The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

  There was no way someone who cared as much about appearances as Duke Bergandon would allow such an unkempt lot to serve in his guard. By the calculation in their narrowed eyes, they weren’t surprised to see me. My chances of bluffing my way out of this seemed slim, but I drew myself up anyway.

  “This is your last chance to avoid treason,” I warned them. I tried to sound sure and unafraid, as if I had an army at my back, but my voice came out too thin and strained. “You can still save your lives and your honor if you surrender now.”

  The men exchanged glances. Scars marred their unshaven faces. The man carrying the lantern set it down inside the door, drawing a flintlock pistol in its place.

  “Potion,” one grunted to another.

  I sucked in a breath and held it. A man in the rear rank meddled with his pouch, but I didn’t wait. I lunged at the ruffian in front, stabbing his hand; he dropped his flintlock with a cry. The broad-shouldered brute beside him lifted his sword, but a man with a scarred chin caught his arm.

  “Careful! Alive, remember?”

  Oh, that made this easier. I chanced a gulp of air and pressed forward a step, slashing at their eyes. My opponents seemed unsure what to do with their weapons, jumbling back out of the doorway in an undisciplined clump.

  “Enough!” Scarred Chin called. The man in the back rank hurled something at me, and glass shattered at my feet. Liquid splashed my legs. I was sure if I breathed in, I’d smell peppermint.

  The false soldiers slammed the door shut between us.

  The potion seeped through my stockings. I headed for the winch, struggling not to inhale, desperate to free Marcello before I blacked out. But dizziness dropped me to my knees before I’d crossed the room, and I gasped in a sharp breath of peppermint.

  The world upheaved, plunging my mind into blackness before I hit the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When I woke again, I felt dry and empty, like a leaf from last year’s autumn. Light tickled my eyelids open. I lay where I’d fallen, between the winch and the door. The lantern still burned, catching gleams from the golden spell wire binding the winch and portcullis to the mirror on the wall. A desk covered in papers stood against one wall, next to shelves bearing stacks of folded Falconer uniforms and a pile of Ardentine military badges with the Bergandon crest. More shelves bore jars of artificer’s paint with ground obsidian and a pile of gray domino masks. An empty coffin stood in a corner; the sight left me queasy.

  I appeared to be in a veritable storehouse of the tools of treachery.

  Judging by the racing of my heart and the weakness in my limbs, some time had passed, though the poison hadn’t progressed enough for the cramps to have started. Instead, it was fear for Marcello and the children that hooked into my gut and twisted.

  I hauled myself into a sitting position, too quickly. Everything swam and listed. I sagged back to the floor and stared at the ceiling, panting.

  The door opened.

  “Hello, Amalia,” Ignazio said.

  I considered lunging for his throat, but the man with the scarred chin and his brutish friends waited in the hall behind him. Better to let him underestimate me. I tried again to sit, letting him see the struggle. This time, I stayed upright.

  “Hello, traitor.”

  He waved his hirelings back and closed the door, giving us privacy. “Is that any way to address your cousin?”

  I glared. My throat was too dry to waste more words on him.

  He sighed. “All right. Is that any way to address the man who can save your life?”

  From his coat, he drew out a flask. My heart leaped despite myself, but when he crossed the room and proffered it to me, it didn’t smell like anise.

  “It’s wine,” he said. “You need to drink something. Take it.”

  “How do I know it’s not drugged?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “What need do I have to poison you?”

  I took the flask. It was a weak and unrefined red, but a powerful thirst compelled me to swallow some anyway. Besides, it bought me time to think. I had to find out what had become of Marcello and the children.

  “The cramps haven’t started yet, I take it?” he asked.

  I shook my head, still drinking.

  “They will soon enough.” He watched my face closely. “After that, it’s a painful descent into hallucinations, unconsciousness, and death.”

  He was out of slapping reach. I set the flask down. “Are you here only to taunt me? I can’t bear to think any Cornaro could sink to that level.”

  “No. I’m here to give you another chance. Please, Amalia. I don’t want you to die. There’s still time to mix the elixir if you agree to cooperate with me.”

  Hope lurched in my chest. If he wanted my help, maybe Marcello and the children had gotten free somehow. “Why should I cooperate with you?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t seem to have many other options, do you?” He glanced past me to the portcullis winch. “Were you hoping to free Lieutenant Verdi? You won’t have much luck without these.” From within his doublet, he drew out a golden chain hung with rune-marked stones, dangling it in front of me as if taunting a cat.

  Before I could get a good look, the door flew open, and Lady Savony strode in. I glimpsed a brand-new artifice seal nailed to the door on a piece of canvas. Hell of Despair. That complicated things.

  “Are you still trying to convince her?” Contempt iced Savony’s voice. “We should kill her and get it over with. Do you truly think it’s kinder to let her die slowly?”

  Ignazio tucked the chain back into his doublet and glanced over his shoulder at her. “You agreed to follow my lead. In this, and all things.”

  “Because you have the vision, wealth, and influence to save Ardence. And because Astor would have destroyed it with his excesses, if he didn’t hand it over to Vaskandar first. I will not let my city fall”—she shook her head—“but I have no patience for sentimentality. Don’t you start dragging your feet like Leodra did over the children.”

  “I’ve admitted it was a mistake to bring him in. Have no fear—I’m made of sterner stuff.” Ignazio jerked his chin toward the door, and the city beyond it. “How do things stand?”

  “The River Palace is sufficiently outraged, and the lords primed. It should be trivial to place it entirely under my control. Lady Terringer is unconscious from the poison you slipped her. She may survive, but it doesn’t much matter; she’s out of our way for now, and my people sabotaged her courier lamps. Bedridden and without a way to contact the doge or the garrison, she’s neutralized. The Shadow Gentry are set to take the blame, and the children and Lieutenant Verdi remain imprisoned below.”

  I stopped my eyes from drifting to the winch. So long as they were still alive, I had a chance of getting them out.

  “The last pieces are our Falcon and Falconer, then,” Ignazio said.

  “Yes. And you promised me you’d have them under control.” Savony bit off each word. “To threaten the city with balefire and then save it. Everything goes to the Nine Hells if the Empire starts actually destroying the city with those artifice cannons instead.”

  “I fear I didn’t anticipate my cousin’s lack of a sense of self-preservation.” Ignazio flicked a disappointed glance my way. “But I have some confidence Zaira will be willing to work with us regardless. Never fear.”

  “Also, they’re not quite the last pieces.” Lady Savony fingered the spectacles dangling from her neck. “What of the children?”

  Ignazio sighed and stood. “I’ll have someone deal with them. I have to choose carefully. We need people who won’t balk and can be absolutely discreet.”

  “What are you going to do?” The words burst out of me.

  He didn’t reply. Lady Savony glanced at me with no more interest than if I were a bug, and the two of them headed for the door.

  “Ignazio! You’re better than this!” I called. “If you harm those children, you will damn yourself forever. You can’t come back, once yo
u cross that line.”

  Lady Savony left the room without breaking stride. But Ignazio paused in the door, his hand on the frame.

  “It’s too late,” he said softly. “I made my peace with damnation the day I poisoned you.”

  The door closed behind them. The lock clicked into place. A line of light flared briefly around the door as the artifice seal activated.

  That bastard. My hands clenched in my lap. He didn’t deserve to bear the Cornaro name. Our family might be pragmatic and manipulative at times, but even the most ruthless had never stooped to murdering children.

  I sat still for a few moments more as their footsteps receded down the hall and then descended the stairs. When I was sure they were gone, I staggered to my feet, snatched up the lantern, and brought it over to the portcullis. A tremor passed through me as I examined the mirror, making the lantern light quiver, but my attention didn’t waver. I had to set Marcello free, with or without Ignazio’s jewelry.

  One weave of beaded artifice wire carried the command from the mirror to the winch to drop the portcullis. Another ran to the portcullis itself, activating the magical seal that kept it locked in place. Five empty niches in the mirror frame awaited Ignazio’s rune stones, no doubt, which presumably acted as the keys to unseal it again.

  That was a problem. But Ignazio knew little about artifice. Unlike alchemy, its rules could sometimes be rewritten by nimble fingers and a skilled mind.

  I held the lantern close to the golden wire that wove around an iron ring atop the portcullis, defining the seal. Five blue beads formed a pattern in the delicate traceries of wire, matching the mirror keystones. If I could line them up just right on the complex swirls, like the tumblers of a lock, it would release the energy to signal the seal to open.

  I could do this.

  My breath rasped more and more quickly through my lips, but it still wasn’t enough air. With trembling hands, I delicately, carefully slid the beads along the wirework. I had to keep my mind sharp and focused, no matter how much my body came apart around me.

  My numb, clumsy fingers kept pushing the beads too far, or rotating them on the wire. I wanted to weep with frustration. I knelt by the portcullis, the lantern oil burning lower and lower, my vision growing narrower and narrower. Those tiny beads became my entire world as I fumbled them, with agonizing slowness, into place.

  Finally, finally, a jolt of energy ran through my fingertips. I had them lined up. The seal was open.

  I peered down through the deep slot in the stone floor, to where I glimpsed lamplight shining on the portcullis bars beneath. My straining ears caught the high music of children’s voices below. I couldn’t make out words, but the dispirited tone pulled at my heart.

  “Marcello,” I called. “Can you hear me?”

  The voices paused. A face pressed to the bars below, only a sliver of it visible through the narrow gap. I glimpsed one round, wide eye staring up at me, from a child’s face. Then it vanished.

  “There’s someone up there!” the girl shouted. “Someone in the ceiling!”

  A scuffle, and hushing sounds. Then another face leaned into the portcullis, familiar and startled.

  “Amalia! Is that you?” Marcello’s voice warmed me like mulled wine.

  “Yes! I’m sorry I took so long. There were … complications.”

  “Where’s Zaira? Is she up there too?”

  “No.” I braced my hands on the floor against the dread that settled over me. “She didn’t come ask you for a light?”

  “No.”

  The grim word sat heavily in my stomach, indigestible. But whether she’d fled or been captured, betrayed us or died, made no difference to the moment’s task. One problem at a time.

  “I unsealed the portcullis,” I told him. “I’m going to try to winch it up. Don’t let the children trigger it again.”

  “You’re amazing.” I caught a flash of white teeth through the narrow gap. “Thank you. Will you meet us outside?”

  I sighed, letting a long, precious breath free to find its way down to him.

  “Marcello, I’m going to tell you something hard, and you have to accept it.”

  A frown rearranged the sliver of brow I could see. “I’m listening.”

  “I’m not going with you.”

  “Amalia—”

  “Even if I could break the artifice lock on this room, I couldn’t go with you.” I swallowed, but couldn’t smooth out the roughness in my throat. “I’d slow you down too much. Ignazio is getting hired murderers to come kill you right now. You need to get those children to safety. You can’t wait for me.”

  “I’m not leaving you here!” Anguish tore his voice.

  “You’re all those children have, Marcello. If you let them down, they’ll die.” I found the sharp tone my mother used to snap me back to sense when I was being foolish. “Go. Get them out of here.”

  A long pause. He straightened away from the portcullis slot, so I couldn’t see his face anymore—just his hands, gripping the bars until his knuckles stood out white.

  “Once they’re safe, I’ll come back for you.”

  “Fine. Now, go. Hurry.”

  “You’re a brave and brilliant woman, Amalia Cornaro.” Those strong, callused hands flexed once, then let go. “I think I might love you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t afford to cry, couldn’t sink into the bitter pain of losing my chance to be with him. It wasn’t fair, for him to say that now.

  “I’m going to try to raise this thing.” I forced the words out through a stiff jaw. “You lift it, too.” I turned to the winch, half-blind with unshed tears, and all but fell on the handle.

  I was too weak from the poison to raise the portcullis far, but Marcello and the children only needed a foot or two to slide out beneath it. Still, by the time I locked the winch in place, I was gasping and shaking. I slumped against the wall, spent.

  “We’re through,” Marcello called up from below, after an interval of excited child noises and scrambling. “I’ll get the children to safety, and I’ll be back. Wait for me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” The words rasped out too thin. I doubted he heard them.

  Then they were gone. The last sounds of children striving fruitlessly to be stealthy faded, swallowed by stone walls and distance.

  I was alone. Only death remained, close and patient, its silent wings folding around me.

  “I think I might love you too, Marcello,” I whispered.

  Cold seeped through my back from the stone wall I sagged against. It was easier to keep my eyes closed and to focus on breathing, on stilling the tremors in my limbs. But even with the poison taking full hold, my mind kept running, mad as a dog with its tail on fire.

  I had to believe Marcello would get the children safely to Domenic, and that Domenic could convince the Ardentine court of Raverra’s innocence and take control of the River Palace back from Lady Savony. But that would take time—hours during which Savony still had free rein in the city. And I had no inkling of what had happened to Zaira, save only that Ignazio had seemed sure he could secure her cooperation.

  There was still too much that could go wrong. Ignazio’s hired murderers could catch Marcello and the children. Zaira could burn the city down, especially if she found herself suddenly released by my death. The doge could decide Ardence had gone too far, or that nothing mattered if the jess still wasn’t returned, and attack the city despite all our work. Lady Savony could have Domenic killed. I couldn’t die now—not with so much left to do.

  In cruel mockery, pain opened like a flower in my middle, a sharp twinge building with alarming rapidity until it doubled me over.

  The cramps had begun.

  It sank in, finally, that I only had a few hours left to live. It was too late even to beg Ignazio for mercy; he was gone. No one survived Demon’s Tears without the neutralizing elixir, and the nearest bottle was a hundred and fifty miles away in my bedroom in Raverra.

  A feeling welled u
p in me with slow grandeur, locked in time with the next cramp. I expected fear, but what wound through the pain was fury. At Ignazio, at Lady Savony—and at myself, for sitting on the floor waiting to die when I had work to do.

  The anger gave me strength enough to stagger to my feet, clutching the wall for support. I was out of ideas and out of time, but damned if I’d stop trying.

  The door banged open.

  Ignazio and Lady Savony stormed in, accompanied by a handful of armed men.

  With them, a smile like a pleased cat’s narrowing her eyes, was Zaira.

  “Where are they?” Savony demanded. She flicked her wrist at the hard-faced brutes with her. I reached for my empty dagger sheath, but I was in no condition to resist. Two of them twisted my arms behind me, and a third pressed a knife to my throat.

  I laughed. Threatening me with death was meaningless now. “I have no idea.”

  Zaira shrugged. “I showed you which way they took the brats,” she told Savony. “It’s not my fault you weren’t fast enough to catch up.”

  She didn’t so much as glance at me. The ruffians weren’t watching Zaira, or threatening her. She was no captive; she was with them of her own free will.

  Ignazio whirled to face her. “Can you burn the entire area they’re in?”

  “If I’m sufficiently motivated.” She cast a contemptuous glance at me. “But only if this bitch releases me first.”

  “Zaira …” I breathed. Another cramp struck before I could say more. I strained to fold over, but the painful grip on my arms held me up.

  “We can release you easily enough.” Savony nodded to the men holding me. They threw me down on the floor; my hip and shoulder slammed into the stone. Before I could even try to fight the surge of dizziness and nausea that overwhelmed me, one of them had a sword point tickling my side.

  “Wait.” Ignazio held up a hand, frowning. “She’s dying of the poison anyway. It won’t be long now.”

  “We don’t have time,” Lady Savony said. “If you can’t stand the sight of your cousin’s blood, close your eyes.”