Chapter 25
‘She’s resourceful, that girl. It’s written all over her. Imagine how resourceful you have to be to live and survive in a forest full of monsters.’ Sunay shook her head in a wondering fashion. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to return with the Frozen Heart after all, you know.’
‘And how many people will she have poisoned to do it?’ asked Artair.
They were sitting in the mage’s cosy study, drinking hot black cups of something Sunay called kopi.
When he had returned and she had seen his face, she had immediately put a pot on to brew, saying it would help him think clearly.
From the way his muscles were twitching Artair strongly suspected that kopi was a stimulant of some kind, something that the Golden Tower of Perpetual Morning strongly disapproved of—to rely on stimulants to stay awake was to invite disaster, that was their teaching.
But he found he was glad of it, savouring the bitter tang on his tongue.
It was unlike anything he’d tasted before.
‘You can’t make an omelette without poisoning a few eggs,’ said Sunay in a musing tone.
‘Pardon me?’
‘Look, the business of gods and mages is a messy one, my friend, full of dark deeds and dubious decisions.’
‘You would poison someone if Tisk asked you to?’
‘Well, quite aside from the fact that doesn’t sound like my lord’s style at all, yes, of course.
’ Sunay paused to take a sip from her own cup.
‘The bond between mage and god goes bone deep, Artair. I owe all to my lord, and the price for my pretty little spells is a lifetime of devotion. It’s not really something that can be danced around or negotiated—once that deal is made, often in early infancy, there is no throwing off the yoke.
Which makes me wonder about the bond between our Elver and the Queen of Serpents.
Famously she does not make mages, and no one performs magic in her name—the only one of the Twelve to avoid humans in this way—yet she has her children, the jih that she has transformed over thousands of years, taking their ordinary natures and making them extraordinary.
Which makes me wonder what Elver is, exactly, to her.
As far as I know, she has never transformed a human so directly before. Isn’t that interesting?’
‘What about me?’ he asked quietly. ‘They say the Sleepless are jih spirits too. Did she make us? And if she did, why?’
Sunay took a loud slurp of her kopi and grimaced. ‘An excellent question. I don’t have the answer for you, I’m afraid. Perhaps no one knows, save for the Queen herself.’
Artair looked into his cup of kopi. Perhaps he would never know the truth of his own nature.
‘What do you know about Mother Maura?’
‘I’ve heard the name, and I have heard that she is as ambitious as the day is long, but she is a mage of the Bloody Claw—calling them ambitious is like calling a fox devious.
Of course it is, that’s its nature.’ She leaned back in her chair, cradling the cup in both hands.
‘Some names have a dark reputation attached to them without bringing with them any details, so when you and Elver went off to the Temple of Threshold, I took the liberty of asking my lord if he knew anything.’ Sunay paused, pursing her lips.
‘Normally, he loves to gossip, so I was surprised when he had very little to say about this Maura. Claimed that he knows little more than a name. Mentioned that her hair often clashes with her choice of gown.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘When he told me so little, I asked around the village just east of here. Most had not heard of her, but a few had. The rumour was that some years back she dedicated the town of Ashingdown to her god, a bloody ceremony that raised its walls and brought it prosperity. The rumour on the heels of that was that the sacrifices were not willing.’ Sunay sighed.
‘I don’t envy you dealing with this one, Artair.
Darkness and tragedy cling to her like blood to a cloth. ’
The door opened and Elver was there, blinking in the lamplight. Sunay nearly jumped out of her skin.
‘By the Twelve, do your feet even touch the floor when you walk?’
Artair found he could not look away from her. On some level, he’d thought she wouldn’t come back.
‘I’ve done it,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the Frozen Heart.’ The cuff of her shirt was cupped around it, as though it were too hot to touch.
‘Oh, well done!’ Sunay stood up and crossed over to her. ‘How? Artair tells me that your final rite was somewhat, uh, curtailed.’
‘I stole it,’ said Elver quickly. ‘Easy enough. Those idiot monks don’t lock their doors.’
Sunay reached out and plucked it from her grip, and as she did, Artair saw the pair of them exchange a look, Sunay’s thick black eyebrows raising in something that looked like surprise.
‘ Well. This will do nicely. Let’s get this to my Lord Tisk and then you’ll have your spell. Come on, it’s a little walk to the temple.’
‘You mean this isn’t the temple?’ Artair downed the last of his kopi with something like regret.
‘This? Goodness me, no,’ said Sunay happily. ‘Did you really think that Tisk’s temple would be out in the open? The hidden and the secret, those are my lord’s domains.’
She led them out the front door of the cottage, past the rows and rows of votive statues; in the moonlight they looked a little uncanny, as though they might come to life at any moment and rush at their ankles.
From there, they ploughed through an overgrown copse of horse chestnut until they emerged into a small clearing carpeted with autumn leaves of red, gold and brown.
In the centre, there was a stone basin filled with water reflecting the starry sky above, its edge carved with leaping foxes.
There wasn’t a single leaf floating in it, despite the hundreds crunching underfoot.
‘My Lord Tisk,’ said Sunay. Unlike most of the other mages and priests they had encountered, she did not sound solemn or meek.
Her voice kept its cheerful cadence. ‘I have an extra special offering for you today, for the unrivalled knock-down price of one slightly fancy illusion spell. How about it?’ She placed the heart into the water and it seemed to vanish immediately—Artair could not see a bottom to the basin, only more sky, which wobbled and reformed at the mage’s touch.
They all stood there for a moment in silence, listening to the sound of an owl hooting somewhere in the trees behind them.
‘So,’ said Elver eventually. ‘Did that work, or…?’
‘He can be a little tricksy sometimes,’ said Sunay.
She dipped her fingers into the water again, causing a few ripples.
‘A bit more background on this one, my lord—the illusion spell is needed to fool a mage of the Bloody Claw, at the request of the Queen of Serpents. The mage in question is Mother Maura, the one I was asking you about. Juicy, right?’
A second later the small ceramic heart bobbed back up to the surface and Sunay plucked it from the water, smiling. Orange light oozed from the object like syrup, sinking into the skin of her hands.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. Sunay held out her free hand, watching as the magic flowed over her fingertips and across her palm. ‘That’s the stuff. I will just keep… Oh.’ Her eyes flared with the orange light, filling the clearing with a bonfire glow.
‘What is it?’ asked Elver.
‘My lord has made an unusual request of me. Nothing to worry about. It happens, every now and then.’ When Elver made to reach for the ceramic heart, the mage closed her hand around it. ‘I’ll just keep hold of this for the time being, if you don’t mind.’
Again, they exchanged a look that Artair didn’t understand, and then Elver shrugged.
‘Sure. Fine. Makes no difference to me.’
‘Now then.’ Sunay put the heart inside her wide-sleeved jacket and rubbed her hands together.
‘You two can bed down in the cottage tonight and we will get going in the morning. I would say bright and early, but I will be honest with you, I like to avoid dawn where possible. My bed calls me too strongly at that hour.’
‘What do you mean, we?’ said Elver.
‘I mean we, us three,’ said Sunay. She grinned at them, her dark eyes sparkling.
‘You can’t just… give us the spell?’ Elver was looking more uncomfortable by the second.
‘Us?’ Artair said, looking at Elver. ‘I thought you were only coming as far as this temple. You said you would take the cub home again from here.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Elver said shortly, giving him a pointed look. ‘I’ve more reason than anyone to see Maura stopped.’
‘My lord insists I accompany you,’ said Sunay, brushing over the awkward pause.
She was still all smiles. ‘As I might have mentioned before, he has a taste for the business of other gods, and this positively whiffs of it. So. You get the pleasure of my company. Come on, I don’t know about you two but dealing with gods makes me ravenous, and I make a passable chestnut stew. Just don’t ask what’s in it.’
‘Is it chestnuts?’ said Elver, a pained tone to her voice.
‘It is.’ Sunay looked delighted. ‘However did you guess?’
When Lucian opened his eyes that night, it was to look up on a ceiling that was strung with tiny glittering objects—he could see silver acorns, tiny, bejewelled figures, porcelain hands with blue lines painted across their palms, dozens of coins that had been pierced and hung from golden threads.
He sat up and found that he was lying on a bed in a small attic room.
There wasn’t much else of note in there, aside from a storage chest at the foot of the bed, and a small round window that looked out onto a peaceful night forest.
‘It’s a bed at least,’ he said aloud. ‘That is an improvement on the stony ground of a dismal little clearing.’
There was no sign of the monster girl, and he was surprised to find himself disappointed.