Brine and Bone

by Kate Stradling

  The palace healer followed his recalcitrant patient. “Your Highness, this is my new apprentice. She—”

  “Rubbish,” said the prince, his gaze never leaving Magdalena’s face.

  Master Asturias bristled. “I beg your pardon?”

  Finnian’s voice pitched with exasperation as he confronted the healer. “She can’t be your apprentice. That’s practically a servant. Her father’s the Grand Duke of Ondile, and she’s his only child. What idiot proposed pulling the heir of one of our sovereign allies into servitude?”

  A gurgle sounded from Master Asturias’s throat.

  “And you,” Finnian cried, turning his attention on Magdalena. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  She maintained her calm despite a jittery heartbeat. “I didn’t have a choice. Soldiers showed up at the seminary yesterday, confiscated my things, and loaded me into a carriage.”

  “And you didn’t pull rank on any of them?”

  She shifted, unable to meet his gaze. “I don’t… I mean…”

  His familiar, twinkling charm crept onto his face in the form of a winsome smile. “You know, Malena, if you wanted to come see me so badly, you didn’t have to go through such a charade.”

  Her temper snapped. “We don’t use rank at the seminary. I’m out of the habit. And if I did want to see you—which I didn’t—I would have come on my own power instead of having a smarmy captain practically frogmarch me here.”

  “Smarmy—?” Dismay twisted his mouth. “You mean Gil brought you?”

  “Gil?” she echoed, coldly distant.

  “Captain Byrne.”

  “That was the name.”

  To her surprise, Finnian raked one hand through his hair and paced the length of the rotunda. Silence prevailed as he processed this new revelation, until he arrived at a conclusion. “I’ll go see my father. I’ll have everything cleared up in an instant. Or were you coming to see him now?”

  Magdalena spared a sidelong glance at the elder healer, who seemed to think silence was his best option. “Master Asturias was instructing me on the layout of the palace.”

  “Why? You used to live here.”

  “I didn’t get the chance to tell him that.”

  Finnian barked a laugh. He snatched at her wrist to pull her along with him, but she evaded his grasp.

  “Don’t make me a spectacle here too, your Highness,” she said in a low voice.

  He paused. Something akin to hurt flashed through his eyes, but he shook it off. “Come with me, both of you.”

  Magdalena glanced longingly down the passage that led back to her tiny room, but disobedience to the crown prince was not an option. Glumly she fell in step behind him, Master Asturias stiff-backed beside her. She fixed her attention on the floor as they walked. The familiar patterned marble dredged up memories of laughing childhood games played along this very hall.

  The prince stopped at the door to the king’s private parlor, but only long enough to rap a sharp rhythm against it. He shoved through with a contrived smile plastered on his face. His jovial voice rang out into the hall. “Good morning, Father, Mother. Look who I just found.”

  Magdalena shared a perturbed glance with Master Asturias. They both filed into the room, where the king and queen ate their breakfast. King Ronan kept his expression aloof when he spied Magdalena. Queen Orla almost choked on her eggs.

  “You’ve met Master Asturias and his new apprentice,” said the king. His wife sputtered and coughed, but her maid scurried from the side of the room to pat her back, so he focused his attention on his son. “I’m sure one or both of them told you to return to your bed for the day.”

  “Yes, Master Asturias did.” Prince Finnian beamed at his sire.

  The queen buried her face in her napkin, her cheeks almost purple as she expelled the errant food particles from her trachea.

  “And yet here you are, not in your bedchamber at all.” The king’s voice held a reproving edge.

  The prince ignored it. “I’ll get back there eventually. Magdalena says that Gil brought her here yesterday, and if Gil was involved, that means it was on your orders.”

  His father adopted a false façade that matched the son’s almost perfectly. “An apprenticeship to the palace healer is a great honor. What better, more appropriate reward could we offer the young woman who performed such a marvelous service on the crown’s behalf?”

  The queen drowned her coughing fit in a glass of water, her stricken face drawn tight.

  “I can think of several,” said the prince. His expression turned studious. “I’m more curious, though: how does the Grand Duke of Ondile feel about you apprenticing out his daughter as though she were a common peasant?”

  King Ronan froze. His gaze slid to Magdalena, confirmation that not only had he not recognized her on the night he retrieved his son from the seminary, but that her name had triggered no recognition until this very moment. The blood drained from his face.

  His wife, meanwhile, recovered her wits and scooted from her chair. She circled around the table to envelop Magdalena in a perfume-laden hug. “How lovely to see you again, my dear. It’s been quite a few years since you’ve graced our courts with your beauty.” She gushed over her gratitude for the help Magdalena had provided her son and launched into a speech about the terrifying two days she spent believing her child had met his death at sea.

  None of this was enough to distract Magdalena from a very different, very quiet conversation taking place across the room.

  The king leaned close to the prince and whispered, “You never said the girl who saved you was the Grand Duke’s daughter.”

  Finnian replied in much the same tones. “I told you it was Magdalena of Ondile.”

  “There are probably dozens—hundreds—of Magdalenas in Ondile! How was I supposed to know—”

  “You saw her with your own eyes! She used to live here, Father, until you and Mother sent her away.”

  “But you should have said—”

  A frustrated growl erupted from Prince Finnian. The sound, so unlike him, caught his mother’s attention. She arrested her story to ask, “Are you tired, dear? This is why we wanted you to stay in bed for another day or two.”

  “I’m not tired,” Finnian snapped. He noticed Magdalena, as though he had briefly forgotten her presence, and schooled away his ire. “I merely wanted to learn how this interesting arrangement had come about. Now, I’m going to complete the tour Master Asturias was giving his new apprentice, and you three can stay here to work out the details of her service.”

  “Finnian—” his father began.

  “It’s the least we can do for such a distinguished guest,” the prince said. He was already tucking Magdalena’s arm against his side, guiding her to the door. A warning glance from him told her to go along with this.

  The rule was to be set aside for the moment, it seemed. “So nice to see you again,” Magdalena said as he led her away. She ducked her head, the closest she could get to a curtsey while moving so quickly.

  Finnian pulled the door shut behind them. “What can I say?” The sincerity behind this question spoke an apology he had yet to voice.

  And Magdalena did not want him to voice it. “Why should you say anything?” She attempted to extract her arm, but he held tight.

  “I insist, Malena. I’ll finish your tour while they get everything sorted for you.”

  Her heart sank, but she ruthlessly smothered the emotions that swelled. “Sorted for me how? If the king and queen send me home, there’s no need to finish a tour.”

  He stared. “You consider the seminary your home?”

  Confusion pulled through her. “No. Ondile is my home.”

  “But at most you’ll return to the sage’s seminary.”

  She couldn’t stop the bitter laugh that bubbled up. “In disgrace? By now everyone there knows I was called here for an apprenticeship. Apprentices don’t return unless they fail and require discipline. At this point, I’m bound for Ondile.�
�

  The quiet dismay upon his face upended her thoughts. She shifted her attention further up the hall. “It’s all right. The seminary couldn’t have kept me much longer. My brand of magic makes me more of a curiosity than a useful contributor, and it’s rare enough that Master Demsley has exhausted all his resources on it already.”

  “I don’t—” Finnian began. She glanced a question at him. He tried again. “Ondile is too far away. It’s half a week or more to get there. I never intended to send you—”

  “It’s all right,” she said again. His distress was spiking sharply enough that it seeped into her.

  But her attempt to soothe fell short of its mark. “It’s not all right.” Finnian dropped her arm and stepped away from her. A wild look chased across his face. He glanced up the hall they had come, to the door behind which his parents discussed this situation with their palace healer. His mouth flattened. “Wait here.”

  He strode back that direction and disappeared into the room without so much as knocking. The door clicked shut, leaving Magdalena standing alone in a hall that was generally out of bounds for any but the royal family.

  A fleeting urge to bolt coursed through her. How soon might she have before someone passed at either end of the corridor and saw her here, before they called guards to escort her off the premises? Her anxiety multiplied with each passing second, so that when the door opened and Finnian reappeared, relief swamped her in an instant. She moved instinctively closer. He tucked her arm against his side again.

  “It’s settled. Let’s continue your tour, then.”

  “What’s settled?” Magdalena asked.

  “You’re to remain as Master Asturias’s apprentice,” he said. “My father will write your father and explain everything. You won’t return to your seminary in disgrace, or have to make the long trip to Ondile. Master Asturias is interested in working with an empath, too, so you can be of use to him. All that’s left is to move you into proper quarters in the nobles’ wing.”

  Her alarm spiked anew. “No!”

  The prince frowned at her, suddenly uncertain. “No? I thought maybe you didn’t mind the apprenticeship—”

  “I don’t. I mind quarters in the nobles’ wing.”

  He stopped and turned his full bewilderment upon her.

  At this point, she had nothing to lose by being frank. “Living among those girls was a nightmare, your Highness. The catty remarks, and the backbiting. Some of them were downright mean, and they were only children. I can’t imagine what age has done to them.”

  His mouth rounded. “Oh. Well, the crowd’s thinned from the old days. I think that most of the mean ones have gone back to their parents by now.”

  The mean girls were also the absolute least likely to vacate. She frowned as she considered this. “How could that possibly be?”

  Finnian smiled his charming smile and patted her arm. “Easy as pie. I showed them special favor and my father sent them away.” He laughed at his rule-breaking. Magdalena, meanwhile, considered the calculating nature this remark revealed.

  “Like you’re showing me special favor right now?” she asked. What game was he playing? With Finnian, there was always some ulterior motive lurking beneath his cheerful veneer.

  But he only laughed again. “Don’t worry. This is outside the rule. Here’s the garden, just as it always was.”

  They crossed from shadowed hallway to brilliant sunlight, where flowers and trees basked and insects flittered through the air. The heady floral scents washed over Magdalena, invoking sweet nostalgia. She had loved to sprawl out upon the grass and read, once upon a time.

  Impulsively she broke away from the prince to smell a cluster of pink blossoms. He chuckled behind her back. When she glanced at him in confusion, he said, “That’s the first time you’ve smiled in six years.”

  Magdalena straightened, prim in her self-consciousness. “Don’t be silly. Of course it’s not.”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t seen any of the others, so they don’t count.”

  Her brows drew together in a decided frown, which only elicited another laugh from him.

  “The world doesn’t revolve around you, your Highness.”

  “Of course it doesn’t. But what meaning has sunshine at night, even if it does exist?” Before she could respond, he turned wistful eyes upon the expanse of gardens. “I’d say you have about an hour before any of our noble residents stirs from their bedchambers, if you want to play out here.”

  “I’m a bit too old for playing,” said Magdalena.

  He favored her with a wry smile. “Are you? That’s a shame. Come have some breakfast with me, then.” He extended his hand toward her.

  She wanted to take it, but a series of painful memories assaulted her. “Wouldn’t that be breaking the rule?”

  “I told you we’re outside of the rule. Would you feel better if I sent word inviting everyone else to join us?”

  Her reproving glare was answer enough. He laughed, and she accepted his hand, and together they passed back into the palace.

  “Good morning,” said a cheerful voice. Magdalena and the prince both dropped their hands behind their back, like guilty children caught in mischief. Captain Byrne smiled. “As long as you’re out of your rooms today, your Highness, your father has asked that I watch over you.”

  Annoyance flashed across Finnian’s face. He started to say something but swallowed it in favor of walking. Magdalena followed, and Captain Byrne fell in step beside her.

  “So I hear you’re not a Magdalena of Ondile, but the Magdalena of Ondile. My apologies for failing to recognize you.”

  She glanced up at the handsome captain but returned her gaze forward when their eyes met.

  He chuckled. “You don’t remember me, do you.”

  Finnian’s shoulders stiffened in front of her. Magdalena, startled by the bald assertion, chose the easiest response.

  “No, I don’t.”

  There had been no Gil and certainly no Captain Byrne, to her recollection, in those bygone days.

  The prince paused, glancing back. “You don’t remember him because he’s only been here for three years.”

  Magdalena frowned up at the captain, who only laughed again.

  “You’d be surprised how many people claim they do remember me, though, milady.” He winked.

  With a warning glare to the flirtatious officer, Finnian drew Magdalena to walk beside him. They continued on their path, Captain Byrne in their wake.

  Chapter 5

  Magdalena’s return to the palace of Corenden, along with her heroic role in rescuing the castaway prince, spread like wildfire. By day’s end, hundreds of servants had peeked at her, and dozens of nobles had stopped by Master Asturias’s infirmary on false pretenses.

  The palace healer grew increasingly annoyed at the interruptions to his work. Magdalena intercepted the visitors and tended to their minor complaints in his stead.

  “The palace might want to consider refinishing its furniture, what with the alarming number of splinters we’ve seen today,” she said as the pink light of sunset stained the room.

  Master Asturias only grunted from the corner where he mixed his healing elixirs.

  It wasn’t all the furniture that needed refinishing, of course. By now she could clearly see the worn settee where the ladies of the court had run their fingers—some of them repeatedly—to pick up their flimsy excuse to seek out this upstart girl who had returned to their ranks. They had spoken to her with honeyed words as she tended to them, oblivious that she could sense not only the nature of their injury but also its source.

  When she brought out tweezers and a bandage, each girl had exhibited surprise. To a one they asked, “You can’t heal it? I thought you had magic.”

  “That’s not the type of magic I have,” Magdalena always replied, her voice patient as she stooped close to extract the flecks of wood.

  Master Asturias, who was a healing magician, remained in his corner. Each girl left the infirmary
with hand salved and bandaged and presumably returned to her room without communicating anything of importance to her peers, as the next would appear armed with the same ignorance.

  “There’s a paste you can apply to slivers to swell them out of the skin,” Master Asturias had commented after the third such encounter.

  “I know,” said Magdalena as she cleaned the sharp tweezers. Her fingers itched with pinpricks of phantom wounds up and down their lengths.

  The healer had arched his brows but didn’t interfere after that. It was, perhaps, petty of her to choose the more painful method for dealing with these visitors, but she had no incentive to offer them an easy fix for a frivolous malady they had caused themselves. Besides, the process hurt her as much as it hurt them.

  Their final visitor came as the pink sunset bled into a twilit purple. Prince Finnian knocked on the door casing, with Captain Byrne directly behind him. Master Asturias almost leapt from his workbench, his spindly fingers scrabbling for a vial he had set aside. A glance toward Magdalena told her that he would handle this patient, so she remained primly in her own corner of the room.

  The palace healer whispered instructions to the prince as he gave him the vial. Finnian nodded, but he shifted his attention past the man to Magdalena. “Are you done for the day?”

  “She’s done,” Master Asturias replied before Magdalena could say a word.

  The prince accepted this answer as though she had spoken it with her own lips. “Will you walk with me, then?”

  “Do you walk with all the ladies of the court one by one?” she asked.

  He tipped his head toward the door. “Gil is here too. Come on.”

  Her master had already given her permission to go, and she’d be a fool to deny an invitation from the crown prince. Carefully she fell in step beside him. “Where do we walk?”

  “To the ocean stairs.”