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None of the tavern girls or barkeeps had heard anything more about Kishori’s imaginary nephew, and she was beginning to wonder if she ought to leave Atherton. She was pretty sure she knew the man who had spotted her and sensed her magy. She had seen him once during the Loshadnarodski War, when he had rained down fire and death on her and her friends. He was Caedmon Aldred, legendary court sorcerer of Myrcia.
On the one hand, this was almost certain confirmation that Edwin Sigor was here in town. On the other hand, Caedmon could obliterate Kishori with no more than an idle thought. He was a true hillichmagnar, and magy flowed out of him as naturally as he breathed. He didn’t need rings or bracelets or necklaces to carry his spells for him. Kishori really did not want to fight him.
She reminded herself that she had to finish her mission in order to get back to her husband, though. But as she sat in the little teashop, three blocks from the school, she indulged in traitorous thoughts. She was sitting near the side door, with her thumb on the stone of one of her rings, just in case. She was scanning the room for Caedmon, or anyone who looked out of place. And she thought to herself, “This is stupid. This is awful. This is wrong.” Queen Muriel was a terrible person, and it nauseated Kishori to think that by completing this mission, she would be helping such a woman.
Kishori had tried to learn how to be kind and forgive people. So it had been a while since she had felt good, strong hatred toward anyone. But she truly hated Muriel now.
A group of girls came and sat at a nearby table, giggling and red-faced. She ignored them for a few minutes, but then she heard one of the girls distinctly say the name, “Edwin Sigor,” and Kishori forgot about Muriel and everything else, as she leaned in to listen.
“I think she’s full of shit,” said one girl. “I think ‘Henry’ was obviously some baker’s boy, and she’s too embarrassed to admit she got fooled.”
“Serves her right,” said another. “She’s always going on about how she thinks we all should be equal, which is pretty rich coming from a duke’s daughter. She just wanted to shock us all by dancing with a commoner.”
“I don’t know,” said a third girl thoughtfully. “If you look at Henry and sort-of squint, you can see he looks a bit like the king and Prince Broderick. If he’s Edwin Sigor, then he’s their cousin, you know.”
“Yes, obviously,” said the first girl. “But a lot of people have brown hair and blue eyes. It’s not like it’s exclusive to the royal family.”
“I’ve never known Penny Ostensen to tell a lie,” said a fourth girl, in a quiet, firm tone. “And I don’t think she’s lying now.”
Kishori turned slowly, looking out of the corner of her eye. The fourth girl was slim, with long red ringlets framing her face, and she had her arms folded over her chest in a defiant gesture. That was the posture of a girl who truly believed her friend, and whose friend was probably worth believing.
“Ostensen,” muttered Kishori under her breath. The Ostensen family were the dukes of Severn—strong supporters of King Broderick. Queen Muriel was an Ostensen by birth. That made Kishori instantly take a dislike to this “Penny,” but she reminded herself the girl didn’t necessarily have anything in common with her infamous relatives. Earstien knew Kishori had worked blasted hard not to be like her own family. This girl might well be the same. And it sounded as if she and Edwin Sigor had been somehow attracted to each other. A sad situation, if true. But it meant Kishori really needed to go find her.
She paid her bill, slipped out the side door, and went to a nearby stationery shop, where she got a single sheet of parchment, some wax, and a cheap brass seal. In a minute, she had a blank, sealed letter. Then she returned to the teashop by the same side door and approached the girls’ table.
“Pardon me,” she said, “but I think I heard one of you mention Penny Ostensen.” She held up the fake letter. “I’m carrying a message from her family. Would you happen to know where she is right now?”
The girls all looked at each other, shaking their heads like Kishori must be some sort of simpleton. “She’s at Queen Freyda Hall, obviously,” said the girl who had spoken first. “Where else would she be?”
“But she’s not out enjoying the day like you all are?” Kishori pressed.
All the girls, except the redhead, burst out laughing. “She’s pining,” giggled one of them. “She’s lost her true love.”
Kishori thanked them and left before she succumbed to the temptation to slap them. All except the red-haired girl, of course. From the teashop, she headed up the street to the Scholars’ Gate, where she asked the porter for directions to Queen Freyda Hall.
Again, that look as if Kishori were an idiot. “It’s right there,” the man said, pointing over her shoulder at a rambling, low brick building, surrounded by a little garden, only a hundred feet away.
“Lovely. Thanks,” said Kishori.
In the entrance hall, there was a neatly painted sign stating that “Messengers are asked to wait for the Matron.” But there was no one at the little office by the front door, and Kishori didn’t really feel like waiting. There was a bell on the desk, and through a far door, she heard several women chatting and laughing together. No need to bother them.
She leaned over the front desk and found a book where the girls apparently had to sign in and out. Each line had a girl’s name, her room number, and the time she had left and returned. Kishori flipped through the book until she found an entry for Penny Ostensen, who gave her room number as 144.
It took Kishori a few tries to find the room in the maze-like building, but eventually she did. She knocked, and after a minute, the door opened to reveal a tall blonde girl in a pink dressing gown. Kishori didn’t need an introduction to recognize her. This was obviously Penny Ostensen—the resemblance to her horrible aunt was apparent at first glance. The same rich blonde hair. The same sharp jaw. The same perfect cheekbones. Except this girl also had red, puffy eyes; blotchy, tear-streaked cheeks; and a handkerchief in her hand.
“Hello,” she said in a thick voice. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”
Kishori pushed her way into the room and shut the door behind her. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I’ve been given to understand that you know where Edwin Sigor is. Your aunt, the queen, sent me.”
The girl took a few steps back, frowning and looking Kishori up and down warily. “You’re looking for Edwin Sigor?”
“Yes. The queen asked me to find him.”
Penny’s expression hardened—eyes narrowed, jaw set. It made her look even more like her aunt, if Kishori hadn’t already known. “I have no idea where he is.”
“Very well. Can you at least tell me where to start looking?”
The girl crossed her arms. “Perhaps you could start in the Void.”
“Penny, darling, who are you talking to?” Floorboards creaked, and Kishori spun around to see a silver-haired, matronly woman poke her head through a side door. She spotted Kishori and her eyebrows went up. “Oh! Hello, madam. Who are you?”
“She was just leaving, Miss Fletcher,” said Penny.
Kishori curtsied. “I take it you are her ladyship’s governess. I have been sent by the queen to learn the whereabouts of Edwin Sigor.”
“Miss Fletcher, don’t you tell her!” cried Penny.
“Edwin Sigor?” said the older woman. “Well, everyone on campus knows that—”
“Miss Fletcher,” said Penny, “I will never speak to you again if you don’t shut up!”
Kishori pressed the jewel of a ring to her thumb and pointed at the girl. “I’m sorry.” Then she whispered the spell, and Penny fell silent. Her lips still moved, but nothing came out. The girl’s mouth worked furiously, wider and wider. Her hands balled into fists. Veins stood out on her slim neck. But she couldn’t scream.
She launched herself at Kishori, hands flailing. But before she could make contact, Kishori muttered a second spell, and the girl was flung across the room and pinned to the wall.
“I truly am sorry,” Kishori repeated. Then she turned back to the governess. “I really think you’d better tell me where Edwin is.”
Miss Fletcher’s chin quivered, and then, with a grim nod, she said, “I can see the queen really did send you. You’re definitely her sort of person.”
That stung, but Kishori ignored the taunt. “All I want is to know where Edwin is. And then I’ll leave.”
“He’s in Storrick Hall,” the woman said, looking at her feet. “It’s up the hill, between the chapel and the library.”
Kishori turned at the door and looked at them both—the old woman shrunken by defeat and shame, the girl still struggling red-faced to break the bonds of the spells. It had all escalated so quickly, so stupidly. In seconds, Kishori had become her old self again—the person she had sworn she would bury.
“I want you both to know,” she said, “that the old me would have killed you both at this point.” She shut the door and walked away. The spells on the girl would wear off in a few minutes, and in that time, Kishori would have to find Edwin.
Storrick Hall was exactly where the governess had said it would be. In the little vaulted entryway, Kishori found her way barred by a porter in gray livery. “I’m very sorry, madam,” he intoned, “but you are not permitted upstairs. If you could give me the name of the young man you wish to see, I can bring him down to the Visitors’ Parlor.” He gestured languidly toward a little green room with cracked old leather couches.
“I’m looking for...,” Kishori searched through her memory, recalling what the girls had said back in the teashop. “I’m looking for a boy named Henry, though rumor has it he’s actually Edwin Sigor.”
To her surprise, the porter laughed. “Ah, young Master Harris. I regret to say that he has left in rather a hurry. And his guardian—or whoever that man was—went with him.”
“Guardian?” said Kishori. “This wasn’t a tall man with reddish-brown hair in a ponytail, was it?”
“Why yes, in fact it was. Someone said he was Caedmon Aldred, which is ridiculous if you ask me.”
“Utterly daft, yes,” agreed Kishori. “Can you tell me where they went?” Inventing quickly, she added, “My, um, mistress is a seamstress here in town, and she made them some clothes, and they need to settle their debt before they leave.”
Apparently, they had gone to the stables, and as Kishori ran down the same hill she had just come up, she realized she must have missed them by moments. Maybe Caedmon had felt the magy when she had silenced and immobilized Penny Ostensen and had rushed to get Edwin away.
The stable master confirmed that “Master Harris” had left minutes before with a man answering to the description of Caedmon Aldred. Kishori sprinted back to her own inn, retrieved her horse, and rode out. She went up and down the High Street, checking her ring. But there were no signs of the hillichmagnar anywhere. She went from one side of town to the other, and then out to the south, into the little notch between the town and the mountainside. And there, finally, she saw a faint flash of blue in her ring. She took out her spyglass and scanned the long, winding road. High up the slope, miles away already, she spotted two tiny riders.
“I’ve got you now,” she thought.
She had no idea what she would do when she caught up, but she had to keep chasing them. There was no other option left open to her now. Her old personality was reasserting itself—the cruel and pitiless side of her that she tried so hard to suppress. She was horrified by it, and at the same time, she drew strength from it.
Once upon a time, back during the war, she and her colleagues from the Vizierate had tracked down and trapped the great hillichmagnar Servius Faustinus—a friend of Caedmon Aldred. In truth, they had been trying to catch someone else—the Loshadnarodski sorceress Daryna Olekovna. But that was neither here nor there. Kishori remembered how they had done it, with a carefully planned ambush. Faustinus could have destroyed them in a fair fight. But they hadn’t let him have that fair fight.
She still felt disgusted with herself when she remembered those days. She and her colleagues had tortured Faustinus horribly, and she had taken tremendous pleasure in hurting him. It was the worst moment in her life, but in some ways, it had been the beginning of the end. She had been so awful to him that she began to question what was wrong with her. That had been the first spark in the wildfire, the first stone in the avalanche that had led her to desert and run to Myrcia.
For now, though, she had to put all that aside. What was important was that she knew a hillichmagnar could be beaten. And she knew how to do it. “It’s only this one last time,” she told herself. “I just have to be bad one more time, and then I can go back to being good.”