Authors: C.N. Crawford
She balled her hands into fists. Since her return, she had learned her mother’s crime.
Bathsheba had been only to happy to tell her that Queen Morella was a whore. Apparently, she had taken a number of young lovers from court. Since Morella wasn’t a descendant of the gods as Bathsheba was, such depraved behavior was only to be expected. Celia had just feigned disinterest during this conversation, plucking at the hem on her dress, but secretly she’d envisioned herself smashing a nearby vase and driving the shards into Bathsheba’s withered little heart.
She didn’t know if the rumors of her mothers’ affairs were true or not, and she didn’t care. If she’d been married to someone like her father, she would have sought solace elsewhere, too. Thomas was right. Queen Bathsheba and King Balthazar were a pestilence on this city. Blood relative or not, if they found Celia conspiring with Ragmen, they’d saw off
her
head in the square.
The door creaked open, and Oswald stood in the entrance, his blond curls dripping on the white robe. The silky fabric barely covered his chest, and she could still see the letters burned into his flesh. She dragged the bowl of water back into the room before wrapping his arm around her shoulders.
She grimaced at the broken collarbone protruding through his skin.
He leaned into her, and she kicked the door shut behind them. His presence threw an extra kink into her plans, but she couldn’t toss him back to his executioners. He was Tobias’s closest friend. And anyway, he’d obviously suffered enough.
Resting against her shoulder, Oswald hobbled across the room to her bed. Gently supporting his back, she helped him recline against her blue satin pillows. He winced, nearly crying out when she helped him shift his legs onto the mattress.
He stared at her though his one open eye—pale blue, the color of glacial ice. His jaw was set tight. “Thomas trusts you. I don’t.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, you don’t have a choice right now.” She sat next to him on the edge of the bed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. He smelled of her lavender soap. “Which leg is worse off?”
“That one.” He nodded to his right leg. “And the ankle of the other. They rammed a nail through the tendon.”
Christ.
Sympathy pierced her. “Did it hurt—I mean.” She swallowed, staring at his mangled legs.
Stupid question.
“This is horrifying.”
“What, this is new information to you, Princess? Hark, everyone! Nippexies swim, dogs rut in the street, and your family tortures Tatters!”
Her ears bloomed with heat. “I was banished when I was six. I wasn’t exactly privy to state secrets.” Flustered, she touched her fingertips to his leg. “Stop talking. I need to remember the spell.” She closed her eyes, grazing his leg with her hands and chanting the Angelic words. When she finished, he let out a long, relieved breath as his bones mended.
Her pulse raced. This was all a terrible idea, and it wasn’t a part of her plan. But if she was going to rule over Maremount someday, she’d be queen of the Tatters too. She might as well start taking care of them now.
Her fingers moved from one part of his body to another, healing his ankle and his arms before moving on to his eye. The swelling reduced enough that he could open it, but the deep purple color remained. He stared at her as she moved to his collarbone, resting the tips of her fingers on the bronzed skin by his shoulder. She took care to avoid the exposed bone. The spell wasn’t a panacea. It seemed to set his bones, and the skin grew over the wound, but the collarbone continued to bulge from his chest at an awkward angle. She frowned at the lump by his shoulder, hoping she hadn’t done any permanent damage with her spell.
He glanced down at it. “Good enough.”
She moved her fingers toward the burns on his chest, but he caught her hands in his. “Leave the burns.”
She frowned, surprised by the ferocity in his voice. “They
branded
you.”
“I
am
a Ragman. And proud I didn’t give up any real information.” His gaze was unwavering. “I was close to breaking. I would have, if Thomas hadn’t showed up with an iron bar.”
Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to imagine the torments he’d endured. Still, his admission that he’d been close to the breaking point suggested that he was beginning to trust her, at least a little.
He rubbed his shoulder. “It’s over now. And maybe you’re a Throcknell pearl-licker, but I’m certainly feeling a lot better.”
She looked him over. “Anything else broken?”
A faint smile flickered across his lips as he rubbed his toned arms. “Eager to get your hands on more of me now that I’m in your bed?”
A blush crept up her chest. “
What?
”
“I didn’t see your fingers on Thomas’s neck. You didn’t
have
to touch me to do the spell.”
Her cheeks were on fire, and she hoped he couldn’t see it in the wavering candlelight.
He obviously never learned any manners.
He raised his hands over his head, stretching over her pillows. “Not that I can blame you for taking the chance when you could. Those porridge-faced ferrets who prance around you at court wouldn’t excite me, were I a woman.”
Apparently, he was feeling better.
“Oh, really? Well, I’m not the one who wasted time prettifying myself for our encounter.”
He sat up. “We’ve got a little time, but not much. Asmodeus gave the wardens strict instructions. No one was to bother him in his work. It may take a few hours yet afore they find his broken carcass.”
“Maybe.” She stood, lifting the hem of her long gown. “We have work to do.”
She strode to the window. “Thomas! Your cocky prisoner friend has recovered. If we’re going to get the spell, we need to do it now.”
He awoke with a start, blinking out of a deep sleep. “Right. What are we doing?” He winced, trying to swallow. “We’ve been to Asmodeus’s temple. The plague spell must be there. He had all sorts of books.”
Oswald rose from the bed, rubbing the back of his neck. His body seemed to be fully functioning.
“The temple sounds like a good idea,” said Celia. “But I have no idea how to operate the portals. We’ll have to get back into those tunnels that you both used. And I don’t know my way around those, either. They haven’t been used in centuries.”
Thomas pushed himself up. “I think I can help there.”
Celia lifted the hem of her dress to climb the steps as Oswald’s sphere of foxfire drifted above them, illuminating glistening stone walls in a narrow stairwell. The golden sparrow, Odile, fluttered after her, determined to stay with her master.
Thomas had been babbling something about a zodiac wheel for most of their journey through the dank tunnels, though now, as they neared the end, he had fallen silent. With his newly mended bones, it had become Oswald’s job to support the scholar. The pair lumbered up the stairs behind Celia, not a single shoe between them.
Thomas seemed particularly preoccupied with sevens and twelves. At an intersection of tunnels, he and Oswald had engaged in a long and confusing discussion about metals, planets, and star signs that made little sense to Celia, and she wasn’t left with a great deal of faith in Thomas’s lucidity. Apparently they were headed toward Virgo, whatever that meant. She had a terrible feeling they would emerge from the tunnel right in the center of the Great Hall while Queen Bathsheba looked on. The Queen would call the guards and look on with a bloodthirsty leer while they were disemboweled before her.
At least we have the invisibility spell, assuming I can remember it.
Her memory wasn’t as good as Fiona’s, but during the weeks she’d spent here, she had replayed the spells in her mind in case she needed them. And during the long journey through the underground tunnels, she’d taught the invisibility spell to Oswald. With two philosophers reciting it, the spell would double in strength and duration. Fortunately, Oswald had proven a fast learner.
“We must be near the end,” he said with a grunt.
She glanced back at the shambling pair behind her. Thomas’s head lolled, his eyes closed. Oswald still wore Celia’s robe, though it covered very little. He might be a stickler for cleanliness, but he seemed less fussy about modesty.
She didn’t want to admit it out loud, but she was glad that Thomas had brought the Ragman along. Celia’s knowledge of Angelic probably wouldn’t be strong enough to recite an unfamiliar portal spell with any kind of accuracy. She’d been counting on Thomas to help her piece together the spell. Although he’d never learned Angelic, he was a professor and probably better with languages than she was. But Oswald was even better. He’d received the same training as Tobias, and he would be able to read it on sight.
She bit her lip. “It might be best if you read the portal spell, when we’re ready. You can probably get through it faster.”
“I’ll help you learn it, but I’m not going with you. I belong here.” He heaved Thomas up another stair. “How’d you get it?”
“Asmodeus.” Hopefully that was enough of an answer. She didn’t feel like giving Oswald the whole explanation.
“What—he just
gave
you a spell? Out of the kindness of his shriveled heart?”
Of course, Oswald wasn’t the type to just let things go. She gritted her teeth. “He used to come to my room after dinner. He decided to make me his mistress, even though he thought I was brain-damaged. Maybe
because
he thought I was brain-damaged. He didn’t think I could read, so when I asked if I could look at some of his pretty books, he didn’t see the harm. He brought a few over, and I sent him on a task to fetch a servant for more wine. While he was out of the room, I combed through the books. Some of the titles were in English. Most were something to do with getting rid of locusts or curing swine dysentery, but I found one called Lord Mordred’s Portal Spell.”
“That was quite cunning of you.” He was starting to sound out of breath as Thomas became more of a dead weight. “When you entertained him in your room, you didn’t have to kiss the withered goat, did you?”
“I did what I had to.” When she resisted his kisses, he would grit his teeth and clamp her hands above her head, pinning her to the bed. The thought of his long, pink tongue lapping at her lips made her want to vomit.
“You did what you had to.”
Asmodeus wouldn’t have remained satisfied with just kissing and groping for long. She was thankful Oswald and Thomas had showed up when they did.
She wanted to change the subject. “The sparrow—Odile was my mother’s familiar. She must have lingered at the fortress after my mother died. She found me when I came back. I haven’t met my own yet.” She was lucky her mountain lion hadn’t appeared in the castle, or she would have had to explain her initiation into a coven. “Do you have a familiar?”
“Had one. A meadowlark. Meraline.”
She was almost afraid to ask. “What happened?”
“She flew between the bars of the torture chamber. Asmodeus crushed her in front of my face. Burnt the carcass in a brazier.”
She winced. She had no reply to that.
“I haven’t seen Eden’s lark,” he continued.
A lump rose in her throat.
Maybe it’s better if we walk in silence for a while.
Ahead, faint streams of silvery light shone through a metal grate. As they approached, she could see that it was carved with a leafy design, like a decorative storm drain. A tendril of fear spiraled through her when she thought of shoving the cover away, potentially drawing the attention of a nearby guard. “I see the opening. You think this will come out by the portcullis?”
“I’m not sure. But it’s a solid guess.”
Great. A solid guess.
She closed in on the tunnel’s end. She could see only the stars gleaming in the night sky. She turned to Oswald. “Are you ready to chant the cloaking spell?” Odile perched on her shoulder.
He nodded, and they incanted the spell together, the three of them shimmering to transparency when they finished.
He touched her arm. “As soon as you remove the cover, we’ll need to move quickly. If a guard sees it move, they’ll sound the alarm.”
Celia turned to push on the grate, straining her arms, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Here, take Thomas.” Celia felt a nearly limp body collapse into her arms, and she suppressed a shudder. They would all need that plague spell now.
Oswald pushed past her, and her pulse raced as he slid the cover aside. Metal scraped against stone, but there was no sudden onslaught of guards.
She shoved Thomas toward Oswald, and he hoisted out the dead weight. Celia followed, a cool breeze chilling her skin.
She exhaled with relief when she looked around at Lullaby Square. They weren’t by the portcullis—they were just in front of the Lilitu Fountain. Night guards would be standing watch by the fortress, but the drain was out of their view.