Nowhere to hide in the servant’s quarters. Reflexively, Meg squeezed through the window, thankful she was small about the hips and shoulders. The escape left her clothing dusty, with a tear on the hip of her pants. It was mostly covered by her vest.
The garden before her provided no cover. She flattened herself into a niche in the castle wall, blinking in the cold mist, heart pounding.
Kilovan. That cry had to have been his. By Kyaju. Kilovan had volunteered to be the assassin, not her. Xanther was a soldier. He had killed. But she was the only one left.
And she looked stupid and obvious, huddled against the castle wall. She needed to look busy, purposeful. She pulled the knife from her purse and scanned the garden.
Daffodils. She blinked. Early spring daffodils.
She sliced their stalks and shook off the raindrops. There. Busy.
A gardener’s work. She was not dressed as a gardener, and though the drizzle now lightened to a soggy mist, she was getting wet.
What was she to do, walk out through the tradesman’s gate, dressed as a servant for the great hall? What questions would be raised, then? By the Many, she had not got very far.
Flowers. She cut more flowers.
She could use one of her spells of Confusion or Memory Loss, perhaps—she still had several hidden in the quilting of her small clothes. But then what?
Someone over by the kitchen door was calling a name. The voice came closer.
The gardener—asleep on the floor in the servant’s chambers she’d just vacated. Was someone looking for him?
And the soldiers who’d—presumably—caught Kilovan. They might be satisfied their captive explained the sleeping gardener, but she would be a fool to operate on that assumption. All men broke under questioning.
She shoved her knife in her pocket and gripping the daffodils like a lifeline, skirted the outside of the castle along a gravel path, away from the voices. It would be some time until her earlier spells of Confusion and Well-Being wore off and the cooks and scullery maids began to piece together that Xanther had not taken his passengers, but those questioning them might deduce the facts earlier.
The stone wall was long and unbroken, and the garden disappeared in favor of storage sheds and outbuildings. Smithy, butchery. Luck was with her, and no one was about. Yet.
A door. Into the back of the great hall.
She tried it. A simple thing to open with magic, but no need. It was unlocked. She stomped the muck from her boots.
The bakery, full of bakers and their helpers. Piss.
She turned—
A servant’s stairs. Yes!
Someone called to her.
“I’ve been summoned to Lord Wenid’s suite,” she responded in her new voice, and ran up the stairs. This body, however, did not run three flights of stairs as Meg would have wished. She’d slowed considerably—and was panting—by the time she reached the top. She wiped her boots on a carpet and shook off the dampness clinging to her clothes.
A corridor. A vase on a table. She shoved the daffodils into it.
Kill the magiel? The thought made her mouth go dry.
Kill.
How she had wanted to. Kill the magiel who’d stolen her life. Kill the king who’d permitted it. Kill the soldiers who’d followed such foul orders without question.
She had wanted to, when she was safe in her hovel, when she was in a tent on the mountainside. When there was no chance of her being able to do it.
But now, the castle crawled with those who would imprison her. Behead her.
Her mission would fail.
Meg picked up the vase with the flowers. Her feet moved with false confidence down the wide corridor.
A maid servant came out of a room carrying a chamber pot and closed the door behind her, turning purposefully the other way.
Meg walked, taking in everything before her, around her.
A guard, bored, stood before another door.
The corridor echoed with the scuff of her boots on marble. A voice carried from some distant room.
There was nothing to do but find Wenid’s chambers. What came after...she would face when she got there. If she got there.
She remembered this corridor. But somehow, it didn’t seem to align with Xanther’s sketch. Gods, why? A finding spell would only work with—
And then, the magiel was in front of her.
Emerging from the top of the wide stone steps, slowly, leaning on a cane, two attendants by his side.
Why did he look so frail?
When she saw him a year ago, he had no cane. But he walked—toward her—as if he were in pain.
Oh, how could she kill a helpless old man?
He stopped at a double door, and she set the vase on a ledge in front of a glassed window. She pretended to arrange the haphazard stalks, one eye following the magiel’s movements.
Guards opened double doors, and he and his attendants entered. The doors closed.
She’d found his chamber. Yes! If that was his chamber.
She took a deep breath, biting back her grin, her insides vibrating.
One step at a time. Don’t think.
Meg turned back to the flowers. She had no idea what to do. All the plans she’d come up with. All the eventualities she’d discussed with Kilovan and Xanther. None had come close to the situation she was facing now. She was not Kilovan, strong enough to throw a curse into the guard’s face and drag him inside a door. She had...daffodils.
Taking a breath to calm herself, she squared her shoulders and lifted the vase. She strode up to the guards at Wenid’s door. “Fresh flowers for the chancellor.” The voice she used was pleasingly gruff.
One of the guards put his hand on the knob. The other frowned. “Now?”
Hurry. What to say? “They are fresh now, Sieur.” Although, to be truthful, they were beginning to wilt. Her poisoned knife.
Another spell of Confusion? She had one left.
At the far end of the corridor, near the servant’s stairs she’d run up, the baker, covered in flour, pointed to her. “That’s the one.”
Weeks. Weeks, Janat had lingered in the cell. Like the others, she’d tried her hand at manipulating the door’s locks, but a magiel of some power had warded them. Artem’s magiel, Wenid Col, no doubt; reinforcing his spells, knowing he was detaining magic wielders. Without knowing the magiel’s work, Janat could not guess how to go about breaking it.
She’d missed the equinox. Lost her opportunity to learn what Mama had wanted for them. The opportunity to right the wrongs that had turned her world upside down.
Had Meg or Rennika kept the rendezvous? It seemed unlikely. How could they? Two women in a world of thievery and war. And...nothing, as far as she could tell, had changed. No great magic had been wrought.
Now, it was hard to convince herself that anything mattered.
She and the other women were not treated badly, only confined. Their food was meagre but healthy and varied, they were not left in manacles, and they were allowed a few minutes of well-guarded exercise above ground each day. Their captors told them nothing but appeared to want them able-bodied. At random times, one was taken, and that one did not return. The women speculated on the fate of the selected ones, but that’s all it was. Speculation. New captives were brought; always, the one with the most capricious skin was taken.
Today, though, in Janat’s case, they appeared to make an exception, perhaps because she’d been here, now, longer than any of the others.
Her hands were bound and the door behind her clanged shut.
A soldier on either side grasped her upper arms. She swallowed back her apprehension and schooled herself to observe their route, to orient herself to the geography. She’d been in Larin’s castle before, the summer Mama toured the seven countries. She took note of where they were taking her, of hiding places and ways out.
They climbed from the underground cells and crossed the bailey in the rain to the great hall, going in through a servants’ entrance by the kitchen garden. They climbed servants’ stairs and came to a plain but comfortable suite, such as she had not been in since leaving Archwood. The room was dominated by a canopy bed which, she guessed, held a feather mattress. A sitting area, with table, chairs, and a couch before a fireplace, was warmed by a fresh blaze. Glass-paned windows overlooked the stables. In an attached room, a handful of maids poured hot water into a bath.
A bath. How Janat had longed, this past year and more, for a bath.
The soldiers unbound her and were gone, locking the door.
The decanter was metal, as were the goblets. There was no poker or candlestick or plate of sufficient heft to use as a weapon.
Janat wasn’t daft. She hadn’t refused the bath or the scents or the supple robe, nor had she refused the hot and tempting meal. She had declined the wine in favor of water. But now, beneath the watchful eyes of the maids—who, she had no doubt, would intervene if she chose to do something to alarm them—she roamed the suite hunting, hunting for anything to use in her escape. Part of her wanted to pour a goblet of wine to calm her nerves, but yet, she held back.
Doubtless all the magiel women brought here before her had done the same. There was not even a whiff of any herb that could be manipulated into a charm.
But unlike the lesser magiels, Janat could likely make her way to the great halls’ doors; and as a daughter of one of the Great Houses, she could, with an effort, call forth magic without the use of ingredients. Even throw spell words a short distance. All she needed was a chance.
The sun had long set and the room was dark but for the glow of a few soft candles and the flicker of the fire, when the door to the corridor opened.
Soldiers, again. This time, they stood aside as a hazy-skinned man, dressed in a clean, decent shirt and pants, entered.
“Gweddien?” The name escaped Janat’s lips before she questioned the wisdom of revealing herself.
It took him only a moment. “Janat?”
She blinked.
“Leave us.” He flicked a finger and the soldiers withdrew. “All of you,” he barked, and the maids scurried away. The lock snicked behind them.
How it was possible, she didn’t know, but the unexpected sight of someone she knew released a surge of grief. Without warning, tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Shh, shh.” He rushed to her and gathered her into his arms.
“Oh, Gweddien—” She wept on his chest. How long had she known him, on the road, and in Silvermeadow? Maybe half a year, at most? She’d had eyes only for Sulwyn then and couldn’t remember...had Gweddien and his mother left Silvermeadow before she and her sisters went to Kandenton, or after? And what had brought him here?
No...he’d gone missing. She remembered. His mother had been beside herself.
“Hush,” he murmured into her hair. “What are you doing here?”
“Captured.” And all the events since Archwood inundated her and overwhelmed her.
Gweddien led her to the bed and sat beside her until her sobs quieted. “I am so, so sorry.”
“But...” This made no sense. She gestured to the room. “Why...why has King Artem—Huwen, I mean—seized us, only to give us these luxuries?”
Gweddien’s face became subtly darker. “It’s exactly what it looks like.”
A crawling sensation crept over her skin. “I...don’t understand.” But she did.
“It’s not Huwen.” A sheen broke out on Gweddien’s skin and his eyes darted, restless. “It’s Wenid. He wants magiel babies.”
She jerked back.
His mouth curled as though he tasted something bitter. “I don’t know why.”
Her gorge rose. “And...”
The bed.
She stood, backing away.
Those women. One each night. “You...”
He straightened ever so slightly. “There’s no hope, Janat.”
She gave him a sharp look. Something was wrong with him. He was ill.
“The soldiers will be on guard outside the door all night. If we don’t perform, we’ll be punished.” The words were almost perfunctory. He’d said them before. Many times.
“Then they can punish us.”
“I’ve seen what he can do.” He looked away. These whispered words came out hoarse, agonized. Honest.
She couldn’t help herself. She felt a sneer crawl up her lip. “You’re in on this?” she asked. “For the sake of regular meals and a gilt cage to live in?”
His eyes flashed, black. “No!”
“No?”
He spoke vehemently. “There are rebels, Janat. Maybe you don’t know. Revolutionaries fighting Artem’s madness.”
She remained silent. She knew. But this masquerade might be intended to draw her out.
“I was one of them,” he spat. “Don’t accuse me of treason for my own gain.”
She lifted a brow. The evidence of his treachery was right before her.
He let out a helpless breath, seeming to lose all the bones in his body. “I’m ensorcelled. Can’t you see?”
“No. You look to be in full possession of your body, your mind, and your will.” Or...no. There was something wrong with him. There was. A...palsy. “Would you force yourself on me?”
“Don’t!”
She paced, abruptly filled with the need to move, to distance herself from him, to strike out. “We’re magiels! There must be some way we can escape.”
Coldness settled on Gweddien and his eyes lidded. “Not for me.” He looked up impotently. “We will do as Wenid wishes. Gently, or forcefully.”
Gweddien was an enemy.
“I’m sorry, Janat. But I can’t...”
Sorry? She wanted to spit on him.
A peculiar change came over his expression. “Janat. Falconer.” He stood. Watched her. Wiped the sweat from his brow and rubbed one eye, shivering. “My God. Janatelle. Falkyn. From Archwood,” he whispered.
That name. She’d never told him.
He marched to the door and knocked. A soldier opened it. “Summon Chancellor Wenid.”
No! Gods, no!
“He must come immediately.”