Guardian of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “What exactly does this thing do?” she asked.

  “It’s too complicated for a non-Deviser—”

  “But it takes magic out of a source, right?”

  “That’s the basics, yes.”

  “Kerish,” Willow said, “I think it took source out of me.”

  Kerish blinked. “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not? The disc is glowing. And you said I was holding it the wrong way around.”

  Kerish touched the disc lightly, as if he expected it to feel different. “Because you’re not an Ascendant. Nobody dowses for you.”

  Willow lowered her voice and glanced at Fiolina and Felix, both of whom continued oblivious. “But my magic comes from somewhere. All magic comes from source.”

  Kerish chewed his lower lip in thought. “You absorb magic passively from the lines of power, so yes, you contain source. But you aren’t filled with it the way an Ascendant would be. And that tool is meant to draw magic from the intersection of lines of power, not from a person.”

  “It looks like you ended up with a side effect.”

  They both looked at the rod in Willow’s hand. “Put it back,” she said.

  “Put it back, how?”

  “I don’t know.” The strange silence, the dimness of her eyesight, was starting to unnerve her. This is what it’s like to be normal, she thought, and it terrified her.

  “Well, it’s not like that thing has a reverse setting.”

  “Then dowse for me. Do something.”

  “Willow—”

  “In about half a minute, I’m going to start screaming. It’s that bad, Kerish.”

  Kerish helped her stand, then took her hand and led her to the circle. “Felix, could you show Fiolina the prototype hall? I want to do one last thing with this Device.”

  At least one of them was thinking clearly. Willow couldn’t see beyond her need to have her magical senses restored, but it occurred to her that Kerish couldn’t dowse for her without Fiolina realizing Willow had inherent magic. She waited, tense and miserable, for the bodyguards to perform their ritual dance and Fiolina and Felix to leave the room.

  “Just stand here,” Kerish said, and put one hand on her lower back and held the other in midair over the circle, presumably in the center of the source. Willow nodded and tried not to move, or breathe, or do anything that might distract him. Kerish closed his eyes and lowered his head.

  Music, delicate and flowery, sprang from nowhere, bypassing the cotton wool her ears were stuffed with and going straight to her brain. She smelled flowers, honeysuckle and lilacs, tasted the burnt-sugar deliciousness of khaveh, and closed her eyes against the rainbow veils that swept across them. She became faintly aware of the golden rod she still held in one hand, its warmth trickling through its length into her palm, gradually warming to a blessed scorching heat. The tingling, itching, fizzing sensation of assorted metals emerged from the fog, making her want to weep for the sheer joy of no longer being blind and deaf and numb.

  All the sensations were reaching a painful peak, and she stepped away from Kerish, breathing as heavily as if she’d run a mile. “Enough,” she gasped. “Please.”

  “Sorry. I forgot you wouldn’t know how to signal…sweet heaven, are you all right?”

  “I am now.” Everything was clear-edged and bright, painfully sharp, but she welcomed the pain, evidence that she was herself again. “Thank you.” She handed him the rod and rubbed her palm against her leg. It was going to hurt for a while.

  “Willow…I had no idea.”

  “I know. It’s not your fault.”

  “No, but I should have thought—”

  They looked at each other. “It takes source out of people,” Willow said.

  “Completely negates their magic,” Kerish said.

  “It’s a weapon. Against Ascendants.”

  “This isn’t a war, Willow.”

  “Isn’t it?” Willow’s heart sped up again. “Terence isn’t going to just let Felix have the Crown. He’s going to fight. And he’s got all those Ascendants who are as good as an army—”

  “Which he also happens to have. This isn’t a solution. There’s only one Device!”

  “For now. And it’s part of the solution. If we had an army of our own, that Device could turn the tide of battle in our favor.”

  Kerish shook his head. “We don’t even know if the Serjian question is going to succeed. This is all completely premature.”

  “Nevertheless…Kerish, I think you should focus on making more of these.”

  “I think you’re insane.”

  “I’m not insane. I’m thinking of Felix. Just…I just want to be prepared, that’s all.”

  Kerish sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. Let’s just go home, all right? We’ll have supper, and put Felix to bed, and then I want to show you the rooftop gardens at night.”

  “Kerish, I know you just said ‘rooftop gardens’ but what I heard was ‘kissing until we can’t breathe.’”

  He brushed her hair off her forehead with his gentle fingers. “You,” he said, “have excellent hearing.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Willow lay wakeful in her bed, watching the moonlight trace shadows over her wall. She drew shapes in her imagination: a bridge, a dragon, a pig with only one ear. If only she could make sense of life so easily. Catrela was speaking to her again, but tersely, only about things that mattered to eskarnas. Willow could hardly blame her for that. And Kerish…she could hardly blame him for wanting to protect her. It wasn’t as if his fears for her were irrational; she was in a dangerous line of work. Had been in a dangerous line of work. Her promise only to use her midnighting skills in aid of Felix didn’t seem to ease his mind at all.

  She rolled over and stared at the canopy, dark and lowering like a cloud. At this time of night, she found her deepest fears waiting, all her many failures lined up to parade themselves across the field of memory. It didn’t matter that she’d secured evidence Janida could use against Abakian Raena: she’d alienated one of Felix’s best supports, had ruined Gessala’s happiness, and had failed utterly at convincing Imara to return home. The girl hadn’t even returned for her fuoreno’s funeral. And the vote on the adjeni was in four days. Things were not looking good for the Serjian question.

  Maybe it was time to start looking for an exit. She regretted giving Janida the assassin’s money now. She could have used that to support herself and Felix for a long time. In the morning, she’d go to Janida and explain…what? That she was a quitter? No, she wasn’t going to give up yet. Even if she had no idea what to do next.

  She rolled out of bed and went to Felix’s room, more to give herself comfort than to check on him. He was sleeping as he always did, sprawled across the bed and leaving very little room for poor Ernest, who ought to be in his own bed anyway. Not that Willow cared. She knelt by Felix’s head and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. How extraordinary, that she’d gone from being deliberately alone to having this young boy in her life. Was this how mothers felt, this tender desire to protect Felix from everything that might hurt him? She touched his hair again, then stood. “Don’t think I approve,” she whispered at Ernest, whose ear twitched in sleep.

  She settled in a chair in the main room and thought about calling for a servant to bring her hot herbal tea or something that might calm her. No, she wasn’t going to disrupt someone else’s sleep just because she was restless. She drew up her legs and leaned her head on one arm. The moon was in the wrong position to shed light on this room, but Willow found the darkness comforting. This was still her time, even with all her fears, even if she’d given up midnighting. The time when she felt most in control.

  There had to be something more she could do. Sitting and doing nothing would drive her mad. The harem was probably doing something with Abakian Raena’s letter, but whatever it was didn’t involve Willow at all. She didn’t understand the rules of this strange society she floundered through, couldn’t contribute by writin
g letters or hosting a party, and there wasn’t a single thing she could do to aid Felix politically or make amends for the mistakes she’d made.

  Unless…no, that was a terrible idea. The Hajimhis didn’t want to hear from her, after that disastrous party, even though Fariola had been at fault too. And what would she say? “I’m sorry you provoked me into rudeness?” That wouldn’t achieve anything. And she’d probably just mess everything up, blundering around and proving she was an uncouth foreigner.

  Or she might humble herself, hope Fariola was as honorable as everyone had said, and maybe correct one of her mistakes. She was having trouble shaking the idea.

  Sleep on it, make a decision in the morning, she thought, but it was at least another hour before she calmed enough to sleep.

  ***

  In the morning, she fortified herself with several cups of khaveh before turning to her resident expert on Eskandelic culture—the part relating to dress, anyway. “I need to visit someone this morning,” she said. “Someone not friendly who hasn’t invited me. What should I wear?”

  “Someone not—to say, enemy is?” Caira began going through Willow’s wardrobe.

  “Not really. Someone I want not to be my enemy.”

  Caira clicked her tongue. “This,” she said, holding out a pale yellow silk dress fine enough to be nearly translucent. “Over this.”

  Willow struggled into the narrow cotton shift and let Caira slide the silk dress over her head. It had been made for someone curvier than Willow, but it still looked good, and Willow wished Kerish were there to see her. Where was he, anyway? Usually he ate breakfast with them before taking Felix to the scholia for the morning. “You can play with Posea this morning, all right?” she told Felix.

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  “That would be a bad idea. Besides, it’s probably going to be…” Boring was not the right word. There was every chance her conversation with Fariola would turn into a shouting fight. “Not interesting to a little boy.”

  “All right. But I want to go to the ocean later.”

  “We can probably do that.” She hugged Felix, tousled his hair, then ran to the courtyard, praying she wouldn’t meet anyone she might need to explain herself to. With gestures and a few words of Eskandelic, she convinced a servant to harness a carriage for her, then directed the woman to drive her to the Hajimhi Residence.

  The Hajimhi Residence lay near the palace where the Review had been held and was made of the same yellow stone. That was where the resemblance ended. Where the Review had looked delicate and fairy-like thanks to its lattices of carved marble, the Hajimhi Residence was built along the same lines as the Abakian Residence. It looked like a fortress, a single blocky building surrounded closely by trees easily fifty feet tall with dusty green needles.

  The stones used in its construction were half the size of the carriage and rough-faced as if no one had bothered to shape them into more than a basic rectangular block. The side facing the private drive was windowless, with only a pair of doors to indicate it was more than a strange yellow wall erected in the middle of Umberan. Willow could climb it, probably, thanks to that rough surface, but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere more accessible than the front door. And breaking in would give the wrong impression.

  She asked the driver to wait, climbed awkwardly down from the carriage, and walked the long, long path from the street to the door. The Residence was on a hill about fifteen feet above street level, turning the needle-strewn path into a stiff climb that had Willow’s calves aching by the time she reached the front door. This was probably the stupidest idea she’d ever had, but she was there and the worst that could happen…all right, Fariola might take such offense at Willow’s effrontery she’d make it her mission in life to eliminate all Serjian’s support on this and every other issue. Willow paused with her hand on the bell rope. She really hadn’t thought this through.

  No fear. Before she could stop herself, she pulled the rope. She heard nothing, but she already knew from the Serjian Residence that the bell rope was attached to a bell deep within the house, so she clasped her hands in front of her and waited.

  A breeze brought the smell of flowers to her nose. Bushes of unfamiliar flowers, big fat clusters of blue and white blossoms, grew around the base of the Hajimhi Residence. The contrast to the building was amusing, like seeing one of Felix’s stolid bodyguards dressed in a dainty pink skirt. The bushes were large enough that Willow could easily conceal herself beneath or behind them, and she looked closer, imagining some Hajimhi servant crouched there, with instructions to observe callers and pass the information to whomever decided who was allowed to enter.

  The door opened. A man wearing purple Hajimhi insignia on a comfortable tunic and black cotton trousers stood there. He looked very surprised to see her. So much for her servant in the bushes theory. “Yes?” he said in Eskandelic.

  “Willow North to see Hajimhi Fariola,” Willow said, enunciating clearly.

  That startled him even more. He said something in rapid Eskandelic, then backed away, holding the door open wider. Willow entered.

  The room was a tiny version of the entry chamber back at the Serjian Principality, with a floor tiled in gold and silver and a couple of benches against the walls. Willow sighed at how comfortably cool it was. It was still early, but the silk dress was surprisingly warm despite its thinness.

  The servant indicated that Willow should take a seat on one of the benches, then left the room by one of its three arched doorways. Willow leaned against the wall and enjoyed the feeling of cool marble against her back. They hadn’t kicked her out, which was either good news or meant the servant didn’t know who she was. In either case, she was going to enjoy the room while she could.

  She heard footsteps down the hall the servant had left by, and sat up straight just as a couple of women and the door servant entered the chamber. One of the women carried a basin, the other held white towels. The man spoke in Eskandelic, then paused, waiting for a response. “Do you speak Tremontanese?” Willow said. The three exchanged glances. They were glances that said each was hoping another would take charge.

  Finally, the woman with the basin said, “To wash, guest is,” and knelt on the floor, extending the basin to be at chest level to Willow. Willow splashed her hands in the cool water, then wiped her face, keeping an eye on the man. He didn’t wince or do anything else that might indicate she’d made a misstep, and she accepted a towel to dry her face and hands with, then handed it back. Finally, the basin woman stood, bowing to Willow, and she and the towel woman left the chamber. The man made a little gesture that meant “stay there” and left by a different door.

  Willow sat with her hands clasped loosely in her lap and waited. She examined the domed ceiling, which was painted with a mural depicting five women kneeling before a man. Interesting. They were dressed in traditional Eskandelic garb, open jackets and full skirts, but they all wore their hair long and gathered high on their heads in a style Willow was unfamiliar with. There was no telling how old the mural was from where Willow sat, and she was in the process of assessing the room’s potential as a climbing surface when the man reappeared and said, “Come.”

  The hallway he led her down smelled faintly of roses, though Willow saw nothing except the same silver and gold tiled floor as the entry and a high arched ceiling set with round windows. By the shadows, the sun would illuminate the room most directly around two o’clock in the afternoon. At the moment, the windows let in a diffuse morning light that revealed dust motes floating through the air, caught by the same drafts that brought the scent of roses wafting past Willow’s face. The servant had a ring of iron keys somewhere inside his tunic, but aside from that Willow sensed no metal nearby.

  The hallway ended at an arched doorway with strips of gauzy fabric hanging down over it like a tattered curtain, though since the fabric was embroidered with real gold it was unlikely to be tattered by accident or use. The servant parted the fabric for Willow and bowed. Willow retur
ned the bow of master-to-servant, feeling slightly guilty at doing so, and entered the room.

  It was hemispherical, identical in shape to that of the harem in the Serjian Residence, though its walls were painted a cool, pale green and the cushions were deep blue and forest green and a rich burgundy. Hajimhi Fariola sat on one of the sofas, her back straight, her face expressionless. Light Devices filled the room with a silvery glow that made her look carved of marble.

  Willow let out a long, slow breath, then sat on the sofa across from Fariola. She perched on the edge of the sofa, afraid of being swallowed by the pillows. Silence stretched out between them. Willow guessed she was supposed to speak first, but in the face of that marble visage all her conversational gambits deserted her.

  Finally, she said, “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  “You dare much, in coming here,” Fariola said. “Or perhaps you do not know this.”

  “I don’t know what it signifies, in your culture. I’m sorry if it’s bad manners. In my culture, my coming to you means I want to make things right, if I can.”

  “You think to impose your culture on me?” Fariola’s voice sounded remote, not at all as if she took offense despite her words.

  “No, I thought it better not to pretend I understand more of your rules than I do, as if my short time in Eskandel could make me a master. I intended to show you respect the way I would…anyone back home.” Probably better not to tell her that whatever Willow knew of respect, she’d learned from Aurilien’s dukes of crime. She already felt as if she were skimming along a crust of ice, forced to keep moving if she wanted to survive.

  One corner of Fariola’s mouth twitched, not in amusement. “And this respect demands what of me?”

  “Nothing. I show respect for my own sake. It’s to indicate that I apologize for my rudeness.”

  “And demand forgiveness.”

  “I said it’s not about demanding anything. My honor requires that I demonstrate… contrition. I behaved badly and I embarrassed both of us in public. I apologize for this.”