The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

  I stopped by the great fountain at the center of the plaza, with its ring of twenty-four stone fish spitting water at a platform on which the Nine Graces stood back to back reaching out benevolent hands to bless everyone who came to the River Palace. Under the gloomy sky, their blank eyes seemed distant and pitiless.

  “I don’t know what to do, Venasha,” I said, my voice low.

  She frowned. “About what?”

  “Gabril.” Savony’s list of names dragged at my hip like a bag of lead. “I wish to the Graces Domenic hadn’t told me he was the leader of the Shadow Gentry. That’s crucial information. How can I not tell Lady Terringer? And my mother and the doge?”

  Venasha whistled. “Oh, dear. Yes, that is difficult.”

  I spread my hands, catching windblown spray from the fountain. “If the Shadow Gentry are just bored nobles dressing up and spouting separatist rhetoric, it doesn’t matter. But if they’re involved in the plot to start a war between Ardence and Raverra, staying silent could get people killed. And turning him in could get Gabril killed.”

  Venasha frowned. “I don’t much care about Gabril, but Domenic would be devastated. He has a bit of a blind spot about his little brother.”

  “I’ve noticed.” I kicked at a loose paving stone.

  “I suppose you could make your own assessment.” Venasha tilted her head. “You’re going to meet him tonight, right?”

  “Yes. Domenic invited me to his brother’s treason party.”

  “Can you wait until after the party to decide what to do?”

  We had less than three days left. But it didn’t make much sense to turn Gabril in before the party, given that it was the best lead I had to try to find out whether and how the Shadow Gentry might be involved in the kidnapping plot. “I suppose I could wait.”

  Venasha put a hand on my shoulder. “It may not make the choice any easier, but at least you’ll have more information.”

  “Thank you.” I folded her in a quick hug.

  “Come on,” she said with a smile. “Let’s go meet my husband, and you can convince him to make better choices than Gabril.”

  I laughed. “When you put it that way, it sounds easy.”

  We finished crossing the plaza and entered the gardens. They were nearly empty due to the threatening clouds.

  A stray drop hit my nose. I hoped it wasn’t bringing its friends. “Will Foss even be here, with this weather?”

  “When it’s raining, he sometimes waits in the pavilion.” Venasha gestured toward an open-sided building with white marble columns standing on a knoll, visible in glimpses through the distant trees.

  But as we approached, a shout of anger and alarm sounded from the dense grove ahead, between us and the pavilion.

  Venasha paled. “That’s Foss. Oh, Graces. Aleki!”

  She broke into a run, skirts fluttering around her. I followed.

  Why did this have to happen on the one day I was laced into a corset and wearing fashionable shoes instead of boots and breeches? My chest heaved as I hurried after Venasha, lungs forced to expand upward with my waist cinched too tight for deep breathing. At least I still had my dagger at my hip, and my flare locket around my neck.

  Our path rounded a tall hedge and plunged into the trees. And there was Foss, at last, but he wasn’t alone.

  He sprawled against a statue of the winged Grace of Victory, blood pouring down his side, his face pale with shock. A man with a long knife faced him, shaking crimson drops off his blade.

  Venasha screamed and flung herself between Foss and his attacker, arms spread to shield him. I took advantage of the distraction and stabbed at the ruffian’s neck.

  He spun, and my blade caught him across the shoulder instead, but it was a deep gash. He swore and dropped his knife, his arm falling limp.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “Why are you attacking my friend?”

  “Aleki,” Foss moaned from Venasha’s arms. “There was another one. He ran off with Aleki.”

  The attacker made a grab for his knife with his good hand. I laid a cut across it, and he pulled back, both arms bleeding now.

  “Hells take you,” he cursed, and sprinted away.

  I turned back to Foss, my hand shaking on my dagger hilt. Venasha had dropped to her knees in a pool of skirts and held him in her lap. She had her own knife out and was slicing up a petticoat.

  “Foss! Are you all right?”

  “I’ve got him.” Venasha’s voice was flat as a slammed door. “It’s not deep, but I have to bandage this now. Find Aleki! Bring him back!”

  “Please,” Foss begged, tears in his eyes. “Hurry.” He pointed off down the path.

  I couldn’t say no. I kicked off my high-heeled, pearl-encrusted shoes and ran in the direction he’d pointed.

  I followed the path through the copse of trees, past a fountain with carved dolphins, over a rise hemmed with rosebushes, and into the massive, templelike pavilion.

  There, between the rows of creamy marble columns, stood a man and a small boy, hand in hand. They stood peaceful and still, a broad smile on the man’s face, and it should have been a friendly and reassuring sight.

  Except that the boy was Aleki, who never stood still. His eyes shone glassy and unfocused.

  And the man was Prince Ruven.

  “Why, hello, Lady Amalia.” Ruven’s smile broadened, as if he were genuinely delighted to see me. “Look who I found. Someone seems to have lost him.”

  I faltered to a stop, bloody knife still out, gasping for breath. I couldn’t take my eyes off Ruven’s hand, clasped around Aleki’s. A snake could have been swallowing the boy’s arm and I would have been less afraid for him.

  “It’s so fortunate I happened across him.” Ruven pressed his free hand to his breast. “I hate to think what could befall such a young child in the wrong hands. We were just going to find his parents. Weren’t we?”

  Aleki nodded, still staring blankly. Fear squeezed my heart. “What have you done to him?”

  “Only helped him calm down. He was frightened, poor boy.” Ruven ran the back of a knuckle down Aleki’s round cheek. Aleki didn’t so much as flinch. “Such a lovely boy. So exciting, to watch the mage mark manifest, isn’t it? So much potential, like a bud only beginning to open before you can tell what the flower will be.”

  I wanted to lunge across the pavilion and knock his hand away from Aleki’s face. But I didn’t dare make any sudden movements. Ruven might take it into his head to hurt Aleki at any second, or tie his arm in a knot, or something worse.

  “What do you want?” My voice was an unsheathed weapon, all point and edge. I couldn’t play his games. Not now.

  “Why, only to help you!” He spread his free hand. “I was thinking of our conversation earlier, you see. And I thought perhaps it would be useful to show you how good it is to have me on your side. How fortuitous that this boy gave me the opportunity to present you with an example!” Ruven patted Aleki’s unresponsive head. “By returning him to you, of course.”

  “Then return him.” I shoved the words through my teeth.

  Ruven laughed. “My, my. Such a lovely glare you have. Here, take the child, then.”

  He released Aleki’s hand. Immediately, the boy’s face crumpled into pure terror, and he began wailing.

  I ran up and snatched him into my arms, barely remembering to throw down my dagger first, anxious to get him out of Ruven’s reach. Aleki planted his face in my shoulder and howled stickily into my hair. He was fine, thank the Graces.

  “I’m taking him back to his parents now,” I said, as much for Aleki’s benefit as for Ruven’s.

  Ruven shrugged. He seemed about to speak when the man who’d attacked Foss came stumbling up the path, still bleeding from his shoulder and arm, his face pale and waxy. I stepped back, angling Aleki away from him, but the man merely threw himself to his knees at Ruven’s feet.

  “My lord,” he began. “I have a report—”

  Ruven reached out and laid a hand on the
man’s head, as if in benediction.

  A spasm shook the wounded man, head to toe, and he clutched his chest with his working arm. He dropped to the path, landing on his face, and lay still as a stone.

  Dead.

  Ruven recoiled with a mild pretense of alarm. “Oh, dear, this man has attacked us. What a terrible fellow. I’m so glad I was here to save us.”

  “You killed him. You killed your own man.”

  “My lady, I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.” Ruven raised his eyebrows. “I have never seen this man before in my life. I am quite shaken, I assure you.”

  I’d had enough. I clasped Aleki to me with one arm and scooped up my dagger with the other. “Prince Ruven. I am going now.” I wiped the dagger clean on my own silk skirts and jammed it home in its sheath. “I suggest you stay away from my friends in the future, because if you come near this child again, I am going to do everything in my considerable power to have you arrested.”

  Ruven bowed, smiling. “I will bear that in mind, my lady.”

  “I suggest you do. Good day, Your Highness.”

  I turned my back on him. I prayed to the Graces my gown hid the trembling in my legs as I walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I found Venasha staggering up the path, helping along a heavily bandaged Foss, both of them sporting bloodstains and stark desperation. As soon as they saw me carrying Aleki, they cried out in relief. Aleki nearly threw himself from my arms to his mother’s, and the three of them huddled together, heedless of Foss’s injuries, holding one another close. Their emotion was so intense I had to look away.

  “We should get out of here,” I said after a moment. I wanted Aleki as far from Ruven as possible.

  “Yes,” Venasha agreed. “Foss needs a physician.”

  “I’m fine,” he protested weakly.

  Venasha ruffled his hair and shook her head. Aleki helpfully jabbed a finger into his father’s eye.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, “let’s head for the garrison. I’ll feel better with hundreds of soldiers and thick stone walls between Aleki and harm.”

  Foss nodded, his face grave. “Now that I’ve had time to consider it,” he said, “so will I.”

  I commandeered a coach from the River Palace to take us to the garrison. Aleki fell asleep in his mother’s arms on the ride, lulled by the rumbling wheels. Foss stroked his hair with a trembling hand, looking likely to pass out himself. Venasha made soothing sounds to both of them, pale as paper, her voice unnaturally calm.

  The watchers on the castle ramparts must have examined our coach through a spyglass as we took the winding road up the hill to the fortress. Marcello, Zaira, Istrella, a handful of soldiers, and a physician with a box full of alchemical remedies greeted us at the gates. In a flurry of competent activity, Foss’s wound was soon treated and properly dressed, and the family was settled into a suite of rooms designed for visiting nobility. I waited in their sitting room to make sure all was well while Venasha saw her husband and son tucked safely into their beds.

  She emerged from the bedroom at last, shutting the door gently behind her.

  “Thank you,” she said. Her hands started to shake. She held them up in front of her face in wonder, as if she couldn’t imagine what was happening.

  “Maybe you should go to bed, too,” I suggested.

  “It’s only afternoon … But I think I will. I wanted a bath, but I’m not going to leave them alone for one minute.” The shaking traveled to her shoulders, and she flung her arms around me.

  I hugged her gently. “It’ll be all right. Prince Ruven has made his point. He won’t bother you again.”

  “But someone else might. The mark is so clear in his eyes. It’s only a matter of time until someone threatens him again.”

  “They won’t.” I squeezed her tighter. “Because we’ll keep him safe.”

  She took a deep breath, let go, and straightened her bodice. “Of course you will. That’s what the Falconers do, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, though a yawning gulf of sorrow opened under me. “Yes,” I said. “It is.”

  Out in the corridor, between the illumination of well-kept oil lamps, I leaned my forehead against the stone wall and closed my eyes. At least they were safe in the garrison now. If Zaira burned the city, or Istrella’s cannons wrecked it, Venasha and her family would survive.

  Someone tapped me lightly on the shoulder.

  I shrieked. Istrella shrieked too, in startled response, as I whirled to face the round lenses of her red-and-green glasses. She nearly dropped something she held in her other hand—a glass orb wrapped in beaded wire—and it flashed as she bobbled it, with shifting rainbow lights.

  “Hello, Istrella,” I said breathlessly, slumping against the wall. “I thought you were going to murder me.”

  “Oh, not at all!” Istrella clutched the rescued orb to her chest. As it stilled, the lights faded. “I wouldn’t have the faintest notion how to murder someone. No, I wanted to ask you if Aleki was awake. I made him a toy!” She shook the orb proudly and it glowed again.

  “What is it? A pocket luminary?”

  “Sort of. More colors, and the patterns change depending on how fast you move it. And it should last longer than most pocket luminaries.” She pushed back her glasses to admire it better. “Though come to think of it, do you think he’s too young for something this breakable?”

  I nodded solemnly. “Better add some fortification runes to it.”

  “You think of everything!” She bounced with enthusiasm. I forbore from pointing out she could probably remake it out of something sturdier for a lot less effort.

  Zaira burst around a corner, her knife out. When she saw us, she scowled. “Were you two screaming like that over a toy? I thought you were being murdered.”

  “Amalia thought that, too.” Istrella lifted her brows. “Apparently, I’m quite terrifying.”

  Zaira sheathed her dagger, shaking her head. “Like the Demon of Madness herself.”

  “Well, if Aleki’s asleep, I should get back to work on my project for the doge,” Istrella sighed. “I hear they want it done tomorrow now. Good night!”

  She waved and left, a skip in her step, completely oblivious to the cold, queasy feeling her parting words had left me.

  Zaira grunted. “If I were that cheerful about setting people on fire, they’d drown me in the lagoon.”

  “You’re not that cheerful about anything.” But that wasn’t right, I realized. “Except Scoundrel. And Terika.”

  Zaira stared down the hall, after Istrella. “They’re all right. Wish I could have brought Scoundrel here with me, but Terika’s taking good care of him.”

  “You miss them both, don’t you,” I said softly.

  Zaira shrugged with rough force, like she was shaking off an attack.

  “They’re your friends.” It was an easy word to say, but it fell from my lips with more weight than a ship’s anchor. I remembered the Tallows shopkeeper’s words: Zaira doesn’t have any friends.

  Zaira’s eyes went white-rimmed, as if I’d threatened her. Then she spun away from me, hugging herself. “Are they?”

  “It’s safe for you to care about them now.” I chose my words carefully as if they were footsteps exploring a thin sheet of spring ice that could crack at any second. “With the jess on, you won’t hurt the people close to you anymore.”

  “There’s no one close to me,” she snapped. And she strode off down the hall.

  Lady Terringer herself stopped at the garrison to check on Venasha’s family. When she found them asleep, she took me aside to tell me that given Prince Ruven’s mounting history of suspicious activities, and his connections to the Shadow Gentry, she was going to have his rooms quietly searched the next day for the missing jess, just in case.

  The idea of Ruven possessing a jess left a chill in my bones. He might well be the danger Leodra had warned of, and the name that had died on his lips.

  After talking to Lady Terringer, I need
ed some fresh air. I found a no-nonsense kitchen garden in one of the garrison courtyards, where dusk gathered in shadowed corners and crept up the walls. Late tartgrass blooms cast a pungent musk across the garden. I sank onto a stone bench, my bloodstained skirts spreading around me. It had already been a long day, and I still had to get ready for Gabril’s party tonight.

  One of the courtyard doors opened, and Marcello stepped out into the twilight.

  He paused in the doorway, staring across the garden at me, shadows pooling in his eyes. The moment stretched longer. I wished he would say something, anything, but he just stood there, as the color leached out of the sky.

  I couldn’t take it. “Did you come to look at me, or do you have something to say?”

  My own voice sounded frail and foolish against the profundity of the evening silence.

  Marcello shook his head, as if breaking a spell, and crossed the garden. Without a word, he sat on the bench beside me and took my hand in his.

  His touch sent warm waves all through the core of me. My lips parted, but shock and a building, wondrous alarm choked off speech.

  “Please,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

  “What?” I snatched my hand back. Was he deliberately confusing me?

  Worry drew grave lines into his fine face. “This Shadow Gentry party tonight. It’s too dangerous. Don’t go.”

  I curtailed the urge to deliver a sharp retort. He had a point. One Falconer had already been attacked, and tensions between Raverra and Ardence had wound tight enough to break into violence at any moment. “I have to. It’s the best lead we’ve got.”

  “Then let me come with you.”

  “You can’t.” I shook my head. “Can you imagine, an officer of the Falconers walking into a meeting of the Shadow Gentry without an invitation? You’d feel obligated to arrest them, they’d feel obligated to assault you, and it would end in an incident far worse than the ones we’re trying to repair.”

  Marcello stared down at his lap, gripping his knees. “Everything is already going to the Hell of Discord, Amalia. I don’t know how we can salvage it. I had nightmares all last night about … about tonight going wrong.”