The Magic Council (The Herezoth Trilogy)

by Grefer, Victoria

  Once the council membership was decided and Vane could spend more time at Oakdowns, he realized August needed some distraction. He also thought if he failed to visit Treel’s uncle soon, his father’s old butler, he probably never would. He cursed himself for forcing marriage and all marriage entailed upon August before their situation could allow her peace in her new home. He cursed the protesters and letter writers who were destroying her hopeful expectations. Beyond that, he asked August if she would like to go with him to Yangerton; they could visit the old man and then perhaps explore downtown, where the plaza and the theaters were. They could see a show, could dress like normal people and buy cheap seats to avoid unwanted attention. August was thrilled by the prospect of getting out of Podrar.

  They went the following week. Vane bought tickets ahead of time for an evening opera. They spent the morning exploring the city, August bringing him to some of her favorite haunts as a child, in particular a park near the center of town. After lunch in a crowded café—the two basked to blend in with the masses of people, to be unremarkable again as each had used to be and never once appreciated—they headed off to the outskirts where Treel’s Uncle Jorne lived.

  The buildings grew smaller and farther apart as they walked. They passed a circular building with burgundy walls near the end of their journey, clearly some kind of fortuneteller’s shop. August wanted to go in, but not so strongly that Vane couldn’t change her mind. Just the thought of having cards read made his skin crawl. They moved on, and ten minutes later found the street to which Treel had directed Vane, Mudhole Road. Luckily, the spring had been dry for Yangerton and the dirt path remained what it should have been, packed dirt. In no time Vane was knocking on a door made of wooden boards at a tiny brick cabin. A man seventy years old or thereabout, with murky brown eyes like Treel, thick white hair, and a shapely beard somewhat grayer, opened the door with one hand while his second gripped a rounded cane.

  “Jorne Warrell?” asked Vane. Jorne nodded and smiled at him. “I’m….”

  Vane’s host cut him off with a strong, throaty voice. “I know exactly who you are. I’d been wondering if you’d drop by. And you brought the Missus, how delightful.” Jorne kissed August’s hand, the custom of his generation. “Do come in. Make yourselves at home.”

  Jorne led his guests into a parlor furnished with wicker chairs, a wicker table, and a thin brown rug. “Have you gone through the attic at Oakdowns?” Jorne asked, when they all had taken seats. “I hid a portrait of your parents there, and your father’s wedding ring…. Ah,” he said, glancing at Vane’s hand. “I see you found them.”

  Vane and August shared a shocked glance. The duke said, “It was you, then? You put them there?”

  “The day your mother fled with you. I knew sooner than most what had happened at the Palace, you see. I helped Rexson Phinnean and old Crescenton’s boy get the crown prince inside the manor. His Majesty’s brother was injured something awful. It was me who called for the duchess and kept other servants away. When your mother left for good, I moved the portrait. It was only a matter of time before Zalski would send men over, or come over himself, and I didn’t want that portrait slashed or burned. That didn’t seem right.”

  “And the ring? How did you get the ring?”

  “The engraving had worn down, so your father sent it off the day before he died for re-etching at the goldsmith’s. I was to pick it up the following afternoon, the day…. We all know what happened that day. After you and your mother left Oakdowns and she made me swear up and down not to speak a word, not a blessed word about what I’d seen, I went ahead and retrieved the ring like the duke had told me. Figured it was the least I could do in his honor. I’ve always wished I’d been able to pass it back to Her Grace, but everything worked out in the end, I suppose. She’d want her son to have it.”

  August was sitting next to Vane, and she took his hand in hers. The duke asked, “And my father?”

  “Him too.”

  “Not that. What kind of man was he? What was he like to work for? I’ve had so many people speak to me of my mother, but my father…. No one’s described him at any length but the king, and I’m sure….”

  “The king’s biased in his favor, is that it?”

  “Rexson’s bound to be,” said Vane.

  Jorne leaned forward, still gripping his cane. “You want the truth about your father, then. Is that what brought you here? Well, the man knew some foul language, he did, and he wasn’t afraid to use it when he argued with his brother-in-law. Respected Zalski’s wife sincerely, though, and she was a nasty piece of goods. Treated the household like animals, that woman, and if the duke ever told her a word about it, that word never reached me. He did apologize when she was exceptionally abusive, but not as often as he should have.

  “I wouldn’t call your father bookish, but given the choice between an afternoon at home or one out hunting, seven times out of ten he’d stay in the library or see that his horses were properly attended. A gifted horseman, quite gifted, but a dreadful archer, and I can’t say he had a sense of humor about that.”

  “In regard to his servants?”

  Jorne nodded. “He was direct, never one to talk in circles. And he expected his orders carried out with no fuss. All in all, he respected the staff and they respected him for it. I heard remarkably few grumbles about his treatment of anyone. He would ask my opinion about trivial matters, but drew a line of formality with his servants.”

  “Maintained a distance,” said Vane.

  “That’s got it. Here’s a fact I just recalled: he hated carrots something violent.”

  “So do you,” August told her husband.

  “And I’ll never forget that habit he had of strumming his fingers when he was thinking. Whenever I’d go in his office, sure as eggs at breakfast I’d find him strumming his fingers on his arm.”

  August’s face lit up. “You do that all the time.”

  “There was a tight-lipped aspect about him that would have put off a certain type of individual, though it never bothered me. I said he was just the introverted type, I think that’s the proper word. Found out later he’d been keeping his wife’s secret all along.” A curious look came over Jorne. “Her mark, the sorcerer’s mark, it wasn’t on her arm, was it?”

  “Her forearm,” Vane confirmed.

  “Never once saw Her Grace without long sleeves, even the summer dresses she’d wear around the garden.”

  They spoke for another two hours. Vane asked what had pleased the servants about how his father interacted with them, and what Jorne wished the man had done but didn’t, hoping to pick up tips. The old man had his share of anecdotes to tell, some sweet and funny, some bitter when Vane contemplated them alongside the knowledge of how everything had ended for his parents. August invited Jorne to grab a bite to eat with them before they went to the theater, and he was happy to accept. Over dinner, the old butler mentioned his nephew, as Vane suspected he might, and Vane said nothing of having met Treel or of Treel’s incarceration. Jorne, however, already knew what had befallen the young man.

  “Other men who served your father, they work for the king now, one or two of them. They wrote me to say Treel had been arrested. Stealing jewels.” Jorne shook his head, his expression despondent. “About tore my heart out, that news did. What’s worse is Treel hasn’t written. Well, I know he can’t write, never let me teach him, but he could dictate a letter. Won’t do it. Too ashamed, I guess.”

  The old man sighed, fighting tears. Vane and August let him have a moment to collect himself before they changed the subject.

  After taking leave of Jorne came the opera. Neither Vane nor August had ever been to one, and neither cared much for it, though that did little to squander the evening. Vane was relieved to see August let go of her concerns for a night; August was so thankful to get away from Oakdowns she would not have cared if the sopranos missed every other note, which they did not. The show was impeccable. She and Vane were among the last to file out when
it was over, and she asked, almost pleading, “Let’s not go home just yet. Yangerton’s gorgeous by night, especially the theater district. Let’s just walk around a bit.”

  “Let’s,” Vane agreed. He was not too keen himself to return to Podrar, though the hour was closing in on midnight.

  August knew the area, so Vane let her lead. It was a perfect spring evening, just cool enough that August wrapped her plainest shawl around her shoulders. They wound through side streets and alleys lined with shops, all closed, above which hundreds of people lived in tall housing complexes. They stopped in a tavern less raucous than most for a glass of wine, then decided they had wine enough in Oakdowns’s cellar and ordered ale instead. It was past one when they left, but still neither wanted to go back to the capital.

  They walked some more, back through those alleys and side streets among a small crowd of people winding their way home. They passed before the theater, where August stole a kiss, and turned into a street on the opposite side of the building from the roads they had already explored. Some five corners down, a giggling woman around Bendelof’s age came running out and brushed August’s shoulder.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, dear!” she said, and laughed some more, hanging on August’s arm. “I didn’t see you. I had dared him to catch me.”

  The streetlamps and moon were both bright enough that Vane and the man who rounded the corner after his companion had no trouble recognizing one another, despite their casual attire and unembroidered cloaks.

  “Ingleton.”

  The woman supporting herself on August stopped laughing. She drew back with a shocked look, staring at Vane, who stepped between his wife and the newcomer.

  “Yangerton.”

  “Fancy meeting you in these parts. Quite a ways from home, no? And you had business at the Palace only yesterday, I understand.”

  “My means of transportation don’t concern you.”

  Amison’s face said plainly that if they were magical they concerned everyone. He remarked, “You did have business at the Palace, no? With that council they just released news you’d decided to join. You presented your colleagues to the queen and Chief Adviser. You joined that farce of a Magic Council after all.”

  “The council’s no farce, Amison. No farce at all. If it were, you’d never have threatened me on its account. And don’t feign surprise I joined. You never doubted what I’d do.”

  “No,” replied Amison. “No, let’s not feign anything. Let’s be honest and open and cordial with introductions.” He pushed Vane aside to get a view of August. “This must be….”

  “My wife, yes.”

  “Charmed,” said Yangerton. August extended a trembling hand to him; she didn’t know what else to do. Rather than take it, the duke spat at her feet, and Vane moved back between them, one hand stretched behind him on August’s shoulder.

  “You will leave,” he told his peer. “You will go back the way you came, or I swear to all that’s holy you’ll regret it. I don’t care if you’ve a witness. I don’t care if she talks to every reporter from here to Fontferry, am I clear?”

  Yangerton folded his arms. “You dare threaten me?”

  “You will not disrespect my wife in my presence. Am I clear, Amison?”

  Amison seethed in response.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? Funny, I see no feline on this street. Am I clear?”

  Perhaps it was the shadows, but Amison looked clammy, and a line of sweat appeared to break out along his neck.

  “Perfectly,” he confirmed.

  “So why are you still here?”

  Amison gripped his lover’s hand so tightly she yelped and swept her around the corner. Vane and August listened to their footsteps fade.

  “August, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered. Vane wrapped an arm around her and led her back towards the theater.

  “August, I….”

  “So that…. That was the Duke of Yangerton?”

  “It was.”

  “And he…. He knows you used magic to come here?”

  “He does.”

  “After you swore to Rexson you’d stop using it when we eloped to Partsvale and the papers made such a fuss about the fact we could only have gotten there with a spell?”

  “After I swore that, yes.”

  “Will he…? Val, will Amison speak?”

  “He might. Or she might.”

  They stopped near a different theater than the one where they had seen the opera, a smaller theater, and August took her husband’s hand. “It’ll be all right,” she told him. “It’ll be all right, it has to be. Val, he’s nothing but a hypocrite, spitting at me like that when he’s got his tart born no more noble than a workhorse not five feet away.”

  “He doesn’t despise commoners, and doesn’t care that we’re together. He wouldn’t care if I spent every night with you. He just cares I married you. I shouldn’t have married you, see? That isn’t done. It’s that he resents. He’s no hypocrite. He’d never marry that woman, and she knows it. He’s a lot of things, most of them indecent, but he’s no hypocrite.

  “Damn it! Damn it, August, I’m so tired of this! We can’t have one day, one bloody, normal day without everything going to hell. And if there’s a baby…. August, what are we doing? What have we gotten ourselves into?”

  August squeezed his hand. “We’re living one day at a time, like we decided at the start. We’re taking each moment and each crisis as it comes. Val, listen to me, you listen, I don’t regret a thing, especially not day two hundred and ten.”

  Vane blinked. “Two hundred and ten?”

  She smiled. “The day we married. I counted back on a calendar last week. We met on August nineteenth, no? I’m not quite sure of the number. That day’s pretty rattled, you bonking me on the head and all.”

  She gave him a playful jab in the stomach, and he said, “You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”

  “Never ever,” she swore. “As for the baby: yes, it’s a complication. Yes, it’ll cause a headache when people learn I’m pregnant, if I’m pregnant at all. I’m terrified for all kinds of reasons, and I just know I’m going to start feeling sick any day now. Val, I never knew terror could be something beautiful, beautiful and blessed and utterly wonderful. I learned that these last hours, though. I wouldn’t change a thing, not the baby if one comes, not the peace I found all day before that run-in, but I need to know you feel the same way, because in spite of all you said when I first mentioned a child, I’m not sure you do. That’s the only fear right now I want to get rid of, because I’m just not sure you….”

  “I meant every word I spoke when you told me you might be expecting. August, I would never give up what we have, any child first and foremost, to get rid of the mess that comes with it.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Val, thank you.” She embraced him and said, “I’m sorry I kept us out this long. We shouldn’t have stayed. We could have avoided….”

  “I wasn’t ready to go back either,” he told her. “Though we probably should go now.”

  “We probably should,” she agreed.

  They transported back to Oakdowns, and as bad as the end of the night had been, for August the next day was equally miserable. She spent much of it vomiting into a pail. Neither she nor Vane had much doubt after her nausea continued the entire week that followed, and none at all the week after that, when August still felt ill and missed a second cycle to boot: bring with it what it may, a baby was coming.

  Each morning when August attempted to eat breakfast she blamed a common stomach illness for her lack of appetite, and also feigned a fever to throw off suspicion of pregnancy. She and Vane read the Bugle carefully in their dining room, but without dread. That was because Vane had already dressed in common clothes and transported to Yangerton to bring back its papers. It was those the couple read together with forced calm on their faces and tension in their arms before August even rose from bed. No word fro
m Carson Amison concerning them appeared.

  Finally, after two weeks of fretting about the Duke of Yangerton and suffering constant nausea, August scowled as she threw the Yangerton Weekly on the rug. She wore her nightshirt and sat propped up with pillows beneath a thin sheet, her husband beside her. “Why doesn’t he speak?” she asked. “Why does he wait? I can’t take much more of this!”

  “I don’t think he will speak, August, if he hasn’t by now. He’s not the type to bide his time, not when he’s no pressing cause.”

  “Was it your threat against him, do you think? Is that why holds his tongue? He knew your uncle well, the king said. He knows what any sorcerer can do with the proper spell.”

  “Perhaps,” Vane consented. “It could also be for the circumstance in which he met us. If he doesn’t trouble to hush his affairs, he’s never drawn deliberate notice to them either. He’s not completely shameless. Who cares why he’s quiet? Why question the one bit of good luck we’ve had all year?”

  August insisted, as she did daily, just once, “You should tell the king what happened. He should know of it.”

  “I can’t, August. You know I can’t. He all but forbade me transporting out of Podrar. Making a show of my magic. It’s already far too much in the public eye. What happened with Amison is precisely why he demanded caution. Rexson wouldn’t be pleased I ignored him.”

  “This could affect politics, Val. The king should know.”

  “He’d simply worry. I’d only disappoint him, and for what? Nothing seems to have come of this. August, I’m not a coward. I understand that if Amison does cause trouble, I must tell Rexson why. But until the cad does, I don’t see the value in troubling the king. He’s enough to be dealing with day to day without me heaping my cares upon him. Anyway, as things stand, I believe we’re in the clear now.” Vane paused. As much to change the subject as to get a different worry off his chest, he said, “I think I should visit Treel again. Not for him, for the old man. If I can get Treel to dictate me a letter....”