by Kesia Lupo
It’s just the storm cloud, she told herself sternly, already picturing stepping out of her corpse-stained clothes and into a hot bath. She quickened her pace again, close to panting with exertion as the path narrowed and steepened. The cloud was thicker in the lower town, but – senselessly – Constance had felt safer in the gloom below. Up here, she felt the bubble of unease spreading wider across her chest. Someone is watching.
And then by some instinct, she stopped about ten paces from the portcullis. The echo of footsteps continued, stuttering to a halt a little late.
‘Who goes there?’ No reply. ‘Come on. I know you’re hiding,’ she added, her voice low with warning. She waited a few moments, half-wondering if she’d imagined the whole thing. And then, slowly, a figure stepped out from the darkness.
Her eyes combed the face part-muffled in fine silk, the dark hair tied beneath. The eyes glittering green in the intermittent flashes cast by the lightning as familiar hands lifted a pair of shield-eyes. He didn’t speak, but challenged her with his gaze.
‘Xander?’ she breathed, unbelieving. And her heart sank as she ran through everything he might have witnessed. How long had he been watching her? ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed, suddenly angry. ‘Why have you been following me? We’re supposed to be on the same side!’
He stepped closer, his expression strangely unreadable. ‘The night we met in the gardens, you refused to tell me the truth – and so I decided to find out for myself. I watched you slip into the great hall again. I watched your cane light up. I watched you descend into the crypts. And it was then that I knew you were hiding something … terrible. I’ve been trying to understand ever since.’
She stared and stared. How much did he know? ‘You followed me into the crypts?’
‘Yes, just now, to the peril of my own soul. I had to know. And still I don’t quite understand. I know you’re looking for something.’ His eyes flickered to her cane. ‘And obviously I know you’re a mage.’
‘Xander … I …’ The thought of him hating her, despising her, pierced her heart with a pain so pure and intense that it burned. Guilt was heavy on her shoulders. She shook herself mentally. How had he turned this around? He was the one following her!
He appeared to read the mix of shame, fear and anger chasing each other across her face. ‘I know you’re a mage, Constance,’ Xander said again. ‘And I could have told everyone after I saw you that first night. But I didn’t. Your secret is safe with me.’ He said it sharply, as if rebuking her for daring to think otherwise. ‘Once I knew that, lots of things slotted into place. Your disappearance six years ago. The strange happenings before you left – the small fires, the broken things.’ He was warming to his subject, his eyes flashing. ‘It was your magic, wasn’t it? At the time, I thought someone – perhaps the Duchess – was trying to drive you away. And when you vanished, part of me wondered if they’d succeeded. Why on earth didn’t you tell me all those years ago? You could have saved me a lot of pain.’
She was silent, her pulse racing, her eyes downcast. She hadn’t thought of it like that before. Hadn’t thought what her disappearance might mean to the few people who had cared about her. Finally, she found her voice. ‘I was afraid,’ she whispered. Truth.
‘You thought I was just like everyone else? Didn’t I mean more to you than that?’
She stole a glance at him, watched as he ran a hand through his long, dark hair in frustration. A sudden tenderness rushed over her and she reached out, touching his hand lightly and stopping it in its tracks.
His voice softened and he stepped closer. ‘Constance, my mother was a foreigner just like yours – and for all our noble blood, the people of Duke’s Forest will never let us forget that we’re different. My skin is the wrong colour. You might look like your father, but inside you’re different too. You’re putting on a good front, but sooner or later everyone here will know you’re not like them. We’re not like them. You should have known I would understand. It doesn’t change how I feel.’
She shook her head, wordless. The sound of her heart pattered inside her skull like a squall of rain.
‘And there are so many more lies, more things you are hiding from me. Why are you searching the crypts, Constance? What are you looking for? Look at me.’
She glanced up at his face. To her surprise, she saw he did not despise her. He was … confused. Angry. But he didn’t hate her.
‘Let me help you,’ he said hoarsely, grasping her hand more tightly in his. She couldn’t help the way her heart soared.
‘Xander, I promise I will tell you everything. But here is not the place,’ she said at last. Her voice barely sounded like her own. ‘We should not be seen returning together.’
‘But—’
‘The Justice has eyes everywhere, if Captain Trudan is to be believed,’ she insisted firmly. She pulled her hand away as gently as she could. ‘I’m asking you to trust me – just this one last time. And then I will tell you everything.’
He nodded slowly, reluctantly. ‘Today?’
‘Today. As soon as you like, once we’re safely home. You go around to the west tower entrance. I dismissed the guards there before I left. I will enter here. They won’t question me.’
‘Very well, Constance,’ he said. ‘But I will hold you to your word this time. I won’t let you leave me in the dark again.’
And with that barest hint of a threat, he melted back into the storm cloud.
Constance looked up at the four towers above, blacker darknesses against the night’s shadow, slits of yellow light spilling infrequently from their sides. A clap of thunder far below sent a tremor down her spine, but she didn’t jump. Anger and fear broiled within her and her ears rang faintly, as resting bells hum in the wind.
What am I going to do about this?
She knew what she should do, what the temple would have had her do. Go after him now. Silence him. You know the spells that will kill without a trace. No one will be the wiser.
She shook her head, faintly sickened by the thought. Oh, she could kill – and she had done. She wasn’t squeamish. But this was different. This was Xander. No matter how much she tried to deny it, he meant something to her – he always had. Even after six years apart, and whatever she had shared with Emris, those feelings didn’t just disappear.
By the time she entered the courtyard, the storm cloud was lightening, a dull pre-dawn luminescence spreading across the castle.
She was midway to her tower when she heard the scream, the sound of glass smashing. She spun round, unable to pinpoint the direction. Cold sweat prickled her skin. ‘Who’s there?’ she called. She held her cane at the ready, magic thrumming in her blood.
Another scream sliced the air, louder now, high-pitched, followed by a desperate, ‘No, no, no, no!’ More smashing, the icy noise of breaking glass. Constance looked up instinctively. The shapes of the four towers were tangled with fog. She knew with sudden urgency, her stomach plummeting to her feet, that the voice belonged to the Duke.
‘Father?’ She hurried towards the base of the north tower, but it seemed impossibly far away, shrinking like the end of a tunnel in a nightmare. ‘Father!’
She heard footsteps and a bleary-eyed Winton appeared at her side from his rooms in the west tower, hastily dressed, his furs bulky around his shoulders, his longsword strapped askew to his back, holding out a lantern. His nightshirt peeked out above his boots.
‘Did you hear that?’ Constance breathed. They met each other’s eyes through the storm cloud, which flashed blue and shifted between them in the pinkish glow of dawn. For a moment they were children again, and their father was in trouble. And then, at the same time, they looked up.
‘Please, I beg you—’ The Duke’s words terminated mid-sentence.
‘Father! Father!’ Winton called out, throwing himself towards the tower, pure panic in his voice. Constance followed, her skirts flying. Glass crunched under her feet as she neared the tower’s base. A primal terror gripped her.<
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‘Pa!’ Winton’s voice broke on a word he hadn’t used since childhood.
A large dark shape fell sharply from above; the air whistled, the cloud parted, a wet thwack rang out on the paving stones at their feet – so close, she felt the atmosphere ripple. It happened so quickly. For a few long moments, Constance could not move. Black blood spread across the paving stones. She stared at the body.
Father. My father.
Somewhere far beneath the dumb shock freezing her limbs, her thoughts raged. Only hours ago, she’d been at his side. She’d broken through the spell on his mind, and they’d talked. It can’t be a coincidence …
Winton dropped to his knees in the dark, wet pool, looked into his father’s staring eyes, which gleamed in the semi-light of dawn, just breaking over the battlements. He looked and looked, clearly unable to believe what he was seeing. Then his eyes rose again to the tower. Constance felt her whole body shaking, but she followed his gaze, stood very still and listened, and tried to think.
Footsteps echoed down from the stairs. Dr Thorn appeared at the threshold, panting.
‘No …’ the physician managed, his face contorted with exaggerated shock.
‘Help him, for Ancestors’ sake!’ Winton cried in frustration.
Help him? Help him? Is he mad? Constance’s mind was swimming. One thing was clear to her: Jonas Thorn is the killer! She raised her cane in sudden anger, feeling the power burning under her skin. I’ll turn him mad, crack his skull against the pavement, see how he likes it.
But curiosity got the better of her. She only watched as Thorn crouched beside the Duke, shook his head.
‘Do something!’ Tears flooded Winton’s trusting, stupid eyes. ‘Help him, Dr Thorn!’
Obediently, he rested his fingers on the Duke’s exposed neck, curiously clean and pale against the mess of his skull. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a time. ‘He’s gone, Winton. The Duke is dead.’
Voices sounded in the gloom: the Duke’s last struggle had woken the castle. Questions rang out across the courtyard.
‘The Duke is dead!’ Thorn announced to the new arrivals. As people spied the body between the shifting clouds, screams of confusion laced the air.
Heavy footsteps cut through the panic, sharp and cold as a snick of scissors. The Justice had arrived, fully dressed and accompanied by his vicious white hound, Barbarus, and a large cohort of his men. Constance stiffened, her jaw tightening. The captain had been right to worry about the Justice’s hidden army. The black-liveried guard surrounded the courtyard – they’d expected the news, Constance realised, somewhere behind her raging disbelief. She saw too the knowing glance that passed between the Justice and the physician.
Others arrived: Xander, who had gathered a handful of his men on his way from the guard’s entrance in the west tower, and a number of the city guard, those who had been inside the castle or on patrol. She searched out Captain Trudan’s face – found it. He nodded at her respectfully. Xander stood close to her now. He met her eyes, shook his head in shock. Nobles and their ladies, dressed in bedclothes, clutched at each other, a few screaming or sobbing at the ghastly sight. Constance’s pulse raced. Her father was dead. She felt the force of two slaps, six years past and two days ago, ringing in her ears like a new-struck bell.
And then, at last, her mind caught up. The Justice had planned the murder. He had a plan. And it was starting now. She tightened her grip on her cane.
‘The Duke is dead,’ said the Justice, once everyone was gathered. He turned his eyes on Constance. ‘Constance Rathbone, Lady Protector, you are under arrest on suspicion of murder.’
A shocked silence fell across the courtyard as two of the Justice’s men stepped forward, reaching for Constance. Winton stood up from kneeling at the Duke’s side, the knees of his trews soaked dark with blood, and blocked their path.
‘How dare you,’ he said softly, and the chilly disbelief in his voice froze them in their tracks. ‘Our father is dead. How dare you accuse my sister.’
‘Murder?’ Constance addressed the Justice calmly. ‘By what evidence?’
The Justice’s cold blue eyes flashed as he turned to address not Constance herself, but the crowd of onlookers. Barbarus growled low at his side, fixing her with his single pale yellow eye. ‘No one can question my devotion to the Ancestors, or my determination to root out the wickedness responsible for the curse upon our city. Since returning to Duke’s Forest, my home and my faith, it has been my life’s work. In my ten years of service, I have achieved a great deal, and yet, not that which meant the most: the destruction of the storm cloud and those responsible for its evil visitation upon our great city.’ He stepped out, past the body on the cobblestones, his eyes falling but briefly on the corpse. ‘I had been searching in the wrong places. And with the prodigal daughter’s return, the answer fell into my hands.’
The gathered people waited, the whole courtyard holding its breath in expectation.
‘For Constance Rathbone is responsible for the storm cloud. She is responsible for the madness of the Duke. And … she is responsible for the death of the Duke.’ He turned his eyes to Constance. ‘For she,’ he continued, his voice ringing with triumph, ‘is a mage.’
Constance’s mouth was suddenly dry, and the courtyard grew busy with gasps and murmurs. She forced a laugh, a cold, hollow sound in the whispering hush. Winton stared at her. ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said, ‘absolutely ridiculous.’ Her voice sounded unconvincing even to herself.
‘Do you not defend yourself, my lady?’ the Justice sneered. ‘I had my suspicions six years ago or more. The late Duchess too was convinced there was something … odd about the Duke’s firstborn. Curious, isn’t it, that the Duchess conveniently departed this world a matter of weeks before the Lady Protector’s return. And that the mage who cursed her burial rites disappears into thin air the very day before the Lady’s arrival, as if Constance herself had helped cover her tracks.’
‘What? I …’ Constance knew she had to speak. She knew the Justice’s arguments were full of holes, threaded together with the barest of suppositions and the slimmest fragments of truth. But somehow the memories from six years ago gathered in her mouth like a gag, and she could not release her words. The mirrors breaking at her lightest touch. The fires sparking in her dreams, setting her bedclothes alight. The wisps of steam from her tea curling into hands and faces and creatures before disappearing into air.
She remembered Winton’s mother, the young Duchess, watching with her beautiful dark eyes. Once, when her father’s back was turned, she had pinched Constance on the arm, sharp and hard, and hissed, ‘I know what you are, and when I prove it, you will be gone – just like your mother.’
The Justice laughed coldly. ‘Are you not a mage then, Constance? Defend yourself! Did you not visit the Duke in secret yesterday?’ he demanded. ‘And did you not cast a spell on him? A spell to exacerbate his madness, to force him to cast himself from the tower?’
Absurd, she thought with instant clarity – and the absurdity of it knocked her to her senses. Suddenly she found her words. ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ she hissed. ‘Nothing you have said makes any sense.’
‘Do you deny you are a mage?’
She drew herself tall. Half-truths are better than lies. ‘No, I don’t deny that.’
The gasp rippling through the crowd was spun full of horror. She heard murmuring. Although she couldn’t pick out the words, she could guess their import. Winton was looking at her as if she were a stranger. ‘Constance? Is it true?’ he whispered.
She met his eyes determinedly. ‘I’m sorry I have had to lie to you all. I wish I hadn’t felt the need, but I knew I would not be accepted if I told you the truth.’ She turned to the rest of her people, their cold, shocked faces. ‘I cannot help that I am a mage. I didn’t ask for it. And I never wished to be ripped from my home and sent away. But even so, I didn’t kill my father. That was you, Lord Justice. Or rather, you and Dr Thorn, whose potions fed his ma
dness.’ She fixed her eyes on the physician. ‘You pushed him, didn’t you? On the Justice’s orders.’
The physician’s face was impassive. The Justice slid the sword from his belt and aimed it at Constance’s heart. As if waiting for this signal, his hound rose to its feet and crouched, ready to pounce. His black-clad men drew their blades, and Dr Thorn slipped two fine daggers from his belt, standing in a fighting stance at the Justice’s side. He displayed no signs of the red combat magic simmering under his skin, but Constance could sense it, sure as fire.
‘You are under arrest, my lady, for murder,’ the Justice growled.
‘You said that before, Lord Justice,’ said Constance. She raised her voice. ‘But surely it is you who ought to be under arrest. We have to ask ourselves, who has gained the most from the storm cloud, from my father’s madness, from the Pestilence and the mage hunts?’ She lifted her cane and pointed directly at the Justice, the golden tip a mere inch from the point of his sword. ‘You, Lord Justice. You, who have the hypocrisy – the gall – to recruit a mage to hunt mages.’
Suddenly she turned her cane aside and shot an arrow of magic at Dr Thorn. She’d hoped not to harm but to reveal: and she had judged it right. The instinct to defend against such an attack was irrepressible. He swiped his dagger and a flash of red dispatched the purple dart. The crowd gasped, and Thorn scowled as he realised what he had done. Someone started to scream, others to run. The fear in the air was palpable.
Magic was truly here.
Constance watched Winton’s face drain of blood.
The Justice spoke next, his words low and heavy as thunder. ‘To conquer what you fear, you must become it.’ The monstrous white hound barked twice. Constance couldn’t stop herself from flinching at the sight of its bared, yellowish teeth.
The ordinary folk of the castle were fleeing from the scene in earnest now, the Duke’s body cold and forgotten at the courtyard’s heart. People slipped into doorways like frightened mice, hoping not to be noticed – those inside already pressed white faces against the nearest windows, watching.