“There always are, it seems. If the war isn’t over and I’m not home. If we’re not bombed to smithereens by then.”
“If Rudyard still lets me sneak out of Stour. If you haven’t decided to claim my life.”
They were nearing Weasel Rue. The nestled farmhouse somehow managed to look cozy and inviting even without a candle in the window or a light under the door crack. Well blacked out, Phil thought with satisfaction. She stopped at the rustic post and rail fence that nominally separated the farmhouse grounds from the farming acres proper.
Foolish to get attached to a place, she thought, looking at the unlovely, snaking house. It wasn’t home, it was only where she happened to live. Or if it was home, it was because Fee was there. Just as foolish to get attached to people. Phil had made such good friends here, though. She wished more than anything that the war would end and she could return to her normal life in London, and yet...How perverse of me to almost be glad if it lasts just a little while longer.
“Arden, are we friends?” she asked suddenly.
She had turned and was leaning her elbows back on the fence, hips canted forward, searching his face.
This is the moment, he thought. Now is when I decide if I will follow Thomas’s unwise path, or be sensible. My only purpose is to help the Essence flow through the world. Love has proven itself a worthless thing, and the fact that a beautiful, passionate, generally insufferable girl is gazing up at me in the darkness, mere inches away, is no reason at all why I should touch that preposterous red hair of hers.
He did touch it, but only because that perpetually stray lock was about to go in her eye, and it was annoying him. There, now that it was safely tucked behind her ear, there was certainly no reason why his hand should linger on her cheek.
Though, somehow, it did.
“I didn’t think it would be possible,” he said, letting his fingers slide along the strong line of her jaw, while his thumb found eternal solace in the dimple of her chin.
“Most things are possible.”
Not this, though, Arden told himself, even as his thumb, restless after all, touched her parted lips . . .
The front door of Weasel Rue opened, and the bright light streaming from within drew shadows from their bodies, entwined, for an instant, then abruptly separate.
Damn, each thought.
The person in the doorway couldn’t see clearly out into the night. “Phil, is that you?” a familiar voice called.
Silhouetted against the cheerful farmhouse light stood Hector, manly in full uniform, grinning like a schoolboy.
“Who is that?” Arden asked, trying and failing to keep the jealousy out of his voice.
“He’s my...brother,” she said, which was true enough. “I should go.” She tore herself away, the phantom of Arden’s touch still on her lips. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” he promised.
She ran off, and he lingered at the fence watching her, glad beyond belief that he’d made the unwise choice after all. Tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow!
With an indulgent grin, happy for her happiness, Arden watched Phil’s brother race out to meet her...catch her up in his arms and whirl her around...kiss her...kiss her again, hard and lingering on the lips he’d only this very moment decided were his forever.
I was right, he thought bitterly, turning away. Love is a lie.
Phil, surprised, confused, and too polite to do what she really wanted to do, which was to shove Hector away and explain in a word that she had no desire to marry him, stayed in his arms because she couldn’t immediately bring herself to crush someone she did, sincerely, love. Finally her lack of response gave him his first hint, and when he pulled away, still smiling, more tentatively now, her face told him the rest, and his smile trembled and collapsed.
“I got two days of ‘passionate leave,’” he said, drawing himself up and forcing himself, as the army had taught him, to be indifferent and brave and oh so very English. “I thought I’d surprise you.”
“You did! I’m so...of course I’m so happy to see you, darling.” He winced at the word. “Come inside and tell me absolutely everything. Only...you go in, I’ll be there in a jiffy.” She sneaked a look over her shoulder into the night. Had Arden seen? She had to explain.
Hector allowed himself to be guided into the house, and Phil sprinted back to the fence. “Arden!” she called in a hoarse whisper. But he was gone.
She started to run after him but caught herself. She couldn’t treat Hector like that. Despite their misunderstanding, he was still, as she’d told Arden, her brother, her own dear brother home on fleeting leave, and she had to spend every possible moment with him. Arden would surely understand. Perhaps, in the shadows, he had not seen that unbrotherly kiss. Tomorrow, he’d said. She caught her breath, the possibilities tingling through her body. Tonight she belonged to Hector, as his loving sister. But tomorrow! Oh, tomorrow!
Arden stormed into Stour with such ferocity that the little prentice who’d been set to watch for him trembled with dread as he relayed his message: Report to Headmaster Rudyard immediately.
“Tell him I’ll see him in the morning,” Arden snapped, and the little prentice burst into tears.
“Please, master, if you don’t go, he’ll think I didn’t do my job, and he’ll—”
“Oh, very well,” he said, sweeping majestically past the sniveling child. He wanted to be alone, to hit something, to curse something, to set the world ablaze with the Essence and burn out the shameful feelings that—even now, even knowing her perfidy—ravaged his breast.
“I know what you’re up to,” Headmaster Rudyard said as soon as Arden entered his office.
For a moment he thought this must mean his uncontrollable passion for Phil, and with an angry flush rising to his cheeks, he was about to tell the Headmaster it was none of his damned business, and get the fight he was looking for. But Rudyard forestalled him.
“The secret meetings, training to use the Essence for violence. Did you really think you could hide it from me, Arden? Do you really believe I don’t know everything that goes on in the bounds of Stour?”
(Not everything, Rudyard admitted to himself. Not everything, Arden thought with relief.)
“By rights I should call the college into full conclave now and see you and your cohorts condemned for this gross act of rebellion.”
“The others aren’t at fault. I ordered them, coerced them, threatened them—”
Rudyard held up his hand, and to Arden’s amazement, his lips twitched in the faintest smile. “I know it doesn’t take much to coerce a young man to action when his aged superiors seem to be doing nothing. I was your age, too, once.” The mirth vanished. “In another time, we would not be having this conversation. You would simply be drained before your peers.”
“Or in secret.”
“Yes, if it was for the good of the college. But I need you. You above all. You, who came so close to not returning to the fold.”
“You knew!”
Rudyard nodded. “But you did come back. The one who was sent to dispatch you reported that you’d abandoned the girl and were more than willing to return, after all. More than any other man here, you’ve shown that you can resist temptation, however pressing. And now, though what you’re doing is in defiance of all our laws, a capital offense, I know you do it with an honest heart. You would die for the college. You would die for the Essence. Very likely, you will die for the Essence.”
Arden’s red-hot anger turned to ice.
“We are attacked on two fronts, Arden—by an enemy from without, and one from within. The Dresden magicians have returned to Stour.”
“Impossible! We’ve...I’ve warded the place more heavily. I would have known.”
“You are a child in cunning, compared to them. With their corruption of the Essence, they are capable of things we’re not even aware of yet. They have an accomplice inside Stour who is manipulating the protection we’ve established, making a way for them to enter undetected.”
�
��Then how do you know they’ve been here?”
“Even with help, they can only stay a few moments before being detected. One, at least, has managed to come here repeatedly.”
“If they’re here, why haven’t they attacked?”
“They are attacking. They’re attacking the minds of our magicians.”
Aghast, Arden asked, “They can turn a man’s mind against his will?”
Not for the first time, Rudyard wondered if it had been a mistake keeping the magicians fundamentally innocent all these hundreds of years. To be so ignorant of human nature...And yet their methods had kept the world safe and whole, so far. Who was he to question the old ways? And even among the sheltered men, there was always one who was a bit more worldly, a bit cannier, balancing right on the knife-edge of tractability. Rudyard had been such a man in his youth, and Arden was, in many ways, another. Had things gone otherwise, Arden might have one day succeeded him.
“They are not turning our magicians’ minds against their will. They are telling suggestible men things they like to hear, about being special, and worthy, and powerful. What man does not want to be told he is of the master race?”
“But they know it already. What can the Dresdeners say that will sway them? Everyone here knows his duty. No one would betray the Essence. They all know what would happen to the earth.”
“No doubt the Dresdeners are vowing they’ll continue the Exaltation and all of our work and promising them more besides.”
“What could they be promising? What could a magician possibly want that he couldn’t conjure for himself with the Essence?”
“That is for you to find out. You must uncover the traitors, and you must find out what the Dresden invaders are planning.”
“But how?” He thought he’d been so vigilant, yet one of the enemy had still gotten through. What more could he do?
“One discovers a traitor by becoming a traitor himself.”
“No!”
“No one but you can do this task. You’re known to be rebellious, and the threat of death already hangs over your head—a fine motivation for betrayal.”
“Everyone knows I’m loyal.”
“To the Essence, yes, but you will make them believe your loyalty to the college is fading. Let it be known, and she will come to you.”
“She?”
“I believe the woman who visited the journeymen shortly after the Kommandant came is the one infiltrating the college now. I don’t know how many have fallen under her sway, but if it continues, we may be faced with a war from within. Only you can stop it.”
“Why not you, or Felton, or—”
“They say the Dresdener is very lovely, and young, with hair the color of the sun.”
“Again, why me?”
Rudyard laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “You have faults, Arden, but vanity is not among them. When you return to your room, look at yourself in the mirror, and you will see why you must be the opponent of a beautiful woman. You will seduce her. You will let her believe you are devoted to her. You, who have had such success in the world of love, will do this with ease.”
“Success?” he asked weakly.
“You seem to inspire feminine devotion. That singer you had in London was so mad for you, she killed herself when you left her.”
A deep chill settled into Arden’s bones, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.
“Are you surprised? According to the one I’d set to watch you, she adored you. Jumped off a roof. And those Albion girls are always making eyes at you. The fierce one pretends not to, but the pretty, soft one, don’t you see how she beams at you? You have a way with women, Arden. Time to put it to use for the good of the college.”
You stupid old man, Arden longed to say. Fee, love him? Couldn’t Rudyard see that she was simply joyously happy, that because she loved Thomas, she loved the world? And Phil—treacherous minx—no, he was being too hard on her. She never said she loved me, never gave me reason to believe she did. There was no faith betrayed.
Ah, but Ruby! All at once his injured, embittered heart melted. The thought of her supple soft limbs flung broken on the pavement, of that pert, sweet face shattered, dead...Had that been his fault? He hadn’t meant to hurt her, exactly, not like that, only to make her feel. Poor Ruby. For the first time he remembered her without rancor, the way she’d climb and twine and press herself to him like an eager little capuchin, the old melancholy songs she’d sing after lovemaking—“Barbara Allen”; “My Lodging It Is on the Cold Ground”; “Early One Morning” . . .
His eyes grew heavy, and he blinked and looked away. It was as well Phil had not stayed in his arms, as well that she did not love him, or pretend to. Because even if she did love me, he thought, I’d still have to seduce this Dresden magician with her sunshine hair. Now, it will be easy. I will be like Ruby was and make love without feeling love. No, I will certainly never feel love.
“Learn their plans, Arden,” the Headmaster went on. “They want to take over the college—I must know how! I don’t know who the traitor is yet, but it would be wise to get closer to some of the journeymen she first approached, those who have begun to parrot her sacrilege and seemed to repent almost at once. Bergen was one, and Lightbody, and Jasper, though he’s so good-natured and stupid, he always agrees with whoever’s nearest. I heard him concur with a magpie, once.”
Chapter 16
Hector stayed until noon, putting on a good face the whole while, such a very good face that Phil was caught off guard when, just before catching a ride with a corporal friend returning from Brighton, he pulled Phil aside.
“I know things are topsy-turvy. Us, and the world. You don’t have to decide anything now. I know, you’ve decided already. Your lips told me, even without words. But it’s a woman’s privilege to change her mind, right? I just want you to know that, if you change yours, I won’t say a word of reproach, only ‘yes.’ I love you, Phil. Always have, always will. I want you to be my wife, but if you won’t be that, you’ll still be my friend. Like it or not, eh?”
The news about Stan had certainly softened the blow of rejection. After a hasty conference, the sisters had decided to stay as far away from the truth as possible. They told him that Stan had been found, insensible, and taken to a country sanitarium where, the doctors were hopeful, he might regain his memory in a year’s time.
“It’s enough,” Hector said, giving Phil a brotherly peck on the forehead. “I suppose two miracles would be asking a bit much of the cosmos.”
As soon as he’d gone, Phil ran to Stour, but Arden was nowhere to be found, and she held her classes on the field as usual, bludgeoning her students without mercy, catching a tap on the cheek from the instantly contrite Rapp on one of the frequent occasions when she glanced hopefully over her shoulder toward the castle.
He came, as before, when the training was nearly over. He would have done his utmost to avoid her, but Rudyard had counseled him to keep to his former patterns as much as possible, so as not to arouse suspicion.
When she spied him at last, she lit on him like a hawk to her master. The words tumbled out, and she scarcely knew if she was coherent. “He is my brother. Stan’s brother anyway. I mean...not quite that, but they came to the Hall of Delusion together, and he’s lived with my family and we taught him, and it seemed quite natural for a time that we should marry one day, and I never really thought about it, but when I did think about it, I knew I wouldn’t, and like Fee always says, you don’t have to think about love, do you?”
She looked up at him expectantly.
“I don’t think about it at all,” he said, looking anywhere but at her.
“Oh!” she gasped, thinking he meant one thing, and then said, “Oh . . .” realizing that perhaps he meant something else entirely.
But no—last night, when his large sun-browned hand had been on her face, Phil knew, for a fleeting instant, what Fee had known every moment of her life since finding Thomas. He felt it, too, of that she was sure.
I deserve his coldness, she thought miserably, because I didn’t know my own mind when I should have. I know it now, Arden. Look at me!
But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Even from the periphery of his vision, her face, her entire body were filled with such thrilling anticipation that if he looked, he would be lost.
Confused and hurt, she sat beside him and turned her attention to the last sparring magicians taking final playful jabs at each other as they drifted back to Stour in preparation for the evening’s Exaltation.
“Coming, Arden?” the sweaty Master Felton asked, rather sloppily as he sucked on his bruised knuckles. “We only have half an hour or so until the Exaltation. Oh! I forgot you’re forbidden. Forgive me.” He stammered apologies until he was out of earshot.
Phil and Arden watched bats fill the gloaming as they fattened for their winter sleep. Night insects indulging in their last hurrah droned from the hedgerows. Phil pulled her sweater tighter across her chest against the crisping air, and Arden fought the urge to put an arm around her. I’ve made up my mind, he thought. Why am I still here? He pretended to adjust his jacket and in the process inched closer.
This is an interlude, the last one, he told himself. In just a moment, his work would begin in earnest. Already, he’d made contact with the traitor. It had been ridiculously easy—the journeyman was so eager to share what he was sure was the perfect truth, so flattered when, after hearing murmurs of heresy from Arden, the young master had listened to his ideas, had frowned, then nodded.
Tonight, when nearly all the rest of the college was at the Exaltation, Arden would commit his first traitorous act. “You may have to do terrible things,” Rudyard had warned him. “Things that will make you despise yourself. When this is done, you may be so despoiled in spirit as to be unworthy of the Essence, and if that is so, I promise, I will drain you myself. Or it may be that the Dresdeners will kill you. Or if you are the man I take you for, you may well do away with yourself when it is over and done with. There is no shame in the peace of death, once you have done your duty.”
Delusion Page 18
