The Apprentice Sorceress

by E. D. Walker

  The door creaked open, and Yonca’s head appeared in the gap. Her eyes widened as she gazed avidly at Violette and her magic needles. Violette’s eyes watered, and she bit her lip. “Please…please ask the princess to send for Master Llewellyn. I need help.” Her voice broke on the end, and she sniffed back tears.

  Yonca touched her cheek, her work-roughened hand gentle and warm. “Ah, child. What a mess you’re in.” The servant woman gave her a reassuring smile then rocked back on her heels. She raised her hands high above her head then clapped them together once, hard.

  Violette felt something go through her body, over her, like a warm ocean wave rolling her limbs in its power. But instead of drowning her, the wave freed her, and she took her first deep, calm breath in what felt like hours. She started to sit back, but Yonca caught her by the arm to hold her in place. “Wait just a moment, Lady Violette. There’s needles all over the floor now.”

  Cheeks warming, Violette glanced around and indeed saw the silver glints littering the floor. Her little helpers, stripped of their magic life, lay unmoving now.

  Yonca moved about the room, scraping them off the floor and sticking them through a piece of scrap fabric. Despite Yonca’s warning, Violette began to move too, helping the servant gather the sharp items. Violette was hampered somewhat by the sheets and scraps and other assorted fabric sewn higgedly piggedly all over her own dress. She moved now like a walking heap of sewing scraps.

  Yonca bit her lip watching this, her eyes crinkling with a laugh she was too polite to voice. “Lady Violette, where are your scissors?”

  Violette cast around and finally saw the scissors wrapped up among her skirts and the sheets sewn to them. She untangled the handles and sat patiently while Yonca proceeded to snip her free of the mess she’d made. Violette’s face was practically on fire with embarrassment, and she was close to vomiting she was so nervous. The snip snip of Yonca’s work on the fabric became almost unbearable. “You have magic,” Violette whispered.

  “So do you, it seems.” Yonca also kept her voice low. “Young Ned should be teaching you less potent spells.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone. Please.”

  Yonca snorted. “Child, you’ve a sword over my head same as I have over yours. I knew that when I decided to stop your magic.”

  Violette clasped Yonca’s wrist. “I won’t tell. Not anyone.”

  Yonca smiled a little. “Nor I. Now sit still a moment. Those damned needles double-stitched some of these together.”

  Violette wanted to drop her face into her hands or simply melt in her mortification. But her training as a lady prevailed, and she managed to sit perfectly still instead.

  The quiet snip of Yonca’s work continued a moment more before she drew a deep breath. “You should tell someone, though, my lady. You need help. Power like yours needs taming and, begging your pardon, but Young Ned is too green and untried to teach you the trick.”

  Violette knit her fingers together and clenched them. “Ned said that too. But I told him I wouldn’t let anyone else help me if he didn’t.” She swallowed. “I don’t want this. Why is it happening now?” She hated the petulant whine in her voice, hated how like a spoiled child she sounded. But her nerves had been scraped raw this evening. All the control she had left right now was going toward not crying.

  Yonca touched her head, fingers tangling in her disheveled curls. The gesture kindled an ache in the back of Violette’s heart. Her mother used to do that—stroke her hair, fuss over her, reassure her.

  “Magic is capricious,” Yonca murmured. “They say it’s a gift of the fairies from long ago, and it’s fickle like the fae folk. Magic will bloom to life at the worst possible moment and do what it wills to make mischief unless you keep a tight hold on it. The more power you have, the more training, the more control you need.” She put two fingers under Violette’s chin and coaxed her to look over. Yonca’s eyes were dark brown and tense around the corners. “You are very strong, child.”

  Yonca reached over and gave a pull. The sheets that had been sewn to Violette’s skirts pulled away, and she kicked free of them. Standing, she hugged her arms around herself and faced the door. “How…how did you learn magic, Yonca?”

  “My mother taught me. As her mother taught her. It wasn’t a crime to know a few spells until the Northmen became frightened.” She slammed the lid of the sewing box down hard, all the emotion the servant allowed herself to show. It occurred to Violette that Yonca had to keep as tight a control over her emotions, her true thoughts, as Violette did. Tighter really.

  Which made what she had to ask next feel like the height of presumption. Of privilege. But there was no one else. “Could you…” Violette bit her lip, her gut roiling as she chewed over the question burning to escape her mouth. She swallowed, her mouth dry, and tried again. “Would you consider…” She scrubbed her hands over her face then left her eyes covered, too nervous to watch Yonca’s reaction. “Will you teach me, Yonca. Please?”

  A rustle of cloth sounded, and she turned to see Yonca standing beside her with one hand outstretched and a small, somehow sad, smile on her face. “I can, child. I will.”

  Chapter Ten

  Yonca’s lessons had a structure, a formality to them that Ned’s somewhat improvisational instruction had not. There was no “here’s a fun spell to try” with Yonca. Violette and Yonca met every day late in the evening after the household had gone to bed. When Violette had to sneak out of her shared room, she told Noémi that Yonca was teaching her some Tiochene methods of embroidery.

  All the lies upon lies seemed to be growing like a mountain of refuse to Violette. Lying to the princess about her meetings with Ned, lying to Ned about her continuing need for his magic lessons. Lying to almost everyone about what she really was…

  “Focus.” Yonca never yelled, but her voice had assumed a crispness now during their lessons, an authority Violette had never encountered before when the other woman had been merely a servant.

  The past several nights, they had been doing drills on the basic heating spell, warming and rewarming a pot of water until Violette could get it to exactly the temperature she wanted and until she could extinguish the spell at the exact moment she wanted. Yonca wasn’t bothering to teach her any new spells yet. Their focus was on learning to deploy and control the spells she already knew.

  After about a week of practice that left Violette sweating and breathless, Yonca finally allowed Violette to try the “dancing” spell again on their iron cauldron. On her first attempt, the cauldron lifted right off the floor and flung the water on them. Violette recoiled, biting back a cry. Yonca merely wiped the water from her eyes with a sigh. They had a bucket of water from the local well beside them. Patiently, Yonca filled the cauldron with the bucket water and set it in front of Violette once again.

  Violette angrily swiped a drip of ticklish water off her chin. “Why don’t you ever use your magic to refill the bucket?” She was stalling. She didn’t want to try again. Didn’t want to get both her and Yonca drenched. Again.

  Yonca leaned against her shoulder in brief reassurance. “You shouldn’t use magic for something you can do without it. Unless you’re desperate. Freezing to death and you need a fire. Something like that.” She shot Violette a slow, sidelong look.

  Violette’s cheeks burned with shame, remembering the dresses she’d tried to make the magic sew. And the teapot. The only time she’d used her magic appropriately had probably been the first time, when she’d been defending herself and Ned from those thugs on the beach.

  Yonca poked her arm. “Try again, child.”

  Violette sucked a deep breath in through her teeth. Dance, magic. The heavy cauldron lifted, wobbled. She gritted her teeth and kept her thoughts clear and simple. Pour. Pour into the bucket. Pour.

  Like an indecisive cat, the cauldron bobbed in the air, but after another moment of Violette gritting her teeth and thinking Pour as furiously as she could, the cauldron tipped slowly over. The water ran out of i
t and back into the wooden bucket with a low, happy burbling.

  She let out her breath, her cheeks hot and her temples sweating, and she tried not to grin in triumph.

  Yonca smiled at her, though, and gave a short, approving nod.

  Violette finally allowed herself to smile back, so wide her cheeks hurt.

  Yonca gave an affectionate snort. “Now do it again.”

  ***

  The next morning, Violette was yawning her way through a different sort of lesson as she coached Ned through his first fumbling attempts at reading one of the folktales aloud to her. He recognized most of the words, but it was slow going, and she could tell from the tension in his shoulders and voice that he was getting frustrated. She touched his hand. “How about some tea and a break?”

  His cheeks flushed, but he nodded and closed the book. “Must be dead boring listening to me trying to puzzle all this out.”

  “You’re learning. You’re not supposed to be an expert yet.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin, looking more like his usual self. “That’s what the king always says during training sessions.”

  “It’s what my mother always used to say when she was teaching me to embroider.”

  They smiled at each other, but then Violette felt flutters in her stomach, and she had to look away. She made quite a business of pouring tea for herself and Ned. The cups rattled as she set them down.

  Ned squeezed her fingers. “And how are your lessons going?”

  She almost dropped her teacup. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been improving steadily and quickly. Better control. More confidence. It’s not me doing that.” He huffed out a laugh.

  “I’ve…I’ve found another teacher.” She kept her voice very low. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you who. Not with the way things are right now in the city.”

  He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I wouldn’t presume to ask. I’m just glad they’ve been such a help to you.”

  “Ned, you’ve been a great help to me. I…” The words felt sticky and heavy on her tongue. “I don’t know what I would have done without you these past few weeks. You’re a true friend.”

  He raised his teacup in a toast. “And happy to be so.”

  They sipped their tea in silence for a contented, peaceful moment.

  “The king thinks he may have found a ship to take us away.”

  “Really?” The princess’s household of three could probably have left the city months ago, before the winter storms made passage impossible. Lord Guillaume had been trying for months to find a ship that would take them. But Princess Aliénor had always found a reason to delay, because she had no intention of leaving Aratum with Lord Guillaume. She and King Thomas had already agreed to leave the city together. If Lord Guillaume sailed off with the princess, he would take her straight to Jerdun, and she would probably never see King Thomas again.

  Violette sighed into her own drink, conflicted as always over the princess’s illicit romance. She desperately wanted to get out of the city and get home, of course. But the king and the princess sailing off together in secret seemed destined to breed trouble.

  “I just hope they don’t start another war over this marriage,” Ned muttered.

  Violette gaped at him. This was the first she’d heard him express his opinion, and she had to laugh a little. “Oh, our poor lovers.” She was always very careful not to say anything aloud that might implicate the king or the princess. Especially not in the princess’s villa, as it was crawling with Lord Guillaume’s spies. “Is no one rooting for their happy ever after?”

  Ned shook his head, but he was grinning. “My…friend always jokes he wishes he’d fallen in love with a dairy maid. It probably would’ve been less complicated.”

  “My friend always wishes her lover were a shepherd. Well, at least they understand how much trouble they’re causing everyone.”

  “Even if it doesn’t stop them from doing what they like anyway.”

  “Would it stop you? If you truly loved someone?” She asked the question as a joke, teasing.

  But when Ned gazed at her, his eyes burned. There was no other word for it as he looked at her with an intensity that she felt all the way down to her toes. “If I thought the lady loved me, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to have her.” He held her eyes for another moment, one of his sad, wistful smiles playing about his mouth. “My lady.”

  Her breath seemed to snag somewhere under her collarbone. She’d suspected for some time that Ned had feelings for her, but this was probably the first moment that she’d really let herself realize that she had feelings for him.

  She wet her lips, fighting the most ridiculous urge to grab Ned by the collar and haul him over the tea table for a kiss. Ned?! How could she want Ned?

  But oh, she did. She wanted him so much her stomach ached with it. She took a fortifying swallow of tea then set her cup down with a firm clink. “Shall I…shall I read you one of my favorite folk tales from the book?”

  “As you please, my lady.”

  Violette licked her thumb and flicked through the pages, probably faster than she should have for a borrowed book. Still, the achy, kindling nerves inside her wouldn’t let her be slow or still. Finally, she stopped herself and smoothed her hand flat over the book then stifled a gasp of dismay. Of course, she’d landed on one of the love stories.

  But still she cleared her throat and began to read. “‘Once upon a time, a great queen had three daughters. Although each of the girls was lovely, the youngest was the most beautiful by far…’” The tale went on with the queen incurring the wrath of a mysterious monster in the forest. He demanded the hand of her youngest in marriage to spare the queen’s life. The queen tried to cheat the monster and hide her youngest away. “‘But the beast sent a magical wind and carried off the girl to a beautiful house built on the mountaintop. That night, after dark, her husband came to her and whispered, ‘I love you more than life, and I will make you a good husband. I ask only that you never bring light into our bedroom or try to find me by daylight. I’m sorry, but I must forbid you from ever looking at me.’”

  “So he is a monster. And he doesn’t want to scare her off.”

  Violette smiled. “Just listen—”

  But they were interrupted as the princess came clattering into the courtyard, returning from her morning ride. She stopped short when she saw Violette and Ned. “Violette, shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

  “Ready?”

  The princess laughed. “The ball tonight. Have you forgotten?”

  “Blight it!” Ned leapt to his feet. “The king said he’d skin me alive if I didn’t clean myself up proper for it. Pardon me, ladies, but I must take my leave of you.”

  Princess Aliénor laughed and waved an airy hand to dismiss him.

  Meeting Ned’s gaze, Violette’s heart pounded so loud she wondered the noise didn’t drown out the sound of the courtyard fountain. “I’ll see you later, Squire Ned.”

  He grinned, the expression kindling in his eyes so she could almost imagine them dancing with light. “My lady.”

  ***

  Violette was distracted all through their preparations for the ball. She accidentally pricked the princess with one of the hairpins while dressing her hair, and she nearly tore Noémi’s hem trying to help her into her gown. If Violette hadn’t had Noémi and Yonca helping her get ready, she might have walked out of the villa with her gown unlaced, hair uncombed, no kohl on her eyes, no rose oil to sweeten her skin.

  “Are you all right?” Noémi asked. “Another headache?”

  If only. “I’m all right. Just a little tired, I think.”

  Noémi pressed her hand. “All those embroidery lessons with Yonca are running too late into the night. Perhaps you should stop them for a little while.”

  Yonca kept her eyes demurely lowered, contributing nothing, but deep lines of tension appeared around her mouth.

  Violette swallowed. “No, no, there’s too m
uch to learn. I’m all right. Really. I’ll feel better once I’m dancing.”

  Noémi laughed at that as she’d hoped. The princess called for her from the other room, and Noémi went to see what their liege lady needed. A moment later, she called for Yonca to fetch something for them, and Violette found herself alone in her chamber.

  She smoothed a hand over her dress, brushing at nonexistent wrinkles. Truly, the ball was the last place she wanted to be tonight. Ned would be there, looking his very best, per his king’s orders, no doubt. She didn’t know what to say to him. What to think.

  Ned was Lyondi and a squire. There was no path between the two of them, no road they could walk down to be together. She outranked him, and it would be years before he could be knighted and be able to afford a wife.

  If he even wants a wife. He was a flirtatious, roguish sort of fellow, after all. He might be after only dalliance. Granted, a dalliance with Ned might be quite fun. His kiss had certainly left her wanting more—

  “Ugh.” She fisted her hands against her hair but stopped herself before disordering the careful braids that Yonca had done for her.

  She didn’t want to be a wife again. Not yet. Not even to Ned. But she wasn’t the sort to dabble in dalliance. That choice led nowhere good. No choices. Not for her. Marriage or nothing.

  And she didn’t want nothing from Ned.

  Noémi poked her head through the door. “Time to go.”

  ***

  The city of Aratum had been feeling a pinch in recent weeks, shortages of food and spices, lack of room as more and more refugees poured in from the fallen colony-cities. But one would never know it based on the sumptuous feast laid out at the ball. Boiled eggs in silver cups. Artichokes and roasted pigs’ feet. Poached fish with bread hot and steaming. Roast fowl and bright-pink ham on shining silver trays. Tall glass decanters filled to the brims with rich, dark wine. And the whole table heaped and garlanded with roses like an offering to Lady Fate herself.