The Prince of Secrets

by A J Lancaster

  “Do you know what she wanted?”

  He shook his head and pulled clumsily at his wet shirt-sleeves, trying to unbutton them. Hetta pushed his hands away, taking on the task herself. Her knees pressed into the mud, damp seeping through her skirt. Each inch of material she lifted away from his skin made him suck in a breath.

  “What was in that mixture?” she asked softly.

  “Yarrow. Vervain. Eyebright.” He lapsed into a tongue she didn’t know to list the rest. “I do not know the local names for those.” His words were thick and slow, and when she’d freed him of his ruined shirt, he scrabbled at the soaked bandage on his forearm with shaking fingers. Hetta didn’t like to remove it—he’d lost so much blood already. But he tore at it feverishly until she stilled his hands with her own and unwound the bandage for him.

  When she’d removed the last of the herb-soaked material, Wyn sagged in relief, eyelids fluttering shut for a second. A fine tremor ran over his skin, but when he opened his eyes he’d regained a measure of his usual composure.

  Blood was welling up where she’d removed the tainted bandage, the lug-imp’s bite deep and raw. Hetta made a rapid decision and pulled off her coat, setting it impatiently aside. The coat was too thick to wrap effectively, but her blouse would do. It was the work of seconds to undo all the buttons. She wore a slip beneath that left her shoulders bare, and the cold wind bit at her skin in the time it took to shrug back into her coat. She began to wind the thinner material around his arm, an absurdly frilly bandage.

  “I am ruining a lot of clothing today,” Wyn murmured. His gaze strayed to the expanse of skin visible above the low neckline of the slip but unfocused as she tightened the makeshift bandage. “We need to get inside the boundaries.”

  Hetta looked towards Stariel. The estate lurked just on the edge of touching, so close she could feel its eagerness for her return, but she doubted Wyn could even stand unaided, and she wasn’t strong enough to carry him by herself.

  “Wait here,” she told him.

  He gave a weak smile. “As you wish, my Star.”

  She stumbled onto the road. This was a back way, to the north of the main road that passed through Stariel-on-Starwater. The train track that ran nearly precisely along Stariel’s eastern border was only a long stone’s throw away.

  Gravel scattered as she ran towards the boundary, clutching her hat securely to her head. “I can heal wounds that would kill a mortal man,” Wyn had said once before, and she hoped it held true now, even with wounds made with iron bullets. It was hard to keep a firm handle on the alarm threatening to rise up and choke her. She’d never seen Wyn so disoriented before. That worried her nearly as much as the blood loss.

  Sheep raised their heads to watch her from the field beside the road and, with the sudden skittishness typical of their kind, abruptly took exception to her running, turning and bounding away. The air held nothing but the earthy mix of sheep, grass, and mud, but she couldn’t help searching for a hint of something out of place, in case it was all the warning she got. A sudden croak made her start, but it was only a crow perched on the low dry-stone wall. The road angled up to meet the train tracks, and she launched herself over that final hurdle.

  As soon as she crossed the bounds, gasping, her awareness expanded. Energy surged through her, bolstering her magical reserves, as if she were a sagging balloon suddenly swelling with air. Stariel nearly knocked her over in its enthusiasm, metaphorically trying to lick her face and rub itself against her, like a large and exuberant dog.

  she told it, before delving deeper into the estate. Stariel caught the taste of her emotions and vibrated with sudden alarm and fierce protectiveness. Where was the danger? It would rain down retribution on anyone thinking to invade its territory.

  Hetta sunk willingly into its hyper-alertness. She would need it for what she was about to attempt. Her body faded from her awareness until she was a creature of soil and forests and groundwater and a thousand tiny moving parts. A web of bright sparks scattered across her surface: her family. All the Valstars had at least a bit of the land-sense, a connection to Stariel, but some had it more strongly than others. What did she need? For a moment, she struggled to remember her intentions, too deeply immersed in the land. She clutched towards the brightest point of the web on instinct. Jack, she thought. That must be Jack.

  But it wasn’t Jack. Two feminine minds started at the sudden touch, their identities becoming apparent as Hetta’s focus tightened: Hetta’s half-sister Alexandra and her cousin Caro. Alexandra’s pen poised above a blank piece of paper and a drop of ink fell from the nib in the time it took for Hetta to realise they weren’t who she wanted.

  Hetta drew back with a mental squeeze of apology and tried again to convey to Stariel who she was looking for: Jack. She tried to think how Stariel would know him: stocky, red-haired, blunt, and dutiful to his roots. She visualised the mile-eating way he walked, the whistle of him calling his dog. Something in her scrambled description set off an echo of recognition in Stariel, and the land eagerly zeroed in on a different spark.

  she flung at him as his mind lit up in surprise. She didn’t know if it was possible to communicate this way, but if anyone were connected tightly enough for it to work, it would be him.

  There was a pause.

 

  It wasn’t speech, not really. Communicating with Stariel had given Hetta some practice at interpreting a wordless flow of meaning. This was a more quick-silvered version of that, Jack’s thoughts fast and darting as minnows compared to Stariel’s. Jack was a tumble of incredulity and worry, demanding answers and offering assistance all at the same time. How was she doing this? Wonder shimmered through their connection.

  Hetta tried to parcel up what she wanted into something communicable, distilling the image as she’d learnt to do as part of her illusionist’s training: Wyn, lying bloody and broken against the muddy-green of the verge, the train tracks in the distance. She visualised a great string connecting Jack to her current location and flung the image at him. Concern shivered through the connection, but he’d understood. She hoped.

  Disentangling herself from Stariel was difficult, her own anxiety making the land swarm up in a misguided attempt to reassure her. Two feet, she had two feet, warm inside their boots. The texture of her stockings prickled against her toes. No, that wasn’t her toes; the prickliness was the swish of pine needles in the southern forests. She tried to locate her hands but found instead the intricate threads of waterways joining, forming the major tributaries to Starwater.

  Stariel had senses she had no name for—the tiny ripples of air currents as a robin flitted from branch to branch, the heavy saturation of the soils in the sheepfold, the ebb and whirl of magic within its borders—so she tried to focus on the sensations that were purely her own: the slanting sunshine of winter afternoon warm against her cheeks, the cold air filling her lungs, the loamy scent of countryside, and the small shifting of gravel under her boots.

  Finally, she opened her eyes. The sun had moved. How long had she been standing there, lost? This couldn’t be normal lordship behaviour. She would’ve noticed her father caught in mindless reverie. The need to find a teacher scratched at her again.

  Wyn! She spun and looked down the sloping road. Her last rush to the boundary had carried her a little past the train tracks, thank the nine heavens. There were only two trains a day this far north, and the later train wouldn’t pass this spot for another few hours, but it still made her shiver to think of herself standing mindless and vulnerable on the line.

  Wyn was still sitting when she reached him, and it struck her all over again what an awkward position it was for a winged creature. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t react to the sound of her approach. The brown of his skin was washed out to a sickly beige, the lines of his face stark. The smell of rain on dry earth hung around him, fragile as spider webs.

  “Wyn?” she said, worried by his intense
stillness. “You’d better not be unconscious. I shall be very annoyed with you if you are.”

  His eyes snapped open, russet flecked with brandy-gold. “I should like to avoid that,” he said, voice oddly sluggish.

  “I’ve summoned Jack.” She paused. “Why did Mrs Thompson shoot you? It seems a rather excessive act. Don’t tell me our bank manager’s wife was working for your brother.”

  “I don’t…know,” he said. There was something dreamlike about his expression. It worried her, but his words were coherent enough, if more slowly spoken than usual. Had he done some kind of fae thing to push back the pain? “But I don’t think so. It doesn’t make sense for Rake to try to kill me after working so hard not to. Especially not so clumsily.”

  “You and I have an entirely different understanding of what constitutes trying to kill someone,” Hetta disagreed. “What about the other one? The one who sent the lug-imps?”

  “Aroset?” He shook his head. “She would never send a mortal to do the deed. I suppose it could be one of my other siblings.”

  “I’m never going to complain about my familial disagreements again,” Hetta vowed, wringing a small smile from him. He looked so worn that she couldn’t bear it. She flung herself at him with extreme carefulness, wrapping her arms around his chest and burying her face against his collarbone. She trembled and simultaneously cursed herself for such foolishness. He was the one injured, not her! But he’d been shot, and it could’ve so easily been much, much worse. She kept replaying the sound of the gunshot and his sudden flinch as the bullet hit. She hugged him tighter.

  Wyn kissed the top of her head, his good arm coming around her. “They haven’t killed me, Hetta. And I don’t intend to let them,” he said softly, stroking small circles between her shoulder blades.

  “Good,” she said without lifting her head. “You’re forbidden to die on me, you understand?” She breathed in the warm scent of him, that dust after rain smell mixed with spice. That and the warm solidity of him finally eased the cold dread she’d held ever since Rakken told her about the lug-imps.

  He murmured wordless reassurance, but his pulse was too fast and erratic against her cheek. It quivered through her, closer than her own, and her insides re-tied themselves in painful knots. He might not be dead, but he certainly wasn’t all right. Hetta wasn’t used to dealing with this intensity of emotion; never in her past affairs had she suffered this stomach-clenching fear of loss. She didn’t much like it.

  He leaned his head against hers. “Oh, my love, I’m sorry. You cope so well that I forget, sometimes, that this isn’t what you’re used to.” Her heart gave an odd squeeze at the endearment. She’d known, of course, but he’d been so careful not to say it. He didn’t seem to notice his slip, which worried her more than anything else. “Will you help me stand? We should get to the border.”

  Hetta pulled herself together. “I don’t think you should move. If Jack has an ounce of common sense, he’ll bring the pony cart.”

  “And I don’t think we should stay here where we are vulnerable for any longer than we have to.” He must be tired indeed to disagree with her so bluntly. “I’ve amused you,” he observed.

  “It’s the sight of you trying to be all calm and collected when you’re nine parts unconscious,” she said, getting to her feet. The angle gave her a close view of his horns, and he stiffened under her appraisal. He wouldn’t admit it unless she made him, but she knew he hated her seeing him like this. “Can you stand? There’s no point in us arguing about it if you can’t.”

  “Do I get some credit for trying to argue, regardless?” he asked lightly. She refused to smile, and he admitted, “I don’t know. My leg is…painful. But I would rather suffer that tenfold than stay here as a sitting duck any longer.”

  She’d prefer them to be within Stariel’s bounds too. How much time had passed since she’d summoned Jack? Had he even understood what she wanted from him?

  “All right,” she said reluctantly. “But let me see if I can find a stick or something first.”

  Some minutes later, with the aid of a flimsy piece of poplar that was all she could find, they managed to lever Wyn up off the ground. Fortunately, he’d been injured on the opposite leg to his shoulder, so he could sling one arm around Hetta’s shoulder for balance.

  They proceeded by inches. Wyn was no lightweight, and he could put no weight at all on his injured foot. By the time they’d gone three yards, Wyn was panting and shaking with the effort and Hetta was regretting giving in. How could she have forgotten how good he was at masking discomfort?

  “This isn’t going to work,” she told him, coming to a shambling halt. “We should just wait for Jack.”

  It took him several seconds to reply as he caught his breath. “But we…have…come…so…far!”

  She ignored this attempt at levity. “You’re going to faint in another minute at this rate,” she said grimly.

  “Possible,” he admitted, face pale. The movement had made his wounds start bleeding afresh, seeping through all Hetta’s makeshift bandages. There would be no salvaging her blouse or scarf. Thin rivulets had worked their way down his left forearm and over his hand to end in scarlet drips at his fingertips.

  Hetta made a decision. “Impending fae attacks be dashed. Sit down before you fall down!”

  He would’ve tried to argue with her, but she shimmied her support out from under his shoulder and he folded heavily to the ground. He glared up at her, the clear affront in his expression making her heart squeeze with worry; it wasn’t usually so easy to read him.

  Hooves clattered against gravel and Hetta spun, hope burning in her throat. It was Jack, driving the pony cart, but he wasn’t alone. Her cousin Caroline and her brother Marius sat in the cart, wearing matching shocked expressions. Marius’s was because of Wyn’s injuries. Caroline’s was because of his wings.

  15

  Iron

  Wyn bore the reveal of his nature to yet another Valstar philosophically. Or at least as philosophically as possible under the circumstances, which wasn’t very. Every breath grated muscle and bone against the iron bullet. It made it difficult to care much what people thought. Stormwinds curse iron! It tangled through his magic, making it impossible for his body to heal as it should. He’d sunk into a meditation before, carefully cordoning off the pain, but the strain of moving had broken that temporary mental block.

  The horse snorted at Wyn as Jack pulled the cart to a halt, but the animal was familiar enough with him not to shy away. Instead it stood, huffing disapprovingly at his wings.

  “Good…afternoon,” Wyn panted. He was suddenly conscious of the mud sticking to the tips of his primaries. From his ungainly seat, he couldn’t raise his wings high enough to keep them free of the dirt. Would it be easier to bear being so exposed if he were at least clean?

  His thoughts tumbled back and forth like stones in a polisher’s barrel. Caroline’s face was too composed. Had Jack warned her? Marius was frozen. Please let this not be another reason for Marius to be angry at him. He had bungled that relationship so badly already.

  Caroline was saying something to Hetta, and then they were all getting out of the cart.

  Marius was saying something to him as well, but it was hard to concentrate over the searing agony of the iron. Why were they all milling about so? They ought to go back inside Stariel’s borders where they were safe. He tried to tell Hetta this, but the words came out garbled and he had to repeat himself.

  “The border—we need to go.”

  “Yes, but not until I’ve stopped the bleeding again. Caro’s brought the first aid kit from the house, thank the heavens.”

  He watched, oddly detached, as Hetta removed the makeshift bandage from his arm. It had come loose as they walked, and the wound had re-opened. His fingers were tacky with drying blood. Hetta began to wind a fresh white length in its place, taken from the first aid kit. The large case stood open on the roadside, glittering with jars, instruments, and bandages. Something snagged
at him, difficult to grasp as fog. If only the iron weren’t in him, poisoning his blood.

  The iron!

  “Need to get the iron out,” he said, scrabbling weakly for the scarf tied about his wing. What was the word? “Forceps.”

  “The bullet!” Hetta understood, thank the Maelstrom. “It’s still in you.”

  There was a cacophony of voices. Marius demanded to know who had shot him and Jack swore, while Caroline matter-of-factly said something about steady hands, but then he lost track until Hetta untied the scarf and emptied a canister of what felt like liquid fire onto his wing. Agony exploded, white-hot as the heart of a star. He fanned out his wings in instinctive response, and the movement jolted the iron ball. Lights danced across his vision.

  Hetta. Her hands were on his face, anchoring him, and he brought his good arm up to twine his fingers with hers. He was gripping too tightly, but he couldn’t make himself let go, not with the sharp iron of the forceps digging into the arch of his wing.

  It took forever and no time at all. He couldn’t tell. There were only his harsh breaths and the piercing wrongness of the iron, Hetta’s hand and the low sound of her voice as she murmured comfort. He couldn’t make out the individual words, but he held fast to that stream of reassurance. A long disused part of his mind flared to life, the part that knew how to survive even when pain made that seem impossible, and he coiled in on himself, a pebble in a river of torment.

  Then suddenly it was done, and the world righted itself. He became aware that he was shaking and forced himself to stop, though he couldn’t bear to relinquish Hetta’s hand quite yet. Her eyes were a paler shade of grey than usual, lovely as dawn mist. She had her back to the sun, and it brought out the red in her auburn hair.

  Sheep baa-ed in the distance, the sound curiously grounding. It was second nature to test the air for hints of magic, but there was only the lingering fragrance of cherries. If there were any fae present, they were well hidden. But of course they would be—both Aroset and Rakken were skilled enough to mask their signatures if they wanted.