The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  “Who’s the girl?” Kora asked. “With the ringlets?”

  “Ursa’s sister.”

  “Ursa the kidnapper?”

  “Think of them like Zalski and Laskenay. It’s that kind of relationship.” Kora nodded her understanding, and Zacry told her, “I have to go. I need to see Joslyn before heading back to Podrar. Can you keep Melly? Rexson said she’s fond of mashed berries, and also yams and gruel, thick gruel. He directed she’s to take cow’s milk. She’s grown accustomed. With everything that’s happened, Gracia’s not been able….”

  “That’s not uncommon, you know. Cow’s milk is no problem.”

  “The boys and August can sleep at my house. So, how’s Joslyn? And Viola?”

  “They’re just fine, Zac. Mother’s with them now. She brought my kids with her. They wanted to go for a walk.”

  Zacry kissed his sister on the cheek. He would have hugged her, but she had Melly on her hip. He was about to transport, and she knew it, because she called out, “Wait!”

  “What is it?”

  “How’s the king? How’s he coping?”

  “As well as can be expected. His kids are safe now. That’s his main concern, but the whole situation’s strained his marriage.”

  “He told you that?”

  “It’s obvious, though he hasn’t been direct. The queen’s said nothing about it. She’s too refined, and too proud to boot, but she didn’t want to send the children off. You could see it in her face.”

  “She didn’t want them sent to me, is what you mean. My history with her husband.”

  Zacry coughed unconvincingly. “Gracia’s angry as hell,” he explained. “Not at you or Rexson, at the Enchanted Fist. Rexson himself’s beyond livid. I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be Dorane right now.”

  “Keep an eye on the king,” Kora pleaded. “Don’t let him do something he’ll regret. I’d never say it to his face, but he’s more like his brother than he’d care to admit. He always has been. And I told you what Menikas did, how he ended up.”

  Menikas had been Rexson’s brother’s alias. After years of the strain of leading the resistance, and after an extended argument with Kora, he’d walked out on the Crimson League, taking three men with him he eventually led to death.

  “I’ll keep Rexson under control. Maybe you’re right, Kora. What he did to Vane….”

  “Vane?” Kora’s eyes grew two sizes. “What’d he do to Vane?”

  Zacry grabbed his elbow. “He just spooked him a little. For his own good.”

  “Zacry, what happened?”

  The sorcerer looked at Kora with apology in his eyes. “It’s not important, and I don’t have time for the story. I swear, it’s nothing. I’ll be careful to watch the king, though. I really need to go, but I’ll be back, and soon: I hope within the week.”

  “Zac,” Kora began, but too late; her feeble protest was lost in the strong, clear tones of the incantation Zacry used to transport to his house. He vanished, and his sister, with Rexson’s young daughter cooing on her hip, spun the teacup so hard that she lost her grip and sent it flying off the table. It shattered on the floor. Melly stopped her chatter, looking up with round blue eyes wide open.

  Kora grabbed a broom from the corner, but soon thought better of it and laid the handle back against the wall. She shut her eyes, as though summoning her strength, and then gazed resolutely at the ceramic shards spread across her kitchen. She enunciated a phrase that made Melly turn her head with interest. Had the child been older, she would have inferred that the strange sounds Kora made were some kind of cleaning or vanishing spell, because once the woman spoke, the cup’s remains no longer littered the room.

  * * *

  Melinda stayed at Kora’s house that night, but Kora had no room for August or Rexson’s sons, so she transported them to Zacry’s when her husband returned home. August felt self-conscious imposing on the wife of a man she barely knew. She tried to be grateful she was safe, to appreciate Joslyn’s kindness, but August’s throat closed up a bit each time she tried to speak to her hostess. Joslyn held her in awe.

  Zacry’s wife was stunning, the most beautiful woman August had ever seen. No one in Herezoth had such gorgeous dark skin, such haunting black eyes. Once the boys went to sleep, tucked in with thick blankets on Joslyn’s bed—they all fit easily, and Joslyn could sleep on the settee in the living room—August offered to help her bake some bread in preparation for breakfast. As they kneaded dough on the long kitchen counter, keeping quiet because they had moved Viola’s crib to the living room and didn’t want to wake her, August whispered, “I’m sorry to intrude on you this way. I’ll be happy to help keep an eye on the boys while we’re with you. They’re gems, all three. They won’t cause you any trouble. I appreciate what you’re doing for them, Joslyn, and for me.”

  Joslyn put down a lump of dough and patted August’s arm, painting her skin with flour. “I’m honored to give them a makeshift home, and you with them. Don’t you dare apologize for being here. Zacry told me how you kept them safe, how you’re in danger from your sister.” Joslyn shook her head and took up her dough. “I can’t imagine that a sibling could…. I grew up with no family, none at all, and I would so have loved a sister. I look at Zacry and his family, and sometimes it makes my heart ache, I long so badly for what he has. To think this woman could be so ignorant of what a blessing….”

  “Ursa’s focused on other things, I guess,” said August. “She’s always been more political than me. Well, as long as I’ve known her she has, which isn’t all that long. Three years, I think. We never met before then, and she…. It’s not that she didn’t care for me. I always had nice dresses and proper coats, and she’d take me once a week to the local tavern for a meal. Now that I think of it, though, I’m not sure how much all that was for me, and how much it was for her reputation. We always made it to the tavern at the busiest part of evening, right after sunset. Sometimes we had to take a table on the porch, because there wasn’t room inside. I was never sure why we kept going back. It was awkward having any conversation with Ursa, anywhere, and we’d have to shout to make ourselves heard at the tavern.

  “She wanted people to see how she gave me the best of everything. She has plenty of money, Ursa does. As for having some kind of sisterly bond…. We just didn’t have much in common. Not anything, really. We both like animals, but for different reasons. They’re toys for her. Her magic lets her control them. She’s using me the same way, as a pawn to get what she wants from the king, because her politics, that’s what matters to her.”

  Joslyn pursed her lips. “Enough for her to kidnap, apparently.”

  “Oh, I’m not defending her! But all the same, I’m glad I was able to meet the boys.” August paused, then said, “I should have done more for them, but I was scared. Ursa’s bear stood guard outside, and to make it run away I’d have had to kill my sister, or convince her somehow to let it go. I thought about attacking her, I did, but I just didn’t know....

  “Ursa locked her door at night and kept the key, the mansion’s master key. I was sure she had a spare hidden someplace, so when the boys arrived, I prayed it wasn’t in her room with the other and started snooping around. After two weeks I found it in the kitchen, tied to the stove’s back leg. That night, I actually went to Ursa’s door with a knife. I stood there fifteen minutes debating whether to go in. I knew if I frightened her enough she’d release the bear, but Dorane was staying with us, and he’s a sorcerer, the same as Zacry. I could never have held my own against him, and I didn’t want to give him any cause to, to teach the boys a lesson, as he’d say.”

  August’s voice fell away, and an awkward silence ensued. Joslyn was unsure how to respond, but she understood the girl needed to get the crime she had almost committed off her chest. Finally, Zacry’s wife decided the best thing to do was to emphasize that in the end, August had not threatened or assaulted anyone.

  “You were right not to put yourself or the boys in danger. Right to wait for the
king to act.”

  “I’m so glad he called Zacry and Val…. Vane, that is. The rescue mission would have failed without either one of them. Have you known Vane long? When did you meet him?”

  “When he was thirteen or fourteen and the king brought him here.”

  “The king? On a ship?” August shivered as she began forming small loaves with her dough. “I can’t imagine a month at sea. I hate the sea. Boats make me sick, and when I think of all those monstrous fish…. I never could stand live fish. Never could watch Ursa’s cook scale a dead one either. Sometimes Ursa would scale them herself. She used to do that as a kid, she’d say.”

  “I always longed to travel,” said Joslyn, all too glad to continue a new topic. “Always wanted to see something more than Traigland. The idea of a great ship was so appealing to me as a girl, so romantic in its way. I used to imagine I had long lost relatives in Herezoth, just waiting for me to discover them. Used to picture the boat pulling up to a grand port, and there they’d be when we disembarked in the salty air…. That was nonsense, of course. My ancestry is clearly Traiglandian. Anyone can tell that with one glance at me. But that connection I felt with Herezoth, it never truly went away. It made me feel comfortable around Zacry from the first, as though somehow I’d always known I belonged with him. That must sound foolish.”

  “Not at all,” said August.

  “I’d still like to see Herezoth’s great cities someday. I’d like my daughter to know her heritage. We wouldn’t have to take a boat, of course, not with Zacry’s magic. I might press him to sail there anyway, if I can save enough for the passage. I started putting away last year, a coin at a time.”

  Just then, Viola began to wail in the next room. “I can finish in here,” August offered.

  “She‘ll wake the boys,” Joslyn worried, and rushed off. She took Viola outside, for the night was mild, with many stars and a light breeze heading out to sea. The ocean was only a mile away, and a hint of salt and brine was just detectable in the air. Viola stopped screaming, began only to whimper; she had nursed a mere hour before, and was not hungry. As Joslyn swung her daughter from side to side, she wondered whether Herezoth’s shore smelled the same as Triflag’s, whether its air also stung the nostrils, and whether, arriving by ship, she would have grown so acclimated to Herezoth’s sea clime before reaching port she would even have noticed its scent.

  Zacry was in Herezoth right now. It had been glorious to see him that afternoon, to hear his steady, firm tread coming up the walk, and agony when he told her he would have to leave again, that the children were safe but the criminals on the loose. Joslyn couldn’t resent him returning to aid the king; Rexson’s sons belonged in Traigland no more than Zacry did, and someone had to rein in the madness that threatened them, so they could return home. If only Joslyn could be certain Zacry would return! What would she do without him? How would she raise Viola on her own? She hardly knew a thing about mothering, had no example from her own childhood to rely upon, just the memory of the vast, whitewashed dormitory she had shared with sixteen fellow orphans. The room was comfortable and warm, but spiritless, lacking personal touches. The children had an hour to draw each day, between sums and reading lessons, but no one hung their pictures for them. The beds were all identical: plain wooden boxes with slits down the top edges, where wooden panels could slide in to prevent young children rolling to the floor. Joslyn’s only heirloom was a faded blanket, now threadbare, in which whoever had left her at the orphanage as an infant had wrapped her against the wind. Viola would rip the swath of fabric through any night now, but Joslyn covered her sleeping daughter with the blanket every evening. That blanket was the only thing Joslyn had to give her. Beyond that, she had no idea how to be a mother.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The League Reunited

  It was hours past midnight when Bendelof returned, exhausted, to the room she let in her workplace, one of Yangerton’s cheaper inns. Her head was as stuffed with thoughts of Gratton and the king as the oversized peppers her boss was known for cramming with the previous day’s bread.

  Rexson had ordered his children off mere hours before, and the need for such measures had thrown him in a mental fog to cloud everyone’s vision. Bennie had wanted to speak with the king, to restore his ability to think without emotion, but she’d refrained. She felt like she hardly knew him. He had sent her no message in fourteen years before a month ago, when Hayden had appeared in the kitchen where she was just putting up the soup pot to tell her Lanokas was in trouble. He had a horse for her if she needed one, but Lanokas, he needed her to meet with one of his guardsmen right away at City Hall: a more secure location. Hayden admitted later he had come to her on his own.

  With his children gone a second time, what Lanokas needed was a current confidant, not a past one, so Bennie had touched Gratton’s shoulder. That was all. She later wondered if she had channeled Zacry’s magic to pass her thoughts to him, because the guardsman did intuitively what Bennie would have suggested if she could have gotten him alone. He railed at the king. Yelled sense back into him. He stopped short of pulling a dagger on him like Lanokas had done to Vane, but not by much, and Lanokas was himself again after that, not excessively angry or brooding. Before Gratton’s outburst, Bennie could have sworn the king was not Lanokas at all, but was acting like—even looking like—his dead brother. Gratton had brought the king back to normalcy with his rage, before later ruining all the royal’s progress like a....

  Like some word Gretta Yastly would have had no problem coming up with. Bennie kicked off her sandals and lowered herself to her bed, to stretch her back, because she didn’t own a chair. She had no space for one. That bed (missing a leg and propped on a log to keep it steady), a candlestick, and a battered wardrobe were the only furniture in the room, which was small enough that it could have served as an immense storage closet. The space served Bennie well enough; she was never there but to sleep. She spent her days running errands for the inn, visiting friends, or reading at the library. Nights she worked in the kitchen.

  I’ll be safe here for the moment. They won’t risk angering Rexson by attacking me, not yet. They’re biding their time, hoping he might cave and announce a Magic Council. They won’t come after me until the week they gave him runs out and they expose him in desperation. I’ll have to leave then, but for now….

  I can’t let Gratton come here. He wouldn’t understand why I live in this place. We sure saw eye to eye about Lanokas today, though. I’d never have thought Lanokas would take his kids’ leaving so hard. I’m sure he’s frustrated as anything he had to send them away, but he’s got to know they’re safe with….

  “KORA!”

  Bennie tumbled off the bed as Kora materialized before her. The sorceress, with a nervous glance at the door, cast a sound barrier before yanking Bennie up by the elbow. “Quiet!” she hissed. “I’m glad to see you, but for all the Giver…!”

  “What are you doing here? How…?”

  “I transported. Zac told me the crew’d be in Yangerton, and I knew you lived here. I had your address, anyway, so I waited outside, hoping you’d come back.”

  “But Rexson’s children. Your children….”

  “They’re with Parker and my mother.”

  “What if Dorane…?”

  “No one will find them, Bennie. How would Dorane get to Traigland? It would take weeks. He’s never been there, so he can’t transport.”

  “You don’t know that. Man alive! What if someone sees you? You’ve been banished. Go back, please go back! We’ve got this under control.”

  “You realize you can’t lie, don’t you?”

  “What does Parker think of this? He does know you’re here?”

  “Of course he knows. You think I’d just run off? Bendelof Esper, you’re the most exasperating….”

  And Kora threw her arms around her friend, failing miserably not to think about her farewells with her family.

  She had left at two in the morning. Rexson’s boys and
August were at Zacry’s, while Kora’s children and Melinda had been in bed for the past six hours. Kora herself paced an uneven path through the toy-strewn parlor, where her mother sat in horror, her husband impassive.

  Ilana Porteg was a tall, stout matron, though not to a degree to cause comment. She had put on her cotton nightdress, and her short, shockingly gray hair was brushed for bed. Her full face, still youthful, looked pale and frightened. “You lied to me. You said Zacry had gone to do research, for one of his essays.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “All this time he’s been playing the hero. And that boy! Kora, you sent that boy with him?”

  Parker said, “No ma’am, she didn’t. Vane showed up here as fiery as one of the pokers in the smithy. He demanded to tag along, right demanded it. Kora tried to talk him out of it.”

  “So he’s still in Herezoth. Still. And Zacry’s gone back to track down magicked criminals.” Ilana ran a hand down her face. “He can’t do this alone.”

  “That’s why I’m going after him,” said Kora. Ilana’s complexion turned from slate to crimson.

  “Don’t joke like that,” she said.

  Parker frowned. He looked his wife in the eyes, as though he could read her thoughts that way. “She’s not joking,” he announced.

  “Zac needs me. The king needs me, since he has the sense—and thank God he does—not to let Vane get himself killed. It’s a matter of numbers: we have one sorcerer to their two. I’d have to work in the shadows, but I, I can surely do something. I’ll be invisible, so if the enemy suspects I’m there, they’ll think I’m Vane. That’s the logical assumption. They’ve seen Vane cast spells, when he rescued the princes. They know the king has two sorcerers.”

  “Don’t justify this,” said Parker. “This isn’t about Zacry, and it’s not about the king. You’ve been itching for years to go back, been waiting for an excuse. Any excuse.”