For the first few nights in Coldridge, Janat and her sisters shivered in a rickety shanty they built from sticks and the blankets Sulwyn had given them, a shelter which afforded no protection from thieves or worse. But Meg came back from a foray into the streets, saying a group of refugees was squatting in a vacant mill and at least it had a roof. The place was crowded, and some resented the three newcomers who were not family to anyone already there, but most took no notice of them.
A place to stay out of the snow was an immense luxury. But they still needed food. Money.
Now Janat watched, her hood shielding her face, as a woman with skin that rippled faintly in time, sat on a blanket in the market, trading small phials for money. Some patrons gave the woman one, two, even five chetra for a single small container.
Janat could make potions. Of course she could. Even worldlings could make potions, but a magiel could make strong, effective potions. If only she knew the recipes. If only she knew which ingredients to blend, which spell words to chant, which constellation to cast under, which of the Many Gods presided over each prayer. Janat had the ability; she merely lacked the knowledge.This mercurial-skinned woman must have the knowledge.
She needed to approach the woman in private.
After a time, Janat’s patience was rewarded. A crone took the woman’s place, and the woman left the market. Janat caught up to her as she reached an unobtrusive doorway along a narrow side street. “Excuse me.”
The woman turned. She measured Janat in a glance and seemed to find her wanting.
“You’re a magiel,” Janat said. “You cast for your local village?”
The woman’s eyes hooded. “I cast for four villages,” she retorted. “And my wares are good enough for the merchants and tradespeople of Coldridge.”
Even better.
“I’m a magiel. I’d like to learn some spells.”
Distain crept into the corners of the woman’s eyes. “You’re half-talented at most.”
She meant the almost-still cast to Janat’s skin. “No, I’m full magiel. My mother conceived me to have steadier skin.”
The woman snorted.
“She did.”
“Then, why didn’t she teach you your spells?”
“She was teaching me.” But Janat had lessons in reading and writing, history, politics, and religion. She’d rarely needed to cast spells for every day, useful things, and when she did she could look the procedures up in a book.
The woman turned to enter the house. “I have all the apprentices I need.”
“Well, could I just copy out a few spells from your book?”
The woman spun back, a frown of incredulity on her face. “I have no book,” she scoffed. “And if I did, I’d hardly give my secrets to some fraud talking like a toff, to steal my customers.”
Steal—
The door slammed, and the woman was gone.
“There’s going to be an execution!” A girl rushed into the mill where Meg and Janat sat on the mill stone with the women, trying to sew.
Most of the fugitives left the mill during the day and Rennika had gone with them to watch the beggars and pickpurses. Rennika was a little too old to apprentice to begging, but her soft, vulnerable look masked a surprising willingness to hold her own in a tussle, spawning a grudging respect among the children. She was catching on to their accents, and the little beggars had begun to let her follow them and try her hand. She’d already brought in a few chetra, from which Meg was able to buy two steel sewing needles. She owed the sharp-eyed woman beside her for the thread and fabric, though.
“That’s not news,” one of the refugees remarked.
But all heads lifted at the girl’s interruption.
“Come to the square, right now!” She urged. “King Artem’s going to destroy the Amethyst!”
“That’s lunacy,” an old woman cried.
Tasks forgotten, the refugees scrambled to their feet.
“I swear it.” The girl ran to the door, shouting over her shoulder. “The crier’s announcing it in the street, right now.”
Meg hurried with the rest of them down the narrow steps, Janat just behind.
The street was awash in rabble, all heading in the direction of the great square before the castle gate, all talking and shouting at once.
At first, Meg could see nothing over the throng filling the plaza. Soon, though, a military rhythm of boots announced a procession of soldiers. Ahead, a file of steel-helmeted men, apparently on some type of raised platform, formed a line. They knelt, revealing an array of royalty on tiers behind them. And there he stood, behind a line of armed knights. King Artem, in full steel plate armor, staring down his nose at Teshe’s people. Behind him, Meg recognized two young men—boys—as the princes, Huwen and Eamon. Taller and older since she’d seen them...only last summer?
“Hear ye, citizens of Teshe!” a herald called out from the front edge of the platform, and the talk and rustling of the crowd died.
This was it. Meg had been wracking her brain, trying to think of some way to get into the castle, to let her uncle know they were here.
And, this was a distraction. While everyone was watching the spectacle, Meg could ease her way toward the open gates behind the platform, in case the opportunity presented itself for her to slip inside.
She touched Janat’s arm. “I’ll see you back at the mill.”
Janat frowned but nodded.
If only Meg could find a way to have a moment alone with Uncle Chirles, or even King Larin, she could let him know what’d happened in Orumon. Surely, her uncle could find safety for her and her sisters, if not in Coldridge, then perhaps in one of the king’s country houses.
“By order of His High Majesty, King Artem Delarcan,” the herald said, his voice carrying over the gathering, “the people of Teshe are hereby informed that the One God is acknowledged as the only and true God of all of Shangril.”
There was a hush of indrawn breath through the crowd, as Meg wormed her way toward the back of the platform.
“And, that the worship of any lesser God or Goddess is forbidden.”
A murmur of unrest erupted.
Anger boiled around Meg, and the same anger rose in her own chest. It was not up to a man, even a king, to deny his people worship of the Gods.
The herald had to call out for his words to carry. “Such worship is the worship of demons.”
The mob shifted forward and Meg was carried momentarily from her path. By Kyaju’s devotion, how could King Artem, of his own will, take an entire people’s religion from them in a stroke?
“And as a consequence,” the herald shouted, his words barely audible over the bleats of the assembly, “the prayer stones to the false demons are hereby abolished.”
The mass pressed forward, and Meg was wedged, unable to move, watching the spectacle.
And...a blur in the corner of her eye...
No. She looked along the platform. Nothing.
Not nothing. There was another. Nothing she could pinpoint, just a place where for an instant, a corner of her vision shifted as though she looked through a glass, or through water, at something distorted. Then the illusion was gone. Was she losing her sight?
Then, Uncle Chirles, in the plain homespun of a magiel, stepped forward, barely visible above the heads of those around her. His two sons, mere children, stood on the platform behind him. His inconstant skin paled as he removed the Amethyst from about his neck and held it up for all to see. The jewel’s facets glinted a deep violet in the cold afternoon light, its golden setting gleaming in the slanting sun like a nest of writhing snakes.
Trembling, he laid the jewel on something out of sight beyond the crowd. A slab of granite, no doubt, in the center of the platform. The flickers of distortion around the edges of Meg’s vision multiplied.
Meg stilled, her gaze fixed on the drama before her, and her fingers crept to the death token at her neck.
A black-hooded axman stepped forward, this time wielding no ax, but instead, a sledgehammer. He measured his stroke with an eye and then, raising the hammer in a single fluid motion, brought it down with a resounding crunch.
The crowd flinched back as shards flew in every direction, splinters lancing those closest, drawing blood.
A shudder of power reverberated through the square. Meg felt its impact on her skin and in her heart, and she was blown back into the peasants behind her.
No. By the Many Gods, no.
Thunder rumbled in the distance—or perhaps within her skull—despite the wintry weather.
How would murderers and thieves now gain access to the lowest sphere of Heaven and find their forgiveness in death? How would Uncle Chirles and King Larin of Teshe go to the spheres of the Gods to pray for death tokens for their subjects? The prayer stone, and its power, were utterly destroyed.
How could this be?
The grumbling resumed, lashing and furious. Gaps appeared about her, as people exhorted their neighbors. Meg had to move. She wormed her way toward the end of the platform.
Now King Artem, himself, raised his hands and stepped forward. “Hear me, people of Shangril! The old ways are gone. Embrace the new.” He stepped back and nodded to his chancellor.
Soldiers grasped Uncle Chirles’s two arms. Two others seized his sons. Before the magiel could do more than flinch in surprise, a soldier bound his hands behind his back.
What?
Meg caught a glimpse—
Someone brushed the remaining shards of the Amethyst from the stone slab and placed a block of wood across it. Uncle Chirles was shoved to his knees, his head stretched across the block. Hazy mirages flicked near him, disappeared, and flicked again.
“No! By all that is Holy!” her uncle screamed, writhing. Two soldiers pinned him down, hard. “Not my sons!”
Uncle Chirles—
“In the name of the Many Gods, you cannot—”
The executioner gave his sledgehammer to an assistant and took up the ax.
“This is blasphemy!” Uncle Chirles shouted.
King Artem nodded, and her uncle’s face, just visible, paled with shock. The Holder of Histories placed his death token on his tongue.
Again, with the same single fluid stroke, the executioner raised his ax and brought it down—
Meg averted her face. But she could not keep it averted.
Blood spattered those closest, and the severed head fell to the platform with a thump.
Her stomach seized and she gagged. There were executions in Orumon, of course there were. But not many, and she’d never seen one.
This time, a wave of outrage and shouting filled the square. Meg’s sight cleared.
A tomato smashed itself against the plate armor of one of the king’s guards.
Like a machine, the guards on the periphery of the platform nocked their arrows and raised their bows. Soldiers on the parapets did the same.
Cold skittered over Meg’s neck and back. A soldier shoved Uncle Chirles’ older son—her cousin—
There would be a moment of chaos. Just as there had been in Archwood. She had to make use of it.
Meg pushed down her nausea, shoved against the milling crowd and freed herself into a gap between the mob and the castle wall. Pressing herself against the stone, she made herself small and wriggled along its rough surface. In a moment, she grasped the edge of the gate.
The crowd went silent and a child’s scream was cut short.
A horde of soldiers poured through the opening.
In their wake, she darted into the castle.
Meg knew the layout of Coldridge castle. She’d been here last summer.
But as she darted up the cobbled entryway, Meg realized this knowledge would do her little good. She must still pass through three gates before she could gain the inner courtyard. The Gods were with her. For this brief instant in time, all three gates were open and empty of soldiers.
She didn’t fool herself that the murder hole between the second and third gate contained no eyes spying from above or rocks ready to pour down on her. But she had surprise on her side. She scooted past the second gate and, flattening herself against the wall, scuttled through just as the third gate was lowering. She ducked and rolled beneath it, reaching the courtyard before the portcullis spikes found their slots in the cobbles, rocks tumbling through the murder hole behind her.
She scrambled into the stairwell, clambering up its spiral as shouts erupted behind her. She followed a passage she’d discovered while playing Catch Thief with the younger children one afternoon. Images of Uncle Chirles slashed her vision as she ran.
She dashed, finally, into the kitchen. A half dozen surprised faces flicked up from their work, and a scullery maid at her elbow screamed.
Meg grabbed the girl by the shoulders. The name came to her. “Bess,” she cried. “It’s me! Meghra Falkyn!”
The scullery maid stared at her, speechless with shock. There were four or five others in the small room. Cook, the cinder boy, a few more.
“Bess, I have to talk to King Larin.”
Bess continued to stare, her mouth open.
Cook was at her side in a stride. “Meghra Falkyn?”
“Yes. Do you recognize me?’
Cook peered incredulously into her face. “Meghra Falkyn. How...”
“Archwood is attacked. It’s under siege by King Artem. I have to tell King Larin.”
Tell King Larin. Unless his head was next on the block.
“Siege.” Cook nodded. “We were attacked and taken. Late summer. No siege. The king capitulated.” She spat on the floor. “He can’t help you.”
Uncle Chirles. The sickening crunch—
Meg shook the thought away. “I have to try. I have to talk to him. Is there any way you can sneak me into his room?”
Cook’s brows knit. “Not easily. And, too risky.” Then she nodded: a short, decisive nod. “I’ll do what I can.” She turned and glared at the servants who stared at them in horror. “And not a word from any of you,” she bellowed.
The sounds of footsteps and shouting in the corridor gave Cook an instant to react. She snatched a knife from the table at her elbow and an onion from a basket, and shoved them into Meg’s hands.
Meg grasped her meaning. She hunkered down by a table, slicing.
Cook flicked her fingers, and the servants returned to their duties. Bess picked up the bucket she’d been carrying and slipped Meg a shy smile before taking it out to the well.
A handful of soldiers poured into the room, spreading out to search, looking beneath tables, in cupboards, behind crates, eyeing each scullery girl, drudge, and apprentice.
“A spy entered the castle.” One of the soldiers addressed the room. “Has anyone seen him?”
Cook shrugged. “No, Sir.”
Spy. Meg’s vision flashed with a picture of her uncle kneeling at the block.
The others murmured in the negative, heads lowered.
Two soldiers continued to inspect the servants. One approached Meg. She put her knife and onion on the table and stood respectfully, hands at her sides, staring at the floor.
He pushed past her, looked under her table, and continued searching.
“You have a magiel?” The soldier who’d spoken seemed to see Meg for the first time.
Cook bobbed her head. “Daughter of a village healer. A half-wit, not fit to apprentice in magic.”
Meg wilted a little, in confirmation. By Kyaju, had they seen her skin as she dashed through the gates?
The sickening crunch of the axman’s blade echoed in her ears.
The commanding soldier grunted. “If you see anything untoward, report immediately,” he said. He nodded and left the room, followed by his men.