by Jenna Glass
If he could find even a shred of evidence that the abigails were responsible—or if his tax collector should find evidence that the rumors Melcor had brought him were true—then he might finally have just the fuel he needed to destroy his half-siblings. And raze the Abbey yet again—this time for good.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The moment Delnamal stepped into the king’s private study, he could see that his father was ailing, his nose red and swollen and a handkerchief clutched in his hand. Delnamal bowed, but his father was impatient with the formalities and quickly gestured for him to take a seat.
“You may want to keep your distance,” the king said in a raspy voice that hinted at a sore throat. He sniffled and touched the handkerchief to his nose.
Delnamal made a face and took the chair farthest from his father. There were disadvantages to having the Abbey at such a remove, for though the abigails had never managed to create a cure for head colds, there were potions that could ease the symptoms appreciably.
“Have you no cold tonics in storage?” he inquired, for it was a rare household that didn’t keep a supply of common healing potions.
The king coughed and winced. “I did. But several of my personal staff caught cold, and I hoped to avoid its spread by treating them. We have none left.”
“I’m sure we can find some for you,” Delnamal said. Surely someone in the city still had cold tonics available, though it was the season when they were always in high demand.
The king sighed. “There’s no need to make a fuss. Common folk endure the symptoms of head colds all the time without the help of tonics.”
Delnamal frowned, for his father was seventy-two, and illness tended to strike people of his advanced age harder. “Perhaps it is…unwise not to treat it?” he suggested, and the king smiled at him.
“Are you trying to mother me, my son?”
Delnamal squirmed and blushed. Surely the queen was already lecturing his father on the importance of maintaining his health. It was unbecoming of Delnamal to nag like a woman.
“I promised your mother I would send for a potion from the Abbey if my symptoms get worse or don’t start getting better in the next few days. Now, what is it you wanted to see me about? I’m hoping to retire early this evening and get some extra rest.”
Delnamal hesitated a moment, loath to add to his father’s troubles and possibly disturb his rest. But if he saved his unpleasant report for later, his father would be furious with him when he found out. The king had little patience with coddling, which Delnamal should have remembered before he pushed him on the subject of the tonic.
“Melcor was attacked,” he said, just as he could see his father was about to bark at him to get on with it. He told the king about the flier that had attacked his secretary, and of course he mentioned his own suspicions that that flier had come from the new Abbey.
“And why would the women of the Abbey want to attack Melcor in this fashion?” the king asked, and despite his cold, he was still capable of a fearsome glare.
It took an effort not to wither under that glare. Delnamal had never mentioned to the king exactly what he’d allowed his men to do when they’d visited the Abbey. The omission had been in part because he felt the king had no need to know, and in part because Delnamal knew full well he would not approve. The glare said he knew more than Delnamal would have liked.
“From what I understand,” Delnamal said, hoping he looked entirely innocent and unconcerned, “Melcor has some exotic tastes when it comes to bedding women, and some of the women of the Abbey objected to his use of them.” All of which was perfectly true. Delnamal swallowed hard and willed his father not to pursue the subject. He did not relish having to explain himself, and a lie would be unwise when it could be so easily disproved. There had been too many witnesses in that Abbey.
The king stared at him for a long, uncomfortable time, and if it weren’t for the head cold, Delnamal was sure he would have pressed. As it was, a violent sneeze broke off the stare, and the king waved a hand in dismissal.
Delnamal rose from his seat and bowed, but before he exited the room, a sudden thought struck him, and he stopped a few steps from the door. He turned around and looked at his ailing father.
“Perhaps it would be best not to send for a tonic from the Abbey,” he suggested. He would not put it past those bitches to hold his father responsible for their exile and strike out at him in retaliation.
The king’s eyes widened. “Surely you don’t think…” He allowed his voice to trail off.
Delnamal raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “Do I honestly think they would attempt to poison their king? Perhaps not. I only know that I would hesitate to drink one of their tonics at this time. They are not to be trusted. And as you said, common folk suffer through head colds without the aid of tonics all the time.”
Delnamal left the room to the sound of his father loudly blowing his nose.
* * *
—
“What are you still doing here at this hour?” Chanlix asked.
Alys jumped and gasped, hastily closing her Mindseye and blinking in the darkened room. Chanlix stood in the doorway, clucking like a mother hen as she lit a luminant. Alys had been so absorbed in her work she hadn’t even noticed the sun going down, and though she’d been vaguely aware of the room emptying out, of abigails saying good night, and of her own distracted responses, she’d had no idea she was the only one left.
“Sorry to startle you,” Chanlix said, coming to join Alys at her worktable in their fledgling Academy.
Alys sighed and rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the stiffness. She’d been sitting there far too long, and her body ached and complained.
“You are pushing yourself too hard,” Chanlix said gently. “Both your mind and your body need the occasional break.”
Alys sighed. “I know. But I’ve had something of a breakthrough, and I couldn’t bear to stop tinkering just yet.”
Chanlix’s face lit with delight. “You have?”
Alys pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not the breakthrough I was hoping for, unfortunately.”
Chanlix gave her a look of sympathy that made her throat tighten, then gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. Alys was pretty sure Chanlix thought she was on a fool’s errand, but the other woman had been nothing but supportive and helpful and had not once put her doubts into words.
“I got frustrated with all my failures,” Alys continued, “so I decided to try something different for a while. I was talking to one of Tynthanal’s men the other day, and he mentioned a spell hunters use to hide snares. It’s called a Trapper spell, and it uses Lix to make the snare blend into the background, effectively making it invisible. It can only work for something relatively small, and I was wondering if I could create something similar—and maybe larger—using Zal.”
Zal was a feminine element associated with illusion, and in most of the world, it was exceedingly rare. It was rare enough that Alys had as yet discovered only one spell in her mother’s book that utilized it—and yet in Women’s Well, it was plentiful, and she was certain it had many, many other potential uses. When she’d first started working with it, she’d been hopeful it was the key to faking a pregnancy for Shelvon, but so far it had not panned out, and she’d thought perhaps trying a different application might break open some doors.
Alys smiled a little sheepishly. “It was just a whim, and there are probably more effective uses of my time, but…” She shrugged.
Chanlix nodded. “But it is enjoyable to tackle a challenge you’re certain you can conquer.”
Alys met the other woman’s eyes and felt a surge of warmth. She had certainly not come to Women’s Well in search of friendship, but she had found it nonetheless—and finally been forced to admit to herself how desperately she had needed a friend since her mother’s Curse changed everything. She had a
lways focused on the damage the social isolation was doing to her children, and had never allowed herself to acknowledge what it was doing to her, how lonely it made her feel. Back in Aalwell, Shelvon was the closest thing she had to a friend, and yet the woman was young enough to be her daughter.
“Show me what you’ve come up with,” Chanlix urged, a glint of excitement in her eye. Her magical talent was considerably less than Alys’s or Tynthanal’s, but she made up for that lack of talent with a deep understanding of how elements would work together—even when speaking of elements she could not see herself. She also clearly loved to tinker with magic almost as much as Alys did.
Alys showed Chanlix the copious notes she had taken while testing different combinations of Zal with other elements and demonstrated the most promising of those, which caused her worktable to disappear from sight—along with the floor beneath it and the wall behind it, leaving a very strange empty space that was eye-catching, to say the least.
“I feel like I’m close,” Alys said. “If only I could make it stay confined to the table itself…” She deactivated the spell so that the table came back into view.
Chanlix cocked her head at the table, a crease forming between her brows as she thought. “What you want is not so much for the table to disappear, as for it to be hidden from view.”
Alys nodded. “Yes. But so far, I haven’t figured out how to do that.” Despite all her natural abilities, she was still a novice magic user at best. And as helpful as her mother’s book was, it seemed clear the late abbess had not foreseen the elements available in Women’s Well. The book’s magic was centered on those elements produced by Aaltah’s Well, with only passing mention of others.
“You want it to do what the usual Trapper spell does, only on a larger scale. Zal seems to be more potent than Lix, and shares some of the same attributes—camouflage is something like an illusion.”
“Yes,” Alys agreed.
“So why don’t you try using them both together?”
Alys would have thought combining the two elements would be redundant, but she trusted Chanlix’s greater experience. Opening her Mindseye, she found a couple motes of Lix and added them to the coin she was currently using to hold the spell. Then she added in Rho and held her breath.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that the entire tabletop had disappeared, though the legs were still visible. And there was no strange, gaping void to draw the eye. Reaching out, her fingers found the table’s edge, then groped until she found her notes. When she lifted the notes off the table and away, they suddenly became visible in her hand.
She shared a delighted grin with Chanlix, though she wasn’t sure how much use anyone had for a spell that made a tabletop disappear.
“And now it is time for you to take a rest,” Chanlix said firmly. “End with this small victory. And tomorrow, we can work on making the illusion even larger.”
Alys felt a surge of excitement. “If you have an idea, we can try it right now.” She had sorely missed this almost giddy rush of success as she’d worked so long and hard on the illusion spell she wanted so desperately to create. The repeated failures had dampened her spirits more than she’d realized, and she felt like she could continue working all night now.
“I have an idea,” Chanlix confirmed. “And I will tell you what it is—tomorrow.”
Alys made a sound of frustration. “You are only one year my senior,” she reminded Chanlix. “You don’t get to mother me.” She sounded sullen to her own ears, but Chanlix merely laughed.
“I’m the closest thing Women’s Well has to a grand magus,” she replied cheerfully as she hooked her elbow through Alys’s and gave her a tug toward the door. “And I say the Academy is closed for the night.”
She sighed when Alys didn’t budge.
“Listen to the voice of experience,” Chanlix insisted. “Experimenting with magic when your mind is weary is a recipe for disaster. If you weren’t already weary, you would have thought of using Lix and Zal together without me.”
Alys wasn’t sure that was true—it would likely take her years to develop the kind of intuition Chanlix had demonstrated—but she was tired. And, come to think of it, her head was throbbing.
Still reluctant, she allowed Chanlix to steer her from the room and out into the desert twilight.
* * *
—
Watching out her window, Chanlix gritted her teeth as Rusha, dressed in the red robes she had previously tossed aside, led the tax collector to her house. The girl smiled and swished her hips, acting convincingly delighted at the prospect of selling her body once more.
“Come away,” Tynthanal said, gently putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her away from the window and back toward the table where Alys sat, her hands cradling a cup of hot mint tea.
Chanlix saw that a second cup had appeared while she’d been anxiously watching out the window, and Alys pushed it toward her with a sad smile.
“I’m so sorry about this,” Alys said, but Chanlix waved the apology off.
“It’s hardly your fault Delnamal decided to send a tax collector to us.” Chanlix knew exactly whom to blame for that, and she was powerless to do anything about it.
Alys turned her teacup around and around, staring at it as if in fascination. “If I hadn’t come here, perhaps he wouldn’t be paying so much attention…”
Tynthanal pulled back a chair with a deliberate scraping sound, startling both women. “Let’s have done with the confessions of guilt,” he said, then sat down with a thunk. “We knew he would not ignore us forever, and today’s visit will buy us more time.”
It was true that they had anticipated an eventual visit from a tax collector, and they’d had a plan in place to deal with such a thing. Thanks to Tynthanal’s spies, they’d not only known a tax collector was coming, but they’d known which one, which had allowed them to tailor the bribe specifically to him.
“Do you think he’ll keep his side of the bargain?” Alys asked.
“He’ll keep it,” Chanlix said, and she had no doubt of her own convictions. She had yet to meet a tax collector who wasn’t a greedy bastard, and she was sure every one of them happily took payments on the side, but Julvin took that greed to an elevated level. Thanks in part to generous contributions from both Alys and Tynthanal, the bribe they had offered—paired with the promise of future payments of similar size—was a temptation Julvin could not resist.
It had been Rusha’s idea to sweeten the pot by taking Julvin to her bed, playing once again the traditional role of the abigail that the women of Women’s Well had thought was behind them.
“I was always his favorite,” Rusha had said, and it was true, for Julvin had rarely come to the Abbey to collect taxes without visiting the pavilion—a visit he expected to be granted free of charge. “We don’t want him to leave Women’s Well unsatisfied.”
Chanlix had curled her lip. “He’ll have his money. How unsatisfied could he be?”
“Men are fickle beasts,” Rusha replied. “He will expect to be serviced, and if he is not, he will wonder why not. We don’t want him thinking about us in that way.”
And still Chanlix had hesitated. All her abigails had grown used to being free to allow men into their beds by choice, rather than necessity, and it was a hard thing to take that away from any of them. But Rusha was insistent.
“You never did get around to punishing me for defying you back in the Abbey,” she’d said with a wry smile. “Let this be my penance for endangering the Abbey. Now, I will ensure its safety instead.”
In the end, Chanlix had been forced to agree, but that didn’t mean she was untroubled by guilt. And beneath that guilt was the persistent worry that they would not be able to keep the secrets of Women’s Well hidden forever.
“Julvin’s report will buy us time,” she said, tapping the table restlessly with her fingert
ips. “But one day, there will come a reckoning.” She shivered and hugged herself.
Alys leaned over and put a hand on her arm, giving it a comforting squeeze. “But we have made such great strides in such a short time. By the time that reckoning occurs, we will be in a much stronger bargaining position.”
“We?” Chanlix asked with an arch of her brow. “I was under the impression you’d be leaving us as soon as you perfected your spell for Princess Shelvon.” Not that she showed any signs of even having invented such a spell, much less perfecting one. Chanlix knew she was still trying, but it was beginning to seem like a lost cause. Not that Chanlix would ever put that thought into words.
Alys colored. “That is still the plan, of course. I must secure my daughter’s future above all else. But I desperately need those occasional successes to give me hope against all my failures. I don’t know how much longer I can stay, but while I’m here, I will give you as much help as I’m able.” She pushed back her chair. “And with that, I should get back to work.”
“Perhaps you and Chanlix should spend some more time on that Trapper spell,” Tynthanal suggested.
Chanlix cocked her head at him. “I thought we were ready to move on to something else. We’ve already re-created it for a much more affordable price, and it’s capable of hiding much larger areas.”
“But you haven’t tested it to its limits yet. I’d like to see just how big you can make it.” He gave Alys a hopeful look, and she shrugged.
“I’m sure we can expand it farther without too much effort if you think it’s a valuable use of our time.”
“I think it could be,” Tynthanal said. “I can imagine any number of military uses for such a thing, if it could be made larger still, and that would make it a valuable commodity for us. Anything that increases our value to the Crown provides us another layer of safety.”
Chanlix heard a hint of…something, she wasn’t sure what, in Tynthanal’s voice, and she glanced at him curiously as Alys agreed and hurried from the room, eager to return to the comfort and pleasure of her magical practice. He returned Chanlix’s look with a studied blandness that only served to make her more anxious.