Chapter 38
Ivy
The fine chain of the concealment charm itches at my neck. I try to scratch surreptitiously, not that anyone can see me anyway.
It’s been chafing against my skin all night.
Now the dawn glow is creeping across our hastily erected stage. The sunlight enriches the deep purples and blues and brilliant yellows and oranges that Casimir recommended. They give the wood an otherworldly quality, like a glow of enlightened energy shining out of the darkness. Looking up at the platform and the various painted structures rising from it, I could almost believe they were formed out of divine energy rather than human effort.
Hopefully our audience will take away the same impression. We need them to see this spectacle as definitive proof of the gods’ approval.
Beyond the ring of daimon, Black Talons members, and guards poised behind me around the platform, the crowd of spectators has swelled. I can’t count them all, but I have to think thousands are craning their necks or sprawling on the grass, waiting for the spectacle of the trials to begin. And more are arriving in droves as the word has spread.
It won’t be long now. All nine of the independent clerics we invited to oversee the different trials have arrived. Shortly after the last bell, the Order of the Wild brought forth a large carriage that supposedly holds three challengers to the throne who’ll compete with Petra.
They haven’t shown their faces yet, though a few different Order members have ducked into the carriage, presumably to discuss strategy.
There’s been no sign of Lothar so far, but his representatives assured us that the former magic advisor intends to be here to ensure every step of the trials is carried out “fairly.” By which I’d imagine he means, “in some way that’ll let us win.”
If he tries anything too obvious, there are thousands of witnesses to observe his villainy. But we have to stay on the alert for more subtle tricks.
I don’t expect him to back down easily.
Tinom has set himself up as a sort of master of ceremonies, which suits me just fine. I can’t even show my face, let alone run the most important event that’s happened in Silana in decades. He eases down from the stage at a summons and goes to speak with a couple of Order representatives within a careful cluster of protective gang members.
A group of about a dozen riders catches my eye from the north, riding toward us at a canter. I wouldn’t think much of the new arrivals, but it’s unusual to see so many together on horseback.
I slip around the stage for a closer look, and a smile springs to my lips. The warming light catches off Voleska’s sandy blond hair, swinging with her steed’s strides in its usual ponytail.
We sent a message to Pima to let her and Emor know the trials were impending, but we hadn’t known if either of them would make the trip in time.
The riders approach at the back of the platform by the spread of carts and wagons. A few of the people who came with us from Pima break from their ranks to greet Voleska and their colleagues, and Stavros and Casimir head over as well.
I slip between the carts to follow them, getting enough shelter to remove my charm.
When I step forward to meet Voleska and her gaze meets mine, I can’t help hesitating. Something flickers through her expression in her initial pause, and it occurs to me that we never discussed the source of my magic, even though I assume she’s caught wind of the real source and extent of my power by now.
Lothar has spread his tales about my murderous ways far and wide. Maybe she isn’t enthusiastic about counting me as an ally any longer.
But the pause is only the space of a heartbeat. Then Voleska marches forward with a grin and grabs me in a brief but eager hug, topped off with a clap on the back. “Look at this production you’ve pulled together. We’ve come a long way from brandishing stolen shields, huh?”
A laugh that releases some of my bottled tension tumbles out of me. “I guess we have. I can’t take much credit for this. I’m just making sure it all goes off without a hitch.”
Voleska nods. “I’ll let you get back to that, then. And I brought a few more friends to do our part.”
Stavros taps my arm, peering toward the city. “Lothar is on his way. We’d better get into position.”
He touches my cheek in a brief caress. We set off for the stage together, me vanishing with another yank of the chain over my head.
Most of the structures on the platform are meant to serve a purpose in the trials themselves, but there’s a semi-circle of boards just a little taller than Stavros off to one side. Slats cut between the boards give anyone standing in that alcove a view of both the rest of the platform and the audience.
Sulla, Casimir, and Rheave are already waiting for us there, their stances tensed. Stavros will be employing his gift at what seems like the most crucial moments in the hopes of preventing attacks before they happen. Casimir is judging the emotional atmosphere of the crowd.
The other three of us are staying braced to use our magic to solve any problems that arise.
As I settle into place, the crowd parts in front of the stage. Lothar strides between the watching figures, his posture as haughty as always. His velvet cloak drapes unevenly across his one-armed form.
Tinom makes a gesture, and our defensive force gives way to let his former colleague through. My teeth set on edge.
“We’re letting him walk right up here?” I murmur.
Casimir smiles tightly. “It was negotiated. Tinom and Lothar are going to look over each of the candidates to confirm there are no signs of hidden magical advantages.”
A chill rushes through me. “He’s going to get that close to Petra?”
“I don’t like it either, but it’s supposed to be a show of trust. The other clerics will be right there, along with her guards.”
That doesn’t feel like enough. Without another word, I ease away from the wall and slink across the brightly painted boards amid the looming equipment.
Petra stands in the open center, now joined by the other three candidates: a lean man with a sharply pointed beard who I think I recognize as a count, a bulky fellow with flinty eyes who I wouldn’t be surprised to discover was once in military service, and a sinewy-limbed woman with elegantly braided hair who’s probably a minor noblewoman of some sort.
They’ve all dressed in the agreed-upon outfits of a simple short tunic and slacks. The single layer of fabric leaves little opportunity to disguise even small blades or magical trinkets, and their tight shoes offer no room to conceal a weapon.
As Lothar ascends the steps to the right of the stage to stand next to Tinom, I dart over behind him. The towering, lopsided man wafts a smoky cologne that makes my nose wrinkle. It reminds me too much of the late-night rituals his scourge sorcerer colleagues conducted.
I don’t sense any magic in it, though. Even when I lean as close to him as I dare, I can’t pick up the faintest vibration of magic on or around his body.
He could be holding his gift in reserve until he’s right in front of Petra. Or maybe whatever his talent is, it wouldn’t help him sabotage her, so he’s counting on someone else’s help.
At least I know he isn’t carrying an enchanted object on him that could harm her.
My magic reverberates through my torso. My fingers curl into my palms, holding back the urge to harm him quite permanently now that he’s finally right in front of me.
But he knows the audience works in his favor to some extent as well as ours. If Petra’s allies murder the leader of the Order seemingly unprovoked, it’ll appear to prove all his claims true.
Even if it looks like an accident, his people will blame it on treachery.
We need to treat him as an equal rather than a criminal until he exposes his true colors.
Restraining my power deep within me despite its frantic burn, I lurk nearby as he moves down the row of candidates. He gives each of his own only a cursory examination, already familiar with them. Any stealthy advantages they’re concealing, he’s approved.
When he stops in front of Petra, I tense even more, focusing all my senses on every minute movement of his body. Petra stands rigidly, her eyes fierce as she gazes back at the man she watched slaughter her parents. Her guards step forward to shadow her more closely.
Lothar skims his hands through the air around her body as if testing her, but I still can’t pick up on any magic emanating from him. From his grimly satisfied expression, I think maybe he’s just hoping to intimidate her.
Well, it would look awfully suspicious if she experienced any ill effects while he’s standing right in front of her. Any sabotage he’s planning, it’d be easier for him to get away with it once the trials have begun.
I don’t completely let out my breath until he moves away from her. Tinom finishes studying the last of the Order’s candidates and steps to the front of the stage.
Magical amplification sends his voice ringing over the crowd. “Now each of the candidates will swear before the All-Giver and all the godlen that they will not use their own or any other’s gifts to assist their performance in these trials. They come to these tests with no foreknowledge of the correct answers or approach. They accept their judgment based on their own mortal skills.”
As the candidates swear in one by one, I duck back into the spy alcove. I’ve only just returned when Filip hustles over to our part of the platform.
The Order defector faces us with an uncertain expression. “The three sacrificial accomplices who came with us in case we needed them to speak—they want to stay near Ivy and Sulla.”
Sulla turns and asks the obvious question for me. “Why?”
He seems to grope for his words. “I’m not sure—I?—”
“We think we can help.” One of those accomplices is hobbling along the base of the platform to come up beside us, supported by a man from Pima. Poltus’s voice comes out thick and the long cloak and loose pants he’s wearing only hide some of the deformities inflicted on him, but we weren’t going to put them back in their shrouds.
The eyeless, noseless man turns his mutilated face toward us. “The scourge sorcerers drew on our power before with the wrong intentions. You’re trying to set things right. And the more of your own power you use, the harder it’ll be on your minds. Isn’t that right? If we lend you what we can of our gifts, you can make a small amount of your riven magic stretch farther.”
A sharp ache pierces through my heart. Because it doesn’t matter that I’m concealed when Poltus can’t see anyway, I don’t hold myself back from speaking. “We’d never ask to use you the way they did.”
The man makes a dismissive sound. “You’re not asking. We’re offering. There isn’t much we’re capable of contributing in our current state… Please, let us do what we can to see Silana restored to peace.”
I don’t know how to argue with that request.
Sulla bobs her head respectfully with a rustle of her dress. “We appreciate your support more than you can imagine. Thank you.”
Poltus sinks down on the grass next to the platform, tucked out of the way and I hope decently comfortable. His two companions limp to join him.
“I wish we could see the trials for ourselves,” the one woman murmurs to the others, and the ache in my chest expands through my ribs.
The scourge sorcerers have inflicted so much destruction and pain on the people they claimed to be raising up. I have to do everything in my power to ensure their reign ends today.
Tinom is calling forth the clerics he summoned from nine nearby temples. “A cleric of each godlen will set their own task to fit with the equipment we’ve assembled and to score by their own judgment with divine guidance,” he announces to the crowd. “The leader of Silana should have strengths in every area our deities consider important. The Order of the Wild has been granted the opportunity to provide their own clerics to assess the candidates if they disagree with the outcome.”
I grimace. No doubt we can expect plenty of disagreement.
The magic advisor spreads his hands as if in welcome. “The sequence of trials has been determined through random selection. We’re beginning with Prospira, our godlen of prosperity and growth.”
He taps the gesture of the divinities down his front, and it’s echoed throughout our audience.
A man in the yellow robes of Prospira climbs onto the platform, motioning a few devouts in plainer clothes with him. “We’ve brought our own trial with us to ensure none of the candidates could have prepared in advance. My devouts and I were inspired by the call.”
The devouts each unveil an identical miniature tree carved completely of wood. Fruits the size of my thumbpad poke from between joined leaves.
The cleric sets a statue before each of the candidates. “Please examine your tree. You will find that any part you wish may detach. Give it careful thought, considering the principles Prospira holds dear, and select what you feel is the most important aspect of the plant while preparing your explanation.”
He turns to Tinom. “Can you use your gift with illusions to amplify the image for the crowd as you have our voices?”
Tinom rubs his hands together. “An excellent suggestion.”
As the candidates bend down to examine their trees, each about waist height, the air shimmers in front of them. Tinom projects a single image of a tree, this one twice as tall as any person, with overlapping movements of ghostly hands as it accounts for all four of the people studying their own.
Well, it doesn’t seem as though Petra is likely to face any danger with this trial, although I don’t know how her answer will compare to the others. How much time has she spent thinking about trees?
I focus on the people beyond the platform, stretching my senses, staying on guard for the slightest hint of an attack. Next to me, Stavros scans the crowd as well, with a quiver in the air that tells me he’s concentrating on his gift.
All at once, an impression of a sharper tingling hits me from above. Some sort of spell is plummeting toward the platform—hurled up there to disguise its source?
My pulse lurches, and I snatch Rheave’s arm. “Magic above them!”
He doesn’t need me to say more than that. The daimon-man whips his arm upward, and a thin crackle of his supernatural energy ripples through the air.
His defensive effort splits into a dozen tiny bolts—and one sizzles as it catches the advancing spell before it can crash down on Petra.
I whirl around to peer at the crowd. My gaze flicks left and right before catching on a woman a few bodies back from the front of the crowd just lifting her hand with a determined expression.
Rheave can’t blast her from here. My heart skips another beat, but the words Sulla told me echo up from my memory.
Even very small acts can have a large impact.
My mind leaps to an appropriate counterbalance. I release a spurt of my magic to push down a patch of dirt beneath the platform—and thrust up an equivalent patch beneath the scourge sorcerer’s feet.
She stumbles, knocking shoulders with the man next to her, and whatever attack she was going to send out next falters.
Another stream of magic courses past me, but this one moves from the huddled sacrificial accomplices toward Sulla. With a swell of heightened power, she aims her own attention at the woman I targeted.
The scourge sorcerer’s body lights up with a glow stark enough to cut through the strengthening sunlight. The people around her glance over and stare.
With a harried expression, she pushes off through the crowd away from us, maybe afraid some worse punishment is coming.
While we’ve been fending off magic attacks, it seems the candidates have made their choices. They’ve all straightened up with their piece hidden in their clasped hands.
The Prospira cleric starts at the far end of the row from Petra. He beckons to the bearded count. “What did you pick?”
The count holds up a chunk of wood that’s basically just a rectangular slab. Tinom amplifies that image too, so there’s a second giant man looming like an immense ghost above his actual self.
“The wood of the tree is most important,” he says. “It allows people to build their houses and warm them with fire. To make carts to carry goods to market and bring new purchases back again. And it provides a home to animals as well.”
The cleric hums, and a murmur spreads through the crowd. It sounds like a reasonable answer to me.
Without giving any judgment, the cleric strolls on to the bulky man with soldier airs. “And you?”
As Tinom’s illusion shifts to him, the soldier holds up one of the wooden fruits. “The fruit of the tree feeds both people and animals. You can’t build much if you’re starving.”
“True enough,” the cleric says agreeably, and continues on to the sinewy noblewoman. “What do you think?”
She holds up a piece identical to the count’s. “I also chose wood, for the same reasons—and it can also be used to build bridges, barns, fences, temples—everything a society needs to grow.”
“Many excellent thoughts.” The cleric’s tone stays even. He reaches Petra and bobs his head to her. “Do you have anything new to say?”
“I do, actually.”
Petra opens her hands. It takes me a second to realize she’s holding one of the fruits—but only half of it, the inner side showing several seeds carved within.
She traces the tiny ovals. “The seeds are more important than anything else, because they allow more trees to sprout. One tree can’t build much of a house or a fence, or offer enough food to feed a family for more than a few days. The more you can grow, the more you can provide.”
A smile touches my lips. Yes, that’s exactly it.
A ruler needs to think not just of the present moment but how the whole country can thrive together.
A sudden round of applause, punctuated by a few cheers, sweeps through the crowd. Petra keeps her composure but brightens a little.
The cleric smiles too. “Spoken like one who truly understands Prospira’s hopes for us all. That is the answer I was seeking.”
A man in the red tunic of the Order stomps his foot near the front of the crowd. “Hold on! How do we know you didn’t give the false princess her answer beforehand?”
The cleric knits his brow. “I wouldn’t dishonor my godlen by cheating her of a proper trial. But if you don’t trust my answer, I suppose we could ask the daimon whether Princess Petra’s answer felt genuine.”
The captured daimon must give an invisible nudge, or maybe the spirits could understand. A streak of sparks lights up, flowing around Petra’s body, as if giving their approval.
“But—” the man starts.
Lothar holds up his hand to stop him. “Let it stand.”
I study him through the gaps in the wall. Why isn’t he fighting every verdict tooth and nail? Is he worried about how he’ll come across and waiting for a better chance?
Or does he know he’ll get the opportunity he needs later?
The green-robed cleric for Estera comes forward next, holding a crate with several glossy balls about the size of the candidates’ heads. She hands a ball to each of the candidates. “I’ll light the globes with each correct answer. A ruler Estera can support will understand the history that brought us to this place and the countries that surround us as well as our own. You have ten chances to prove your knowledge.”
She runs through the questions at a steady pace, touching on the effects of Darium rule, the overthrowing of the empire, past relations with our neighboring countries, and ending with three questions asked respectively in Veldunian, Bryfesh, and Icarian.
With each correct answer Petra gives, her orb glows brighter—and her fellow candidates stumble more. Whatever their existing education and the hasty studying Lothar will have put them through, it doesn’t match that of a woman raised since birth as the heir to the throne.
I suspect Petra could have answered any of these questions nearly as well at ten years old as she does now.
None of the other candidates speaks enough of all three of the other languages to respond to all of those questions. By the end of the series, they’re standing stiffly, the soldier ruddy-faced with frustration, the noblewoman pursing her lips unhappily.
I haven’t spotted any incoming attacks, but before the cleric can announce her verdict, Lothar lifts his voice. “You were selected by the princess’s allies, Your Holiness. I’d like to have a cleric the Order of the Wild chose test her with a few questions she can’t be expecting.”
Our cleric steps back. As a man in green robes takes the stage, my body tenses. But he keeps a careful distance from Petra as if to avoid any idea of threat.
He asks her another series of questions in each of the same three languages, throwing in one in Woudish and another in Darium after—long questions that I know at least in the tongues I can speak myself are much more convoluted than what the first cleric asked. But Petra answers each steadily enough, without a hint of being thrown off.
The cleric indicates his approval, but there’s a hint of a sneer to his tone. “One last thing. The Battle of Raclawnem—how did your great grandmother’s forces win the day?”
My skin prickles with the sense that this is some sort of trap, but Petra doesn’t hesitate. “There was no Battle of Raclawnem. Raclawnem is a small valley town not far from the Pinch. The nearest significant battles I’m aware of that were fought in that area were in Mevild county during the rebellion against the empire, and outside the city of Accia under my grandfather’s rule.”
My gaze flicks to the cleric. Apparently he was hoping to catch her in a lie of confusion or make her look inept. Instead, he’s done the opposite.
He lets out a short chuckle and bows his head. “My questions are finished.”
As he descends the platform, I think I see him shoot a brief apologetic grimace Lothar’s way. Another round of applause rises up.
A gray-robed cleric for my self-appointed patron godlen takes over next, ushering the candidates into the large, intricate boxes constructed by the baron’s craftspeople. Casimir contributed his insight to those too. They’re painted an ominous thundercloud hue to enhance the sense of a threat, with a silvery sheen on the entwined parts so it’ll be easy to spot when each segment is released on the way to freedom.
As the cleric explains to the candidates and the audience that these are identical puzzle boxes designed to test cleverness and ingenuity, I notice a slim man moving along the edge of the crowd.
He bends to place something on the ground several paces from the corner of the platform. Then he ventures farther where the mass of spectators has fanned out around the sides of the stage and sets another object down there.
There’s nothing overtly threatening about his movements. The guards haven’t moved to stop him. But something about his meticulousness sends a jangle of warning through me.
I nudge Casimir and point out the man. “What do you think of his intentions?”
Casimir studies him for a moment as the man meanders on along the side of the platform. “He doesn’t care about the outcome of the current test. I suspect that’s because he’s planning to alter it. If I…”
A wisp of magic tickles past me, and the courtesan sucks in a breath. “What would make him happiest is if I looked the other way and pretended I never noticed him. He’s definitely attempting some kind of sabotage.”
My mind leaps through several possibilities even as my chest tightens at the thought of releasing more of my magic already. But I do have the sacrificial accomplices below me, waiting to play the one part they can.
Ignoring a twinge of queasiness, I touch Stavros’s hand. “Signal the guards to be on the alert.”
Then I extend my concentration toward not just my target and a couple of scraps of wood lying at the base of the platform, but the mutilated accomplices as well.
A waft of energy rushes through me, propelling my own magic out of me faster. Even with only a small intent in mind, I have to yank at my power to rein some of it in.
The two pieces of wood shift and nestle together—and the buttons on the man’s trousers snap apart. The loose fabric drops to his ankles in an instant.
He stumbles and pitches forward. Several more of the objects he was holding spill from his arms.
In an instant, the guards Stavros alerted rush forward to restrain the guy and confiscate his cargo for examination.
“That was nicely done,” Sulla says softly. “One more challenge down.”
I can’t manage more than a tight grin. “Who knows how many more to go.”