“Drown someone on dry land? Blind a helpless girl? Attack his dying sister? Damn right he couldn’t.”
“I don’t want to upset you, I just…. I understand Laskenay’s compassion for her brother now. Because Zac, he’s what Zalski could have been, that’s what I mean to say. He’s like a Zalski that never let the world turn him bitter, the Zalski Laskenay must have grown up with and never quite forgot.”
Kora bit her lip. “She forgot in those last moments. She was like him at the end, you know. Bitter’s a perfect way to put it. Vengeful. Don’t you remember the way she gloated about killing Zalski’s wife?”
“Laskenay was a good woman, a good woman who suffered more than her share. If she let herself feel all she lost before she died, if she struck back at the man who took it all away, well, that’s more his fault than hers, I’d think. He drove her to it.”
“He did,” said Kora. “But she was a different person that last day. It still unsettles me.”
“Give the woman a break. She was human. We’re all human. We all did things we weren’t proud of those in those last weeks.”
Bennie grabbed her wrist, the wrist she had almost sliced open while on guard duty, and Kora had the tact to leave the past alone.
“So we don’t know where the Fist went off to?”
“Our best guess is another inn in town, assuming Gratton’s on our side and didn’t tip them off. We’re looking for them tomorrow. Zac made a point of partnering Gratton, to keep an eye on him. The king’ll join them. I’m supposed to help Hayden.”
“And if you two find them?”
“We’ll tail them. Hayden and I aren’t about to fight sorcerers.”
“I’ll go with Zac and Rexson. I assume they’ll attack if they find the cads?”
“You won’t be able to hold the king back, not your magic and Zacry’s together. Kora, go home. Please go home.”
Kora shook her head. Bennie let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll get you some blankets,” she said. “You can sleep on my floor. There’s just space enough.”
* * *
After four hours of restless sleep—Bennie’s rug provided little padding—Kora and the redhead met up with the king’s party in Yangerton’s Central Plaza. Kora refused to feel emotional walking some of Herezoth’s most famous streets. She devoted her energy to avoiding the crowds, to not jostling exasperated mothers who ran after their little urchins. A lurid sense of déjà vu overcame her senses, even served to heighten them. She felt seventeen again in her invisibility, out on a mission for the Crimson League.
The plaza had changed. The stone construction that served as City Hall had shutters on its windows now, which made it look decades newer. There were fewer foot-peddlers than in years past, and more rows of wooden stands expanding in squares from the central bell tower. Gone were the brooches and posters that displayed the letter Z framed in a triangle: Zalski’s mark, the indication that a vendor had registered with the tax office. Perhaps the most striking missing element was the scaffold. A four-story housing complex, made of stone to match City Hall and the other buildings nearby, reared in its stead.
Kora and Bennie found the men they sought in the shadow of the lodging house. The sorceress picked out Gratton without much trouble. He was the only ally she’d never met, and she suspected his bout of drinking would have taken a visible toll. She was right.
Kora stifled a gasp and spun on her heel as a middle-aged man tore past her with a burlap sack. Then she gaped at Hayden, who had grown less waifish and held himself with much more confidence than at the age of sixteen. Knowing the adolescent, she hardly recognized the man. The king bore his forty years well, though his hair had thinned since the last time Kora saw him and stress had dulled his eyes, drawn his mouth down at the corners. Kora’s heart ached; she longed to rush at Hayden and embrace him, to sling an arm around the king and make him smile, with her thumb and index finger if she had to. Instead, she snuck up behind her brother and whispered, “It’s me. I’ll follow you.”
Zacry jumped and, when the action drew eyes, waved his arm as though to bat away an insect. “Damn mosquitoes,” he said, to explain away his jerks. Hayden stared at him. “They’re everywhere. We don’t have them in Triflag.”
“We don’t have this many in Podrar,” Hayden conceded.
The king stood with pursed lips. He looked at the sorcerer, his eyes narrowing by the second. He stared right through Kora, and then, before she realized he had her figured out, he moved an arm and pulled her forward with his magic. She stumbled toward him; he grabbed her above the wrist. “I’ll be back,” he said. “I need to check something at City Hall. Zac, come with me.”
Her brother in tow, Kora let the king guide her through the maze of merchant stands. What else could she do? To transport would carry Rexson with her. Kora didn’t fear to be alone with him, not for an instant, but he wouldn’t appreciate the spectacle of her making him vanish in front of a crowd, so it was up City Hall’s stone steps they went; Zacry and Rexson were careful to keep Kora from the throngs. The king shared a significant glance with the uniformed guard at the entrance, and then sneaked into a dank and cobweb-strewn broom cupboard.
“Blast it,” said Kora, as she tripped on a mop bucket. Zacry cast a sound barrier to shut out the noise she made, with the unintended result of lighting the room with a sickly yellow glow. His sister cancelled her invisibility.
“Hi,” Kora told the king, a sheepish grin across her face. She could feel her forehead sweating beneath her bandana. “Don’t be mad at Zac. I didn’t tell him I was coming.”
Zacry said, “I should have realized you’d do this. I shouldn’t have told you what….”
The king raised a silencing hand. He asked Kora, “You do realize I could have you killed?”
“Like you’d kill me! What would you do, hang me? You’d have to arrest me first. Why don’t you try it?”
“This isn’t a joke, Porteg.”
“Porteg?” Kora blinked. “Since when do you call me Porteg? Since when do I risk my life for a joke?”
“So you understand what you’re doing?”
“I understand I can’t be seen by random people, and not by the enemy. They’d bully you into forcing Traigland’s king to ship me back here for trial. I understand these things, Your Majesty.”
“Hell, Kora!”
“So now it’s Kora again.”
“May I ask what you’ve done with my children?”
“They’re with my mother. And August and Zac’s wife. Between the three of them, they can handle a brood of ten.”
“Nine,” the king corrected her. “My four and your five.” Kora bit her lip, and Rexson turned to Zacry, horrified. “You’re a father?”
“His daughter’s eight months,” Kora admitted.
“Shit,” said Zacry. He ran a hand down his face. Rexson paled.
“I never would have asked….”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Zacry, I mean it. I….”
“I said drop it, all right?”
Rexson’s gray face turned stony. Kora nearly rolled her eyes. “Don’t command His Royal Highness, Zac,” she warned. That stopped the king cold; Kansten, long dead, had always referred to Rexson’s brother as “His Royal Highness” in disrespect.
For a second, Kora thought the king would slap her. He magicked a broom over instead, cracked the handle across his knee, and flung the pieces aside.
“Is that out of your system now?” Kora asked.
Rexson demanded, “Who do you think you are, coming back like this?”
“Stop,” said Kora. “Stop, all right? I don’t care if you’re king. You’re being an ass.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Marked One. You have no right disrupting my plans without my knowledge or consent.”
Kora replied, “Well now you know.”
“Have I consented?”
“I’m here to help you, Lanokas. To help, because that’s what friends do.”
&
nbsp; The king started when she called him by his old alias. “My God,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m turning into my brother. He never did appreciate a thing that others….”
“No harm done,” said Kora. “But seeing I’m here and all….”
Rexson said, “You can join us. If you want to, that is. I wish you wouldn’t, but I’ll leave the choice to you, considering it’s your neck.”
“I want to be clear, I’m not here as the Marked One. I still don’t understand what that means, not fully, but I imagine you could handle this without me if you had to. You’ve done just fine without me all these years.” Kora sighed, and admitted, “All I know about my blasted ruby, still, is that it came to me by the Giver’s intervention. That’s a rare thing, but there’s no other explanation for that magic no human being was around to work, and my father never told the legend of the Marked One without saying God would send a hero in Herezoth’s darkest time. Well, that’s all done with. Zalski’s dead.”
A curious look came over Rexson. He glanced at her bandana. “Your ruby’s still there?”
“I don’t know why. If the Giver put it there, I guess it’s up to him to take it off. I stopped trying years ago. A severing charm from Zac and me together couldn’t do a thing, and to say the least, I’m used to the stone by now. I guess I…. Why did I even bring this up?”
Rexson said, “You’re not here as the Marked One.”
“Oh, right. I’m here as a second sorcerer, because you’ll need that magic. I’m here to help my brother.”
Zacry scowled. “I’m not twelve anymore.”
“You’re still just one person to cast spells.”
Her brother’s scowl stretched, but Kora smiled. It felt like the old days, one of the better ones, when she would wake and feel in every fiber of her being that nothing could go wrong, at least not tragically so, before the sun sank. “Let’s get those bastards once and for all,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nasty Surprises
It was ten o’clock in the morning the day after Rexson’s children had arrived in Traigland. Through his spectacles, Valkin stared at a wooden rectangle set into a corridor in Zacry’s house. “What’s that?” he asked.
“A door,” Kansten replied. She was nine, Kora’s oldest. Tall and thin, she had freckles and straight brown hair that August had twisted up for her.
Valkin said with a grin, “I can see that.” Kansten was more fun, more adventurous than his brothers, and infinitely more sarcastic. He was sorry he had to lie to her about his name, but his father had told him to tell everyone he was called Tommy. The king had been serious about that, very serious; the lines had popped up in his forehead that Valkin only ever saw when Rexson spoke of telekinesis, so Valkin figured he should do as he was told.
Kansten said, “It’s my uncle’s study. We can’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
Kansten shrugged her shoulders. “We’re not supposed to. The adults always tell me to leave that room alone.”
Valkin’s eyes began to sparkle. “Why? What’s in there?” he asked. Kansten shrugged her shoulders again. “Don’t you want to find out?” he pressed.
“It’s probably just books and stuff. Uncle Zac reads a lot.”
“Let’s see.”
“Tommy….” Kansten said, but he ignored her and pushed the door open. Kansten followed him inside and glanced around, glad to see her suppositions had been right. “I told you,” she proclaimed.
The whitewashed walls were lined with cheap shelves, shelves sturdy enough to hold books placed two rows deep. Some papers and an inkwell were set on the chestnut desk. One tome lay open where it had fallen from the desktop to an armchair; Valkin went to examine it and replaced it on the desk.
“Wow!” he cried, almost pressing his nose against the open book. “That’s a spellbook. Those are incantations!” He turned the page and read for a moment. “Let’s try to cast one, just for fun. This looks like a good one here: it’s an energy spell, to take tiredness away. At least, that’s what the book says. Eh— Energa Crez,” the prince stammered, trying to read the spell. Then he repeated it with more confidence. “Nothing,” he said with a grin. He had known he was no sorcerer.
Valkin flipped another page. “You should try this one. It’ll heal your skinned knee if it works. How’d you do that anyway?”
“I tripped on a root. In the yard. I was kicking a ball around with my brothers.”
“Well, try it,” urged Valkin. Kansten backed away. “Come on, try it,” he insisted. “You don’t have the mark, do you?”
“I don’t, and I don’t want to try a spell.”
“Why not? It’s not like it’ll do anything.”
“Listen, I don’t want to. I just don’t.” Kansten’s mother would kill her.
Valkin crossed his arms. “Scaredy cat,” he accused, and Kansten froze.
“I hate cats.”
“Then don’t act like one. What’s your problem?”
“You want to know? Really?” Kansten stormed to the book. “I’ll do it. I’ll show you what’s my problem.” She took a deep breath and read the spell, Kura-la.
“What is it you wanted to show me?” Valkin asked, his grin wider than ever. Kansten repeated the spell. Her bottom lip began to tremble, and Valkin turned more serious.
“Did I miss something?” he asked.
“No,” said Kansten. “No, you didn’t. Nothing happened. I don’t get it.”
She sank to the floor, brushed away a tear. Valkin joined her, asking, “You didn’t really think you’re a sorceress?”
“I should be,” she said. “My Mom told me she’s one, and Uncle Zac does magic too. He brought you here, didn’t he? I don’t have the mark, but they don’t either. I never tried to cast something before, but I thought….”
“It can skip a person, magic. Just because some relatives….”
Kansten began to weep. “How come my power’s blocked? I should have magic. Even Vane does magic.”
Valkin blinked. “You know Vane?”
Kansten tried not to choke on her words. “He lives here,” she said. “In this house. How do you know Vane?”
Valkin blushed. “He visits my family from time to time. Well, he used to. He’s a friend of my parents. Stays with us at the Palace.”
Kansten wiped her face. “The Palace?”
“In Podrar,” Valkin stammered. “My dad’s a, a kind of butler there. My mother, she’s one of the queen’s maids.”
“One of them? How many does she have?”
“Three,” said the prince, grateful to say something truthful, however trivial.
“I see,” said Kansten. “Look, do you mind if I, if I want to be alone for a bit? Not to be mean….”
“Sure,” said Valkin. “Sure, all right.” He wasn’t offended, as the poor girl still was crying. If anything he felt relieved to get away, to escape his gaffe of mentioning the Palace.
When he had gone, Kansten wiped her face on her sleeve and tore back to the desk. She clambered up on her uncle’s armchair and looked down at the spellbook. She tried three more times, fighting panic, to heal her scraped knee. When that didn’t work, she flipped backward three pages so quickly that one of them ripped. Two, three, four times she read out the spell Tommy first had discovered, the one to make you strong, to give you energy. She felt no stronger than usual, only sad and angry, even tired and weak. She sobbed harder than ever.
But Mom’s a sorceress. She told me she is. She said people might talk about it, because they know about her. She can do magic, so why not me? Why?
Kansten didn’t bother to wipe her face again. Her tears were coming too fast and thick. She huddled against the wall to sob into her knees, careful not to mess up the pretty twists August had put in her hair.
Just then, Joslyn noticed from the hallway that the door to Zacry’s office was ajar. She walked over to investigate and found Kansten crying in the corner. The woman’s sharp, dark eyes moved from
the weeping child to the spellbook on the desk, and widened in alarm. She flew to her niece, kneeling to examine her.
“Kansten, are you hurt? What happened?”
Kansten spoke with a hiccough. “Nothing happened,” she proclaimed.
“You haven’t cast any spells from your uncle’s book?”
“No, I tried. Nothing happened. I’m not a sorceress.”
Grateful that no magic had gone awry to maim the girl, and beginning to understand why Kansten was upset, Joslyn settled more comfortably on the floor and put an arm around her.
“Would you like to be a sorceress?”
“I never asked myself that. I always just thought I was. I’ve been waiting and waiting for my fifteenth birthday because that’s when….” Another hiccough. “That’s when Mom was gonna let me cast my first spell.”
“Your mother never said there’s a chance you might not be able?”
“She did. She did say that. I just never thought it might be true.”
“I see,” said Joslyn. She still held one arm around Kansten, and she gave the girl a loving squeeze. A motherly squeeze. “Not having magic has clearly upset you. Can I ask why?”
“Because it’s not fair. It’s just not fair. Mom can do magic, and Uncle Zac does.”
“But you’re not your mother or your Uncle Zac. You’re your own person, and I wouldn’t change a thing about you even if I could. You wouldn’t be Kansten then.”
“I’d be better.”
“You don’t need magic to be a better you. Kindness doesn’t require magic. It only calls for an open heart.” Joslyn guided Kansten’s hand and placed it on the upper left quadrant of the girl’s chest. “That’s where true magic lies, and that’s power you do have. The human heart can accomplish things no spell ever could. No spell can make you feel loved and protected. No incantation can recreate the wonder and the awe I knew the first time Viola laid her little head on my shoulder and fell asleep. These spellbooks here can’t cause that fuzzy feeling you talked about the first time you made your sister laugh.
“I don’t have magic, you know, and I feel quite blessed. This might not help you feel better right now, but I can tell you, cross my heart, that having magic wouldn’t make me any happier. Kansten, I promise you won’t miss out on any of the truly important things because you can’t cast spells. Why, you’d never cast a spell before today, right? Today you didn’t either, that’s all. Just one more day like any other. And tomorrow you won’t, and that’s fine too.”
The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 17