The horse huffed as the cherry-sized ball of silver energy buzzed through its mane like a jocal fly. Vesperi focused on channeling the talent in her palm into the faint stream connected to that ball. It was so indistinct no one would notice it but her, and her control over it was thrilling. Besides, if her concentration faltered, no one would blame a dead horse on her. Vesperi rarely deigned to enter the stables—the servants cared for the animals, and she would never let herself be considered one of them.
Smells of tobacco, sour ale, and sweat alerted her she was not alone. She lowered her hand, and the ball of energy dissipated. The guard Lokas, the least appealing of the lot, wore a faded green tunic embroidered with House Sellwyn’s viper, though the garment’s tattered threads obscured its raised head. Father ought to dress his men better.
The guard cleared his throat, yellow spit hitting the ground. “Your father wants to see you, Vespy.”
“Don’t call me that.” She had always hated the nickname. It had not suited a four-year-old child, much less a woman of nineteen. But Lokas was one of her father’s personal guards, the only ones who dared chastise her when her father or Uzziel were out of sight. The others had learned not to trifle with her.
“I will call you what I want, whore.” His voice was gruffer than usual, and his breath reeked of the stale brew the guards kept in their quarters. The barrels sat in direct sunlight most of the day, making the ale hot and rancid. Lord Sellwyn probably had to pull Lokas out of one to come get her. She nearly giggled at the image of her slender father struggling with an ogre of a man like him, dripping with ale.
“I have never been your whore, Lokas.” She said his name with disdain. “Is that what has you in such a displeasing mood?” She had bedded most of the guards by the time she left for the convent—it was the easiest way to control them and sometimes fun. Lokas, however, repulsed her with his constant drunkenness.
Lokas spat at her. “I wouldn’t take you if you lay down in front of me, legs spread wide. The smell of your used-up cunt makes me ill.”
She wiped the spit from her face with the loose velvet at the end of her sleeve. Then she made to soothe him with warm tones, making sure to brush up against him. “Oh, Lokas. There is no need for such venom. I refused you out of love—I did not want your ego bruised when you couldn’t perform. Liquor can have that effect, you know.”
“Shut your mouth, harlot.” He prodded her side with a dagger always kept in hand. He was not fast enough to pull it from his belt if attacked, so he held it instead. “Let’s go.”
She complied. He did not have enough wits left to make this game of insults a challenge. They walked on the cobblestone path back toward the manor house and over the bridge that crossed the dry riverbed of the Sell. It had not rained in western Medua for as long as Vesperi had been at the convent, though the air had felt heavy of late. They reached the main door, and it creaked opened as three guards pushed it from inside. She was tempted to see if her talent could push it faster. Perhaps it wouldn’t sear if she let it out as a wave rather than focusing it into a stream. If it worked, the guards would be spared a lot of effort, but what reason did she have to make their lives easier? Her father often said tired guards were loyal guards. Maybe someday she could burn through a wooden door without destroying what lay beyond it. She had already lit a couple of incense sticks when practicing and nothing else had flamed.
And of course, she had done the same to two people. The burning was completely unexpected that first time, when she charred Sister Vandely to a crisp. The woman had ordered Vesperi to stay behind after a training session. She had rambled on about submission and duty, and Vesperi was not in the mood to listen. The moon Esye had been especially clear that night, and Vesperi stared at it through the window as the woman had droned on. As her anger built, Vesperi had fixated more on the moon, noting how the others formed a ring around it. Sister Vandely rapped her with a stick to get her attention, and Vesperi had raised a hand to slap the old crone. But she did not hit flesh. Instead, a blazing silver shaft nearly blinded her, and her palm sliced through a sheet of falling black ashes. The smell had made her gag, the same as when her father burned runaways outside the gates of Sellwyn. Vesperi hoped to do the burning for her father someday without using wood at all. When she mastered her talent, he would see how invaluable she was to him. Better a wizard as an asset than an enemy.
“Lokas, you can leave me now. I will be safe inside.” She did not wait for his reply but went through the doorway and up the stone steps to the open-air walkway, happy not to hear his plodding gait follow. She did not stop to touch the carving but kept on toward the manor—Father was waiting. As she walked down the hall, servants with brooms in hand darted away. One weaver was too slow getting back to his loom. She noted his balding head of black hair in case he should dare look her way again. If she had to endure the guards’ fists and lashes, then so did everyone else. That her father allowed her that power was dignifying. Perhaps she’d have the weaver’s cloak trampled. But destroying a good cloak with the guards so shabbily dressed would be a waste. She would have to mention their lack of repair to Father.
Bellick, another of his guards, stood in front of the door to Lord Sellwyn’s chamber. She gave her hips a bit of a swish and tugged down her chemise enough to reveal the white trim of her bodice. He gave her a complete top-to-bottom inspection. He had been one of her first lovers, the comeliest man in the manor with those dimples and sage-green eyes. She would not mind another tussle if she got him alone.
Placing her hand on his chest and tracing her fingers downward but not too far, she greeted him. He shuddered with pleasure but hastily straightened up. “Your father is waiting inside.”
“I know that. He can wait a little longer,” she whispered in his ear, giving full breath to each syllable.
Bellick pushed her away reluctantly. “He’s in a foul mood. I would not try him if I was you.”
“I know how to handle my father.”
Bellick laughed in her face as he pushed open the door. Lord Sellwyn hunched over his desk, scribbling with his favorite pen made from the hide and taxidermied head of a forest viper, complete with fangs. Its venom could kill, should her father decide to pierce someone’s skin with it rather than merely lace it into his words.
She took a deep breath and walked in, closing the door behind her. Lord Sellwyn did not acknowledge her.
“Father? Lokas said you wanted to see me?”
He did not shift as he spoke. “I searched for you in Uzziel’s room. Then I went to the kitchen, to see if you had joined the other women, but you were not there—again.”
“You know I hate the kitchen.”
“What you hate does not affect me. It is your place to be there whenever your brother does not need you.” He barely spoke above a whisper. “Since you are so content to stay at Sellwyn Manor, then you need to learn to stay where you belong.”
“So that’s why you called for me.” She had thought it might be about the suitors. It was always about the suitors. There had been one more this past week, Lord Dusen Rolang, a man so old his feather-thin frame had to be supported by two of his servants. She should have put him out of his misery, but instead she refused to see him at all. Lord Sellwyn’s daughter would not wed a decrepit old man. Her father should realize it would portray him as weak.
“I called you here because I do not know what to do with you.” Jahnas Sellwyn laid down his pen. His green-eyed gaze licked its way toward where she leaned against the wall, not having been asked to sit. “You reject every man I allow here.” He strained his lips into a thin line. “Scare them away or insult them until they demand I have you beat for insolence. Saeth only knows what happened to Lord Agler.”
“Agler was an idiot. An affront. I thought you meant him as a joke.”
“A joke? Do you not know how desperate I am to be rid of you? I don’t care if a slime-sucking frogman offered to take you away. If one hopped here with a bag full of souzers clutched in his webbed feet, I would throw you at him. I want your dowry, darling daughter. And I want you out of my hands.” He held her in a narrowed gaze for a moment then returned to his parchments. “What happened to Agler?”
The lie leapt to her lips easily—she told it to anyone who asked. Why, I asked Agler for time to consider his offer, she would say, one more night. Agler left the room, and I watched as he exited the manor through the door to the walkway, watched the light brighten the dark hallway for a moment then dim again as the door closed. Then I never saw him again, and what could I do about that? I cannot force a man to wait for me. Such a simple tale, and her reputation was such that everyone believed she had scared him off. Everyone but her father. He knew her better, knew she would not meekly agree to consider a suitor’s offer. She was her father’s daughter, and by Saeth’s fist, no one else would ever know her as well.
Her heart pounded, and she felt as though a child again, peeking at him from the kitchen doorway, hoping he would ask her to join him at the table one night, if she could prove how worthy she was. This was that moment, time to show him, show him everything. She had not singed one horse’s hair.
“I killed him.”
He was at her side faster than she had ever seen him move before and yanked her by the shoulders. She did not flinch.
“You killed him? Is that what you said?” His voice was a hiss.
Vesperi stood firm. “Yes. He was a spy, Father, a spy from Lansera. One of those bloody Ravens.” She did not blink. Now was not the time for submission. He must hear her.
“You are telling me I let a spy into my household and only you noticed it?”
Oh no. Vesperi had not considered him taking it as an insult, a grave misstep. His pride was too quick to bruise.
“You could not have known,” she placated him. “Only when we were alone did he make mistakes. He called me Lady several times.” She spoke fast, trying to pacify him before he really grew angry. “I killed him for you, Father, to protect the Sellwyns.”
He loosened his grip a little, and her heart leapt. She strengthened her plea. “Don’t you see how much use I can be to you? I can get closer to your enemies than your spies because I am a woman. They will not suspect me. And that’s not all I can do.” She raised her pointer finger toward the high window and willed the energy to come slowly so as not to alarm him.
“When are you going to give this up.” He groaned and pulled away from her to pace the rug on the floor, sending cockroaches scurrying like servants. “You are a woman, Vesperi, a woman. Uzziel will inherit Sellwyn Manor, not you. He is my son.”
“He is a blight on us!” The yell escaped her. It always came back to Uzziel, that pathetic whelp. Her talent churned rapidly, caution forgotten, and she did not care, did not want to control it. She forged on.
“Uzziel has been in his sick bed for all of his eleven worthless years. He should have been put to death at birth like the offal he is. The advers proclaimed it so.”
“Do not speak of your betters, Vesperi. You are the mistake.”
“Fine.” She spat out the word. “Fine. I’m a mistake. I’m an embarrassment. Uzziel is your heir, the light of your life. But what happens when he dies? Do you think he is going to outlive you? Truly?”
He stopped pacing and bent over at the waist, chortling at her words. Vesperi shrank against the wall. This is not good. She had never heard him laugh before—never. Her father was a serious man intent on amassing and maintaining his power. That left no time for laughter.
The talent ceased within her instantly, and its absence left her cold. Thank Saeth it had not built up enough for her to demonstrate it. She thought he would be proud of it, thrilled he could use her to further his reach, but she could not know how he would react now. Not when he was laughing.
When he caught his breath, Lord Sellwyn said, “What will I do? What will I do? If Uzziel does not live, I will disown you and your mother and take a new wife.”
“What?” She could barely speak. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. “You, you would do that?” Disowned females were outlaws, tainted, untouchable. Only one option remained for them, one place they could find shelter, if it could be called that. “You would send me to Thokketh?” Saying the name gave her chills. It was a place of exile, a fortress built of ice on the edge of the desolate Giants’ Pathway. Females unclaimed by liege or nobleman ended their lives there in bitter cold and banishment. No one came back from Thokketh. The sheven in the moat waters and their always-opened mouths tore them to shreds if they tried to escape.
He could not mean it. He wouldn’t send her away. She was a Sellwyn, she was his. Jahnas Sellwyn did not give up his property. He burned his deserters rather than let them escape, destroyed what betrayed him. He did not abandon it. This was—this was not right.
“My doors would be locked to you faster than Uzziel’s blood ran cold.” The laughter again, mocking her. She wanted to cry, to wail, to beg, but only her instinct worked and it screamed to run, to leave his presence before he could shame her anymore.
She flung open the door, slamming it into Bellick. His curses mixed in with more of her father’s horrible cackling amusement. It sounded louder than it should have, echoing through the hall and her head. She ran toward her room at the far end of the manor. As far from Father’s room as possible, she realized as she flew. How could she have been so stupid to believe he would ever give her what she wanted, that she meant anything to him? She was more afraid than she could ever remember.
The kitchen doorway loomed up ahead. She stopped running, thinking to warn her mother, too. The room had no door; the heat from the kitchen’s five stone-encased ovens warmed the corridors, and the women would sweat to death if enclosed within it. It reeked of bloodworms roasting in the central oven, their putrid scent akin to the fumes that rose from Durn’s swamps. With the river dried up, no game came to graze outside Sellwyn manor, and everyone had to make do with insects. Plenty of those crept around in dark corners.
The kitchen’s walls were smeared black from someone’s vain attempt to clean the smoke stains. Nearly all of the manor’s women were there, stirring one of the stew pots, poking at the hot coals in the oven, or huddled together beneath the sole window cracked open about as wide as Vesperi’s pinkie.
Lady Sellwyn was at the closest oven, her back to Vesperi. She wore her usual mud-colored skirt with threads of pressed copper sewn into it so it would sparkle in the light, if she ever saw the light and the copper had not turned a dull green. A green apron covered her ruffled chemise, and her dark hair was pulled back in a snood of the same shade, the color of Sellwyn’s viper. She was a slight woman. Vesperi could not imagine the agony it must have caused her to give birth the many times she had. Only she and Uzziel had lived past their first birthdays.
Her mother pushed a pot into the oven and rested a giant wooden spoon on the counter. She spun around, perhaps sensing Vesperi’s gaze. Her face dripped with sweat. Rust-colored liquid from the pot stained the apron. For a moment, all she did was stare, shocked to see her daughter in the kitchen, much less the manor. She probably had not known Vesperi had returned to Sellwyn. Vesperi had not sought her.
When Lady Sellwyn reached out an arm, beckoning her forward, Vesperi bolted. She ran back into the hallway and lunged past the last few doors to her room. Hot tears poured down her face, and she cursed them as she grabbed at her bedcover. No, it would never do as a sack. It was covered with Sellwyn’s crest, the snake stitched into every patch.
She would be found out before she made it to the next town. Next town? There was nowhere she could go in Medua. She pulled off the sheet instead, its edges frayed. It would not last, but she did not have time to search for something else to use. She had to move fast to get to the mountains. She had to run.
The riverbed of the Sell cracked from thirst, a massive piece of lacework stretching ever westward. Vesperi’s feet struck the dry clay with a louder stomp than she had hoped, though no one should be seeking her yet, at least not here. Her father would not think she had the nerve to run, and when others tried to escape, they went for the cover of the swamps to the northeast or to the eastern road to Qiltyn, hoping to outrace both her father’s mounts and the liegeless men living in the wilderness surrounding it. All hanged from Lord Sellwyn’s rosewood tree in the end, but they never ran west. No one ran to Lansera. They’d already been rejected there.
He would decipher her course eventually but not for a while. She hoped—nay, depended—on his underestimation of her. His inattention, that lack of the regard she had craved only half an hour ago, might be what saved her. She gripped her improvised pack more tightly.
A dark form loomed around the first bend, and her heart fell. It couldn’t be him, not this fast—
“I am not your father, Vesperi.” A dulcet voice she could not immediately place called out to her. But she did recognize his lengthy legs that dangled from where he sat on the riverbed’s bank.
“Lorne? What are you—how did you—why are you here?” She could not begin to guess how he knew she had gone, much less where to find her. The voice in her head shouting Run! Run! grew louder, but she resisted it. He might simply think she was out for a walk … a woman, walking alone at twilight. It was ludicrous, but she had to try.
When she drew close enough to read the boredom on his face, he spoke, “I am not going to tell him. You are making my task easier, actually. Uzziel will be much calmer without you stirring him up.”
She could not bring herself to bat an eyelash at him, no room left in her thoughts with the pounding in her head and the panic in her chest.
“Take this.” He handed her a petite sack.
“What am I to do with it?” She undid the tie. The heavy scent of honey and musk made her gag. Fallowent.
“You will need it.”
“I think I’m tall enough already.”
He laughed at that, sniffed the air, and reached behind him, producing two sturdy sticks of rosewood and a square of fabric coated in some sort of resin. “You will need this too. It’s going to rain.”
She took it from him, eyes round. He fixed his azure ones on them. “Good luck, Vesperi Sellwyn.” Sadness crept into his playful tone. “You will need it. And so will the rest of us.”
He disappeared into the brush on higher ground. Vesperi did not stop to process how bizarre his behavior had been or why he would let her go. She needed to run. It was all she could think to do.
As she took the next step forward, a drop of rain hit her head. More fell on the parched ground as she went, strikes on the stretched skin of an urum drum.