“My lady,” Seren said again, “in your condition—”
“I’m not an invalid.” But she half stumbled as she turned away from the window, and leaned heavily on the sill. “I slept for hours,” she insisted. “I hardly feel it anymore.”
She was halfway across the room when she hesitated, swaying slightly on her feet. Seren caught her before she could stumble again; she felt so strange, as if her bones had gone as hollow as the birds’. “Damn it,” Arianrod muttered, with a dry chuckle. “Well, at least more rest means more time before Gravis assaults me with the barrage of questions he is no doubt dying to ask me.” She flopped back onto her bed, sinking into the pillows. “Speaking of Gravis, have he and the others returned yet?”
“Not that I know of, my lady,” Seren said. “They did have … rather a lot of work to do.”
Arianrod rolled her eyes. “I did the work. They’re just cleaning up the mess.”
That was, strictly speaking, true, but Seren wouldn’t exactly enjoy the task of disposing of fifty-three charred bodies, all the same. “What happens if they’re seen?”
“Oh, I expect they will be—and remarked upon, naturally. Members of the guard leading so many wagons out of the city at such a peculiar hour … yes, that would be strange. Who knows what rumors the common people will devise to explain it? I wouldn’t dare try to guess—their ingenuity in these matters has amazed me far too many times already.”
Seren took her time replying, trying to choose her words carefully. “You don’t feel that they might … become upset, depending on which rumors they fasten on to?”
Arianrod just laughed. “Seren, if the common people are to be believed, I have, in somewhat more than three years of rule—a rule that began, let’s not forget, when I murdered my father—conversed with the spirits of the dead, used forbidden sorcery to place curses upon my enemies, called upon the most preeminent scholars in the realm to devise novel methods of torture, and fed an unfortunate rentholder his own eyeballs because he disliked my new dress. If they truly wanted to become outraged at my lack of moral character, they’ve had plenty of opportunities.”
“But if they think you’ve sent your soldiers to bury the bodies of innocents—”
“I thought you hated that word,” Arianrod said, her smirk as keen as ever.
Seren bit her lip. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. But to your people…”
“I take your point,” Arianrod said, “but when innocents go missing, people tend to notice. I doubt Elgar’s fifty-three were well known in Stonespire, or that they had savory reputations if they were. Once everyone realizes we haven’t snatched any maidens or infants, they’ll stop caring.”
“And the soldiers themselves?”
Arianrod shrugged. “Gregg hasn’t questioned an order in twenty years, and if Dent and the others have doubts, Gravis will put them to rest. He was always the one who distrusted me most, and he never made a secret of it. If he tells them that he can’t offer them an explanation, but that he has no qualms about anything that happened, they’ll accept that.”
“Do you think he will tell them that?” Seren asked.
Arianrod propped her chin on her hand. “If you’d asked me three days ago, I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but now I actually think he will. Perhaps the reality of what I’m capable of was less frightening for him than his fantasies of it—at least now he knows there were no demons involved, after all. Or perhaps he realizes how much I held myself back—how much damage I could have done, and how often, and didn’t. I don’t think restraint was something he ever attributed to me before.”
Seren pressed her lips together, searching for the right words again. “Do you think … do you think you can really trust him with that secret?”
“By now I’m certain of it. If he were going to turn against me because of my magic, he’d have done it already.”
“Perhaps he was afraid.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, Seren. Gravis would never let fear hold him back from something he’d convinced himself he needed to do. He’s not capable of it.” She tilted her head, then reached up to brush a lock of hair back from her face. “Do you know why my father loved him so much?”
Seren scowled; Caius Margraine was not someone she liked to think on. “Because he agreed with him so much, I assume.”
Arianrod laughed. “Not even close. In fact, it was for the opposite reason.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “My father was always prone to rages, and when he was in the grip of one, what meager powers of judgment he had deserted him. What he did to me is proof enough of that, but on the day of my birth, when he saw my mother dead, he attempted to strangle the midwife, right there in the birthing chamber.” She paused, perhaps waiting for a reaction, but when Seren said nothing, she continued. “He had his soldiers all about him, of course, but they weren’t prepared to do anything; he was their lord, and they were sworn to his service, and so they just stood there, watching him do this thing. Well—they all but one stood there. A green recruit from out in the hills who’d been only two years in the castle guard—he was the only one to try to check my father’s anger. He attacked him, actually, and tried to wrestle him to the ground. No true servant, he said, could stand by and watch his master dishonor himself.”
“And that was Gravis?” Seren asked.
“That was Gravis. My father nearly killed him for getting in his way, but a few of the other men followed Gravis’s lead, and eventually they subdued him. My father honored Gravis ever since.” She sighed. “So you see, Gravis is incapable of any kind of prolonged deceit. He might badger me half to death during an argument, but if he ever became convinced I meant to do something he could not forgive, he would stop me or die in the attempt—almost definitely the latter, but I doubt it would make any difference to him. That’s simply who he is.”
She drifted into silence, and Seren moved to the window, peering down into the orchard as Arianrod had. The sky had grown lighter, and she could make out the blood apples hanging among the leaves. “You aren’t going to ask me?” Arianrod said, so suddenly it took Seren a moment to make sense of her words. “About the magic?”
There was a question she wanted to ask, but she was afraid of how Arianrod might react if she did. “I could figure out enough,” she said instead. “I know it isn’t infinite. I know it hurts you, though I don’t know why.”
This silence was different—almost painfully heavy. Arianrod was staring at the ceiling, her jaw clenched tight. “Neither do I,” she said at last. “And I have wished to know that as much as I ever wished to know anything.”
Seren felt a shiver of unease, but she did her best to suppress it. “What do you mean?”
Arianrod still didn’t look at her. She dropped her gaze to her hands instead, curling her fingers inward. “If this pain were merely the price every mage must pay, I would bear it gladly. But all the books I have read, all the research I have done—everything suggests that the mages of old could cast even the most complicated spells without any injury to themselves. Fatigue, certainly, occasionally to the point of exhaustion, but there is a world of difference between fatigue and what I suffer. This is not the way it is supposed to be. Something is wrong.” She opened her hand again, staring at the lines of her palm. “At first I thought some weakness in my body was to blame. But I am not unduly weak—I’ve never been sickly in my life. It’s something else.”
Seren leaned back against the wall, trying to steady herself. “So when we were at Mist’s Edge … you felt that pain because you had used magic?”
Arianrod made a face at that. “Yes, that was because I overexerted myself. I attempted to do something pointless, and therefore foolish—something I have tried many times before. It has never worked, and didn’t then.”
It was an effort for Seren to force her next words out without stammering. “And … before, when—when we met. That was also … that was magic?”
“Oh, you remembered tha
t, did you?” Arianrod smiled. “Gods, I first came up with that spell when I was … seven? Eight? It was a favorite of mine when I was young—one of the first I devised that I could really be proud of.”
“You could use magic when you were that young?” Seren asked. “When did you first realize you had it?”
Arianrod tapped her bottom lip. “Hmm, I wonder. There was never any great revelation for me—I think I always knew, in one way or another. At first I was just afraid I was wrong, that my childish certainty was no more than an elaborate game I was playing with myself. But I wasn’t wrong.”
She looked across the room, to where a lone candle was burning on her desk. “Here,” she said. “Blow that out.”
Seren crossed the room, and did as she’d asked. The sun had risen far enough that they were not plunged into darkness, and she could still make out Arianrod’s face as she gazed at the slender wick. “For a true mage,” she said, “a spell is not a painted circle or a string of arcane words. Those things, where they exist, are only crutches, for mages who are too weak to cast without them. They’re like the tricks your tutor teaches you to remember your lessons; there’s no need to memorize things when you simply know them.” Then she fell silent, and stared at the candle again. She did not frown, or set her jaw, or stare unduly; she glanced at it quite casually, the way you might look out a window, or at a face you only thought you recognized. And the flame sparked itself into being again, enfolding the wick without so much as a sputter.
A smile spread across Arianrod’s face, the most open expression of delight Seren had ever seen from her. “There,” she breathed. “Just like that.”
“And that doesn’t hurt you?” Seren asked.
“That?” Arianrod laughed. “That is child’s play. Perhaps if I lit a hundred candles at once, or continuously blew that one out and lit it again for an hour or so, I would start to feel it.” But then her expression darkened, closed off slightly. “The problem is that I feel it at all—that a limit exists at all, where there should be none. There are things even the most talented mages have never been able to do, of course, but it wasn’t due to any sort of weakness; the most impossible miracles were simply beyond them. But to have my true potential stifled like this … I must discover the reason for it. I must discover how it can be restored.”
“It means so much to you?” Seren asked, before she could help herself. But perhaps it was the right thing to say, for Arianrod’s expression opened up again.
“Of course,” she said, but it wasn’t dismissive, just contemplative. “Magic … Who could even hear the word and not desire it?” That same lock of hair had fallen back into her face again, and she twined it around her finger, smiling faintly. “Magic does not care for coin or blood or title; it cannot be bought, begged, stolen, or learned. You either have it or you don’t. And if you do have it, what you make of it is entirely up to you.”
Yet the thought of magic stirred no more covetousness in Seren than it ever had, only that same twinge of distrust. “Do you really think it’s possible? That you could take away the pain?”
Arianrod didn’t hesitate. “I’m sure of it. What I did to those men was the most powerful spell I have ever attempted, but even though it was a success, it was possible only through the most rigorous calculation. Like this, Seren, I can use magic only as if I were balancing an account, ever wary of spending too much. But there were people, once, for whom it was an art.” She sat up with weary slowness, but her eyes were burning, as intent as they had ever been. “I have to find it. I will find it. I will have these damned shackles off, and then … what couldn’t I do, if I were truly free? What could possibly stand in my way then?”
Seren could claim no eloquence at the best of times, but now her voice stuck in her throat, letting air fill her lungs only painfully. What could she possibly say or do, in the face of something Arianrod wanted so desperately, something Seren herself could barely understand?
After several moments of silence, Arianrod shrugged. “Well, so now you know. If you have some scruple against magic, our agreement, as ever, permits you to leave.”
She did not know what to say, so she fell back on what she knew to be true. “It doesn’t change anything,” she said. “I am yours to command, as ever.”
Arianrod lay back again, her sigh so soft that it was scarcely audible. “So you are,” she said. “So you are.” But then she glanced back at Seren. “You still haven’t asked it.”
“I—I haven’t asked what?”
“Whatever it is you want to ask me.”
Seren bit her lip. “You aren’t going to like it.”
“Then I am perfectly at liberty not to answer it. Ask.”
That was a command, so Seren said, “I only … I don’t understand. If you could do things like that—like what you did in the hall—why did you not simply erase them? The—the scars.”
Arianrod looked away again, turning her eyes almost listlessly to the ceiling. “I told you, didn’t I? I tried.”
* * *
In another hour, Stonespire Hall would be opened to the public while Lady Margraine sat in judgment. All the bodies of Elgar’s men had been successfully disposed of outside the walls, far enough away from any habitation that Gravis hoped they would never be found. He had pacified the ranks of his fellow guardsmen—though they were still, understandably, confused, they had agreed to accept his assurances about what had transpired the day before. But there was still one matter that needed seeing to before they were ready to open their doors.
Kern stood between Gravis and Dent, bound and chained with every possible precaution. There was a heavy bruise at his temple where Gravis had knocked him out when they were on the wall, but aside from that, he looked dignified enough, solemn and earnest, his gaze level.
Lady Margraine perched on her throne, still a bit pale in the face but otherwise sedate. They were the only people in the hall—Almasy would no doubt have preferred to be there, but she had stayed up the whole night through, and Lady Margraine had informed her that if she did not sleep until at least the afternoon, she would be tied down.
“Well, then.” Lady Margraine propped her chin on her hand, glancing dismissively at Kern. “I have no strong feelings where this boy is concerned, so I’m willing to hear your opinions on the matter. There is, of course, Lady Gailin’s proscription to consider, and I think we ought to follow it in this instance. The common people have no true knowledge that the throne was ever attacked. I think it best, to sustain their continued faith in the power of that throne, that they never be enlightened.”
The first Lady Gailin Margraine, a far-distant ancestor, had decreed that murder, no matter how just, should never be a public spectacle or cause for celebration, and thus most Esthradian executions were carried out in private. If one of Lady Gailin’s descendants wished to stage an execution in front of the people, he or she could dodge the proscription by claiming it was in the public’s interest—its very sober and noncelebratory interest—to see justice done. But most of the rulers of Esthrades hewed quite close to the original decree, no doubt for the same reason Lady Gailin had made it in the first place—not, as was famed, for her ladyship’s tender heart and distaste for bloodshed, but so that would-be martyrs were denied their stage.
“I agree,” Dent said slowly, “that his execution should not be before the rest of Stonespire, but … perhaps your ladyship might wish to have it before the rest of the Stonespire guard.”
She blinked at him. “Why would I wish to do that?”
Dent winced. “My lady, the treachery of this—begging your pardon—this whoreson fool has tainted the honor of every member of the guard. Allow us to see it restored together—and let his punishment turn aside any who’d seek to go a similar way.”
Lady Margraine shrugged. “I have no objection to that. And you, Gravis? Do you agree?”
Gravis hesitated, searching for the right words. The request he had was impertinent, he knew, but he felt he had no choice but to
make it. Finally he bowed, and then, so she would know he was serious, he knelt, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. He could not remember the last time he had knelt before her; perhaps he never had. The rest of them knew it, too, and there was silence throughout the room, as they waited for her or Gravis to speak.
“My lady,” he said at last, “have I served you well in this matter?”
She pressed her lips together. “Well enough.”
“Did I not reveal the traitor to you? Did I not apprehend him alive, that you might judge him for yourself?”
“You did.” She shrugged again, but there was some discomfort in it, as if she were attempting to shake something off. “There’s no need for this posturing, Gravis. What is it you wish to say?”
“I would beg”—the word was out before he considered it, and then he could not take it back—“a favor of you. Since this young man—this traitor—was among my men, since I found him and appointed him, and since it was I who uncovered his treachery … I ask that your ladyship render him into my care, for me to administer his justice, and me alone.”
She frowned, but he could not tell if she was displeased or merely puzzled. “Your wish is … to be his executioner?”
“My wish is to administer his punishment with my own hands, yes,” Gravis replied, “but I ask—I ask that I may do it alone.”
She met his eyes for several long moments. Whatever she saw there must have satisfied her, for the tension went out of her face. “Very well, Gravis,” she said. “If that is your request, I see fit to grant it. You did, as you say, discover the rat, after all.” She turned to Dent. “Dent, assist Gravis with our young traitor until you have brought him down below. Then you may leave him with Gravis until judgment has been rendered.”
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