Tethered by Blood

by Jane Beckstead

  Tethered by Blood

  The Counterfeit Apprentice, Volume 1

  Jane Beckstead

  Published by Jane Beckstead, 2018.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  TETHERED BY BLOOD

  First edition. May 29, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Jane Beckstead.

  Written by Jane Beckstead.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sign up for Jane Beckstead's Mailing List

  About the Author

  To everyone who ever asked me about my book. Thanks for caring.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I didn’t notice the boy until someone shouted his name. “Ivan! Ivan, dance for us!”

  Other voices joined in too. “Dance for us, fool!” and “Speak, fool!”

  He stood in the middle of the town square, shoulders slumped forward with his gaze fixed on the cobbled stones. He was younger than my seventeen years, maybe a malnourished fourteen. Dirt l ayered his face, hair grimy and matted.

  Ivan. The word sounded much too close to Gavin, the name my brother bore before the wasting sickness took him. I looked again at the boy, trying to find traces of my Gavin in his face. Ivan’s face was vacant, but I felt something, a pull I couldn’t explain even to myself.

  He grunted in pain as someone poked him with a stick. Delighted at his response, his tormentors followed up with more determined pokes. “Get him in the leg, John!” other boys yelled, encouraging the boy with the stick.

  Ivan let out a feral cry. He rubbed his arm as tears streamed down his face, but the dirt stayed stubbornly in place.

  I felt a quick burst of anger like I hadn’t since my fighting days before I was an underwizard, days when I brawled with other children my age over insults, real or imagined. Back when I still wore the skirts that betrayed my gender and Mama spent her evenings bewailing my ever becoming a “respectable lady.”

  My thoughts turned to Master Hapthwaite. “Give in to emotion, and you are a slave,” he was fond of saying. “Rule your emotions, and you are free.”

  I supposed I took my emotional tranquility for granted since I had passed the Wizarding Board’s Mastery Over Self Trial, the fifth test in a series of twenty toward becoming a master wizard. Serenity was my constant companion.

  There were other ways to become a magician, but for those who chose to become a master wizard, control over one’s baser emotions was paramount. Frustration had become foreign to me.

  I was calm. It was the one thing I knew for certain.

  Somebody let loose a rock. It thunked into Ivan’s leg, and the boy jumped.

  “Dance, fool!” a boy near to my own age cried. “Dance and we’ll feed you. I’ve got berries.” A grin twisted his face as he retrieved another rock. Ivan lurched side to side in what I realized was his form of a dance.

  That was when I understood. This was a common occurrence for Ivan, and the dirt on his face was not only dirt but bruises as well.

  My fingers formed a fist, compelled by an instinct I’d forgotten I had. A few words were all it would take. A few muttered words and I would be through with the whole of them. I’d never performed a killing spell, but I knew the incantation to a handful of them. Performing one would violate the code of the Wizarding Board, since as an underwizard, I could perform strong magic only at the behest of my master. And so I checked myself and forced tranquility into my mind, unwilling to give up everything I had worked for so easily. My fist loosened, and the tension eased from my body. I averted my eyes and forced my steps away from the square.

  Maybe it was a mistake to go to the village that day. A pain raged at the back of my head that I’d ignored for hours, as I refused to acknowledge it was an aching-head sort of day. Besides, forays into the outside world were rare since I was an apprenticed underwizard. Many underwizards disappeared from society altogether during their training, only to emerge a decade later as trained master wizards. But add Master Hapthwaite’s illness to a shortage of potion ingredients, and there I was, wandering the streets of a village whose name I couldn’t remember, looking for the storefront of William the Botanist.

  By the time I found the shop, the noise had receded enough that the scene from the town square had faded from my mind. Smells wafted from the shop’s entrance, intoxicating, mysterious scents. My calm had returned.

  “Edgar’s apprentice, are you?” William the Botanist boomed at me, and it took a moment to remember Master Hapthwaite’s given name was not “Master.” He clapped a meaty hand on my shoulder. “What’s your name?”

  “Avery, sir.” I pulled the now-crumpled list from my pocket, written by my hand only that morning. “We are in need most especially of baneberry, if you’ve any to spare.”

  While William gathered ingredients, I focused my attention on the plants growing in the warm shop. A few I could identify by sight: sage, marigold, vervain, basil. Others were unknown but pleasing in an almost bewildering way.

  I inhaled the scents of the shop, many intended to bring calm. In the distance, I imagined I heard a shout. My fingers reached for a rosemary plant, and an unbidden memory sprang to mind: those bad days and nights of brewing rosemary tea with the hope that it would cleanse my brother’s diseased body. Gavin as he was in the days before he died, worsening in his sickbed, the damp hair plastered to his forehead, the clammy skin, the weak grin that attempted to make me smile even as he neared death.

  I couldn’t shake the image of my brother Gavin and those false words I’d whispered to him that last night before he died. “You will not die, Gavin. You’ll be well.” And the biggest lie of all, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  A few words and a twist of my fingers, and my hearing sharpened enough to listen to goings-on as far away as the town square. I took a moment to sift through the cacophony of other noises in my head—an argument at a nearby market, children playing, an old man mumbling to himself—but at last I singled out the sounds I sought.

  Ivan the fool made a wild, grunting cry. Laughter rippled through the accumulated crowd.

  “I didn’t know fools could bleed,” someone said. I heard the crowd's excitement behind that one voice.

  My fist clenched, and it was moments before I realize I’d snapped the rosemary in half. I stared at the crushed plant in my hand and recognized that I was teetering on the edge of something dangerous. My teeth clenched against the trembling of my body. I forced my eyes closed and pushed all sound and thought from my mind.

  That wasn’t Gavin. He had nothing to do with me. I was calm. I was in control.

  I opened my eyes and placed the crushed rosemary back in its pot. My finger ran down the length. It knit and
hdld, once more alive. I exhaled a breath of relief. That spell didn’t always work for me.

  “Can’t seem to find the baneberry.” William emerged from the back of the shop, his arms full of several plant varieties which he deposited on the counter. “I know I have some.” He scratched his head and looked around. “Has John been in my stores again?”

  “John?” I asked, showing an interest I didn’t feel. In my head I planned a route out of the village that would avoid the square.

  William rooted around shelves behind the counter but threw an apologetic glance my way. “My son. Gets into things occasionally. Not much younger than you. You know how boys are.” He took in my underwizard robes and rubbed a dirty hand along his grizzled chin. “Or perhaps you don’t.”

  For a moment my heart picked up speed, slamming against my ribcage, and I wondered if he’d guessed my secret. Could he tell I was a girl? After all the pains I had taken to conceal it?

  I looked down at myself, but all I could see was a shapeless mass of robes, as always. When I looked up again, he had gone back to foraging among the shelves. To himself he muttered, “I told him to stay away from the poisonous plants, though.”

  My eyes widened. John. I wasn’t thinking at all when I bolted out the door. I paid no heed to William’s voice behind me. For several brief seconds it was just me, robes lifted to my knees, legs pumping, shoes slapping the cobblestoned streets. I charged into the town square and stopped to gasp for breath, hands on my knees.

  Crumpled and pathetic, Ivan sobbed into his palms. A boy stood over him, hand extended.

  “Are you hungry, Ivan? I have some berries. Do you want one?”

  Ivan’s trembling hand reached for the glistening white baneberry the boy holds out to him.

  I tackled the boy around the knees. He was bigger and stronger, but I was faster. My speed had been the deciding factor in most of my fistfights. Still, I could strangle him with a flick of my finger and some muttered words if I so desired. But I didn’t. I swung a fist and connected with flesh. He grunted, and we rolled and grappled. Pain lit up my senses.

  Anger sung through my veins; outrage throbbed in my chest. He was the wasting sickness that took my brother, the father who abandoned me, the Wizard’s Council which demanded of me my emotions. I felt awake for the first time in a long time. “This is me, Gavin. This is me, Ivan,” I wanted to say. I didn’t know which one I was talking to or if it mattered.

  I tasted metallic blood: nauseating, thick. My pulse pounded and my sight blurred. I spat red and swung again.

  A blow from behind hit me between the shoulder blades, and I went down, face-first. My brawling partner jumped aside, and a new someone leaned on me, a weight on my back pressing me into the ground. I fought, but hands pulled my arms backward until I wanted to scream.

  “Who do you think you are, underwizard?” the voice at my back bellowed.

  I wriggled, but my arms felt like they might pop out of their sockets. Rage filled me, and I twisted my head to the side to glimpse my new attacker.

  “Don’t imagine you can behave as you wish just because you’re an underwizard,” he growled. You’re under Bramford’s authority now.”

  All I could see of the man were bulging tendons in his neck and the cut of his jerkin. Then my cheek met the cobblestones, already slick with blood from my face.

  My fingers curled to prepare for the magic I was about to perform, the strong magic which would send this man to the next life and prevent me from completing my master wizard training, though I was too enraged to care.

  Somewhere, a voice of quiet reason warned me to stay calm, Avery, and stay in control, but I was too far gone to listen. And then my eyes fell on the one thing I could see with my narrowed vision—Ivan. He was crouched and sobbing, his hands covering his head for protection. Baneberries lay scattered around him. The boy I was brawling with cuffed Ivan on the ear, and he sprawled.

  I had failed to protect Ivan the fool, just as I had failed to protect my brother. The fight went out of me, and I sagged against the cobblestones.

  My captor, sensing my capitulation, loosened his grip. His feet stepped into my view.

  “Send for Master Wendyn,” his voice said above my head. Then his booted foot came toward me, the last thing I saw before pain and light exploded behind my eyes. I welcomed the darkness when it pulled me under.

  ***

  My head throbbed a sickening beat when I awoke. There was no denying that the aching-head day I didn’t want to acknowledge earlier had turned into a full-fledged crawl-under-the-comforter-and-shut-out-the-light sort of ache. A weight dug at my neck, and somebody sniffled nearby.

  I rolled to my knees. My surroundings, bleary as I squinted into the painful light, showed that I was in a small cell, surrounded by bars on three sides and a chinked wall on the fourth. The sniffling paused at my movement, and I looked to find the reason.

  In the cell next to mine, Ivan the fool huddled against the bars nearest me. Blood that wasn't there earlier smeared his face. He was beaten while I was unconscious.

  I crawled nearer.

  He was watching me, his face cautious and fearful. He scrambled backward when he noted my progress toward him.

  I swallowed against the bile rising in my throat as it threatened to push its way out. “It’s all right, Ivan.” My voice was hoarse and thick. I swallowed again. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  But I knew it was a lie, even as I said it, just as much of a lie as I told my brother. I already comprehended without looking that the weight around my neck was a trammel, used to prevent the use of magic, which left only my wits and strength to save us both. And hurt as I was, how could I help Ivan, let alone myself?

  “He doesn’t understand,” a deep voice said, and I started back, surprised we weren’t alone. “Not very sharp, our Ivan. Although your concern is touching.”

  The man stood under the window where the light was so bright it turned my stomach to look at him. My first impression was of dark eyes beneath heavy brows, but my assessment of him stopped there as I realized he wore the robes of a master wizard.

  My stomach dropped. I scrambled to my feet and wavered there while my skull pounded and spots blinked through my vision. Was I going to be sick?

  I was wearing a trammel. My magic and all spells I had cast on myself had fallen. This meant my voice-modulating spell—the magic that made my voice deep as a boy’s—was no longer in place. How high had I spoken just now? Did I sound like a girl?

  “Well?” His voice was impatient and cold, and he moved around to the front of my cell so the distance between us was an arm’s length. I wondered if he was from the Wizard’s Council, come to end my apprenticeship. If so, I didn’t recognize him from the trials.

  “Well?” I repeated stupidly, more concerned with reaching a deep enough pitch in my voice than sounding intelligent. “Well what?” There. That was husky enough.

  The man’s eyes bored into me, through me, with more scrutiny than Master Hapthwaite ever managed. If I wasn’t careful, here was a man who would find out my secret.

  "Your master has heard of your doings in my village, underwizard. He’s washed his hands of you. You’re no longer apprenticed."

  Disapprenticed? It was only natural, but it was still a blow. I looked away from the man’s fierce eyes, which saw too much, and looked at Ivan instead. I had given everything up for a boy who couldn’t understand what I’d done. Which of us was the real fool?

  “You’ve violated your apprentice oath. You will be stripped of your levels and punished for public brawling.”

  I nodded, still watching Ivan. “I understand.”

  He continued after a brief pause. “But only if I report you.”

  My gaze returned to him. His smile, when it came, was not pleasant. I wanted nothing to do with this man.

  “I think you can be of some use, underwizard. Until I find out if I’m right, I’m taking you home with me.”

  I stared
at him, uncomprehending.

  His frown deepened when I didn’t move. “Well, what are you waiting for? Bow to your benefactor.”

  I trembled, wavering where I stood, and then bent at the waist and vomited at his feet.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mama used to say a mind distracted can’t sew a straight seam, her way of telling me to pay no mind to diversions. With her it always came back to sewing.

  I could still see her as she was in the years she was bedridden, leaned backward onto misshapen pillows, the husk of some brilliant flower faded to the crumbled browns of autumn. I remembered the sunless day we buried her on the hill, Papa and Gavin and me.

  Gavin. My brother. Dead and buried next to Mama, two crude markers reaching toward the sky.

  Focus, Avery. Sew a straight seam.

  I knew that I was concussed. Master Hapthwaite had a copy of Rudimentary Medicine I devoured, along with most of the rest of his library. If the headache and nausea weren’t indication enough, the way my thoughts were running through the cracks in my brain like water, too slippery to hold onto, verified it.

  Across from me, the master wizard—whose name I had somehow forgotten—slumped forward, his fingers shoved into his inky black hair. His face wasn’t as lined and weathered as I expected, which meant he was younger than I first thought. Beard growth of a few days rambled over the lower half of his face like lichen on a log. As the carriage continued its jolting and swaying and rolling forward, he looked up, caught my gaze on him, and frowned. His unpleasant expression turned my stomach more than the swaying conveyance.

  “You will not soil my carriage, underwizard.” His voice was hard as granite, and he tucked his shoes beneath his robes.

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “I mean, no.”

  He sniffed in clear disgust, and his gaze shifted to the fool. I was still not clear why the boy was here, but I knew the new master wasn’t happy about it.

  There was a conversation in the jail of the vile little town, which it turns out was called Bramford, between the new master and the man from the town square, the one who knocked me to the ground and kneed me in the back. I caught snatches of it while still behind bars, trying to control my nausea and the spinning room.