The Forbidden Heir: A Novel of the Four Arts

by M. J. Scott

  “I know,” she said. She sounded annoyed at the reminder, but annoyed was better than scared. He let the magic he’d been holding go, and it rushed away from him, as though the ley line—stronger here than those he’d used in Anglion—was pulling it back. The sensation wasn’t entirely pleasant. Did it feel the same to Sophie? She was stronger than him, which made her more sensitive to the ley lines. The first time she’d seen one, she’d said it looked like a river of golden light, whereas he saw it only as a faint shimmer.

  But if the difference in the ley line had disturbed her, her face didn’t show it. He decided not to ask, merely took her hand and led her over to the table, determined that she should eat. And then, at long last, they could sleep.

  Chapter 2

  A low chiming noise startled Sophie out of a sleep so deep she didn’t even remember having laid her head on the pillow. She blinked in the darkness, uncertain where—or even who—she was. Beside her, Cameron stirred, and the memory came back to her.

  The Academe.

  Illvya.

  “Sweet goddess, what is that noise?” Cameron muttered, pushing up onto his elbow.

  “I don’t know.” She shoved the covers back and climbed out of the bed. The room was dark, but a faint light showed around the edges of the curtains. Perhaps it was morning. If it was, they must have slept for at least twelve hours already. Which didn’t dim her desire to sleep longer still.

  She groped her way to the curtains and pulled them back, revealing a just-rising sun beyond the window, sending arrows of golden light spreading across the buildings of Lumia. A city she’d never expected to see for herself.

  Anglion history said it was corrupt and dangerous. Full of wickedness, and users of depraved magic. Though it didn’t deny Lumia was beautiful.

  On the first two points, she had no idea what the truth was. On the third, it was clear that Lumia was indeed as fair as the light it was named for.

  Looking down from the height of their room revealed it to be a city of taller buildings than she was accustomed to. In Kingswell, the largest building was the palace. Here though, the buildings all seemed to be at least three or four stories high, many of them taller still. She couldn’t remember how many sets of stairs they had climbed to reach their room the night before, but she thought they too must be on a fourth floor or higher.

  The skyline spread before her was sketched in curving domes that nestled together in groups, narrow spires spiking toward the sky, and less ambitious buildings that combined odd angles and made the golden light gleam brighter against the deep shadows. Reflecting off the glazed tiled roofs and arched windows, the gilded light seemed almost tangible, oozing over the city, the color near to that of the honey her mother’s bees produced on their estate. The shining city looked like something half-imagined, a glimpse of a place that belonged in a dream. Or perhaps a nightmare.

  She suppressed a shiver and turned back to the room. The chiming continued, growing more urgent in tone. The light revealed no clue as what the source of the sound might be. Eloisa’s palace had a system of bells that could be used to summon servants, but there was no sign of anything like the levers that operated those.

  While she searched, the volume of the chime increased again. Cameron was glaring around the room, looking far from awake, dark hair spiking up in all directions, and his blue eyes slitted. “Make it stop.”

  “If you can tell me what’s causing it, that would be a good first step,” she retorted.

  He grimaced. “Goddess knows in this place.”

  “Maybe—” She broke off as a knock—loud but somehow politely cautious—sounded.

  She looked at Cameron.

  He shrugged. “If they were coming to do anything bad to us, I doubt they’d knock.”

  “Maybe that’s what they want us to think,” she said with more bravado than she felt. She tugged one of the many layers of quilts off the bed and wrapped it around her shift in lieu of taking the time to dress. She moved to the door and put her hand against the wood to take down the wards so she could open it.

  Willem stood on the other side, his pale curls flattened back against his head by wont of being wet. “Madame Mackenzie,” he said. “I came to collect you and your mari for breakfast. I have been waiting for an age. Did you not hear the chimes?” He spoke mostly Anglish again, for which she was thankful.

  She shook her head apologetically. “We heard them. We didn’t know what they were.”

  Willem looked puzzled. “We use the chimes to request entry when a room is warded. It is not always wise to knock on a warded door, no?”

  “I suppose not,” she said, feeling slightly foolish that such a simple thing had not occurred to her. “But we don’t use such a system where we are from.”

  “Anglions must be brave,” Willem said, looking as though he thought perhaps “crazy” was the correct term.

  The fact that most Anglions didn’t ward their doors at all—either from lack of magic or lack of need for such protections—didn’t seem like a thing to mention. Willem had clearly never contemplated such a situation. Which meant she needed to remember not to knock on any doors here without checking for wards first. Another reminder she was no longer in a familiar—or safe—place. “Perhaps you would show us how to work the chimes?”

  He nodded at her politely. “After breakfast, please. I shall wait while you dress. The meal will be underway, but we can still eat if we are quick.”

  There didn’t seem to be any hint of whether or not to partake in breakfast being a choice, and it was clear that it was Willem’s priority just now, so Sophie merely returned the nod and closed the door.

  “Well, I guess this means the emperor hasn’t sent a troop of soldiers to take us into custody,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

  Cameron paused in the middle of buttoning his trousers. “Not yet, at least.” Then he smiled. “I think the best plan is to just take one thing at a time for now. Food first. Then we can start to make a plan.” He picked up his shirt and drew it over his head.

  Despite her continued nerves, she couldn’t deny that her stomach was demanding food, so she followed his example. The resulting outfit of rumpled, travel-worn gray dress and hastily pinned hair was hardly impressive, and she was uncomfortably aware that neither she nor the dress smelled particularly pleasant. But it was the best she could do at short notice. Cameron needed a shave and his clothes were as wrinkled as hers, so at least they were a matched pair.

  When they rejoined Willem in the hallway, he beamed happily at them. “Very good,” he said. “Now, breakfast. This way.”

  They set off at a fast walk that Sophie suspected would be closer to a run were Willem on his own and late for breakfast. He looked younger this morning with his hair still damp. She judged him to be thirteen, maybe fourteen. At that age, every boy she’d ever known had been preoccupied with food, eating quantities fit to feed armies. Which explained the pace he set as they moved down the lengthy hallway to the nearest set of stairs.

  Unlike the previous evening, she was awake enough to pay attention to her surroundings and the route they were taking through the building. Thick carpet muffled their footsteps, the patterns woven through the muted green and gray shades forming sprays of delicate filigree that it seemed almost a crime to walk on. The walls were fashioned from paneled wood for the first four feet or so from the floor, then changed to broad tiled borders for several feet more before changing again to plain painted plaster. The tiles were, like the carpet, covered in small, carefully detailed patterns that grew more vivid in shades as they progressed up the wall. The plaster above the tiles in the corridor where they walked was a bright leafy shade of green, but as they descended the stairs to the next floor, the paint, and the predominant colors in the tiles and carpet, changed to a deep blue. Did the colors indicate something? Was it rude to ask? Perhaps it would be wiser to start with a different line of inquiry first. “No ravens today?”

  Willem shook his head. “They will be
breakfasting, too. In the Raven Tower.”

  “The Raven Tower?”

  “Where the rookery is.” He looked at her curiously, clearly wondering how anyone could not know such a basic fact.

  “You breed the birds?” Cameron asked.

  Willem nodded. “Yes. Ours are the best. Some take wild crows or other animals as fams, but the Academe ravens are prized.” He turned at the bottom of the staircase and started down another long corridor. “The young ones not yet bonded or the breeding pairs who have fledglings and are not with their masters—if they have such—are cared for in the rookery.”

  She supposed it was no different from raising chickens or ducks or geese. But for some reason, the thought of large numbers of the big black birds in one place was disturbing. All those sharp beaks and claws. But she didn’t think Willem would appreciate that particular thought so she merely smiled at him.

  As they reached the next staircase, there was a squawk and a flap of wings above them and then a bird settled on Willem’s shoulder, twisting its head to peer at Sophie. She thought, though she could not be certain, that it was the same one—Tok—from the previous night. If not him, then another young one, something about it a little ungainly—if a bird could be said to be such a thing—that told her it was not yet full grown.

  She nodded at it as it studied her, and it tilted its head and cawed back but, to her relief, didn’t move from its perch.

  Willem twisted his head to frown at the bird. “Tok, you should be in the tower.”

  The raven cawed again, fluffing its feathers, claws denting the fabric of Willem’s robe forcefully enough that she wondered why it didn’t tear.

  “If you’re hungry later, don’t blame me,” Willem muttered, twisting his head toward the bird as he walked.

  Tok made no reply, merely bobbed his head and settled his feathers before fixing his gaze on Sophie.

  Sophie tried to ignore the bird and the intensity of its gaze. The walls on this floor were a cheerful yellow but otherwise similar in design to the ones above them. Very different from the stone walls, softened by silk hangings and tapestries, that she was used to in the palace in Kingswell. And Anglion houses generally had wooden floors and small rugs, the walls painted white. They echoed—the sounds of those living in them plain to anyone in the house. Here, however, the carpets muffled their footsteps and, it seemed, most signs of habitation. There were no telltale noises to suggest that there were any other humans anywhere in the entire Academe. The silence and the unfamiliar surroundings made her skin prickle uneasily.

  She could, however, smell hot bread, fried meat, and something greenly herbal in the air. Apparently the demands of her body were winning over the undercurrent of fear that threaded her stomach. She was starving. In this very moment, she’d happily have taken food from anyone—even a demon—if it would ease the gnawing in her belly.

  “How many students are there at the Academe?” Cameron asked from beside her.

  Willem shrugged. “Somewhere around one thousand.”

  Sophie halted, startled. “So many? All . . . wizards?”

  “Not all of us,” said a dry voice from behind her.

  Sophie spun on her heel. A woman dressed in the same swirling black robes as Willem—though hers seemed to be made of a much finer fabric—had stepped out of one of the many doors lining the corridor and was pulling it closed behind her. She laid her hand against the wood and then clucked to herself before turning back to Sophie.

  Her hair was silvery. Not the white blond of Willem’s, but rather the true silver of age. Her face was very pale, the years written on it in an infinite number of fine wrinkles. She cocked her head, bright blue eyes fastened on Sophie’s face. Her hands gripped the handle of a black cane but she didn’t seem to be leaning on it heavily.

  “Madame Simsa,” Willem said from behind Sophie in a tone that suggested he was nervous.

  The old woman’s gaze didn’t move. “I know my name, Willem. What I don’t know are the names of our . . . guests?”

  “This is Lord and Lady Scardale,” Willem said. “From—”

  “Anglion. I have eyes in my head, child.”

  Did their clothes so clearly mark them as Anglion? Yes, many of the people they’d seen as they’d passed through the streets of Lumia on the previous day had been wearing bright colors, but there’d also been a good number dressed in sensible, sturdy working clothes in duller shades. Sophie would have thought hers and Cameron’s fell into that category. Admittedly, they were currently looking somewhat worse for wear, but that shouldn’t give them away.

  Could Madame Simsa, like the demon who’d answered the Academe door on their arrival, sense something about their magic? Either that or she had a sanctii whispering in her ear. A sanctii not currently visible. Sophie fought the urge to step back and put a little more distance between herself and the older woman.

  Willem had addressed the woman as Madame, but somehow Sophie doubted that was the whole truth of it. This woman had some sort of power.

  “Venable.” She bobbed a shallow, cautious curtsy, keeping her gaze on Madame Simsa. There was intelligence and confidence in her blue eyes. The expression of someone used to commanding respect. Here at the Academe that had to mean being a magic user of some kind. A strong one. Not that Sophie could sense Venable Simsa using any magic. Back in Kingswell, she had been able to feel the chill of Illvyan magic amidst the damaged stones of the palace, but here she couldn’t isolate the same sensation. Maybe because she was surrounded by that very magic? She deepened the curtsy. Politeness seemed wise.

  Particularly when she had no idea how the hierarchy of the Academe—or indeed all of Illvya—might work. The age-white of Venable Simsa’s hair left no clue as to what magics she might wield. The Arts of Air and the blood magic that battle mages like Cameron wielded didn’t mark their users like earth magic did, but working with the demon sanctii did—as the black streaks mingled with red in Chloe de Montesse’s hair had proven. But perhaps those faded with time. Earth witches’ hair eventually turned gray like anyone else, though more slowly, unless they were particularly strong. Which in Anglion currently meant only a few of the royal witches.

  Venable Simsa nodded in return, not denying the title. “Lady Scardale.” Her eyes flicked to Cameron. “Lord Scardale.” Her mouth quirked and she gestured to herself, the movement making the fabric of her robes gleam briefly, a hint of color rippling over the black like light catching a raven’s wing. “As you can see, we are not all wizards here.”

  “So the Academe teaches all of the Four Arts?” Cameron asked.

  “Just so.” Her gaze sharpened and Sophie felt like she was being examined from the inside out.

  “Still, one thousand students is a large number,” Cameron said.

  It was. The Red Guard might have close to a thousand blood mages, but she didn’t think there were anything like that many earth witches in Anglion. Not those with power enough to do anything above herb witchery anyway. Nor were there so many brothers of the Arts of Air. And those here at the Academe were just the current crop of students. How many mages were there across Illvya and the empire?

  “Younglings, many of them,” Venable Simsa said, flicking a hand as though to dismiss Cameron’s assertion. “Like Willem here. Remind me how old you are, Willem?”

  “Fourteen, Madame,” Willem replied promptly, with a small bow. “Not so young.”

  “You start learning magic younger than that?” Sophie said. “That is a long time to study something without knowing if you will have any power at the end of it.”

  That earned a shrug of Venable Simsa’s black-clad shoulder. “We believe in giving students a good grounding. Magic is safer if those who wield it know what they’re about.”

  “And what happens to those who do not manifest?”

  “We do not only teach magic here,” came the reply. “Our students study many things. They get the same education as normal students in languages and literature and mathematics an
d such. As well as some more advanced subjects for those who show an aptitude for a particular topic. We do not believe in keeping our population ignorant. Those students who fail to manifest any power go on to have useful occupations. Advocates and scholars and engineers. That sort of thing.”

  “I see,” Sophie said, though she didn’t entirely. She didn’t even know what an advocate might be. Behind her, Tok cawed, there was a rustling whistle of feathers, and then the bird thumped onto her shoulder. She went still and Venable Simsa smiled.

  “The bird likes you.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Good breeding, that one. He will be a good familiar.”

  “Earth witches don’t use familiars,” Sophie protested before she could think. “At least not in Anglion.”

  The smile widened. “Ah. But you are not merely an earth witch, are you, child?”

  “I—” Sophie stopped. There was no obvious answer to that particular statement. Or to the challenge in those blue eyes that for a moment seemed to shine with a rainbow gleam.

  From behind them a bell rang several times.

  “Breakfast is almost over,” Willem said. “Madame, excuse us. Maistre Matin asked me to escort the lord and lady to eat and then to his study.”

  “And no one must keep the maistre waiting, I suppose,” Madame Simsa said with an edge to the words. “All right, on your way. Though you should send the bird back to the rookery. He is too young to behave himself in the dining hall. And someone might take it amiss if he steals their sausages.”

  Tok squawked in what sounded like a protest at this and Sophie nearly smiled at the indignant tone. Willem smiled outright, glancing at Sophie.

  “No one would dare harm a feather of one of our ravens,” he said. But he inclined his head toward Venable Simsa. “I will try to convince him. But he is not likely to listen.”

  “Not if he’s got his eye on Lady Scardale here, no,” Venable Simsa agreed with a nod. She moved her attention to the bird and made a swift shooing gesture. “Off with you. The lady will still be here in a few hours. One hopes. And if you are, Lady Scardale, come and find me.”