The Spy's Twisted Magic
Chapter One
Taliesin Ddraennen, who was currently calling himself Tally Barberry, was waiting for the first blooms on the roses he was growing from carefully selected seeds.
The bud of one excited him when he made his daily inspection—it showed promise of a true blue.
Only when the bud opened, though, would he know whether that promise would be fulfilled, with petals blue enough to meet Lady Baradine’s vision for her garden.
None of the others with buds looked hopeful, though one was close to black, which would also be interesting and possibly useful.
Taz wished his magic gift was more reliable.
He had made a song out of his hopes and wishes, and used the music as a vehicle to pour his power into the seeds before planting.
He had continued to sing to the tray of seedlings every day since, sometimes with and sometimes without his telyn.
The singing, especially when accompanied by the lap harp, made his spells more certain.
But even with the harp, his mage gift had a weird habit of twisting his intentions and giving him something that met the strict wording of his songs, but not what he had meant.
He would not trust the bud until he saw the full flower.
It might be blue enough for the garden the lady catalyst was planning, or it might not. He would have to see.
The lady catalyst was married to England’s dragon lord, who had come into his power a year ago, and had been made the Marquess of Baradine, so strictly speaking, Taz worked for Lord Baradine, but the lady was the one who paid attention to the garden.
The manor where the Baradines lived had a walled garden known as the Long Walk, which connected the main house to the tower the dragon lord had taken for his own.
It had been much neglected while the manor sat empty, as had the rest of the gardens, and the lady catalyst planned to restore them all into, as she put it, “a feast for the senses”.
For the Long Walk, she was taking the colors of the rainbow as her theme, each stripe of color subtly changing to blend into the next. Since she wanted roses in each of the seven segments, that meant a splendid variety of roses.
Red, yellow, orange, and violet were easy enough.
He would have a full range of shades to choose from.
He had fewer options when it came to indigo and green.
He could manage the transition shades from blue to indigo, and from green to yellow, even.
But not from blue to green, and not a true shade of blue.
Yet. He was determined to succeed, as a gift to the lady who had been so kind to him, and whom he was betraying by his purpose here, let alone by every report he sent back to his masters.
He continued down through the greenhouse, checking moisture and leaf health, removing a weed here, tying up a vine there, singing a simple wellbeing charm, which should be safe enough.
His coconspirator was meant to be meeting him today. She would come to the rose garden as close to two o’clock as she could manage, and it must have been at least ten minutes since Taz had heard the stable clock chime the half hour.
She would be wearing a knot of yellow ribbon to identify herself to him.
He had a knot of the same pinned inside his coat to show her once he saw her.
She must be working inside the manor, for his spymaster and mentor had told him that the plan called for him, the gardener with free access to anywhere outside, to partner with someone who could move about freely inside.
Apart from that, he knew nothing about her. Not her age, not her appearance, not her status. And not her motivations. Was she a friend to Wales, and so, a true partner? Or an enemy of England and Scotland? The heavens knew the occupiers of his country had plenty of those.
He wouldn’t find out by procrastinating here, and there was always useful work to be done in the rose garden, which was why he had suggested it.
He picked up his basket of tools and headed along one path after another until he could pass through the gate and step down into the shallow bowl where roses of many colors and a variety of growth habits marched in ranks down the paths, sprawled over arches and pergolas, and scrambled up the brick walls that sheltered the garden.
This early in the season, there were only a few dead heads, but enough to keep him busy trimming as he moved along one of the paths and then another.
From the other side of the manor, he heard the distant sound of the stable clock chiming the hour—first a peal of bells to announce that the minute hand had once more completed its circuit, and then two chimes—bong, bong—one after the other.
It was two o’clock, so where was the woman with the yellow ribbon?
But before the last echo of the last note had quite faded away, someone entered the rose garden.
Taz started toward her, then stopped, confused.
This was no servant. She was dressed like a lady, in a pale gown made of some light fabric that swirled around her knees as she walked.
The broad hat on her head shaded her face, but the way it was crowned with a wealth of ribbons and flowers added to the impression that here came quality.
And yet, pinned to her chest, bright against the pale cloth, was a knot of yellow ribbon.
*
Persephone Thornton entered the rose garden certain that, at any moment, her fearsome cousin, Lord Baradine, would leap out and accuse her of treachery. He was a dragon lord, and who knew what he was capable of doing?
The man who had sent her to this meeting had assured her that no one could read her mind, not even a dragon lord. Just to be certain, he had helped her cast a spell to prevent even the most innocent of eavesdropping on her thoughts and emotions.
She would be safe enough, though she could not see the man who was supposed to be waiting for her. The only other person in sight was a gardener, who was busily doing something with the roses.
Sephie hoped he would go away soon so the Welsh spy could approach her. She did not want any observers. She didn’t want to think about what might happen to her if she was caught working for the Welsh, either, but after all, what had the English ever done for her?
Killed her father, by all accounts. Lord Baradine had admitted as much, except he said it had been an accident. Sephie’s father had scoffed at warnings not to visit the house where the lady catalyst was living, lest her unicorn take offense. But he had ignored the prohibition and paid the price.
The lady catalyst, who was now Lord Baradine’s wife, had told her more. According to her, Sephie’s father had come to persuade her out into the garden, where the Welsh mage, Prince Ymrs ap Draig, would be able to kidnap her.
Instead, the unicorn had killed Father. And Lord Baradine, in his dragon form, had killed the mage.
Except that Prince Ymrs was not dead, and had recovered from his injuries.
So said the man who had come to Granny’s cottage, where she had stayed on after her Granny’s death.
“Your father is dead,” he had said. “The catalyst set her unicorn on him,” he had said.
“Your father chose to support Cymru, you see. Will you support Cymru, too? Will you revenge yourself on the English by working for the land of your grandmother?”
Sephie didn’t think Granny had given Welsh independence any more thought than Sephie had. Possibly the songs Granny was fond of singing were Welsh resistance songs, but Sephie had never learned Cymraeg, the Welsh language, so she could not say one way or the other.
And Granny had lived most of her life in England, having married a lesser son of the Thornton family, one of England’s great families.
“That dog of an Englishman married her for her Cymry blood,” the man from Wales had grumbled.
“For the magic in her blood, he took her from her people. And look what happened? Just the one boy with hardly enough magic to bother with. They should have left her in Cymru.” He paused and then added, “And, of course, there is you, too, Miss Thornton.”
Sephie was used to being an afterthought, if anyone thought about her at all.
Father certainly hadn’t. After Mother died, he had left her in the country with governesses.
Then, when her mage gift awoke, he brought her to London, to the College of Mages, to be tested. And what a disaster that had been.
The bowl she had attempted to levitate had flung itself at the wall and smashed a painting.
The apple she had tried to make twice its size instantly swelled to four times as big and then rotted with a foul stench in moments.
And when she had attempted to transform a block of wood into a carving of a rooster, like the one the examiner showed her, it had transformed, but into a bouquet of pretty ribbons—not even a wooden statue of one, but with actual silk ribbons.
Father had not even seen her following that debacle. He had just sent a letter saying that since her magic was too unreliable to win her entry to an apprenticeship or to one of the colleges of magic, he had asked her Granny to take her.
But there. Perhaps the dangerous work he was doing for the Welsh resistance meant he could not keep her with him, for her own safety. She kept telling herself that, but she wasn’t certain she believed it.
The gardener was approaching along a row of roses, glancing up at her from time to time.
Why was he staring at her? Approaching her?
He couldn’t be her contact, could he? A menial outdoors worker?
But even as she glared at him, he turned back the corner of his coat to show a knot of yellow ribbon, the token by which she was to recognize her partner.
Why was it him?
*
Taz was having trouble believing that his contact was a lady and not one of the indoor servants—and he could guess which lady she was, too.
Even the outdoor servants had heard that Lord Baradine’s cousin had come to stay, and who else could she be?
She certainly wasn’t Lady Baradine, who was the only other lady in residence.
The woman in front of him must be Miss Persephone Thornton, who was not just Lord Baradine’s cousin, but also the Duke of Findlater’s niece. Why would she be working for the Cymry?
But rumor had it that her father had been working for one of the Cymry resistance groups when he died, skewered by a unicorn. If that was true, perhaps the daughter had picked up his work.
On the other hand, if Lord Baradine had somehow found out about the plot to put spies in his house, and had replaced the Cymry agent with his own, then Taz was already in trouble. Proceeding with the meeting couldn’t make things worse, but he would be cautious, nonetheless.
“My lady,” he said in Cymraeg. “I am Tally Barberry. The Hawk sent me.”
Miss Thornton gulped. “Is that Welsh? I do not understand. Are you from the Hawk?”
She was, or was pretending to be, a Cymry agent and she didn’t speak the language?
And called it by the name bestowed by the invaders?
Cautiously, Taz said, “I have been sent to be your contact with the Hawk.” And to be Hebog’s eyes and ears among the outside servants, Hebog being the mage they called after that noble bird.
“Oh.” She had collected her dignity and pride around herself, and was now looking at him as if he were a slug that had had the insolence to crawl on her lettuce. “You are my contact?”
“At your service, Miss Thornton.”
That alarmed her. “How did you know my name?” she demanded.
This was not going to work. He didn’t trust her. She didn’t trust him. Still, he would make an attempt. “Everyone knows the dragon lord’s cousin is staying with him, and the only other lady in the manor is the lady catalyst. I know what she looks like.”
She thought about that for a moment. “You are not entirely stupid, then,” she said. “Where should I bring messages for you to send to the Hawk?”
Taz had given the matter some thought. “See the sundial in the middle of the garden, my lady? It has a hollow base. You shall have to be certain no one else is in the garden, but it is not overlooked by the house or the tower, so if you are alone within these walls, just bend down, reveal the door—I put a glamour on it, and I shall show you how to lift it—collect any messages that wait for you, and place your own.”
She nodded, then set off toward the sundial at a fast pace.
I suppose she wants me to show her now. Snooty Saesnag. Taz hurried after her. He wondered what she would think if he pointed out that he liked her as little as she liked him. This was never going to work.