Fire Wizard

by Patty Jansen

  So she took a step forward, feeling her way along the wall. Another step, and she felt the warm presence of one of the boys. She poked him and he also moved along the wall.

  With every step Johanna took, she watched Alexandre. There was some sort of commotion at the far end of the room. Men spoke in foreign voices. Someone came in carrying a bright torch. By its light, Johanna could make out the silhouettes of three men in hairy cloaks. Also clearly visible were a group of people in dark clothing against the wall. Those were some of the men in her group.

  Immediately, Alexandre’s guards sprang into action with a lot of yelling and shouting.

  Johanna pushed the man in front of her. Hurry up, hurry up. They made their way along the wall as fast as they dared, while one of the young men at the back screamed obscenities at Alexandre.

  Johanna cringed, but a good effect of his action was that Alexandre and his fish left the area near the grave and went back to the door.

  “Run,” Johanna whispered to the man in front of her. She would not let the young man who was brave enough to call Alexandre names draw the tyrant’s anger in vain.

  They ran. Well, it wasn’t a proper run, but more a fast shuffle along the wall, avoiding the pillars that supported the roof and unspecified debris that had lain there since the night that the city burned. Johanna didn’t want to think about what all the things were that she kicked, trod on and crunched under her feet.

  The shouting behind her intensified.

  They reached the far end of the room where the glass wall came around to meet the inner wall. The first door was miraculously still intact. It also wouldn’t open.

  “Smash the glass,” Johanna said.

  “They’ll hear us.”

  Johanna looked over her shoulder, where a couple of men with torches were coming in their direction. “That doesn’t matter. Quick.”

  The young man kicked. Glass shattered. His mate helped him kick the glass shards out of the frame.

  “Come, mistress, you first.” He helped Johanna through the hole and then climbed through himself. His mate followed. His clothes caught and fabric ripped. The glow from the torches was getting stronger. By its light, she recognised the faces of the two young men with her. They were Bart and Simon, sons of the merchant Jan Hendricksen, who had not survived the fires.

  “This way,” Johanna said, starting down the stairs into the garden. She had inserted the staff back into the sheet around her waist.

  “We’re not waiting for the others?” Simon said.

  “We need to get the mistress out,” his brother said.

  “I don’t like leaving them. I didn’t even see where they went.”

  “Outside, I hope. Come on, the Shepherd said that the most important thing is that the mistress is safe.”

  Johanna followed the brothers down the stairs into the darkness of the garden, past the graves of the King and Queen.

  She understood why Master Willems would have instructed them in this way, but didn’t like to be considered worth more than the other people. She didn’t like the idea of running away, especially when Master Willems was still inside.

  They ran in single file across the dirt-covered pavement. Sounds of a struggle drifted on the wind.

  Johanna looked over her shoulder, but it was far too dark to make out anything except the glow of three lanterns bobbing as the men carrying them ran through the garden.

  Johanna and the brothers reached the circular area with the benches around the empty fountain with the empty pedestal in the middle. They ran along the basin’s edge, through the bushes to the garden wall. Bart climbed into the hedge and to the top of the wall. He cursed.

  “What?” Simon said.

  “Ladder is gone.”

  Simon cursed as well and then apologised. “Sorry, lady.”

  “I’ll jump,” Bart said. “It’s not far.”

  He disappeared. Simon clambered onto the wall using the bushed, and then he helped Johanna up. It was very dark and she couldn’t see where she was putting her hands and feet. Branches scratched her. The stone of the wall was cold and slippery and her fingers were fast losing sensation.

  But finally Johanna sat atop the wall, balancing with one leg on either side. It was awfully dark down there on the other side of the wall.

  “Jump, mistress,” Bart said.

  Simon jumped off and vanished into the darkness. “Come on, mistress, we’ll catch you.”

  The lights in the garden had come much closer. Men yelled out in foreign voices and spread out to search for the escapees. Alexandre himself was coming into the garden with a creature of fire leaping next to him, a long-bodied creature, like a stoat or an otter.

  Johanna jumped into the dark void.

  Hands tried to catch her, but the young men couldn’t support her weight and she fell hard and awkwardly on her side. The tide had come up and the beach was covered in briny water which seeped into her dress.

  “Are you all right, mistress?”

  Johanna scrambled to her feet. Icy cold fabric stuck to her legs. “I think so.”

  She took a step. Ow, her ankle. She fell against Simon.

  “You’re sure?” Simon asked, holding her arm.

  “Just don’t go too fast.”

  As fast as they could, they walked across the muddy beach along the water. By the light from the lighthouse Johanna saw the ladder bobbing on the waves. There was now a lot of noise on the other side of the palace wall. A man shouted in a foreign language.

  Johanna and the brothers reached the pier and clambered onto the quay.

  They ran to the boatshed in East Harbour where they’d started and where a number of people were waiting.

  Their return was greeted with exclamations of, “Thank the Triune you are back, mistress.”

  Johanna made her way to the back wall where the table that Master Willems used as altar still stood. She was shivering so much that she felt like her knees would give out any moment.

  Her fingers were so cold that she couldn’t undo the knotted sheet around her waist.

  “Let me help.” Greetje came to her.

  Tears pricked behind Johanna’s eyes. Would she need to tell Greetje that her husband was left behind in the palace?

  The sheet came loose. Johanna put it on the table and unwrapped her parcel. People gasped when she revealed the crown and the staff.

  “Hail the king!” a man shouted.

  A path opened up between the people. Roald crossed the room. He was looking not at the items on the table but at her.

  “Why are you wet?”

  “I went to retrieve the crown and staff of the Carmine House so that you can be a proper king.”

  He still didn’t take his eyes off her. “Why is your dress glowing?”

  She looked down and, yes, her dress was still glowing.

  “I’ll explain later.” What was there to explain except that his sister had turned into a malevolent ghost, and that his father had never trusted him? She picked up the crown. “This is yours.”

  Now he finally looked at it, reached out and ran his finger along the top of the crown.

  She lifted it and set it, gently, on top of his head.

  A number of people shouted, “Hail the king!”

  Roald gave her a confused look. He reached up as if to check that the crown was indeed on his head, which it was. “Does that mean that this land is mine?”

  “It does.”

  He took the crown off his head and handed it to her. “I don’t want to be king. I don’t know how. My father said I was stupid so I couldn’t be king.”

  “And you believed him?”

  He stared at her. “He’s the king. He knows everything.”

  “Roald, you are the least stupid person in this entire kingdom.”

  He blinked. “How can my father be wro—”

  “Your father was the dumb one.” Squandering the family fortune on the church, fighting with the nobles who were responsible for the businesses i
n Saardam, going crazy after the death of his daughter, engaging a necromancer. All because he was unwilling to accept his son.

  “Please put it back on. Your father is dead and he can’t tell you what to do anymore. You are the king and I will help you.”

  He put the crown back, not entirely straight, and looked at her with his slightly confused expression. His eyes were clear and blue. He had trimmed his beard and his hair was brushed and clean.

  Once she would have thought that outliving him was something to hope for. Now, she realised that she utterly loved him and the thought of losing him brought tears to her eyes.

  She closed him in her arms where he stood, frozen, not sure what to do.

  He protested. “My mother says—”

  She put her finger to his lips. “Your mother is dead, too.” And Johanna didn’t like the callousness she had seen in Queen Cygna’s actions. “It’s about us now.” And about the little baby growing inside her.

  She held him close. As a rare sign of affection, he also put his arms around her.

  People cheered. “Long live the King and Queen!”

  It would have been a cheerful occasion if it weren’t for the fact that Master Willems and the other men had not yet come back.

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  THEY WAITED for a while, but Johanna was shivering so much in her wet dress that several people told her to go home.

  “Go home. We don’t want you to get sick, mistress.”

  “But they went out because of me.”

  “Which will have been useless if you die of cold. Please go home. We will wait.” Greetje was trying to stay positive, but her face was pale and her eyes red. Bart and Simon had told her what they had seen and she knew what Alexandre could do.

  Johanna hugged her. “I’m so sorry. I want to wait with you, but I’m so cold.”

  “Just go,” Greetje said.

  Johanna felt awful. This was all her fault. It had been her idea to get the crown and staff. Were a few trinkets worth this much?

  She could only assure Greetje that Master Willems had not been carrying any religious items that would mark him a Shepherd.

  “Oh, but he knows,” Greetje said. “I’ve no doubt of that.”

  Her attitude made it all worse. It was likely that her husband was dead and she knew it.

  Johanna went home with Roald and two other young men, carrying the crown and staff in the sheet. It was very late now, and the houses were dark and the streets deserted.

  There was a light on in Father’s study. That was odd, because Father normally went to bed early and would not let the light burn if he wasn’t in the room. He hated being wasteful. They quickly walked to the back of the house, where the light in the kitchen was also still on.

  Nellie and Koby sat at the kitchen table. When Johanna came in, both jumped from their seats.

  Nellie cried, “Oh, mistress, there you are. I’m so glad that you’re back. I thought—”

  “What has happened?” Nellie’s eyes were red from crying.

  Tears welled in Nellie’s eyes. “Your father.”

  Johanna’s heart jumped. “What happened? Is he sick?” She could see him broken and battered after falling down the stairs or in bed and too ill to get up after taking some kind of sickness.

  Nellie shook her head. “It’s much worse than that. They came to the door and spoke with him and they took him away.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know! I didn’t see it. I heard them, and I should have gone upstairs and stopped them.”

  “It’s all right,” Koby said. “They were strong men. I saw them and there was nothing you could have done anyway.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Thugs. I didn’t know the men in question, but they probably worked for the LaFontaine family.”

  Johanna’s heart was thudding. “Where did they take him?”

  “I don’t know!” Nellie sobbed. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, mistress. I don’t know.”

  “It’s not your fault, Nellie.” Johanna hugged Nellie, tears in her eyes. She was so tired and so cold, and everything was falling in pieces around her. How long would it be before Alexandre found her? And then a thought: he probably knew she was back and would use Father to lure her out. By refusing to hand over the business, he had cut off the last way in which he could have been useful to them.

  Roald came in from the door into the hallway. He said in a grave and serious voice, “We will free him. No one makes my women cry.”

  Johanna put an arm around him and he gave her a stern look. Angry almost. It was disconcerting, coming from him. He’d never shown any of this type of concern for other people before. “I will go up to this man and I will tell this man that I am the rightful king and that he should leave.”

  Koby said, “But Your Majesty, I wouldn’t—”

  “Thank you, Roald,” Johanna said.

  If only it were so simple.

  But something about the sincerity with which he had said it disturbed her. They had the crown and staff. They had the Carmine cloak, even if it was more brown than carmine.

  They went upstairs where Johanna put on warm nightclothes and Nellie took her wet dress. “Look at the state of it. It’s got burn holes and it has ripped, too. I don’t know if I can fix it, Mistress Johanna.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Nellie.”

  She had enough dresses to wear.

  As she lay in bed, shivering under many layers of blankets, Johanna cried for Father and Master Willems and the other men. Likely, Alexandre had known who she was the moment they had come into town.

  * * *

  Morning dawned bright and sunny. The temperature had dipped below freezing overnight, and rime edged the dead leaves and bare branches of the trees in the garden.

  She got out of bed before Roald did and went downstairs to the kitchen where it was warm.

  Greetje sat at the kitchen table, crying into her hands.

  Johanna sat opposite her, accepting tea and sweet porridge from Koby and eating silently. She felt terrible. She wanted to say that everything would be all right, that getting Master Willems and Father free, if they were still alive, was as easy as sending a letter of complaint to Alexandre.

  “What is . . . likely to happen now?” she asked Koby.

  Koby gave her an uneasy look. “We can only guess. There was a time that the tyrant caught a group of people having a Church service. He locked them up in the dungeons under the mayor’s house, and the next day, the town crier proclaimed at the markets that the prisoners would be burnt at a public execution. We went and watched, because we didn’t believe that he would do it, but he did. A lot of fighting broke out, but the tyrant was prepared for this and a lot of our remaining good young men were killed. We don’t know that this is going to happen again, but . . .”

  Johanna felt sick. “We have to stop it.”

  “That’s right. It’s barbaric,” sounded a clear voice from the door. Roald stood there fully dressed in his outdoor clothes. “They are my men and I will tell that man that he cannot keep doing this to my men. I’m going to tell him that right now.” He turned around.

  “Roald.”

  He turned back to the kitchen and frowned at her.

  “Have some breakfast first.”

  He didn’t move.

  “You can’t do anything if you’re hungry.” And when he still didn’t move, she pulled him into the kitchen. “Sit down.” She pushed him into a chair.

  Koby put a bowl of porridge in front of him. “Eat that, Your Majesty. It has lots of honey.”

  He nodded. “I want to help.”

  “Eat,” Johanna said. She pushed the spoon into his hand. He was really terribly determined, and that was another thing about Roald. When he had something in his mind, he was not so easily deterred.

  He started eating.

  “So what are we going to do?” Greetje asked.

  Johanna wished she knew. She wished she had a m
agician willing to help her, although there probably wasn’t one who could defeat Alexandre. “I guess we’ll go to the markets to hear the proclamation.”

  Greetje nodded, tears leaking out of her eyes.

  Johanna put an arm around her shoulders. “Whatever happens, we’ll look after you and the little one.”

  “Thank you.” Greetje took a shuddering breath and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said again. “We’ll be strong. Because nothing will ever be worth the sacrifice if we don’t stand up and we don’t win.”

  Johanna managed to convince Roald to stay at home. They were, she told him, just going to have a look to see what needed to be done. Koby said that she would light the fire in the library, but Roald showed no interest in the library today. Once he had something in his head, it was hard to get him to do something else, especially something that required him to think.

  “You can help Koby with the bread,” Johanna said.

  And that distracted him enough to stop demanding to come. They simply couldn’t risk that anyone recognised him. Men didn’t usually go shopping with the women.

  Johanna, Nellie and Greetje dressed in their winter clothes. Jackets, thick cloaks, hats, scarves and mittens.

  They walked through the streets, pulling up their scarves against the biting wind.

  There were a lot of guards at the markets. The usual line of people stood outside Alexandre’s house, but there were more guards than usual, including a number of the ones who everyone called the elite guards, with bears. They were Estlander men and they reminded Johanna of Sylvan. The fact that most of them walked with bears meant that they had some magic capability themselves.

  Johanna had wanted to speak to Leo Mustermans. She needed his help but didn’t want to ask for it, because it would be dangerous. But there were so many guards that she didn’t dare talk to him. He smiled at her when she walked past.