by Kesia Lupo
She watched as the woman observed her own clothes: the faded black habit, the cowl shadowing her face. The lady reached forward with her cane and pushed back the hood; the bright purple light smarted Lena’s eyes. She put the bulb of the cane under Lena’s chin, and turned it one way and then the other. Lena could feel a strange, mild heat burning inside the glass. Her heart hammered in her chest. The mask’s gaze seemed to linger on the dark birthmark on her smooth cheek – perhaps with disgust, perhaps curiosity.
And then, through the grille over the mouth of the mask, a metallic rasp said, ‘So you’re a cryptling. What are you doing here?’
Lena was silent.
‘I said, what are you doing here? What of the quarantine?’ said the woman. ‘Speak now and tell me the truth or I shall lose my patience.’ She had an authority to her voice that made Lena afraid not to answer.
She shook her head, trying to steady her senses. ‘I … was convicted of magecraft and sentenced to death. I escaped. The Justice …’ She trailed off, clenching her fists as grief and anger overwhelmed her.
‘The Justice? What of the Justice?’
‘He’s been hunting mages since the quarantine. He thinks there are mages in the city, causing the storm cloud. And he convicted … me. He killed my …’ What had he been to her? A parent? A teacher? A grandfather? ‘He killed my master. For trying to protect me. But before he was murdered, Vigo told me a way out.’
‘I see.’ The masked lady regarded her coolly, offering no sympathy, no apology. But she lowered her cane, and somehow Lena felt she understood.
After a few moments, she found the courage to speak again. ‘I … please, I don’t know the way out of the forest. Can you help me?’
The lady nodded slowly. ‘I will … but you must do something for me too.’
Lena waited. What could she possibly do to help this lady?
‘A man has been pursuing me – you will find him at the forest edge. His name is Emris. You are to tell him that I helped you. Tell him that I said he is mistaken, that I am innocent.’ She rapped the side of Lena’s head with the cane. ‘Do you understand me, girl? Repeat it.’
Lena stammered and flushed with indignation. If she wasn’t so reliant on this stranger’s help, she’d have told the lady where to stick her cane. ‘I … I am to tell the man at the forest edge that you helped me, that he is mistaken and you are innocent.’ Innocent of what? she wondered.
‘Good.’ The woman lowered her cane. ‘Now go. There are those in the world that do not come from Duke’s Forest, nor believe in its superstitions.’ Her voice was heavy with a cold kind of pity. And as she walked past, she added, ‘Keep walking, mage, and follow the footsteps I have left behind. You will soon find your way out.’
Lena watched her slender figure fade into the shifting air, the unnatural purple light on her cane gradually swallowed by the cloud. Mage. A shiver ran through her and she clenched her fists tight to stop her hands trembling.
She took a deep breath, swallowed, and tried to relax a little. When she felt steady enough, she picked up the silver dragon-knife from the forest floor and slid it into her belt. Then she turned her eyes in the direction from which the masked lady had emerged. Follow the footsteps. Lena had wondered how; in the darkness, in the fog, she could barely see her hand in front of her face. But gradually, as she watched, the masked lady’s footsteps began to burn.
A twisting path illuminated the underbelly of the storm cloud in purple imprints, winding into the distance. And Lena knew she would never have found her way without it. The forest’s trick paths looped and disappeared and reappeared without rhythm or pattern, and the storm cloud flickered blue and green between the trees, casting crazed shadows. But the footsteps were steady, trailing far ahead until the thickening vapour reduced them to a blur, then a faint smudge of light.
Lena followed the path.
TWO
Constancy
By the time the masked lady glimpsed the tall wooden gates of Duke’s Forest, dawn lit the storm cloud a ghostly white. She heaved a sigh of relief. The journey had felt like an endless nightmare. The hem of her cloak and long trailing dress were smeared and spattered with mud, her left hand trembling as it gripped the pommel of her cane. She had a gash on her ankle where she’d slipped against the loose rock of the foothills.
At least she’d lost Emris somehow at the forest edge. She’d long since felt his pursuit fall behind, his presence slipping from her senses. Sadness tugged at her throat. Would she ever see him again? Either way, she hoped the girl would deliver her message.
She stopped a few paces on, her heart sinking as quickly as it had risen. An enormous wooden gate loomed out of the storm cloud, fifteen feet tall, the mossy stone walls slick and sturdy on either side. Ivy twisted its fingers over the old wood, the leaves sickened and grey, but the stems strong, damp and snake-like. The gates had been locked for two years, but it looked like longer. A worn sign had been nailed to the gatepost, white paint stark against dark wood. She stepped closer to read it through the dense cloud: UNDER QUARANTINE BY ORDER OF THE DUKE.
She drew up to the gate, laid her gloved hand against the chains threaded again and again through the central beams, and wondered what she’d find on the other side. Quarantine. She remembered the articles in the papers two years ago, the shock on the streets as a whole city shut itself from the world. But yesterday’s papers were trampled in the gutters, and people had soon forgotten. Who really cared about a place like this anyway? A city on a mountain, in a forest, in the middle of nowhere?
To her surprise, the metal of the chains felt tingling warm to the touch, even through the fine silken material of her gloves. The chains were thrumming with magic.
She adjusted the wheel on the side of her mask. Her view of the world shifted: the physical world faded and blurred, the wood of the gates softening into a waterfall of brown. Instead, the spell-scape came into focus, lending a different kind of sharpness to the masked lady’s surroundings. The storm spell fizzed in the air, encompassing her completely. If she glanced over her shoulder, she knew she would find the shining, lightning-like paths – the spell’s veins and arteries – which had allowed her to trace her way through the forest. If she glanced down at herself, she’d find not a mere body but a weave of shining purple magic running in tandem with her blood, albeit flickering and weak after her long journey. But there was something else here. Another kind of magic.
She gazed at the lock and chains, confused. A red glittering magic protected the metal. She reached out to touch the lock with her hands, her magical senses following, examining the work. It felt like armour – hard and unyielding. A protection spell. The faded colour suggested the spell was old – perhaps it had been cast when the gates were locked – but it was clearly the work of an experienced mage. The spell was simple but bold and unusually strong. The colour also suggested a disciple of Jok – the warrior’s god. Whoever it was, they’d wandered a long way from home.
She frowned. The girl in the forest had told her the Justice was executing mages – and besides, Duke’s Forest was famously anti-magic. The masked lady knew that better than anyone. And yet it seemed a spell had been used to prevent the citizens of Duke’s Forest from escaping.
Or, perhaps, anyone else from getting in.
Who had cast this spell to keep the chains from rusting, to keep the lock jammed tight? And had it been cast from the inside or the outside? How did the mage-girl escape? A weakness in the wall somewhere?
You don’t have time for this. Not now. Just focus on getting inside.
She drew on her dwindling reserves to unpick the spell, the tremor in her left hand growing more pronounced as she laid her cane against the chains and burned the red magic to frays. ‘Gods’ balls,’ she cursed, clenching her fist harder to steady the shaking. The old rusted metal shuddered and glowed purple, the lock on the other side clicking open and falling to the ground with a thunk. The lady pulled the chain loose with her steadier right hand, b
reathing heavily behind her brass grille, and slipped through the slender gap she’d created.
Home sweet home, she thought bitterly.
Her ruined kid boots crunched on a pile of bones. She glanced around, turning the mechanism on her mask to bring the scene into focus, the spell-scape shimmering into the background. A human skull stared back at her from a pile of detritus. And then she spotted a thigh bone. A ribcage still ragged with the remnants of flesh.
She crouched down, picked up a medium-sized bone that must have been the upper part of an arm. Holding it up to the eyeholes of her mask, she spied tiny serrations in the white. Chew marks. She peered through the shifting gloom again, anger sharpening her vision. The mess of human remains pressed up against the gates as if they were still trying to escape. She glimpsed the tiny hand of a child.
A mage hunt? The girl had told her the Justice had been convicting mages, but she could never have imagined anything on this scale. On top of the Pestilence. She remembered what the mage-girl had said: this was the Justice’s doing. How had the Duke let this happen?
Dropping the arm bone, she stood straight, suddenly reinvigorated.
She shut the gates – resealed them seamlessly by twisting together the old magic. It was better this way. If anyone checked, they’d never guess how she got in, or that she’d used magic to do so.
The lower town was almost unrecognisable. Six years ago the shops had been busy, and bright market stalls were set up in the square. Now, it was nearly empty, black windows gazing out over slick cobblestones, the noxious cloud crawling in between. It flashed and flickered intermittently, blue and light green, and a rumble sounded close to her ear, startling her. The storm cloud – yes, that’s what they were calling it. Peering at the inhabited houses, windows glowing softly, she glimpsed ragged curtains, dirty blinds, gaps in door frames stuffed with old rags. Homes under siege.
The road to the top of the mountain, to the castle crouching on its summit, was steep and ill-maintained – she stumbled several times, leaning heavily on her cane for support, relying on the tick-tick of the clockwork in her mask to filter out the vapour and its effects. She passed through the upper town, whose mansions and grand houses appeared to be entirely abandoned. All the way up the mountainside, the storm cloud lay like a slumbering beast stirring in its dreams. Only as she neared the summit did it start to thin, the castle towering overhead. By now she knew she was close to spent, a bead of cold sweat trickling down her brow.
‘Who goes there?’ Two figures stood on either side of the wrought-iron portcullis at the top of the narrow path, designed for defence. As she drew nearer, she heard the ring of two swords pulled from their scabbards, glimpsed a dull flash in the semi-darkness. ‘Stop, in the name of the Duke!’
She obeyed, a few steps short of the portcullis. ‘Is this how you treat all your visitors?’ she remarked drily.
Hurried footsteps approached, another figure emerging from the gloom. The masked lady saw the hulk of a thick fur cloak, a sword hilt peeking from a shoulder-bound scabbard. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘An intruder, my lord,’ said one of the guards.
‘I’m no intruder,’ she said, surprised at the strength and clarity of her own voice. She drew yet closer, and as a bank of fog passed by, clearing the space between, the guards gasped.
‘What kind of creature—’
‘Stay back!’
Both raised their swords across their torsos, unbalanced in their haste. Beneath their peaked iron helmets, the masked lady saw the whites of their eyes. She hesitated in confusion, but quickly realised their mistake – she could imagine how her clockwork mask appeared to them: an expressionless metallic facade, a grimacing mouth and wide circular eyeholes, demonic in the grey daylight.
‘Relax,’ she said. ‘It’s a mask. Here.’ Slowly, she undid the leather fastenings and exposed her face, her skin tingling as it met the damp, cool air. In an instant, she felt her power weaken further. She tried to disguise the growing tremor in her hand, gripping the mask tightly as the shaking passed before slipping it into the special concealed pocket in her cloak. She focused on the wide courtyard beyond the gate. The cloud was thin enough up here not to be an immediate danger to her eyes, thin enough even to see some of the buildings around the courtyard she’d raced across as a child, spinning her hoop. She felt an unexpected stab of sadness and guilt. Now a washerwoman was hurrying into a narrow doorway with a basket of laundry, casting a curious glance over her shoulder at the commotion.
The third, fur-cloaked figure stepped closer, right up to the iron gate, his face framed by the bars. She recognised him instantly: his black curly hair the picture of his mother’s; his alabaster skin, now shadowed by the beginnings of a beard; his tired eyes a warm, dark brown.
She shook her head in disbelief. He’d been a gangly boy of eleven when she’d left, but he’d grown into a handsome young man.
‘Winton,’ she said softly.
At first, he gazed at her, uncomprehending. But as he studied her face, she watched shock and suspicion pass over his features, replaced by a kind of delight. ‘Is it really you, Constance?’
She smiled. ‘It’s really me. I’m home.’
As Winton shouted an order to open the portcullis, Constance realised her arrival had begun to draw a crowd: a few servants gathered nearby, a black-liveried valet loitered in a doorway, a lady leaned from her upstairs chambers in curiosity. The big iron wheel creaked and popped as it drew the gate up into the walls – others arrived, drawn by the sound. Visitors were clearly an uncommon occurrence at the castle. Constance had never seen the courtyard so busy with people and yet so still: everyone was watching, waiting.
Once the gate was raised, she stepped into the courtyard. Winton stood in front of her, gazing at her face, his eyes shining. ‘For Ancestors’ sake, what happened to you?’ he cried. ‘I thought you were dead!’ And without waiting for her reply, he enveloped her in a tight embrace – so quickly she barely had time to tuck her left arm behind her back, out of the way. He was a half-inch shorter than her, but as she circled her right arm around his shoulders, she felt how broad and strong he had grown.
Across the courtyard, a loud bang sounded, echoing strangely across the stones. Winton released her and turned round. Constance quickly spotted the source of the noise: a door had opened violently, thumping against the wall. A man stood on the doorstep of the round, tall tower to the right of the gates – the north tower, she remembered – his rich velvet robes dishevelled, his eyes wild, his beard long, grey and tangled, his wrists painfully thin. And he met Constance’s eyes with a wild gaze, hurrying forward through the shifting fog as if he knew her, his black cloak whipping around his legs.
She squinted. Did she know him too?
‘My daughter! My daughter!’ he cried.
And suddenly Constance recognised the stranger, her heart convulsing.
It was her father. It was the Duke.
She had to stop herself from fleeing from him, and from the shocking truth.
My father is mad.
Six years ago, her father had been the sanest, most practical person she knew – sane to a fault. She remembered his level, determined gaze and couldn’t match the father she had known then with the spectre now rushing at her through the storm cloud.
Before he reached her, Constance glimpsed another tall man emerging from the north tower as if in pursuit, his brown coat – the many-pocketed outfit of a physician – flapping in his wake.
The Duke gazed at her – and for a second his dark eyes cleared. She felt confusion drain from her body, replaced by pity and horror. And then his head bowed down, as if with the weight of heavy thoughts, and he buried his face in her neck, clutching her close, shaken by sobs. She felt the wet of his tears on her collarbone. Is it really Father? Constance suppressed a flinch as the Duke’s bony arms encircled her tightly, and she held her breath: his white hair was greasy and foul-smelling. What did the Duchess think of this? Why had she no
t ensured he was properly cared for?
Gradually, she forced herself to return the embrace, meeting Winton’s eyes over her father’s shoulder. Her half-brother lowered his gaze.
After a time, she gently prised the Duke from her and turned to her brother. ‘Winton, where is your mother?’ she asked quietly.
He shook his head, and for the first time she realised he was dressed head to toe in black. ‘She … she died, not two weeks past,’ he said.
‘I … I see.’ Constance was shocked, but she didn’t do Winton the indignity of feigning grief. The Duchess had borne little love for Constance, the daughter of the Duke’s previous wife. She’d been a proud native of Duke’s Forest, while Constance’s mother, Patience, had been a foreigner. The late Duchess was the daughter of a minor noble, while Patience had been born to one of the great families of Valorian. And the Duchess had noticed Constance’s … strangeness … before anyone else, and made sure that Constance never forgot it. Even so, her heart ached for Winton. She knew what it was to lose a mother.
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said sincerely, squeezing Winton’s shoulder.
The people who had gathered in the courtyard were gazing at the small family reunion with mingled curiosity and expectation. They looked like a crowd of ghosts floating in the air, up to their knees in a thick sea of mist.
‘For those of you who do not know me, I am Constance Rathbone. Firstborn of the Duke. Heir to the Forest,’ she said, her voice loud and commanding. A ruse. She felt weak, her blood pumping fast and shallow. She spied the brown-coated man who had followed her father pushing through the crowd, a determined expression on his face. He slipped into an open doorway nearby.
The Duke stood by her side, holding on to her right arm like a frightened child. As she spoke, his eyes fixed on her face, a wide, wondering smile on his lips. Oblivious to her trouble.
She clutched her cane with both hands to keep herself upright, feeling the strain in her gloves. The courtyard was silent and solemn.