Chapter Ten #2
The babies were all aware of the battle. Polly, too, admitted that she could sense the magic energies being released. “It is like a scratching at the back of the mind, or a shriek that I cannot quite hear,” she said. “It makes the hair stand up on my neck.”
“For me, it is a fizzing on the tongue,” Delia told her. “Like the bubbles from cider. And at the same time, a shimmer of colors that I can only just see.”
Polly shrugged. “Hard to explain, Miss, isn’t it? I wonder if it feels different to mages.”
Privately, Delia wondered if sensing magic was evidence that Polly had at least some rudiments of a mage-gift. I must remember to ask Mr. Thornton.
The babies were definitely affected by the shifting currents of magic around them.
Sapphire’s eyes were the purple that hinted he was disturbed but had not yet succumbed to his killing rage.
He paced the room as if he were a sentry, and perhaps, in his infant equine mind, he was.
He kept staring out into the garden, and Delia would have joined him if Mr. Thornton had not insisted she stay away from the window.
Mary clung to Polly, curling her snake body around the girl and snuggling against Polly’s chest, one infant hand firmly gripping the bodice of Polly’s gown.
Theodosia, the sphinx, whimpered until Delia picked her up and walked the floor with her, and even then, she shifted restlessly, turning her head to and fro, as if she expected attack but did not know from which direction.
Sister Louise arrived—she said to sit with them, but Delia knew she was the final guard in case all other defenses failed.
Theodosia immediately demanded to be passed to her favorite person in the world, and Delia was free to try to comfort Sapphire.
In the end, she crossed back and forth across the room with him, keeping him company.
This wasn’t like the attack on the canal boat, or even the first assault on the castle. The first had lasted for perhaps fifteen minutes, the second not much longer from when the gardening sister first gave the alarm until the assailants gave up and retreated.
This time, the sounds of fighting and the uncomfortable sense of magical forces being used in battle went on and on. Eventually, the babies wore themselves out with their own fretting. They each accepted a bottle and settled into an uneasy sleep.
“I’m frightened,” Polly admitted, once she had put Mary in her cot.
“We are holding our own,” Sister Louise said with assurance. “If that were not so, our sisters would have fallen back to move you and the babies to the keep.”
The keep where Lord Percival lived! That might be the least safe place in the castle.
Should I tell Sister Louise what Mr. Thornton told me?
She was still hesitating over the question when the door from the cottage’s main central passage opened and then closed.
Lord Percival materialized out of thin air.
“Miss Nettleford, quickly. We are about to lose the castle. My nephew has sent me to take you to safety.”
“Stay back and keep your voice down!” Sister Louise warned, casting a warning glance at Sapphire.
“My good woman,” said Lord Percival in the tone of a man cajoling an elderly and mentally defective lady. “We do not have time for these meaningless social rituals. Rescue is waiting for us in the garden. Come with me.”
Afterward, Delia wondered if she could have changed what happened.
She was momentarily distracted by the memory of Mr. Thornton’s words.
“Do not trust anyone except me, Captain Harewood, Polly, and the nuns.” And, just today, he had said that all the evidence pointed to Lord Percival being the traitor who was working with the Welsh mage.
Could she have avoided Lord Percival’s grab for her hand, and would the consequence have been less severe if she had done so?
Perhaps she could have done nothing, even if she had ducked away, even if she had been focused on Sapphire. The little unicorn went from fast asleep to a rage-filled charge in an instant, and before Delia could blink, Sapphire had hurled himself at Lord Percival, horn first. And connected.
Lord Percival didn’t even have time enough to yell. His face frozen in an unuttered scream, he let go of Delia’s hand and made a sort of grunting noise as he fell backward, his body sliding off Sapphire’s wickedly sharp horn.
Delia backed away even as Sister Louise rushed forward. She couldn’t take her eyes off Lord Percival, and the neat hole in his chest.
An increase in the fizzing sense had her glancing out the window behind her, in time to see the collapse of part of the wall between their garden and the inner courtyard of the castle.
Several of the nuns were out there, throwing mage bolts and physical weapons at the small group of men who were nonetheless forcing their way inside through the gap in the wall.
Even as she watched, one of the men saw her at the window.
He stretched out a hand and gestured, the hand shimmered with purple light, and with a jolt, Delia found herself in the garden, her head and gut assuring her that she had fallen there, and certainly she nearly did fall, for she had been standing on a level floor and her sudden move to an uneven piece of ground outside left her reeling.
The man—the mage, he must be—put out a hand to steady her. So that is what translocation feels like, said some rational distant part of her mind, even as the rest of her mind shrieked in panic and her ears heard the whimper she was not conscious of making.