by Kesia Lupo
It felt like hours before she bore a tiny hole in the wall, sending a stream of her magic into the weakness. Her head ached, but she persevered. Cracks appeared in the spell and the Duke’s posture visibly relaxed. The effort had sapped her energy. She let out a sigh, a trickle of cold sweat running down her neck as she refocused, slipping the mask off her face.
‘Father?’
‘Constance?’ He spoke in his ordinary voice, his eyes clearing. ‘Ancestors …’ He looked as if he was about to weep – but it was different now. The emotion on his face was real, sane emotion, and she felt a wave of relief. But the pure feeling in his eyes quickly hardened into something like shame, and Constance knew instinctively that while her father had been a prisoner in his own mind, he had seen everything. He remembered everything.
‘We don’t have much time,’ she said. ‘I don’t have the strength to break this spell completely.’
‘What are you doing here, Constance?’ He met her eyes, a flash of his old determination returning in his gaze. ‘I told you never to come back,’ he hissed. She was startled by how quickly he had transformed from the broken old man to the Duke she’d once known. ‘Well?’
She stared at him. She was asking the questions now. ‘Who did this to you, Father?’
‘Constance—’
‘Father, I haven’t time to explain. You have to trust me.’ She met his eyes, willed him to listen, to yield – just for once. ‘Who did this to you?’
He surrendered. ‘The physician. His medicines reinforce the … the spell.’ He spat the word, as if it were a curse.
‘And why? What game is Jonas Thorn playing?’
Her father shook his head. ‘Look not to the pawn, but to the player. Who has gained the most from my madness?’
Constance frowned. ‘The Justice? But he hates magic … Why …?’
‘For power. Why else?’ The Duke was gazing upon his ravaged hands with disgust, as if at the hands of a beggar. ‘All manner of hypocrisy is practised in the name of power.’
‘You know this for certain?’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe the Justice was capable of such self-deceit. ‘It doesn’t really make sense …’
The Duke met her eyes witheringly. ‘I know it. And if you have half a brain, you ought to know it too. Of course it doesn’t make sense: the Justice is a fanatic. He is not a logical man and it is likely he sees no conflict between the end he desires and the means he chooses to achieve it.’
Her mind was racing, but she brushed aside her other questions. Instead, she took his hands to ask the one that truly mattered, the question she had saved until she knew he might be capable of answering. His fingers were dry and papery in her own, the hands of a very old man, though the Duke was barely fifty. ‘Father, I am looking for something … Do you remember the brooch that mother used to wear on her chemise?’
Confusion clouded his expression, but he nodded. ‘I remember it. She wore it always,’ he said, and despite his forcibly matter-of-fact tone, a tightness showed around his eyes. ‘I had gifted her far finer pieces of jewellery, and yet …’
The relationship between her parents had been strained, Constance knew: a marriage of two strong-headed people was rarely without complications. And after her mother’s death, the Duke had all too quickly moved from mourning to his second marriage. She’d always hated that. And still … looking at his face now, she knew some part of him had truly loved her.
‘Have you seen it since? Do you know where it is?’
‘Why would I have seen it?’ He fixed her with a hard stare. ‘What is this all about?’
Constance felt a precious part of her hope flicker and die. She’d assumed her father’s induced madness was a sign he knew something important, something that would lead her to the answers she sought.
When her father spoke again, there was a new softness in his voice. ‘You should not have returned. Is this about what happened that night … when I saw … ?’
She squeezed his cold hands in hers, forced her voice through reluctant lips. ‘Of course it is, Father. Everything is about that night.’
‘I told you to run, foolish girl,’ he said, his voice caught between pain and tenderness. ‘There is no place for you here. Just like there was no place for your mother.’
Constance felt an unexpected flash of pain at the words. ‘Why did she even come here?’
He shook his head but didn’t answer. ‘Why did you come back?’
‘This is my home. My birthright.’ Truth.
‘The storm …’ And all of a sudden he was struggling against the red spell as it tried to reinforce itself, mending the break in its wall with tendrils knitting like ivy.
‘What is it, Father?’ She gently raised her right hand to his face, feeling him start to disappear.
‘Something … has been bothering me. Could it be … Thorn? The mage who cast the … the storm spell?’ He had to struggle with the words between strained, panting breaths. ‘Could the Justice be … responsible? Is it all … connected? The mage hunts … They could be a decoy, and a way … to exert control? The Justice … is a fanatic … he is unhinged. These are the things … I have wondered … beneath my madness.’
Constance nodded slowly, squeezed his hand. ‘The physician is strong enough to cast such a spell, and he has certainly been in the city for long enough,’ she said. Her heart clenched as she told her father what he longed to hear. ‘But I will triumph over this, Father. That’s why I’ve come home.’
‘Yes.’ The Duke appeared comforted, resting back in his chair. ‘You … you have to save our city,’ he managed. ‘Save it … from the storm cloud … and from the Justice … and his mage.’
His eyes met hers determinedly, and Constance could feel him clinging to his sanity like a drowning man clinging to the rocks. When she replied, her voice burned. ‘Don’t worry. I will show them the true meaning of justice – you have my word.’
Relief briefly flickered over his face, followed by confusion. Constance lifted her hand from his face, unable to bear the sense of him slipping away. The lines around the Duke’s eyes grew deeper, his stoop more pronounced as he hunched over in the chair. He closed his fingers around the scored wooden arms, his knuckles whitening. The lines on his face deepened.
The sea had swept him back into its depths, and he was drowned.
‘Who are you?’ he snapped, catching sight of her as if for the first time. ‘What are you doing here, sneaking around? Fetch the Justice! Out! Out!’ he shouted, his voice raw and ugly.
She stood up. ‘I’m just leaving, my lord,’ she said, the words catching in her throat.
NINE
The Huntsman
Lena woke, groggy and heavy-headed, when the sun was breaking through the window of her little room. For a moment she was disoriented. She didn’t recognise the wooden bed, the soft sheet beneath the mounds of woollen blankets. And where was Hunter, usually curled up on her feet?
Someone was knocking on the door of her room – and she could smell something delicious. ‘It’s me, Lena,’ Emris announced, ‘and breakfast.’
The previous day returned to her in a whirl of impossibility. At the same time, she realised quite suddenly that she was starving. ‘Coming!’ she called, and scrambled out of bed. She quickly dressed in the clothes from the chest of drawers, leaving her ruined habit on the floor by the bath and resting the butterfly carefully in a new pocket. The clothes were exactly like the ones Emris wore – grey tunic, trews and cloak. She pulled on her old boots after knocking the worst of the dried mud and leaves out of the window.
After a huge, greasy breakfast of bacon, eggs and fluffy white bread, eaten from a tray in an armchair beside the map room fire, the huntsman led her on a twisted path through the interior of the old terraced houses. The entire street had been knocked through into a ramshackle mansion: flights of stairs, a tangled warren of corridors in various states of grandeur and disrepair, heavy doors and carved arches. Emris nodded at grey-clad passer
s-by, occasionally murmuring a greeting or flashing a smile. Lena was hardly spared a glance in spite of her birthmark; next to Emris’s scars, she supposed, it was nothing unusual.
By the time they had finished climbing the final staircase, arriving at a plain wooden door engraved with the words ‘FIRST HUNTSMAN’, Lena was a little breathless. ‘I’ll never find my way back to my room,’ she managed.
‘That’s sort of the point,’ Emris said, allowing her a moment’s rest. ‘Extra protection against any intruders. Ready?’ Without waiting for an answer, he knocked three times on the door.
Lena straightened her fresh grey tunic, tucked her hair behind her ears and blew a long breath through her lips. She’d eaten and slept, washed and changed, and still her nerves jangled like bells on a feast day, and her large breakfast churned in her stomach. She shifted on her feet, stared at the floor. Was she really a mage? Somehow she still couldn’t believe it – none of the strange things that had happened around her had been intentional. But she was about to find out for certain …
‘Don’t worry,’ Emris said softly. ‘He’ll ask you a number of questions and give you a few small tasks, and then he’ll tell you what temple you’re best suited to. Whichever it is, I’ll be sure to take you there and set you up.’
‘I know.’ He’d already said this three or four times, in various different ways, as if he sensed her nervousness – but none of his reassurances helped. She kept thinking back to Emris’s explanations about Chaos, how it was dangerous and could overwhelm someone who wasn’t properly trained. She shivered. Something had killed that serpent, something inside her, even though she hadn’t meant to. That sounded a bit like Chaos, didn’t it?
Emris knocked again, louder, and an impatient voice cried out, ‘Yes, yes! All right. Come in.’
The door opened. Inside, a portly older man sat low in an armchair at an enormous desk, a huge wall of bookshelves at his back. A musty tome lay face down on his belly, and he was in the process of pushing his glasses up his nose. A big silver pot of sharp-smelling coffee steamed on the desk in front of him. Out of the window, Lena glimpsed a wonderful view of the beautiful glittering dome of the Holy Council.
‘Is this her then?’ the man said, plonking the book on the table, standing up and peering at Lena as if she were a tadpole in a pond. Like every passer-by in the temple, he didn’t seem to notice her birthmark at all – not even with a flicker of the eyes. He observed her all at once, summed her up in a glance. It was disconcerting and comforting at the same time. He had a large red nose and a sharp but kindly face, his dark eyes peering from behind gold-framed spectacles.
‘It is,’ said Emris. ‘Shall I leave you to it?’
The older man waved his arm. ‘Wait here – we shan’t keep you long.’
Lena was surprised by her relief. In a whole world full of strangers, she supposed, Emris was less of a stranger than most. He took a chair by the door, slipping a book off a shelf nearby and shooting Lena a reassuring smile.
‘Well then. Come here, girl,’ said the First Huntsman, and Lena crossed the several feet of embroidered carpet to the desk as he poured himself a cup of coffee and shuffled some papers. ‘Take a seat. Remind me of your name?’ He picked up a feather quill, unscrewed a glass ink jar.
‘Lena,’ she said, sitting down on the opposite side of the desk. The chair was very smooth and squashy. She sank into its cushions, her feet lifting off the floor as she slid backwards.
‘Family name?’ he asked, glancing at her from under bushy eyebrows.
Lena shook her head. ‘I don’t have one,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to explain. Cryptlings had no family name – that was taken from them the moment their birth family abandoned them to the Ancestors. When cryptlings died, they were interred in a communal tomb, like the lowest of beggars and criminals. Of course, Vigo hadn’t even been afforded that – his bones lay bare and untended not far outside the walls of the castle. Her eyes stung and she looked down at her lap.
The huntsman appeared to sense her discomfort, sparing her further questions on the subject. His voice was gentle when he spoke again, his pen hovering over the paper. ‘And yet I shall have to fill the form with something. Perhaps as you were rescued by a huntsman of Faul, you would accept the name “Grey”?’
Lena nodded. Lena Grey. She liked it.
‘Very good. Now, has Huntsman Lochlade explained why you are here?’
‘Emris said you were going to decide which temple I should start training with,’ she said.
‘That’s right. And to help us decide, I’d like you to complete a little test – not the pass or fail kind, just the sort to help us puzzle out where you’ll fit in. After that, we’ll pack you off to your temple and you’ll have your very first lesson.’ He looked at her kindly, as if she were about six years old. ‘Are you ready?’
Lena suppressed a gulp. She wasn’t ready – but what choice did she have? Her stomach burbled with nerves and she sent an instinctive prayer to the Ancestors before realising she was about to betray her old faith for good. She felt her face twist into a kind of grimace of confusion.
‘Are you ready to take the test, Lena?’ he asked again, observing her distress.
She managed a stiff nod, forcing herself to agree. The only way was forward.
‘Don’t worry, child. As First Huntsman, I have lots of experience in assigning temples to Rogues. In fact, Emris is among my greatest successes.’
Lena turned to where Emris was sitting in his straight-backed chair near the door, apparently absorbed in a large leather-bound book. ‘Emris was a Rogue?’ she said under her breath.
‘Oh yes. He was one of the oldest we’ve ever encountered. Eighteen by the time we found him. He was very strong to hold out against Chaos for so long.’ He sipped his coffee, a wisp of steam curling into the air above his head. ‘I knew within five minutes of meeting him that he’d remain with Faul – he had a natural talent for the sort of magic we require. And he’s been a champion for other Rogues ever since. It’s not the favoured route into the temples, you know – many distrust it.’
Lena blinked. She’d thought if she took this path, she’d be accepted into this new world. ‘Distrust it? What do you mean?’
‘There are those who say that Rogues – or former Rogues – will never be as accomplished or controlled as those who have been in the temples from the start.’ He smiled. ‘Nonsense – of which Emris is the finest evidence. Well, let’s get started.’ He shuffled his papers again. ‘I suppose I should ask you the obvious question: do you feel drawn to any one of the temples? Emris mentioned he’s shown you the basic outline.’
Lena shook her head.
‘Well, that’s not unusual. No matter. Part of my job here is to be a good judge of character – to see in you what you can’t see in yourself.’ He took up his pen a second time, resting the feathered tip against his top lip. ‘Now, I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and you’re going to answer quickly and instinctively. Don’t think about it – just say it. Does that make sense?’
‘No,’ she said. How was it possible to stop yourself from thinking?
But the First Huntsman either didn’t hear her or ignored her answer. ‘Good.’ His pen was poised. ‘Would you say you’re a forgiving person, Lena?’
‘No.’ The word leaped out of her mouth before she had thought of it. A smile hovered on his lips.
‘As I said, I have a knack for this. Do you draw a strict distinction between right and wrong? Or is it more blurred?’
‘Blurred,’ she said instantly.
‘How important is your family to you?’
Lena shook her head. ‘The only family that mattered to me is dead.’
The First Huntsman offered no condolences but scribbled a line on his paper. ‘When threatened, do you run, or hide, or fight?’
‘Run.’ She frowned, thinking back to the serpent. She had thrown a knife at it before running. ‘Or maybe fight.’
He tappe
d his pen, as if uncertain. ‘Remember, try not to think, Lena. Are you guided more by your passion or your reason?’
‘Passion.’ She shook her head. ‘No, reason,’ she argued, annoyed at her own answer. ‘Or at least a mixture of both.’
He coughed. Lena sensed his unease – she was doing something wrong. She shifted in her seat, warmth flooding to her cheeks. ‘I’m failing, aren’t I?’
‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘It’s not that kind of test, remember. But your uncertainty is unusual … One last question then. Are you a good person, Lena?’
The answers had arrived readily on her lips, if confusedly – but now, nothing. Her mind fell blank. She took a few deep breaths. Are you a good person? You stole a butterfly from the crypts. You let Vigo die for you. She shook the thoughts from her head. Of course. Of course I am. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I mean … I think so.’
He frowned and set down his pen and notepad, half-filled with scribbles, lots of them crossed out. ‘Well, never mind about all that. I’m going to set you a challenge – and again, I need you to think as little as possible, simply follow my instructions. Do you understand?’
Lena nodded, sensing the slight irritation underlying his words.
‘Now, sink back in your chair and breathe deep. Envisage a small white light floating in the air before your face. Slowly push your power towards the light.’
Lena frowned. ‘My power? What? Look, I can’t—’
‘Just try.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘Every mage can accomplish this small spell.’
But was she really a mage? Was she capable of this? What if she wasn’t?
What if she was?
Oh Ancestors … Well, I suppose this will settle it.
The huntsman went on. ‘The idea is that the globe of light you produce will exhibit the colour of your magic. This in turn will indicate to which temple you are most suited. Sometimes it’s not terribly clear, but it can provide an indication. Ready?’