By the time the wind had shredded the smoke cloud into drifts Wren finished her illusion spell, and a false gig drifted ahead while Thad hauled hard on the tiller, sending them sailing across the bow of one of the pirate ships.
“It’s working, it’s working,” Patka whispered, peering into the murk.
“Now, Lambin,” Wren muttered, breathing hard to dispel the faint buzz of magic-reaction. “We don’t want them seeing our wake if they light lanterns.”
But Lambin was already shooting arrows. He wasn’t very good at aiming yet, as he’d never held a bow until he was taught on board the
Sandskeet
, but he didn’t need to be good. He just had to get those arrows somewhere on board the pirate ships. One, two, three, four in a row arced up and vanished behind the pirates’ sails.
The first two arrows sped between the masts to splash in the water on the other side of the pirate ship, but one clattered against the foremast, and the next smacked into the main sail and tumbled to the deck.
From both arrows rose the faint sparkle of magical itch powder, which spread on the wind.
“Next ship!” Patka whispered.
The two longboats converged on the illusory gig as Lambin shifted his aim to the next pirate ship.
Wren braced herself, gathering her fading strength,
hold it, hold it, don’t think of chickens—
And lost it.
“Wren?” Danal asked anxiously.
Wren gritted her teeth. Shut her eyes. Began the spell again,
slow, slow, calm, calm, clear, clear, remember the Crisis Rules—chickens—
Lost it.
“They’re coming . . .” Lambin breathed harshly on Wren’s other side.
Wren shut it out. She shut out Danal’s anxious eyes reflecting the distant torchlight, and Patka’s wary scowl.
Calm. Calm.
Don’t
whine
about
how
difficult the new spell
is
, Mistress Leila instructed during a long-ago lesson.
You
broke
it
into
pieces
to
learn
it
.
Now
break
it
into
pieces
to
use
it
.
Wren shut out the pirates. She shut out her companions. She shut out the memory of her own mistakes. Chanting steadily—layer after layer—she sensed the building of magic—
Hold . . . hold . . . one more layer . . .
“Nafat!” The spell snapped into place, a snap so powerful Wren staggered back and plopped into the middle of the gig, sending it rocking.
The others gasped as a mirror of the pirate ship snapped into being on the other side of the second ship, which responded by hauling its wheel to avoid collision—
“Nafat!” The second pirate mirrored right beside the first pirate, and it too hauled its wheel over hard, the wind steady in the sails.
Sails rose and fell in jerky lunges, amid angry screeches.
“The itch powder is working,” Danal chortled. “It works!”
Making a tremendous effort to escape the phantom ships, the two pirates drew closer and closer, seeing one another too late. As angry shouts rose from the decks and shrouds of the two, their yards neared . . . .
The crews yanked the wheels, the ships slowly turned away from one another.
Someone bellowed, “They’re turnin’—they’re phantoms!”
“Aw, they figured it out,” Danal exclaimed.
Wren stood up in the gig. She focused on the closest halyards aboard each ship. Muttering fast, she gathered magic—animated the ropes—snapped the spell into place.
“Wow,” Patka breathed.
“They’re tying ‘em together.” Thad grinned as the animated halyards snaked through the air and tangled tightly around the mast of the other ship, in both directions.
The ships came together in a grinding crash, and hoots, curses, and cries of rage were her reward.
The longboats veered away and began sailing back toward the bigger ships.
“Discovered the phantom gig,” Thad declared. “Next?”
Wren cast a look skyward. The jackdaws circled against the stars as the clouds parted.
“Well, they aren’t interfering,” she muttered.
“Signals going up,” Patka reported.
Wren and her companions watched the lanterns hung from the upper yards on the first ship, soon echoed by all the other ships.
“Know any of those signals?” Wren asked Thad and Lambin.
“No,” Thad said, and Lambin shook his head.
Sailors swarmed up onto the yards, slacking the sails. Around the still-tangled leaders the rest of the fleet slowed. Then changed direction—toward them.
“They found us,” Patka said, slumping.
“Yes.” Lambin sighed. “There’s a lookout right in front of that big lantern. I saw a hand pointing at our wake.”
“They’re having a tough time seeing us,” Patka said.
“Yes, tougher than we have seeing them.” Lambin laughed.
There was no sound except the creaking of the mast, the faint, distant cries of the pirates dealing with the tangled ships, and the wash-wash-wash of water down the sides of the gig.
Then Thad said slowly, “They’re going to wait for the sun to come up.”
“And try to gang up on us,” Lambin added, unstringing his bow.
Wren looked down at her waiting fire-spelled breads. “I was too slow,” she said. “It took me too many tries.”
When Patka and Danal looked up, their dark eyes round with worry, she squared her shoulders.
I’m all they’ve got
, she thought.
If I can’t manage big, complicated spells without making stupid mistakes, then I’ll just do lots of easy spells.
It’s up to me.
“It’s just past noon,” Garian said as soon as he walked into Tyron’s office.
Tyron bit down hard against a sarcastic comment. He knew Garian wasn’t stating the obvious to be obnoxious.
They glanced at the window, beyond which the garden was flooded with midday sunshine. Perfect weather.
Unfortunately, that promised perfect weather at night.
Tyron said, “No, I’m not yet ready. There’s been too much to do here. Are you here to offer help, or is there a new problem?”
Garian lifted his hands, a ruby ring glowing in the fire-bright sparks reflecting from the pond outside the parlor windows. “I’m not ready, either, but I came with a question.” He didn’t seem ready to ask it yet, though; he stood uncertainly, fingers twitching at the window curtain as the ruby glittered, then he swung around. “I’ve so few of the best guards, what with having to send patrols here and there following those fools of Hawk’s. Why did they take it into their heads to explore the castle ruins in mountains
this
week, of all weeks?”
“To be annoying.” Tyron sensed that this was not Garian’s real question. “Hawk has to suspect we’re getting ready for him.”
Garian sat down at last, irony replacing his exasperated expression. It made him look unsettlingly like his father, the tough, cold, and calculating Duke Fortian—except Fortian had never had a sense of humor. “So, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That Hawk is not going to try anything nefarious tonight at all? I’ve been worrying about that off and on all week, that all our effort is for nothing. But I am convinced if we didn’t make the effort, he wouldn’t be able to resist doing something we’d really hate.”
Garian brooded over that, then looked up. “I guess we go through with it, then.”
Tyron lifted his hand toward the window. “And try to make it look effortless, like we can snap our fingers and have all these people in place without any extra strain. At least, I’ve gone to every court function all week, striving to give the appearance of nothing special going on, even though he’s probably seen our senior mage students pacing the lakeside and standing under the trees practicing protection spells.”
“I wondered why you took a sudden interest in the parties this week. Couldn’t be the dancing.”
“While you nobles were twirling around with your fans and your flirting, I’ve been trying not to think about how far behind I am in my own work. But Hawk is not to know that.”
Garian snorted a laugh. “Effortless. Yes. Well, I’d better get back to the palace and waft my archers into the trees, and my scouts into the woods.”
He lifted a hand in salute and departed.
Tyron sent the waiting first year student to summon his chosen team of mage students. Orin arrived first, as though she had been waiting just outside. She was not a senior, but she had offered to help. Tyron spoke to each, going over the plans one more time, before he sent them off to get into place, preferably armed with food from the kitchen against a long day and evening. Orin departed last, with a thoughtful, concerned look back at him. Her long silvery hair rippled as she walked away.
A palace messenger dashed in and stumbled to a stop. “The queen would like to know if you still plan to attend this evening?” she asked.
Tyron knew what Teressa really meant: would he come early and speak to her first. He said, “Please tell the queen that I will be there.”
Everyone else waiting for an interview with Tyron pressed back as the queen’s messenger retreated on her errand, and then they crowded forward, elbowing ahead of a small, bucktoothed boy in a dark brown tunic. Tyron noticed the boy once or twice, but he was far too distracted to think about him except as yet another problem to be dealt with before he could leave for the palace and whatever awaited him there.
He was not looking forward to the evening.
Afternoon shafts of light slanted through the window before Tyron got through the last of the waiting students and messengers.
He looked wearily at the small boy. His dusty dark brown tunic had a wheel stitched on the front. The boy clutched a message bag in both arms.
Tyron tried to hide his impatience. “You have something for me?”
“Not a message,” the boy said. “I was paid extra to come to you. And speak to you alone.” He opened his bag and brought out an object folded in cloth. “I am from Fliss, I was to say,” the boy explained. He grinned suddenly. “She sent me to the Guild Destination. It was my first time going by magic.”
Tyron took the object, and smiled. “Did you like it?”
“No.” The boy flashed that big, buck-toothed grin again. “But I’m the first o’ us to have a magic transfer, so that’s something.”
A scrap of paper fell out of the cloth. Tyron held it up. It appeared to be a bill of sale for a used wagon. He whispered a common spell the traveling mages used to banish illusory words, and sure enough, the bill of sale vanished, revealing the real message:
I
don’t
know
if
there’s
a
problem
or
she
just
lost
it
.
But
I
saw
it
in
the
window
of
a
curio
shop
—
I
don’t
think
they
know
what
it
is
.
F
.
Tyron shook the object free of the cloth, and then stared in sick disbelief at the object in his hands, trying not to recognize it. But he did, because he had chosen it himself.
It was Wren’s scry stone.
Teressa dismissed her maid and brushed out her own hair. She stared into the mirror, wondering why her eyes looked so tense—why they called her father so strongly to mind. Her memories of him were not of a tense person. Strange.
She turned away, her fingers braiding automatically. She’d just put her hair up in a coronet and fixed silken flowers in it. The party was outside, in the dark, after all. And it didn’t matter what she looked like. She was the queen. They had to accept her as she was.
She glared into the mirror. It didn’t matter? Then why had she ordered this new gown, the finest gown she’d ever worn? She studied the low neck, edged with pearls and tiny diamonds, of her parti-colored dress made up of midnight blue and pale rose silk, joined by golden embroidery in the shape of leaves. The gown was fitted, its style minimizing her boniness and lending her (she’d thought) some of the rounded grace she admired in other females.
“Why?” she whispered, smoothing the gown.
But she knew why. It was not for her Court.
It was to impress Hawk.
And that was why she was in a bad mood. He didn’t do anything to impress
her
. He just was. So why did she want to impress him? Was it because he’d begun paying attention to everyone else, making sarcastic comments that sent court ladies into peals of laughter? Was it because he danced with the others, teasing them all, especially that solemn, silver-haired mage student who trotted after Tyron all the time?
“I am the queen,” she told her mirror. “He can take me as I am—or not.” But the moment she said it she knew she wanted to be courted for being Teressa, and she was not entirely sure, despite his rare and flippant compliments, that he wasn’t really courting a queen. That he wouldn’t be courting Robin if she were queen, or that earnest and ever-present silver-haired Orin who Tyron seemed to admire so much.
There were two more things she had to face.
One. Though he might just be courting a queen, she was attracted to
him
. Hawk. She would find him fascinating even if he were the gardener who saw to her roses, or a Rider in the hills, or a brick-maker. Except . . . he’d be the best Rider, or the strongest and fasted brick layer. Part of the attraction was his easy strength, the cool way he challenged the world.
Teressa kept wondering if her father had been that strong, that cool, would the kingdom have fallen?
But my father was wise and compassionate
.
That brought her to the second thing she knew: if she asked Hawk straight out if he was courting Teressa the person or Teressa the queen, he’d make some remark and deflect her, and she would not get the truth. She might never get the truth, because she was not the least sure that she could trust him.