Bedtime Stories

by Johnson, Jean

  She turned her attention to the cause of her suffering. The disenchanted tangle of black threads lay on a silver tray on the low drinks table between them. Next to them on the tray lay a jeweled silver hair comb. The comb was set with beautiful, gleaming rubies. Their red glow compared favorably with the bowl of apples sitting next to the tray, for all that most of the gems were barely a quarter the size of Nevada’s littlest fingernail.

  Talladen had brought the apples home with him the moment he had gotten word of what had happened. He was sweet like that, remembering even in the midst of a life-threatening crisis that Nevada liked apples. The hair comb had puzzled her from the moment she had been given it; her hair wasn’t long enough to use it, but Socorro had insisted she accept the gift of it anyway. The comb was the kind that Nevada remembered Althinac women liked putting into their long hair for ornamentation whenever they pinned it up.

  She would have tucked it into her hair if she’d had enough to hold it, but she didn’t, so she hadn’t even picked it up. Socorro had tucked it into her bag of things, along with her new fabric clothes. Now, as the shorter of the guardian apprentices continued, Nevada was glad she hadn’t handled it.

  “When we checked the bag of clothes for other dangers, we found that. The hair ornament was also tainted with magic. In specific, a spell-trapped poison, which like the corset was meant to be activated once you were completely alone,” Danau explained, glancing briefly at her husband, Koranen, before returning her attention to Nevada. “Had your hair been long enough to tempt you into using it, either one could have killed you swiftly enough, but the combination of poison and constriction would have killed you before anyone could have saved you, even had they been in the next room waiting for it to happen.”

  Nevada shuddered. She felt Migel touching her shoulder. At the same time, Cotter reached over and touched her hand, both of them giving her comfort. Of all of them in the room, only Migel and Koranen had hair long enough to have pinned up, though Danau’s hair was almost long enough. But Nevada did remember a time when she, too, had once possessed locks long enough to dress with ribbons, pins, and combs.

  “Whoever planned this is a criminal under both Althinac and Menomonite law,” Migel stated. He lifted his chin slightly. “Their opportunity to do so was in part my responsibility, for having had the idea to come here at all. I’ll undergo any questioning you have by Truth Stone, and I’ll command everyone who came with me to undergo it as well. Since the crime was committed in Menomonite territory, we will submit to Menomonite justice. All I ask is, if you’re going to arrest me, let me make a mirror-call back to Althinac to let them know of my absence.”

  Strangely enough, it was the normally sober Danau who smiled. “I don’t think arresting any of you would do our political ties any good. At least, not without solid proof first. Even the city council has been forced to admit that total isolation isn’t good for us. But we will question everyone, including yourself. Starting with you, in fact. Husband? ”

  Nevada bit the inside of her lip. Danau still sounded a bit smug whenever she said that word, for all it had been months since their return from the distant island of Nightfall. The poor woman had suffered from an excessive affiliation with aquamancy, to the point where she literally had problems regulating her body temperature, making it impossible for her to be intimate with anyone. Her husband had suffered in the same way, only from his affinity for pyromancy, in the opposite direction from the chief aquamancer of Menomon. Together, they made the perfect couple, even if they were rather monogamous about it. Scandalously so, by Menomonite culture.

  Fishing a white marble disc from the pouch at his waist, Apprentice Koranen tossed it at Migel. The Guardian of Althinac caught it with both hands. Missing his touch on her shoulder now that his hand was otherwise occupied, Nevada listened to him test the stone’s enchantment.

  “I am a shellfish.” A quick check of the smooth-polished stone showed a blackened imprint where his fingers had pressed during his absurd statement. It faded within moments, and Migel nodded, gripping the stone again. “I am Migel of the family Althec, Guardian of Althinac, and I came here to convince Nevada of the family Naccara to wed me and help rule at my side, with the intent that the joining of our two families would convince our war-torn people to join back together. I did not come here with the intent to harm her in any way, nor would I have allowed anyone else to come for that purpose, had I known about it at any point.”

  Displaying the Truth Stone showed everyone it was white. His words were true. He handed the stone back to the pyromancer, who nodded and tucked it back into his pouch. “Right. One down, and almost a dozen more to go, including the crew of your ship. The first suspect is your cousin. I’ll—”

  The chimes for the front door rang, cutting him off. Kristh shrugged and rose, heading down the entry hall to the right to answer it. A murmur of voices lasted only a moment, then he closed the door and led their prime suspect into the parlor. Socorro greeted everyone with the same friendly smile she had sported from the beginning. “Hello, everyone! Did you get to see Nevada’s new clothes?”

  “More of them than we wanted,” Cotter muttered, glaring at her.

  “Here, hold this,” Apprentice Koranen told her, pressing the disc into her hand before she could see what he was handing her.

  She blinked down at it, then looked up at him. “What’s this for?”

  “The truth,” Rogen growled. Like her other husbands, he was still incensed at how close Nevada had been brought to death. “Did you deliberately bring clothing which was enchanted to throttle its wearer? In specific, to choke our wife, Nevada?”

  Socorro blinked, her smile wavering with puzzlement. “Why would I do that?”

  “Answer the question, yes or no,” Koranen directed her. “Wait, you’re wearing rings. Take them off first.”

  “My rings?” Socorro asked, glancing down at the gemmed metal circling three of her fingers. “Why?”

  “We had an incident on Nightfall involving rings that thwarted Truth Stone scryings. Migel wasn’t wearing any when we questioned him, but you are. Take them off or be held in contempt of Menomonite law,” Danau ordered.

  Shrugging, Socorro complied. Setting her rings on the table, she gripped the truth stone. “I was not aware of any particular item which was enchanted to throttle or otherwise harm a particular wearer.” Unfolding her fingers, she showed the unblemished marble to the others in the room. “Is that your only question?”

  “Were you aware of a plot by anyone else to harm Princess Nevada Naccara?” Sierran asked.

  Socorro gave him a sardonic look. “I’m an Althinac. We’ve been embroiled in a civil war for the last twelve years, and I’m a part of the family doing its best to overthrow the Naccaran bloodline. Of course I knew of plots to harm Nevada! I’ve been hearing of plots to try and find her and hopefully eradicate her for almost half of my life.”

  “I don’t think we need to check the Truth Stone for the veracity of that statement,” Koranen muttered dryly.

  “Well, that’s what most of them were. Just plots,” Socorro pointed out tartly, setting down the admittedly unblemished stone and picking up her rings from the table. “I’m sure the rest of you have indulged in idle speculation a time or two. Any other questions? No? Mind if I put my rings back on?”

  Yes, I have a question, Nevada thought, distracted by an ache in her gut that had nothing to do with having her ribs crushed by a silly garment. When is dinner?

  Guessing that no one had started it while she napped, she sat forward to reach for an apple. Her ribs immediately protested, just as they had protested when she had tried slipping her bare feet into a pair of sandals before coming out of her bedroom. At least Dar-shem had done a thorough job of cleaning up the broken toiletry bottles she had knocked off of her vanity table, so that she didn’t have to. And the healer had done a good job of reknitting and strengthening the bones, though her chest would still be tender for days to come. But she was hungry. She
tried leaning forward again and sucked in a sharp breath, sinking back in her seat.

  “What’s wrong?” Migel asked her.

  “Do you need the healer again?” Dar-shem offered.

  “No, no; I’m fine. Or I will be. I was just hungry, and wanted an apple,” Nevada muttered, sitting back.

  Talladen got up to fetch her one, but Socorro was closer and faster. Plucking one from the bowl, she turned and offered it to Nevada. The suspicious stares from Nevada’s husbands made her heave an exasperated sigh.

  “It is just an apple. She wanted one, so I was going to fetch her one. But if you’re worried that it’s somehow poisoned—see?” Bringing the fruit to her lips, the Althinac woman took a large, crisp-cracking bite out of the ripe red fruit. Chewing, she displayed the fleshy white interior. “Af you can fee,” she mumbled around her mouthful, “it’f perfectly fafe to eat.”

  Handing the bitten fruit to Nevada, Socorro folded her arms defiantly across her chest. Nevada eyed the apple warily, but not because she feared it was poisoned. Not after that demonstration. She just wasn’t in the habit of eating fruit which someone else had bitten into. She turned the apple around to the unblemished side and bit into it, enjoying the sweet-tart smell.

  Mere moments after she swallowed that first bite, the world went numb. It didn’t hurt, like the corset had. But she was aware of a sudden inability to breathe, of the lax muscles of her arm which let her head loll back and the fruit drop from her fingers. Dimly, she heard her husbands shouting her name in alarm, felt Migel’s hands touching her, scooping her out of her chair. She heard the sizzle and crackle of hastily applied spells, but she couldn’t do anything, couldn’t react, couldn’t even see as her eyelids drooped shut under their own lax weight. Even time itself seemed muddied, bogged down by whatever spell or poison had her in its grip, until every second she lay there seemed to devour whole minutes of everyone else’s time.

  Am I dead? she wondered. Or at least dying? Is that . . . Is someone crying?

  Lips touched her mouth, as did the salty wetness of tears. She recognized Migel’s touch, though she had only known it for a single night, and she hadn’t heard him sob before now. The world swayed and the noises went away, though she could still feel Migel’s presence at her side.

  Someone shouted something close by, startling her. She couldn’t react, but the strong voice did pull at her consciousness, bringing back pain and life as it sucked the numbness out of her. Within a minute, she could draw a deep, rib-aching breath on her own, replenishing her air-starved lungs.

  Cracking open her eyes, she found herself back on her own bed, with Migel holding on to her left hand and a stranger with long, light brown hair standing at her right side. A power crystal, of the usual egg-shaped sort used to collect and store magical energy, hovered in the air above his hands. But instead of the brighter hues of pure power she was used to seeing, the crystal was being filled with a sickly, greenish darkness, a darkness that the crystal sucked up out of her body as it slowly hovered its way down her legs. The faint glow of the clock crystals on the wall showed she had been drifting in her strange state of numbness for several hours.

  Once the last of that darkness left her, Nevada felt disturbingly light-headed. The last time she had felt this way, she had spent too much of her magic on tasks for the Mage Guild, yet all she had done was lie here, almost dead. The stranger with the light brown hair and the oddly familiar features muttered something to end whatever spell he was using and fitted a thick-padded silk bag around the crystal, moving with deliberate care to avoid touching the hovering, malevolently dark green orb. Before she could summon the strength to ask him who he was and what was happening, he gave her and Migel a polite nod and left her bedroom.

  She licked her lips. “What . . . ?”

  “We thought you were dead at first. But the healers found traces of life still in your body. You were soul-sickened by a combination of poison and spell, one specifically targeted to the Naccaran bloodline,” Migel told her. His voice was rough and his eyes red, his touch gentle but trembling as he caressed her cheek. He gave her a wavering smile. “The Guardian of Menomon discovered it was a poison meant to bind to your magic and suppress it, mimicking death. But you weren’t dead, just very deeply asleep. Almost in stasis.”

  “Sounds . . . pleasant,” Nevada murmured.

  “You would have slept for a hundred years while the poison worked its way through your magic, if Menomon’s Guardian hadn’t remembered a description of something similar happening to another mage long ago, in some of the city archives, the story of a beautiful young woman being poisoned by an older rival and cursed to sleep for a hundred years. Guardian Sheren arranged for her apprentice’s twin to come all the way out from Nightfall Isle and clean it from your system, since she isn’t quite as confident of her powers as she used to be, and this other mage apparently has enough power and control to extract the poison without killing you or risking himself.

  “But while this Morganen fellow did save your life, he had to drain you of all of your excess magic and a good portion of your life energy, too,” Migel murmured. “I’m afraid you won’t have any energy reserves for at least a week, if not longer.”

  “And I’ll be . . . ravenously hungry,” she managed, already feeling her body beginning to shake from hunger.

  “Never fear, we have just the cure for that,” a voice from the doorway proclaimed. Cotter came over to the bed, sitting down at her side, a bowl of what looked like mushed peas and other things cradled in his hands. “Raw vegetable pease-pottage, otherwise known as the ultimate in baby food for starving, power-exhausted mages. You’re lucky that most of these fresh, ripe vegetables you’ll be eating for the next three days were ones our kind mage guest brought. Otherwise they’d have cost me two weeks’ pay, given they’re outside the Menomonite harvesting cycle. Open up now, there’s a good mistress . . .”

  Too hungry to care what it tasted like, Nevada complied. The mush on the spoon was as messy in taste as it was in appearance, but her body recognized the nutrients it craved even as her tongue rebelled at the texture and flavor. Eating each spoonful her first husband fed to her, she listened as Migel cleared his throat and continued.

  “It, ah . . . it turned out my cousin has been hiding the fact that she’s a mage all this time. She had built up a false personality to wear like a shell, which allowed her to successfully lie while using the Truth Stone—as well as some very tight, camouflaging shields to disguise her aura—some of the Althec family mages discovered her aptitude as soon as it manifested, and chose to train her in secret, to hide her abilities so that they could have a hidden weapon in the civil war. Someone no one would suspect as a mage, because she’d never displayed her powers as a mage where anyone outside of a rare few in the family would see them.”

  Migel caught a bit of mush that had landed on the edge of her lips and gently scooped it inside. Nevada managed not only to accept it, but to nibble on his finger a little. He blushed, and Cotter cleared his throat.

  “Now, now, children; she’s not in any shape for such activities. And certainly not while I’m in the room, thank you. I may be married to her, but I’m not interested in ogling her charms. Time for a sip of water,” he added.

  Migel helped Nevada sit up a little more, allowing Cotter to bring a glass of water to her lips. The Althinac mage shook his head as Cotter resumed feeding her. “I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have put your life at risk . . . It was a stupid plan, and I’ll not hold you to any of it.”

  He got up from the bed. With her mouth full of mush-laden spoon, Nevada couldn’t speak. Mutely, she glared at her husband. Cotter nodded, understanding what she wanted.

  “If you set one foot outside this bedroom, Guardian, I’ll be forced to challenge you to an Arcane Duel,” Cotter warned the other man just as he started to open the door.

  Spinning on his heel, Migel eyed him askance. “You? Challenge me? Even adjusting for the differences between Althi
nac and Menomonite gauging standards, you’re less than a third my rank!”

  “Yes, and I’m barely even half of her rank,” Cotter agreed, unperturbed. “But I am her husband, and since she’s not in any shape to protest this asinine idea you have about leaving her—save your strength, dear,” he warned Nevada as she swallowed, preparing to speak—“it’s up to me to champion her and knock some sense into you. Especially since you were trying to make a unilateral decision about leaving her, when you came here to become one-half of a team. Besides, it’s not always about sheer, raw, magical strength.”

  Migel snorted. “In an Arcane Duel, yes it is!”

  “Not if you’re a sneaky son-of-a-squid like me: I cheat.” Popping another spoonful into his wife’s mouth, Cotter winked at her. “And I’d involve my co-husbands. Even if they aren’t mages, they won’t let you leave without a fight. You’re the husband our Nevada actually wants, and as far as we’re concerned, whatever Nevada wants, Nevada gets.”

  “So, what, I have no say in the matter?” Migel demanded, hands going to his fabric-clad hips.

  “Not if you know what’s good for you. Moreover, we took a vote just now, and it’s decided. Rogen and Dar-shem will be staying here, because they’re needed for the work on the desalinator. The rest of us, Baubin, Kristh, Talladen, and myself, will be accompanying you back to Althinac. That way you’ll know Nevada has four bodyguards who are unswervingly loyal to her . . . and by extension to you. But only so long as you keep her happy,” Cotter warned Migel, his expression sober. “Stabilizing the politics of Althinac is an important task, and having a Naccaran back in power—or rather, in co-power with you—will help with that. So no more talk of leaving her behind. Or us. Not even if she does divorce us. Not until the situation in Althinac is firmly stable. Then we’ll consider moving back.”

  “Why?” The question came from Nevada, and even she was a little surprised to hear herself ask it. But she was curious and wanted to hear Cotter’s answer.