Chapter Thirty-Six

“Breathe in,” Elaine instructed. “And then breathe out.”

Johan, his eyes closed, did his best to obey. It was hard to quiet his mind, even just before sleep, but he had to try. After what had happened to Hawthorne, Elaine had suggested that he might be able to get in touch with his magic after all ...but, so far, all that had happened in three days of attempted meditation had been him falling asleep twice. Elaine had laughed and admitted that had happened to her too more than once.

“I can hear my heartbeat,” he announced, after a moment. It was true; his heartbeat suddenly seemed to be pounding away. “But I can’t feel anything else.”

He opened his eyes. Elaine was facing him, sitting cross-legged with her own eyes closed. She looked oddly sweet and yet vulnerable in that pose, even though he knew that she had insisted they walk extensively until she was used to walking again on her rebuilt leg. And, for that matter, that she’d been casting spells with her new wand until she knew precisely how best to use it. She might have told him that wands were largely unnecessary, but she clearly hadn’t been happy to lose the wand Hawthorne had snapped.

“No worries,” Elaine said, opening her eyes. She hadn’t bothered with the glamour; the red light that seemed to be burning inside her skull was as disconcerting as ever. Johan had wondered if he could get rid of it, but Elaine had flatly refused when he’d offered. Spells intended to repair eyesight might go spectacularly wrong when used by an untrained magician. “We can try again tomorrow.”

Johan felt his eyes narrow as she stood up, smoothing down her shirt. “How long did it take you to master it?”

“Months,” Elaine said. “But then, I was never a very powerful magician ...”

She broke off, glancing around as if she’d heard something. “Someone is coming,” she said, reaching for her wand. “A ward was just triggered, right by the bog.”

Johan rose to his feet as she walked over to the window, wand in hand. They’d talked about what to do if the cabin was attacked, but in truth he knew that escape would be difficult, no matter how quickly they ran. If they stayed on the paths, they were likely to be tracked down with ease; if they went off the paths, they were quite likely to get lost. And if the enemy had werewolves or tracking spells, it would be very hard to break free.

“It’s Dread,” Elaine said, relaxing slightly. “And he’s carrying a large bag.”

Johan smiled as the Inquisitor stamped up to the cabin and stepped inside, after taking off his shoes. Dread still bothered him – he was an Inquisitor, after all – but he was clearly Elaine’s friend, perhaps more than a friend. Elaine didn’t seem to have a social life; Dread was the only person, apart from Light Spinner, she met on a regular basis. But he was still an Inquisitor.

“Hawthorne will be going back to the capital,” Dread stated, as Elaine passed him a mug of hot Kava. “There are several druids who wish to take a look at him.”

Elaine nodded, seemingly unsurprised. “You’d think they didn’t trust the druids up here.”

“They don’t,” Dread said. His tone was droll, almost sardonic. “The Golden City is the epitome of magical learning and research in the Empire. There is no possibility that anyone from outside the city can match the druids inside the city.”

Johan smiled, remembering Charity’s stories from the Golden City. There had been many social barriers between the students – and those who had come from outside the city often faced a hard task in being accepted by their peers. Jamal had never complained, but then Jamal had had the arrogance to brush his way through any mocking sneers. And besides, loath as Johan was to admit it, his brother was a powerful magician. He could have handled a few sneers.

“I have letters for you both,” Dread added, opening his bag. Johan was impressed to note just how many protective spells there were on the leather, protecting the material inside from prying eyes. “Elaine, one of them is from the Grand Sorceress.”

Elaine took a gold-edged letter and carried it over to the table to read. Johan watched her go, then took a letter Dread offered him. It seemed to have been enclosed in a white envelope that was expensive, but not as expensive as the ones his father used. And the hand that had addressed it was unfamiliar ... yet definitely feminine. He realised, with a thrill of delight, that it had to come from Jayne. It was suddenly hard to open it carefully, rather than tearing it open.

Inside, there was a single piece of paper. He read it ... and felt the bottom drop out of his world.

 

Johan.

I thought you were a decent guy. I liked you. Now you’ve ruined my future. I had my life planned out, a life where I would accomplish something of my own. Now it has been taken from me by you. Your father made that quite clear to me.

I will not marry you. I will not sleep with you. I will not have children with you.

I swear to you that if we are forced to marry, I will make every day of our shared life a living hell.

Burn in hell.

Jayne, of no House.

 

Johan stared down at the letter, unable to understand. What had happened? What the hell did she think he’d done? He hadn’t cheated on her; they’d barely even started their relationship!

Elaine looked over at him. “Johan?” she asked. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Johan said. He was too shocked to be angry or sad, even though he knew he would be sooner or later. What had happened? “Jayne ... Jayne wrote me this letter.”

He passed it to Elaine, then looked at the second letter Dread offered him. One look was enough to tell him that it came from his father; the envelope was expensive, the address written in his father’s own hand. Feeling his shock gradually being replaced by anger, he tore the letter open and scanned it quickly. It was worse than he had dared fear.

 

Johan.

As a son of House Conidian, you are in need of a wife. I have taken the liberty of arranging for your betrothal to Jayne, of House Rendang. She is a younger daughter, but it is clear to me that you like her and care for her. The wedding will take place as soon as reasonably possible ...

 

Johan crumpled up the rest of the letter, wondering just how his father thought he would react to such a suggestion. There were so many subtle insults in the handful of paragraphs that it was hard to imagine that his father didn’t know that they were there. Calling Jayne a younger daughter was a snide reminder that she wouldn’t inherit much from her family – and thus she might not be a suitable wife for the Conidian’s second son – but if Johan liked her, it might not matter. And besides, it would make them more dependent on Johan’s father.

Someone must have been spying on us, he realised. Someone had seen them when they were eating and taken the news to his father. His father, not one to miss an opportunity to get his hooks in someone, had made a deal with Jayne’s father, effectively buying the man’s daughter for Johan. But Jayne hadn’t consented ...

She wouldn’t have had to consent, Johan recalled, remembering the marriage laws he’d looked up when the first suitor had come looking for Charity’s hand. The suitor had been over twice her age, but that hadn’t stopped their father taking it seriously. Charity had been deeply worried until the offer had finally been rejected. She could only legally object after she turned twenty-one ... and if she reached that age, unmarried, few people would want her because they would suspect that there was something wrong with her. If her parents couldn’t marry her off ...

“I won’t,” he said, savagely. “What was he thinking?”

Elaine took the second letter from his hand, unfolded it and read it, quickly. “Is he out of his mind?”

“He must be,” Johan said. “Why ...?”

“He’s desperate,” Dread said, very quietly. “You were important before you did ... your trick to Hawthorne; now, you’re the most valuable and yet dangerous person in the Empire. If someone manages to get control of you, they’d have a good chance to become the next Grand Sorcerer.”

“I am not a tool,” Johan snapped. Bitterness and rage billowed up within him. Darkness seemed to fall over his vision. “I am not ...”

“Careful,” Elaine said. Her voice seemed to come from a far distance. “Johan!”

Johan opened his eyes, unsure of when he’d closed them. The room was shaking, the tremors slowly fading away to nothingness. Dread was standing in front of him, one hand raised as if he were about to slap Johan hard. Johan hadn’t realised just how close he had come to losing control completely. He sagged and had to be caught by the Inquisitor before he hit the floor.

“I can’t ... she hates me,” Johan said, desperately. “What have I done to her?”

“You’ve done nothing to her,” Elaine said, sharply. “And it speaks well of you that you care enough to be angry.”

Johan stared down at his hands. Part of his body was hinting that it really wouldn’t mind being married to Jayne, the sooner the better. His mind told that part of his body to shut up; Jayne had had her ambitions, ambitions she could no longer realise ... just because he’d taken her out on a date. What had she done to deserve it? As the wife of a Conidian, she would be expected to be nothing more than a brood mare. At the very least, she would have to put off her studies until after she’d had several children.

What is the difference, he asked himself numbly, between what Hawthorne planned to do to Elaine and this?

It would be rape, plain and simple. He couldn’t go through with the wedding.

“He can’t force me into this,” he said. “Can he?”

“I confess that your case is unique,” Dread said. “But if you were prepared to reject the family altogether ...”

“Then I will,” Johan said. “Or ...”

“There may be other problems,” Elaine said. “Your brother has been released.”

Johan stared at her, too stunned by the first letters to be angry at this new piece of news. But then, it really wasn’t a shock. He knew Jamal’s skill at getting out of trouble too well to be surprised. If his father was unwilling to forget custom and tradition and promote Charity to be Prime Heir, he had to move the heavens and earth to free Jamal before it was too late. There would be no other candidate for Prime Heir until the younger kids reached eighteen years old.

“Why?” he snarled, finally. “How much did he have to pay?”

“There were oaths made,” Dread said, simply. “Your father pledged his life that Jamal would behave himself.”

“I’d better start looking for suitable clothes to wear for the funeral,” Johan said, grimly. He knew that he would miss his father, but after the two pieces of bad news he found it hard to care if something happened to him. “A purple serge suit, a yellow and black polka-dot tie, green and mauve-striped shirt, gold monogrammed boots and a white bowler hat.”

Elaine snorted, as if she were trying to hide a giggle. Dread merely scowled at the pair of them.

“I’m serious,” Johan said, forcing himself to hold down a giggle himself. “Jamal cannot behave himself – and some idiot has just handed him a sure-fire way to kill his own father!”

“Your father does have excellent incentive to ensure that Johan behaves himself,” Dread observed. “His own life is at stake.”

“Jamal is still Prime Heir,” Johan snapped. Maybe he should have accepted his father’s offer and become Prime Heir himself, even though it would have tied him to the family he wanted to escape. “What’s to stop him breaking the oath and killing my father? What blasted idiot thought that this was a good idea?”

“The Privy Council,” Elaine said, tartly. “And wouldn’t there be consequences if your brother killed his father deliberately?”

“I know him,” Johan insisted. “Jamal is not even remotely capable of not acting badly.”

“Your father will handle it or die,” Dread said, before Johan could continue. “I assume that you wish to head back to the Golden City?”

“I think so,” Elaine said. She smiled, then pocketed the gold-edged letter. “You’d think there would be a crystal ball here.”

“The Inquisitors who normally come here are expected to recuperate,” Dread pointed out. “If they knew what was going on, they’d feel compelled to do something, even if they were at death’s door. We are not taught how to relax or to give up.”

Johan smiled, remembering the Grand High Inquisitor books Charity had been fond of reading. They’d been trash; the hero of the book alternatively catching Dark Wizards with effortless ease or bedding his way through the planet’s population. It was a minor miracle, Johan remembered thinking, that he hadn’t also left thousands of children in his wake. But then, he would probably have known how to prevent his conquests from becoming pregnant.

The thought made his smile grow wider. There had been a note in the back of the book, where the author had claimed that she had known hundreds of Inquisitors very intimately and her stories were based firmly in reality. After meeting some Inquisitors for himself – and a Dark Wizard – Johan was fairly sure that she’d made them all up from whole cloth. It was a bigger miracle that the Inquisition hadn’t sued.

“We’ll go down after lunch and catch an Iron Dragon, if they’re running normally now,” Elaine said. “And, once we’re back at the library, we will try to sort out this ghastly mess.”

***

This time, Elaine couldn’t help noticing, Johan was not so fascinated by the Iron Dragon, or the countryside as they headed back to the Golden City. He alternated between rage and frustration – and a bitterness that his relationship with Jayne had been so easily destroyed. Elaine was no expert in relationships, but she understood how the girl had felt – and, no doubt, she had believed that Johan had asked his father to arrange the match. There were girls who would be delighted at the arrangement. Jayne, clearly, wasn’t one of them.

Johan’s father had sent the marriage contracts in a separate envelope. Elaine examined them carefully – she’d had to talk Johan out of destroying them – looking for loopholes. But there was nothing that suggested itself to her; Johan’s father and Jayne’s father had given their approval and both children were too young to legally object. If she’d been more powerful, Elaine suspected, her own Guardian would probably have sold her off to the highest bidder. Or maybe he had tried and the Witch-King had interfered. It would have taken Elaine away from the Great Library, ruining one of his plans.

“They can’t force us into bed together,” Johan said. “Can they?”

“There are potions that can do just that,” Elaine commented, still reading the documents. “I don’t think Jayne would miss them trying to use such potions if you were locked in the same room together.”

It was interesting just how few clauses there actually were. Stripped of legalese, Johan’s father had promised to give Jayne’s father a lot of money – and not much else. It was odd to see a daughter sold so blatantly, which made her wonder if she was missing something. Normally, the true nature of the deal would be concealed behind a tissue of nonsense; here, it was blunt and almost shockingly honest. But then, Jayne was a younger child. Perhaps they’d just decided that the niceties weren’t important.

Poor girl, Elaine thought, grimly. She looked over at Johan. Poor boy.

“I think there’s only one loophole we can use, short of you severing all ties with your family,” Elaine said. That would have been tricky even before Johan had stripped Hawthorne of his power. Now ... he would need at least one Great House obliged to defend him. “I want to take you on as my apprentice.”

Johan hesitated. “Is that wise?”

“You would need my consent to get married in that case, as long as you were my apprentice,” Elaine said, simply. “I would obviously not grant consent, so you wouldn’t have to honour the marriage contract. Your father might claim that you can’t take on an apprenticeship without his permission, but the Grand Sorceress already gave her consent, which automatically overrides your father’s opinion.”

“And, as you offered me the apprenticeship before the contract was signed,” Johan said, “father can’t claim that you took me on just to help evade the marriage.”

But that was what we are doing, Elaine thought. Johan was right, though. The apprenticeship had been offered before the marriage contract.

“I will,” Johan said. “Will you take me as your apprentice?”

“I will be a hard taskmaster,” Elaine warned. There were still too many question marks over Johan’s powers – and how they would respond to an apprenticeship oath. But she knew that she dared not let Johan become a pawn in the power struggle she knew was threatening to sweep over the Golden City. “You have been warned.”

“You already have been a hard taskmaster,” Johan grumbled.

Beside him, Dread barked a laugh.

Johan scowled at him, then held out a hand. “Tell me,” he said. “How do we do it?”

“Once you have spoken to Jayne,” Elaine said, firmly. “You need to patch things up or cut them neatly first, or your feelings will interfere with the bond.”