Again, Iminique held her silence. According to the words of the faded history tome buried at the bottom of her late mother’s trunk, the city walls hadn’t been ensorcelled to keep the weirs out, but had been warded against the shadowhungry. The weirs being locked out had been a side effect, not the intention.
But with the passage of five hundred years and fickle human memory, who could say now what the truth was?
“There’ve been attacks on supply wagons.” Extracting his handkerchief once again, her father dabbed at a spot of wine on his upper lip and then jabbed the bit of cloth in the air for emphasis of his next point. “Surely you’ve noticed the increase in guardsmen that accompany us on our trips between demesnes.”
“What was that?” Overhearing her father’s words, short, wiry Ambassador Irvon leaned over from a cluster of ambassadors standing beside them. Excusing himself from his circle with a nod and a smile and smoothing back his black, oily hair, he joined Henrikei and Joufei. “If it’s the shapeshifters you speak of, I had a run-in with them just last week. Had to kill two of the beasts myself.” His narrow shoulders shuddered and his hands fluttered as if searching for a transient glass of liquid fortification. “Can’t say how strange it is watching the animals turn back into humans once they’re dead – makes you feel like you just killed people rather than monsters. One of them was a woman.” He shook his head, lip curling. “I can’t believe they send their females into battle like that. But they’re getting out of line. I’ve been petitioning the magnate to do something before they go from attacking travelersto attacking the walls.”
Her father clapped Irvon on his back, nearly sending the little man staggering. “The walls will keep them out, Irv.”
Irvon regained his balance and leaned forward intently, head shaking. “The protection spells are failing. They’ve found holes in—”
“The spells have held for centuries.”
“Things change.” Irvon jutted out his diminutive chin, making him resemble a belligerent youth. “The spells are fading, and there have been rumors that the mages are growing weaker. Each generation, fewer remain who can reconstruct the original spells should they fail. As it is now, the mages can barely repair the wards where there are gaps. What’s to happen if the spellsbreak completely?”
Henrikei raised his wine glass. “That’s right, Irv! They need all the mages they can get. We should round up the few we have and shuck ‘em down to the Seventh Demesne to…” His words trailed off and an awkward silence ensued. Two sets of eyes flicked toward Iminique and away.
“What are you looking at my daughter for?” Her father’s dark brows swept low over narrowed eyes.
Henrikei ducked his head in mute apology, but Irvon wasn’t so tactful. “Your wife was a healer, was she not? That means your daughter—”
“Will neverheal,” her father clipped out.
Irvon faltered, stepping back as if dodging a physical slap.
“Come, Daughter.” Latching his fingers onto her thin shoulders, her father spun her around and steered her away. “It’s time you meet the other ambassadors and their families.”
His fingers digging into her flesh and the rough inelegance of his movements unexpectedly brought that horrible night rushing back, the night he would never forgive her for. His hands had bruised her shoulders then, too, as he’d dragged her silent and devastated away from her mother’s body. He’d been shouting then, calling her incompetent, her powers useless. He had sworn that night that she would never heal.
And she had silently sworn that she would. That somehow, some way, without him knowing, she would learn the craft he’d forbidden her mother to teach her, the powers he had never let her use until that night – after the physicians had left, after he’d sent the servants away, after he’d locked the door to make sure no one would see. The powers that had failed her because she did not know how to use them.
But never again. Never again would another die because she could not heal them.
His grip gradually loosened and his breathing returned to normal as they circled the ballroom, meeting group after group of normally staid, now slightly inebriated ambassadors and their equally nondescript families. Iminique smiled at them over teeth gritted against her uncomfortable, too-tight dancing slippers, the blister forming on her heel, the stinging soles of her feet, and the ache in both her ankles. Ignoring her own discomfort, she sent her magic questing through those her father introduced her to and she healed what infirmities she found, reforming everything back into its natural flawlessness.
All too soon they stood before Ambassador Indrix Oufei, the most respected ambassador of the Seven Cities, and his nineteen-year-old son, Brent – the reason her father had forced her to come tonight, even though at thirteen most considered her too young to be presented at a ball.
Being the obedient daughter she was, she studied him with the air of one who hadn’t already rejected him in her mind.
Although of average height, he still towered over her. His dark brown hair had been combed back and slicked down with some kind of pomade, and his thick eyebrows were arched and groomed over narrow, critical brown eyes. His nose sloped gracefully downward in a straight, aristocratic line, shadowing the thin mouth that cut into his features like the slash of a knife.
“…Iminique,” her father was saying, his smile wide and his chest puffed out with pride. “My daughter.”
Brent’s sulking lips parted in a grin, revealing two rows of perfect teeth and a certain charm not visible when he was brooding. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips and kissed her knuckles, his eyes never leaving hers. Intense and secretive as a thief’s, those eyes promised something perverted, as did the intimate way his fingers slid back and forth against her palm.
Iminique dipped into a curtsy, wanting to pluck her fingers out of his grasp but knowing she mustn’t cause a scene. When he relinquished her hand, the clammy heat of his fingers clung to her even through her silken glove, and only her sheer doggedness to adhere to courtesy kept her from peeling off the silk and discarding it.
While their fathers exchanged formalities and tidbits of news, Brent watched her with avid – unwelcome– interest. Iminique endured his delving gaze and maintained her polite smile, nodding when it was expected of her and contributing when requested to. But even as her father led her away, Brent’s eyes, intrusive and…unwholesome, slunk behind her, creeping over her shoulders in a sensation reminiscent of cobwebs clinging to her in a dark passage.
“That would be a fine match, Daughter!” Her father, buoyed up out of good spirits and overflowing into effusive goodwill, seized her hand, tucked it into the crook of his elbow, and patted it fondly. He practically strutted among the guests, nodding here and waving there as if he were the ruler of the First Demesne himself. He loweredhis voice. “And he appeared quite taken with you.”
Iminique made a noncommittal sound and then bit her tongue on more as her father rambled on, extolling the benefits of a match with Brent Oufei and glorifying his assets.
Dancing on the razor’s edge between dutiful daughter and secretly rebellious became harder the older she got. Eventually she would have to tell him she would never marry– ever. That she refused to pay the price her mother had.
But not tonight.
The endless string of ambassadors resumed, and Iminique pasted her polite smile back on her face to match everyone else’s. Though no one spoke of it, they were all acutely aware of how ill it boded that the queen’s screams had stopped but no one had yet come to announce the birth. Keeping pace with the false cheer, Iminique bobbed curtsies and nodded smilingly at banalities and all the while healed in secret.
It was as she was making the unpleasant discovery that one of the ambassadors’ unwed daughters, a sallow, thin-lipped girl of sixteen, was quite definitely pregnant with an illegitimate child, when Iminique’s skin started to prickle.
Every part of her tensed, suddenly aware of some other, darker power stalking her.
N
o, not stalking her; it already crawled its meandering way inside her healing, twining around her magic like a snake, plucking at it, testing it.
Her heart pounded in her ears. The metallic pungency of fear clung to the roof of her mouth, joining the acerbic, fermented aftertaste of the Second Demesne wine. Noises became muffled, as if the magic had cut her off from the rest of the world. She could still see it, see the dancers, their faces split with ghastly laughter, see the ambassadors and her father in animated discussion, a mere hand’s-reach away, see the wives and daughters leaning close and winking, winking at some delicious gossip, but she no longer felt a part of it.
Father. She tried to speak, to clutch his jacket sleeve, but no sound came out. Her arms wouldn’t move.
The malicious magic curled around her, tightening each moment. The edges of her vision went dark.
In the distance, the queen screamed. Iminique felt it more than heard it, felt it quiver in her bones.
The magic whipped away, toward the queen, forsaking Iminique and leaving her sagging.
Her father’s grip on her elbow yanked her from her trance and hefted her up, his face thrusting toward her, filling her vision. Iminique struggled to focus on him, on what he was saying, but she was gasping for breath. Clinking wine glasses and voices sounded too loud, assaulting her ears and making her cringe. The cloying fragrance of over-perfumed dancers swished past and mingled with the overpowering scents of body odor and sweaty armpits. Bile merged with the fear already lodged in her throat.
Her father gave her arm a disgruntled shake. “Daughter?”
Everything snapped into focus, with one thought tantamount.
The presence had gone after the queen.
And she had to stop it.
Bursting onto bookshelves...
August 16th 2013
Soul Fire Page 29
