Chapter 12
W e race up the bank and along the cobbled road. I push myself so hard I’m barely breathing, and sweat rolls down my temples. Akilah can’t keep up. A pebble is stuck on the sole of my boot and every pounding step jars.
I splash through a dirty puddle and skid through our gates.
“Caelus!” The call comes from Mother, who races out from her chambers.
My stomach squeezes. “Take me to Lucetta.”
At a glance I can see Lucetta’s leg has been crushed. Blood has soaked through the crude attempt at bandaging. I fly over the small chamber and drop to her side, knees hitting the wood floor with a thud. Her big blue eyes are full of fear as they find mine and hold tightly. She whimpers. Her tiny hand reaches for me as she stumbles over my name.
“I’m going to put you to sleep first, okay?” I say, my voice cracking. “When you wake up, you’ll be better.”
Glowing purple shimmers gather, sending her quickly into a deep, pain-free slumber.
“Your brother’s roof collapsed in the earthshake,” my mother whispers. “She got trapped under a beam.”
“I need cradlebloom in a tea, with borage. Please.”
She darts out. Only a minute later, the door squeals open again. I turn, but it’s not my mother who’s returned.
My father’s gaze flitters from me to Lucetta as he steps into the room, his face all tight lines. I feel a burning anger expand in my chest and grit it back, teeth grinding together. I’d dreamed of his forgiveness, but now... now I don’t want it.
Father sees my look and flinches, his hands curled at his sides. “Where would I have found the funds for a vitalian?”
My throat tightens with frustration. “You could have healed her yourself—”
“The luminist heard about her injury. You know he has his eyes on us.”
“She’s three years old .” My eyes sting and I steady myself against the wall. “Your own granddaughter!”
Her sweet laugh echoes in my mind—bright, innocent. Now, she lies broken, whimpering. A searing ache ripples up my throat. “How can you stand there and watch this.”
I turn back to Lucetta, but Father grabs me by the shoulder and hauls me to my feet. “You think this doesn’t make my heart ache too?”
“If she’s not healed, she’ll have a permanent limp. She could die of the infection.”
“We’d need proof we used official magic.”
I want to scream in his face that I don’t care about official or not. Why should Lucetta have to suffer? But the roar inside me breaks into a hiccup. Why do we have to make these choices? Why am I constantly on the run, when all I want is to help?
His grip on my shoulder tightens, and his face crumples for a moment before he masks it with pinched lips. “It cuts me too. Watching her struggle. Hearing her cry.” His throat juts on a hard swallow and I glimpse a man trapped under the weight of right and wrong, his spirit and his resolve crushed as badly as Lucetta’s leg. “I know I’ve failed her.”
My chest heaves as I glare at him, my voice shaky. “I don’t care what we have to give up. She needs help. Get her a vitalian.”
Father closes his eyes and releases me. “With what funds, Cael? We have to return a dowry.” Father rubs his forehead.
A wave of nausea rises up my throat.
This is my fault.
I’ve always been rebellious. Always gone against the law to chase after my outrageous dreams; gone against my family to chase after my own heart.
I yank at the pouch Silvius gave me. It’s supposed to feel freeing, handing this over—supposed to make Father and myself breathe easier again. But I only feel guilt. “I have it.”
Father’s voice is heavy with relief, but there’s also disappointment in his eyes—something that may never disappear between us. “Go, then. Get a vitalian. And tomorrow, return the dowry to Megaera’s family.”
* * *
I’m happy to see Lucetta skipping again, but it doesn’t stop the guilt from twisting in my gut as I struggle into my nicest clothes the next morning. It takes Akilah three trips to my courtyard to drag me and the Temenos dowry to the carriage.
The fourth time, hand balled in the back of my cloak, the tie strangling my throat, she chides, “Well it’s nice to know something scares you.”
I haul in a breath and I’m about to mount the step when the sound of my name drifts over from where the aklos are working. “I have a delivery for Caelus Amuletos.”
Another one? I already woke to bushels of rare iqi husk sent by Silvius.
“Here,” I call, and a gold-sashed aklo weaves through the early morning activity in the courtyard to stand before me.
“Can I see some form of identification? I’m instructed to hand this over personally.”
I show him our family badge, my name carved into the front, and he places a small box in my hand. “My master says to use this well.”
On the gravel-bumpy ride to the Temenos manor, I refuse to open the box.
“But aren’t you curious, Cael?”
“I am, but until I’ve given this back”—I lift the purse containing Megaera’s hundred-weight dowry—“I can’t find joy in anything.”
* * *
There are two types of red seen in the city. The colour of blood just before it dries—the colour of redcloaks. And the colour of fresh slaughter—the favourite of Megaera, my former intended. Today it’s painted on her lips, twirling in her skirts, knotted into her hair. With a tight jaw, she allows me inside, orders her aklas and mine to stay and, with an even tighter look at the purse, leads me to the back courtyard.
I clear my throat, at which she crosses her arms. “You came yourself. I was beginning to think you a complete coward.”
She takes the purse and throws it aside, coins and jewels spilling out over the ground.
Even without love, she wanted marriage. Everyone wanted it but me.
I close my eyes to images of her in her golden wedding attire, the panic in her eyes as I fled. “I’m sorry, Megaera.”
There’s a glint in her eye that says my apology isn’t enough. Yet she looks away, to the stone walls enclosing her beautifully kept manor. There’s a resilience in her expression, like she’s familiar with disappointment.
“You can have anyone,” I murmur.
Her eyes narrow for a moment, then she lets out a raw laugh. “I chose you . You were... promising. You needed money, and I had it.”
“I can’t let that be a reason for us to end up miserable. Despising one another.”
She steps forward, prodding her own chest. “ I would not have been miserable. I would have been grateful .”
I frown, not understanding.
“You have ambition! And ability.” Her voice is quiet, brittle. “I tested you.”
“You what?”
Images flash in my mind, of Megaera’s visit with her injured rabbit. I recall the trembling creature in my hands, its strained breaths and matted fur, its pained red eyes. My stomach roils. She’d hurt her pet. As a test ?
“I needed to know.”
I rock back on my heels with a repulsed, anguished whisper, “You—”
“For my father!” Her eyes darken with something heavy and desperate. “He always said magic should belong to those who can wield it, not just pure linea. He even wanted non-linea to be taught—given crude skills, allowed to heal in those ways. He called it fairness.”
Her voice wavers and breaks but she still holds her head high, pinning me with her gaze. “The last king called it treason. He forced my father to drink life-shortening tea. Every year since, his health has plummeted. No official vitalian dares treat him.”
My breath falters.
She continues, “We petitioned for pardon last year, hoping his son would be more benevolent. But no.”
She tried to marry me to save her father. The desperate act of a loving daughter.
“I’d have let you practice. I’d have given your family everything they needed while you searched for a way to stop that poison.”
“I can try anyway, Megaera,” I say earnestly.
Her hands ball in her skirts. “How can you help without the safety of our name?” Her voice hardens, but her eyes gleam with tears, and I ache at her cutting words. “They’ll come for you, and you’ll be of no use to me.”
In her shoes, to save someone—Akilah, or little Lucetta, even Father... wouldn’t I go to the ends of the world? Even if it meant binding myself to someone I don’t—
“Marriage...” I shake my head. “That isn’t something I can offer you.”
A frail “Megaera” followed by hacking coughs turns her towards the house with a hard “See yourself out.”
I grind my forehead against the wall of the carriage as it rumbles away from the Temenos gates. When I pass through the icy shadow of the grand luminarium that presides over the capital and the royal city, I bang my forehead in lieu of a bow.
I’m selfish. When it comes down to it, I choose what’s best for me no matter the cost. Every luminist out there would see right through my insistence I want only to save lives. They’d shake their heads, read warnings from the tome of the arcane sovereign, recite the codex of elemental blessings. And eventually, give up. A hopeless case. He won’t even choose his family.
I laugh, but it’s hollow, and the sound dies behind my pinched lips when Akilah hands me the gift box.
A rectangular wooden badge lies inside. It’s the same size as my identification sigil, and far more powerful. Riverpearl edging gleams under the faint light in the carriage, framing the emblem of the royal house. This is a soldad. A badge of dedication to the magical arts. Only the most promising linea carry these—access to libraries, to examinations, to learning .
I turn the badge to a grid of six empty squares. Three stamped squares gives one the right to call oneself a vitalian.
“Is this...?” Akilah whispers, stroking the edge reverently with her fingertip.
I clutch it shakily. If I use this to enter the examinations, I could get those three stamps.
Brandish a stamped soldad, and no one will question my background. I’d be...
I’d be a real vitalian.
The soldad feels heavier than its size should allow, the riverpearl edging cool against my palm. This is a path—to knowledge, to power. To helping the helpless.
But it’s also a potential path to ruin, like the tithiscar.
If someone who knows I’m not linea, not full-blooded and legally entitled, catches me with this...
My gaze shifts back to the glowing dome where it straddles the royal city, protecting the men beyond it who’ve made these laws.
I clench my teeth. What if I can use this to make a difference? Even if it’s a small difference. Isn’t that worth the risk?
* * *
The Pavilion Library is a ring of beautiful buildings around a vast, pavilion-dotted garden. Rooms upon rooms filled with books, filled with spells. If I keep the soldad, I’ll be allowed to stay here—not just to gaze at this sea of knowledge, but to dive in, to fish out exactly what I want. Maybe somewhere in here there’s the knowledge I would need to help Megaera’s father.
I grip the pearl-rimmed wood and turn to the white-bearded skriniaris who let us in. A white cat trots at his side, like a matching accessory.
The skriniaris eyes me up and down, then takes the soldad from my pinched, shaking fingers.
He inspects it carefully and offers it back. “I was expecting you.”
I blink. Had Silvius pulled more strings than the badge? Had he gone to lengths to make sure even a skriniaris would know I’d come?
“He said any risk is worth honing your skills,” the skriniaris says.
“You know him? Silvius?”
A chuckle. “Is that the name he gave you?”
I sink onto my heels and scrub my frowning face. I see the clearing in the royal woods, the scattered bodies of stamped redcloaks...
“He’s been many things. A tailor, a jeweller, a merchant. Always changing his name, always a new mask. Of course, men like him don’t survive without secrets.”
I meet his eye but he shakes his head, resolute. I won’t get those secrets from him.
I stare at the edge of riverpearl. Who exactly is the person who gifted me my heart’s desire?
The skriniaris smiles and pushes the soldad back into my hand. “I’m Evander, the cat is Taffy. You must be Master Amuletos.”
“Caelus. Cael.” I stare at all the potential the wooden badge holds. “Getting caught with this might bring trouble.”
“Then don’t get caught.”
Akilah whispers beside me, “That’s usually your line.”
Skriniaris Evander smiles and I slowly smile too. “Will it get me into Thinking Hall?” I ask.
Scholars from every region of the kingdom go there to share their thoughts on art and beauty and magic. Isn’t the last day of the week the day they recite newly penned poetry? Share their visions of an ideal kingdom?
He reads my determined expression and laughs. “You can head there right now.”
On a pent breath, I leave Akilah to some much-deserved time to herself, and head off.