The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

  “It was apparently quite sudden,” Marcello said.

  Zaira crossed her arms. “Well, that’s an obvious poisoning if I’ve ever heard of one.”

  “The timing is more than a bit suspicious,” I agreed. “Maybe Ignazio can help her. But it sounds as if we’ll have no aid from the Serene Envoy for a while.”

  Marcello straightened, with grim purpose. “The situation is a disaster, but my duty is clear. I need to get you both safely to the garrison, then contact Raverra. The doge and the Council of Nine can decide what to do next.”

  “Bollocks.” Zaira glared at him. “You know damned well what they’ll decide.”

  “The doge and the Council aren’t bloodthirsty warmongers,” I felt obliged to point out. “They might not leap to the attack. But even if they don’t, that would leave Savony in control of the city, with easy outrage over the duke’s murder to back her against Raverra, and all her plans and tools still in place. We’d be outside the city, holed up like fugitives, looking guilty and with no way to stop her.”

  Marcello spread his hands. “We can’t stay here. This town house is hardly built to withstand a siege. If we don’t leave for the garrison as soon as possible, she’ll have you arrested or killed. Then she’ll get her war for sure.”

  Zaira grinned, but there was no humor in her baring of teeth. “Oh, we might hold her off for a bit. If she comes here looking for a fight, I’ll give the bitch exactly what she wants.”

  Marcello shook his head. “We have to retreat to the garrison. I don’t like it, but we have no choice. I’ll send a message to the doge and … and make sure Istrella has finished her cannons.”

  The despair in the sag of his shoulders struck me like a slap. Zaira at least looked ready to fight, but the gleam in her eyes was that of a cornered animal with nothing to lose. They were out of ideas and out of hope.

  I supposed that left it to me.

  I’d told Ruven I was the Empire. I’d felt, for a moment, the vast power that would some day be mine to command. But that current flowed both ways. Now we were the only eyes and hands the Empire had at this critical moment and place, this tipping point above the fiery abyss.

  We couldn’t walk away. Ardence needed us. Vaskandar was watching, waiting, ready. Raverra relied on us to hold together the last few threads of the Empire’s serenity.

  And someone else needed us, as well.

  “No,” I said.

  Marcello frowned as if he would argue.

  I lifted a hand to silence him. “No. We still have time.” I turned to Zaira. “Jaslyn and Padric and the rest are waiting for us. We can’t let them down.”

  She nodded sharply, her eyes bright.

  “This is bad, but it’s not the end. Savony is panicked and improvising.” An odd sense of strength flooded my chest, warmer than the cold might of the Empire. If I had to pick two people to help me save Ardence, I could do far worse. “So long as we keep our heads, we have an edge. We can do this.”

  “How?” Marcello still looked dubious.

  “First, I’ll talk to Ignazio. He can head to the Envoy’s Palace and use the courier lamps to inform the doge, then use his political connections in Ardence to try to spread the truth about Lady Savony and the duke’s murder, and to keep things calm.”

  “You tell him fast, and then we free the brats from that pit.” Zaira glared at me. “No making them wait while you mince around chattering with limp-brained courtiers.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “We head straight to the warehouse and free the children. That should give the Ardentine nobles reason to believe us, too.” I took a breath. “Then we tell Domenic everything. He’s the duke’s cousin, and well liked, with a reputation for political neutrality. He might have the clout to have Savony arrested himself, so that Raverra doesn’t have to retake the city from her by force. Then we can go to the garrison.”

  Marcello’s brows lowered. “You know my orders for this kind of situation, Amalia: to pull out of the city, contact the doge, and use force if necessary.”

  “Your orders didn’t anticipate the duke’s murder.”

  “This isn’t what the colonel would want me to do.” His voice built a wall, but it was of sand, not stone. His eyes shone green with the rising tide.

  “The colonel isn’t here.” I knew what I had to say, but the words were strange and difficult. I swallowed. “I take full responsibility, as my mother’s heir. If there are to be consequences afterward for this decision, let them fall on me.”

  Marcello saluted, with far more energy than he’d shown a moment ago. “Of course, my lady.” His old wistful smile spread across his face. “After all, you aren’t under my command. If you’re going to try this mad rescue against my advice, it’s still my duty to protect you.”

  “And I have to go with her,” Zaira grinned. “She may be an idiot, but she’s my Falconer.”

  “Excellent.” I beamed at them.

  Beatrix appeared with a wine tray, timid and pale in the face of this nighttime uproar. She cast about fruitlessly for a place in the foyer to set it down.

  “I’ll head upstairs and tell Ignazio,” I said. “Zaira, why don’t you two repair to the sitting room with the wine and fill Marcello in on the details of our adventures following Lady Savony? I should only be a few minutes, and then we can go.”

  “You might want to wash your face before you talk to Ignazio,” Zaira said dryly.

  My ears burned so hot they threatened to pop off my head. “I’ll go do that now.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I fled across the foyer to the stairs, covering the lower half of my face. My need to wash might be genuine, but I also had to take my elixir. Let them think it was only embarrassment that drove me to my room.

  I leaped up the stairs, the marble banister flying under my hand. Halfway up, I heard Marcello cry out in outrage. Zaira must have gotten to the part about the children in the drain.

  The thought of those thin faces and reaching, pale fingers tightened my chest. We had to get them out of there tonight.

  I paused at the washroom to wipe off the worst of the grime with a cloth. The soft warmth of the artifice-heated water felt good on my face.

  I could do this. It would be all right. First my elixir, then Ignazio, then the children. If we could free them, we could still stop Savony’s war. Domenic could help us get the situation at the River Palace under control, and once Gabril knew how Savony had betrayed him, we might even gain the Shadow Gentry as allies rather than enemies. A few hours to take some key pieces away from Lady Savony, and we’d have a much better report to make to the doge. One that wouldn’t point to balefire as the simplest solution.

  Feeling a bit heartened, I crossed the hall and threw open the door to my own room, planning to head straight for the wardrobe where I hid my elixir bottles.

  The smell of anise hit me, sickly strong.

  My desk drawers, chest, and wardrobe stood open. Someone had searched my room.

  A sick feeling twisted my stomach. I hurried to the wardrobe. Shining shards of glass scattered across the rug. A large fresh stain surrounded them.

  Grace of Mercy.

  I dropped to my knees and felt the damp carpet. Then I brought my fingers to my nose. The familiar scent of anise overpowered everything.

  There was too much glass on the ground. It had to be more than one bottle. I’d only brought two.

  I frantically pushed aside clothes in the wardrobe, but there was no sign of the bottles. They all too clearly lay in shards on the floor. The rug had soaked up every drop of the elixir. There was none left.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Someone knew my secret weakness. And they were trying to kill me.

  I plucked glass shards uselessly from the rug, then let them slide through my fingers. One sliced my hand, drawing a thin line of blood, but I didn’t care.

  I had less than three hours left before the poison resumed the deadly work Ignazio halted years ago.

  Uncle Ignazio. Relie
f flooded me. He was home; he could make more elixir. It might take him time, and I might not have a pleasant night ahead of me; but I wasn’t going to die. He’d been able to concoct the elixir in time when I’d first been poisoned ten years ago, after all.

  I hurried to his study, running my hand along the wall to touch something solid in a world gone unsteady as a sinking boat. The fading light of the luminaries filled the hallway with ghosts and shadows. I tried not to think of the several emergencies riding my back like demons—the children, the murder, the elixir—and focus on the simple task of reaching Ignazio’s door.

  I couldn’t keep my urgency out of my knock, hammering harder than I’d meant to. “Uncle Ignazio? Are you in there?”

  He opened the door himself, alarm in his eyes. “Amalia! Come in. Are you well?”

  His warmly lit study, lined with books and the occasional jar of herbs, enfolded me with welcome relief. I sank into a chair without invitation, my knees trembling from shock.

  “Uncle Ignazio, someone broke in to my room and smashed my elixir bottles.”

  His face went still and serious. He closed the study door and pulled a chair up close to mine. “Did they get all of them?”

  “Yes.” I clenched my hands together in my lap to keep them quiet. “There wasn’t a drop left, and I already took my only grace vial. I’m late with tonight’s dose.”

  “Ah, yes, those little emergency vials. How long will it buy you?”

  “Three hours from when I took it. Then the poison starts working again.” Or so my mother had warned me. I’d never been more than a couple hours late with my elixir before. The memory of agonizing cramps and terrible hallucinations kept me on schedule.

  “So, perhaps nine or ten hours before it kills you. Good.” He stood, clasping his hands behind his back, and started to pace. “We have time, then.”

  “You can make more elixir?”

  He stopped and turned to face me, his expression unreadable. “That, Amalia, depends entirely on you.”

  “… Pardon?” I couldn’t have heard him right.

  “I had hoped not to have this conversation with you for a while yet. But too many things have gone wrong.”

  I stared at him. His words made no sense. And his demeanor was all wrong: I was about to start dying, and he was giving me a look of stern regret, as if he were a professor to whom I’d turned in shoddy work.

  Pieces began to come horribly together in my mind, too late.

  Our Raverran friend …There was a Raverran working with Lady Savony. And Gabril had trusted me as soon as he’d heard the name Cornaro.

  Ignazio. Curse him to the Hell of Corruption. I’d trusted him. I’d loved him. He was family.

  “You broke the bottles,” I whispered. “You’re one of the ones trying to start a war.”

  “Oh, no.” Ignazio looked surprised. “Why would I do that? I broke the bottles, yes, but I don’t want to start a war. I want to end one.”

  My hands curled into fists in my lap. “There’s no war to end. Unless you start one first.”

  “Listen to me, Amalia. We don’t have a lot of time, and I honestly would prefer you didn’t get hurt.” He settled back into his chair, extending a hand to me as if in comfort. I jerked away from it, repulsed. “I’m sorry about the bottles. But I need your cooperation in this.”

  “In betraying Ardence and Raverra both? In keeping children locked up in dark cellars, and murdering dukes?” The words tore my aching throat. This was the man who had given me my first astrolabe, and taught me how to read alchemical symbols.

  “All that was necessary, to put someone in command of this city who can save it from itself. Under Duke Astor Bergandon, Ardence would have fallen to ruin and like as not wound up in the service of Vaskandar. Lady Terringer couldn’t save it. It had to be me.”

  “It won’t be you.” I made my voice cold and hard. “The doge and the Council will treat you with less mercy than they did Baron Leodra.”

  “Leodra.” He sighed. “A shame about him. He understood what this city needs, and he would have been an invaluable ally if he’d been able to keep his head better in a crisis. But you’re wrong about the doge and the Council.”

  “I think not. Do you really think my mother will have mercy on you because you’re her cousin? When they hear of this treachery—”

  “They won’t.” His voice was quiet, his face gentle. “Because you won’t tell them. I know this is hard to accept, Amalia. But you must do as I say, just as Ardence must do what Raverra commands. All these years, you have survived only to serve me. You simply didn’t realize it until now.”

  A wave of fury boiled up in me, and I slapped him in the face.

  Ignazio stood, eyes flashing. “Do you think you can get your precious elixir elsewhere?” he snapped. “It is in my nature to be thorough, Amalia. Before I even acquired the Demon’s Tears, ten years ago, I started hunting down every copy I could find of the formula for the cure. I have devoted more than a decade to locating every written record of the recipe, and destroying it. The elixir that keeps you alive exists only in my mind, Cousin.”

  So he had been the one who poisoned me in the first place.

  It was too much. Angry, helpless tears stung my eyes, grieving for the Uncle Ignazio I remembered so fondly. The lie I’d believed. The man he’d never been. “I cared about you, Ignazio. For Graces’ sake, you’re my family.”

  “I care about you too, Amalia. But I have been passed over too many times.” His voice twisted to bitterness. “Not quite powerful enough an alchemist for the mage mark. Not quite near enough in the succession to sit on the Council of Nine. And then not quite good enough to stay Serene Envoy to Ardence. Well, no more.” He started pacing again. “I may never sit on the Council of Nine, but you will do it for me, speaking with my voice. And if I can’t be Serene Envoy, I will be imperial governor. When this city devolves to the Hell of Madness and I am the only one who can solve its problems and end the war, the doge will have no other choice.”

  “The children said a man would rescue them,” I said. “I thought maybe they meant Ruven. But that was going to be you.”

  “Of course. I will save the children, find the jess, and put to justice the Shadow Gentry traitors who stole them both. I will rescue my own kidnapped cousin, freeing her just in time to save the city from the balefire she loosed from afar in a panic when she was captured. I will have the backing of the Ardentine people and the late duke’s own right hand. And of the Council of Nine, once Lissandra prevails upon them, for how could she not support her own cousin after he rescues her beloved daughter?”

  He sighed, then, and his shoulders slumped. “That was the plan. It’s going to be harder, now you’ve made a mess of things. But if you help me, we can still salvage this.”

  “I’ve heard enough. More than enough.” I rose from my chair. “I’m not going to help you. I’m going to stop you.”

  And I cried out, as loudly as I could, “Marcello! Zaira!”

  My voice rang out strong and clear. But only silence met it.

  Ignazio smiled. “They’re asleep by now.”

  “Asleep?”

  “Every servant in this town house is mine, naturally. I sent down orders for Beatrix to serve them drinks well laced with a certain potion with which I believe you are already acquainted.” He took down a bottle from a shelf and shook it teasingly. I didn’t have to smell peppermint to guess what it was.

  “What are you going to do with them?” I demanded.

  “Zaira is still useful to me, if she’s willing to cooperate—and I have worked hard to ensure she will be. Lieutenant Verdi knows too much.” He frowned. “As do those children. I’d meant to rescue them, but if they talked to you about our plan … Perhaps the story might be more poignant if I merely bring their killers to justice.”

  “I think not.”

  I gulped in a breath, snatched a candlestick off Ignazio’s desk, and brought it smashing down … not on Ignazio’s head, tempting
though that might be.

  On the bottle in his hand.

  He gasped in alarm as the bottle broke; that sharp intake of breath was all it took. He dropped like a stone, sleep potion splashed all over him.

  Still holding my breath, I ran from the room and slammed the door behind me. I didn’t know how long he’d stay unconscious. Every servant in the house was hostile, and in a few hours I’d be in no shape to save anyone. I had to act quickly to have any hope of rescuing the children and preventing war.

  I tried not to think about how little chance I had of saving myself.

  I made it to the sitting room without encountering any servants. Perhaps they would rather not know what was happening in the town house tonight. Zaira sprawled on the floor; Marcello slumped in his chair, a glass of wine lying on the rug below his dangling hand.

  I went to him first, an instinct over which reason had no sway pulling me. I grabbed the front of his uniform and shook him, whispering urgently.

  “Marcello! Marcello, wake up!”

  His head rolled limply on his neck. I switched to slapping his cheeks. “Marcello!”

  Nothing. I pulled back my arm and slapped harder.

  His face pulled into a slow wince. “Amalia, whaa …”

  “Wake up,” I hissed. “We need to get out of here, or we’re all dead.”

  That got his attention. He hauled himself upright. His eyes kept trying to drift closed, but he stayed up.

  Good. The potion didn’t last long. But that meant we didn’t have much time before Ignazio woke up, either.

  “Wha happen?” Marcello slurred.

  “Ignazio’s a traitor,” I said. “He drugged you. I’ll explain while we run.”

  Zaira’s eyes fluttered open in response to mere shaking. The girl burned through potion as quickly as she went through food.

  “That filthy rat,” she spat. “Drugged! I’ll kill him myself.”

  “We need to get out of here,” I said. “We have to rescue the children. If we don’t hurry, they’re going to kill them.”

  Zaira swore. Together, we hauled Marcello to his feet, though between her slight frame and still unsteady legs, Zaira couldn’t take much of his weight.