Janat rubbed her eyes. The stitches in the small clothes she was sewing for the wine merchant’s wife two streets over had begun to blur. Her tallow candle was burning low, and bed beckoned. She put her sewing away, corked the whiskey bottle, stretched, used the chamber pot, and removed her robe. She crawled between the frigid sheets.
But her ruse to entice sleep by overtiring herself came to naught.
The moment she pinched the candle out, the image of the girl—the one she’d given the curse to, to kill her baby—came to her, the way Janat had seen her that afternoon. Beaten. A black eye, swollen closed. A bruise on her jaw. Holding one arm tight to her body.
Who would beat a young girl? Janat knew.
It’d been tricky to create a curse to protect the mother while killing the child. But the girl looked well when Janat had seen her outside the chandler’s shop yesterday. The girl wouldn’t stop to speak where she could be seen talking to a magiel, of course. But she’d thanked Janat with her eyes and with a nod of gratitude.
Something had happened between yesterday and today.
A small sound—the door flew open.
Janat scrambled up, blankets wrapped to cover her.
Soldiers sprang into the room, a chaos of shouts and footfalls. “That’s her.” Behind the soldiers, a plainly-dressed farmer or tradesman pointed at her.
A scream caught in her throat. The farmer looked fleetingly familiar—
The soldiers surrounded Janat’s bed and two gripped her arms. The man disappeared through the door.
Roughly they jostled her through the door and down the dark staircase. She squealed, her heart racing. The stink of the soldiers filled her nostrils. Fingers of iron gripped her biceps, her feet barely touching the steps.
And then she was out of the butcher’s home and tossed in nothing more than her chemise and small clothes onto the icy boards of a cart. She yelped as one of the soldiers yanked her arm, rolling her onto her face, and catching her other flailing wrist, tied her hands with rough rope behind her back. Splinters and straw scratched her face.
The wagon creaked under the soldier’s weight as he ensconced himself behind her. The others mounted their horses and the cart jerked into motion. Janat screamed, trying to sit up.
A mailed glove cuffed the side of her head, a disorienting blow, and the cart rattled over the ice.
Janat woke to the stinging touch of a cloth gently dabbing at her forehead. She tried to rise.
“Shh.” Someone leaned over her in the barely perceptible light that filtered through a small window in the door of a large cold room. She could make out the forms of a few huddled bodies in the straw. Two others—women—sat near her, looking on.
“It’s nothing. Only a scrape,” the woman with the bit of damp cloth said, as much to calm Janat as to inform the other two.
“Where am I?” But she knew. The interminable journey last night had not taken her far from the butcher’s attic. The cart had climbed a maze of streets, passed through castle gates, and stopped in a small bailey. She’d been forced down several flights of steps in wild torchlight and shoved into this dirt-floored cellar. The ropes around her wrists had been removed, and she’d shivered in the straw as one of the soldiers tossed a blanket over her. The door clanged shut, and the light beyond the peephole gradually faded to inky dark.
In the silence of skittering rats and the wheeze of its human occupants, Janat searched her memory to try to discover what her crime had been. And...where she’d seen the farmer whose pointing finger had accused her.
She’d never seen him before. But he had the look of the young girl who’d bought the curse. The one who’d been beaten.
Which was the answer. Of course. It had been only a matter of time before Janat sold a spell to the wrong customer.
“Artem’s castle in Coldridge,” the woman nursing Janat responded. She sat back and exchanged glances with the other two. “You slept late. You’ve missed the first meal.”
Janat hadn’t known she was hungry until the woman mentioned food. She struggled to sit up. She could guess why she was here, but why the others? “What was your crime?” she asked the woman who’d tended her.
“Being magiel.” There was a pause. “And a woman.”
Janat looked around the cell again. It was too dark to see if everyone had the inconstant skin of a magic wielder.
The equinox.
Gods—she could not miss the equinox—
Survive, Mama had said. The one thing—the one thing—Janat lived for, the end to all of Shangril’s disputes and inequities—
She had to get out.
A scrape of footsteps on cobbles made them turn. The ruddy glow of firelight grew in the small rectangle looking out onto the corridor.
The footsteps stopped as keys jangled against metal and the door swung open. Janat shielded her eyes and crouched. The woman beside her put a hand on her arm. Two soldiers planted themselves on either side of the door as a third ordered them to form a line against one wall. He carried a beating stick.
Janat moved. Once they had emerged from the straw, Janat was surprised to discover there were more individuals—magiel women—than she’d thought: eight or ten. The soldier walked down the line, pulling each woman’s face, one at a time, into the light of his torch. Janat eyed the guarded doorway. So close.
Three of them were shoved away from the wall, all with the most volatile of complexions. These, the soldier viewed a second time and selected one—a comely woman—to take from the cell. The other soldiers closed the door behind them.
Janat slumped back to the straw. She hadn’t been brave enough to run. Foolish enough.
One of the women muttered under her breath, “And not one has come back.”
Wenid jerked out of his doze in the anteroom of the women’s chamber. The squall of a baby.
The candle on the table beside him had burned away to a nub and the excited chatter of women’s voices percolated through the far door. The drapes had not been drawn over the glassed windows and a spray of stars glinted in the blackness. Perhaps one chime, by the shrine bells, not later. He straightened in his chair and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. It had been only four days since he’d accompanied young Prince Eamon to Heaven with the Ruby, praying for death tokens, and he was not yet fully recovered.
He did not have long to wait for one of the midwives to bustle from the room and curtsey before him.
“Boy or girl?” Wenid asked. A girl would be preferable: more powerful, at least in female things such as whelping the next generation of magiels.
“A fine, healthy boy,” the woman beamed.
Well. Five more women were with child. And Gweddien Barcley could provide his talents again.
“He is a good size,” she reported, “and he has all his fingers and toes. He nursed immediately, which is a good sign that he will thrive.”
Better and better. “How does the mother?”
“She’s tired but gave the full afterbirth and is not bleeding too much.”
“Then the mother will live?” A healthy mother was more likely to raise a healthy child.
“She should be just fine.”
Wenid climbed to his feet. “Good. I’ll send a messenger to the king.” Artem would be relieved—as was Wenid. Another step toward solidifying the one God’s supremacy on this lowest sphere of earth. And, to confirm Wenid’s place as the king’s chancellor. “Come to me immediately, if there should be any problem with child or mother.”
The midwife hesitated. “Sire. The mother asked me to plead with you.”
He turned, his hand on the door knob, cautious.
“She wants to know...” The woman wiped her hands on her bloodstained apron. “She wants to know how long she will have with the child.”
Women were apt to become difficult when it came to separating them from their children, to the detriment of both. It was best she be calm in these critical few days and weeks. “You may tell her I have no heart to take her child from her.”
The midwife’s relief was evident. “Thank you, My Lord. The woman will—”
“But much depends on her.” He would have to have this conversation with the woman, but not now.
The midwife’s apprehension returned. “Upon what shall I tell her this privilege depends? She is distressed, My Lord.”
Wenid rubbed his forehead. Piss. This conversation should come later. Or, perhaps he should have had it with her before. “Simply her compliance.”
“She will want to know—”
“The child’s power. She was instructed to endow him with magical strength.” Though, there would be no way to ascertain this for some time, likely years. The youngest magiel in history—a magiel of the Amethyst almost two hundred years ago—had taken his position at the age of eight, though his king had refrained from allowing him to use the prayer stone until he was fourteen. Even so, the child had died before his twentieth birthday. Taking on magiel duties later rather than earlier was undoubtedly wiser. The child would have much to learn.
The midwife curtseyed.
“And she is not to instruct him on politics, religion, history...nothing.” By the One, he would have to make a list. And have the mother watched. “No children’s tales or songs or games that have not been approved.” Sooner or later, though, they would have to be separated.
The midwife’s tiny frown and nod gave him to understand that she comprehended his meaning. “I will inform the mother. I have no doubt but that she will agree.” She curtseyed again. “Do you wish to name the child, Your Grace?”
Wenid considered. “Call him Dannle.” His father’s name.
“And a surname?”
“Lock.” No reason. Or, perhaps, a wish to finalize his grand work.
Meg’s fingers stilled on the pot of mushrooms, and she counted them for the third time. Thirty-four. She dipped her quill in the tiny pot of ink and got the number down on her precious sheet of paper before she drifted off again. By Kyaju, she was tired. The smoky candle flickered in the gusts of wind and rain that slapped her tent, making the bins and jars of ingredients she had collected jump and dance. Harder to count.
There were five hundred uprisers already camped here in the woods, a day’s ride south of Coldridge, and more arriving daily. She needed to make scores of charms—mostly worldling potions—but some would need to be more powerful and magical. Dwyn Gramaret was rumored to be bringing a thousand men from Canyondell, and who knew how many Sulwyn would bring. She was to arm a special cadre of light infantry with curses to be delivered at close range, and all the troops would need Heartspeed, likely for many days running.
Sulwyn had left the upriser camp in the Orumon valley the same day he’d uncovered the priceless information in King Artem’s high camp. The details he’d discovered were critical to the uprisers’ mission, and Dwyn Gramaret needed to hear them directly from him as soon as possible.
Meg hadn’t seen him since. A messenger came from Dwyn Gramaret two weeks later. An attack. On Coldridge. A big one, but no details about why Coldridge, or why now. Fearghus led them out of the Orumon valley, and she’d been here ever since, doing what she did best, and waiting for her king to call for her.
But winter softened and days lengthened, and the tarn haunted Meg’s thoughts. She’d have to let Fearghus know she was leaving, but the timing was bad: the equinox fell just about the time the upriser armies were to be assembled. He wouldn’t be happy. And Dwyn. She didn’t want to fail him. But her first loyalty had to be to Mama.
Then, the news came.
Archwood had fallen. And, therefore, Orumon had fallen.
Mama. King Ean. Everyone she knew there was dead. The Amber, like all the other prayer stones, had been crushed. A public ceremony. No question, the messenger said.
Her rage, oddly, filled her with fire and hate but did not escape to energize her muscles or flinch her expression. Even the report of Artem’s inevitable death, from a single well-placed arrow, gave her no joy. She’d sat after listening to the messenger, listening to the questions and debate and speeches. Numb on the outside. Hopeless inside.
Everything. Everything she’d worked for, believed in. Gone.
Except her work with the uprisers.
Meg crouched, shivering, in a doorway next to a cobbled lane as the sun rose. A few early risers brought carts up the street to what might have been a market square. What city, Meg didn’t know, though something about the place seemed familiar. She was too tired to try to work it out. No one approached her. She must look like one of the many homeless refugees sleeping in corners, now so common.
Then—
She was running down a muddy street beneath overhanging buildings, almost out of breath, in a rainstorm. Janat, dressed in rags, ran ahead of her, slipping in the mud, dodging around a corner. Gods, she was usually careful to hide herself away after using magic, some place safe. She willed her flagging body to sprint, round the corner behind her sister. A jog, and the alley opened out into a wider street. No place to hide, here—
And she jerked awake among sheepskins on a pallet in a canvas tent. Winter sunshine glimmered through canvas joins, and someone sat nearby, a silhouette. Her tent in Fearghus’s camp, though whether she was back in her own time or not, she had no idea.
“Meg?” The voice was Sulwyn’s. She must be close to her own time. She’d heard he’d joined the camp late yesterday afternoon. She let her eyes slip closed. Gods, she was exhausted.
“Are you here?”
Sleep. If only she could sleep. “Yes.” She tried to speak, but the word came out, faint, even in her own ears.
He lifted her head and she smelled the beer on his breath, felt the cold metal of a cup at her lips. She brought up a hand to guide it. She was thirsty, and the icy water was sweet. She lay back. “Thank you.”
“Dwyn was worried about you.”
Dwyn? “He’s away.”
“He’s here. Arrived two days ago.”
Two days...
“I’ve been here three.”
She rubbed her face with her hands. “How long...until we attack?” She had spells to make. Dozens, perhaps hundreds.
He pushed her back onto her pallet with a gentle hand. “You’re not to worry about that. You’ve been working too hard.” He turned and spoke to someone outside the tent. When he returned, it was with a small wooden tripod and pillows to create a back rest for her. “By all reports, you haven’t left this tent for near a week.”
She looked at the chamber pot in the corner. She smelled no waste in the close confines, so it must be clean.
A boy arrived with a steaming bowl, filling the space with a savory aroma. She was famished. She sat up and took the trencher, spooning delicious gravy and turnips into her mouth.
“Good.” Sulwyn sat back. “King Gramaret’s armies need potions, but not every one must be made with magic. He needs you to be alert and awake when the attack comes.”
She flicked her gaze up at him and stuffed a bit of flat bread into her mouth. He looked good. Thin and unshaven, but everyone in the upriser camp was all thin. He sat back at the foot of her pallet, and spoke as though the moment in the woods had never happened.
“Actually, I’m surprised...you’re here.” He gave her a curious look, the statement almost a question.
She gave him a small frown of puzzlement and washed her meal back with water.
“The equinox is only three weeks away.”
Mama’s plan. The defeat she’d shoved from her mind, the shock she’d worked so hard to repress, flooded back. “The Amber was smashed,” she said bitterly.
“Was it?” His words in the gloom were not a query but a challenge. “How do you know?”
She shot him a black look. “Don’t mock me, Sulwyn.” Again, she saw the Amethyst. On the granite stone before the castle in Coldridge. Shattered under a sledgehammer.
“And...if Artem, or his advisors, didn’t find the Amber in Archwood, do you think they would admit it?” he asked. “Or might they find another gem close enough to the Amber to be mistaken at a distance?”
She stared at him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Could this be true?
“But I wouldn’t fail to meet your obligations to your mother based on a rumor. Especially one announced by Artem. Or Huwen.”