The Child Prince (The Artifactor)

by Honor Raconteur

  “To what end?” a man with narrow shoulders and thick glasses asked wearily. “King Aren was still alive, it’s not as if the prince would have been able to rule. Or even known how to, as he didn’t have the necessary training for it.”

  “And who’s responsible for that?” Clasessens demanded, face becoming ruddy with anger. “I’ll tell you! WE ARE. You’ve talked Goethals and I into changing one law after another, and sometimes you overruled us entirely, but what has it led to? The king and prince going out into the public, on their own, and doing everything in their power to strip us of our position! And you know what? Sweet mercy, but I can’t blame them. I sit in a den of vipers.”

  “Clasessens, that is quite enough!” Toussaint thundered. “I will not sit here and be insulted like this! We are not at fault for any of this. Everything that we did was for the good of—”

  “Ourselves!” Goethals overrode loudly. “Do not try to tell me otherwise. It was not for the good of Windamere, but for the sake of this Council. But the game is up, Toussaint. We shall not wiggle free of this. The Dragonmanovichs are free—free of the rooms we locked them into, free of their curses, and free of the supposed safety of this palace. They are even now doing everything in their power to wrest back their kingdom. If we are lucky, they will not call forth the power of the Council of Kings.”

  A man that sat almost directly in front of Sevana chuckled in a darkly humorous way. “Really, gentlemen, this drama is unnecessary. So the king and prince have been scurrying about the countryside, stirring up the rabble. To what end? We can certainly re-instate them to their former positions, but they will no longer have the power they once did. The laws are changed, the procedures different. If they call in the Council of Kings, it will not affect us in any way. We have the perfect excuses in place: We tried to cure the Child Prince and failed. We had no knowledge of the king being cursed whatsoever, just thought him indifferent to the workings of his country. We changed the workings of the kingdom so that we could preserve it. Is this not all reasonable, given the facts of the situation?”

  The very way he said it, with such mild good humor, made Sevana’s stomach twist in an ugly knot. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”

  “Same here,” Bel grimaced, expression a mix of revulsion and anger. Shaking his head, he turned to Aren, who stood nearby, and asked, “Is this enough? I cannot imagine that they need to hear more than this to know how corrupt the council is.”

  Aren’s expression was fixated into marble stillness, not revealing anything, but his eyes shone with conflicting emotions. “It’s certainly enough for me. My brother kings, what say you?”

  Sevana had been so engrossed in the discussion in the council room, and to what the kings around her were saying, that she paid scant regard to the crowd of citizens that hovered outside around the three floor to ceiling windows. This proved, in retrospect, to be a disastrously stupid thing to do.

  The citizens had not listened calmly as the Councilmen talked, and they took in every word with growing outrage and disgust. As the Councilmen calmly laid out their excuses and plans to keep the Dragonmanovichs from regaining full power, the citizens started to speak to each other in louder and more fervent tones, their anger spreading like a contagion. It became so loud that even inside their stone walls, the men in the Council room could hear it, and they stopped mid-sentence to listen.

  “What, in sweet mercy, is that?” one of them asked in bafflement. Standing, he took a look through the windows, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “Heavens, there’s people out there! Now how did they get unto the ground unchallenged?”

  “Why are they even here?” Toussaint asked, puzzled. “Some misguided attempt to support their king?”

  “Ridiculous. Have the guard round them up and throw them in some cell.”

  Sarsen swore, words almost too quick to be understood, and took an aborted step toward the outer wall. “No, don’t—”

  From outside, the crowd became a mob of rage. They moved forward in an unrelenting tide, calling out words that could not be understood. They hardly needed to be, as tone relayed enough. These people were angry. Angry at what the Council had done to the ruling family, angry at being suppressed and mistreated for ten years just to satisfy these men’s ruthless ambitions, angry to be treated even now as little better than cattle. Their presence magnified and expanded, becoming just as threatening as a young mother dragon in search of her egg.

  “Can’t understand what they think they’re doing,” Toussaint said, his naturally loud voice carrying at exactly the wrong time. “Solid stone walls between us and them. They think we’ll pay attention to a bit of rabble yelling at us?”

  In that moment, the delicate balance of power cracked and broke open as one of the large windows exploded inward, glass shards spraying in every direction. No one could even formulate a response before several people shoved the glass shards further inside, giving them a way inside, and the first of the ‘rabble’ stepped through.

  “Stone the crows!” Sevana took a step forward, hand automatically reaching for a wand, before she remembered that despite being see-through, she had a solid stone wall in front of her. She clenched her hand in aggravation, nails biting into the skin of her palms, and resisted the urge to swear. “They’re breaking through!”

  “What do they think they’re doing?” Bel demanded at her side, eyes wide with incredulity. “I specifically told everyone that I didn’t want any fighting!”

  From the other side, in the council room, the air of civility shattered with the windows. Several young men, of every possible age and size, forced their way past the shards of glass and the wooden trim, seemingly uncaring about the scratches they gained along the way. They had nothing more than daggers and lamps in their hands, but they didn’t seem to care about being properly armed either. They roared with anger, voices overlapping each other so much that no one could make sense of even a single word, and surged forward. In their wake, others swarmed inside, and not just the younger generation. Older men of every possible trade, middle aged matrons, and even a few old men brandishing canes all fought their way through, faces contorted with rage.

  “This is bad,” Sarsen muttered, wincing as another window shattered, spraying glass inside in every direction. “The guards—”

  “Won’t do a bit of good,” Aren denied, voice harsh and sounding ever so slightly panicked. “They won’t be able to get inside the room, there are so many people there. Artifactors, can you do anything?”

  “From here?” Sarsen objected. “Majesty, I know we can see into the room, but there’s still solid stone between us! I can’t cast a spell through stone, we’d have to go around and into the room from the doorway.”

  “You’d be just as stuck as the guards!” Aren protested.

  “Maybe you should try a window,” Bel suggested with bleak humor. The words barely left his mouth when the last window shattered, the sound making everyone flinch.

  “Someone has to get in there quickly,” Navarro said firmly. “Look at them. They’re not just angry, they’re enraged. Someone’s going to be killed at this rate.”

  The Sa Kao king made an excellent point. Sevana’s eyes scanned the room as much as she could, but in this melee of people, she couldn’t discern even one councilman. They’d been buried under a human avalanche and she could no longer make heads or tails of what she saw.

  “Sarsen, do a scan,” Aren ordered. “Has anyone been killed yet?”

  He flicked his fingers in a quick gesture, words of the spell muttered so quick and low that even she could barely figure out what he said, and then the small circles of the spell appeared in front of his eyes, as if he wore round glasses. His eyes turned almost blue as he went from one end of the room to the other. “I count two dead.”

  “Already?!” Aren exclaimed. “Sweet mercy, this is madness! They were only called to witness, not kill!”

  “I say you’ve got very loyal people,” Vlatko said with a wolfish
smile. “My people, they would react same in this situation, I think.”

  “We’ve got to get in there somehow!” Bel growled. “Can one of you break us through from here?”

  “And do what?” Axelrad demanded at his elbow. “You’d get swept along with them and trampled, possibly killed, without anyone intending harm. Mobs are mindless monsters, no reasoning will stop them at this point!”

  The guard captain spoke golden truth. But Sevana had no patience for this argument on the best course of action. While they spoke and debated, more people were being harmed, and it needed to stop. Now. “Step back!” she called to everyone in the room. Without giving them more than second to respond, she pulled a wand free and spoke sharply, “KLAK!”

  The wall cracked and splintered before crumbling to the floor in large chunks. Everyone around her gasped and stumbled backwards in reaction, their reflexes about five seconds too late to do any good. But she didn’t worry if she might have hit someone when she blasted the wall silly. Instead, she put a boot on top of the nearest chunk of stone and stepped up, crossing the divide into the other side.

  Some dust lingered in the air, landing on her tongue, and she absently spit it out as she stepped up again, onto the largest pile of stone. The people in the Council room flinched away when the wall crumbled. At least, the ones that noticed moved. The rest were so involved in fighting and yelling, they hadn’t yet detected anything amiss.

  Fed up with the whole situation, Sevana raised her wand high in the air above her head, and did a wide circular motion, including the whole room in front of her. Then she snapped it downwards with a commanding, “ISE NE FOLE!”

  From her wand, ice rushed out in a lightning-quick stream, gushing outwards and coating the whole room in seconds. The air misted white as it abruptly cooled, spraying a fine, cold mist in every direction, and an errant shiver raced along Sevana’s skin. She didn’t flinch from it, staying focused. Everyone, once coated, froze in place, only their faces and heads untouched. What had been chaos only moments before became a frozen land of blue-white ice. It looked like a cursed ice sculpture with figures in demented and strange poses, mouths agape and eyes wide with panic.

  Those outside the room, who had been trying to fight their way inside, abruptly halted at the gaping holes of the window and backed up a few paces, nervous now about entering.

  Sevana eyed them all and a nervous silence filled the room. “There’s two dead in this room,” she said in a loud voice that sounded thunderous. “Who are they?”

  “Uhhh…” a female voice in the far back corner responded timidly, “I saw a Councilman over here with a knife in his chest.”

  That would be one. (Sevana felt it good riddance, too, but Aren undoubtedly wouldn’t think that way.) “Who else?”

  “There’s another Councilman over here with a bad head injury,” a male voice responded closer to the window. She couldn’t see the speaker through the throng of bodies, but he sounded nervous as well. “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

  So that made two.

  “Um, Madam Artifactor,” a pot-bellied man in front of her attempted a smile which faltered under her unamused gaze. “Do you mind undoing the spell now? We promise to leave quietly.”

  “You can take that matter up with your king,” she informed him glacially. “Aren?”

  Aren cleared his throat and stepped forward, slipping a little as he tried to scale the rocks. “Sevana. Thank you for, uh, taking the matter in hand.” The look on his face said he’d wished she’d done something different, though. Clearing his throat again, he looked into the room and said, “My people, while I appreciate and sympathize with your anger, this is not why I called you here.” He launched into a lecture right then and there, which Sevana automatically turned a deaf ear to.

  She snorted and turned away, waving him ahead and handing the whole matter over to him. He’d created this mess, more or less, and so he got to deal with it. He wouldn’t be getting any more help from her.

  Bel crossed both arms over his chest as he watched her re-enter the room, the expression on his face a mix between incredulous and sardonic.

  Putting a (admittedly fake) hand to her forehead, she said, “Phew! That was scary.”

  “Yes,” he drawled, “you were.”

  “Well, I’m done here.” Giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder, she walked past him, heading for the door. “I leave the cleanup to you.”

  “Wait, Sevana!” he called after her. “Wait, the room’s still frozen, you can’t leave them like this!”

  She waved a hand without turning or looking back. “Send me my license!”

  Sevana hummed to herself as she leaned over her worktable, tinkering with her light charms. If she could just figure out a way that a normal person (i.e., someone without any magical abilities) could turn the light on and off, she would be able to market these and make a fortune. Well, Kip would be able to market them for her, she should say.

  A blissfully peaceful two months had passed since all of her company had left. Bel and Hana were married a bare week ago, in an elaborate ceremony the likes of which the country hadn’t seen in at least a hundred years. Sevana only had a passing interest in attending, an interest that had faded quickly when she realized how crowded the event would be. Despite her protests, Kip dragged her to it anyway. Fortunately for all, the couple had realized that Sevana hated all manner of pomp and ceremony and had the wits to not drag her into the middle of it by attempting to make her some maid of honor or future godmother. She went like any other honored guest, gave them a very nice wedding gift, and promptly left before the party got really started.

  While there, Axelrad had filled Kip in on what happened with the Council after she’d left them frozen stiff. She had unabashedly eavesdropped during the conversation, wanting to know what happened to the greedy fools. Two of them really had died during that madness before Sevana had stepped in. But of the remaining Councilmen, all but three were stripped of their wealth, title, and position and were severely punished. Some, after going through trial at the High Court, had been sentenced to execution. Others, guilty of ‘lesser’ crimes, were simply exiled. One still awaited in the palace prison, as his crimes were still under investigation and no one knew just how severely he needed to be punished yet. But in all, only those three councilmen that had proven faithful to the Dragonmanovich family—or at least to the good of Windamere—remained in power. They were serving as a Council even now. Aren and Bel hadn’t yet decided if they even wanted to keep the Council, considering all of the power it had gained in the past decade. Axelrad confided to Kip that they were of half a mind to abolish the Council entirely and start fresh. Sevana thought that an excellent idea. But they hadn’t made any decisions yet, so she’d have Kip keep tabs on any new developments.

  Life had more or less returned to normal where it was just her, Baby, and Big with Kip making visits at random. She still got an occasional message from the palace, some of which just updated her on recent events, others asking for help on different matters. (She only responded to the latter.) Her license had arrived a bare month before the wedding, and even now it sat on the highest bookshelf, proudly displayed in a frame. She looked up for a moment and stared at it. The elaborate lettering, gold seal, and the signatures of both king and prince gave it a very prestigious look.

  But more importantly than that, it meant that she would never, ever, have to do all that bothersome paperwork again.

  Happy with the thought, she resumed tinkering. Now, the charm for this was very simple and basic in design. Also, like most charms, it relied solely on the written incantation and the elements bonded to the incantation. Adding any kind of verbal component would be tricky and probably pointless. Only a magician would get the commands to work. But what if she added another layer to the written incantation? Something that would act like a switch, perhaps?

  She’d invented several things this year that she just couldn’t sell to the public, for various reasons. (L
ike a certain grow-for-true-love bed that she’d been forced to dismantle before a rascally cat could sleep his life away on it. Literally.) It grated that she hadn’t found a way around the limitations of at least some of her inventions. If she could find a way to make at least one of them work, she’d be satisfied.

  But for the switch idea to work, she’d have to change the base component. Captured sunlight wouldn’t cooperate and just turn itself off on command. What other fire element would blend with the metal and do what she wanted it to? Hmmmm.

  Still humming, she went to her far shelves and started pulling out supplies. More metal to experiment with, different types of bottled fire elements, and the like. With her arms full, she brought it all back to the worktable and started laying them out. Now, some of these could be very volatile until properly bound to a spell or incantation, so she’d need to exercise caution when using them in their raw form. The captured light of a firefly wouldn’t be difficult to manage, but the shiranui was known to have a capricious nature, and she’d have to keep an eye on it to prevent it from going out of control. Actually, the shiranui was known to give off a very strong blue light. Would that even work well for lighting a room?

  Perhaps the reflected sunlight would be the better choice. While not as strong as pure, captured sunlight, it did give off quite a bit of light and it responded better to monkeying.

  She didn’t want to leave the shiranui out, unbound, while she experimented with the other light sources. If it didn’t work, she wanted to put it quickly away before it caused any trouble. So she picked up the glass vial that contained it first and leaned against the table, the edge of it pressing into her upper thighs. The metal bar on the table lay only a finger’s span in length, hardly any size at all, so she didn’t want to put much on it. Even through the glass of the bottle, the shiranui’s light radiated heat, almost hot enough to burn her. She gripped it gingerly with her fingertips, un-stoppering the glass top with her other hand. She only needed a drop of this. Just a drop, just one—