by Anise Rae
On the other side of the tapestry, Mara tripped over her feet as she fought to stand up. She’d be safer if she just stayed down. It hurt to watch. He was afraid of what would come next. The prophecy had spoken of evil. The word was synonymous with wayward, and its mention would not go unnoticed. He knew damn well that it was the relics that were evil, along with the god who made them. Not Mara.
The High Councilor raised a leg to showcase her stains. She kept her balance with her staff. Her jeans looked like she’d waded through ink. “You should work on this, sorceress.”
“If you want jeans that only hold your vibes against your skin,” Mara began, “then I can’t weave them with stain resistor spells. If I did that, the jeans would hold my vibes.”
“Then we have a problem! I need a new pair with plenty of backups. I want a dozen! No, two dozen! And make them tighter.” The High Councilor slapped her own bottom.
“Goddess help us,” Vin whispered, backing up a step.
“Tight like a second skin,” the crone continued. “I want them by Saturday next. I have a hot date.”
The room went quiet.
Senator Glender-Casteel gave a long-suffering sigh. “Is this date scheduled for before or after the West devours the Lady’s land?”
“Are you questioning my judgment, you speck of a girl?”
“Here they go again,” muttered Sinclair.
“Always, Glender,” Senator Glender-Casteel replied. The crone had been a mother, of sorts, to the now-senator, a fact Gregor had learned in his time as bodyguard to Lady Bronte.
The pair faced off.
Power flashed, burning up in a blink and taking the warmth in the room with it. The air turned so cold it hurt to breathe, even behind the tapestry, as the two powerful women battled in silence with their energy.
“Oh Goddess, we’re going to die.” Calendra backed up to the edge of the crowd until she was hiding behind Mara. “My mother sent me to court, and she as good as turned me into a corpse.” For once, the flighty, young woman wasn’t overreacting.
Vincent poked at the tapestry. “I want Bronte out of there.”
If Gregor’s mate were in there, he’d feel the same. As it was, he wanted Mara out of there too.
Mara stepped forward. “If I may interrupt?”
He closed his eyes. Hell, this kept getting worse. No, you may not interrupt, he thought. Have a care, woman.
“Shit,” Sinclair muttered. “She is too damn brave for her own good. I warned her to stay quiet.”
Unexpected jealousy raised its head. Someone else had noticed that brave goodness…and probably those legs, too. Those were impossible to miss. “You know her?” Gregor asked.
Sinclair smirked. “Interested? You’ll never get her. You’re not her type.”
“And you are?”
He laughed softly. “Anyone who’s connected to her”—he pointed at the High Councilor—“or any other part of the government doesn’t stand a chance with Mara Rand.”
The crone dashed forward and in less than a blink, stood nose to nose with the sorceress. “You want to interrupt, evil eyes?”
Power rocked the tapestry. Gregor clenched his teeth.
The High Councilor tossed her staff in the air and it disappeared. She grabbed Mara’s hands and peered at her palms as if she could see a fortune there. “Is your clutch as evil as those glow balls rolling around in your skull behind those spectacles?”
Mara lifted her chin high though fear tightened her brow. “You do know that the idea that waywards are evil is outdated and incorrect. When was the last evil wayward you can remember?”
All around her the ladies-in-waiting backed away, bracing for the retaliation they were certain—he was certain—would come from standing up to the most powerful mage in the Republic.
“Eh.” With the casual sound, the crone shrugged. “There’s always a first.”
“Well, I’m not it. And, also, I can’t get you a new pair of jeans by Saturday, much less two dozen.” She held up her hands, palms toward her chest in a pleading mage’s non-threatening pose. “The spinning alone will take me over a week and the closest mill that has the proper conditions to weave it is in the city of Kansas. The threads must be woven into fabric by Non-mages or they get contaminated, and the Republic certainly doesn’t have a mill that meets that requirement.”
The Wild West. Gregor cocked his head.
“I have to book two months in advance to get time on their looms,” Mara explained.
“Figure it out, sorceress,” the High Councilor snapped. “I’ll give you three days to spin the thread, starting tomorrow. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.” She ticked off three fingers. “Saturday for travel.” Another finger. “I give you Sunday to rest.” Her voice went light with that little gift.
“Generous, Lady.” Sarcasm drawled through the words. “Most Nons don’t work on Sunday anyway. But your plan has a problem.”
Oh, Goddess, so damn dangerous.
“What the hell is she thinking?” Vincent muttered. “Does she not understand to whom she is speaking? She’s going to be a flake of freak dust if she doesn’t stop.”
Gregor narrowed his eyes at the condescension in his former boss’s tone. This was why he could never go back to the army. Prejudice ran deep, and now he was cast out among the rest of the imperfect to fight against its swift current.
“How do you expect me to spin thread when you confiscated my spinning wheels?” Mara demanded.
Gregor caught Mara’s hint of nerves as she shifted her eyes right and left. The High Councilor couldn’t know about the wheel he’d left behind, could she?
“I’ve taken care of that.” With another breath, the crone was back to her plan and on to the next hand, ticking off those fingers. “Monday to get it woven. Tuesday to travel home.”
“There are no trains on Tuesday.” Mara’s anger came through the words. “The train that goes between the city of Kansas and the border only runs on Saturday and Monday.”
“The West is so weird. Fine, then. Monday to get it woven and travel home. You’ll be a busy girl that day, but do whatever you want on Tuesday. You’ve got Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to cut and sew.” She lifted both hands. “Delivery on Saturday next at noon. Simple! Even I could do it.”
Mara gave her a hard, defiant look.
A silent pause stretched and then the crone poked a bony finger against the middle of Mara’s forehead. “Watch yourself, sorceress.”
“She’s reading her mind,” Lincoln whispered. “Mara knows better.”
“What’s the wayward doing?” Calendra gasped, apparently oblivious to the High Councilor’s mind-reading ability. “Is she going to give us the evil eye?”
“I went to school with Mara.” Sinclair spelled the words to his ear, shutting Vincent out of their conversation.
“You went to SWWM?” Gregor cast back. He knew his surprise showed on his face.
If Lincoln Sinclair attended the School for Weak and Wayward Mages—its initials were pronounced swim for short—then that meant the chief of the High Councilor’s security was wayward.
Sinclair stared at him. Yes, he definitely knew about Gregor’s incident and its results.
“Wayward vibes are contagious!” Calendra cried, standing in the middle of the ladies-in-waiting.
Sinclair laughed out loud.
The High Councilor gasped too, mocking the woman. “You don’t say! We should vacate the room so we don’t catch it! Run!” The word roared through the room, shoving the women toward the door on an ocean wave of power. But just before Mara got there, the doors slammed shut. The bolts slid home.
Mara was locked in with the High Councilor.
7
Her hands were shaking, but she stood her ground, holding the crone’s gaze. She adjusted her specs with quivering fingers. “I have a business to run, Lady. I need to—”
“Where is the white glister oak spinning wheel?” The High Councilor’s voice turned so sharp and vicio
us that Mara’s cheeks and hands stung from its force.
She looked down. Red welts streaked her palms. Her breath came in short, silent jumps. The air was disappearing again, sucked away like a vacuum spell had descended over the entire room.
“I don’t know,” she gasped.
Black spots dotted her vision. Mara fell to her knees as thick, smoky streams surrounded the High Councilor once again. This felt different from the last time. Power streaked over her skin like a thousand tiny lightning strikes. Gravity multiplied by a hundred.
She fell flat to the ground.
“Glow Eyes spins webs as Luck commands!” The crone’s voice expanded, punching against every inch of the room, the building, the world, as if she channeled the Goddess’s voice. “Abandoned!” The word scraped through the little air left with a harsh roar. She screamed, pain filling the sound.
Glow Eyes. Lost girls, help her. This was about her.
She knows.
She tried to cover her head, but she couldn’t lift her arms. She was pinned to the ground by the strength of the prophecy.
“The relics…await!” The words were disjointed. The High Councilor choked on them, like they were too big and powerful for her mouth to hold. “Their fate!”
And then everything returned to normal. The air reappeared in a silent snap. Gravity relaxed its tight pull.
Mara took a loud breath of air and managed to lift her head to survey the room.
The High Councilor swayed on her feet and then sat down on the floor beside her, legs out straight, her robes caught up high, exposing her stained jeans. For a moment the woman sat there slumped, her face slack with exhaustion. Mara wanted to inch away, but she couldn’t move yet.
The crone leaned back on her hands. The color slowly returned to her cheeks. “Was it good for you?” She wiggled her feet back and forth.
It was all Mara could do to get to her hands and knees, which felt less dignified than lying flat. She twisted to let gravity take her hips to the floor so she could sit facing the leader of the Republic.
“I could feel that coming. They’re like burps that won’t bubble up. Such indigestion.” The High Councilor patted her stomach and then pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “That’s why I sent those sissy women out. They couldn’t have handled that. Don’t tell them I said that though. They’d be insulted. Now, you, tough stuff, I knew you would survive. Nothing knocks you down, does it?”
“I’m knocked down every day, Lady, case in point.” How could the High Councilor possibly assume otherwise? How could anyone? “And to set the record straight about that prophecy, Luck does not command me to do anything.” A tired anger popped up that fate would dare to stir its finger through the threads of her life.
“You think not?” the crone asked. “That prophecy is new. They’re a bitch to birth, but I always feel like I’m doing my job when they come up. That one is not fully formed.
“Glow Eyes spins webs as Luck commands. Abandoned…. The relics await their fate,” she recited. “No shit that the relics await their fate. But what is their fate? That’s the question. I had another new prophecy last night.” She recited it, too.
“Glister mistress, twined delight,
Wields the relics a royal right.
Wield without line of blooded descent,
A deadly choice, spin and lament.”
The High Councilor paused for a moment. “A glister of blooded descent, straight from the king’s line. There aren’t any of those. The glister king has been missing for a long time.”
“Everyone in the Wild West knows that.”
“Pfft. Been there so many times, have you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” The Wild West had given her a temporary home years ago. She’d been desperately poor with nowhere else to go. She’d stayed west of the Mississippi long enough to earn the funds to start her mill by selling shirts and pants woven with bulletproof spells, her own creation, one that few needed in the Republic since citizen mages shot vibes at one another, not guns. Although the Republic’s army or enforcers might have been interested, she would never approach either party.
Thanks to her denim, Mara was still a regular visitor to the Wild West. “Don’t you have that in my file?” she drawled.
The High Councilor shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’ve never read your file. I have no need. Besides, your name comes up in every other prophecy I speak.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Well, just this one. But trust me when I say, one is enough. Prophecies are nothing but trouble. Last night’s prophecy came up easily. That means I’m not the first oracle to speak it.” She sighed. “Some other oracle already knows it.”
Mara already knew it too. It had arrived numerous times from her mysterious pen pal.
She knows.
But did she? Surely if the High Councilor knew about Mara’s collection of prophecies, she wouldn’t be so relaxed at the moment. She’d be squeezing Mara for every drop of information possible.
The crone lifted an eyebrow. “What was that thought?” She cupped her ear as if she was trying to hear better.
Shit. Mind reader.
“No, seriously. I missed it. Think it again, would you?”
Mara tightened her nose as if she could squeeze the thoughts to stay in her mind.
“Oh, come on. You’re no fun.” The High Councilor nudged Mara with her foot. “Wield without line of blooded descent. A deadly choice. Soooo,” she sang the word long and loud. “Apparently”—she hung on to that word too—“according to that prophecy, it’s a bad idea to touch the damn relics. Unless you’re royal.”
The crone gave a humph. “Wish I’d known that earlier. But that’s a hazard of the job. Acting without knowing everything. I vomit up words, phrases, and fragments that come from someplace else…someplace other than my mind…until the entire story is formed, and then I must make sense of it.” She scooted across the floor until she was side-by-side with Mara. She leaned in, their foreheads nearly touching. “Day and night, they whisper at my mind.”
A chill ran over Mara’s skin.
“They don’t always come up as rhymes and riddles. Sometimes they’re images or messages for specific people. Regardless, they are my reason for breathing, for casting every vibe of power. And you, my foolish sorceress, have spun yourself into the heart of it all. Stupid Glow Eyes.” She stroked the back of her wrinkled, veined hand along Mara’s cheek. “Evil child.”
Mara stiffened.
“There are other prophecies about the relics. Here, listen to this.”
Black smoky trails encircled the crone again as her words overflowed with vibes, carving a path into Mara’s mind like a canyon gouged out by countless floods. It hurt.
“Whoever claims the relics three
When midsummer moon shines bright,
Sets mageland’s fate upon its course,
Their hearts’ desire as its force.
* * *
If under that moon’s pure white light,
Cruelty bears what Luck bestowed,
The borders of mageland will erode.
* * *
But if under summer’s full Rose Moon,
High Blood finds Luck’s Lady’s three,
Then safe the western borders be.”
The High Councilor tipped her head back as the aftermath of the prophecy landed on her face. She blew a perfect ring of smoke. “The Rose Moon,” she whispered and held up her fingers as if she were counting on them. “Seventeen days and the clock is ticking. The Goddess’s wheel in cruel, evil hands. What do you think of this, sorceress?”
“I think there is no Goddess. There is no wheel. There is only a fairy-tale.”
The High Councilor cackled a hard laugh. “Stubborn, aren’t you? But you will learn. And how you will wish for oblivion. Glow Eyes, Luck speaks about you…and the relics…and their fate. He, too, exists, else I would not speak prophecies of him. The wheel will destroy everything we live for. The Lady cries.�
� She waved her hands, impatient. “The land dies. Blah blah blah!”
“If evil has a spinning wheel, we both know who wields it,” Mara said
The crone frowned. “Power United? We’ve searched high and low through their stores of wheels, through the ranks of their sorceresses. There is nothing there. I wish it were so simple.” She clapped her hands. “Bang! Poof! Tada! Evil identified. Problem solved. But they don’t have it. Evidently, you don’t either.” She shrugged. “I can only guess that the West has it. And so I’m sending you.”
“Me? I don’t know how to find it.” This time, a dangerous mix of desperation and rebellion welled up in Mara’s voice.
“Monkey!” the old crone called over her shoulder.
Mara glanced around the room trying to figure out where the High Councilor was leading this conversation now, but there was no monkey present.
Gregor stepped out from behind a tapestry.
“You,” she whispered. Betrayal squeezed around her. Had she seriously believed he’d seen past her specs yesterday? What had she been thinking? This man was the government’s agent…and Power United’s. She could not afford to forget that.
She took a slow inhale as if she might pull back the whims their previous encounter had momentarily loosened.
His gaze darted over her form, inspecting her. She didn’t hesitate to do the same to him. His slump was back. His forehead was lined with what she guessed was worry, but his stride was loose and long. It devoured the distance between them. He wore the same clothes as yesterday like they were a uniform for him.
He stopped beside her and only then turned to face the old woman as if he were declaring his allegiance with Mara. “Lady High Councilor.” He bowed and knelt down, putting them all on the same level.
Mara glared at him. He’d been spying on her again. He was like a gnat that would not buzz off.
“A gnat?” the High Councilor said. “I bet it would be quite satisfying to give him a good swat. You’ll have plenty of opportunity, sorceress. I am sending my monkey with you to the West. It’s a dangerous place, and I care very much about my jeans. Gregor Whitman, I hereby release you from my service and render you to Mara Rand.”
