Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Only one prisoner has ever escaped from the Archimago Tomb in the three hundred and twenty-seven years since it was built.
King Henry XVII had sent his own brother to the Tomb, and so the younger brother had his agents murder the king in cold blood.
The Tomb’s will transferred to its new, rightful heir, and so the king’s brother—now king himself—walked free.
—THOMAS FEYDON, A HISTORY OF MAGIC IN ALVION
Oliver arrived first.
“You didn’t say he would be here,” he hissed, gesturing to Roland.
“I didn’t say he wouldn’t be, either,” I countered.
“Fair play.” Oliver considered us across the booth.
“These are dangerous times. The king is a walking corpse. The Guildfords are now insisting Cecily is pregnant—most courtiers assume it is a lie, of course. Fulke Roet has sent a flurry of messages across the country and abroad to his mother’s relatives in Bastian, asking for support.
The divisions are drawn in court. Why, pray tell, would I throw my hat in with you lot, when you, Lord Chancellor, are meant to be dead? ”
Roland’s annoyance rose. He pressed his lips together.
“We have information the Roets and Guildfords do not,” I said.
Oliver frowned. “You do have something, don’t you? And time is running short?”
Roland stabbed a finger across the table. “Temper your thoughts.”
He laughed to see Roland so affected. “Can I not admire her boldness? I could easily tell the king your whereabouts and collect my coin.”
“Ah, but you’ve already helped us once before.
You are implicated in our plotting, I’m afraid,” Roland said.
“Bianca has the memories to prove it. The Book of Hours … the blood cipher … I’m sure the king would love to know his new private secretary has aided a traitor to the Crown. Several times, in fact.”
Oliver knew words spoken under the cover of darkness frightened the king more than any sword. Just then, a cloaked figure entered the tavern, their face tilted into shadow. “Our second guest has arrived,” I said.
The figure took their time weaving through the crowd, pushing the bodies aside to carve out a wake of fear. They were small, but when their eyes flashed the drunk merchants and lawyers and students all stumbled back.
Miranda flicked back her hood and settled in the booth beside a visibly startled Oliver.
The sharp planes of her face flickered in the candlelight.
“So. It is you. Dare to seek me out again, Moonborn, and I’ll cut you into pieces and feed you, still moaning in agony, to Guildford’s hounds.
I’ve come only to tell you that.” The rasp of her voice scraped my spine.
Roland studied her. “No, not only that.” A slow shake of his head. “You’d like to know what you might gain.”
She glared at him. “How do I address you, now that you’ve been stripped of your titles?”
“Your Grace will do.”
I squeezed his hand beneath the table. “Miranda is here because we are the chaos now. We are the ones raising our fists to strike. This is the side a Marsborn prefers to be on, is it not?”
Those carmine eyes shimmered like light on a pool of blood. “You do not know me. Do not speak as though you do.”
“Clearly, you are dissatisfied, or you wouldn’t betray your master to hear us out.” I eyed the trail of her scar. “At the Tomb, I felt loneliness in you. And enduring pain. Roland said they hurt you. So I will ask you a single question, then: Is your loyalty to your own kind?”
She had no immediate answer to that. The four of us had been thrown into a tournament to fight, our magic made into spectacle. The idea being, if we grappled for power, if we tore into each other, we would never think to pool our strength.
“Oliver, can you bind us together now? If Roland and I reveal our plans to both of you, whatever is or has been spoken at this table cannot be repeated, written, or passed along in any way to another living soul.”
Oliver sighed. “Do I have a choice in the matter?”
Roland smiled pleasantly. “No. And if you have any desire to trick us, I’ll sense it.”
“Agreed?” I stared at Miranda until her frown deepened and she nodded, her curiosity piqued.
“Yes, fine,” Oliver snapped. “I so swear.” We all repeated after him. Symbols gathered in the air, swirled around us. The oath traveled through our bodies and up our throats, singeing our mouths with the promise.
Now, we could begin.
“Good.” Roland leaned forward. “In two days, Bianca believes the king will die. Fulke Roet will inherit. He will surely name his own magician, Jasper, Lord Chancellor. Unless…” He drew a circle with the tip of his finger.
“We prove the Guildfords and the Roets are traitors before the entire court and the king. Miranda, you can even be the one to kill Charles. Would you like that?”
He’d struck true. A part of her danced.
“I have been bound to him since I was a twelve-year-old apprentice.” Her eyes shifted between me and Roland. “I cannot kill him. I was forced to swear a Mercurian oath to serve his house.”
“Yes, those cannot be undone,” said Oliver. It was the same magic we were bound by in our oaths to the king, the same magic tying us all together now.
“How about … a public execution?” Roland offered. “And you can watch at the very front of the crowd.”
“Charles has an heir,” Miranda said. “When Charles dies, my allegiance shifts to Tom. He is far worse than his father. When I was a girl, he would bring me children to hurt. If they bullied him, or whispered about him, I was to make them regret it. I was forged in cruelty, Your Grace.”
I remembered, suddenly, her sharp kick against my ribs.
“Tom and his father will both be sent to the Tomb, if all goes according to plan,” I promised her.
She sat back, folding her hands together. “I still cannot harm a Guildford. I am sworn.”
“Bianca’s plan does not involve you harming a Guildford at all.
And when we have disgraced them, you will join us and live wherever you wish.
You can take the Guildford seat of Foxhall as your own.
Or we can find you someone who already has sons, someone who would take a magician for a wife.
Ah. That got your attention.” He leaned forward, startled by the subtle flush in her cheeks.
“Marriage? Foxhall?” He studied her. “Marriage,” he breathed.
“Oh, you hope for it. You’ve surprised me, Mars. ”
I wasn’t surprised at all—not since I’d seen her flinch from Charles Guildford. She had told us she was forged in cruelty; of course she longed for softness.
“And you.” Roland spun toward Oliver. “You’ve won this tournament.
You may have a home at court for now, but I am proof that the king’s loyalty does not endure.
We offer you revenge against the one who killed Ambrose, Fulke Roet.
If you help us, you can have an ambassadorship to any nation you wish—Lionesse, Carmin, Estellan, take your pick, though I can see you long for the Estellan countryside.
” He added a generous income to further tempt him.
Oliver straightened in his seat and twirled a quill through his fingers, while Miranda toyed with her ring. Her thumb stroking the griffin stamped in iron.
She suddenly scowled. “You offer us the world, yet you own nothing.”
“You forget who I am,” I said.
“And who is that?” Miranda taunted.
“Prospero’s daughter.”
At his name, a strike of fear. “So, a devious little snake—and a dead man?” Miranda said.
“The two of you were chosen to apprentice to him, and you must think yourselves so special. Do you think that earns you favor with me? Do you know where I grew up? Polishing Guildford silver, and before that, in a crumbling village. When I was born, a midwife told my father I was the spawn of a demon, that my mother had lain with the devil instead of him and that was why my eyes were red. He murdered my mother for it, then turned the blade on himself. I was left in the cold forest to die. A local soothsayer who knew the planets saw what I was and took me in. But she did not love me. She saw my value alone. She tried her best to teach me rudimentary Mars magic, waited until I had my first blood, and sent me to the Guildfords, our local lords. I was never invited to court.” A twist of her mouth.
“I taught myself magic. Alone. Experimenting on my own body, and then later, the cruel children Tom Guildford ordered me to punish.”
The scars on her hands, her face. They were self-inflicted. At the Tomb, Roland had suggested as much. “You do not have to be alone,” I said softly. “You can join us.”
“Why not twist my desire?” She pointed at Roland with her chin. “Why not make me your scampering dog, panting my tongue and following you wherever you go?”
“Because I choose not to,” Roland said simply.
She muttered something spiteful under her breath.
Only Oliver heard it. “We are all capable of terrible things,” he told her.
“You could make us attack one another, here at this table, couldn’t you?
” He pointed to me. “She could make us all descend into madness. I could bind you to a family that hurts you.”
Roland studied him for several moments. “You have a way with words,” he said, and to my surprise, Oliver flushed. “Now, if we’re finished arguing, Bianca will tell you both what she has in mind.”
Miranda snorted, drawing a line between the two of us, though she directed her question at me. “Why are you working for him, truly?”
“Are you daft?” asked Oliver.
“Because he has a pretty face?” Her eyes probed mine.
“Oh, I assure you, I’m much more than a pretty face.” Roland smirked. “That’s the least of her reasons for supporting me.”
He stifled a laugh as I stabbed my nails into his knuckles.
“Miranda, you are essential to this plan,” I insisted. “I need you. We both do.”
“You need me? After all we did to each other in the tournament? At the Tomb?”
Ah. No one had ever needed her before. And no one had ever forgiven her.
“I believe you can be more than Charles Guildford’s sword arm.
Prospero wrote something about Mars that I remember well.
He said, ‘Of all the planets, Mars is the most misunderstood. For it is a planet of action, and we must all be called to act in the face of injustice or neglect. A king raises his sword high, and the army is undaunted. A healer raises her knife to cut off rotted flesh and starve infection. A rebel raises his fist, anger spurring his cause.’”
She studied me carefully, biting her cheek as she came to a decision.
Far above, our ruling planets must have spun in wonder. Our heads bent together. The candles melted down to stubs. The Moon unleashed its light over the map of Redhall I laid out before them.