Chapter 8
8
The bloody Archduke of Estarion would not stop causing her trouble!
Growling, Saskia crumpled up the delicate leaf-note that had appeared in midair at the worst possible moment, disrupting her latest experiment and ruining her precious materials. There was no signature on the note, but she hadn’t needed any. The sparkling gold letters had been etched into the veins of the leaf itself, revealing the fae identity of its sender immediately.
Any luck in our joint hunt? A’s friends say our prey may have moved in your direction.
By “friends,” of course, Lorelei meant “spies”—Ailana’s coolly efficient network of spies, spreading across the continent like transparent ice to ferret out secrets for the Queen of Nornne. Perhaps Saskia ought to have felt grateful to have this particular secret shared with her… but the entire purpose of erecting a magical barrier of epic strength between Kitvaria and Estarion had been to give her time off from thinking of that damnable Archduke. Now, her carefully created silversand and hellbane concoction, stymied at the moment of would-be magical catharsis, had fallen back into the cauldron with a sad and squishy plop of surrender, left gooey, unactivated, and unusable… and Saskia had already read two different urgent notes about the Archduke earlier that day.
It would be helpful if all of her various interrupters could, at least, get their warning stories straight.
According to Lorelei’s latest botanical interruption, the Archduke was slinking around the border of Kitvaria now, like a venomous serpent hunting for a vulnerable entrance point. According to the two earlier missives from Mirjana, though, he was busy sending delegations of priests and diplomats—including Saskia’s godsdamned paladin of an uncle!—to plead with the Emperor for the use of an elite squadron of Imperial Gilded Wizards to tear down her lovely barrier. That news had sent her rushing back to her laboratory, to redouble her trials for a new magical line of defense.
Even if her barrier was destroyed—or the Archduke found his own way through it—she wouldn’t make any invasion easy. How many of his own soldiers would the man truly sacrifice for the sake of her uncle’s cause?
If only Yaroslav would be sensible enough to accept defeat, for once in his petulant, entitled, and malicious life…
But then, the Archduke wasn’t to blame for her uncle’s continued survival. That was Saskia’s doing. If she’d had the strength of will to murder him when she’d had the chance, none of this would be a problem now.
Snarling at the memory of her own weakness, Saskia set herself to the tedious work of cleaning her equipment. Even after the failure of her intended activation, the contents of the cauldron were still too magically unbalanced to be dumped into any ordinary cesspit or compost heap—and if any lingering remains were left to curdle in the cauldron, her next experiment might well be her last.
Fortunately, Saskia had been handling volatile magical materials ever since she was a child—and in those twelve halcyon years after she’d escaped her uncle’s grip, before she’d been forced to take the throne, she had learned under Mrs. Haglitz’s unyielding eye how to scrub and polish anything to perfection. She was just cleaning off her hands, using a special mixture she’d created to neutralize all types of magical residue, when a familiar knock sounded on the door.
“It’s safe to come in, Morlokk!” she called, without removing her hands from the bowl of cleansing cream. “You won’t be set on fire or transformed into a toad by anything in here now.”
“You reassure me greatly, Your Majesty.” Her majordomo stepped into the cavernous room, holding a sheaf of papers in his giant hands. As a girl, when she’d first escaped into his and Mrs. Haglitz’s protection, the strength of those hands had promised safety; now, she looked at the pile of letters he held and winced even before he intoned, “These are for you.”
“Was today’s post really so urgent that you had to bring it down?” Avoiding his gaze, Saskia turned to wipe off her hands with a clean towel and unfastened her laboratory apron without haste. “You know I already went through Mirjana’s most urgent messages this morning…”
“These are invitations, ” Morlokk said, “and they’ve been piling up for the past week while everyone’s waited to find out whether you will be hosting your own seasonal celebration.” He set them down with painstaking care on the newly cleaned table before her. “You will need to make a final decision today, if Mrs. Haglitz is to make all of her own festive preparations in time.”
Sighing, Saskia hung up her apron and turned back to accept her doom. Creamy sheaves of stationery embossed with gold leaf competed for the role of the most swooping handwriting and the most flowery artificial scents. Her nostrils flared with distaste as she lifted up the first, which smelled overwhelmingly of out-of-season jasmine. “Does no one even remember that we’re still at war? Why is everyone suddenly in the mood for feasting and celebrations?”
Morlokk’s tone was patient. “If you’ll recall, we are approaching the time of Winter’s Turning, and you are Kitvaria’s crowned queen. Do you really not remember your own parents’ annual celebrations?”
At his words, a wholly different combination of scents filled her memory: beeswax candles everywhere, used for the priests’ rituals, along with tangy smoke from the many pine fires, cinnamon from the vats of hot mulled wine, and the most comforting fragrance of all: her mother’s vanilla perfume pressing against her skin as Saskia was hugged good night.
She’d been sent to bed at the usual time, of course, but she still remembered lying awake, vibrating with curiosity as the festivities continued late into the night below her in the grand, crowded ballroom of their city palace. How could she possibly fall asleep when wild, vibrant strings and woodwinds were sending joyful, mischievous invitations whirling up through the floorboards of her room? Everyone else was so happy downstairs: her parents the smiling, circulating hosts, beloved by everyone around them, and even her uncle for once smiling, a favored guest…
Her fingers clenched the delicate envelope, crumpling it against her palm. “I don’t have time for that sort of frivolity this year. You know I have real work and a kingdom to defend.”
“Unfortunately, your First Minister… well.” Morlokk coughed into one big fist. “I believe she may have anticipated your response.” Reaching into the pocket of his silk waistcoat with his free hand, he removed a small, sealed note covered in Mirjana’s all-too-familiar script and handed it to her between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. “She instructed me to give this to you if you refused to accept any of these invitations.”
Gritting her teeth, Saskia accepted the unwanted offering. This note, at least, didn’t smell of anything but the plain black ink that Mirjana always used… but that was the only comfort she could take as she ripped open the seal.
There was no greeting at the top of the terse note, only a warning and an ultimatum:
The high priest and nobles will all rebel if the Queen of Kitvaria doesn’t publicly honor the gods and her highest nobility at this traditional time of year. Choose which noble house to honor by accepting their invitation or follow in your own parents’ footsteps and announce that you’ll host a celebration in the capital, as every one of your ancestors did.
Now .
Darkness take the gods and everybody else, too. Squeezing her eyes together, Saskia took a long, steadying breath.
She had only attended one royal Winter’s Turning celebration since her parents’ murder, but she would never forget the avid gazes of the gathered priests and invited nobles as she’d stood against her will behind her uncle, flanked by guards on either side. Yaroslav had held the crown for almost two years by then; everyone had heard his gloating explanations, spread far and wide by journalists and gossips alike. He had had to step in to save the kingdom from the taint of her parents’ “failed” rule: a taint that, according to her loving uncle, had come to toxic fruition in her blood.
Looking back, she supposed he must have felt some pressure to produce her in public and prove that she was still alive; even the most conservative and anti-magic of Kitvaria’s nobles might well have been moved to protest the idea of executing a child.
But not one of them had stepped forward at that celebration to show the slightest sympathy for her. Only their gazes had clung to her like sticky sugar-water, hungrily awaiting any thrilling displays of the dangerous, uncontrollable magic that had corrupted her from birth—a sad result, her uncle claimed, of all the time her mother had imprudently spent consorting with the nonhuman creatures of their realm in her years of ethnographic work.
Who knew what concoctions the old queen might have ingested among those creatures, or which scandalous, inhuman rituals she might have participated in while carrying her child? None of the nobles had any means of knowing, that much was true… but they’d all been more than ready to believe the delicious worst.
Nausea rippled through Saskia at the memory. She swallowed hard.
It wasn’t enough. Bile rose inexorably through her chest.
The sound of all those whispering voices in her ears… her mother’s perfume and her uncle’s smile…
Saskia’s head spun as she dropped the note to the table. “I need air!”
Morlokk’s sorrowful sigh sounded behind her, but he didn’t even try to stop her as she fled.
Saskia managed to hold the nausea in check as she thundered up every flight of the narrow, curving staircase, one hand resting against the cold stone wall to keep her balance. At least the exertion helped; by the time she reached the final door, at the very top of the south tower, she was almost too breathless to even feel the stinging bile in her throat.
Her magic turned the lock by instinct before she could reach out with her fingers. Panting, she stumbled out onto the roof of the south tower—and lunged immediately for the battlements.
As she hung over them, she sucked in deep, desperate breaths of the sharp, cold air, her fingers clenched convulsively around the ancient stone. When she finally felt safe enough to straighten, she tipped her head back, shutting her eyes against the too-bright sunlight and letting the wind sweep across her face and neck to flay and cleanse her.
Distantly, she was aware of the rush of wings through the air as her crows swirled in a protective cloud around her, summoned by the intensity of her emotions and her magic. She didn’t need to listen to their angry, worried caws to know they were ready to soar into battle by her side… but this time, none of them could help.
For once, she couldn’t fight at all.
Saskia might not have attended a royal Winter’s Turning since she’d fled her uncle’s clutches, but even she knew they were more than simple entertainments; they were, along with Spring’s Ease, the public rituals that led the calendar for the whole kingdom.
She’d agreed to take the crown for the sake of everyone she loved. She wouldn’t fail them now. But she was no longer the child who had innocently believed in the loyalty of her parents’ guests. If she were to walk into that grand ballroom again, with all the same people in attendance, this time wearing the crown upon her head—to feel every gaze turn upon her and know that, even as they bowed or curtseyed, they were all secretly wondering how many of her uncle’s sickening claims about her were true…
“Your Majesty?”
That hadn’t been the voice of a crow. Saskia startled hard, and the flock around her squawked a cacophony of protest at the disruption. At first, she couldn’t make out anything past the shifting black chaos that surrounded her; then she realized that the new arrival was cloaked in black as well.
Darkness take it. The last person she could ever allow to witness any vulnerability on her part was a dark wizard; they were constantly jousting for power and only too ready to dismiss her authority.
She released the battlements as if they’d burned her. “What do you want?”
“Ah… nothing, actually. I only…” He broke off, clearing his throat. “Forgive me for the interruption. I’m afraid my crow—that is, your crow, but it’s spent the last week keeping me company, no doubt on your command—anyway, it was quite insistent that I follow it up here. I assumed that you were summoning me.”
Saskia’s shoulders sagged with her long sigh. “Not this time.” She swept out her right hand in a slow, gentle half-circle, prompting the crows between them to flap out of the way. With the rest of the flock no longer blocking her view, she could see young Oskar balancing on the dark wizard’s shoulder with his roughly textured black claws wrapped around the thick fabric of—what was his name?—oh, yes, Fabian ’s cloak. “All of the crows were summoned,” she explained wearily. “Oskar must have decided to bring you along as his chosen companion.”
“I… see.” There was a long moment of silence as they regarded each other, for the first time, in the open air. Sunlight glinted off the silver mask, hiding his expression, while his hooded figure cast a long shadow across stone.
Saskia was only too horribly aware of her own disordered appearance. The purple kerchief she’d worn over her hair in the laboratory had managed to stay—just barely—on her head, but at least half of her hair seemed to have come loose from the topknot underneath. Now it lay in careless, untidy hanks across the shoulders and back of her plainest gown. Thank the gods, she’d at least remembered to remove her stained apron before she’d fled the laboratory and her responsibilities.
She could almost hear Mirjana’s voice in her ears: “ In the civilized world, it’s essential to present a polished and fashionable appearance at all times…”
“ Does he think of me as his companion?” Those weren’t words she’d expected to hear from a dark wizard, but they broke through Saskia’s bitter memories like a cool wind sweeping through them. Fabian had tilted his hooded head to peer at the crow still perched on his shoulder, and his voice was full of doubt.
Saskia snorted a laugh. “Why else would he have left the flock behind to hang on your sleeve for the past week?”
“But…” He raised his left hand towards his occupied shoulder, and Oskar let out an impatient grunt, leaning forward for the petting that was clearly his due. “You really didn’t ask him to stay with me?”
“Why would I?” Baffled but reluctantly charmed, she watched Oskar nuzzle demandingly against Fabian’s bare hand… which appeared to be smeared with large splotches of ink. “Have you been suffering from those ink spills you were worried about? I thought your special pen would have arrived by now.”
“Oh, it did.” The wizard’s fingers curled against Oskar’s beak as his voice lowered in unmistakable embarrassment. “It’s only… a bit messy to fill. That is, it was the first time. But it will soon become easier! This is a different model than I had tried before.”
At the price that Morlokk had reported paying for that fountain pen, it was a wonder Fabian had ever had the chance to try other models with his previous employers. Still, Saskia found her lips curving in amusement as she shook her head at him. “Is my entire library of magic covered in puddles of ink now?”
“Absolutely not!” His shoulders stiffened to attention. “Would you care to come and see what I’ve done so far?”
A refusal rose immediately in Saskia’s throat.
As she’d told Morlokk, she had work to do. More than that: she had an excruciatingly painful letter to write, acquiescing to her First Minister’s demand. No matter what Mirjana had said in that note, they both knew that Saskia had no idea how to choose among noble houses in order to accept one of their invitations. No, she would have to give in to necessity and tradition and host her own event as queen…
But not in the grand ballroom of her parents’ city palace.
Here on the top of her tallest tower, the wind was cool, the air was clear, and she could finally think again. So, she knew exactly what to do—and could allow herself to take a moment to relax before she outraged everyone by doing it.
“I have a feast to plan,” she told the dark wizard. “We’ll be hosting Winter’s Turning here at Kadaric Castle this year…
“But I’m certain I can come down and visit the library for a few minutes first.”