Collapsing into a chair, Julianne groaned. “No. I can’t get Madam Seher to agree to help. She hasn't said no, but she keeps asking us to wait until Adeline makes it out.” Worry cast a shadow on Julianne’s face. “Danil, it’s been two weeks. What if she’s already dead?”
“Why don’t we just go get her?” he asked, as though he were suggesting a trip to the market for a loaf of bread.
“Right. We’ll just sneak into a fortress full of mystics who can shield the shit out of each other, steal the princess from the tower, and escape with our hides intact.”
“That’s a great plan!” Danil said without a hint of irony. He plucked an apple from a nearby bowl and sank his teeth into it with a loud crunch. “Who are we taking?”
“It’s too dangerous.” Julianne ran a hand through her hair, doing her best to keep her frustration behind a thick mental shield.
“Never stopped you before.” Danil threw a second apple at Julianne, who caught it one-handed.
“He’ll be expecting us. He knows what I can do, and he’ll be prepared.” She rolled the apple in her hands, thinking.
“He’s lost his general and half an army. What did happen to young George, by the way?”
“I let him go,” Julianne said with a deep sigh. “His mind was so full of holes that when I took his body over, I broke a few things in the process. He’ll be wandering the countryside somewhere, hopefully with enough wits left to shelter from the animals and the cold.”
“You don’t think he’s a danger?” Danil asked, concern etched on his features.
Julianne’s doubt about letting him go resurfaced, and she chewed at her lip before answering. “Perhaps. But I don’t know that he’s entirely at fault for what happened, and the damage he’s suffered is enough punishment for what he did do.” She shrugged, knowing she would make the same choice again if she had to. “I don’t think he’ll come back, though. He was pretty scared when I left him.”
Scared was an understatement. George Junior had been cowering in a ball, rocking back and forth while he whimpered to himself, shaking and trembling. He had wet himself, too, though he didn’t give any indication that he had realized it.
“Fair enough.” Ever loyal, Danil took her word that George’s errant son wouldn’t be back to cause trouble.
“You’re right about the rest, though,” Julianne said, still mulling over his comment from earlier. Rogan had sustained a heavy blow by losing the lord’s son and his army. If they waited too long, that small advantage would be lost.
“I am?” Danil asked, confused.
“We need to move, and soon.” She looked around the small, cluttered room. “Can we set up a meeting here? For tonight?”
Danil nodded. “I can make some space.”
“You don’t have a class scheduled? I don’t want to interrupt if you do.”
“No,” Danil said. “Most of the villagers can either shield well enough to practice on their own, or they’ll never pick it up, so I’ve stopped the classes until things settle down.”
“That’s fine, but I intend to start them up again,” Julianne said. “I don’t want people getting lazy. It’s the only defense they have against the muckers.”
Danil looked surprised at her use of the word ‘mucker’, a shortened version of the phrase ‘mind fucker’. The villagers had only used the word in reference to those who had abused their power.
They made plans for the evening meeting and Julianne left to go about her day. She needed to organize the food stores, giving the village a chance to stock up before winter. The hogs the soldiers caught would replenish their food for a little while, but they needed more than just meat to last them through the colder months.
After that, she would need to track down the people she wanted at the meeting, check the guard rotations were going well, make sure the small army they were amassing had enough armor and weapons…
“I’m tired just thinking about it,” she said aloud. Still, the thought of finally making a plan to end this war sent frissons of electricity down her spine in a combination of nerves and excitement.
Chapter Four
Adeline sat at the end of her bed, back straight and muscles tense, listening to the ravings of a madman.
“So, my dear daughter, I have decided to act. No longer can my enemies be allowed to undermine my rule. The townspeople are angry, angry at these insurgents and what they have done.”
“What will you do, Father?” she asked, swallowing bile at the false words.
This man was not her father. Her real father was stowed away safely in a small village somewhere. This man? He was an imposter, a trickster using mental magic to disguise himself as the gentle Lord George.
“I will smite them,” the man hissed. “I will crush them like weevils and feed their bones to the dogs. No one—no one—can be allowed to stand against me, to thwart my power like they have.”
Adeline was certain the man was Rogan. The leader of the New Dawn had wiped her memory each time she had seen him, and for a long time, she had wondered if she was simply going crazy and he didn’t exist at all.
After confirming his presence with others, though, and recording the smallest remembered snippets of her encounters with him, she was quite sure this was him.
Like many in a position of power, Rogan hadn’t thought that lowly commoners and prostitutes were worth mind-wiping. Adeline had gone to great lengths to speak to the forgotten people of the city, catching scraps of information and vague rumors about the man who stood as her father’s advisor.
Rogan was known to be petulant and impulsive. He was easy to enrage and offend, and violent when the mood took him. He didn’t inflict physical punishment himself, but twice now, a person in the street had been subjected to an invisible flogging, writhing around the cobbled road and screaming in pain.
The local brothel told of a man who walked in and demanded service, which the lady of the house had been magically compelled to provide. The two girls that had gone in never came out. It was rumored that he had killed them, but no one was sure.
Adeline knew.
They were in the dungeons below her father’s castle, the building that served as his home, as the town offices, and below, as its prison.
She’d snuck down once, aching to see who was kept down there. She’d seen the cell her father had been kept in, his rumpled jacket still on the floor in one corner. Next to it, two girls sat on dirty straw, staring at the wall.
Adeline had crept away before being seen, returning the stolen keys so that no one would know of her little trip.
She had enlisted Jill, one of her maids, to sneak food down for the girls on a regular basis. As one of the few of George’s staff who had been taught to shield her mind like Adeline, she was about the only person left in Muir who could be trusted.
Jill had barely been seen in the past week, and not at all for two days.
Adeline hoped Jill was ok and that the girls were still alive. For the last week, she had been locked in her room, guarded closely by the two new soldiers lurking in the hall.
“There is something else I must tell you about.” Rogan’s demeanor suddenly changed, becoming nervous, shy.
“Perhaps it could wait?” Adeline tried to dodge the conversation she had assumed was coming her way. “I didn’t sleep well, Father. I’m terribly tired.”
He ignored her protest, not that she was surprised. “Rogan is a fine man. Terribly smart and so benevolent to my—to our—people.”
Adeline stared at the floor, muscle in her jaw flexing. How dare he use my father for this, she thought to herself. Her thoughts might be safe behind a mental shield, but she needed to work harder to control her physical reaction.
“I do think you’d like him,” Rogan continued. “And you’re getting old, too old to be without a husband.”
Adeline didn’t respond. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her white hands gripped her skirts so tight she knew it would be wrinkled when she stood.
Adeline knew she would have to find a way to use it against him, but the thought of being forced into marriage with the man who was trying to take her city left little room for a clear head.
“I tire of this,” Rogan said. He often ended his visits abruptly, and Adeline suspected it was his magic, exhausting him after long days spent maintaining the magical illusion. “Goodbye, my dear daughter. Think on what I said about Rogan.”
“Of course, father.”
Adeline braced herself, and forced a smile as he leaned down to kiss her forehead. He doesn’t even smell like father, she thought, glad her innate shield had so far prevented him from reading her mind.
He left and shut the door behind him. She fled across her room on tiptoes and pressed her ear to the door. As she listened, one hand fished a long chain from between her breasts, and took out a thin, silver key.
“...back tomorrow,” he was saying to the guards.
“Yes, Master,” they answered in unison.
Their words suggested they were loyal to Rogan, who had insisted his title was Master. He had never said what he was a master of.
She listened as the hard click of boots on the stone floor faded away, locked the door with a quiet click, then ran to her bed. She stuffed her pillows beneath the blankets in the rough shape of a sleeping body, then ran to a small writing desk against the wall. She penned a quick letter on a tiny scrap of paper.
Rogan more unstable. Threatening to come for you.
She didn’t mention his burgeoning crush. Madam Seher wouldn’t stand for that and would rush in to rescue her without thinking. It was too early for that, and would risk any plans they might come up with.
With one last look at the door to make sure it was shut tightly, Adeline dove under her desk. It took a moment of groping the hard stone to find the tiny crack and slip her fingers in. With a low grating sound, the hidden door opened.
She crawled in, then stood in the hidden cavity behind the wall. A lever on this side closed the hidden door, and a peephole disguised by a tapestry in the room would give her a chance to make sure the room was empty before she returned.
Now, though, she had a job to do.
A narrow staircase led up to one of the old towers. The only other entrance was boarded up, a precaution Lord George had taken after some klutz of a cleaner had fallen from the tower. In such a peaceful region, he had lamented the mere presence of them before blocking them off.
Adeline’s little door was the only way in, as far as she knew. She had discovered it as a child, and never told a soul. Now, it was literally a lifesaver.
“Percival?” she called softly as she neared the top of the stairs. “Are you still here?” She had meant to come up at dawn, but Rogan’s unscheduled visit had almost caught her out.
Flapping wings rustled behind her, and she greeted the pigeon with a small curtsy. “Thank you for waiting, Percival.” He chirped, then hopped onto her hand, cooing happily as she stroked his grey feathers.
“You know the drill. I’ll try to be gentle, but if you flap around like last time, you’ll just make it more difficult.”
The bird couldn’t understand a word she said, but seemed soothed by her words. Adeline rolled up her message into a tight little scroll, and used a bit of string to tie it to the bird’s foot.
“There. Mathias will be looking for you,” Adeline whispered.
At her gesture, the bird launched himself out of her hands and into the air, gliding away from the tower and into the sky.
Adeline watched until he was no more than a speck, then took a careful peek at the city below. It was quieter than usual, residents herded off the streets by a newly formed city Guard.
This group of soldiers, employed by Rogan, were rougher and meaner than her father’s men. They had strong armed one of the inns into closing, and almost killed business at the other two with strictly enforced curfews and harsh punishments for anyone seen drunk in the streets.
“Just you wait, you bastard,” she whispered. “You’ll pay for ruining our city. Just you wait.”
Chapter Five
Bette rubbed her shirt on the washboard, humming loudly.
“I haven’t heard that tune,” Tansy said next to her.
“No? Well, that’s because it’s a rearick song; somethin’ we sing up at Craigston,” Bette explained.
“Where’s that?” Tansy asked.
Bette lowered her voice dramatically. “It’s across the Madlands! Ye have to brave the crazed beast-men, then travel through the low-lying valley. Just when yer feet are ready ta fall off, ye come ta the biggest, nastiest mountain ye ever laid eyes upon!”
Tansy’s own eyes were wide, lapping up the story.
“Once ye start climbin’, the air gets real thin. Yer lungs get tight, and the air gets colder and colder, until yer walkin’ through a blizzard. Only then will ye find a wee shinin’ light in the snow and sleet, a little twinkle to guide ye ta Craigston, where the mountain people hail from.”
“And a few miles up from that, us weak-kneed, soft-bellied mystics live,” Bastian threw in. He squeezed out a wet pair of pants, then dunked them into the stream again. “It’s really not that bad.”
“Bastian, ye bloody spoilsport. I was tellin’ a story!” Bette slapped him with her shirt, splattering him with water.
“Hey, this is my only clean outfit!” he protested. “Then you should wash your clothes more often,” Tansy chided him. “Though, I suppose I should be glad you wash them at all. Bette, how’d you teach these dumb lugs to look after themselves?”
“Teach them?” Bette asked. “I near bloody drowned the last one who thought I’d be his washer-woman.”
“If not for Julianne, Garrett would still be stuck head-first in a water barrel,” Bastian confirmed. “Believe me, no man would ask Julianne or Bette to do their laundry. Not if you value your balls.”
He tossed his wrung-out clothes in a basket, then swung it over his shoulder. “Catch you ladies later,” he called, nodding respectfully to Polly as she passed him on his way out.
Polly threw herself on the ground, dumping a heavy basket of clothes beside her. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her mouth set in a tight line.
“You alright there, Pol?” Tansy asked cautiously.
“I’m fine,” Polly snapped.
Bette shrugged, willing to let the girl be, but Tansy wouldn’t let it go.
“You are not; you’ve been crying. Did one of our boys do something? If he did, I’ll box his ears.”
Polly gave a quick shake of her head and Tansy sat back down. “Oh. Pity, I could’ve done with a tousle. What is it, then?”
“It’s everything!” Polly threw her hands up in despair, fresh tears dripping down her face. “When Jakob came to tell me I had to leave Muir, I was terrified. Everything I had, I’ve left behind—friends, family, my home.”
Tansy reached a wet hand out to pat Polly’s shoulder awkwardly. “You’ll be ‘right, now. Once we clear those bastards outta Muir, we’ll all be able to go home.”
“Home to what?” Polly snapped. “I’ve lost my job and half the town thinks I’m a traitor.” She glowered at Tansy. “It’s alright for you lot. You’ll get to be involved in the big battle, people will see you saving their asses. Not me. I’ll be stuck in this pig shit of a town.”
“What’s that rubbish, then?” Bette exclaimed. “Ye don’t intend ta help us take down Rogan?”
Polly snorted. “As if anyone would let a dirty hooker get involved. The only thing I’m good at is fucking things, and I’m not even allowed to do that anymore. Well, not for money, at least. And if I’m not getting paid, what’s the point?”
Bette’s eyes widened. “Do ye think the people of Tahn here were born with weapons in their hands or shields on their minds? They’ve worked bloody
hard to recover, and to grow strong enough ter fight back.”
Polly raised her face from her hands, eyeing Bette warily. “You think I could learn to fight?” she asked, sniffling.
“Anyone can learn ta hold a pointy stick and shove it up a man’s arse,” Bette said, wagging a finger. “But a woman that’s learned where the rest of his soft bits are is likely to have a few tricks of her own. Yer saying it’s not so?”
Polly sighed and flopped back on the grass, tears dry now that her mind worked over what Bette said. “I can get out of a grapple or a headlock, and I know where to stick a dagger in close quarters, if that’s what you mean.”
“Aye, exactly! Now I just have ta teach ye ta do it from a little farther away.”
“I can help!” Tansy cried. “I used to do a sword swallowing act. Have you ever tried to dance while swinging four blades, with another one down your throat?”
“Well, I’ve had to dance with something down my throat, but it wasn't a sword,” Polly quipped.
“I’d rather the sword!” Tansy squealed.
“So, would I,” Polly agreed, finally cracking a smile.
Bette hooted and slapped the ground. “Aye, lassie, you’ll train up quick, I’ll bet. If ye wanna see just how fast, well, all ye can do is see for yerself.”
“Ok, then,” Polly said, sitting up. “I’ll show that uptight, mystic bastard I can be good for something. He’ll see.”
“And which uptight mystic bastard might we be talkin’ about?” Bette asked, curiosity piqued by the passion on Polly’s face.
“Danil.” The word hissed out between clenched teeth.
“Oh, aye. He’ll see something, alright,” Bette murmured to herself.
A fury like Polly’s could only come from one place—she cared what Danil thought of her, and he had given her the impression that it wasn’t much.
“This’ll be fun,” Tansy commented after Polly had gathered her skirts and left, promising to come and see Bette for her first training lesson in the morning. “Poor old Danil won’t know what hit him.”
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