Antebellum Awakening (9 page)

Merrick and I stood on top of the Wall the next morning, hidden back in the shadow that Chatham Castle sent over the lower bailey. Masses of Guardian hopefuls teemed in the deep stone pit, fighting each other with the wooden swords that meant they were new recruits. Furious cries rang through the air now and then, a sure indication that some inattentive trainee would later be nursing a bruise or a splinter.

Good thing they don’t have real swords yet.

The spring air sat heavy on my shoulders, thick with fog and threatening a chilly rain. It felt good to have a cool day. Even though I’d faced Miss Mabel two days before, the desert heat still felt real on my face. After my unexpected visit, I’d awoken in Letum Wood with scratches on my hands and feet, and no idea where I was. I had to transport back to Chatham Castle. Sleep had been elusive for the past couple days, adding to my weariness. To my relief, I didn’t see Mrs. L again.

Seeking a bit of security, I pulled my deep blue cloak closer around my shoulders but left the hood down. Camille had woken up early to tuck my hair into two braids against my head, ensuring it would be out of my way for either a fight or a run. But it had been in vain. Merrick and I had been hidden for an hour, studying proper fighting technique. Or, more realistically, how not to fight.

“Watch that one,” he said, pointing to a different fellow on the other side. “He seems to know what he’s doing. We’ll start working on new footwork patterns tomorrow. Learning a sword is pointless without them.”

“Are you going to make me practice with the Guardians?” I asked, a disturbing image of fighting with the burly boys flickering through my mind. One gangly Guardian stumbled over his own feet, fell to his knees, curled into a ball, and pled for mercy.
Then again,
I thought with a wry look,
perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad.

“No. I’m teaching you a different sword fighting style, but the basics are the same.”

“Why?”

He thought it over for a second. “If you are truly training to fight Miss Mabel, then she’ll expect you to be trained to fight like the Guardians. Teaching you a different style may give you an advantage.”

“Oh,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Tradition isn’t always a good thing,” he said with a grim tone. “Keep that in mind.”

“What do you mean?”

He shook his head with stoic disregard. “It’s not important now. Our current task is just to get you ready for it. Focus on that.”

I was grateful when he finally released me for the day, hoping the Witchery was empty so I could have a chance to iron out my thoughts. I trudged up several winding staircases and down the lonely castle halls. An abandoned Witchery waited for me and I let out a sigh of relief.

Several notes cluttered our rickety table. Michelle was working on an order of orange rolls in the kitchen. Leda was in the library writing an essay for her political history class, and I’d heard Camille laughing with a couple of Guardians as I walked through a back hall. Despite the pervasive silence, the solitude was welcome.

I dragged a thick wooden box filled with blankets and herbs to the window and sat on top, my knees pulled into my chest, protecting my heart. The wind blew the scent of Letum Wood into the turret. I closed my eyes and savored the sweet smell. Calm moments like these made me remember Mama in a way that didn’t hurt quite so much. It was one of the rare days when the grief took second place to better memories, and didn’t sit on my chest quite so much.

I felt so calm that I gave into the rare weakness of thinking about Mama, recalling the smell of lavender on her linen dresses. She had liked the light touch of the material, the way it never felt heavy or restrictive. Although she had stayed home to raise me and run the Tea and Herb Pantry with Grandmother, Mama had been a free spirit.

Just when the daydreams about home started to feel real, when I began to convince myself that I still lived in the cottage deep in Letum Wood, I jerked out of it to the sound of Miss Mabel’s voice.

Your task is to kill the High Priest.

My eyes darted around the room, and then I realized I’d started to fall asleep in the mild spring air. I straightened and pushed the hair out of my face. Try as I might, Miss Mabel’s voice wouldn’t leave. Her task echoed through my mind over and over and over.

Your task is to kill the High Priest.

Though today’s memories of Mama were gentle, I was grateful for something else to focus on. I started to formulate a plan. There were only two ways out of the binding: figure out a way to destroy it or die. No matter what happened, Miss Mabel wouldn’t get me without a fight. I ran the pad of my thumb along my bottom lip as I pondered over our meeting. Miss Mabel had said she hated someone as much as I hated her. It had to be the High Priestess, the only witch with more power than her.

The flash of inspiration I had when I’d seen the contract again for the first time ran back through my mind. Would a binding have any power if there was no evidence of it? Could I steal the binding and destroy it?

My heart hammered at the thought. If it were possible, I’d have to go to the Western Network under my own power, find the
Book of Contracts
, search for mine, destroy it, and get back before someone noticed. If the West Guards caught me, they’d kill me on the spot. If Miss Mabel caught me?

I shuddered at the thought.

The tattoos staining the skin of my right wrist called my attention. I gazed down on the circlus, a ring containing the three marks that I’d earned at Miss Mabel’s School for Girls. It represented three areas of magical expertise: the Esbat—an advanced course in leadership and ancient languages—Advanced Curses and Hexes, and Advanced Defensive Magic.

Staring at the circlus reminded me of the night I earned the last two marks, when Miss Mabel killed Mama. A rush of fury stirred my heart to even greater passion. What did it matter if Miss Mabel caught me? I was going to get that binding. What did I have to lose?

I only had a few months left to live anyway.

•••

“Merry meet, Bianca. What did Merrick make you do for today’s lesson?” Michelle asked me when I walked up to her table the next morning. She sat in front of a plate of biscuits, gravy, sausage, and toast. The servants’ dining room moved around us, the one area of Chatham Castle that never seemed to sleep. It bustled with harried servants and dissonant Guardians, and was the main battleground for the eternal war between Mrs. L and Fina, the head cook.

Tables of varying size had been scrunched into every available spot in the broad dining room, which was almost as big as the ballroom, and made movement chaotic and difficult. There was no intimate space here, and it never emptied. Different shifts of workers kept it in constant flow. A table half the width of the room stood near the eight foot tall fireplace. Four kitchen workers kept the massive table constantly full of fare. The dining room made it easy to disappear into the melee but still keep track of everything going on. This morning I’d wandered there in search of Leda.

“Push-ups,” I said, sitting across from Michelle and recalling that morning’s training with a grimace. A careful attempt to shift my already sore shoulders only resulted in greater pain, so I stopped moving. “Lots of them. And footwork. I had to repeat the same movements at least five hundred times.”

Michelle’s nose scrunched. “Sounds miserable.”

“Thanks,” I said, buoyed by her empathy. “Where’s Camille?”

Michelle motioned behind her with a jerk of her head. In a moment I spotted Camille’s bushy blonde hair, pulled away from her face with a glittering headband. The broad shoulders of the Guardians clustered around her dwarfed her short, but increasingly slender frame. Her chubby teenage cheeks had begun to lose some of their girlish roundness since she’d moved to the castle. All the attention from the Guardians left her in a happy glow most days. When she tilted her head back and laughed at something one of her admirers said, I smiled to myself.

“They are all so in love with her,” Michelle said, following my gaze. “Except for Brecken, I think. She mentioned something about him ignoring her yesterday when she tried to get him to take her on a walk in the gardens.”

Sure enough, Brecken sat at the far end of the table, oblivious to Camille’s presence. He wasn’t lost on her, however. I noticed her eyes dart his direction every now and then, especially after she let out a witty comment that earned guffaws from the rest of the Guardians.

"It’s good to see that someone is immune to her girlish charms," I said. My mind turned back to my original purpose. “Have you seen Leda?”

“No,” Michelle said, her forehead scrunching together. “She was gone by the time I came down here this morning.”

My mind churned. Where would Leda have gone so early? Michelle woke up before the sunrise to get working on the fresh loaves of bread, a time of day when no one stirred. The librarians would have opened the library just fifteen minutes before I came to the dining room. What was Leda up to?

“Oh,” I murmured. “Interesting.”

Michelle lapsed into her familiar silence and I was glad. She only spoke when she had something pertinent to say and I loved that she held little expectation for conversing. Sitting with Michelle was easy.

“Okay, well, I’m going to the library,” I said after a few more minutes when our intermittent chatting died down and Michelle finished up her meal. “Are you still on duty?”

She nodded and said, “I’ll see you after work.”

After waving to Camille and winding my way through the maze of tables and bodies, I headed toward the library to begin the first phase of my big plan to free myself from Miss Mabel. First, I had to find out if bindings could be destroyed before they were fulfilled. After that, I would figure out a way to infiltrate the Western Network. If I were caught, they would kill me.

When I walked through the stained glass double doors that led to the three-story book sanctuary, I found Leda and Miss Scarlett sitting together at a table near the outer fringe of the room, their heads bent in deep discussion. I made a mental note to ask Leda about her early morning activities later.

“I want to try,” Leda said in a low tone. “But I’m afraid that my curse will become a problem if Council Member Jansson finds out that—”

She stopped, her spine stiffening, and gazed right up to me.

“Merry meet,” I said in a jovial tone, wondering why Leda had any business with Council Member Jansson. He was a middle aged, black haired witch with a constantly bland facial expression who oversaw both Chatham City and Chatham Castle. Most of the affairs of the castle went through him.

“Merry meet, Bianca,” Miss Scarlett returned, tugging on the edge of her jacket, as if it could have the nerve to wrinkle. “I heard about your experience with the dragon. I’m glad you and Camille came out of it unscathed.”

“Thank you, Miss Scarlett. So am I.”

Miss Scarlett looked no different today than any other day. She wore a blue dress with her hair swept into a bun at the back of her neck and a crisp white jacket with long sleeves over it. The red bracelets she never took off sang each time they clanged together on her wrist. I’d never seen a piece of fuzz on Miss Scarlett’s clothes or a hair out of place. If I had, surely it would have been a sign of the end of the world. Miss Scarlett was as steady and timeless as the wind.

“Why are you talking about Jan—”

“We’re learning about the political history of the Southern Network as well as current events,” Leda blurted out, her nostrils flaring. “Would you care to join us and write an essay on why the Southern Network army needs metals found in the caves of the Western Network?”

“Lots to do today!” I said, taking a step back. “Hope you have some fun.”

“I’ll see you later,” Leda said dismissively and turned back to her paperwork, but not before a look of relief crossed her face.

Well played, Leda,
I thought. She wanted to get rid of me, and she had. But why? She was definitely up to something.

“Now, the Southern Network has always been known for their talent in crafting weaponry,” Miss Scarlett began, and her voice soon droned into the background.

I ventured further into the library, past the circular, elevated desk that sat in the very middle of the room. Several librarians bustled inside of it, sorting cards, books, and slips of paper. The walls filled with dusty tomes gave off the scent of aged paper and ink. I perused the stacks with a disinterested eye.
Treating Fungus, How to Properly Age and Preserve Mushrooms
, and
All About the Mansfeld Pact
ran past my eyes. It wasn’t until I found a book entitled
Bindings and Such
that I felt a glimmer of hope.

A librarian passed by, ignoring me. I settled on the floor and cracked the book open, flipping through the table of contents. Old, nearly illegible handwriting covered the fading pages. I had to squint, working to read every line.

“The many types of bindings,” I read under my breath. “Eternal bindings. Inherited bindings. Bindings for children.”

Nothing on the list appealed to me. After combing through the book without success, I shoved it back onto the shelf and grabbed another from nearby.
How to Fight in a Mactos.
But that dealt primarily with magical fighting and blighters. I pushed it back.