Spark

by Anna Holmes

  “For all of a minute. After I broke the mask, she…vanished, somehow. Again.” She slumps against the wall, still holding the mask against herself. “My mother isn’t a mage. Wasn’t? At least, that she ever told me…that’s the sort of thing you tell your kid, right?”

  I’m not sure how to answer that, and Tressa looks equally lost. At last, she starts to get up with no small amount of strain. “Let me have a look,” she says, trying to brace herself on the bedpost. “Maybe we can—track her down—”

  Her front legs wobble, and I rush forward to catch her by the forearms and ease her back down. “Think that medicine is catching up with you,” I tell her, letting her settle back to the large pile of pillows a bit at a time.

  Caelin comes to kneel in front of Tressa. “Thank you,” she says, putting her hand to her shoulder. “Truly. But there won’t be much to find. My mother was a specialized scout in the guard before she married my father. She’s well versed in hiding her trail.”

  “Perhaps she slipped up this time,” Tressa persists, her words starting to slur.

  “It’s all right. She keeps resurfacing around me. She’ll pop up again.” She makes a comforting circle with her hand on Tressa’s shoulder. “I know how obnoxious it is to be told, but it’s time to rest.”

  Tressa’s eyelids are starting to sag. “If—I do,” she says, “make sure the prince knows that he has to, too.”

  Caelin laughs a little. “Understood.”

  I tuck some displaced pillows back around Tressa. “We’ll give you some quiet. I’ll be back in a bit, all right?”

  She nods with an apparently heavy head. Before I get up again, she sets her hands on my forearms, where mine had been when I caught her. “I’m not done yet,” she assures me.

  “No,” I answer with a smile. “You’re not.”

  I let Caelin wander along in the silence she needs on the way back to Northshore’s house. The Northern Shore and I are not very cozy, given my brief assignment here as a punishment. It’s not bad, it’s just…full of people who think that they’re smart because they didn’t wind up farmers. As if being born far from farmland is an indication of anything other than luck. We make our livings where we are, and sometimes we luck into something else.

  To their credit, Northshore’s family doesn't seem to carry on this pretense. He comes by his snobbery honestly, like most will casters, and he seems to be doing what he can to shed it. The light from the cryst lurking near the horizon a ways out to sea makes me feel a touch guilty about that thought.

  Fortunately for my guilt, Caelin finally seems ready to talk. “I didn’t make you for the nurturing type.”

  Unfortunately for the rest of me, this is what she wants to talk about. I kick at a loose cobblestone. “You know I’m not.”

  “You did pretty good back there.”

  “She…ah.” I run my hand over the back of my head. My hair is getting longer than I usually keep it, and it, like this line of questioning, is starting to feel a bit uncomfortable. “She deserves it. I can try, at least.”

  Caelin folds her arms against the cold and glances over at me. “So are we ever going to talk about it?”

  “Talk about what?”

  She sighs. “You never tell me when you're interested in a girl. Why?”

  “Because you have the subtlety of a godsforsaken excited puppy.”

  “Tell me you did not just malign the gods’ noblest creatures like that.”

  “There’s just so much…jumping.”

  “I just want to see you happy,” she says with a tiny smile. “After that whole…pretending to be me thing with Alora….”

  I nod slowly. “Yes, I remember, thank you for the reminder.”

  “Well, you never talk about that, either. It’s not good to keep everything holed up in there.” She pokes my forehead.

  “You underestimate the empty space in here available for holing things up.”

  “Bah.” She carries along, kicking a bit of rock along the cobblestones. “You don’t have to tell me if you don't want to. But you know I'd listen, right?”

  “Yes. You always do.” Caelin nods, glancing around the narrow alleyway, up at the tall buildings. At last, I let go of a breath. “You don’t think it’s…strange, do you?”

  “Strange? Because she’s…..”

  “My subordinate.”

  “I don’t,” she says with a shrug. “You know how much I care about rank.”

  Which is to say not at all, given that she took up with a Legion prince before she even knew he was a prince. “Are you going to marry him?” I ask.

  “You never were one to beat around the bush, were you.”

  “Well?”

  “He, uh…seems to have attempted to ask me once. There was some backpedaling and a general agreement that if he did ask….”

  “You would.”

  “Yeah.” She folds her hands behind her back. “I know you don’t love him.”

  “But I want to see you happy,” I tell her, my voice low. “If that means him, it means him.”

  “You…took that a lot better than I expected.”

  “He’s not going to be my husband,” I reply. “If you were telling me to marry him I’d have some issues, but you’re a big grown up queen. I think you can make that decision on your own.” Out of nowhere, she grabs me in a hug. I am not much for hugs, but from the ferocity, I can tell she seems to need it. I put my arm around her and pat her shoulder. “See? Puppy.”

  “Oh, stuff it.” She pauses. “You tricked me into talking about myself, you rat.”

  “It’s a more interesting topic by far.”

  “Rubbish.” She lets me go. “Thank you, brother.”

  “It’s hardly like you need my permission.”

  “No,” she says, tilting her head skyward again. “But it’s nice to hear that my choices are mine every now and again. Just as yours are yours. Who gives a damn if other people think it’s strange?”

  “She might,” I point out. “There’re enough eyes on her all the time already. If this got around….”

  “Have you even asked her for her opinion?” Caelin asks pointedly. I don’t think I need to answer, because she shakes her head. “You’re turning it over preemptively in your head, making your careful, propriety-driven decisions about four steps ahead. Good on the battlefield. Less good in the real world. First things first, Lieutenant.”

  “All right, all right, point taken.”

  Ahead, a blue light streaks unevenly toward us over the wooden bridge into town. Caelin starts, then runs to intercept Northshore, who carries an awkward bundle of something in his arms. “Alain?”

  He pants to a stop. “I…got worried. Left a protective on the house.” He glances over to me, then back to her. “Your light’s out. What…?”

  She looks down at the fragment of mask in her hand again, seemingly grappling with an explanation. At last, she buries her face in the bony recess of his collarbone without a word. He braces her equally quietly, startled, confused, concerned. After a moment, he unfurls her cloak and pulls it over her shoulders, wrapping his arms around her. He rests his chin on her head and throws me a questioning look.

  The last few steps toward them seem longer than the rest. In the end, I give him a brief nod. It doesn’t answer his questions, but he brushes the disheveled mess of Caelin’s hair away from her face and kisses her forehead instead of asking it aloud, and for that, I can’t dislike him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alain

  It had been hard to come home, harder to leave it, and harder still to keep my seat in the storm clouds above the Shoulderswidth Valley. Elle identified the cryst used on me as from this deposit, so that’s where we’re hurtling in this deadly machine. Caelin flings an arm across me to try to keep me pinned to the bench. “Higher or lower, Nuthatch,” she shouts. “Pick one!”

  “It’s bad all over, Highness,” he retorts, maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the helm even as the clouds keep trying to
bat it out of his hands. “We’re better off trying to ride it out up here than forcing a landing.”

  “He’s right,” Bannon puts in over an audible shriek of wind scraping across Fran’s hull. “The fuel source is stronger than the wind.”

  Another large bump, and he scrambles to keep Tressa’s cushions from sliding out from under her. She’s said little the whole time, but each jolt seems to renew the queasiness in her expression. I know from experience what having something jostling raw nerves feels like. I reach past Caelin for a moment and focus the energy bouncing around my insides into lifting the cushions under Tressa’s front legs. It’s not the most elegant solution, leaving part of her body floating a few inches above the deck and the rest of her below, but it’s better than her knees jamming into the steel floor repeatedly until we land.

  She gives me a look, and I say, “Humor me until we stop rattling around this death canister, please.”

  “Nobody’s dying,” Nuthatch shoots back. “Just keep low and watch your heads.”

  “I never asked,” Tressa yells. “When did you learn to fly?”

  “Will knowing that make you feel better?”

  “It doesn’t sound like it,” she answers.

  If anyone speaks after, I don’t hear it over the thundering of my own blood and the humming of my own cryst in my ears. I can’t help but feel a little indignant. This is the only casting I’ve done today and it’s little more than a parlor trick. I was able to do more than this when I was half Elle's age. I shut my eyes, hold the spell tight. The story isn’t over.

  A hand shaking my arm pulls me back. I pry my eyes open and see pretty much everyone, our pilot included, standing in front of me wearing an array of expressions ranging from alarm to vague disgust to barely hidden fascination. “Who is flying this?” I sputter.

  Nuthatch sighs and gestures for me to produce my wrist. “We’ve landed. What’s the last you remember?”

  I’d like to answer his question, but it’s hard to think past the infernal itching of my skin where these damned crystals are protruding. Itching is too generous. It’s deeper than just my skin, burning. I twist, try to feel for what’s causing this, my fingertips glancing over a crystal ridge growing over my spine. It’s small, for the moment, but based on Nuthatch’s face it’s more concerning than the fact that I wasn't aware of our landing. I force some air through myself a few times in hopes of keeping the cryst from growing any further, and all at once, my muscles clench. All of that fresh air is wrung out of me a bit at a time in a a barely suppressed groan, and when I think I can’t possibly exhale anymore, the tension snaps, and I’m free. My body sags forward, the burning gone, the only evidence of the cryst the occasional blue scale left on my skin. Nuthatch observes those for a silent span of time, then looks uncertainly at the door. “Let’s…get that cryst for you, yeah?”

  I nod briefly, trying to fill my lungs again. Caelin puts a gentle hand to my back. “You go on ahead,” she tells the assembled. “We’ll catch up.”

  Gavroth points August toward the door, and Bannon follows after, Tressa clinging to his shoulder for support. Nuthatch is about to fall in when a clanging sounds from down the cabin. He frowns. “Damned stowaways,” he mutters. “This is what happens when they leave that hatch open at the ports.” Bannon turns back from the door, crossbow in hand, and Caelin stands up, ready to go for her sword. Nuthatch motions silently, then throws a hatch open.

  A narrow, short person with an unfortunately familiar head of black hair tumbles out. I stand now, too, despite still feeling the electric thrumming in my limbs. “Ellenore Marguerite Flynn,” I thunder. “There had best be a very good explanation for this.”

  She swipes her hair out of her face, looking up at me with a sheepish little smile on her face. “I…wanted to make sure you didn’t die and I knew you’d say no if I asked to come?”

  Well, at least she’s honest, I guess. I cover my eyes with a hand. “Our father is going to lose his mind,” I groan. “How did you—we said goodbye to you at the house!”

  She shrugs a shoulder. “I knew you’d be going to the inn to get everyone else, so I ran. Oh, and I left a note so he wouldn’t worry.”

  “So he wouldn’t—ugh.” I lose my ability to form cogent sentences for a moment. “Elle. I appreciate the concern. But what are we supposed to do if you have an episode out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I brought my medicine,” she says defensively, then points to Nuthatch. “Also, he’s a doctor. I know. You made me see him yesterday.”

  Forget sentences. I can’t come up with a single word right now. Caelin looks at the floor, Nuthatch finds a convenient reason to be absorbed in a bit of fuzz on his sleeve, Bannon puffs out a breath, and at long last, Gavroth bursts out, “Ha HA! Oh, ease up on her, Prince. You need all the help you can get. Besides. She's smarter'n me and the doctor here put together, and probably you, too."

  “While I take your point, Rye, and agree that it is likely, I have two things to add— one, she’s going to be insufferable now that you’ve said that, and two, it’s a lot harder to guarantee her safety when she sneaks out of her home.”

  Elle sticks out her lower lip, and Gavroth chuckles. “Looks like both of those things are my problem, then.” He leans over and scoops up Elle, plopping her onto his shoulders. “Come on, little alchemist. Let’s go fix your brother, hmm?”

  They both look at me hopefully. I cover my eyes with my hand. She’s already here, and no amount of railing at her is going to transport her back. Hells, it would take us hours and yet another trip through that storm to take her back ourselves. Frankly, on his shoulders is probably a safer place for her to be than left here by herself, or worse still, with Jori. “Fine,” I manage, letting my hand drop, swing against my leg. “This time. And see to it that there is no next time, an I understood?”

  She gives me the cocked grin I used to hate so much. Now it’s hard to stay angry. “Right back at you, you great flounder.”

  “I mean it. What if you picked the wrong ship? You could be on the opposite coast right now. Being loaded on a ship to Kenn.”

  “I’ve read the food is really good there.”

  It’s also hard to sound threatening when she knows more about the place than I do. “Get going,” I mutter, waving them off. Caelin waits for them to troop off, then kisses my cheek and settles to the bench again in Fran’s wide cabin. I let my arms swing as I pace a bit in agitation. “Impossible. She has always been impossible and is only getting more so.”

  Caelin pats the bench next to her. At length, I limp back over, drop back to her side. “Frustrating, isn’t it? Wanting safety for someone and having them disregard safety completely?” Ah. Here it is. I stew for a moment, not wanting to admit she may have a point. When I don’t rise to the bait, she leans forward. “She is very much your sister, it seems.”

  I keep my eyes focused forward. “Your record on this front is not exactly spotless, Your Hypocrisy.”

  “This isn’t about me, dearest.”

  “And until a few moments ago, it wasn’t about me, either.”

  She frowns, starts to say something, her torso tipping slowly forward like a tree on the verge of becoming a log. After a moment, however, she stops herself, sits back, pulls her knee into her chest. “Alain. Be irritated with me if you like. I’ll gladly take it if you please…stop antagonizing yourself.”

  “You think I want this?”

  “No. I know you don’t. But you keep banging your head against the reality of it.”

  “If I can’t cast, what good am I?” I demand.

  Caelin releases her leg, leaning forward again to try to look me in the face. I keep it difficult, intentionally or not. My face is warm, my hands in damp balls on top of my knees. She asks, “In whose estimation? Your mother’s or yours?”

  “Anybody’s! Isn't that my one redeeming quality as far as your people are concerned? That I could do impossible things, but our relationship keeps me leashed?”

&
nbsp; She sags in the middle. “Is that how you see it?”

  The heat fades a little, the knot in my gut slowly loosening. “Well…yes. Not—as a leash. But I think that’s exactly how they see it. And I know. I know I ought not to let it get to me. It’s not as easy as that.”

  She leans forward on her elbows, resting her forehead against her hands. “How have I not…how could I have not noticed? Tressa and you and I didn’t….”

  “Caelin—it’s not your—a”

  “No, it is,” she says, letting her hands fall in front of her again. “I ought to notice when the people closest to me are miserable.”

  “You have a lot to attend to. We know this.”

  “Bollocks. If I am too busy to notice that, I’m too busy. This is not the way I intend to rule. You are my equals, both of you, and certainly my betters, and if I can’t make time to make that clear for you and others, I’m not doing my job, and I am sorry.”

  “Since when is attending to my poor bruised feelings the Queen’s responsibility?”

  "Since the Queen took up with you,” she answers seriously. “I can't make them think different things. Gods know I wish I could sometimes. I can make it blatantly clear where I stand, and I haven’t.”

  “You have. At the ball.”

  “A kiss. I could have done more, and I will, if you’re still….”

  Oh. She thinks I want out. Excellent. I’ve nearly proposed by accident and implied I want to break things off. “Of course I’m still—yes. As long as you’ll put up with me.”

  She takes up my hand. “It’s hardly a chore,” she says softly, tracing the lines on my palm with her fingertips. She doesn’t skip the brand. I haven’t been able to hide it lately, thanks to the unpredictable surges in magic. Most don’t focus on marks in the palms of others’ hands, but I don’t like looking at it. It hasn’t seemed to bother her since the first time she found out it was there. “You’re more than your casting or your princehood. And I’m more than just a queen. People are people, love, for good and ill.”