Nicholas was astonished at the way Margaret faded from sight. He almost didn’t recognize her. She carried herself in the tentative way of servants, her voice alternately sharp and wheedling. She bought a variety of things for her supposed mistress—a dress, underskirts, a shawl, stockings, a lace cap, and more. They were basic, as readymade items tended to be, but Margaret twittered on about how she’d tailor them to suit her mistress who was so very ill after the terrible events of their travel.
With each conversation, she picked up more and more of the information they needed.
“ ’Tis a fine old manor,” she said when stopping to purchase lavender oil. “How many rooms? And where does the family sleep, then? And how many servants does the regent keep—and such a fine figure of a man he is, too, don’t you think? And such a vigorous town—how many people live here? You must all be so proud. And does the regent have guests? It must take a lot of food and wine to entertain such fine folk. How many visitors did he have, then? How big are the grounds? How to get in and out? An old manor like that—it must have its secrets, no? Hidden passages and all that. I had a cousin once who got lost inside the walls of one of the great houses in Sylmont and nearly starved to death before they could find her!”
She kept up a running patter, gossipy and homey, going to nearly every business in town. Nicholas marveled at her as he trailed silently behind with the parcels.
“Now, that’s what I call a good man,” a stout woman with a hairy upper lip said to Margaret in a loud whisper as she cast a lascivious look at Nicholas. “Nary a word spoken and strong as an ox, carrying all your trifles. That’s a man worth keeping.”
“Don’t I know it. You know he wants to marry me,” Margaret said breezily. “But I told him no. John, I said, not until you have a bit put by for a home of our own will I marry you.” She looked from side to side as if searching for anyone trying to overhear. Her voice dropped conspiratorially. “Did the regent’s wife come with him? I hear she’s quite a handsome woman. I’d like to catch a glimpse of her myself.”
“As handsome as they come,” the baker’s wife said. “Though she’s sharpish. I wouldn’t want to be working in her house.” She bent forward. “I heard she’s beaten her maids so they can hardly walk afterward, just for nonsense like spilling tea on her glove or making an uneven hem in her skirt.” She added an extra sugar bun to the dozen she’d already counted out. “They say she’s the real power behind the man. A lady-Koreion—she’ll eat you whole. But good for the purse.” She patted her apron pockets as if they contained money. “Just this morning she sent an order. I’ll be up all night.” She smiled, her jowls shaking. “I’ll borrow some of those collared servants to help me. I tell you, that regent is good for Molford and Crosspointe too.”
At the cobbler, Margaret gleaned another piece of information, this one disturbing.
“Ain’t got no time right now,” the harried man said, hobnails sticking out of the corners of his mouth. “Regent wants his men ready to march within a sennight. I’m burning the candles at both ends and still won’t finish with all this in time.” He waved at the piles of boots in need of mending that littered his shop. “Come back in a sennight.” He bustled away without waiting for an answer.
Margaret stepped back out onto the wooden sidewalk, her brow furrowed. She glanced at Nicholas. “Where do you suppose they are marching to?” she asked. “And why?”
“Do you have a stronghold? Somewhere you are assembling your own army?” he asked as they began to walk.
She slid a suspicious look at him and said nothing. Annoyance stirred in him. More, he realized, because it was becoming clear that Geoffrey was more dangerous than Nicholas had anticipated. How had he been so blind to the other man’s plotting?
They returned to the inn and went inside the way they’d departed. Margaret unlocked the door and pushed it wide. Nicholas dropped his many packages on a chair and slipped off his borrowed cloak. Margaret went to the bedchamber and then returned.
“They are still asleep,” she said shortly. “We should dress and ring for lunch.”
She rifled through the parcels, finding the clothing she’d bought for Sophia Dedlok of Shevring. It was more serviceable than fashionable, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and in a village the size of Molford, one couldn’t expect much of a selection of readymade clothing.
She retreated to the dressing room.
In the meantime, Nicholas changed into the clothing she’d purchased for him. There were gray wool trousers, a silk shirt, a vest stitched with simple embroidery, and cravat. He had just pulled the bell to summon the servants when Margaret returned.
She was wearing a soft green wool dress over a layer of underskirts. “Would you button me?” she asked as she approached him and turned, the full fabric of her dress sweeping across his feet.
He obliged, glad for the thin chemise that kept his fingers from touching her skin as he fastened the long row of buttons. It was an intimate act, the kind shared by lovers and married couples. He let out a silent sigh.
“Thank you,” she said and began tightening the laces along her sides. Just as she finished, a knock sounded at the door. She went to answer.
He was warned only by the sudden stiffness in her back, and then the servant appeared. She was only seventeen or eighteen seasons old. Her hair was caught behind her head in a severe bun and her clothing hung loose as if she’d lost a great deal of weight. Her arms were covered with bruises and there were patches where she’d been burned. Around her neck was the thick iron collar that had once meant indentured servitude, and now meant slavery. She shuffled inside, her gaze fixed on the floor.
“Good morning, ma’am,” she said with a curtsy. “How may I serve you?”
Margaret shut the door with a loud thump. She stared at the wood, her arms crossed tightly over her stomach. Nicholas fought the urge to go to her. He could offer no comfort that she would want. The maid had jumped at the noise and now cowered into herself, waiting for an expected blow, no doubt. Nicholas snarled and went to the sideboard to pour a brandy. The bottle was nearly empty. He slugged it down in one gulp. He could blame Geoffrey for the slavery, but in the end, he was responsible. He’d made Geoffrey regent and had never tried to stop him.
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, ma’am,” the girl said into the silence.
“Offended me?” Margaret said, her voice rising. “By Chayos, you do offend me. You and that damned collar and—” She broke off like she’d been strangled. “I must apologize,” she said more softly. “I’m—” She drew a harsh breath and her gaze flickered to Nicholas. It was a helpless, desperate look and he moved quickly to her side. He put his arm around her, and though she held herself stiffly did not push him away.
“What is your name?” he asked the girl gently.
She started and her gaze flicked to his boots. She would not look him in the face. “Cora, sir.”
“And your family name?” he prodded. Margaret clutched his arm.
“Blickley,” she said even more softly.
Nicholas frowned. He couldn’t place the name. “How did you end up here?”
The girl gave a little shrug. “They say my uncle’s wife committed treason. She’s a Rampling.” She sniffed. “I should get to work, sir. Missus Drumpolt doesn’t like it when I dawdle.” She rubbed a hand over her arm.
“I can’t do this,” Margaret said in a strangled voice, turning away from Nicholas.
His own chest was tight. The girl had been made a slave by virtue of a distant connection to the Ramplings. She wasn’t even blood. Not that it would have made it any more excusable.
“Clear the table if you would, please,” he said and Cora hurried to remove the remains of last night’s meal. There was a trundle cart in the hall and she loaded everything onto it. “May I bring you lunch?” she asked when she finished. “Cook has cold ham or lamb and hot potato salad with greens, a fruit tart, some roasted tomatoes with dill sauce and fresh rosemary bread.” She
repeated it as if by rote.
“Yes,” he said. “That will do.”
The girl bobbed another curtsy and then quietly shut the door.
“It’s monstrous,” Margaret said, her voice strangled. “That poor girl. By the gods, what have we done?”
“We?” Nicholas asked, startled.
“Yes. You, the regent, me—my family. What have we done that that child can have a collar put around her neck and be sold to whoever wants her? That she can be beaten and burned and even raped? This must be stopped. It cannot be allowed to go on.”
“I agree.”
She turned. “Do you promise? No matter what happens, no matter what it takes, you’ll stop this?”
He reached out and took her hands. They were cold and they trembled, with anger or hatred or horror, he didn’t know. “I will. We will.”
She tightened her fingers on his a moment, then let go, her gaze suddenly remote, like she was looking at him from across a vast chasm. “I won’t let the regent put me in one of those collars,” she said.
The thought made Nicholas’s stomach turn. Geoffrey liked to feel his power. If he had Margaret in a collar, he’d use her in the most degrading ways he could think of. And he had a fertile imagination. Not that Margaret would ever let him have the satisfaction. She’d kill herself first. “If it happens, I’ll come for you. I promise you that. Don’t do anything stupid. I will come.”
She shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make promises to me. I’ll take care of myself. I always have.”
He knew she didn’t believe him. Why should she? But he meant every word.
She licked her lips and her expression turned stoic—a mask to hide everything she might be feeling. “We have to make a plan. It’s time to do what we came here to do.” She glanced at the doorway of the bedchamber, her brow furrowing. “It looks like it will be just you and me.”
Nicholas wanted to tell her no. It was too dangerous. But an image rose in his mind of a terrified Carston, an iron collar on his neck, his body bloody and bruised. He closed his eyes, letting out a shaky breath. “Thank you,” he said, knowing it was not enough. It would never be enough, not for the history that lay between them and not for Cora and the women in the brothels and every other innocent who’d been chained up and enslaved; and not for Keros, who might not wake up and know her, and not for her dead father and her angry brothers who might never forgive or trust her again.
She smiled, sad and bitter, as if reading his mind. “I wasn’t born to walk an easy path.”
“You deserve better,” he said, wanting to give it to her and knowing she wouldn’t take it, not from him.
“What is better? Tonight we will rescue your boy and if nothing else, you will turn your hand to stopping slavery. If my entire life is measured by that much, then it is all worth it.”
Chapter 11
He awoke slowly. It was like swimming up from the depths of the Inland Sea. He opened his eyes and blinked. Everything was limned with a shifting rainbow of light. He watched it, fascinated. Pinks chased blues and greens as they ran down edges, bubbling together on corners and then sliding away again.
A pain cramped his stomach. He was hungry. He sat up slowly. He was on a bed. Beside him lay someone. A woman. She was sleeping. He reached out and set a hand on her shoulder. He pushed out and his awareness flashed through her. Something inside her woke and swept through him—tasting, testing. It retreated, harmless.
He let go of her and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He sat there, staring at the kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. He tried to understand it. He reached out his hand and set it on the bed stand. It was solid, the wood—Yes, wood. He knew what that was—flat and satiny with a lace doily spreading across the top. He knew these words, too, and what they represented.
Something moved inside him. It was physical—a sliding touch against bone and brain. He heard something. Almost a voice. More a feeling. Wonder. Uncertainty. Fear. Anger. Melded together in a choir. He cocked his head as if it could help him listen.
He heard voices. There were people in the next room. They sounded familiar—a low male voice and a quick woman’s voice. He stood and padded to the door and paused within the jamb. The colors continued to run and yet everything was sharp edged and clear. He saw the woman—Margaret. She was sitting at the dining table, her food hardly touched. Her colors were the liquid green of new leaves mixed with a dark velvet blue. Bright specks of orange, pink, yellow, and crimson chased through the green and the blue. She was arguing with . . . Weverton. Weverton was made of black and silver with striations of butter yellow and twilight purple. His colors were misty and not as sharply-edged as Margaret’s. Keros—I am Keros—wondered why.
And then suddenly memory flooded back. He rocked back on his heels as it washed over him in a torrent. Margaret and Weverton. The majicar battle in the Riddles. Ellyn. The journey to Molford. The slaves. The spell crafting with Ellyn. The casting at the brothels. There was a long gray blank and then—
He squeezed his eyes shut. Melting. He could only describe it as melting. He’d felt himself dissolving as the thing in his mind expanded. He’d fought but it was like he had been tearing chunks out of his own mind. He’d not been able to stop. He ripped at himself, shredding himself apart, chasing the illusive thing that darted through his mind like a phantasm. Then something happened.
Healing. Ellyn had tried to heal him. But it was impossible to heal what wasn’t sick. He was invaded. But her spell had distracted the thing inside him. It had given him a moment to think, to stop fighting. He’d surrendered, knowing that fighting was killing him.
After that he did not remember anything until he’d woken. The thing was still there—it was part of him and yet separate. It was waiting for something; he didn’t know what. He glanced behind at Ellyn. His chest knotted as he remembered the majicars in the Riddles. They had gone insane and he knew, without knowing how, that there had been an invader in each of their minds as well, and they had driven themselves mad fighting it. Would she survive?
There was little enough he could do. It was Ellyn’s battle. And yet, watching her lying so still, he remembered that blue morning on the beaches of Azaire when the sylveth tide rolled in and, one after another, all his friends, family, and neighbors were thrown into the sea. He’d watched then, too, helpless. And less than a season ago, when Lucy was taken and the Jutras had come, he’d been bound in majick, unable to lift a finger. He was so very tired of being helpless. The echoing emotion in his mind was resounding—the thing most wholeheartedly agreed, supposing it had a heart.
“Keros!”
Margaret leaped to her feet and ran to him, grappling him in a hug. He hugged her back, smelling the floral scent of her hair. It was stronger now, more intense, like he’d developed a new capacity for the spectrum of scent. He sniffed. Smells opened like a fascinating bouquet—sharp and sour, sweet and musky, dank and foul. Margaret stepped back, examining him. Her brow furrowed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Your eyes.”
He touched beneath them, concentrating on re-forming the illusion that covered the telltale silver and red eyes of a majicar. He felt it snap into place. “Is that better?”
She shook her head and the fluid light of her being swirled and shifted. “No. I mean, yes—the illusion is covering them, but no, your eyes have changed. They were white—all white. Like a bowl of milk.”
He blinked. “That’s new,” he said dryly.
“Indeed,” she said. “Any idea why?”
“A guess,” he said. “I’ll explain over food. How’s Ellyn?”
She looked past him at the prone woman. “She’s been like that since you both collapsed. Can you help her?”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. This is a battle she fights on her own.”
“Battle?”
“I’ll explain. But first”—the food called tantalizingly, but every bit of his body itched—“I’d ve
ry much like a bath.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You are a little past ripe. I bought clothes for you. I’ll get them.”
She retrieved the parcel and he went to wash. He remained in the tub longer than he planned, captivated by the shifting lights of the steam. They were mesmerizing. At last Margaret knocked at the door.
“Did you drown?” she asked through the wood.
“Not quite yet,” he said, standing and reaching for his towel. He quickly dried himself and dressed. On the way through the bedchamber, he stopped to check Ellyn. She had not moved. She was made of mossy green light with scarlet twirling through it like windblown ribbons chasing sparks of white. But her lights were sluggish. He put a hand on her chest and again that awareness within her swept him. He tried to catch at it, but it slipped too quickly away. He followed, but he could not get past the barrier of her lights. He lifted his hand. He hesitated a moment, then bent so that his lips were close to her ear.
“Sperray—do not fight yourself. Surrender as you did that day in the sylveth tide. Be what you will be.” He turned his head and kissed her cheek, inhaling her scent. He straightened and backed away, joining Weverton and Margaret in the sitting room.
His stomach felt like it was chewing its way out of his ribs. He stabbed some ham from the platter and wrapped it in a slice of chewy bread. He ate it quickly, then reached for the potato salad and roasted tomatoes. The flavors of food exploded on his tongue. He wanted to eat slower and savor, but he was too hungry and his companions were impatient. Neither Weverton nor Margaret spoke as he ate. They sipped wine and waited. Keros could feel the anger that simmered between them.
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