Quill and Cobweb
B. A. Lovejoy
To my mother, who believed in my dreams much more than I did.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Don’t Miss the Final Chapter in the Chronicles of Whynne
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 by B. A. Lovejoy
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter One
Light, dark.
Light, bright and beautiful—dark, cold, and unkind.
Light, safety—Dark, bone chilling terror.
A simple reality, really. It was funny how some people failed to understand it, but I supposed I wasn’t around the right kind of people for that—Or the right kind of people in any regard, seeing as how I was in the country’s worst training camp.
At least the guards there weren’t as attentive. That definitely helped me get away with whatever I pleased.
The white flame around my neck flickered on and off. It was manipulated by the turning a small knob at the top of the lantern, one which allowed air into the flame’s glass chamber and just as easily took it away. It was a nervous habit to play with the lantern, one which the guards at the camp had tried to discourage me from, but I did it all the same. The metal frame of the lantern’s door had begun to catch on itself due to overuse and the teardrop glass cradled within it was smudged with the grease of fingerprints.
I couldn’t help the tick, especially as the sun began to set on the horizon, the guards having decided that our lessons should be further than usual from camp.
They tried to tell us that this was only a coincidence, and that they cared for us. Laughable, really.
Never mind what had happened just two days prior. Never mind that every human there was nervously eyeing the outskirts of the forest that seemed to edge closer and closer towards us. Our guards, some Seelie and some human, did not care. They had rifles after all; and those remained loaded at all times, strapped to their sides. The rest of us had two hands and untamed powers to deal with.
Of course, the guards had reason enough to want one of us to be carried off; they’d receive a bounty of gold if anything were to come their way; enough gold to keep their families comfortable for a good while. Things like the survival of others tended to matter less because of that. We’d been brought to the forest’s edge in hopes that our movements would attract attention, that our sounds would draw the wild, wicked other that watched us from the woods. The guards had the nerve to frown when we became quieter there, even as night drew closer and closer. Even knowing that a fear of the Unseelie was bred into us, that it was only natural for us to fear those trees. The fact that they couldn’t understand or even begin to show empathy was astonishing, their brows heavyset and their guns still at the ready as they waited for one of us to screw up and not yet willing to let us leave.
Even when amber eyes stared out from the trees, watching, waiting.
“In the ring, Laurent,” one of the guards called, pulling me out of my thoughts. “You’re the last one for the day.”
I always was.
I sighed, stepping into the middle of the circle the trainees had made, another girl staring me down from the other end. Her name was Emily, I’d faced her before, she was halfway decent, she had some sort of magic that manipulated the air. I left the cataloging and understanding of other people’s powers to Luka, seeing as how I was struggling to figure out my own powers.
At least this would go quickly.
Another guard prattled off the rules, listing all the things we were and were not to do. As if we didn’t know them already, as if we hadn’t watched eight fights in the past hour. A part of me wanted to remind him of that, but I still had an ounce of common sense in me that prevented it.
I widened my stance, summoning the blue sparks to my fingertips. I could see the girl across from me twirling a breeze between hers.
Five seconds, I decided. I’d give it five seconds, then get it over with quickly so that we could go back to our tents. Never before had thin cotton walls and muddy ground beneath my body seemed so appealing.
“Go,” the guard said, and I ran, charging her as fast as I could.
And just like I promised myself, five seconds and I was on the ground, out of air.
“Come on, Wren,” one of the other trainees yelled, “get up!” People liked to root for the underdog.
Here, I was an underdog. Here, I was disappointing them. I wondered why they bothered to cheer as I stayed down, staring at the sky. The black that was beginning to settle over the sky only strengthened my resolve. The previous blue sky fading over the horizon almost acted like the ticking of a clock in my mind.
“Just a spark!” I could hear the murmurs already, the complaints about my lack of control. I was supposed to be the crown’s favorite, the one sent from the second largest city in Whynne—Why was I so bad? Why could I barely summon sparks?
I almost grinned to myself as her foot landed on my chest, beginning the countdown. Another loss.
Oh, how disappointed the King would be.
Just like that, the fight was over. The last battle of the day, my 78th loss in the ring. We could go, we didn’t have to stay by the forest anymore. We didn’t have to see what happened after the sky turned completely black.
A few of the smart kids were grateful. Of course, they didn’t know enough to thank me, but that was fine. What was another lost fight to me? Nothing, if it kept me in the camp. Better there than anywhere else, especially the palace. I’d rather wallow in mud than sleep in silk sheets if that meant that Camden slept miles away from me.
“Alright,” said Avren, the older guard put in charge of us. She was tasked with the impossible challenge of inciting power from a bunch of humans in a manageable way. She must have seen how the amber eyes had grown in number and heard the leaves rustling from a sound other than wind. Unlike her young compatriots, she knew when the numbers became too great; when ideas of heroics and large paydays turned into stupidity. A scar above her snake-like eyes reminded her of that. “You all pack up today, make sure that you have something to eat when you get back,” her hand lowered to the holster of her gun, her voice reminding us, “lights on again, I don’t care if all of your neighbors have theirs on. We don’t need two dead in one week.” She was fae, a Seelie, but a smart one. One cocky enough to taunt the Unseelie by standing at their doorway, but never stupid enough to linger and wait for them to answer it. If I was aspirational, I think I would have liked to grow up to be like her.
A murmur of agreement rose through the crowd as twelve young humans began to pack up their things and get ready to depart. We didn’t n
eed the reminder, even if our training group wasn’t one of the ones missing a member, no one needed a reminder. A few retied the strings of their worn boots, others packed away their leather training clothes, not wanting to be restrained if the worst came. They waited for one another, wanting to stay in groups rather than be caught alone. The larger your group, the better your chances after all. The Unseelie stayed away from large groups of humans, they preferred to pick off the stragglers one by one.
I eyed the worn white leather of my training gloves and debated running ahead of them all as I leaned down to pick up my satchel, the familiar slosh of a full canteen greeting me with the movement. Those gloves were meant to control our powers, stopping accidental sparks and electrical surges from hurting others in my case. They also meant taking an extra five seconds longer to respond when facing an Unseelie, an idea that most feared. I always tried to keep them on, because if I did, that made it look like I wasn’t afraid. It made the younger trainees feel better, seeing as how I was the only one amongst our group to actually see a fully blown Unseelie— not one that was whipped and placed in a cage for us to lob rocks at.
But most of the time I wasn’t at the forest’s edge with malevolent eyes staring out at me.
“You stay behind, Laurent,” Avren said, catching my hurry to leave with the pack. “I need to talk to you.”
“Can we not walk at the same time?” I shot back, pulling off a glove with a decisive tug. “I thought they taught guards to multitask.”
“Not today,” she said, “I don’t want any inquisitive ears listening in.” She looked pointedly to the rest of the group, the majority of them younger than me, more likely to cause trouble. I suppose she thought that anything she’d tell me would travel across the camp along with their little feet and rambling mouths—since many were children.
But group twelve’s leak wasn’t children, it was me. “Alright, just a little bit, I still haven’t picked up my silver, and you’ve worked me well today; I need to get some rest.”
“You utilize your humanity very well,” Avren said. “You lie very fluently.” The last of the children finally scattered as she said that. The youngest, Camille, only cast the briefest look over her shoulder at me before running away. “Don’t set a bad example for them.”
“She’s eleven, I’m sure that, after seven more years of this camp, she won’t grow up to be like me,” I said, securing the final latch on my bag with a scoff. “None of them will, if you’re lucky.”
“I hope,” Avren said in her typical gruff, dismissive tone of voice. “I’m sorry to keep you, I know that you get nervous around the Unseelie, and with good reason—but I merely do what I am told,” she said, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a white envelope. “Correspondence.”
I scowled, making no move to receive it. “Yet again, you must tell them that I am uninterested. This is a waste of parchment.”
“And yet again, I won’t,” she said in an authoritative tone, reaching forward to tuck the envelope into the side of my bag. “I was told to give it to you, not argue with them. It is yours, as were all the others. No one else is to open it.” Right, same as usual. “Maybe if you tried a little harder, these wouldn’t be so scathing that you don’t want to read them.” A bold assumption on her part, I accepted the letter all the same.
Another letter for the bonfire. It was better that than argue; the day was short, and the night was long, I had plans and I didn’t want to be caught in the dark.
“You will not have training tomorrow,” Avren called after me as I trudged up the hill. “Make sure to wear your reds tomorrow!” She yelled as I grew further away, referring to the uniform they’d given me that I’d immediately packed away. “And be sure they’re clean this time, no lint!”
I raised a hand up to dismiss her. I never wore my reds anyway, not for holidays or otherwise, even though the royal guard had tried to insist on them. The stiff, felt dress and burgundy leggings sat unused in the bottom of my trunk, and if I had my way they would rot there.
If I had my way, this camp and the man who sent me here would rot as well.
I drew up the hood of my capelet, pulling the velvet up so that it covered my hair and hid the tips of my very human ears. Not that that did much, the long, woven tunic and fitted leggings that I wore spelled out my heritage clearly enough. Anyone could tell the difference between fae and human in this camp, because nearly all of those not lucky enough to have fae heritage wore something similar, if not a guard’s uniform with a small gold pin indicating their humanity.
The only ones who didn’t wear such uniforms were the merchants who wandered in and out, bringing their textiles for us to envy. Some bought them, even though we weren’t meant to wear them, tying the scraps of fabric around their bags.
They showed up close to payday, staying until either everyone’s pockets were empty, or another round of inspectors from the castle came. The King wasn’t too fond of outsiders hanging around camp, especially since we didn’t live in the best conditions. But the merchants didn’t care, they found desperate soldiers and gave them liquor and tobacco for entry into the camp. When the inspectors came, the merchants fled, on their way to another camp and another payday.
I caught the eye of one of the merchants as she began to nail heavy boards to the front of her shop window, a wooden storefront still pulled by horses. Her gaze cut away from mine almost as quickly as she found it. She didn’t know what I was, none of them did, what’s more, she didn’t want to. If I told her that magic flew from my fingertips, she would only recoil—the heavy gouge marks on the wood in her hands confirmed that. She’d had her fill of magic recently, they all had.
I don’t think whether it came from the Seelie, Unseelie, or another human would have mattered to them.
I hadn’t realized that this was where it had happened. The guards had done such a good job of cleaning up the rust-colored stain on the ground that I suppose that many didn’t know that this was the part of camp it happened in. A part of me wondered if the merchant saw. I would have liked to think not. I would have liked to think that no one saw it, because I couldn’t even imagine it.
I tilted my head back, opting to look at the sky rather than the ground. I couldn’t bear to see where someone had been killed.
Two days before, a man had tried to leave the camp. He thought he could make it through the woods, that the magic he had was enough. Sometimes people thought that, when they were the best in their group and had little else to compare to. They thought that they were powerful, that if anyone in this camp full of magic would get out, it would be them. The Unseelie that found him dragged him back to the center of the camp as a warning, a reminder of what was to come.
The guards were happy because that meant they had something to shoot. They kept bullets engraved with their initials for moments like that, and the one whose bullet was found closest to the Unseelie’s heart nearly tripled his pension. They let what was left of the human lay while they dug through the beast.
We started sleeping with the lights on again after that. Normally they just lit up the edges of a camp to keep out the Unseelie and keep people well rested. But all those lights were on, and whatever came to the camp had managed to muster the willpower to past them by and walk into the darkened plaza to remind us of our place. After that, we all had to have our lights on again, with the promise of one day sleeping in the dark once more but no indication of when. I didn’t know when it would end.
Entering the ration tent, I scanned the table closest to the door quickly, eager not to make the young woman who stood behind the counter at the other end wait. Row after row of woven purses sat on the table, tags hanging from their drawstrings. Each had a symbol indicating who they belonged too, and you didn’t tell anyone your symbol. It kept them from stealing your purse, not many would risk stealing it if they didn’t know whose bag they were taking.
Not that I needed the money enough to care if someone stole from me, not with the Laurents vault
sitting full at home. But I had learned not to turn it down since you never knew when you would need money. Candles weren’t cheap, and oil rations were the bare minimum.
I scooped up two bags in one hand, closing my fingers enough so that the girl couldn’t see what I’d done. Two black, inked birds sat from their tags, one a wren and the other a swallow. Thankfully, few were well versed in birdwatching at the camp.
Luka wouldn’t have picked up his purse otherwise, I knew it. Nine silver was nothing to him, not when he had a vault filled with thousands of gold at home. So I always grabbed it for him, because otherwise it would just stay there.
And eventually one of those guards would grab it.
“Thank you,” I said quietly as I made my way out of the tent, giving the girl a small nod. She only lit the candle beside her in response.
The sky was already dark I realized with a startle, and one of the guards was watching me closely. That should have made me feel safe, but it didn’t.
Only one guard at this camp would ever save me, and I don’t think Nikolas had the purest intentions.
“I’m on my way home,” I said loudly to the guard, tightening my hand around the coins. “There won’t be any bait for you tonight. You’ll have to do actual work like the rest of us, poor baby.”
The guard only scoffed.
I’d heard in other camps about guards holding people outside, making them stand there until something came. That didn’t happen in Alda. While we were close to the forest, we were far away from the palace, and it took far too much time to receive a reward to warrant trying overly hard. The guards would just steal from you instead.
Quill and Cobweb (The Chronicles of Whynne Book 2) Page 1
