by Susan Forest
“And our own men were wounded. The need to care for wounded can cripple an army more than losses through death. Whose side are you on?”
The small-eyed man pierced him with his stare.
“Do you work for Artem?”
Meg stared at the little man. A spy?
“No!”
“Then explain yourself,” Sulwyn said out of turn.
Orville glared at him.
“King Gramaret is waiting,” Sulwyn said testily.
“There’s nothing for explain,” Orville said. “I have no love for kings. Artem, Prime Minister of Aadi—who is in real, a dictator—or any other.”
“Or King Dwyn. Is that what you imply?” Sulwyn pressed. Colm put a hand on his arm, and Sulwyn pulled it away. Sulwyn did not usually let drink get the better of him, and Meg wondered what made today different.
“I have been filled of rich men, call themselves kings, steal from the poor and make life hard for people they should rule,” Orville said in disgust. “You cannot pay me to work for a king. Any king.” He turned to Dwyn. “I hear you are different. You hold up independent people who rule themself.”
“Then why are you blowing up my men?” The king sat back in his camp chair.
“The thinking, the numbers, on the steam catapult is wrong. What happen yesterday is a mistake. It can be more correct. More Arcan soldier was killed or hurt than uprisers. Artem runs.”
“Not thanks to you,” Sulwyn pushed, and Meg wished he would return to his tent to sleep.
Orville raised a brow. “Yes. Thanks to me. Listen. You know nothing. This is small, little country—”
“Where you choose to live,” Sulwyn blustered. He refilled his tankard.
“It suit me, yes. Now.”
The king scrutinized him. His eyes narrowed. “You’re a fugitive.”
The quick turn of Orville’s head. The king’s words had landed true.
“They’re looking for you in Aadi?” Sulwyn cried.
The fat man’s eyes shifted from one to the other.
“What did you do?” Sulwyn crowed. “Murder?”
“Murder? No!” A small smile crept over Orville’s lips. “Theft.”
Everyone at the table stared.
“Money. Five very small steam toys, and molds to make steam engine parts.” He shook his head wryly. “It was toys, put me into the most big trouble.”
Gold, Meg could understand, but—
“Toys?” Dwyn asked.
Orville gave him a patronizing look. “There are more countries, not only Aadi, down there. Below your cliff, Sieur. Many want beauty of steam. Power of steam.”
The king’s voice took on a dangerous tone. “Explain what this rube doesn’t understand.”
Orville let out a breath. “I am engineer. With things in my head and some small example, I am...” He shrugged. “Sell secrets to enemies of Aadi.”
“You’re...a spy?” Sulwyn spluttered. Meg couldn’t think of a more unlikely man. “But not for Artem.”
“And?” Dwyn pressed.
The pudgy man shifted from one foot to the other. “I am almost caught.”
“Almost?”
“Well, I come here. No one expect that. Run from civilize. Me, who never live, but a city.”
From civilization? Shangril was uncultured? Backward?
“The gold you brought with you,” Dwyn said. “Where is it now?”
“Spend on your war, My Lord. To keep Finn and me alive while I teach him how to make steam engine. Some I give to this one—” he nodded at Sulwyn “—for your war.”
“That was your money?” Sulwyn asked.
“Why did you need Finn?” the king asked.
“I am not smith. I have molds and knowing of steam ideas, but I need someone who can work with iron.” Orville smiled at Dwyn. “Gold can be spend. But business, a new thing that everyone, everyone, Sieur Gramaret, want? That is a more, more money idea. I have show steam power and people talk for years. And soon or later, someone with heads—and someone with money to pay—will see. My idea can work here, just like where I come from.”
Meg digested this.
“My Lord,” Orville said, this time without sarcasm. “You do not know. You have, here. Steam is big idea. It works. If you go to Aadi, you see it. And more. Black powder.” He gave the king a conspiratorial smile. “Wait. Watch what cannon do to your enemies.”
Dwyn looked at him intently, but did not interrupt.
“My machine is to make me rich, rich man.” He nodded significantly. “Me and Finn. And, make you and your war—”
A clatter of boots and shouts beyond the walls of the tent interrupted the man’s words. Fearghus leapt to his feet and flung back the tent flap.
“Sire,” a voice shouted.
The king, followed by the others, emerged into the crisp chill. Meg wormed her way around the men to where she could see a handful of scouts. Every able-bodied man in the camp was running toward the king’s tent.
The scout lifted a man’s severed head by the hair for King Gramaret to see.
Shock squeezed Meg’s heart. Beorn.
“Two horsemen charged past our guard and threw this on the ground before riding off,” the scout cried, breathless. “Our men have given chase.”
“On foot?” Fearghus asked.
“Some. Others are saddling horses.”
King Gramaret’s face was unreadable in the dark, but his voice was thick. “Beorn Ygrelle will not die unremembered.”
The men surrounding him growled their agreement.
He took the grisly prize and raised it over his head. “To war!” he cried.
The men shouted. “To war!”
CHAPTER 24
A movement at the bend in the road distracted Janat from her sewing.
She breathed. No threat. Dogs barking at travelers.
No—
The limp. “Sulwyn!” Janat’s needlework tumbled to the ground, pins scattering, as she leapt from her chair and opened the attic window.
Two figures in the snow. Not one.
Meg.
She waited, her breath coming in shallow gasps, as Sulwyn and Meg plodded up the hill, dogged by a scrabble of welcoming children.
They disappeared below her window and she turned to the door.
The door opened. Sulwyn. Real. Here.
By Ranuat’s murderers, he looked worn out. A growth of stubble, and thin, too thin. But his eyes were bright and alive.
Then Sulwyn was across the room, wrapping cold arms around her and kissing her as though Meg was not standing in the doorway grinning.
Janat held out her arm to Meg, and when Meg joined the embrace, Janat held her close and looked into her face and held her again.
Sulwyn and Meg sank onto the chairs at the table, full of chatter and questions, shattering the silence and solitude of the last weeks.
Janat squandered logs on the fire and added salt mutton to the gruel. She made the portions generous and opened a whiskey bottle in celebration, but she had no appetite. To have Sulwyn back, here—to be inches from him, where she could reach out and touch his hand, laughing and joking and well—was hard to fathom. How many times had she seen him in her dreams at night or in her thoughts during the day, laying in some trackless forest or a back alley or dungeon, hurt or worse? That he was here seemed almost less solid than her fears.
And Meg was back, too. Healthy and whole, though dirty and, like Sulwyn, too thin. Quieter than before, Janat thought, and sometimes...did Meg’s gaze linger—on Sulwyn? As though she knew something now that she hadn’t before.
It was as though they all pretended everything was fine. And she poured another dram.
“Tell me all your adventures!” Janat tried to be bright and sparkling. She ignored her food, eyes flicking from Sulwyn to Meg. “Where did you go?”
Sulwyn’s face had a merry glow. “I can’t tell you that—”
But Meg knew.
“—but I will tell you that wherever we
went, people flocked to us. Everywhere in Shangril, the people want their freedom of worship back.”
“Was it dangerous?” Janat knew both Sulwyn and Meg would minimize the risks they’d faced, but she had to ask. “Was there fighting?”
Sulwyn swallowed a spoonful of porridge and tilted his head. “There was some fighting. A lot of marching.”
“Was anyone killed?”
He quaffed his beer. “Some. We had—what?” he queried Meg. “Three at Cascade Creek?”
“Four, with twelve injured. Seven are still with us but five went home. Two with amputations.”
“That’s right.” Sulwyn squeezed Janat’s hand, then released it. “I knew Meg would remember exactly.”
“I had to do the amputations.”
They had shared...
Meg reached out a hand and put it on Janat’s wrist. “But, Janat, I have to tell you my real news.”
Janat was not certain she wanted to learn Meg’s real news.
“Dwyn Gramaret. The king!”
Janat knew who Dwyn Gramaret was.
Meg’s eyes shone. “He asked me to be the royal magiel of Gramarye-in-exile.”
Royal magiel. Like Mama.
“Mostly my duties are no different from what I’ve done the whole time for the uprisers, spells of protection and healing and such. But he found me a horse to ride, almost at his side, and I’m part of his council.”
“Oh.” Janat was uncertain how to take this news. “That’s wonderful.”
“So I’m only here for a short time.”
“You’re not staying?”
“Neither of us can stay,” Sulwyn said between mouthfuls.
Janat thought...she assumed...
“I’ve mostly just come back to copy the spells in our book,” Meg explained. “I need my own book of spells. And to see if you have any herbs or spider legs or other ingredients I can take.” She grinned at Sulwyn. “Maybe a little Elsen ganja.”
“Oh.” Janat was still trying to adjust to this rush of new information. Sulwyn was leaving. “Of course. I have a...dried salamander liver. Some yarrow and snake root.” Gods, such common things. For birthing and crop health.
Meg nodded.
They were leaving. As soon as Meg copied out the book. Returning to Dwyn. And now, war.
There was a strained silence. Sulwyn poured them all another nip. “To a bloodless coup,” he toasted, and they all raised their glasses.
“How...how did you find Sulwyn?” With an effort, Janat wrenched herself from the slippery slope of self-pity. “After he and Colm left here?”
Meg’s gaze flicked briefly to Sulwyn’s face.
He smiled indulgently. “It’s all right.”
Meg spooned her gruel. “They’d just gone down the road and camped. I followed the path all night and caught up to them as they were having breakfast.”
“Why didn’t Sulwyn send you back?”
She shrugged, a small smile touching her lips. “He tried, but I just kept following.”
“Didn’t he get mad?” Janat cocked her head and looked at Sulwyn with open curiosity and, she hoped, not accusation.
“Yes,” he answered for Meg, “but she didn’t care.”
Disappointment. That was what Janat was feeling. But why? She’d stayed at home by choice. The last thing she ever wanted was to follow Sulwyn into his work. Into danger. She never wanted to be a royal magiel. “So, how did you get to stay?” She pushed on, unable to stop herself.
“Well, others joined us.” Meg forged ahead with spirit, as if she, too, worked to keep the mood light. “The uprisers were talking about how they wanted to stop the king’s troops from crossing the bridge over the Farfalls River without a fight. So I said, why didn’t they curse the horses?”
“Ah,” Janat said.
Meg warmed to the story. Yet, the more animated Meg became, the flatter Janat felt. “Some of the rebels wouldn’t listen to a woman, but Colm said it might work.”
“Colm? I thought he didn’t like you.” The name popped from Janat’s mouth on its own accord, and the acidic words followed.
“He’s all right,” Meg said guardedly.
“Then, what curse did you use?”
“I didn’t have any ingredients, did I?” Meg said. “So first I had to collect herbs—”
“There are sleep-drop mushrooms in the forest,” Janat interrupted.
“I know. I found them.”
Janat could have made the spell. “So you drew the curse by the light of Ranuat’s constellation?”
Meg grinned at Sulwyn, and he grinned back, and an unexplained ache wrapped Janat’s heart. “Ranuat’s stars had set, but Sashcarnala was bright, and it worked anyway. The stars had good alignment. And the uprisers let me stay.” Meg broke a hunk of bread from the loaf. “They grumbled and ignored me and treated me like a servant—”
“Hey!” Sulwyn objected.
“And I had to walk at the back.” Meg’s eyes sparkled.
“We used your potions. More than once,” Sulwyn defended himself good-naturedly. “You weren’t just put out to spy.”
Janat’s eyes prickled and her chest felt heavy. She watched as Sulwyn gave Meg a lopsided smile. Meg lifted a brow, her eyes never leaving his.
“Actually,” Sulwyn said to Janat, “Meg’s use of magic saved us more than once. It turned out to be a good thing she was there.”
There was no air in the room. Janat couldn’t breathe.
Meg blushed and lowered her eyes.
“Excuse me.” Janat stood, and the two looked up at her in surprise. “I need—I just need a bit of air. It’s hot. The fire’s too hot.” She left the room, closing the door behind her and leaning on it.
There was no sound from the room at her back. By Ranuat, what had she done? Left for no reason. Erratic. Childish. What would Sulwyn think, that she was angry? Weak?
The tears leaked onto her face. She couldn’t stay in that room.
Sulwyn found her. Of course he found her. She’d slumped to the ground in the snowy alley behind the house, her back against the rough wooden walls, beside a discarded barrel the landlord used for refuse. The tears and moans, streaming from her, were gone now, and she was empty.
“Hey.” He stood before her and she ducked her head, ashamed to be seen. Her eyes were swollen and her hair was bedraggled and she wanted him to go away and never come back. And she wanted him to engulf her and hold her and make everything all right.
He sat beside her against the wall and put his arm around her shoulder, his breath sweet with whiskey.
She didn’t move. Didn’t pull away. Didn’t draw closer.
“What’s wrong?”
How could she reply? What could she say?
“I thought you’d be happy to see me. See us.”
“I am.” The words were small, squeezed.
“Then why the tears?”
How could she explain? It was all...so complicated...
He waited, but the more she struggled with how to respond, the more confused she became. She was useless. She was too young for him—everyone said so—too timid, too...
“I...” His utterance trailed away, as though he, too, could not put his thoughts into words. “I thought I might tell Colm, tell the others. I thought I might take some time away from the cause. Stay here.” She sensed he looked at her sideways, gauging her response.
“Stay here. With me and Meg.” The bitter words snapped out.
“Meg?”
There. It was said.
The closeness of his arm on her shoulder loosened. “She’s Dwyn’s magiel.”
What was she hoping to hear? The vision of Meg in his arms burst into her mind then fled as quickly.
“I never had anything to do with Meg.” The words were low, defensive. “I never looked at her.”
No? Not tonight, at the dinner table?
He gently removed his arm from her shoulder, and loneliness engulfed her.
The silence between them stre
tched.
“If that’s what you...” His sentence trailed off. “...you think...”
Hurt? Him? Sulwyn wasn’t the wounded party.
“I can find some place to stay.”
No. She didn’t want him to leave. She wanted him to stay, to hold her, to make everything right.
Hesitantly, he climbed to his feet.
She hugged her legs and buried her face in her knees.
After a time, his footsteps echoed quietly in the alley.
It wasn’t until Janat opened the door to their room that she saw the flicker of candlelight. Blast. She’d come home too soon. Someone was awake.
“Come in.” Meg’s voice. A command, not an invitation, albeit a gentle one.
Janat entered, shivering. She closed the door and leaned against it, hoping the signs of her tears weren’t visible in the faint light. The fire had died to dull coals.
Meg sat at the table swathed in a blanket. A quill, paper, and their shared book of spells lay open in the glow of a candle. The rest of the room was in shadow, but Sulwyn didn’t seem to be there.
“Sulwyn’s gone.” Meg’s voice was low, uninflected. “He came to get his things.”
Janat had nothing to say. She tried to smother her shivers.
“I think he’s gone to the tavern for the night.”
Janat gave a small nod. All she wanted was to slide under her blankets and turn away from the light.
“What did you say to him?”
That was none of Meg’s business.
“Whatever you said, you hurt him—”
Hurt him? “Are you in love with him?”
Meg’s eyes flashed up, then. “What?”
But Meg had heard her. “Does he love you, too?”
“What are you talking about?” Defensive. Guilty.
Meg had always been jealous of her, of what she and Sulwyn had. “How did you do it? Did you use a love potion?”
“No!” And then, quickly, as though she realized too late the trap she’d fallen into, she went on. “His work for the uprisers is important. I help him with his work. And now—”
“And you’ve forgotten Mama’s plan? The meeting at the tarn.”
