“And so?” the marquise asked, with so little regard that Gravis gritted his teeth.
“And so his children are starving,” the woman said. “His children are starving, and he can’t provide for them, because he died for Esthrades.”
“Ah,” Lady Margraine said. “Now I follow you. If you’ve come to beg, you might have said so from the beginning.”
The woman’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t deny it. “It may seem so, to one such as you,” she said.
Lady Margraine leaned backward, tapping her fingers together. “You put me in a rather difficult position,” she said slowly. “I find you very annoying, but also very boring. Annoying people are usually the ones one wants to kill, but boring people are almost always not worth the killing. It would certainly not be worth the lecture I’d undoubtedly get from Gravis, who, despite occasional flashes of brilliance, remains the most boring person I have ever met. So I must confess, I’m not at all certain what to do.”
“Easy for you to be hard-hearted!” the woman spat, her composure cracking. “Easy for you, who’ve never known hunger or cold or fear—who’ve never known love, and never will!”
Gravis winced with the rest, waiting for the punishment. But the marquise continued to smile even at that; if anything, she only looked more amused. “You see, that’s just what perplexes me,” she said. “I am quite ignorant when it comes to love, it’s true, yet everyone tells me it knows no price—nor gold nor jewels can match my dear one’s eyes, and so forth. Then were it not the gravest insult I could bestow to pay you for your loss? If you truly loved this man, would you not spit at even a mountain of diamonds?” When the woman remained silent, she tilted her head quizzically. “What, do I misunderstand something? Tell me, I entreat you. Is love not thus?”
Still the woman said nothing. She stared at the floor, her face slowly reddening.
“Oh yes, this I like much better,” the marquise said. “I do believe I’ve found the answer.” She put a hand to her throat.
The Margraines were accustomed to wear few jewels, just as they were accustomed to wear no crowns, but the marquise had worn a necklace that day, an opal set in silver. She did not bother to unclasp it, just snapped the chain and tossed it to Dent, who caught it reflexively. “You should be able to sell that for more than a little. Consider it thanks for teaching one with a heart such as mine about the true nature of love.”
The woman stared at the jewel Dent handed her, blinking furiously at it as if she couldn’t decide if it was real. Then she looked at Lady Margraine as if struck with the same dilemma. “I do not know whether to thank you or curse you,” she finally said.
“Good,” said the marquise. “That was the effect I intended.”
* * *
Once the hours of judgment had passed and the hall was quiet again, Lady Margraine turned to Gravis. “You disagreed with me, did you?”
Gravis sighed. “About what, my lady?”
“You know, that affair with the old man. The one with the book? Your face became even more pinched than usual.”
Gravis shook his head. “It was not anything especially important. I simply found his request a wise one, and you seemed not to.”
“What, sun and silence?”
“Peace, I thought, was what he meant.”
The marquise tossed her hair back from her face. “Then why didn’t he just ask for peace? Either way, I can’t think of anything more boring.”
“You are fond of saying that,” Gravis agreed, and bit his tongue before he could say more.
She laughed anyway, of course. “Oh well, perhaps when I am old I shall see the value in sun and silence as well. If I ever live so long, of course.”
Gravis did not doubt that she would outlive them all. “Is there anything else you require of me, my lady?”
She stood, tucking the old man’s book under her arm. “Not today, but we should discuss the situation at the border before too long. I think we may be in for something of a reprieve, but I want to look over the reports before I decide anything.” She took a few steps, then stopped. “I’ll be in my study. See that I am not disturbed by anything but the direst circumstances.”
He should have just let her leave, but instead he said, “You like quiet enough in your study, my lady, do you not? And I always thought it had quite a bit of light.”
She half turned to him, still infernally smiling. “There is light so that I may read, and silence to keep me from being interrupted. But books themselves are not quiet, though reading may appear to be.” She tapped her chin. “If that old man merely wanted a suitable environment for reading, then I misjudged him. But if that were so, I doubt he would have given away his books.”
After she was gone, Gravis sat on the edge of the steps, resting his elbows on his knees. The rest of the hall was empty—Dent had gone to man his post outside, and the servants wouldn’t be down for another hour or so. These silences had been easy enough to bear when his lordship was alive, but now they were a torment as much as a relief.
He didn’t need to wait for the morrow to know Lady Margraine meant to disagree with him about strategy once more. And he would have no arguments to fall back on; she would simply ask him who had been right the last time, and who had been wrong. That was the part that stung most of all: she had never taken part in a single battle, and yet her strategies were better than his and her father’s put together. Did experience count for no more than sincerity? She possessed neither, and yet it never seemed to matter.
He might’ve sat there all afternoon, staring down the length of the hall without seeing it, but then he realized he was not alone. He had not heard the doors open or close, but a familiar shape moved into his line of sight. He blinked, bringing his vision back into focus, and saw Seren Almasy making her nonchalant way down the hall, brisk but somehow unhurried, just as usual.
Gravis got carefully to his feet, and Almasy gradually slowed as she neared him; for a moment he thought she was going to pass him by altogether, but she finally stopped, raising her eyes to his expectantly. “I hardly thought to see you back here,” he said. “Have you actually found it?”
“I wouldn’t be back here if I hadn’t,” Almasy replied. “Where is Lady Margraine?”
Gravis took a closer look at her. Her clothes bore more dust than blood, but the blood was still there. “You weren’t sent to kill anyone,” he said, “but I suppose you couldn’t resist?”
“There aren’t many valuable things that don’t require you to kill someone or other to get them,” Almasy said. “But you knew that. Where is her ladyship?”
“You don’t really mean to tell me that—”
“I mean to tell you absolutely nothing,” Almasy said. “Where is your lady?”
He snorted. “Yours as much as mine.” Almasy inclined her head, accepting that, and before she could ask again, Gravis answered her. “She’s in her study. She didn’t wish to be disturbed, but I don’t doubt you can go up, especially if you’re carrying what you say you are.”
Almasy patted her satchel, as close to smug as he’d ever seen her, and passed him, heading for the stairs.
* * *
Arianrod’s study was built at the back of Stonespire, above and opposite the great hall. Its north wall formed a slight semicircle, set with windows that looked out onto the orchard. But Arianrod’s chair faced away from the windows, because she did not want the sun to blind her as she read. Instead she either stayed bent over the desk, or else, like today, she pushed her chair out and to the side, holding the book open on her lap. She did not look up when Seren crossed the threshold, and for a few moments Seren stood there, thrown off balance by the persistent nervousness that never seemed to go away. She had to say something, but the appropriate words escaped her. “I—”
But Arianrod looked up before she could say any more, her smile as instantaneous and meaningless as ever. “And here I thought today was going to be dull,” she said, letting the book fall across her knees. “Well?�
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In answer, Seren slung the satchel down off her shoulder and held it out. “Here.”
Arianrod stared avidly enough at the satchel, but she made no move to take it. “You really found it?”
“I told you I would,” Seren said. “I don’t leave things half-done.”
“No, you certainly don’t.” She seemed to find that funny, but there were few things Arianrod didn’t find funny, so Seren let it pass. “And you had no … trouble with the thing itself?”
Seren frowned. “No. It’s just a stone. It’s not even particularly heavy.”
Arianrod smiled again. “I was fairly certain, but … ah well.” She stuck a stray sheet of paper in the book to mark her place, then closed it and set it on her desk. “Let’s see it, then.”
Seren drew the stone from the satchel and offered it to Arianrod, but Arianrod shook her head, jerking her chin at the desk instead. Seren set it down, and Arianrod leaned over it, finally picking it up so she could turn it about in her hands. For several moments she just kept twisting it between her fingers, squinting at the marks that covered its surface. Then she laughed. “Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that.”
“Does that mean you can read it?” Seren asked.
“Of course. It’s Old Lantian.”
“What does it say?”
“Hmm,” Arianrod said. “Roughly translated, it would go something like this: ‘My desires are vengeance, and many lives I having taken. Grant power me, and despair all others.’”
Seren stared at the stone in disbelief, as if she could translate it for herself with nothing more than the power of her own incredulity. “What?”
“Yes, I’m afraid whoever wrote this wasn’t quite as firm in his linguistic studies as he was in his ambitions,” Arianrod said. “I bet the wardrenholt itself winced at the grammar.”
“The what?”
“The wardrenholt,” Arianrod said. “That’s what it is. Did I neglect to mention that?”
“And what’s a … vordren…”
Arianrod tapped one finger against her lips. “How shall I explain it? A wardrenholt is … well, it’s most properly a container meant to hold magic, I suppose.”
Seren had heard people speak of magic before, had noted the excited little shiver that ran through them as they wondered at its possibilities. But whenever she tried to think of magic, there was only an emotionless blank—a failure of imagination, she supposed. She could not think of what she would do with it even if she possessed it. There was only that one time … but that couldn’t possibly have been magic, could it? “But then—does that mean…”
“That magic exists? No, nothing so monumental as that, I’m afraid. It proves magic existed, but most historians worth their inkwells admit that much. Think of it this way: let’s say that once, long ago, the fields were full of wheat, and you harvested some and made flour, and you hid the flour away somewhere. Then say a terrible blight came along, and all the wheat in the world died out. Just because someone eventually found your hidden sack of flour, that alone wouldn’t prove that wheat had started growing again, would it? That’s what a wardrenholt is like.” She smiled. “The ironic thing is, when magic was plentiful, wardrenholt were worthless. Less than worthless, even—the refuge of the weak. How funny that a device invented by failed mages turned out to be the only way magic survived to the present day.”
“Failed mages?” Seren asked.
Arianrod laughed. “Well, Seren, you’re no Gravis, so I don’t imagine you lend much credence to superstition. But perhaps you’ve heard tales of the mages of old—how they cast their spells with this special staff or that enchanted amulet or some such?”
“Something like that,” Seren agreed.
“Such are the stories that stick in the minds of the common people, but any decent history of magic will tell you the truth: mages of any worth needed nothing but their own selves to cast their spells. The truly bad mages, however, lacked the power for all but the most rudimentary spells on their own, so instead they stored their magic in stones or crystals or glass over time, the way you might bleed yourself day by day until you could fill a keg with it. That’s where wardrenholt came from, originally.”
Seren shrugged. “It seems a useful enough trick to me.”
“Yes, the same way setting the grass on fire seems a useful trick, until you’ve burnt the forest down. Magic that comes from inside yourself can never betray you—my arm will snap if I force it to attempt a task beyond its strength, but it can never take it upon itself to strangle me. If you take your magic out of yourself, if you make it separate, it warps into something different, something capricious. That’s why this little rock has likely been the death of many people who tried to use it. I don’t intend to make the same mistake.” She stared hard at it, and finally sighed. “I so dislike bringing pageantry into this, but it’s best to take no chances. Let’s see … I suppose blood would have the best effect.”
Seren did feel something at that—a shiver not of excitement but of distrust. “Blood?”
“Blood is very much like magic—in so many ways. Perhaps that’s why it’s so often used for these things.” She rolled up her sleeve, extending the bare curve of her arm to Seren. “If you would?”
Her smile was even more pointed than usual, and she wore that look Seren had seen so often: the intent but detached appraisal of a child pulling the wings off a butterfly, not out of anything so intimate as cruelty, but merely to see what will happen. It was a test, and Seren did not know whether she’d succeeded or failed when she looked away, pressing her lips tightly together. “I have no stomach for that,” she said.
Arianrod raised her eyebrows slightly, but only shrugged. “As you like. Give me a knife, then.”
Seren considered a moment, then reached into her boot; that knife was small, and very sharp, and she hadn’t used it yet. “You don’t have to press down hard—that’ll do most of the work itself.”
“Seren, I know I haven’t had weapons training, but I do know what a knife is.”
Seren was not entirely convinced. “When was the last time you held a blade?”
Arianrod laughed. “Why, several hours ago, when I cut my cheese. It was a valiant battle, but I assure you the cheese came out the worse for it.”
She sliced into the soft part of her arm, just a couple inches shy of the crook of her elbow. She did not wince, just drew the knife away and held her arm out over the stone, letting the blood drip onto it. When she was done, she bent her arm and lifted it, casting about for something to press against the cut. Seren reached into her satchel. “Here.”
Arianrod took the offered cloth, pressed it to her arm for several moments, then turned her gaze back to the stone. “I’m sure my grasp of Old Lantian is much better than our mysterious friend’s, but I do want to make sure I get this right. Something short and to the point is best—you leave any kind of loophole in the language, and the damn thing’ll find a way to fuck you with it.”
She pondered a few moments more, then finally pressed her fingers into the blood, tracing something against the surface of the stone. She could not possibly have used enough to write whole sentences in it, but that didn’t seem to bother her; she just kept tracing letters until she was through. Finally she set the stone down and nodded once, turning slightly to press the cloth against her arm again. “Good. We’d best get this done now, while … well, while it’s on my mind. Fetch a shovel, and meet me in the orchard.”
Seren nodded, but when Arianrod made to leave the room, she did not take the stone. Seren looked over at it, confused. “Won’t you be bringing that?”
Arianrod stared at it for a moment, then turned away. “I think it would be best if … well, you’ve carried it this long, haven’t you?”
After she had gone, Seren walked over to the desk and examined the stone. The blood had already dried, but the inscriptions that covered its surface were just as impenetrable as before; she couldn’t even tell if they had changed.
> The Margraines were wont to keep guards patrolling the orchard, but when she arrived, she found that Arianrod was alone, staring out distractedly at the trees. The sun was starting to set, bronzing the edge of a wisp of cloud. “Any spot will serve,” Arianrod said. “We don’t need a large hole, just one big enough to bury it in.”
Seren raised her eyebrows, but she began to dig. She was no master with a shovel, but thankfully the stone was not large. When she finally finished, leaning on the shovel with a grateful sigh, Arianrod laughed. “Remind me to assign future burial duties to someone else.”
Actually burying the stone took less time, and the sun had barely moved when Seren patted the last heap of dirt back into place. Arianrod knelt then, pressing her palm flat against the dirt, as if she wanted to make sure the stone wouldn’t come bursting out of the ground again. She nodded, satisfied, and got back to her feet. “Well,” she said, on the heels of a surprisingly shaky breath, “that’s that.”
Seren frowned. “We’re … hiding it in the orchard? That doesn’t seem unsafe to you? I know you normally have men on patrol, but—”
Arianrod smiled. “Is it theft you’re worried about? You’re free to try to steal it if you like—I’d even let you keep it. But I for one am going back inside. You can play around out here until you’re satisfied, but then come back to the study; I’m not quite finished with you yet.”
Seren didn’t relish picking up the shovel again, but her curiosity got the better of her; she disturbed the dirt once more, wondering if Arianrod had really meant for her to keep it. But it seemed to her it was taking a lot longer to hit the stone than it should have, and finally she knelt by the hole, sticking her arm in to see how deep it was. There was no way they’d buried it even that far down, yet she was sure this was the spot. She sifted about in the dirt, looking for fragments of stone, but there wasn’t even any dust.
Once again, Seren filled in the hole she had dug and got to her feet. She brushed off her hands and slung the shovel over one shoulder. And then she walked over to the trees, plucking a single blood apple from the nearest branch before heading back inside.
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