Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  She rubbed the spot where the quill had been, now marked by a tiny red diamond. “Is this going to be permanent?” she asked the wizard.

  He scowled and held out his hand. “I have no idea,” he said hotly. “We don’t perform such reckless experiments on ourselves at the college. Now give me back my quill.”

  Tanya let her arm drop, pulling the quill away from him. “I don’t think so,” she informed him. “No, I think I’m going to take it to the Queen.”

  Rollo stamped his foot. “It’s not your place!” he cried, his voice cracking. “It’s not fair! The quill was my idea in the first place and I had to fight the whole college for the right to present it to the Queen and Council. Then,” he said, ticking off the offenses on his fingers, “I get robbed, my horse gets kidnapped, I have to be a bird for days—which is really hard, by the way—a girl shoots me with an arrow, humiliating me in front of the senior faculty, and then a rank amateur, a tavern maid, uses my work to fly me across the kingdom, just so that she can present it.”

  There was a silence. Tanya decided to break it, patting Rollo on the shoulder. “If it helps, I’m sorry Jana shot you,” she told him. “It wasn’t personal.”

  Rollo stiffened. “It doesn’t help,” he told her. “But it also doesn’t matter. Gillian!” The mare trotted up to him.

  “Gillian?” said Tanya, crossing her arms. “You’re telling me her name is Gillian.”

  Rollo climbed onto her back. “Yes, her name is Gillian. She found me drowning in the lagoon by Vermillon’s Pass as a boy. She saved me and I named her Gillian. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “And where exactly do you think you’re going?” she asked as Gillian walked past her. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

  Rollo turned. “I am Lord Magus Rollo of Vermillon’s Pass. I have my name and you have none. Want to bet who the Queen and Council sees first? Let’s go, Gillian.”

  They started trotting down the road. The magician didn’t look back, but Gillian did. Tanya glared at her.

  The mare blinked and looked up at Rollo with soft eyes. She looked back at Tanya, and her eyes were hard again.

  But . . . the mare slowed down. Almost imperceptibly, she slowed to a walk. And Tanya realized: She was giving her time.

  Time to do what, Tanya wasn’t exactly sure. But she had to think of something—anything.

  Rollo was right. She wasn’t even going to get through the door to the palace kitchens in the time it would take him to reach the council room and make sure that they issued an order for her immediate arrest, assuming Rees hadn’t already beaten him to it.

  She had no title to be stripped of, but she would be stripped of the quill and her freedom in short order. The Snake? She’d never see it again, let alone regain its ownership.

  She would be useless. She would be no one.

  Tanya shut her eyes. Why should she allow that? So that people far less competent than she could achieve even greater power than they already had? She didn’t think so. Setting her jaw, she stuck the point of the quill into the center of the little red diamond on her wrist.

  “Tanya!”

  She ignored Rollo’s wary cry and moved the quill, which again slid through her flesh like a reed in the shallows, smoothly and almost imperceptible. And then, in the sky above her starburst self, she wrote: Fire.

  A fire bolt cracked across the sky, a stark flash of bright color against the darkening blue of the newly starlit sky, a great gust of smoke and ash in its wake.

  The fire bloomed on her skin, too. She caught the tail end with the quill point and dragged it down and in a circle, tracing it several times, so that the line was thick and dark.

  A circle of flames, red and burning blue, burst into existence around Tanya. Gillian stumbled backward with a shocked whinny, nearly throwing her charge.

  “What have you done?” cried Rollo, shouting to be heard over the sizzle.

  Tanya turned on the spot and smiled at him through the flames.

  “Do you think they’ll see me now?” she asked.

  The blaze rose higher and higher, coating the woods outside the Capital gates with a rosy haze of smoke. Rollo answered, but Tanya couldn’t hear him over the blaring of the military horns ringing through the trees.

  Chapter

  13

  As the horns and hooves grew louder, Tanya turned and bowed as low as she could, her front knee brushing the undergrowth.

  Her eyes down, she said, “My deepest apologies for the disruption to your evening, gentlemen. My name is Tanya. I’m a maid of Griffin’s Port and did not know to whom I should apply—but I have something the Queen and Council have been looking for.”

  After a moment of hesitation, the corpsman at the head of the party chose to sheathe his sword.

  Tanya nodded at him and moved her fingers over the quill, catching the edge of the wind tornado still tattooed on her arm and stealing a bit of it to blow out the fire.

  The commander hopped off his horse and took a couple careful steps her way. He looked at her closely, his eyes lingering on the blood.

  “Young woman,” he said, a sliver of razor blade in his voice, “are you injured?”

  “Far from it.” With the fire gone, Rollo had regained his seat on Gillian, and the two cantered in between Tanya and the commander. “Commander, I am Magus Rollo of Vermillon’s Pass and this young woman is a thief.”

  The commander’s eyes flickered over Rollo. He found the insignia of the Royal College of Aetherical Manipulation on his cuff and his brow furrowed. He directed his next question to Tanya.

  “Are you, madam, connected with the Royal College? I was not aware that they had admitted any women . . . ?”

  She started to answer, but before she could, the quill point started to vibrate wildly in her vein, and both Gillian and the commander took a cautious step backward.

  Tanya clamped her hand down on her wrist, closing her fingers around the feather’s spine, but the vibrations continued to travel up her body until they reached her head and the ends of her hair lifted with its power.

  The commander observed their progress with widening eyes. He turned to Rollo. “Sir, I appreciate your concern and civic duty. Moreover, I am acquainted with your elder brother and have the utmost respect for your family and your scholarship. But, to be honest, her thievery seems to be rather beside the point at this particular moment and you may debrief me later.” He turned back to Tanya. “I believe it would be more prudent for you to remove the quill now, before we enter the city gates,” he said.

  It was, all things considered, the best result she could hope for. Before she could change her mind, Tanya grabbed the top feathers and pulled.

  The first time she had disentangled the quill from her flesh, it had slid out like quicksilver, weightlessly.

  Not this time. It stuck and stuttered, as if it were pulling through a swamp rather than Tanya’s own insides. At the same time, a sharp pain pierced Tanya’s skull, starting at the nape of her neck and radiating to her cheekbones.

  She fell to her knees, but the commander made no moves to either help or hinder her, and so still she pulled.

  “This is my arm,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “and you, quill, will listen to me!”

  The quill popped out and Tanya fell on her back. Red steam floated above her. Warm flecks landed on her cheek and she realized it was her own vaporized blood.

  A gurgling noise drew her gaze to her side. She watched as the tattoos writhed on her arm, twisting in on themselves, and a black substance, like ink, but shinier and more viscous, drizzled out of the wound on her wrist.

  The drizzle slowed to a single drop and her flesh closed up again with a pop. The diamond, Tanya noted, had transformed into a sunburst. Or was that supposed to be a star?

  Thunder rocked the clearing and the sky opened up.

  The corps commander removed his glove and held open his palm, capturing a few drops of the deluge.

  It was raining gold.<
br />
  More than raining; it was pouring gold. Fat drops of it got stuck in her hair and when Tanya wiped her hands across her eyes, shining grit got under her fingernails.

  Tanya sat up and stared at the junkoff. The gold in the hollow of her apron could buy her a new inn and provision it, too. That is, it could if she wasn’t under arrest.

  Wordlessly, the commander cleaned his glove with a tidy handkerchief.

  “My name is Sir Artur Lurch,” he told her as she accepted his hand and pulled herself to her feet. “I am the captain of city guard and I have an advisory seat on the Queen’s Council. I will take things from here.” Sir Lurch placed his hands securely on Tanya’s hip bones and, as impersonally as if he were lifting a pot off the stove, deposited her onto his horse’s back, at the very front of its saddle. “Captain Tristan.”

  “Yes, sir!” One of his entourage saluted sharply, his face hidden behind a helmet of patterned steel. This was a very different standard of corpsmen than Tanya was used to turning up in the Port Cities.

  Sir Lurch didn’t even look behind him. “Select however many of the corps you need to remain behind and secure this grove,” said the commander while mounting the horse behind Tanya. “I want no gossip in the Capital of what transpired here tonight.”

  “Hang on—” interrupted Rollo, but was cut off with a brisk, soldierly, “Understood, sir.”

  “Carry on then.” Sir Lurch reached around Tanya to take control of the reins, sending the stallion charging down the lane, leaving Rollo shouting in their wake.

  She turned her head and saw the clearing as a shining column of gold—the untold wealth literally pouring from the sky was limited in scope to that one undergrown patch of forest.

  The famous gates were upon them, but Sir Lurch reined the horse into a sharp left, plunging them into the spiky thicket that lined the southeastern wall instead.

  “Are you crazy?” screamed Tanya, throwing her arms up over her face, tensed against thorns. But after a moment during which she realized nothing was pricking her, Tanya lowered her hands.

  “Oh,” she said, putting down her arms entirely.

  They were underground. The sharp and thorny bramble had hidden a smooth pathway in a moldy red brick tunnel, musty with the smell of earthworms and dust. “Where are we?” she asked.

  Sir Lurch didn’t answer. He was busy awkwardly pulling something out of a hard-to-reach inside-breast pocket.

  “Finally,” he muttered, pulling out a small bundle of wadded-up scrap of parchment. He placed it in the palm of his right hand and began to slowly pull back each of its four corners.

  “Regalia,” he whispered, tracing a pattern with his index finger in the space above the paper. “Solar minimum.” He placed his free hand over his open palm and shut his eyes.

  After a long moment of silence, Tanya found herself incapable of keeping her mouth shut. “What on Lode are you doing?” she asked. “Are you praying? It doesn’t seem the best time for it.”

  “May I risk rudeness by asking you a personal question, Miss Tanya?”

  She shrugged. It was the least suggestive time a strange man had requested to ask her a personal question in the dark. “I suppose so.”

  “Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which refraining from offering an opinion and simply observing carefully—and silently—was the best course of action?”

  Tanya took a moment to review his query. “Are you telling me that I talk too much? Because, honestly, no. No one’s ever told me that I talk too much. They’re too busy being made comfortable to their exact specifications in a flawlessly run tavern.”

  She saw the commander’s mouth twitch in the darkness. “That actually wasn’t precisely what I was driving at, miss,” he told her. “But, for the time being, you are indeed talking too much. Now be quiet or I’ll put cuffs on you and bring you to the deepest dungeon in the Capital, as I would have every right and reason to do, rather than where I’m actually taking you, which is . . . not that. So, hush.”

  Tanya chose to obey.

  “Regalia,” he whispered, and again traced a pattern with his index finger in the space above the paper. “Solar minimum.” He placed his free hand over his open palm and shut his eyes.

  Tanya watched as a kernel of light materialized from within the wadded-up paper. The kernel multiplied and swirled in expanding ellipticals until it shot up to the curved ceiling, illuminating the tunnel with a cold, white light, entirely unlike fire.

  Sir Lurch clicked and his horse resumed moving through the tunnel. Tanya blinked, her eyes adjusting to the light.

  The horse had stopped in front of a blank brick wall—a dead end.

  Sir Lurch dismounted in one fluid step and reached up to help Tanya down to the ground. He then stood in front of the solid wall, the grout between the brick laid so finely that Tanya reckoned she could chisel for a century and not pick her way out.

  But Sir Lurch did not produce a chisel, or tools of any kind. He merely removed his other glove and, transferring the witch-light from hand to hand, raised his fingers to the wall, then carefully placed them, fingertip by fingertip, on five separate bricks. With his fingers splayed out wide, he pressed hard and rotated his wrist to the right.

  It was as if a whole swath of the wall became liquid—a swirling eddy of color and light, stretching thinner and thinner until Tanya could see something just past it.

  Sir Lurch grabbed Tanya by the wrist and pushed her forward into the eddy.

  For a moment she was on fire . . . and then she was freezing . . . and then she was standing in a dim cellar filled with bright swords hanging neatly in racks. A sleepy boy slumped over a desk in the corner, his red velvet cap slipping over his eyes.

  The boy sat straight up and stared. “What are you doing there?” he asked.

  Tanya blinked. “I honestly have no idea.”

  Sir Lurch came through the eddy next, his hand on his horse’s bridle.

  “You, boy,” he said. “Have you had this watch long?”

  “No—no, sir,” stuttered the page, straightening his cap. “I’m the ward of the Seneschal, I’ve only been at court for—”

  “Never mind,” broke in Sir Lurch. “You know your way to the stables from this part of the palace?”

  “Yes sir,” said the boy, still staring at Tanya, who realized anew that she was still covered in blood and gold and dirt and Lady of Cups knew what else. “But, my patron, sir, he said to remain at—”

  “I know Lord Horado very well and I will vouch for you,” Sir Lurch told the boy, radiating command. “Now be sure to take extra special care of Jubilee, here. He dislikes this mode of transport.”

  The boy obeyed, taking the reins, and, with a last glance over his shoulder at Tanya, opened a plain door built seamlessly into the wood-paneled wall and led the horse out.

  Sir Lurch watched him leave, waiting until the door shut behind him before turning to the boy’s recently vacated chair. He pushed it out of the way and slid open a panel on the floor. Tanya crept forward to look.

  The false floor hid an array of brass bells and cords. Sir Lurch bit his lip and pulled a lever on a bell near the top of the panel.

  “Yes, I think we had better,” he muttered to himself and pulled another lever, this one connected to a dusty-looking bell at the bottom of the array.

  Something the boy had said suddenly floated to the surface of Tanya’s brain.

  “Sir Lurch, are we in the palace?” she asked, desperately smoothing down her impossibly soiled clothes.

  “Yes,” answered the commander, distractedly, still contemplating the mechanisms below him. “I think that should be sufficient for now.” He slid the false floor back over the mysterious contraption and moved the chair back into position.

  He stood straight and looked at Tanya, who was breathing hard.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked, frowning. “It might be important for you to make a good impression on the person I’ve called down here. Oh,
good, Violet.” Yet another door, a grander one with an iron handle, opened to reveal a woman of middle years, dressed plainly but expensively, her iron-shot hair piled on her head in elaborate braids. “I need you to find me as long a cloak with as large a hood as you can, please. Very quickly.”

  “A cloak?” cried Tanya. “I’m in the Glacier and you want to cover all . . . this . . . with a cloak?”

  “Only temporarily. Violet will have to rustle up something appropriate for you to wear, especially if we’re to present you at Council, but that can wait until we get you to a bath. Ah, Count Hewitt. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  Tanya turned. A sleek man stood in the doorway, surveying her with narrowed eyes. Acting on reflex, Tanya narrowed her eyes right back.

  “Of course, Sir Lurch,” said the sleek man, his voice smooth and high pitched. “What is the bell system for if not to quickly—and discreetly—contact one’s colleagues?” He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. “And, without knowing the facts, I’d say you were right to employ discretion. Who is this young woman? Does she have something to do with the disturbance at the city walls?”

  Sir Lurch smiled wryly. “Should have known you’d have heard about that already, my lord. Yes, I’d say she does.”

  The count circled Tanya. “Does she speak?” he asked mildly.

  “Yes,” answered the corps commander quickly, forestalling Tanya’s automatic retort. She caught his eye and perceived a slight shake of his head.

  “I came across her about a league down the path from the gates,” explained Sir Lurch. “She claimed to be in possession of some information important to the Queen and Council.”

  “Did she also claim to have been attacked by wild dogs? The state of her! Why not simply arrest her, Sir Lurch? She certainly looks disreputable enough to be a criminal.” Tanya winced. Normally, she would have been affronted at such insult, but in this case the insult happened to be true.

  “I had plans to do just that, but then . . .”