Alone in her chamber, Mielitta kicked herself for having missed the chance to visit Drianne. She should have asked Jannlou to take her. But maybe it was for the best. She wasn’t sure such a request would have been wise. She didn’t know what to make of Jannlou any more but she did know what to make of Bastien and it was all bad. Not that Jannlou would see it that way. He might well tell his long-time friend every word he exchanged with Mielitta, and she with Drianne, in all innocence.
Or Jannlou might be as deceitful as Bastien – more so, as he was better at setting verbal traps, which she kept falling into. At some stage, she’d run out of luck and would face the mages’ righteous anger. It was more likely to be Magaram and Shenagra who’d punish her than Bastien. She shivered. She knew what that punishment was likely to be but whatever the risk, she had to reach Drianne somehow, and soon.
As a last resort, she would launch a surprise attack during the Ceremony, with the full force of arrows and bees. Maybe the power that had surged through her when she rescued Drianne from Bastien and Jannlou would be enough to extricate the girl from the Maturity Ceremony and give them time to flee.
She would need her weapons and skills in top condition, just in case. She pulled the quiver out from under the bed and inspected each arrow, one at a time. No splits in the wood, no crushed featherettes in the flights or dints in the arrowheads. No frayed loops on her bow.
She stroked the wooden bow, old-style yew, a gift from Tannlei for her fourteenth-year disappointment at still being a child. The bow was used to her draw and nobody else was allowed to touch it. However much they’d harassed her, even Bastien and Jannlou had never tried to steal her bow – and never would. As Apprentice Mages, they couldn’t risk an accusation of theft or even the attempt. Such a crime against Perfection ranked with breaking into a bedchamber – unthinkable.
She nocked an arrow just to check the tension. A drawn bow is seven-eighths broken so never test it empty. She found a rough edge in the nock, which she sanded smooth with glasspaper. Then she tested it again. Perfect.
Perhaps that was part of the laxness in the Citadel that Rinduran had complained of, her archery teacher’s love of historic materials. But Declan used wood and steel in the forge. It was as Jannlou had said – no logic in how Perfection was implemented.
She had some basic equipment in her pack: a knife, some glasspaper, two spare flights, one shaft. She pulled the neck-chain up from her bodice and fingered the steel of the arrowhead. Kermon’s work was perfection, not only in the patterned steel, but even in its blunt edges, appropriate for its use, purely decorative. Mielitta knew that if she could only hone the edges of the arrowhead again, it would be as sharp as it was strong, her lucky, deadly arrow.
She could go to the forge early, before anyone was awake, don the smith’s gauntlets. It would be child’s play to oil and whet the arrowhead until it was sharp. Even easier to shave the end of a wooden shaft to fit into the tubular end of the steel arrowhead. But then she would need to light the forge, wait and, when it was hot enough, heat the steel tube to the exact shade of cherry red required. If it turned white, it was too hot and would set fire to the wood. If not hot enough, it wouldn’t char the wood enough for the shaft to enter the tube and stay there. She knew every step, from hammering the pin into the tube on the stone anvil, the final reinforcement, right down to quenching the head in oil.
No, it wasn’t any lack of technique that was her problem. It was the secrecy. It wasn’t possible to light the forge, wait the time required, pursue all the stages, without Declan appearing during the process. She was under no illusions as to how angry he would be at anybody else using his forge without permission, let alone a lady. Worst of all, he would doubt that she was a lady. At best, he would swallow her story about a problem in her forging but she suspected he knew more than she did and would smell a rat. Another of those book sayings that expressed exactly what she meant. She was the rat. And he would smell her rattiness.
She fingered her arrowhead again, longing to give it the chance to fulfil its purpose. What a waste of such workmanship! Kermon’s workmanship. Once more, her thoughts brought her back to the Apprentice Smith. He could complete his work on her arrow, put an edge back on, without Declan being suspicious. He’d been just as upset as she was when he was made to blunt the arrowhead. He could take her to Drianne, perform his soul-reader magecraft.
But she trusted Kermon even less than she trusted Jannlou. Kermon’s ambitions were in the open but nevertheless he was getting everything he wanted, which was suspect in itself. He’d taken what should have been her place in the smithy. He’d appeared so conveniently to interpret for Drianne and win the mages’ plaudits, and Mielitta would never know whether his words matched Drianne’s thoughts.
Drones. You can’t trust them.
She ignored the buzzing of bee disapproval at such poor community spirit but their longing for the Forest matched her own. She told herself that practising her archery was the best she could do for Drianne at the moment. Her heart leapt at the promise of water, sun and honey, storms forgotten.
The slow way, she admonished her bees. No whooshing and nausea. I’m doing this as a human.
She rolled her practical shirt and britches up into a ball and strapped her quiver round her waist. She put her bow over her shoulder and threw a cloak around herself to disguise her weaponry as much as possible. No doubt she looked hunchbacked and strange but if challenged, she would simper and use her planned excuse, that she was on an errand to a knight in the archery yard. Besides which, it was so early that nobody would be around. Perfect ways were predictable ways.
Mielitta glided at the quickest pace a lady could be expected to manage, along the familiar passages, down to the narrow path by the dripping rockface. She paused to touch the walls, for luck or a blessing from the ancestors, but she felt no connection. If they were indifferent to her fate, why had they sent her here? Why didn’t they open to her as the Forest did, calling her with its wild colours and scents?
At least her hurry this time was only from her own sense of urgency, not from her enemies’ pursuit. She remembered Jannlou and Bastien shouting behind her, imagined their faces when they reached the blank rock and she’d gone. She smiled. She recalled their chase so vividly she even thought she heard footsteps echoing behind her and she shook her head at her foolish imagination.
‘Radium,’ she called, rushing through the water gate, feeling the different tastes of the rainbow colours, allowing her bee senses to enjoy the blues and ultraviolet.
She stooped by the stream, cupped and drank the water of the day in her hands, today’s flavours of ochre, granite and lightning. The storm had left its taste in the water and she quenched a thirst that had not left her since her last visit to the Forest. The purified drink that sustained the Citadel kept her from dying but this water made her feel alive. She remembered Jannlou’s treasonous quote, his mother’s words: ‘I am surviving, not living.’
The meadow grass looked so soft and springy that Mielitta threw off her shoes and swirled her skirts in a dance, humming softly to her own tune. Her bees joined in, a chorus of thrums that made the earth itself seem to vibrate. The grass was spongy and sun-warmed under her feet and when she had skipped and whirled herself dizzy, the water sparkled, inviting. She took another drink, wondered if she was allowed to stand in the stream.
Allowed. What did allowed mean in the Forest?
She took off her cloak and carefully laid her clothes parcel and weaponry on it. Then she hitched up her skirts and stepped into the running water, gasping at its unexpected chill. What was pleasant to the mouth was startling on her feet but after the initial shock, the tickle of cold water over her toes made her giggle.
She stepped boldly out into the stream and slipped on a large pebble that was slick with moss. Waving her arms to keep her balance just made her giggle more and she landed with a thump on her bottom, the icy freshness striking her through her lavender gown and Mage Fabrisse’s best embroidery.
She stood up with some difficulty and watched rivulets run down the clinging fabric of her dress, dancing into the stream to continue on their way. She preferred not to think about the flavours she might have added to today’s water. She allowed herself a moment to enjoy being a human-shaped waterfall, then she waded to dry ground, clumsy with the weight of her soaked gown.
She quickly stripped, spread out her wet clothes on some large rocks and donned her britches. Her fancy underwear was soaked through so she bound her breasts with a scarf as she had all the long years of her puberty. Her woman’s clothes would soon dry in the sunshine and she had work to do. She could pick them up on the way back. She laced up her boots, grabbed bow and quiver, and raced into the woods, not looking behind her.
She stopped at the beech tree but not, this time, to marvel at each separate leaf. Instead she slipped an arrow into the notched rest of her bow and looked around for a target. She could hear Tannlei’s voice. ‘What is your target today, Mielitta?’
The day she was told Tannlei had gone, she’d hated her teacher for abandoning her. Hated her in angry tears and blurred shots until she disciplined herself to shoot in Tannlei’s honour, in memoriam. Until the day she heard that voice again, preserved in her deep thinking, saying ‘What is your target today, Mielitta?’
And she’d replied, ‘To honour the best teacher, ever.’ She’d tried so hard to centre herself, loose her arrows with skill but she’d been blinded by tears. When she went to collect her arrows, she couldn’t believe that one was right in the heart of the bull’s-eye.
As if Tannlei had been watching her, she’d answered the unspoken question. ‘Today I learned that a lucky hit is still a hit. And that the archer cannot control all events.’ And she’d wept again, for the events she could not control.
Today, in the forbidden Forest, surrounded by the difference of each tree, each rustling leaf, she asked herself, ‘What is your target, Mielitta?’ and she let the answer come from her deepest thoughts, unforced.
‘To be worthy of my teacher. To rise to any challenge to rescue Drianne.’ As she relaxed, felt her body in tune with the bow, felt the vibration, she saw a formation like a cross in the bark patterns of a tree. A tricky shot between the trees. She felt the invisible line between herself, her bow and its landing point, the arc of motion and she loosed an arrow, smiled.
Darts. Stingers, murmured the bees in approval.
Then she held four arrows and turned so her target tree was behind her. She whirled and loosed one after the other, forming a neat five-pointed letter M, with the middle dip at the heart of the cross she’d first noticed. She stepped forward to recover her arrows and was nearly bowled over by a solid brown creature with fey eyes. Deer.
The doe froze, fixing Mielitta in its liquid brown gaze, then bounded off, weaving skittishly between the trees. Mielitta instinctively raised her bow, nocked an arrow and aimed at the retreating deer but stayed her hand. If she needed food, this was something she would have to learn how to do but she had no such need. She smiled, wondering what her teacher would say about shooting deer in the Forest. She pulled her arrows out of the tree, checked she hadn’t split or spoiled them and stood still, watched, turned invisible.
The more she looked, the more she saw. A trail of ants was marching up the tree-trunk where her arrows had left sap oozing.
Making honeydew.
A flash of brown alerted her to another creature startled by her presence but this one was smaller, sat up on its back legs before zigzagging madly away between the trees. Deer? Not a deer. Hare.
Something green coiled and wriggled along a thick branch out of sight. Snake.
An irritating whine from an insect near her face stopped for a painful second as it jabbed her. ‘Ouch!’ Mosquito.
And always birdsong. Long-tailed swoops over her head, red and gold, blue and white. Mielitta had never seen living feathers before and each bird’s flight was as distinctive as had been the individual leaves. So much singularity was overwhelming and Mielitta found the word drunk, savoured it. Yes, she felt drunk on so much Nature.
If she hadn’t shut her eyes to listen better to the birdsong, she wouldn’t have heard the tell-tale snap behind her. In that second’s warning she whirled round with an arrow ready in her bow. But it would be no use against a mage.
Jannlou.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he began, moving closer, dominating her. ‘It’s dangerous.’
He couldn’t say any more as Mielitta threw him to the ground with her full weight and held an arrow to his throat. So he was a mage. So what! She was going to make him work his hardest to take her, however strong his magecraft.
It would be easier if he shut his eyes but instead, he stared at her. She could see her own grimacing face reflected in duplicate. Twin blue mirrors, purple and silver ringed. Circles like the archery corkboard for target practice.
The longer she sat in this ridiculous position, astride a supine assailant, the more vulnerable she was to a quick knee-jerk from someone much stronger than she was. Her advantage was in surprise, in catching Jannlou off-balance, in darts and distance. Her hand was steady but her thoughts were not.
She should use the arrowhead. She could see the pulse below his Adam’s apple, where the steel pushed against the skin, making a tiny discoloured dimple in the even pores. Even as a blunt instrument it could kill. She would only be defending herself. Not that she would ever be asked to justify herself. Nobody would know. But he kept looking at her with sunshine and her face in his eyes.
Clearly, Jannlou had come to the same conclusion. ‘Are you going to kill me or not?’ he asked her, not one cloud in his eyes.
‘Don’t try glamour on me!’ she told him. ‘I’m immune. It doesn’t work.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ he agreed. ‘But this does.’ Inevitable as the Citadel’s greylight, he bucked her off as if she were a feather and then he rolled, so Mielitta’s half-hearted jab landed in the earth.
Then he was behind her, grabbed her arms behind her back, avoided the backward lunge of her head and bent her forward so she couldn’t try it again.
‘Vicious beast, aren’t you,’ he panted.
Bite your head off, thought Mielitta but she said nothing, saving her breath for her next move. She flopped, as limp as if she’d fainted, a dead weight in his grip. Then she back-kicked with both feet, using all her strength and aiming for his privates. As she’d hoped, he was startled enough to slacken his grip and jerk backwards to avoid her boots. She caught him higher up, enough to wind him and to give her the momentum to follow-through in a full flip out of his grasp. She was fit and flexible so she landed facing away from him. She turned, grabbed her bow while he was still doubled over and ran past him into the Forest.
‘Mielitta!’ he gasped.
From a safe distance, she called, ‘I know, you’re going to tell me I’ve got it all wrong. But it doesn’t look that way to me!’ She nocked an arrow, pointed it towards him.
He stumbled a pace in her direction and she loosed a warning. The arrow twanged into the tree-trunk beside him and Jannlou stood still. Her heart thumped as she waited for the blast of magecraft that would surely come. Even if it was half the power of Rinduran’s, she had no chance. And if she survived, she would have to kill him or she was doomed. Once he reported her to his father, her future was in ashes.
Jannlou was no deer but the same reluctance stayed her hand. Did she really need to kill him?
Hesitation would be the death of her.
‘I followed you,’ he yelled. ‘I saw you at the water gate. Heard you use the password and I followed.’
‘No kidding,’ she yelled back. ‘And I suppose you were trying to be helpful again.’
He tried moving another step towards her.
‘Don’t move or it’ll be in your head next time.’ Why was she still warning him? She even felt the urge to tell him what she’d overheard in the library, between Bastien and his father. As if she wasn’t in deep enough trouble without meddling in mage politics. Jannlou would never believe her anyway, not when he’d witnessed her using a stolen password and committing trespass.
Then she realised what else Jannlou must have witnessed.
Outraged, she shouted, ‘Did you watch me in the stream too?’
‘Did you go in the stream? I waited before I tried the password. Didn’t want to bump into you the other side of the gate.’
She flushed crimson, wondering whether to believe him. She could hardly say, ‘Did you watch me undress?’ and whether he said ‘no’ or ‘yes’ she wouldn’t know the truth. The only certainty would be that he’d laugh at her. That deserved an arrow in the head!
‘It’s the first time,’ he called, his voice starting to regain its usual gruff, deep tones. ‘I’ve never been in the Forest before. It’s–’ He was searching for words.
She had many words for the Forest but they were personal. ‘It’s not fake grass that cleans itself or greylight,’ she told him.
‘Why is it forbidden?’
‘You tell me. You’re the mage. Perfection forbids it, I suppose. You’ve been into the walls so you know the history.’
There was a silence. ‘I drank the water. In the stream.’
‘Then you know.’
‘Yes. Every citizen should come here, should have the right to come here.’
‘You’re going to tell Daddy that when you go back?’ she mocked.
‘When the time is right.’ Maybe he was working his glamour on her but she couldn’t shoot him, not if there was even a tiny chance he was telling the truth. What if, in the future, the Forest could be visited openly? What if Jannlou could bring that about one day, when he took over from his father? And she would be the one who made it happen. What if? She lowered her bow and watched as he walked cautiously towards her.
