Chapter Nine
The break-out happened while Polly was giving Mary her evening bottle, and Sister Louise was there, too, having just fed Sapphire.
The baby must have pushed upward, for suddenly the top broke away and fell to the ground behind the shell, and the new arrival looked out on the world for the first time, out of a sweet baby face.
Solemn blue eyes, a fuzz of pale hair, a dear little snub nose—the only feature not fully human was the egg tooth—almost a tusk—that protruded from the center of the baby’s top gum.
The egg’s membrane had been torn open enough for the face to poke through, but remained wrapped around the scalp and neck, like a cowl.
It chanced that the new arrival’s gaze fell on Sister Louise, and there it stayed, the baby peeping to the nun, and the nun making the same sound back. Delia, figuring that the current pause would last for a while, took the opportunity to attend to her personal needs.
When she returned, the baby, still in the shell, was asleep, but she soon woke up and began assiduously cutting a new series of holes at right angles to the first line, straight down the egg.
The work went faster now, and it was no more than another hour before the baby flexed in a way that put so much pressure on the shell that it fell apart, and the little hatchling tumbled onto the blanket, where it wriggled and struggled its way out of the remnants of the membrane.
It was a sphinx. A baby’s head, perfectly human except for the egg tooth, which Delia assumed would fall out in the next few days like that of any other hatchling.
The body of a lion cub with soft golden fur, marked by darker spots.
Small wings, tightly furled to the body and covered in a fuzz of downy feathers.
Or, Delia should say, she was a sphinx, for Sapphire had trotted over to give the newcomer a sniff, and his eyes were still blue and placid, so she must be female, as expected.
Mary, too, had noticed the sphinx, and was doing her best to wriggle in that direction, while Polly kept pulling her back so she did not overwhelm the new baby.
“What on earth do we feed her?” Sister Louise asked. “Most of her is mammal, but then one must consider the wings. And the egg.”
“We shall start with goat’s milk, since we have it available,” Delia decided. “She is, after all, more mammalian than anything else, and if her body is that of a lion, it stands to reason her stomach is, also.”
At that moment, one of the other nuns knocked and entered. “Mr. Thornton is here, Miss Nettleford, and would like to see you, if you are free.”
“Go ahead,” said Sister Louise. “Polly shall help me prepare a bottle, and I shall feed the little darling. Sister Agatha, please chaperone Miss Nettleford to her meeting with Mr. Thornton.”
Delia could not leave until the other nun had stopped to coo over the baby. And rightly so, for she was delightful. Delia was as proud of the little sphinx as if she had delivered it herself, and she was looking forward to giving Mr. Thornton the news.
He had news of his own, and after he had exclaimed over hers, he told her, “The well diver found the hexed object, Miss Nettleford. He could sense that it was magic, though he doesn’t have the gift to know what it was meant to do.
I’ve now had it examined by someone whose gift is discerning magic, and its purpose was just what we guessed, but worse.
Over time, it would have drained the will of everyone who drank the water until we could not think for ourselves, but could only obey. ”
“That is dreadful,” Delia said. A platitude, but she did not have the words to express her horror.
Mr. Thornton took no exception to her relatively mild reaction. “It is.”
Feeling in some obscure way that she needed to redeem herself with an intelligent question, Delia asked, “But how did the hex get into the water?”
With a grim set to his jaw, Mr. Thornton replied.
“That is, indeed, the question. The well house is protected against translocation, so either the enemy outside can break those wards, which is bad news, or someone inside the castle is working with the enemy, which is worse. Whether such a person is a willing traitor or under a hex makes no difference to the danger they represent.”
He leaned forward and reached his hands toward her, then seemed to realize he was in danger of breaching the unicorn’s boundaries, for he sat back. “Miss Nettleford, and you, too, sister. Trust no one except me, Captain Harewood, and one another. Polly and all the nuns, I mean.”
Delia shook her head slowly, not in negation or even disbelief, but as a rejection of a world in which such words were necessary. To think that, just a few months earlier, the worst thing she had to fear was boredom.
“We need to do what Mr. Thornton says,” said Sister Agatha, who must have misunderstood Delia’s head movement. “He has been sent by the king and the College of Mages to protect you.”
“Yes,” Delia replied. “I know. I will trust no one except those you have mentioned, Mr. Thornton. I was not disagreeing. I was just thinking about how I once wished for adventure.”
Mr. Thornton’s sudden smile made her glad she was sitting down, for when he smiled at her like that, her knees felt weak and she would not have needed a hex to give him anything he asked.
You have a duty, she scolded herself silently. You are the unicorn’s maiden.
“I know what you mean,” Mr. Thornton said. “I was wishing for something useful to do when word came I was to escort you to London. I thought I would be gone for a week or perhaps two. I did not expect life to become so… interesting.”
Interesting was one word for it.
“I am not complaining,” Mr. Thornton hastened to add. “It is a privilege to be of service to you, Miss Nettleford.”
He sounded sincere, which was nice of him.
And to tell the truth, Delia did not regret the change in her life, either.
She might have preferred a different change, if she had been given a choice, but she did not want the life she had left behind her.
“I, too, am not complaining,” she said. “It has been, as you say, interesting. Before all of this happened, the most interesting thing that had happened in my entire life was when Papa’s prize pig had nineteen piglets, and people came from all the nearby villages to take a look. ”
Oh dear. When would she learn to think before speaking? Now Mr. Thornton would know that she was a hopeless country girl, without a scrap of sophistication.
And while she knew such an elegant gentleman would never look at the likes of her, and that she was committed to the unicorn and couldn’t respond even if he did show an interest, she still didn’t want him to condemn her as hopelessly rural and ignorant.
*
Miss Nettleford was a darling—her manners and way of speaking so honest and natural. She was the complete antithesis of the Society beauties who hovered around Jasper whenever he attended a social event, particularly during the London Season.
Perhaps they, too, were nice girls under the artificial mannerisms they’d been trained to display. A potential husband could not know what a young lady’s real nature was until after the ring was on the bride’s finger and the vows were said.
Not that any of them showed more than an academic interest in saying such vows with him.
Everyone in London Society knew he was a disappointment to the Duke of Findlater.
Having the strongest gift for magic in his generation of the family had made him the heir presumptive.
Failing to learn how to control that gift might lose it for him again.
These facts were well known. No ambitious lady would join her destiny to his, and if any thought to do so, their mothers would soon dissuade them.
Mind you, his gift had been far more useful since he entered the orbit of the catalyst. Unfortunately, the greater reliability was the only effect.
Whereas others noticed an increase in magic, he stayed the same, probably because he was as deeply flawed as the more pessimistic of his mentors had always insisted.
Perhaps the best he could hope was that, if he stayed close to Miss Nettleford, he would finally manage to release the pressure that continued to build within him—release it and not blow himself, the castle, and half the countryside to smithereens in the process.
He went from the meeting with Miss Nettleford to one with his Uncle Percy—a much less pleasant prospect. The catalyst and the castellan of the castle had entirely different effects on him.
Miss Nettleford made him feel calmer and more capable. He hadn’t missed the glances that hinted she admired him. He reminded himself that she had met very few mages—very few men, in fact—but it was still nice to be looked up to.
Every conversation with Uncle Percy, on the other hand, was a trial, and today was to be no exception.
“I do not see how your discerner can be so certain that this little copper box was the source of the problem,” he objected. “Perhaps it was just an object that fell into the stream that is the source of the water, and the emanations your discerner sensed came from the water.”
“Are you suggesting, my lord, that the water itself has somehow been hexed at its source, deep under the hills?” Jasper was doing his best to sound politely interested in Uncle Percy’s theory.
Even as he spoke, he could tell he was failing the endeavor.
The words came out with a sarcastic overtone that had Uncle Percy bristling.
“And why not? That is no less likely than a hex that magically appears in a well within a cellar that is guarded against both physical and magical intrusion.” Uncle Percy finished with a loud “Ha!” It was more an indignant puff of air than a word.