The Threads of Magic

by Alison Croggon

  “Hence the history of the Avergons is of supreme importance, not only to yourself, but to lesser mortals. Now, as we know, it was your grandfather, the Lion of Avergon, Axel the First, who established his line in the City of Clarel, famously also known as the City of Five Rivers…”

  Why does he keep telling me things I already know? wondered Georgette. She thought vaguely of her grandfather, who had died when she was six. She hadn’t liked him much: he hadn’t been very keen on washing, and he had a fondness for garlic and beans. Her few memories of him were somewhat pungent.

  Georgette had an inconvenient memory, because this did not accord with the stories, illuminated in gold and coloured inks, which she read in her books. They related heroic tales of the Kingdom of Clarel being saved by Brave King Axel, who had cut out the canker of corruption rampant in the former Royal Family and had consolidated his claim to the throne by marrying the daughter of the man he had expediently executed. Georgette believed there were other stories to tell that were both truer and more exciting, but she was clever enough to know that she should not say such things, and so she kept them locked up in her head.

  Except, every now and then, when it would do no harm…

  “There used to be magic,” said Georgette reflectively, interrupting Sibelius’s flow and catching him off guard. “There were witches who could change people into toads. Wouldn’t you like to see that? I would.”

  Sibelius was momentarily speechless with horror. Why did the Princess mention witchcraft, today of all days? Did she know about his other, secret duties? Sometimes he suspected that she did…

  Sibelius’s mustachios, Georgette thought mischievously, looked even more despondent than was their wont.

  He stared at the Princess, his eyes imploring, and spread out his hands in a gesture of appeal. “Princess…” he said, smiling weakly.

  A bell tolled in the distance, and Sibelius jumped. The Princess yawned delicately, covering her mouth with the back of her hand to cover her smile.

  “Oh, lunchtime,” she said. “The Chancellor said I have to charm the Ambassador from the Vorn today.”

  She stood, and Sibelius bowed deeply and backed out of the room, feeling little beads of sweat running down his brow.

  Georgette watched him leave, a crease between her eyebrows. It was true that she would very much like to meet a witch, but her life was so well ordered she was unlikely to meet anything more exciting than rows and rows of drooping mustachios. And no doubt one of them would be attached to a husband.

  She was to meet her latest suitor the next day. He was the King of Awemt, a neighbouring kingdom with which Clarel had been at war since long before Georgette was born. His queen had died the previous year and Georgette’s father now intended to make peace with Awemt, sealing the deal with his daughter.

  Georgette didn’t know how she was going to get out of this one. If she was reading the situation right, her father was plotting to get rid of his own wife, Queen Theoroda, so he could marry again. If he made peace with Awemt, he didn’t need the alliance with Stolt, the mountain kingdom on their southern border, which came with his queen. And after seven years of marriage, Queen Theoroda had failed to present the King with a son. King Axel wanted a lawful male heir more than anything else, but as yet the Princess was his only legitimate child.

  Georgette didn’t see why she couldn’t be Queen of Clarel, but she kept that to herself. Kings always wanted sons.

  I don’t want to be married, she thought. I’d be bored to death.

  She stood up and gave her chair a bad-tempered kick with her rose silk slipper, and briefly hopped about holding her foot in a most unroyal fashion. There was a peremptory knock on the door and, without waiting for her command, which annoyed her, Duchess Albria, her chief lady-in-waiting, entered the room to escort her to lunch.

  Georgette didn’t like the Duchess – her face was too like a hatchet and she had very thin lips – but she took pains to conceal her dislike. She was sure the Duchess spied on her for Queen Theoroda. So she smiled, laid her hand on the Duchess’s arm and paced obediently to the Public Hall to meet the Ambassador from the Vorn.

  Chapter Four

  PIP WOKE SUDDENLY, HIS BLOOD POUNDING. HE HAD thought that somebody was calling his name, that someone … needed him. Someone, somewhere, was asking for his help. But it was only a dream.

  He lay staring at the mottled ceiling of the room, listening to the rise and fall of his sister’s breath. It was already broad daylight: the city had woken up, millions of voices melding into the daily song of the city. A knife grinder had set up his station in the street outside and was calling for trade. Pip listened idly as the man bargained, and then to the shriek of the grinding stone. Maybe that was what had woken him.

  He turned restlessly, thinking over the events of the night before. He had been hiding behind some old wine casks in an alley by the Duck Alehouse, waiting for his chance to pickpocket late drunkards, when he saw two thieves he vaguely knew jumping two men. Pip had already decided not to try these two; although one of them looked like an easy pick, there was something about the way that the other moved, a certain alertness, that warned him off. But when the thieves sprang from the shadows he tensed: there might be something for him after, if he kept his head down.

  One man, the easy pick, had stumbled in the muck of the street onto his hands and knees. In the dim light that spilt out from the Duck, Pip saw a flash of richly embroidered silk underneath his dark cloak. This was no ordinary commoner. Something fell to the ground and, quick as a rat, acting on reflex rather than with any conscious intention, he scooped it up in one fluid motion, diving back behind the wine casks before anybody saw him.

  The four men were too busy brawling to notice him, but now Pip wondered if the fallen man might have spotted him. This made him feel very uneasy. Pip didn’t like being seen and devoted a lot of ingenuity to avoiding it.

  The other man had scrambled up and drawn a nasty-looking dagger, taking his assailant by surprise. These thieves were streetfighters, mean and dirty, but their speciality was jumping rustics who didn’t know how to fight back. They fled.

  Pip watched as the first man brushed himself off, cursing, and patted his pocket with an almost automatic gesture. Then, with growing anxiety, he felt inside it and turned it inside out.

  “It’s gone,” he said, turning to his companion. “The treasure’s gone.”

  “Gone? Are you certain? He couldn’t have taken it – he didn’t have…”

  “It’s not here.”

  “Maybe you dropped it,” said the second man.

  Neither of them spoke like commoners. They had the slight lisp of nobles. They looked at each other, and Pip read their thoughts as clearly as if he had heard them. We’re dead men, they were thinking. Unless we find the treasure.

  With a panic they had not shown when they were attacked, the two men searched the ground around them. Pip waited for his moment and slipped soundlessly out from behind the casks when both of them had their backs turned. He stole out of the alley and started running. He was long gone by the time the men gave up their search.

  All that fuss over a black, ugly thing that looked like the leavings from a butcher? He had expected some marvellous jewel, at least: a diamond, a rare pearl. He felt cheated.

  He folded his arms behind his head and stared at the ceiling, trying to remember a time when life hadn’t felt like a cheat. He had been little more than a toddler when their parents had died of typhus and he and El had been sent to live with an aunt in a small village in the country. Their aunt had taken what little money they had, fed them grudgingly and given them only the barn to sleep in. They were used as servants and beaten if they didn’t properly attend to their duties. In the end they ran away and were drawn into the inexorable gravity of the City of Clarel.

  After nearly starving to death on the street, they were rescued by Amina, the mother of El’s closest friend, who found them lodgings with Missus Pledge. Missus Pledge was o
ld and cranky, but underneath she was kind. They cared for her in her final illness, and when she died she left them her few belongings, including freehold of her apartment, having no one else to leave it to. They kept the faded parchment document that proved it was theirs in a hole in the floor, under a loose plank. It was their most precious possession.

  Pip knew too many worse stories to feel sorry for himself. He and El were lucky: they had somewhere to live, and mostly they had something to eat. And now they had a treasure. Only it didn’t seem like a treasure at all.

  All his instincts told him the box was trouble. Perhaps he ought to throw it in the river and pretend he had never seen it.

  No.

  The word was so clear that for a moment he thought someone else had spoken, and he sat up and looked around the room before he decided it was his own thought.

  No, he decided. It was his and El’s fortune. It was their chance, if only they could figure out why those men thought it was precious. They might never get such a chance again.

  For a while he indulged in a daydream. He would buy a new jacket – green velvet probably – and a cocked hat, and boots with shiny buckles. And he and El would have a slap-up dinner at the Crosseyes.

  “Your good menu, my fine fellow. A leg of ham, with pickles, and a dish of lights, if you please, and your pig sausage. A jug of your finest, and to follow…” – here Pip perused the imaginary menu again, although he could not, for the life of him, read a single word – “…a selection of your best cheeses.”

  He would lift his eyebrow at El. “Will that do, my dear?”

  And El, in a new dress of yellow silk and muslin, in her new shoes with little bows on the toes, with ruby-red earrings dripping from her ears and a ruby necklace at her breast, would giggle and nod, glowing with the fun of it all. And together they would eat the best meal in the house, while the landlord fawned and cringed at their elbows.

  It was an attractive dream, but underneath Pip’s fantasies ran a thick vein of streetwise common sense. The problem was turning his find into money. Pip had no idea how to do this.

  Still, the box troubled him. It was strange, the way it had just opened like that when he asked, and he still had a faint feeling of pins and needles in his fingers. Did that black, shrivelled heart have something to do with magic?

  Even to breathe that word in Clarel could mean death by fire. He’d have to be careful.

  Chapter Five

  GEORGETTE NEVER ENJOYED PRIVATE MEALS IN THE royal apartments, but this occasion was worse than usual. Like most of his subjects, she kept her opinions of her father to herself. Axel was loud, vain and touchy, as perhaps was permissible in a king, but in Georgette’s opinion, he was also a fool. After five heavy courses and countless goblets of wine, he was even louder than usual, and his face was flushed and shiny with sweat.

  She had no fondness for her father, who had never shown his daughter a single sign of affection. At first, optimistic that he would soon have a son, King Axel chose to forget that he had a daughter. Georgette had spent her early years running wild with the servant children in the Old Palace, in what she realized now was delicious freedom. She had shared their lice and fleas and childhood illnesses, their games and secrets and colourful folklore.

  When she turned twelve, her father brought her to Clarel Palace to be educated as a proper princess. She had been heartbroken, but after initial rebellion she had bowed her head to the inevitable. She was never beaten, but transgressions resulted in her being locked in a totally dark room alone for hours on end or, worse, an interview with her father, of whom she was frankly terrified. It was said that King Axel II took after his father, only more so, which some brave souls translated as meaning that he had inherited all his father’s bad traits and none of the good.

  A less intelligent girl might have continued her rebellions despite all the punishments, and eventually been broken altogether. But Georgette was surrounded by broken women, and she took careful note. She smiled at the foppish courtiers who prinked to gain her attention, and performed her endless and dull royal duties with the appearance of goodwill and dutiful obedience. She was especially careful to gain the good opinion of such powerful figures as Cardinal Lamir. Like everyone else, although she seldom admitted it even to herself, she was afraid of him.

  Georgette knew that Queen Theoroda hated her. The Princess’s elevation to heir to the throne meant that the King no longer hoped for a son. It had taken a couple of years for Georgette to work out why the Queen loathed her so much, and it didn’t make her like the Queen any more when she did. But at least it was understandable.

  By her fifteenth year Princess Georgette had been transformed from a wild and rebellious tomboy to a poised and accomplished young beauty. She moved with perfect bearing and impeccable etiquette, and she had a good general understanding of the official histories, heraldries, poetry, arts and major languages of Continentia, as well as a smattering of knowledge of such things as mathematics, astronomy and alchemy. Her sophisticated conversation and charm astounded visiting dignitaries, who waxed eloquently on her accomplishments when they made their reports to their kings or doges or dukes or bishops.

  The only freedom Georgette insisted upon – granted as a sentimental indulgence after stubborn application, because of her otherwise irreproachable behaviour – was to visit privately with her old nurse, Amina. If Georgette loved anyone, it was Amina.

  Over the years, the King had revised his opinion of Georgette. He showed her off as the jewel of his kingdom and plotted her most advantageous marriage. Georgette was clever at heading off these alliances with diplomatically phrased observations on how they might dim the glory of Clarel and weaken its power. And the King, who was a jealous man, had so far been happy to accede to her arguments, especially as they were so artfully turned that they seemed to him to be his own ideas and not Georgette’s.

  This time, though, her usual anti-marriage tactics weren’t working. When she persisted, her father had thrown one of his rages and told her, spittle flying everywhere, that if she didn’t marry King Oswald he would have her beheaded as a traitor.

  Georgette stole a furtive glance at King Oswald, who was sitting in the place of honour next to Axel. The two men were a study in contrast. Oswald was thin and dark-haired and, she guessed, about fifteen years older than she was. He dressed soberly for a king, preferring the chaste luxury of pearls and diamonds over the showy rubies and emeralds favoured by her father. He ate sparingly and said little, limiting himself to polite nods and murmured courtesies.

  If that were all, Georgette might have resigned herself to the doom of marriage. If she really had to get married, a sober, reserved man was a better bet than the spoilt, vain princelings she had met so far. But that wasn’t all.

  When they had been formally introduced, King Oswald’s hand had felt like parchment, as dry and cold as the kiss he had dropped on her fingers. Unable to contain her curiosity, she flicked up a glance and caught his eye, before her gaze dropped modestly to her feet.

  In that moment, for no reason that she understood, her whole body flooded with terror. She was exactly as afraid as if he had drawn a knife and held it to her throat. She suddenly remembered her dream, her mother’s icy hand grasping her arm. She could still feel where the Queen’s fingers had gripped her, as if she were trying to save her daughter from drowning.

  It took a long time for the trembling in her body to subside, and she was quiet enough during the meal for the Cardinal to remark on it.

  “It’s very unfortunate, but I have a migraine,” she said, smiling wanly.

  “Your royal admirer might think you have taken him in aversion,” said the Cardinal.

  “Oh no!” said Georgette lightly. “Why would I do that?”

  She pretended to concentrate on her meal, trying to trace the origin of her fear of King Oswald. On the surface it seemed completely reasonless. All nobles, in Georgette’s opinion, were cruel, and on the surface King Oswald seemed no worse than any
other. Until you looked into his eyes. The word that popped into her head was … empty. What did that mean? Why should that be frightening?

  Empty, without soul. As if he were the living dead.

  She pushed away the thought and attempted to be more like her usual lively self, but every time she looked at King Oswald she felt a sick thrill of terror. The dozens of candelabra threw a bright glare across the over-decorated room, which became hotter and stuffier every moment, and a flea had got into her corset and was biting her. It took all her willpower not to scratch or wriggle.

  Maybe, thought Georgette, as the ninth and final course was being laid on the table, I don’t want to be a princess any more.

  It wasn’t a new notion. Often, when she had been locked in a dark cellar for rudeness to a palace noble or some other minor disobedience, she had wished passionately that she was unimportant enough to do anything she wanted, like the children she had played with in the Old Palace. The illegitimate sons of the King had more freedom and power than she did.

  But deep inside Georgette hoped that, if she were clever enough, if she were discreet enough, if she were patient enough, one day she would be Queen of Clarel. So she stuck it out.

  She stared down at her violet syllabub, which was curdling in the heat. She had the strangest feeling of vertigo, as if an abyss were opening beneath her. For the past few years she had studied the court and read histories voraciously, planning how she could take power in her own right and change everything for the better. But if she were forced into this marriage, she would never be a proper queen. She would be taken to a country she didn’t know, to live with a man who terrified her. She didn’t have a choice. She had never had any choice.

  If Georgette weren’t a princess, she wouldn’t have silk sheets or fancy dresses, and nobody would bow to her. She wouldn’t have to talk to simpering courtiers or listen to pointless gossip, or spend hours watching dull ceremonial processions with her wired lace collar sticking into her neck.