10

When she saw what Grandmother had done to her skirt, Yaika did the logical thing. She blew up.

“How could youuuuuu?!” I heard her voice echo all the way down the hallway on the morning of her oath ceremony. “This wasn’t the design I wanted! I hate youuuuu!”

“Which is why I waited to show you until it was too late,” Grandmother’s voice said firmly. “These cuts are well in line with current fashion trends, and if you pair it with this underskirt instead of that one, the cerulean highlights will look particularly —”

“But that’s not what I wanted! It’s my oath ceremony! It has to be perfect! You’re ruining everything!”

I buried my head under my blankets. Maybe, if I went back to sleep, I could avoid Yaika’s hysterics. I hoped that once this party was over, she’d be possible to live with again. She’d been more and more on edge ever since we started planning it.

“Good morning, Raneh,” Mother said, opening my door. “Time to get up. We have a lot of preparations to make.”

I pulled the blankets off my head. “Do I have to?” I moaned. “Yaika’s lost all vestige of sanity.”

“I did much the same thing at my oath ceremony,” Mother said, throwing my curtains open. I winced in the bright sunlight. “Just because you took yours calmly doesn’t mean we all do. And you should have seen my older sister at her wedding.”

I muttered under my breath and slid out of bed. Truthfully, I hadn’t taken mine that calmly. I’d just had a mild fever the previous few weeks, and had been rather fuzzy about the whole thing.

A frizz of magic zipped down my arm and zapped through my fingers. I jolted upright, awake. Had I forgotten to get rid of it yesterday? Or was it building up more quickly than usual? Either way, it was a bad sign.

I jerked my hand to my arm, hoping Mother hadn’t noticed. Fortunately, she had her back turned to me, picking out an outfit from my closet.

“Is this what Yaika set aside for you to wear?” Mother asked, turning around with a green-and-purple overskirt with matching silver bodice in her arms.

“Yes.” I made a face. “Her taste is abysmal.”

“Her taste is lovely,” Mother said. “It’s just not yours. And she did try to incorporate your preferences into it.”

I sighed, pulling on my favorite golden underskirt. I tugged my thin torron nightgown over my head and ballooned it to the ground in a heap. Torron didn’t wrinkle, but it wouldn’t matter if it did; no one wore torron in public, anyway.

Well, no one but vassals. And young children. Torron generally looked shabby, but it was comfortable. And it stretched every time it was washed, which made it ideal for babies.

I held my thick black hair as Mother laced up the silver bodice, which was tight and stiff and made me look entirely flat-chested. I objected to this. I really didn’t need help looking more skinny.

Unenthusiastically, I climbed into the three outer skirts, which were sewn together at the waistband. The top one was sheer, with splotches of pink, and the middle one was sheer with splotches of purple. The bottom one had swirls of variegated greens, which combined with the top two outer skirts to look like a flower garden swishing in the breeze. It looked amazing in my closet and horrendous on me.

Mother frowned as I twirled around, trying to pretend I thought I looked good.

“That bodice may not be quite flattering . . .” she said hesitantly.

“Oh, you think?” I said sarcastically.

Mother sighed. “Perhaps your sister would be willing to consider reselecting . . .”

“Raneh!” Yaika burst into my room, in tears. “Did you see what Grandmother did to my skirt?! Did you?! She ruined it!!”

Yaika flung her outer skirt across the room, where it landed in an elegant heap on top of my bed. I reached back and retrieved it, shaking it to make sure it hadn’t wrinkled.

“What would you have preferred?” I asked acidly. “Some big, floppy bows to disguise the stained places instead?”

Yaika shuddered. “Ugh! Those have been out of fashion for years!”

“Or perhaps she could have tried repainting it?”

“No one should repaint clothing! You can never get the pigments exactly the same!”

“Or perhaps she could have shortened it.”

“Shortened it? Raneh, are you insane?!”

“Or,” I said, walking over and plopping the skirt in her hands, “perhaps she could have fixed the damage by snipping out the bleached spots and re-hemming it so perfectly that it will look like it was deliberately designed that way.”

Yaika glared at me. She turned and stomped out of my bedroom without a word.

“Well done,” Mother said.

“I just hope she wears it,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Well, you’d better fix my hair perfectly, Grandmother!” Yaika shouted as she stormed down the hallway.

As soon as I could, I snuck down to the gardens. If ever there was a day to visit my groverweed, this was it.

My heart hammered as I squeaked open my metal gate. I shook my fingers, shivering slightly. It was chilly to the touch, but that would change by midday.

Carefully, I climbed into the large central expanse of my groverweed and filias patch. I chose a spot near the side and knelt carefully, spreading my skirts out so they didn’t get dirt on them. Then I reached out slowly and gingerly touched my fingertips to the tips of two plants’ groverweed roots.

Okay, I thought, breathing in and out. Get rid of all this magic. Slowly . . . slowly . . .

Power lanced up and down my arms. My whole hands shoved deep into the dirt, and groverweed exploded into bloom all around me. Runners laced through the air, stems thickened, and leaves smashed into filias as if to strangle them. I pushed harder, desperate to get it all out before somebody called for me. One plant roared up in front of me, and I yelped and jumped back, just as the rest sprayed pollen everywhere. I shook my hair, hoping the grey ashlike stuff hadn’t gotten all over my clothing.

I surveyed the damage to my garden, my heart plummeting. It would be almost impossible to hide all this groverweed. The filias were completely covered in grey pollen, and the air was chokingly thick with the smell of soot.

“Oh, come on!” I protested in a strangled voice, wrenching my hands out of the soil. A network of groverweed roots had already grown over them, so I had to rip through those to get them up. They came out coated in dirt and shreds of roots. And then a groverweed right in front of me exploded ashlike pollen all over my face.

“Ugh! Ugh!” I choked, spitting it out. “That does it! What’s wrong with you stupid flowers? You’re supposed to remain subtle! Small! Small!”

I whammed my fists in the middle of the patch, tears springing in my eyes in fury. Something exploded out of me. I reeled backwards, stunned.

The entire groverweed patch was bare.

For a moment, I just sat there, frozen. Then my fingers scrambled through the dirt, desperately, until I found seeds. Countless, countless, countless groverweed seeds. All the plants were still there. Just . . . just . . . just . . .

Small.

What did I do? I thought, wild-eyed. Did I just . . . use magic . . . on groverweed?

Nobody could do that. Groverweed was the most horrible weed ever. It just . . . absorbed whatever magic you threw at it, including anything in the soil from enhanced fertilizers.

My hands trembled. My mind felt numb with shock. Something was really wrong with me. Something was seriously wrong with me, if I could use magic on groverweed.

I staggered back to the house, hoping nobody would see me coated with groverweed pollen ash.

No such luck.

“What in the world?” Yaika yelped, turning the corner of the stairs and nearly running into me. “What did you do to your clothing?”

“Garden,” I mumbled. “I just — I — uh —”

Yaika glowered and jabbed her finger in the direction of my room. “Go. Change.”

I scrambled down the hallway, relieved for the permission. She’d have been pretty mad if I had changed for her oath ceremony without asking her first. My dirty hands slipped on the doorknob until I finally got it open, and then I collapsed onto my bed, staring numbly at the fire-patterned ceiling.

Something is wrong with me.

I’d never asked for magic, and it had come to me anyway. While everybody else’s magic was dying, mine kept coming more quickly. And now it turned out I could even affect groverweed.

Wait a minute . . . could those be linked?

I lay there, breathing shallowly, my mind dizzy. I could think of three possibilities. Either what had happened to me was another symptom of magic falling apart . . . or I might be part of what was destroying it . . . or I might be a key to saving it.

My dirty fingers clenched and unclenched the orange bedsheets underneath me, my mind working furiously.

Okay. If mine was just another symptom, I was probably not the only person affected this way. So why hadn’t I heard of others? Surely there would be magicians out there who had symptoms like mine, and they wouldn’t be shy about admitting it.

Unless . . . my effect only happened to people who hadn’t renounced status. Or, worse, only people who had loads of status, which would usually mean landowners or landowner heirs. Any landowner with magic would be just as terrified as I was about being caught. And if they were caught? Well, they’d be dead. Either way, I wouldn’t hear about them.

The second possibility made my stomach squirm. What if I were causing, or at least speeding up, the death of magic?

I didn’t think I could be causing the decline of magic. Grandfather said it had been going on a long time, long before he was born. However, he’d also said it had been speeding up lately. What if it was because of me — or others like me?

I swallowed. There was a very uncomfortable, very obvious explanation I had been trying not to think about ever since he’d mentioned that magic was dying.

I had always wondered what happened to magic after it got swallowed by groverweed. Did it just go away? Did it remain trapped forever? Did groverweed somehow consume it and convert it into something else? I’d always assumed that a groverweed’s magic dissipated into the soil when the plant died. But what if it didn’t? What if any magic absorbed by groverweed became irretrievable permanently?

If so . . . if so . . . that might explain the gradual decline. There was magic in all fertilizer, so groverweed that sprang up in crops or gardens could always soak up some of it. Even if people killed the plant whenever they saw it, they couldn’t prevent that happening completely. Gradually, all magic would be absorbed, unless the species somehow went extinct, and even then, it would only save whatever vestiges of magic remained.

I really, really hoped that wasn’t the case.

Because if it was, that meant I had been actively killing the system for years now.

On the other hand . . . I could also pull magic out of groverweed. I did it all the time, to stop one plant from growing too unruly. And apparently I could even affect the plant magically. So if groverweed was the cause of the problem, I might very well be a solution. All I had to do was yank magic out of every groverweed I could see, move the magic somewhere else where it could circulate normally, and . . . and . . .

Well, that was the problem. And do what with it?

If I tried to keep magic inside me, it would leak out and cause problems within a matter of days. If I tried to use it, nearby magicians would notice someone had used magic, figure out it wasn’t one of them, and then start hunting for the person who had. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that I could avoid their notice for my whole life.

And then . . . the Ruler’s death sentence. I didn’t want to die. I really, really didn’t.

There was the other option, of course: I could take the oath of magic. If I did, I could use magic openly without fear. I could drain the plants and do spectacular things. If groverweed was the issue, that would solve everything.

On the other hand, I didn’t know if my ability was because I still had status and hadn’t revoked it. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if I took the oath of magic and then lost that ability.

Besides, unless I had no other choice, I didn’t want to be a magician. I wanted to have my own land, like my parents. I wanted to have vassals to protect, not be at somebody else’s mercy.

I swallowed, squeezing my top outer skirt. The sheer fabric was still smudged all over the place, but at least my hands were moderately clean.

“How am I supposed to know what to do if I don’t know what’s going on?” I asked out loud, looking around at the yellow and red fabrics that decorated my walls. “How am I supposed to do anything without information?”

Of course, nothing answered me.