The Silver Pear (13 page)

Vik shrugged, regret on his face but his eyes told Rane he was determined to find out what was going on with his own sorcerer as well as the others in the region, and he wouldn’t be persuaded to let it go.

He nodded to one of Rane’s guards. “Take him to the holding cell, give him some food and treat him well.”

The queen held out her arm, and Vik took it, started up the staircase with her.

“You will regret this.” Rane stared up at him, arms loose at his sides.

Vik sighed, and half-turned on the stairs. “I’ve regretted many things. Only time will tell if this is one of them.”

The guards moved Rane away, and the sense of opportunities slipping away, of the hope Ylana had given him over Soren sliding through his fingers, hardened him.

He would escape Vik’s castle. And Vik
would
live to regret it.

U
rlay was
a little smaller than Gaynor Town, but then Phon had a few towns dotted across its landscape, not just Urlay, whereas Gaynor only had one.

Kayla liked what she saw.

Vik the Steady had been a suitor for her hand more than once, and she had turned him down every time, but she thought if she had come here, and seen Urlay, she might have weakened a little.

It wasn’t as pretty as Gaynor Town, but the people seemed content, and that said more about Vik than anything else could.

In fact, he had been a poor ambassador for his own suit, if what she was seeing of Phon was a true reflection of his leadership.

Kayla had found him a braggart, condescending, and a little frightening, and with no real advantage to Gaynor in the match with a near neighbor they already had good agreements with, her father had never forced the issue.

She hoped she could avoid seeing him. It would be difficult to explain her presence.

With luck, she could find Rane, discover what Andrei Wolfsblood was up to, and leave.

At least Vik was married now.

She had met Elanie Navaar when she’d passed through Gaynor on her way to her wedding with Vik. She and her family had broken their journey from Tibalt to Phon at Gaynor Castle and spent the night before continuing on.

She had liked the dark-haired woman, with her beautiful silk dresses and intelligence dancing in her eyes.

They had sat together while their fathers had discussed matters of state and Elanie’s mother had gone to bed early with a headache, and Elanie had asked her flatly why she had turned down Vik the Steady four times.

Kayla remembered how surprised she was that Elanie knew of that. That anyone knew.

“I’ve never told anyone, except my father, that he asked me four times.”

Elanie had given a slow nod. “I thought less of you, because I thought you took pride in how many times he has asked and you have rejected, but I see you’re telling the truth. Perhaps someone in Vik’s court knew, and spread the tale.”

The moment still had the power to make Kayla’s face flush with heat in mortification and anger. She realized she’d tightened her grip on Sooty’s collar, and forced herself to relax.

If Vik had something to do with spreading the tale himself, she had always planned to hold him to account for it, but she hadn’t seen him since his marriage.

At the time, Elanie had seemed genuinely distressed. “Please, I see I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to, but if there is a good reason for you rejecting him, if I might be in danger or tied to a violent man, I would like to know now, before I say my vows.”

Kayla had composed herself, forced the anger back, and answered Elanie honestly. “I was only sixteen the first time he asked me. He was a man, nearly ten years older than me, and fresh from the wars his father had fought in the north. He was battle-weary and hard, and I was afraid he would be too much for me. Subsume me completely.”

Elanie had nodded. “And the next time?”

“Exactly a year after my first no, he came back again. He wasn’t so hardened, the year of peace had let him relax a little, but he had a bluster about him, a bragging edged with disrespect for me. As if I must surely have realized I had made a mistake the first time, and he was generously giving me a chance to change my mind.”

Elanie had snorted, and Kayla remembered looking up in surprise.

“Sorry,” she’d explained. “He sounds just like my older brother.”

Kayla had smiled back. “Perhaps you will know how to handle him better, then. Because I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

She’d leaned back against the cushions of the window seat where they were sitting. “When I turned him down the second time—as nicely as I could, I would swear to it—he became rude, and then, for the following two years, on the same day again, he came and asked me a third and a fourth time.”

Elanie sighed, and leaned back as well. “He sounds like the men in my family. Stubborn, proud and difficult.”

“You were hoping for something different?” Kayla asked her.

She nodded, and there were tears in her eyes. They shimmered for a moment but they never fell. Elanie had taken a deep breath, and blinked them back.

“Well, at least I’m used to it. And it appears he is not cruel or violent, which will be a relief to my parents as well.”

“They have also heard the story of the four rejections?” Kayla closed her eyes.

Elanie laughed. “Everyone has heard that story, Princess Kayla. But from now on, they will hear a different version from me.”

Kayla wondered now, as she approached Urlay’s gates, whether Elanie had told the new version since she’d become queen. Because perhaps Princess Kayla of Gaynor would not be particularly welcome here, if not.

She ran her fingers into the soft fur on Sooty’s neck and decided it was too late to change her story now. She knew if Andrei had Soren, Rane would do anything to get his brother back. Vik might object to his sorcerer being attacked, and at least as princess of Gaynor, she could ensure Rane wasn’t executed if he was caught.

Vik wouldn’t want to make an open enemy of Gaynor.

So, if she was stopped, or had to step in and save Rane, then under her cloak she was dressed as the princess of Gaynor, and the princess of Gaynor she would be.

But before she stepped onto the main road into Urlay, she looked down at Sooty, and realized she couldn’t bring her in without drawing a great deal of attention.

“I can either leave you here, or use some of that magic in your collar to make you normal cat-sized for a little while.”

Sooty stared up at her, unblinking. Then her tail twitched, and she stepped closer.

“Smaller? All right.” Kayla took as little of the magic as she could from the collar, and Sooty shrunk down to the size of a small cat. Kayla scooped her up and held her against her chest, and Sooty purred almost as loudly as she did when she was big enough to reach Kayla’s hip.

There was brisk traffic at the gates as the day drew on. Carts coming in, merchants walking next to donkeys and horses laden with goods, all wanting to be inside before the gates closed for the night.

Kayla looked and waited until she saw two carts full of grain with Gaynor’s standard branded into their wooden sides.

She fell into step with the front cart, turned to the cartsman and lifted the hood of her cloak a little.

“Your majesty?” The cartsman pulled reflexively on the reins and his horses shied a little at the sudden stop, and from the cart behind him, the young man Kayla guessed was his son cursed as he had to pull on his own reins.

Kayla stepped onto the footplate, held out her hand, and with mouth open, the cartsman helped her up.

“My thanks.” She smiled at him and settled Sooty onto her lap. “I need to get into Urlay unseen.”

The cartsman looked at her, and then at her hands, and Kayla followed his gaze to see he was looking at all the rings and bracelets on them. Something she seldom wore when she rode or walked around Gaynor.

“You’re never going to tell Vik you changed your mind?” he asked in horror.

She shook her head. “I’m betrothed already, remember, and he’s married.”

“Then why . . .” He blushed, and looked away, as if realizing he had no right to ask.

She touched his arm. “It’s a long story, sir, and you will know it one day, but my betrothed is here and may be in danger, and I need to find him.”

“That woodsman your father sold you to?” His words were bitter, and Kayla realized with shock that she wasn’t the only one in Gaynor to think less of her father for what he’d done to her.

“I chose him myself, not my father. That seems to have caused Eric the Bold some problems, so it all ended very much better than it could have.” She grinned at him, and he gave a slow smile back.

“Well, that’s all right then. Been worried about you, we have. Disappearing like that. Strange glass mountains and Eric the Bold seeming to have the run of the castle, and you being betrothed to a commoner an’ all.”

“There is nothing common about Rane De’Villier.” Kayla shuffled closer to him as they approached the gate, and he put a hesitant arm around her shoulder, as if they were husband and wife.

He smelled of sweet, musty grain and honest sweat.

“What is your name, sir?” They passed the guards with a nod, and the cartsman took the horses right, toward the market.

“Jack Falkirk, your majesty. At your service. My farm is an hour from Gaynor Castle, and I’ve seen you out riding many a time.”

“My thanks, Master Falkirk.” They had come to a stop, and Kayla swung back down to the ground, Sooty held against her once more.

“Father, what on earth . . . ?” Falkirk’s son gaped at the sight of her, and almost fell to his knees.

Kayla shot out an arm and gripped his shoulder. “No.”

He lifted wide eyes to hers.

“Please, don’t draw attention to me.”

“You’re never going to tell Vik you’ll take him after all?” he blurted.

She shook her head. “No. But your father said the same.” She turned slightly, so she could see both of them. “Did you think I made a mistake, saying no to him?”

Both men shook their heads. “In the inns along the way, he’d boast how you would fall to your knees in gratitude that he’d asked you. That women had begged him to marry him, and that you would understand you were the lucky one.”

Kayla sucked in a breath. “Did he, now?”

“Aye.” Falkirk scratched his head. “We were all right pleased when you sent him home with his tail between his legs, not once, not twice, but four times. Made me proud to be from Gaynor.”

Falkirk’s son grinned. “Many a fist fight to be had for those looking for one on Vik’s journey back to Phon each time. All you ’ad to do was ask his men when the wedding would be, and you got as much of a punch-up as you could want.”

Kayla stared at him. “Well,” she said at last, “I’m glad his proposals were good for something.”

“Aye, they were.” Falkirk junior gave her an endearing smile.

“We’re leaving in two day’s time, your majesty,” Falkirk leaned closer, and spoke quietly. “If you or your betrothed need a ride back to Gaynor, you’re welcome. We’ll be staying at the inn.”

Kayla murmured her thanks, pulled her hood a little more over her eyes and took her leave, mingling with the crowd.

She hoped that if she wandered the market, she might pick up some information, perhaps learn where Andrei Wolfsblood lived, and if there had been any trouble in the last day or so.

She didn’t have to wait long. The recent trouble was on almost everyone’s lips.

Andrei Wolfsblood had deserted Phon, apparently, and a man had been caught trying to break his wards and get into his house.

“My Tom is in the guard, not the ones that took the man, mind, but ’e says they ’ad no trouble with ’im. Came quiet as a lamb.” The fruit seller, happily commanding an audience at least two people deep, rubbed an apple until it shone.

Kayla cuddled Sooty up close to her face to hide the look of disbelief on her face.

Rane never went quietly anywhere, although it sounded as if Vik had had a full company of men with him when he was taken.

“I heard he’s the stranger who was at the inn earlier this morning. Asking questions about Andrei, he was.”

Everyone’s attention swung to the new gossip, and Kayla turned away before she attracted attention herself. Her cloak and hood had already netted her a few stares and she didn’t need to hear any more.

Rane was in Urlay Castle, and she hoped he hadn’t used the fact that he was her betrothed as a way out of his predicament.

Vik was only more likely to kill him, in that case. The man who’d got a yes out of her, when all Vik had ever gotten was a no.

R
ane paced
the cell he’d been locked in and debated his options.

The two wild magic items he’d had in his pouch were still there, and the guard who’d examined them was still alive, and unchanged.

He’d almost warned Vik’s soldier when he’d asked Rane to empty his pockets, and then he’d forced his conscience back and shrugged. He’d told Vik he’d regret this. If his man touched wild magic and was changed, so be it.

He’d been careful not to touch the spoon and the stone himself as he’d emptied his pouch onto a small table outside the three cells Vik kept in his massive cellar.

The guard had raised a surprised brow at the contents. “This the silver spoon you had in your mouth when you were born?” he asked with a laugh, and because it had been meant in a friendly way, and Rane could hear no meanness in it, he’d laughed and agreed.

The tone the guard set had him opening his mouth to warn him not to touch the stone, but he’d been too late. The man picked it up, looked it over and set it back with a grunt. “My nephew likes to pick up stones and keep them in his pocket.”

Rane had smiled, relief washing through him like a cooling shower.

He’d have felt bad if the stone’s power was to transform whoever touched it. The guard had done him a favor without knowing it.

At least Rane could touch them now, start trying to work out what they were, and if they could help him escape.

After they checked his pockets, they had made him take off his boots, and patted him down, and he knew he was right to have hidden his knife.

He was alone now. The guards had locked him up and left.

The cells were in an closed off area of the castle’s massive cellar—Rane couldn’t call it a dungeon, because it seemed to genuinely function as a cellar. He had passed barrels of wine, ale and other stores in neat rows on the way to his new room.

Vik obviously didn’t believe in keeping prisoners, because Rane was the only one down here, and by the smell and look of the place, there hadn’t been a prisoner here in some time.

The doors were made of metal bars, making each cell easy to look into from the guard room. The guards had left a lamp on the table outside, and, deep underground, and with no windows, it provided the only light.

Time was wasting. He sat down at the sturdy table next to his prison cot and helped himself to water from the jug they’d left him and some lamb pie.

It was a good pie.

Rane hadn’t eaten since his morning meal at the inn, and he ate nearly all of it.

When there was only a little left, he took out the silver spoon.

It could be that its power had nothing to do with food, but more often than not, there was some connection to an item’s real world function and the magic imbued in it by wild magic.

He already knew it wasn’t very powerful, though, and it could be that the most remarkable thing about it was that it had once been a leaf or a grain of sand, and was now a beautiful silver spoon.

Sometimes wild magic recreated things purely because they were beautiful.

For those that weren’t just for decoration, though, he and Soren had a method they’d developed over time, because you could sell a wild magic item for a lot more if you knew what it did.

A lot more.

And sometimes, a thing was so remarkable, you didn’t consider selling it at all.

Like his moonstone—now lost.

And like his knife.

Carefully, he dipped the spoon into the pie and lifted it to his nose. It smelled the same. He nibbled a bit off, and it tasted the same, too. He ate the whole spoonful and waited.

Waiting had never been either his or Soren’s strong suit.

When nothing happened after five minutes, he took another spoonful, intending to finish the pie, and after five spoons, he realized the portion in the dish looked unchanged from the first time he’d used the spoon.

He ate another five spoon, knowing the amount left should long ago have been finished and, full, put the spoon down and smiled.

Not powerful, not dangerous. It wouldn’t help him escape. But it was very, very useful.

Wild magic items eventually used themselves up. The lack of power in this one might mean that the spoon would only work a few times, but having gone hungry more than once in his life, Rane knew the value of what he’d found.

He cleaned it by pouring some of the water in the jug over it and then slipped it back into his pouch and took out the stone.

It was so unremarkable, he knew it must be extremely dangerous.

There was a law of inverse proportion at play when it came to wild magic. This one had practically shouted at him from its place off the path, and he’d known before he’d seen it that if he could work out what it did, it would be as powerful as his knife.

He took a deep breath and closed his fist around it.

He didn’t disappear, and nothing seemed different.

He switched hands. Sometimes a thing would work in one but not the other, but again, nothing happened.

He threw it in the air, stepped on it, touched it to the metal bars of his cell, the wood of the table, the cotton of the sheets on his bed.

Nothing.

If he’d had access to a fire, he would have thrown it into one next, but that test was unfortunately out.

Then he stepped into the far corner of his room, and got ready to thrown it at the wall beside the cell door.

When they’d first started finding wild magic items, and slowly realizing how much more they could make if they experimented on them first and worked out what each one did, Soren had thrown a strange piece of metal in frustration when it appeared to do absolutely nothing, even though they could both feel the strong pulse of its power.

It had taken down the front of their shed in an explosion that had left Rane’s ears ringing for over an hour.

They had decided it was too dangerous to sell, but they’d kept it hidden with their more precious items, in case they ever needed it.

Soren had taken it, in the end, and used it to break into Jasper’s stronghold.

Nuen might have it now, or, just as easily, it could have been overlooked and thrown out with the rubble.

Bracing himself, Rane threw the stone at the wall, and it smacked into it hard; hard enough to crack the plaster. It flew back straight at him.

It didn’t bounce back on some random trajectory. It was as if it was returning to him deliberately.

He caught it easily, walked over to the wall and took a good look.

The crack went all the way through the plaster to the brick beneath.

Rane walked back, lifted his arm, and put as much power as he could behind the throw this time.

The stone seemed to expand, and the sound of it striking the brick wall was loud enough to make Rane wince.

Again, it flew into his hand, shrinking back to size, and when he walked forward he saw it had made a hole in the wall.

He looked down at it. Small, seemingly inoffensive. He gave an appreciative smile, walked back to the far wall and threw it again, winding his arm back to give it as much speed as he could.

When it hit the wall it was the size of his head, and a section of brickwork collapsed with a clattering rumble and a puff of dust. Rane’s hand came up automatically and the stone seemed to slide onto his palm.

There was shouting, and Rane kicked aside a few jagged sections of the wall, stepped out into the guard room, and stood waiting.

The door burst open, and Rane threw the stone, not too hard this time, at the head of the first guard.

He crumpled, and the stone seemed to come back even faster than it had before, as if it understood speed was vital this time.

Rane threw it again, caught the second guard in the shoulder so he dropped his sword, and then aimed for his head.

When he slumped down, falling over his fellow cohort, Rane knelt beside them and checked they were still alive.

He might be serious about Vik regretting this, but he’d been Jasper’s guard and knight for a time, and he didn’t wish these men ill.

They were both breathing steadily, and so he took a leather breastplate, sword and scabbard, and strapped on a crossbow, wearing it the same way as Vik’s men did, and stepped out into the cellar.

There were three servants pressed up against a far wall, eyes wide at the sight of him, and he gave them a cordial nod of his head as he made his way to the stairs.

If he moved fast enough, kept his head down and blended, he might simply be able to stroll out of here before those servants managed to raise the alarm.

Vik’s castle wasn’t overly fortified and the gates had been open when they’d come in from Andrei’s house.

He ran lightly up the stairs, moving confidently, as if he was one of the guard, and stepped through the open cellar door into the short passageway at the back of the castle that led to the hall.

He kept to the shadows, but tried not to look like he was doing it deliberately. He ducked with relief into the kitchens, which, as with all castle kitchens, was chaotic and filled with people.

He grabbed a tray from a table and hefted it to his shoulder, weaving through flour-covered women and young boys with trays of their own.

He handed the tray to a boy loitering at the back door, and stepped out into a small kitchen garden which he guessed was on the left side of the main gates.

He followed the wall of the main building, turned right, and was back in the main courtyard they’d come through on their way in.

The gates were ahead, still open, and there was enough traffic in and out of them to make him confident he could leave without attracting attention.

He’d got halfway across the cobbled square when the castle’s front doors slammed open behind him. He didn’t break stride, didn’t look back.

Nothing would give him away faster.

“De’Villier.”

Vik’s voice boomed out, and everyone stopped and turned to look at the king.

Rane had no choice but to do the same or stand out.

Vik was looking straight at him.

“I can’t say you didn’t warn me.” The King of Phon stepped out of the doorway and at least six armed men flanked him.

Rane gripped the stone in his hand, and stood sideways, to be less of a target for the archers at the gate and at the castle doors.

He was going to have to decide.

Did he throw the stone and hit Vik, or didn’t he?

Might make for awkward times at the future negotiating table.