Chapter 17 #2
“—was personal,” growled a man as I approached, a young healer named Geth.
His hands were balled into fists, his hackles raised like a dog’s at a thicker, younger man named Tal, if I remembered correctly.
Man was stretching it; he was no older than Dan, surely.
A few others, including regular soldiers, crowded around, talking amongst themselves, but otherwise didn’t interrupt the spectacle.
“Then don’t think it so loudly.” Tal laughed. “Really, Geth, you’d think your mother would have taught you better.”
I knew, instantly, what this was about. Tal was a mindreader. Using his magic where it was unwanted.
Deliberately disobeying Eden.
Geth’s face darkened. “My mother is dead.”
Tal shrugged. “Pity.”
Every muscle in Geth’s body pulled as tight as a lute string. “You filthy piece of—”
“Stop!” I shouted, my eldest-sister timbre edging the words. “Now.”
A few in the crowd stepped back, less to let me through than simply to gawk at me. Geth stood down, quivering with anger, but Tal remained unaffected. Phin, the soulbinder, immediately dropped her head and took the hand of a healer named Seln, pulling her away from the scene.
Turning to me, Tal started, “Do you really—?”
“Are you dumb?” I spoke over him, unwilling to let him bully his way with me. “Do you have a brain in that thick skull of yours, or must you borrow bits of everyone else’s to compensate for the cobwebs?”
Tal’s mouth went slack. A few soldiers snickered. I whirled on them. “Get. Out. If you are not assigned to the walls or the field, then drag your sorry asses to the merchants who have traveled here in time of war to see we are fed. Go.”
In actuality, I had little authority over these men, but they were loyal folk, and the reminder of their duty was enough to turn them away, for now. I could only hope that, in the absence of Renn, his general, and his commanders, the castle did not gradually fall into anarchy.
I readdressed Tal, though I spoke loud enough for the rest to hear. “Did your princess not speak of this? You are not to use your magic unless strictly necessary. Unless ordered by your commanders.”
Tal snorted. “You are not—”
“Finish that sentence,” I snapped at him, “and see how true it proves when your gods-touched king returns and learns of it.”
It was not fair of me to drag Renn into this, even though I knew he would defend me. He had left me here because I lacked the strength to follow him, not because he had trusted me to lead his craftlock troops. Still, my goal was to bring order now. I could worry about the rest later.
Mention of Renn, or at least the gods, finally gave Tal pause.
I let my eyes drag over the others. “You are not immune to the law. If you are not helping your country, you are hurting it. If you do not help us defeat Sesta, you are submitting to Sesta. You think it’s been a hard life for you?
” I pointedly looked at Tal and the other mindreaders.
“So hard living a normal life with a secret easily hidden within your own minds? I have been to Rodsfell. Adoel Nicosia takes crafters as children and pens them like animals. They are used for their magic and their magic alone: no dreams, no aspirations, no families, unless their king bids it. He has fitted each one a dragon, garbed in black and blue, trained to annihilate us. And if he succeeds, if he doesn’t slaughter us like the pigs he thinks we are, then we will be penned, too, to do his will, however dark or macabre it might be. ”
I stormed forward until I stood a pace away from Tal. “Do you think I lie, little boy? Read my mind. Go ahead.”
I held out my hand. I did not want him anywhere near my thoughts, but I had done this once with Nicosia, and I readied myself to do it again with Tal, to feed him exactly what I wanted him to see before breaking our connection.
Tal, however, didn’t take the bait. He sneered, then turned his back to me, heading toward the barracks.
One by one, the rest of the crowd dispersed.
A few unintelligible whispers followed, a couple muttered “Sorry” in my direction.
“Be careful around crafters,” a young, melodic voice chimed behind me. I turned as Princess Azra approached, fan in hand, Jonras trailing her. “They’re a foul and conniving sort.”
I gritted my teeth, understanding her entirely, but it was not my place to correct her, and what would be the point? She didn’t care. So I merely tipped my head in a weak semblance of deference.
I noticed a white cincture slung on her hips, something not in fashion in Antsan. I looked again and recognized the weave. It was one of Renn’s. Renn’s cincture.
I highly doubted she’d stolen it. He must have given it to her.
A headache had begun to form behind my forehead, and I rubbed it, sure it was not the kind of ache dowsing could cure.
Turned and went the way Phin and Seln had.
I had been feeling better today. A little more myself, more the woman from Fount who’d yet to be bruised by love, torture, and politics.
I desperately swam back for that comfort, trying to step into the shadow of myself.
I couldn’t let Nicosia, Princess Azra, or even Renn break me. Somehow, I had to remain whole.
Surely if I could piece together the shattered king, I could rebuild myself as well.
That night, I was reminded that stubborn, prideful boys like Tal were not so easily swayed.
Piya came into Eden’s room to wake me. “Sorry, miss, but someone’s said Cook’s gotten real sick. Cramping badly.”
Groggy, I nodded, glancing at Eden. She had woken as well but fell back asleep as I rose and pulled a dress over my shift.
Sleep had mussed my curly hair into halos of knots.
I did not bother to put on my shoes, though the July night did little to warm cold castle stone.
I nodded briefly to Quinn, who watched our room.
Piya looked half dead on her feet, so I told her to go back to bed.
She bowed her head graciously as if I were her mistress and not Eden, and went on her way.
I had only just stepped foot out of the east tower when a hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled me into moon-cast shadows; a flash of Nicosia in that conservatory passed through my thoughts, sending my heart into my throat.
But my mind planted me in Cansere, in Derren Castle, and the scent of unwashed adolescent filled my nostrils.
I reached for my mother’s knife, but Tal pressed his thick palm over my mouth and pinned me to the castle wall.
“You cur,” he spat. “You think you can—”
I did not let him interrupt me before, and I sure as hell would not let him interrupt me now. I flashed into his lumis, an unremarkable stack of crates with tricolored wood, and ripped apart a plank dangerously close to a death line.
Distantly, I felt him release me, but I brought my heel down hard on his instep and grabbed his hand, blinking back to his lumis and hitting him with raw, unshaped magic, albeit away from anything that might kill him.
I was no honeybee with a quick sting; I was a hornet plunging in my venom again and again and again, and I wanted him to know it. I wanted him to feel it.
How dare he come upon me alone like this. How dare he strike in the night like a coward. How dare he lie to Piya to intimidate me. Were he my brother, I’d switch his bare hide until he cried for our dead mother. But this would do just as well.
I released him. Shifted back to reality to find him on his knees in the dirt, shaking and wheezing, face as pale as the stars.
Staying out of arm’s reach, I crouched in front of him.
“You are pathetic.” I didn’t bother lowering my voice.
“Go home and tell your family, your friends, that you were so selfish and useless with your gift that you couldn’t even march a single step past these castle walls.
You will leave at dawn. Your right to craftlock is revoked. ”
He snarled, glaring at me with the eyes of an injured badger. “You can’t do that.”
I tilted my head to the side. “Princess Eden trusts my judgment, and I have the king’s ear. So yes, I very much think I can.”
He laughed, though it was more a sound of pain than mirth. “You have more than his ear, so I’ve heard.”
Now I did lean in and lower my voice, meeting his eyes, burying my own fears, my own pain, so he saw only the she-wolf I wanted him to see. “All the more reason for you to fear me.”
Any trace of smugness lingering on his face vanished.
Standing, I picked up my skirts and marched back into the keep, up the steps of the ruined tower, and into the room I shared with Eden, stopping only long enough to inform Quinn that Tal wasn’t allowed anywhere near Eden’s room.
Once inside, shivers overtook me. I leaned against the closed door and sank to the floor, hugging myself, pushing down nausea and revulsion. Not at Tal, but at myself.
I had never done something like that before. Hurt someone to get my point across. To win an argument. To prove I was better.
He would have hurt you, I imagined Ursa saying, but she would have said it to make me feel better about myself, not because she agreed with it. Ursa had been kindhearted, like Lissel. She would have been appalled at my actions. Perhaps it was a mercy she was not here to witness them.
I sat there on the floor, staring at the lump of Eden, picking through the day’s events in my head until I could distance myself from them. Understand them.
It had made me feel better, I realized, putting Tal in his place.
Verbally, earlier, and magically, moments ago.
I had been so absolutely powerless with Nicosia.
Even in my magic, having lost Ursa’s extra strength, I felt weak.
But here in Derren . . . here I was not powerless.
Not anymore. And that felt good. That felt safe.