Chapter 23 Kasira #2
Morvir straightened with the air of one seeking to wrest control of the conversation. “If I may, Your Majesty, I had an appointment with you over an hour ago. I have urgent business to discuss with the crown.” His eyes flicked contemptuously toward Kasira and Allaster.
“You are here for the week, are you not, Lord Morvir?” Queen Sarren waved a hand. “We will find another time to talk. Lord Allaster, Lady Eirlana, if you would follow me.”
Kasira hesitated. She wanted to tail Morvir and ensure he wasn’t about to pen a letter about the imposter wearing a Library uniform, but it would look suspicious if she didn’t join Allaster and the Queen.
Reluctantly, she followed them out of the garden and into a serene sitting room of green marble with round, silken furniture surrounding a low table.
A red kyda crystal the size of her fist sat at the center of the table, radiating a pleasant warmth and heating the room with an efficiency that belied its size and elucidated its demand.
Kasira had never seen them used in person until now—Kalthos rarely imported anything with a function too near to magic—but her studies had taught her about the wide variety of crystals and their various applications, from temperature control to mood influencers.
Queen Sarren sank tiredly into one of the round chairs, somehow managing to do so with the utmost poise, and gestured to the other seats.
Allaster took one and Kasira the other; she was all too glad to give her tired muscles a place to rest. The seat shifted as she sat, molding to her frame in a way that left her off-balance until it settled.
The Queen smiled at her surprise. “They are filled with coffee beans. We had such a surplus one year, we encouraged new uses. It makes for a comfortable seat, wouldn’t you say?”
Kasira prodded the chair. “I would.”
Ryn swept about the room, preparing cups of a steaming drink she handed each of them. The mugs were ceramic and without handles, and the drink smelled dark and bitter.
“Coffee from the royal fields,” Queen Sarren explained as Kasira took a tentative sip. The bitterness of the drink puckered her mouth unpleasantly, but she withheld her displeasure. Allaster, meanwhile, took two large gulps in a row, seeming to savor the bitterness.
Like to like, I suppose, she thought and sat her drink in her lap as if to let it cool.
“What is it you wished to speak about, Your Majesty?” Allaster asked after he’d drained nearly half his cup.
His leg had started bouncing, and Kasira eyed the coffee warily.
They drank mostly tea in Kalthos, and upon occasion she’d had a cup of it on an empty stomach and been left jittery.
She’d heard coffee was much, much stronger.
The Queen’s long fingers curled about their mug, each one heavy with rings of marble and crystal.
The kyda crystals were gorgeous, each one of a different shade.
Apricot and rose, cerulean and sage. They each had an iridescent sheen to them when they caught the sunlight, making them glitter like gems.
“While I have no direct proof on the matter,” they began, “I am almost certain Lord Morvir is here to determine where Ayador would stand should a war break out between Kalthos and the Library.”
The subtle changes in Allaster’s posture would have been lost on her weeks ago, but now Kasira saw the way he sat a little straighter and the muscles in his jaw tightened.
“And?” he asked.
Queen Sarren eyed him discerningly. “And it is not this queendom’s practice to immerse itself in foreign wars.
We have long been a state of neutrality, a custom we wish to continue.
We will not aid Kalthos, but I hope you can understand that, despite your help here today, nor can I pledge my people to the Library. ”
“We just saved your life,” Kasira said incredulously. “This is how you repay us?”
The Queen raised their brow, and Allaster hissed warningly, “We are not in the habit of expecting reciprocation for doing our job.”
Kasira scowled back at him, and Allaster’s hackles rose further. “Perhaps you’d like to take a walk in the garden?” he ground out as diplomatically as he could. “Cool down from the stress of handling the Syovar.”
She glowered at him but set aside her coffee and swept from the room, more than happy to let him think she was still worked up from the fight.
He would have been suspicious if she had refused to accompany them or asked to leave, which meant she’d had to make him send her away, something that required little effort on her part.
Her body still felt tired and wrung out, but she had strength enough to return to the garden in search of Morvir, only to find it empty. How much of the palace could she search before Allaster found her absence strange?
She slowed beside the spot where the Syovar had been, the white marble singed.
Though Syovars carried fire in their bellies, they couldn’t breathe it the way their cousins, the northern dragons, could.
Still, as she knelt beside a scorch mark and ran her finger along the marble, the intensity of the leftover heat made her shiver.
Maybe it was her exhaustion, or perhaps her frustration distracting her, but she didn’t hear the boots behind her until it was too late.
A cloth fell over her head as her hands were wrenched painfully behind her, forcing her to drop the sword she’d managed to draw. She kicked back at her attacker, but they shifted aside, shoving her to her knees.
“Bind her hands tightly,” said Lord Morvir’s voice. “She’s ridden with magic.”
“Allas—” Her shout was cut off by a blow to the head. Dizziness overtook her, and she swayed in the grip of the person holding her. Another took her by the legs, and they hefted her from the ground. The world turned, nausea rising in her stomach as she swung precariously in their grip.
“It’s clear,” called a nervous voice, and she tried to focus on what that meant.
Morvir and another person holding her, a third scouting ahead.
Three, she could do. Anymore and—they released her, and she hit the ground hard.
She rolled to get her feet under her, but a boot found her stomach, winding her.
A moment of distant muttered curses, and a door slammed.
Then the hood was ripped from her head, taking a few strands of hair with it.
She snarled up at Morvir’s smug face, her sword now hanging at his hip.
At his back stood an even larger man. The third one was nowhere in sight, likely guarding the door from the hall.
She pushed herself up and back against a wall, the faint silver light from a balestone revealing a large storage room full of crates of fertilizer and shelves of gardening tools.
She spotted a sharp-tipped spade propped up on the wall behind Morvir, but there was no way she could reach it before he stopped her.
Something very close to panic surged high and tight in her chest, her awareness of the walls and the restriction of her hands only worsening it.
“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “I am Assistant Librarian Eirlana Corynth. You can’t just—”
Morvir laughed, the sound rough and grating. “I know Lady Eirlana, you thieving bitch. You are not her.”
Dread, cold and thick as oil, pooled in her stomach. She had thought he’d recognized her as Kasira, but it was Eirlana he knew. She had assumed the two wouldn’t be familiar with each other, but they must have crossed paths at some point.
“What have you done with the real Lady Eirlana?” Morvir snarled.
“Nothing,” she replied. “You’re mistaken.”
He backhanded her across the cheek. Her already fuzzy brain grew woollier, and she shook her head, but that only made it throb. She began to sink inward, the reflex to detach from her body too deeply ingrained. She was bound, trapped, each breath thinner than the last.
“If you lie to me again, I will start taking fingers.” The nobleman crouched before her and withdrew a blade from his belt. “Who are you, and what have you done with Lady Eirlana?”
Kasira forced herself to breathe, to focus on that blade. She had been in some pretty bad spots before, but few of them measured up to this. She was restrained, Allaster didn’t know she was in trouble, and Morvir was looking for a reason to hurt her. She could see it in the gleam of his eyes.
She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her blurry vision, then reached for the stream of magic, but it felt as shaky and unclear as the world around her.
Her body screamed in protest, and Lord Morvir, seeming to realize she was trying something, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her so hard her teeth cracked together.
“If you so much as try magic, I will gut you here and now,” he snarled.
The door opened a fraction, and Kasira’s heart leapt, but it was only the scout poking his head in to whisper, “They’re still talking.” He then retreated back into the hall.
Kasira seized the opportunity. “Allaster will come looking for me. We’re connected. He can find me anywhere.”
Morvir’s lips split into a grin. “And what will he think of an imposter?”
The truth was, she didn’t know what Allaster would do if he discovered she was a fraud.
Mages caught breaking the Library’s laws were forced to return their magic and sent to their home nations for punishment.
If he discovered her farce and banished her to Kalthos, Vera would send her straight back to Belvar.
She would not go back to a cell.
Perhaps, for once, the truth would save her. It was a risky move, but the only one she had left. “I work for Ambassador Vera,” she said, but no sooner were the words out of her mouth than she knew they were a mistake.