The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy) (29 page)

“Hero-worshipped him, I’d say.”

Sedder had been Kora’s closest childhood
friend. He’d joined the Crimson League with her and died soon after. Joslyn
said, “It would be a nice way to honor him. What do you think?”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” he
told her. Tears glistened in her eyes.

“This is really happening? You’re back,
to stay? You’re done with that mess in Herezoth, and we’re having a second
child? I’m not dreaming this?”

“You’re not dreaming
this.”
         

“And you, you won’t let Dorane gnaw at
you? That’s what he wants, Love. That’s precisely what he’s aiming for. He
wants to gnaw at you so constantly you’ll destroy yourself just to stop feeling
it. I know you want to move back to your homeland, that you’d love to maintain
your research. I know we both want those things, but we don’t need them, and we
never will. Everything we need is right here, at this moment.”

Zacry rubbed her stomach and stole another kiss.
“Dorane who?” he whispered in her ear.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

To Face the Future

Vane
never made it to Traigland the next day. He spent from sunrise until well into
the night alternately with the Fist and the monarchs. That Gracia wanted to
have her say surprised the young sorcerer, but Rexson seemed to expect his
wife’s ardor. Halfway through the afternoon, the queen demanded that Dorane
receive no newspapers; that was a luxury beyond his station as a prisoner. Rexson,
who had spoken with Zacry and understood the situation, revealed Dorane’s true
conditions to keep his silence. Gracia forced him, in effect, to admit Kora’s
role in the Fist’s apprehension.

Gracia’s
face turned as white as her husband’s cotton shirt, and when Rexson told her,
“She came on her own, without me asking,” a tint of gray came on. Gracia was
silent after that, though her expression made clear she remained in favor of
“squashing the vermin,” as she had earlier described. She only spoke when Vane
left, to preempt more explanations and excuses from her husband.

“I
don’t want to know what happened, or why. You clearly tried to hide from me
she’d come. You lied to me, or spoke half-truths at best, and I have far too
much to ready before audiences tomorrow. I have to guide preparations. I’ll
fall to pieces if I’m near you now.

“We
will
manage, Rexson. I’ll have calmed
when the children return, or I can feign calm if need be. I can lie as well as
you, I imagine. Right now, I can’t be near you.”

By
day’s end, a bargain with the Enchanted Fist had been settled and signed.
Dorane would get his newspapers and remain in Yangerton, where his wife and son
were. He would work long hours for thirty years on the prison’s construction
and repair crew, maintaining the city’s major buildings. The resurgence of his
pride and will astounded Vane as much as it sickened him, arising as it did
from Zacry’s misery. The boy had to consider, “Maybe Gracia’s got it right
after all,” and though he would never suggest or plan such an operation, if the
queen were to go behind her husband’s back and organize Dorane’s death—by
assassination squad, or poisoning, or a “fall” from a structure he was working
on—Vane would not blame her in the slightest. He could even defend her in
good conscience.

Arbora,
to Vane’s relief, made no second attempt to advise him. She was purely
interested in the council, and when she learned Rexson would convene its five
members once a month—that he would announce the council’s formation by
the upcoming March—she gladly agreed to work ten years in the shipyards
north of Fontferry before she settled down to less strenuous labor in Podrar’s
prison. She consented to tell the Enchanted Fist that their officers had been
arrested for planning to incite them against the tax system, and especially for
the death of Crale Bendit; supposedly, Crale had opposed their tax operation
and had revealed the plot to the king. Crale would never have supported an illegal
aim, Arbora knew, and had indeed been killed by Dorane, so she felt the cover
story was as fair to everyone involved as could be expected. At least, it was
not so unjust to her party that it was worth rejecting, not when going along
with the tale meant she would finally obtain that council. In addition, the
lies were credible. Arbora was known for lambasting how no part of the taxes
she paid went to programs for the magic community.

Ursa
was the easiest to deal with. Vane met with each captive individually, and to
be alone made Ursa’s panic from the day before return with a vengeance. She
agreed to go north to serve her sentence in Partsvale, working the first years
(she talked Vane down from thirty to twenty) in the rock quarries there. Her
fear of death almost made Vane pity her—almost. She clearly expected the
guards to drag her to an alley and riddle her with arrows any night now,
perhaps to rape her beforehand, and when she asked Vane as he turned to leave
whether he knew August, whether he could convince her to visit—the
implication being before the king had Ursa killed—Vane agreed he would
transport August to the jail within the week, provided the girl was up for the
trip. He doubted she would be. All Vane knew for sure was that he found himself
incapable at that point in the day of heading to Triflag like he’d planned. His
muscles and mind were aching from all the transporting from city to city, from
the mental gymnastics of negotiation.

After
settling a bargain with the criminals, Vane returned to the Palace to draw up
documents for signing, then brought those back to Yangerton. The Fist’s
officers made their respective deals official, though Vane wished he didn’t
have to see the smirk on Dorane’s face when he put his signature to the paper
that would, for all intents and purposes, exile Zacry from Herezoth and ensure
his silence in the cultural debate on magic.

Just wait ‘til you’re on that
construction crew. We’ll see if you’re smirking then.

Dorane
was the last
to add his signature,
and he did so around midnight. Vane then transported back to the Palace
grounds. He turned over the papers to Rexson and staggered to his room, where
he fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. His anxieties about the
future; his fervid and frustrated anger on Zacry’s behalf; the strange, airy
feeling he got in the pit of his stomach whenever he thought of August: he
forgot all that for eight glorious hours and simply slept.

*
* *

The
next morning, August woke in Vane’s room in Triflag with a now familiar dread
of the coming day. The sun had hardly risen yet. Viola was fussing, so August
went to help Joslyn calm her, forgetting that Zacry had been home for one full
day already and that with his return, Melly had joined her brothers at his
house. Everyone had gathered in the living room. Zacry held his daughter, while
Joslyn swung Melly in her arms because she had begun to cry as well. The
princes looked bleary-eyed.

“Could
you start breakfast?” Joslyn asked August.

“I’ll
get eggs from the hen house,” August offered. “And water.”

“We’ll
help,” said Valkin, his glasses and hair both askew. Hune yawned but agreed,
and so did Neslan, who by then had made a full recovery thanks to the Porteg
family’s magic. Soon eggs were boiling and the boys were more in the way than
they were helping as they kneaded dough with August for some bread no one had
managed to bake the night before.

This should
be my last morning here. Oh, I hope it is....
Zacry said Val should have come yesterday. I wonder what’s held him? I hope
nothing’s happened to him! No. No, it can’t have. They’re all in prison:
Dorane, the spy, Ursa too. How could they hurt Val from prison? I’m sure he’s
fine, whether he comes today or not. Besides, it really doesn’t matter when I leave.
It’s not as though I have anything to go back to.

After
breakfast, Kora brought the Cason children to play. Kansten, Wilhem, and Walten
kicked a ball around the yard with Rexson’s sons, according to the rules of
some game they had made up earlier that week. Tressa and Laskenay played with
dolls indoors under Joslyn’s supervision. The babies went down for a late
morning nap, and even with Zacry gone into town for some purpose he did not
specify, no one needed August to watch the children. As it was early yet to
prepare lunch, she found herself facing her first block of free time since she
had come to Traigland.

August
shut herself in Vane’s room and grabbed a random book from his shelf: a history
of Zalski’s rule, outlining in particular his changes to the tax code, the
press, the justice system, and the infrastructure of the military. The writer
noted discrepancies between explanations Zalski gave publicly and private
documents found after his death. The topic was not one of great interest to
August; what intrigue it held came from meeting the sorcerer’s nephew, and the
royal family the man had deposed, and now the woman everyone said was responsible
for Zalski’s downfall. She had never lived such a month as this one…. And the
month was not yet finished.

She
turned to the chapter on the justice system, both from a morbid curiosity and
because her sister was in prison at that moment, though she tried not to think
too much of Ursa. Curled up on the bed, she read for half an hour about
executions for minor crimes, and she lost herself in the account of a man who
was hanged for stealing meat from one of Podrar’s butchers. The case was well
known as it constituted the first death sentence for food theft; the butcher
himself had requested a lighter castigation.

It’s so strange to think I was alive when
all this happened. I couldn’t have been older than Melly, though. I guess it’s
just as well I don’t remember my first four years.

A
knock on the door distracted her, and she got up to open to Joslyn or Kora
asking for help in the kitchen.

“Val!”
she cried. She gave him a friendly hug. “It’s good to see you. To see a
familiar face, besides the boys. Are we going back later, then? Zacry said you
caught them all, the spy too.”

Vane was confused, and his expression
showed it. Should he mention Ursa’s request? Should he wait? He decided to put
that unpleasantness off.

“They’re all in custody, and we’re going
to spare their lives.”

August gaped. “They don’t deserve that,”
she said. “Ignoring the fact that we, we’re talking about my sister, they
deserve to hang. I was sure the king….”

Vane remembered Hune’s horrified shrieks
when he saw his brothers turned to statues. He thought of Zacry’s broken and
bruised hand. “He’d like to hang them. And that
is
what they deserve. But the situation’s complicated, more than
you know, and mercy can have a value all its own. That’s what I’m trying to
tell myself, at least. If nothing else, it’s a way for Rexson to distinguish
himself from Zalski.”

“I suppose it is.” August glanced at the
open book lying on the bed. Vane guessed easily which one it was.

“I’ve read it cover to cover,” he said.
“Only once. Once was enough. I figured I should know what exactly he did, what
he stood for. I don’t intend to read it again, but I keep it on the shelf. I
might need it as a reference later. I guess a part of me knew I’d end up at
court, like my father, and well, people will ask questions.”

August said, “If I were you, I’d keep it
not as a reminder of where you come from—because you don’t come from
that, Val—I’d keep it to remind myself of his mistakes, his particular
errors in judgment, to avoid the trap he fell into. It really is easy to
understand why he thought the way he did, isn’t it? I mean, the grand picture
of things he used to justify himself: the suppression of magic, the subtle and
not-so-subtle persecution of the empowered….”

“It’s scarily easy to understand, August.
Especially being a sorcerer.”

“So you’re claiming your title? You’ll be
a duke?”

“I don’t have another choice.”

August felt as though someone had dropped
a brick in her stomach; the sensation more surprised than pained her. What did
it matter if Vane became the Duke of Ingleton? That had no effect on her life,
on her future as blank and unforeseeable as an empty canvas to someone watching
an artist smear a first blotch of paint….

“There’s always another choice,” she told
him.

“Not if I don’t want to think myself a
coward.”

“That’s a pretty convincing reason,” she
admitted. A second brick settled in her gut beside the first. “You’re not a
coward, not after the way you broke into Ursa’s mansion to get the boys. It
would be a true shame if you thought you were.”

Vane decided to change the subject. “I’m
bringing you and Rexson’s kids to the Palace this afternoon.”
         

August blinked. “You call the king by his
name?”

“He’s got one like everyone else, doesn’t
he?”

“I guess he does,” said August.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do
next? Will you stay in Podrar?”

“I haven’t had time to think about that. Val,
I’ve been a wreck, a wreck and a horrible guardian. When we got here, I
couldn’t calm Melly for anything. Joslyn’s been ill in the mornings. I think
she might be pregnant, but obviously I didn’t ask. I hardly know the woman. I
just watched the baby while she was feeling bad, and Viola was scared of me
because I’m not her mother. I fixed Kansten’s hair for her once, and she seemed
pleased, or I thought she did. But now she’s avoided me the last few days, and
I haven’t a clue why. Neslan, he nearly died on my watch, and….”

Vane’s excitement about Joslyn turned to
alarm. “Neslan? What happened to Neslan?”

“He’s fine now. Ilana cured him, but he
got bit by a venomous snake in the woods.”

“I go there all the time,” said Vane.
“I’ve seen a few snakes, but never too many, never one I recognized as
poisonous. That doesn’t sound as though it could have been your fault, and
anyway, if Neslan’s recovered—and he has, he’s running around outside
with the rest of the kids—what difference does it make?”

“None, I suppose. It was terrifying,
though. I really thought we’d lose him, and after everything Ursa put him and
his brothers through…. Val, I was alone with them and Kansten when it happened.
I carried him home. My arms still ache. The whole time I could picture the king
and queen when they found out what I’d let happen. I couldn’t get them out of
my mind. They’ve been so kind to me, much kinder than I deserve, and….”