Chapter 31
Mollandra
Year Five
In the cold light of a rainy afternoon, stripped of the magic that he had hidden himself within, Father looked far more human than Mollandra remembered ever having seen him. Even so, the wickedness in his black eyes carried the same awful promises that had made the Academy seem a place of refuge.
Perhaps if the royal visitors had not been present to witness the deed, the Kindnesses would have killed the intruder and let the older acolytes practise their necromancy on his corpse.
Under the curious eyes of the king’s brother, Kindness Marta chose to reply to Father’s claim on Mollandra with words rather than a blade.
“Acolytes cannot be taken from the Academy. Their families no longer have any claim on them. It is for this indemnity that a fee is paid.”
“Of course. Of course.” Father executed a mocking bow, one arm extended, one cradled to his chest, the fingers on both hands raking the air as if playing the strings of some oversized, invisible instrument.
“But in the case of this particular girl, no fee was paid to her family, to wit, myself or her beloved mother. And as such she is not an acolyte and can be returned to her rightful home.”
“A fee is always paid.” Somehow Kindness Marta managed to make “always” sound like a threat.
“If some abductor of children took your coin and fled into the night with it, that’s hardly my concern, Kindness.” Father turned to the nobles. “Highnesses, I’m sure you could not countenance such theft within sight of the walls of the kingdom’s second city.”
Prince Cormac, looking rather like a drowned rat stuffed into imperial finery, coughed into his hand and glanced from the dangerously calm face of one Kindness to the next.
At last, his gaze settled on Father’s barely contained insanity.
“Well…” The elder prince hemmed and he hawed and he looked almost grateful when his wife elbowed him impatiently out of the way.
“Of course, the Academy can’t steal children. The child’s parent must be paid!…Or their official guardian.”
“Or owner!” Prince Cormac interjected, pleased with himself for the contribution and puffing up within the wet confines of his embroidered jacket.
“Whoever sold my daughter into this establishment was neither parent, guardian, nor owner.” Father dusted off his damp hands and stepped towards Mollandra, reaching for her with fingers so very like claws.
Kindness Terra’s great sword blocked his path, placed between them so swiftly that if not for the hiss of the air it cut, Mollandra might have thought it had simply appeared there. “We will examine the records.”
Mollandra’s throat, constricted by old fear, had been unable to give voice to a single word until Terra’s blade, as long as she was tall, lay between her father and herself.
“I sold myself. I have the marks here.” She held out her hand, showing the coins she had been working free from the hem of her robe as they talked.
Father’s terrible eyes narrowed. She remembered when he was the beast, chasing the children through the mansion’s corridors, crawling through the attic space, stalking the blindness of the bedrooms. The Academy had killed far more of its charges, but the place had seldom come close to evoking the same fear she had experienced even on the least bad of the days she remembered in the mansion’s darkness.
“The girl can’t sell herself. She doesn’t stop being my daughter just because she has crossed over the threshold of my home and gone out into the world.”
Mollandra locked eyes with Kindness Marta.
“I’ve never seen this man before.” She closed her fist around the money they had given her at the gate five years earlier.
“But this is mine.” She raised the hand.
“And children sell themselves on the streets of Tandra-ah every day. How is that allowed if not this?”
“The father’s claim outranks the child’s.” Princess Scalla kept her face a mask, eyes hard.
Why such a high-placed noble should care about an acolyte’s fate, or the demands of a trespassing parent, Mollandra had no idea, but the timing was far too convenient to be taken as coincidence.
“A parent owns a child. The girl—”
Her husband coughed over her before hemming loudly, determined to stop his wife’s pronouncement without actually making one of his own.
Undaunted, the princess pressed on. “The girl should be given over to him.”
With his bare hand, Father pushed Kindness Terra’s sword aside and came forward unopposed.
Mollandra released her coins into a pocket.
Within the cover of her robe she drew her knife.
The first row of acolytes parted before the man.
All save Sharp, whom he shoved from his path as if she were nothing.
Careless of any threat Mollandra might offer, Father took hold of her, overlong fingers with swollen joints wrapping like cables around the muscles of her lower arm.
Agony shot from that contact, spreading through her veins, running through the marrow of the bones beneath.
The familiar pain almost felled Mollandra, but she kept her feet and managed to drive the fear from her voice as she spoke.
“What are Kindnesses if not oath keepers? I took your payment. We made a bond. Until death.”
Kindness Terra scowled and shifted her grip upon the hilt of her sword. Undu’s eyes glittered dangerously, black stones in the white deadness of her face.
Marta frowned. “Has anyone seen this child in your care? Does she have siblings? Were we to visit your house, would she be known to them and to your neighbours?”
“We…” Father’s eyes flashed angrily in Mollandra’s direction, almost blasting away her resolve in that brief contact. “We are a very private family.”
The younger prince, the handsome, unaccountably familiar Sunder, seemed on the point of saying something, but Kindness Marta cut across him.
“You should have come to us with these claims years ago. The acolyte’s training has progressed too far for her to be released.
She will leave here as a Kindness, or she will never leave. This is our way.”
Mollandra tried to shake herself free, but her father’s grip was an iron band. In her core the dark thing stirred—the blackness that they had put into her. He and Mother had fed it into her, and now it was her only defence against them.
“Let her go.” Terra raised close on two yards of cold steel and cruel edge.
Amazingly, despite the threat of three Kindnesses, Mollandra sensed the tension coiling ever tighter in Father’s body as if he were on the point of springing upon them. The thunder on his face seemed to promise that he would make a fight of it.
A cry of pain escaped Mollandra despite her determination. She felt bones grating in her arm. The knife she had planned to drive into the side of her father’s head suddenly seemed too feeble a weapon to harm such a man.
“I must insist,” blustered the elder prince.
His wife, shading to crimson beneath her rain-washed paints and powders, opened her mouth to utter some more forceful decree.
“How is it that you are here now, in this moment?” Undu’s childlike trill flowed into the dangerous stillness before the princess could speak.
“Why today? How is it that you come here, passing our gates without invitation, on the coattails of the king’s own family, and so many years after this supposed loss?
” She advanced on Father, her small flowing steps making it seem that the great bulk of her simply floated towards him.
“What information led you to suspect that a daughter of yours might be in our care? I find it passing strange.” She halted so close to Father that her breath might be felt on his mouth, and smiled her curious smile, wide yet thin-lipped, the one Mollandra knew she must share with the dead down in the catacombs’ fetor.
Father, more than a king within his own walls, had no reply other than a baring of teeth.
Mollandra jerked her arm and this time won free of his faltering grip.
She stepped back several paces. Trembling fingers traced the line of an old scar on the wrist of her knife hand, now exposed.
Fingertips followed a white arc of indentations that traced the shape of Father’s bite: however bad his bark, the man’s bite was definitely crueller.
“You haven’t heard the last of this.” Father began to retreat towards the closed gates.
And then, as if realizing how weak that sounded, how like the words of some costumed villain treading the creaking boards of a small-town stage, he strode forward once more towards Terra’s great sword and Undu’s smile.
“Enough!” Princess Scalla barked. “Enough.” More softly, acknowledging the limits of her authority. “Kindness Marta, I would count it a personal favour if we could avoid violence in front of my son.”
Prince Sunder gave a lopsided smile at this, meeting Father’s eyes with a boldness that seemed bordering on insanity to Mollandra.
He seemed again on the point of speaking but left it to his father, Prince Cormac, to pass judgement. “If you would show this gentleman out and continue with your fascinating account of the Academy’s progress, I’m sure I can give a good report of today’s visit to my brother.”
Kindness Marta eyed Father with a focused venom that Mollandra had never seen before and hoped never to see again—a look that made her truly believe that here was a woman who had killed and endured her way through ten Academy years as one hundred became three.
She gave a disgusted wave of her hand and nodded to Instructor Akki.
Father followed the instructor to the gates without a backwards glance.
“You sold yourself?” Sharp turned around while the instructors were distracted and the Kindnesses conversing with their guests. For once she actually looked impressed.
By way of answer, Mollandra handed Sharp one of the bronze marks she’d been paid. “And now I’ve bought part of you, Sharp Mahalla.”
Sharp looked at the coin, a dull glint in her narrow palm. “And what can I buy with it?”
“One tenth of a good donkey. Or, from me, anything you want. But if you purchase something I don’t want to give, we will no longer be friends.”
Sharp had two looks, one diamond-hard that she used on almost everyone, and a rarely seen soft look that she used in her seductions and almost never at any other time. She used it now.
“That was a foolish thing to give someone like me, Mollandra Plight. You know how I like to spend.”
Mollandra gave a lopsided shrug to go with her lopsided smile.
Sharp used up favours and goodwill with a gambler’s haste.
If she were ever let out of the Academy and given money, she would no doubt burn through that with equal speed.
Even so, Mollandra would trust her to keep this one bronze mark.
She shrugged again and turned away. She held out another of the coins to Tmanga.
“Everyone else I’ve given these to has died. So, better not to take it.”
Behind her, Sharp snorted.
“Bek and Einsa?” Tmanga asked.
Mollandra nodded, her mouth suddenly too dry to speak. She knew Sharp would take the coin the moment there was a hint of danger associated with it. Tmanga, however, was a deep thinker.
“Was that man truly your father?”
“I had another, but I killed him.”
“This one seems dangerous.”
“You have no idea what he is.”
Tmanga took the coin. “You will have to tell us everything so that we can be sure to do things right when we kill this one too.”