at a Sleeping guard, holding the soldier’s tag on a roughly spun woollen cord, whose spinning I recognized all too well.
My dark spell was still twisted into the wool, but there was something else there, too. Something which made me uneasy. It was as if my spell was overlaid with another, an oily, greasy magic, manipulative and so subtle as to almost be unrecognizable. A very specific type of manipulative magic, that could use another’s spell, or another’s will, and turn it to his own devices. This spell was no longer wholly my own.
Of course! Someone had used the spell itself as a shield for select members of the guard. If someone knew enough to turn my hatred against itself, using that hate to keep the Sleep at bay, then mightn’t they know enough to turn the Sleep itself to their own devices?
I lay back and tried to think of how the spell had spread. First to Lavender, pierced by the spindle. Then to her wretched dog, in close proximity. After that, it travelled through the lines of my hatred, touching those who had harmed me personally first. From what I had gathered, my hatred for Hiedelen and his men hadn’t struck me fully until I realized that Will was marrying Narvi – and out of all of the men from Hiedelen, hadn’t it struck Narvi first? But I desperately hated Lesli, and it wasn’t touching him, so he must be guarded. Somehow, just after the surge of my hatred had taken out Narvi, he had gotten hold of my spool of wool and was using it as a shield for him and his men. But when I had attacked him and failed, that hadn’t been the Sleep; that was an attempt at cold-blooded murder. This Sleep spell wouldn’t have protected against that.
But my spindle would. The broken spindle: the drop spindle I had been using for more than a dozen years, the spindle that held the memories of warming spells for my sister and spells to help us escape from our foes and even that wretched gold ring for Lynelle; that spindle had been the channel for my power for long enough that it was as powerful as any more traditional faerie’s magic wand. Anyone with even a moderate gift for magic, particularly the oily, manipulative kind I could feel on this woollen cord, could turn that spindle into a fierce protection, with every pulse of love and hatred I had felt in the last decade. And Lynelle had been no more than seven years ago. Oh, Light, the strength of the emotion in that spindle! What had I been thinking? Of course, I hadn’t been thinking. I’d only been feeling – hatred, revenge, self-loathing for having met Princess Willow and not hating her on sight. I’d liked her. That was what made it so terrible for me. Everything that happened, right from the very beginning, had been because, in one charged, irritated, amused conversation, I had grown fond of the Princess Willow Lyndal.
Cursed, Nameless fae, I wasn’t good for anything.
I hadn’t the strength to do anything about it just then. I could barely see straight. I needed to rest. The hollow in the marble floor left by that blasted thorn bush was a good size to curl up in. It reminded me of my burrow, actually. With the sounds of Levi’s nightmares for company, I tucked myself into a ball and tried to regain some energy.
I’m not sure you could call it sleep, but the day passed in my little hollow.
It was the wedding bells that pulled me from my stupor. I didn’t recognize what they were at first, only that a musical crashing echoed around the palace and rang from the hills. By the Light, I’d stayed too long! I jumped to my feet—
And realized I should have gotten up slowly. I reeled and fell back to the floor.
I spent a few moments on my back, watching the room spin above my head. Then I crawled onto my hands and knees and used the wall to get to my feet. Oh, black dark, how was I supposed to stop this wedding?
Get there first, I decided. Figure out what you’re going to do when you get there.
Will
The wedding was not a grand affair of pride, pomp, and circumstance. There weren’t enough people awake in the castle to fill the palace chapel, so Lesli had elected to hold the wedding in the throne room, where the guests wouldn’t rattle around so much. There were barely forty guests, and at least a quarter of them were upper servants, hastily stuffed into holiday garb. The resident members of the court were in attendance – those that weren’t asleep. Otherwise, the only other guests were Heidelen’s guards. They ringed the throne room, and the bishop seemed uneasy. Will was deposited at the newly erected altar by Captain Warren. Ferdinand entered and watched from the doorway of the antechamber, his face pale as if he were feverish. Will shook her head at him gently. There was nothing he could do.
Apparently, Lesli had spent the last three days having as much of the spun gold as he could embroidered onto one of his royal blue velvet coats. He positively glittered standing by the bishop; as gaudy as a gypsy, only three times as wide. The design was fairly simple, a twisting vine, more the tendrils of a grape than of the climbing roses, but it covered the coat from chin to hem. The sight of him swathed in the spoils of all Reynard’s hard work made Will feel positively ill.
She gritted her teeth as the bishop began the liturgy. She’d been prepared for this. She’d been prepared to marry someone she didn’t love for her country. She’d just thought it would be a harmless little boy, not the epitome of evil himself. As the ceremony continued something melted in Will. As the bishop droned on and on about the sanctimony of the marriage state and how the gods would smile upon the couple, she started to cry. She did not sob, or even bow her head. The tears trickled one by one down her face, but she stood straight and tall and stony faced as the bishop ate up the words until she had to agree. I do, she had to say. I do. And she could. For her country, for her sister, for everyone, she could do this. Bravery. She had that virtue, after all. She could face anything. Even this.
And then someone behind her screamed. She thought it was Ginith.
The entire congregation shifted, turning to look at the figure that was trudging slowly up the isle behind them. More screams followed Ginith’s, and Will almost didn’t blame them. Reynard looked terrible. He was hunched and scraggly. His ragged russet clothes were crusty with dried blood, and the shadows swirled around him like mist. The tattered remains of Will’s shadow spell weren’t entirely gone from him, so he seemed wreathed in darkness. He had forgotten his hood. With his eyes blazing red with exhaustion and his face white as driven snow, he looked the personification of evil.
‘Guards!’ Lesli called out behind her. ‘Fetch the guards! Kill that demon.’
Reynard glanced about him as if he’d only just realized what was going on. The guards at the sides of the room moved as one, fitting bolts to crossbows. ‘No!’ Will cried. She wrenched her arm from Lesli’s grip and flung herself to Reynard, shielding him with her body. His hand gently squeezed her shoulder. ‘No, you can’t kill him!’
‘Move away, Princess. This is no concern of yours.’
‘I won’t let you kill him!’
‘He’s just vermin!’ Lesli barked. ‘Guards, shoot him!’
Captain Warren shook his head. ‘Not with the princess in the way. If you’ll pardon me, sir.’
‘Then seize her!’
Reynard grabbed her then, hard. ‘I want my payment, Princess,’ he announced. ‘You made a promise.’
The words sounded hoarse in Will’s ears. Of all the times to collect! Th
ere had to be something else going on.
‘You know this demon?’ Lesli snapped.
Will glared at him. ‘He’s not a demon!’
‘Foul witch! Associating with demons. Criminal activity in such a noble rank. Guards! Guards!’
Ferdinand surprised Will by coming to her side. ‘Quite right,’ he said evenly to Lesli. ‘If she is such a criminal, it would be unwise to wed her. Why not leave her to her own kingdom’s justice and return home?’
‘Leaving who in charge?’ Lesli asked. ‘You?’
‘Why not? I was to be heir to the kingdom upon my marriage to Princess Lavender.’
‘But you aren’t married yet, Prince Ferdinand! And that witch beside you has broken the law of this realm and used foul magic—’
‘You’re one to talk,’ Reynard called from behind Will. ‘You’re a magician yourself.’
There were several gasps around the room.
‘What did you just say?’
Reynard poked his head between Will and Ferdinand’s shoulders. ‘You’ve your own gift for magic, and you use it, too. You’re shrouded in a magical protection, of a very specific kind. Many of your men, are too.’ He pulled a woollen cord from his pocket and held it out towards the king. ‘I wonder what the noblemen of this realm would think if they discovered that you had a shield against the Sleep … and weren’t sharing it with them?’
Will gazed at Reynard, and she knew he was telling the truth. She glared at King Lesli, with his blue velvet coat and his fine fashionable powdered wig and his expensive gold rings. ‘You were using magic to manipulate Mother,’ she realized. ‘That’s why Mother was listening to you, when she’s been doing everything all her life to get the kingdom out from underneath your oppression. You’ve been using magic all your life, haven’t you? Why else did Father willingly come to sacrifice himself on the thorns?’
Reynard piped up, ‘And why else would your own brother take your place to die on them fifty years ago?’
‘Why else banish magic,’ Ferdinand added, ‘unless because you don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing?’
‘Lies!’ Lesli cried. ‘Conjecture! You can prove nothing.’
‘Yes I can,’ Reynard said. ‘Check his person. He and all of his men have a spell cord just such as this. How long have you had it, Lesli? You could have protected others with that spell, shielded them from the Sleep, like the king and queen, but you didn’t want to.’
‘I only discovered the spell cords in the Princess Willow’s chambers. She’s the witch!’
‘We’ve only your word for that,’ Will said, leaping on the lie. She knew, now, that that rough wool was Reynard’s sleep spell, and she thought it likely that Lesli had only discovered it when he searched her chambers the night she went to see Mistress Cait. Still, he had used it for his own devices, and as such had been caught red handed. ‘Why didn’t you offer this protection to my father? Or Ferdinand? Or Captain Warren?’
Captain Warren cleared his throat. ‘Failure to disclose vital information to the crown in a time of crisis is a hanging offence, sire.’
King Lesli gave him a withering look. ‘Only if I am a citizen of Lyndaria.’
‘If you’re proclaiming yourself as regent,’ Will said, ‘then you are.’
Lesli’s eyes narrowed. ‘This is a farce. They’re all corrupted by the demon, and you can’t prove I’ve ever touched a rag of a spell.’
‘Oh?’ said a crisp, clear voice from behind the crowd. ‘I can fix that.’
White fire engulfed the room. Most of the people screamed, and Ginith was the loudest of all. As quickly as the cool inferno had risen, it faded, leaving only a few tendrils of flame here and there, in particular around Reynard and Will. Up beside them strode Reynard’s little sister, still burning with foxfire. ‘Hey there, Princess,’ she said, and Will smiled at her.
‘What are you doing here?’ Reynard asked.
‘Our ma’s been out looking for you. We were worried. You’ve been gone almost two days. I told her I’d go get you.’ She turned back to the people. ‘People of Lyndaria! My foxfire clings to magic. Everyone look around you. If anyone’s still glowing, you know they’re a magician.’
The fire burned steadily around Will’s hands, with a burning flame near her heart. Reynard positively flared with it, the brightest thing in the room with a shadow at its core. To Will’s surprise, a handful of the guests glittered here and there, and the bishop held a steady glow in his hands.
And King Lesli glowed from top to toe like a torch. Will suspected much of the reason was his gold-studded coat, but some clearly surrounded his mouth. Unless he had been eating the gold, Lesli had been speaking spells of his own.
‘Lies still!’ King Lesli cried out. ‘This … urchin is obviously working with them. Another criminal.’
‘Still,’ said Captain Warren. ‘I’m beginning to wonder about some of my own actions over the last few days, Your Majesty. It might be best to investigate this further before we proceed with any permanent arrangements.’
Lesli’s eyes narrowed then, and he glared at Captain Warren. ‘I do not intend to allow a handful of spurious rumours to deprive me of what is rightfully mine.’
‘Yet you’d do the same to me,’ Will snapped. ‘What proof does anyone have that I did anything to my sister? That I’d ensorcel my own kingdom? Magic was never against the law until Lesli came among us and made it so.’ The guards seemed ready to listen to her, so she stepped away from Reynard to take a better stance. ‘From the moment of my birth I have been devoted to this kingdom. I have obeyed every law, respected every tradition. I am my mother’s daughter, and a rightful heir to the Lyndal bloodline.’ She pointed at Lesli. ‘This man is a usurper who has done nothing but sap this country of its finance and strength from the beginning of his reign! Beside whom do you stand?’
There was a murmur from the crowd.
‘She stands beside a Nameless demon!’ Lesli shouted. ‘And that is the only thing that is keeping you alive, you witch.’ Lesli lunged and grabbed Reynard by the arm, dragging him from the protection of his sister and Ferdinand. Reynard was still too weak from his last night’s labours to struggle much. Lesli turned him around and held a sharp pointed piece of wood to his throat. Will blinked. She knew that piece of broken wood. It was that wooden wheel that she had taken from her cloak. The wheel that had still had a strand of wool around it. Ah, hell, she realized, this was Reynard’s drop spindle! The one he had used to cast the cursed Sleep. And it was sharp and deadly as a poniard, and if her studies served her, likely to pierce Reynard with his own magic if it should be used against him. No shield can protect you from yourself. ‘If I kill your demon, you’ll have no power against me.’
‘He is not a demon!’ Will said heatedly.
‘No one move!’ Lesli shouted.
Will was exhausted, Ferdinand was broken, and Reynard had a sharp, deadly stake held to his throat. She glanced wildly at Reynard’s sister. ‘Can you do anything?’
‘Illusions,’ she said, panicked. ‘Intuition. My brother’s the one with the power.’
Reynard’s hands had moved into his pocket, and Will could see him twisting something with his fingers. Oh, please let him spin himself out of this! ‘Warren,’ Lesli shouted, ‘I command you to clap that woman in irons!’
‘Don’t you do it, Warren!’ Ferdinand shouted.
Warren was used to following commands. He was never one to make decisions on his own. Ginith, however, had no such internal war. She leaped for Will and grabbed her wrists. ‘I’ve had enough of you,’ Will snapped, and kneed her in the stomach. Ginith fell to the ground, her fine skirts billowing around her beautifully.
‘Don’t do it!’ Reynard’s sister cried, and Will turned from Ginith to see Lesli twisting Reynard’s fine fingers backwards, as if he would break them. The spindle dug into Reynard’s flesh, and the tip of the broken shard was stained with blood.
‘What’s this?’ Lesli said. He pulled a tangle of red gold
thread from Reynard’s hand, breaking the spell he was trying to spin. Lesli chuckled. ‘Why thank you. Every ounce of gold helps.’ He squeezed the snarl of spun gold tightly in his hand.
Will screamed. It felt as though Lesli had his hand around her heart, and was crushing it. She fell to her knees, and Ferdinand went with her. ‘Will!’ he cried, catching her with his good arm. Her hand went to her heart, and she looked down. All she saw was the still glowing tongue of foxfire that showed magic had been used there recently.
Reynard watched her fall, his eyes wide with panic, and then his lips curled viciously. With a fierce snarl, he twisted his neck and bit the hand the held the spindle, hard. He barely seemed to notice the new line of red that grazed his collarbone. Lesli cried out in horror and shook his hand, tearing the flesh, but effectively disengaging the biting fox. The broken spindle fell with a clatter to the ground. Lesli also ceased squeezing the little skein of thread, and the pain around Will’s heart faded. Reynard fell and scuttled to her, taking her by the arm that wasn’t already occupied by Ferdinand. ‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed, Lesli’s blood upon his lips. He lightly touched her glowing chest. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Will looked from Reynard to Lesli, who still held the skein of gold. Of course! Reynard did magic by spinning threads. The gold briar on Will’s chest was the same red gold as that tangle of thread. In tending her wound, she realized, Reynard would have used the nearest thread to hand, and that would have been the same spool she had been dangling over, where her blood had poured. That gold was alloyed with her blood, and was holding her together. Whatever Lesli did to it happened to her, too. That was why Reynard was apologizing.
Maybe she could use it against Lesli. Sympathetic magic, as in the one unburnt chapter of The Ages of Arcana. She’d never had access to the kind of power that magic needed, but the thread was her own life’s blood mingled with Reynard’s faerie magic. It should be wildly potent. But what could she have the thread do that wouldn’t mean her own death?