The Threads of Magic

by Alison Croggon

  She blamed Princess Georgette. She had never trusted that girl, not ever. She was sly enough to have crept out through the palace disguised as a servant or some such, fooling everybody. And everyone knew that Lady Agathe had the brains of a pigeon. It would take nothing to deceive her.

  “I agree,” said the Duchess. “I cannot think of any other way that Princess Georgette could have vanished so completely, without anyone noticing.” She drew a shuddering breath and added ominously, “A great evil is afoot in this palace.”

  She crossed her scrawny chest and squared her shoulders. As senior lady-in-waiting, it was her unpleasant duty to tell the King the terrible news. She imagined his response and shuddered. Perhaps, she reflected, it would be wiser to get the ordeal over as quickly as possible.

  She hurried through the palace to the King’s chambers, flustered and upset, foreseeing disaster for herself and her family unless she could absolve herself from blame. The King was still dressing, but when she said it was an emergency she was permitted into his room.

  He was every bit as angry as she had expected. She braced herself against his rage, blinking fast.

  “Perhaps, sire, the Princess disguised herself as a servant,” said one of his lackeys, once the first gust passed. “She may be suffering from pre-nuptial nerves, as delicate females are known to do.”

  “Delicate female? Deceitful, lying little hussy, more like,” growled the King. “You can’t trust the female sex. You never know what’s going on inside those heads.”

  The Duchess decided it was time to divert his rage. “We very much fear she has been taken away by supernatural means,” said the Duchess. She didn’t dare to say the word “witch” in the King’s presence. “Several guards told us that something strange happened in the palace last night. As if it were put under an evil spell.”

  “Witchcraft?” The King’s eyebrows bristled. “Witchcraft in my kingdom? In this very palace?”

  “She has vanished without trace, sire. It seems like the only explanation.”

  “Hmmm.” The King began to look thoughtful. Like his father, he was an unimaginative, pragmatic man, and he didn’t really believe in witches. Axel I had kept the Office for Witchcraft Extermination going after he took power, because it was useful: its assassins were skilful at spycraft and were deadly. Axel II himself had used the office to get rid of quite a few troublesome peasants. In this case, blaming witchcraft might be a handy way of avoiding diplomatic repercussions with Awemt.

  He called to mind Georgette’s disobedience when she first arrived at the palace. He had honestly thought that the Princess was reformed. She had appeared so biddable, her youthful rebellions tamed to a charming liveliness, and she had always displayed a proper meekness when the occasion required. But even so, there was always something he had never quite liked, a sense that she kept her own counsel and had her own plans. She was too clever for a mere girl.

  For a moment, with a pang of apprehension, he had a vision of the Princess dressed in silver armour, a sword raised, leading an army against the palace. What army? The thought was ridiculous.

  He was personally almost sure the Princess had left the palace willingly, but perhaps it would be more politic to pretend that she had been abducted. Traitress or no, the palace needed the Princess back. The alliance between Clarel and Awemt could still go ahead without the marriage, but King Oswald would consider an absconding bride a mortal insult.

  The important thing was to ensure that Oswald punished the person who deserved it, Princess Georgette, and not the Kingdom of Clarel. When he married her, he could make her as miserable as he liked.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  A BRISK BREEZE SWEPT THE LAST STORM CLOUDS from the sky and then died down, its task completed. On the eastern horizon an amber glow presaged the coming dawn. High above, stars twinkled in a deep azure field as if they had been newly washed.

  Across the city of Clarel, roosters fluffed their feathers, threw out their chests and began their morning announcements. It was going to be a beautiful Midsummer Day.

  In the Weavers’ Quarter, it was the best day of the year. Everyone prepared for weeks: homes were polished until they sparkled and everyone practised their steps for the midsummer dances that wound through the streets, blessing all the houses. Bakers worked from midnight, kneading the traditional sweet pastries and breads. The almond bonbons that were distributed to all the children of Clarel had been long prepared, and were stacked in muslin bags tied up with yellow ribbons.

  But this year there would be no festival.

  In the small hours, under cover of darkness, the Cardinal’s soldiers set up roadblocks on all the major streets. Then hundreds of them marched into the Weavers’ Quarter, their chain mail clinking ominously, and stationed themselves in the squares.

  Although the soldiers thought the quarter was asleep, many eyes watched them arrive. Rats watched from the gutters, dogs barked in the workshop yards, cats hissed and leapt onto walls, their hackles bristling. Some of those animals weren’t what they appeared to be.

  The raids began just before dawn. The Eradians weren’t unprepared. Amina had sent word of her arrest to her sister Zoa the night before, and within an hour the news had reached every home in the Weavers’ Quarter. The senior members of the Weavers’ Guild had held a midnight meeting.

  Everyone was alarmed that such a respected citizen as Amina Bemare had been arrested. It had been at least a hundred years since any Eradian had been accused of witchcraft. Every family had stories of the bad old days, when the Weavers’ Quarter had suffered under regular persecutions, and evil memories die hard.

  Not many people slept that night. Zoa, who had a sharp nose for trouble, advised that all children be sent elsewhere in the city. In the quiet hours before the soldiers arrived, carts rumbled all over Clarel, taking sleepy children to safe houses for surprise visits. Precious possessions were hidden in secret caches and witches were posted to every street in the Weavers’ Quarter, to provide as much protection as possible. Witches could calm people down and ensure that people weren’t hurt. And in the last resort, they could fight.

  The first houses to be hit were, as everyone had suspected, those belonging to the Bemare family. The soldiers were greeted by outraged citizens, already washed and dressed for the day. They were bundled at swordpoint into closed wagons and sent to the Office for Witchcraft Extermination, and then their houses were searched and pillaged by the soldiers. Once all the Bemare houses were dealt with, the troops moved on to the rest of the Weavers’ Quarter, working methodically, street by street.

  It didn’t occur to the soldiers until much later that it was strange that they found no children.

  Even the most pessimistic of the guild hadn’t expected that the raids would spread beyond the Bemares. As the sun rose higher and the raids spread, anger grew. In some streets, punches were thrown. One old man was beaten up badly by soldiers, prompting the entire crowd to turn on the troops despite the best calming spells the witch could muster.

  As the day broadened, the people of Clarel, expecting the usual midsummer festivities, began to crowd along the blocked streets. When they were stopped, they demanded to know why they were being prevented from entering the Weavers’ Quarter. Criers announced that it was because the Eradians had used witchcraft to kidnap Princess Georgette.

  It didn’t go down well. Most people scoffed openly. One party of soldiers was pelted with eggs by disappointed citizens.

  Meanwhile, hundreds of people were being delivered to the Office for Witchcraft Extermination. There were far too many to be held in the dungeons, and harassed officials were forced to let many of them go. A crowd began to gather outside Clarel Palace, shouting for the King to stop the raids. Soldiers tried to turn them away, but the crowd kept swelling.

  The Cardinal stood at his window and watched the rabble, clouds gathering on his brow. The palace might be suspicious of the Weavers’ Quarter, but everyone in Clarel knew the Eradians. They worked with the
m, or they were their neighbours. And everyone wanted to get jobs with the Weavers’ Guild because they paid on time, and much more generously than the nobles.

  If Lamir had remembered that today was the Midsummer Festival, he might have delayed these raids. But he hadn’t even thought about it, because it was an event attended only by the city’s commoners. No nobles celebrated Midsummer Day, and therefore it was of no importance. He had forgotten, if he ever knew, that for most ordinary people in Clarel, the Midsummer Festival in the Weavers’ Quarter was the high point of the year.

  The mood in the city was turning ugly.

  The Cardinal scratched his chin, pondering. Perhaps, after all, this unrest could be turned to his own advantage. Maybe the King could be toppled off his throne without the Cardinal having to lift a finger.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  GEORGETTE LIKED TO THINK THAT SHE WASN’T conceited. For years she had despised her father’s touchy pride, and she had vowed that when she was Queen, she would never be like him. It was humbling to discover that she was, after all, not above the vice of vanity.

  For years, ever since she had left the Old Palace, she had been treated as a princess, which meant that, for good and ill, she was always the centre of attention. When she walked through the palace, everyone, even the Cardinal, bowed or curtsied. If she spoke, people listened (or at least, they pretended to). She had always held a secret contempt for court protocols, but now that nobody observed them, she felt offended.

  She woke up after retreating in the small hours, limp with exhaustion, to the dormitory that extended from the back of the council pavilion. She was almost certain that the tent expanded as more people entered it, but if it did, she never saw the transitions. Sibelius was still fast asleep, snoring under a purple coverlet. After Missus Pledge’s will had been decoded he had gone into some kind of daze, and Missus Clay had given him a warm drink that Georgette was sure contained some kind of sleeping potion. In any case, he had gone straight to bed, and hadn’t stirred since.

  According to Georgette’s pocket watch, it was a quarter past eleven. In the Undercroft, she had no way of telling whether it was day or night, and she seemed to have lost her sense of time. She slipped out of the dormitory into the main room of the tent to find that it was a hive of activity.

  She then discovered that nobody can ignore people as well as witches. They can ignore people so hard that it’s like they’re invisible. (In extreme cases, they actually do become invisible, but that’s another issue.) She sat on a chair at the edge of the tent and unrolled the rags from her hair, keeping her ears open. She thought of waking up Sibelius just to have someone to talk to, and then decided that would be too humiliating. She was a princess; she didn’t need company.

  Being unimportant was a novel sensation. For one thing, it was really dull. Nobody had even thanked her for being right about Sibelius d’Artan and tracking down the spell. When she’d asked Amiable what was happening, Amiable had simply answered that it was nothing that concerned princesses, and strolled away. Even Helios, the nicest person on the Witches’ Council, was too busy running around organizing people to take much notice of her. He said vaguely that there had been raids and that people had been injured and at least one person had been killed.

  “Where?” asked Georgette.

  “The Weavers’ Quarter, but it’s spreading. It’s going to be civil war out there…”

  Georgette’s ears pricked up. “Maybe I can help,” she said. “I mean…”

  “I think the most important thing you can do is to remain here, where the Spectres can’t find you,” said Helios. “Excuse me…” He hurried off, and Georgette watched him talking animatedly to a dog that had entered the tent. A dog was more important than she was?

  She was ashamed of that thought, but it didn’t stop her thinking it.

  So, there was some kind of rebellion happening in the City of Clarel? She sat on a stool, out of the way, and kept her ears open as strangers arrived and gave reports.

  She had one single, overwhelming conviction: she, Princess Georgette, ought to be leading any rebellion. This was her chance to actually take over the palace and become Queen in her own right. The people would follow her for certain: they were always excited to see her when she made public appearances. Her grandfather had led a revolt that deposed the Old Royals. Why couldn’t she do the same thing?

  When Missus Clay plumped down at the central table to grab a quick bite of bread and honey, Georgette took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and politely asked if she could sit next to her. Missus Clay licked a drip of honey from her hand. “If you wish, my dear,” she said. “Do you want some bread?”

  Georgette wasn’t hungry, so she shook her head. “I just wanted to ask what I can do to help the revolt,” she said.

  Missus Clay looked Georgette up and down. “I know it’s hard for you, being used to being at the centre of royal affairs and so on,” she said. She spoke quite kindly. “At the moment, there’s nothing for you to do, except make sure that you keep out of the way of Spectres. That’s the most important thing of all.”

  “But … I could really help with the rebellion.” Georgette tried to keep the frustration out of her voice, but even she could hear it. “It’s ridiculous just to hide here when I could be out, you know…”

  “On a white horse leading the charge, like your grandfather in all the paintings?” Missus Clay’s gaze was discomfitingly sharp. “I can tell you for a fact there was no white horse. He didn’t even have a sword. Your grandfather just went into the palace with an axe and a lot of angry people and chopped off the King’s head.”

  Georgette blushed. “No, I wasn’t thinking that. But surely if a princess of the blood stepped forwards and said…”

  “See, there’s the problem,” said Missus Clay. “All this stuff about blood. It’s all very well, Axel the Blacksmith chopping off people’s heads, but it’s not like it actually stopped the Spectres, did it? And after he took over, things were no better for witches than they were before.” She took out a huge yellow handkerchief and dabbed her mouth. “We learned never to trust princes. Or princesses, for that matter.”

  “You can trust me,” said Georgette hotly. “I’d never betray Amina.”

  Again that sharp look. “Maybe,” said Missus Clay. “Maybe we could trust you now. But could we trust you in a year’s time? In five years’ time? That’s the real question.”

  “Why would I change?” Georgette tried to keep her voice reasonable. “Especially if the witches helped me. That would be breaking my word.”

  Missus Clay briskly brushed the crumbs off the table and stood up. “My dear, I don’t want to be harsh. But we know through bitter experience that the word of a royal isn’t worth the air it stains.”

  “Then why bother to take me from the palace? Why bring me here?”

  “That was Amina’s notion, my dear. She was right, because it would be bad if you married Oswald. But it does leave us with the puzzle of what to do with you in the meantime…”

  “But…” Georgette started to say, and then she bit her lip and stared down at her hands. She felt like crying.

  All she had ever been was something that nobody knew what to do with. For her father, she was a nuisance – at best a bargaining chip. The Queen hated her, because the Princess held a rival court. For Amina, she had just been a burden, a task that the palace had told her to do. She had always thought that Amina loved her, or at least liked her, but now she wasn’t even sure of that.

  Nobody wanted her. Nobody needed her.

  Missus Clay took her hand and squeezed it. “Don’t think I don’t feel for you,” she said. “I know it’s hard and strange for you here, girl, but things are very dangerous. I think you’ll manage fine with us, once you get used to it. But right now we have Spectres to deal with, and then we need to get rid of the royals, because that’s where the rot begins. I can tell you have a good heart, that’s why I’m straight with you. Now, I’ve got things to d
o.”

  Georgette watched Missus Clay walk off. She felt a bit stunned.

  In her wildest dreams, she hadn’t even imagined that the witches might want to get rid of royalty altogether. How could you have a kingdom without a monarch? Who would be in charge? There had to be someone in charge. And you couldn’t have witches running things. All they did was argue with each other.

  The witches didn’t know they needed her, yet. But they did.

  Georgette went back to her out-of-the-way stool and brooded deeply. Since nobody was going to help her, she figured that she would have to help herself. She tied her hair up and put on her cap.

  If she remained down here, she was only a pawn in somebody else’s game. It was no different to being stuck in the palace. So she should just leave. Since everybody was ignoring her, maybe she could creep out without anybody noticing. She wasn’t wearing a princess dress, so once she was out of the tent she would look like anybody else.

  In all the histories she had read, rebellions always had an inspiring figurehead. She should be that inspiring figurehead. She had trained her whole life for it. The first thing, she thought, was to find the leaders of the rebellion. She would have to avoid the witches, because they would bring her back here. She had to make the witches see how they needed her.

  She listened to the conversations going on around her and tried to piece together the information she overheard. The Undercroft entrance was near the Furrier’s Bridge. She summoned to memory the city maps she had studied in the palace library. If she crossed the bridge, she would be very near the Weavers’ Quarter, which was where the main rebellion was happening. She could ask her way, if she got lost.

  She yawned and stood up. Helios was passing and glanced at her.