CHAPTER 5 Wren
CHAPTER 5
Wren
‘The “assassin’s teapot”, often referred to by alchemists as “the Ladies’ Luncheon”, was designed in the workshops of Thezmarr’
– A History of Thezmarr
I N THE CORNER of the room, an auburn-haired, long-limbed troublemaker was lounging in her tattered armchair. Resting his growler of mead atop a tower of old books, her sister’s friend, Kipp Snowden, grinned at her.
‘Long time no see, Elwren.’
With her hand still on her racing heart, Wren gaped at him. Time had been good to the strategist – his lanky frame had filled out over the years, and there was a roguish handsomeness to his crooked smile. A dull ache formed in her chest as she marked the changes. She could only imagine how different she looked through his eyes.
‘Kipp,’ she managed hoarsely. ‘How long has it been?’
‘Four years,’ he said, taking a swig of his drink. ‘At the one-year anniversary memorial at Thezmarr.’
That day was a blur to Wren, but for the Warsword at her side, and his warm, strong arms around her as she sobbed. She pushed it from her mind, as she had done every day since.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked with a shake of her head, reaching for a bundle of dried herbs hanging from the rafters.
‘Trying to get rid of me already?’ Kipp pressed a hand to his chest dramatically before draining the rest of his mead. ‘You wound me.’
Wren rolled her eyes and set about weighing florets of lavender. ‘How did you know I was here?’ She’d made damn sure her whereabouts weren’t common knowledge.
‘I have my ways,’ Kipp said with infuriating slyness. ‘Forgive me for thinking you’d appreciate a visit from an old friend. What did I do to deserve such a frosty welcome?’
A pang of guilt shot through Wren. She sighed, looking up from her work. ‘Can I offer you something? Tea, perhaps?’
Kipp snorted. ‘As if I’d ever accept a cup of tea from you.’
Wren hid her smile. The teapot she’d invented, which she’d used to poison the former Guild Master of Thezmarr, had earned her the moniker that had followed her ever since.
‘Now,’ Kipp went on, ‘mead, ale, fire extract, wine, I’ll accept.’
‘I can poison those just as easily.’
‘Not even you would ruin good liquor.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she allowed, wiping her hands on her apron and turning towards one of the cabinets on the far side of the cottage. There, she rummaged through the various bottles and concoctions before pulling out a flask and tossing it to Kipp. ‘Knock yourself out.’
‘Why does it sound like you mean that literally?’ He raised the flask to his lips all the same. ‘How go the alchemy studies?’
The question was like a blow to her gut. She glanced up, narrowing her eyes. ‘Hard to study when you’ve been turned away from the only academy in the midrealms.’ Tasting bitterness on her tongue, she turned away to rifle through a row of vials.
Wren had previously studied alchemy at Thezmarr, as most orphaned girls of the midrealms had. There, she’d found she not only had talent, but a passion for it as well. While her sister Thea’s greatest pride had always been the might of her sword, Wren had always felt at home amid the subtler weapons of plants and potions.
After the war, she had discovered that Drevenor, the ancient academy for alchemists, had been reopened. Great masters had returned from beyond the Veil, new intakes of students recruited and ushered in to carry on the work of its forebears. Wren had desperately sought to be one of them.
And for five years, she had been denied.
Each rejection had come with a single reason: No letter of recommendation .
All Wren had done for the midrealms during the war, all her studies at Thezmarr – it hadn’t been enough. Her former mentor, Farissa Tremaine, had refused to provide her with an endorsement.
‘You are not yourself, Elwren,’ the older woman had said. ‘To send you to Drevenor now would make a danger of you. More so than you already are.’
Wren clenched her jaw at the memory. She was more herself than she’d ever been, and her work ought to have been revered, not used against her.
Kipp was watching her with interest. ‘Farissa hasn’t budged, then?’
There was no keeping the note of resentment from her voice. ‘Not an inch.’
‘You don’t think she has a point?’
‘No.’
If she wasn’t going to get peace and quiet, she might as well do something productive. She located the ingredients she was after: oil of ambrosia, apple seeds and dried bluebells, and returned to her workbench to survey the chaos before her.
‘I still don’t understand why you’re here instead of at Thezmarr,’ Kipp declared, swinging up onto his feet and perusing the cluttered cottage.
Wren watched him warily as he took in the tables groaning under the weight of yellowed tomes with worn leather covers, and the array of entangled roots and vines carpeting the uneven stone beneath his boots.
Kipp grimaced at the sight of a juvenile arachne preserved in a jar. The spider-like monster’s many legs had curled around its abdomen in death. ‘The fortress has got to be better than this.’
‘It’s not,’ Wren said, gripping the edge of the table to still the tremor in her hands as images came back to her in violent flashes. The war-torn courtyard. The lashing shadows. The vortex of wind and rain at her fingertips. Her friends, Sam and Ida, with their heads on spikes, their eyes missing, tears of blood staining their cheeks. She could still taste the broken cry on her lips as her gaze had fallen upon them, the women she’d grown up with.
She was back there again. A ragged gasp escaped her, and Wren felt the sharp crunch of stone digging into her knees as she collapsed in the rubble beside the sister she’d only just come to know. Her eldest sister, Anya, was dead. And all Wren could do was clutch her lifeless hands.
‘Wren?’
Kipp’s voice was distant as the flashbacks dug their talons deeper into her mind, into her heart, and the unstable storm magic in her veins surged in response.
A jagged claw tore through the flesh at her throat, missing her jugular by a hair’s breadth. Fiery pain lanced across her skin, and hot blood spilled down her front – hers, she realized distantly. She stumbled over a pile of rubble, lightning still surging at her fingertips.
‘Wren,’ someone gasped. ‘You have to stop the bleeding—’
Torj. He was there. Lifting her magic-tipped fingers to the open wound at her throat. She struggled against him, but white-hot agony seared her as the Warsword cauterized the laceration with her storm power.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I’m so sorry—’
‘Wren?’ Someone was shaking her by the shoulders. ‘Wren?’
It was the note of panic in Kipp’s voice that wrenched her from her memory with a stifled gasp.
‘What the fuck?’ Kipp exhaled shakily, peering into her eyes, still grasping her upper arms. ‘What was that? Are you—’
‘Fine. Perfectly fine.’ Wren turned away to catch her breath and wipe her clammy palms on her skirts, trying to hide the tremors. Outside the cottage, the wind howled ominously, enough to rattle the windows.
‘That your doing?’ Kipp asked, frowning at the storm breaking outside.
‘Believe it or not, I’m not always responsible for the weather.’ But Wren went to the window anyway and peered out at the darkening clouds sweeping across the crescent moon beyond the treeline. Her magic flickered in warning.
She had barely touched her power since she’d used it to pour her grief into the lands here. It was rare she wanted to. The cursed thing was unpredictable. There were times where she couldn’t stop it coursing through her, tugging her towards something she couldn’t see, filling her with the same all-consuming sensation she’d felt as her lightning surged through that iron hammer belonging to the Warsword.
Gathering herself, she turned to Kipp, arms folded over her chest. ‘Tell me why you’re here.’
Kipp took a long, fortifying pull from the flask. ‘About that...’