CHAPTER EIGHT #3
“Far enough,” he said, a warning in his voice. He tolerated her games, even the ones with bite, but she was dangerously close to drawing blood.
“If not for the reprieve for this contest, the king could call him right now,” Sabina continued, clinking her spoon, “and he’d have no choice but to leave behind everything and everyone until the king is satisfied.” She passed Anya the cup. “It is such a shame.”
“It isn’t,” Anya said, taking the cup. The rest of the table, barely interested in Sabina’s toying, now went quiet.
“Beg pardon?” Sabina said sweetly.
“There is no shame in wanting more from life,” said Anya. “The shame is in denying the means. Hoarding away knowledge.” Her eyes, strikingly earnest, found Sy’s. She looked at him as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time. “Like a dragon.”
The silence was now palpable. Uncouth didn’t cover it. The others did not know what to make of this strange creature who dressed like a hermit, spoke like a farmer, and took her tea like a lady.
Truthfully, Sy did not either. Just when he thought he did, she surprised him all over again.
Terrence’s trumpet of a voice jerked his attention away. “What are you suggesting? Would you have just anyone running loose with our power?” He put his elbows on the table along with his invaluable input and laughed incredulously. “Why, it would be complete anarchy.”
Anya shrugged. “You have the means, but you don’t all run about murdering each other, do you? Is it only fear of punishment that keeps you from becoming a rampaging killer?”
“Of course not,” smirked Terrence. At the ensuing silence, he looked around the table. “I don’t need to say it, do I?”
“Yes,” said Sy suddenly, clutching his spoon, “I think you do.”
“It’s our superior breeding, of course. The lower orders are more prone to violence and criminality. It’s all in the genes.” He lifted his cup. “Even a cut-rate education would teach you that.”
“Terrence,” David chided, tossing an embarrassed glimpse at Anya. “Please.”
Anya nodded. “No, he’s right – inherited wealth bestows many fine qualities.” She listed them on her fingers. “Apathy. Arrogance. Avarice. Articulation – no, that wasn’t it. Ah, authoritarianism.”
David sighed, while Claude sputtered. Bertrand attempted to cover his laugh by scraping his fork against his plate.
“Anyway, even if I had the money, I wouldn’t go to the trouble of learning. Most wouldn’t. You’d still be quite special.” She paused and turned her head in mock sincerity. “Though, more would who couldn’t before, and perhaps they’d be better than even you.”
Bertrand didn’t bother suppressing this laugh, drawing a menacing frown from Terrence.
“Degen,” Sabina said suddenly into the rim of her teacup. “I remember now. Not of those Degens.”
“What Degens?” Claude prodded. Anya’s fingers curled tightly around her cup.
“We should really be discussing the hunt, shouldn’t we?” Sy put in, picking up his own cup. Sabina had not sweetened his tea for him, though she knew he took it; he added a lump of sugar himself.
But it was Count Aquila who answered. “The Degens. Held a barony. Old money, the last of their line. Society darlings, until they mysteriously vanished one summer. They and their young daughter were presumed dead.”
Sy swallowed his tea and turned his gaze back upon Anya. On her hands, now in her lap, curling to fists.
Sabina supplied the denouement. “Their estate had no one to claim it, so King Edgard allocated it to his favorite cousin. Duchess Abigail Skeylor. Sylas’s favorite client.” He smiled tightly at the jab. “No one ever knew what happened to them. It’s been twenty years.”
“Then allow me to finish the story: they were killed.” No longer a fish; an eagle, poised to strike.
Her voice was clear and sharp, like it had been when she’d tried persuading Sy away from the hunt.
“We were crossing the Wryneck at Fledgling Tor to spend the summer in our house in the country. Robbers attacked our carriage. They killed the driver and my father. My mother and I were chased into the Lichtenwald. The Lichtenwald finished her off.”
Claude broke the heavy silence. “By…magic?”
“Starvation.” Her hawkish gaze turned on Claude, sending his own, abashed, to his plate.
“Perhaps grief. What little food we found, she gave to me. You are right to fear the magic. There are spirits here, forces beyond your comprehension. But they aren’t the only thing that will kill you. Cold, hunger. Thirst.”
She raised her own cup to her lips, and by the look Sabina and Claude exchanged, the itch Sy had been ignoring flared red as a flame.
“Don’t drink that,” he said, but it was too late.
Anya gasped, dropping her cup, staining the tablecloth.
Sy knew the spell; a favorite of Sabina’s, a stupid prank meant to turn her tongue black as ink.
But something had gone wrong, horribly wrong.
With a small whimper, Anya clamped a hand over her mouth.
Sy put a hand on her arm, then grabbed her by the chin, reaching for his bag as he examined her, praying her tongue was not rotting and ready to fall out.
But she would not open her mouth and flinched from his touch.
Sy turned on Sabina, ready to spit. “What did you do?”
Sabina’s eyes were wide in alarm. “No, I didn’t – I penned it perfectly–”
Anya jerked away from Sy, and from the table.
“You wrote it under the table, didn’t you?” David accused, on his feet at Anya’s distress. “You misspelled it, Sabina. That was incredibly stupid.”
Sabina started to protest but, chastened by David’s scowl, put her hands in her lap. She turned, penitent, to Anya. “It’s only a small spell, duck. A joke. I can undo it quick enough.”
Anya examined all of them, her eyes wide in disbelief and fear – an unutterable fear. He recalled her tales of strange magic, the attack of pain she’d had in his apartment.
The way, when she thought he wasn’t looking, she tested to see if leaves would stick to her hand. The way they did.
She was haunted by far more than Sabina’s failed spell.
“You, all of you.” Her voice was muffled by her hand, her words slurred by whatever was happening to her mouth. “You think to play, but you have no idea what you’re playing with.” Anya stormed from the gathering, her braid swinging behind her as she vanished into the trees.
Throwing his napkin on the table and grabbing his kit, Sy hurried after her. Sabina called his name. Impatiently, he faced her.
“I honestly thought–” She broke off, hoping for him to save her. He didn’t. “Look at her. No one who looks and acts like that could possibly – it’s such an outlandish story. I thought she was deceiving you, Sylas, for the prize money.”
“We all thought she was,” said Terrence.
“We played pranks like that constantly at Sangfeder,” Claude put in. “She’ll be alright.”
Sy laughed in disbelief. “I’m not sure an apprentice’s pranks are the defense you think they are.”
“And it was cruel and stupid then, too,” added David. “When we were granted our licenses, we all swore oaths not to use our magic that way. If we were in the city, you could have your hand crushed, Sabina.”
Sabina raised her hands helplessly. “It’s only our way of saying hello. Welcoming her to the fold, right?” she asked the table, and most of them nodded. Not David. Bertrand, too, kept his head still, his gaze pivoted to where Anya had disappeared.
Sabina clasped her hands, penitent. “Only bring her back, Sylas, and I’ll grovel at her feet.”
Snickers; Claude hid his behind a hand.
As disgusted with himself for letting it happen as he was with them for doing it, Sy left to find Anya.