A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel)

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  Casting only the merest glance at the stranger who lay insensible upon the floor, Roland strode towards Lucia and reached out to her; she shrank away in spite of herself, and Sophie and Gwendolen caught his elbows and held him back.

  “A moment, I pray you,” she said, astonished to find her voice steady. For the ears of the approaching guardsmen, her own and King Henry’s both (here because she and Delphine and the Princes were here), she forced into it a note of command: “I am quite unharmed; there is no danger now. Stand down.”

  Conall Barra MacNeill glared the King’s guardsmen out of countenance, and knelt by the young man’s shoulder to examine him more closely.

  A melodic skrrr caught Lucia’s ear; when she looked that way, there was Joanna Callender straightening up from the floor with some small metallic object in her hand, held between the halves of a folded handkerchief. “His weapon, I believe,” she said, and Lucia watched her hand it over to the guard captain—Prichard, yes, that was his name.

  “I must go and speak to Jenny, and keep her away from . . . this,” Joanna muttered, and strode away, neither asking leave nor taking it.

  “Lucia,” said Sophie’s voice again, nearer this time; while all this was going forward, it seemed, Sophie had drawn level with Conall and was hovering there, prudently just out of Lucia’s reach (though not, of course, Lucia could not help remarking, out of reach of an offensive spell). “Thank all the gods you were not hurt!”

  “Not in the least,” said Lucia. “Let no one tell you that learning a trustworthy shielding-spell is a waste of effort.”

  Now, now she heard the betraying tremble in her own voice—Steadfast in the face of danger, she thought, in bitter self-mockery, and undone by a kind word from a friend.

  She put out a hand, thinking to keep Sophie at bay, but Sophie, misunderstanding, caught her hand and held it, and stepped over the stranger’s splayed limbs to stand at Lucia’s side, curving one arm protectively about her shoulders. In spite of herself Lucia leant towards her a little, feeling chilled and trying very hard not to shiver.

  “Lucia, will you not come and sit down?” Roland had escaped from Joanna and Gwendolen and was approaching, with great caution, from Lucia’s other side. “You look—that is, you must have used considerable magick, I think, in defending yourself—Sophie, you will help her to a chair?—I shall fetch you something to eat.”

  He turned on his heel and hared off in the direction of the supper-room.

  It now occurred to Lucia that her shielding-spell might have used more magick than, had she been thinking at all at the time, she might have intended. Certainly it was comforting, a balm to her pride, to suppose that it was magick shock and not simple cowardice that made her feel chilled and light-headed and weak at the knees.

  And clever of Roland to have deduced (or had he only guessed?) what had happened, before she had said anything to him about it.

  Lucia and Sophie were still gazing down at the would-be assassin when Roland reemerged onto the terrace; he was carrying two plates, one piled with strawberry tarts, the other with delicate slices of ham.

  “Please, Lucia,” he said again, “will you not sit down?”

  “I will sit down,” she said, turning from Sophie’s encircling arm to look him full in the face, “if you will undertake to ensure that I shall be present when this man is questioned.”

  “I—” Roland faltered, then said, “If it be in my power—yes. You have certainly a right to hear whatever he may have to say for himself.”

  He did not altogether like the notion, Lucia could see. She allowed herself to be steered to a chair near the terrace doors, from which she could both observe ongoing events and devour her strawberry tarts and ham.

  Having seen her settled, Roland returned to the scene of the attempted crime, where Captain Prichard and Conall Barra MacNeill were concluding a businesslike search of the unconscious youth, now bound at wrists and ankles, and—by their gestures—contesting possession of their prisoner.

  The latter interrupted their debate with a low groan, and by stirring and attempting, with no success whatever, to sit up.

  “I—stay here, Lucia,” said Sophie abstractedly. She patted Lucia’s shoulder and darted off.

  Lucia took stock of herself—yes, much better!—then stood up (gripping the chair-back for the first moment, to be safe) and followed.

  Conall Barra MacNeill looked up at her approach and came forward, frowning, in an attempt to head her off. “There is no use at all in my ordering you back to the Sasunnach castle and to bed, I suppose,” he said.

  “None whatsoever,” said Lucia. “Is there any use in my offering you that chair, to spare your knee?”

  Conall glowered down at her, his arms folded across his broad chest. “You may be heir to the chieftain’s seat, Lucia MacNeill, but I have not forgot the time you put a hedgehog in Ceana MacGregor’s parade helmet, or the time—”

  Lucia held up one hand to signify her surrender.

  Fortunately—for Roland, missing the substance and misreading the tone of their rapid, low-voiced exchange, appeared to be on the verge of wading into it in Lucia’s defence—Joanna now came hastening back, with Prince Edward in his scarlet coat close on her heels. Delphine, to Lucia’s relief, was nowhere in sight.

  “Roland!” cried Edward. “Quomodo vales?”

  Roland—with interjections from Lucia and the rest of the witnesses—explained.

  Edward stood over the prisoner, now seated, more or less, with his back against the balustrade—was the young man’s regimental coat his own, Lucia wondered, or part of a disguise?—and fixed him with a no doubt forbidding glare.

  “Explain yourself, Lieutenant,” he said. “What is your name? Your regiment? What reason can you possibly possess to attempt such a vile deed?”

  “I-I-I am Derrien Robic, C-captain—Your Royal Highness—I serve in Colonel Maheux’s regiment, presently quartered north of the river Huisne, in Maine—I—” He gazed about him in what looked like genuine bewilderment. “M-may I know of what crime I am accused? And . . . I beg your pardon, my lords . . . where I am?”

  The gathering erupted at this point into confused debate, which was ended at last by Edward’s saying, loudly and very firmly, “Captain Prichard, take this man to the Palace and confine him to the interdicted chamber, if you please.”

  “Sir,” said Prichard, offering a crisp salute.

  He signalled one of his guardsmen, and they began to pull Derrien Robic to his feet.

  Lucia, however, was not inclined to sit quietly whilst her assailant’s fate was decided by others. “A word, Your Highness,” she said.

  Their faces turned towards her, Roland’s wary, Edward’s astonished.

  “Truly, Lucia,” said the latter, “there is no need to trouble yourself further over this business; my father employs guardsmen and mages for exactly this purpose, and you may be assured that those responsible for this outrage upon a guest of his house—of our house—shall be suitably punished.”

  Struggling to keep her temper, Lucia said, “Your father may impose whatever punishment—” Lucia could see Prince Edward drawing breath to overrule her, and raised her voice a little: “—whatever punishment he sees fit, with my blessing, but first we must know how, and whom, and why—”

  “Lady Lucia”—and Edward’s voice was louder still, though quite without any show of temper—“as a guest of—”

  “Ned!” said Roland, between gritted teeth. “Lucia has every right to know why she was attacked, and by whom.” His composed expression, to judge by the rhythmic clenching of his left hand at his side, was costing him some effort to maintain. “Her being our guest is rather an argument in favour of her request than not, I should have thought. If I had been so used—”

  “You are not a lady!” Prince Edward insisted, his voice lower now, but not the less vehement for that.r />
  Lucia blinked.

  “No more is Lucia,” said Roland, and, before anyone could protest, “not in the way you mean. She is the heiress of Alba, Ned—or had you forgot?” His eyes, like his brother’s a vivid blue, glinted with ill-timed mischief as he added, “I am at fault, of course; I ought to have compared Lucia’s case to your own, and not to mine.”

  The expression of outrage that bloomed over the Crown Prince’s face as he digested this statement forced Lucia to clap one hand over her mouth to stifle a sudden, entirely inappropriate upwelling of laughter. She had admired Roland’s unexpectedly able handling of Merton and Taylor in Oxford, but to hear him taking her part, and with such conviction, was something else again.

  His gaze found hers—swift and furtive, seeking her approval, but with an almost-hidden glint of answering laughter in his eyes—and she grinned at him (though only for a moment) as fiercely as she knew how.

  * * *

  “What we need,” said Lucia, “is a spell-seer.”

  “Is it?” said Sophie doubtfully. “To see what, precisely? Even if, as we suppose, Mr. Robic was acting under some manner of compulsion, surely it will by now have passed off—or been broken—and there will be nothing left to see.”

  “One of Lord de Vaucourt’s apprentices is a spell-seer,” said Roland, “and not altogether insufferable—Macsen Griffiths, you know. Will I send a steward to fetch him?”

  They had, collectively, persuaded both Captain Prichard and King Henry, who could overrule Lord de Vaucourt, to permit the three of them to attend the formal questioning of Robic, though not to lead it. No one had authorised them to invite further persons into the business; but, as Sophie had heard Joanna say more than once, absolution is often more easily gained than permission.

  “Yes,” said Sophie. “Do so.”

  They were a party of four, therefore, when they made rendezvous with Captain Prichard and Lord de Vaucourt outside the door to the Palace’s interdicted chamber. Vaucourt raised his eyebrows at Griffiths, and then at the other three, but desisted when all four of them returned him the same level stare.

  Captain Prichard unlocked and unbolted the door and pushed it open, then strode into the room to retrieve the prisoner. Having seen (and occasionally experienced for herself) the consequences to a powerful mage of imprisonment under interdiction, Sophie was prepared for his drooping posture, his miserable expression, and the faintly green hue of his pallid face; Roland, however, looked altogether horrified when Prichard, having bound Mr. Robic’s hands once more, led him out into the corridor.

  She edged closer to him and murmured, “It will pass off soon enough.”

  Mr. Robic, for his part, regarded her in mute and miserable appeal. Sophie set her teeth. What in Hades did he suppose her willing (or even able) to do on his behalf, after what he had so nearly done?

  * * *

  Some two hours later, they had begun to conclude that there was nothing useful to be learnt from this exercise. Griffiths had given it as his considered opinion that some faint trace of compulsion indeed lingered about the prisoner, but he could form no impression of the spell’s author or of its intent or motivation. Mr. Robic himself appeared genuinely to remember nothing of what he had done, or why.

  An idea occurred to Sophie, halfway through the third or fourth of these retellings of cavalry manoeuvres, stable duties, disputes among the common soldiers, and supervising the unloading of fodder and other supplies. She could, in theory, by means of a song-spell such as the one she had employed to divert her mother-in-law’s attention from Lord Kergabet and Jenny, compel a person to speak the truth; could she also, perhaps, compel him to speak a truth which he did not consciously remember?

  Lord de Vaucourt would never permit it, she told herself. But . . .

  But what if Lord de Vaucourt did not know? Reaching gently for her magick, she began humming under her breath, weaving melody and magick together into a call for the revelation of hidden truths. Griffiths shot her a sharp sidewise glance, but refrained from betraying whatever it was he saw.

  The prisoner stumbled once more to the end of his recital. This time, however, the low monotonous voice, beyond even weariness, did not stop at “. . . and reported for patrol duty with my men,” but continued: “And when we rode out, we were ambushed in our own woods by men of Orléanais.”

  Everyone sat up straighter; no one spoke.

  As though this one misstep had jarred loose all the rest of the contents of some tight-packed secret cabinet, he went on—and on—in the same hollow monotone.

  “There were two officers and six men, none mounted. They strung lines across the trees at chest height, and so scraped us off our horses’ backs. Stupid of me not to see it. One was a mage-officer, which in general none of the Duchies’ troops employ. Perhaps he was a spell-seer, for he looked at all of us and singled me out, and I was the only one of us able to do more than call light.

  “He sent the rest back to camp. Bespelled them somehow, I think, for no alarm was raised. And I . . .” For the first time, he faltered—then swallowed hard—and at last went on. “I must call myself a deserter, I suppose. The mage-officer . . . spoke to me. I cannot recall even now what he said. But I knew at once what I must do. He gave me . . .”

  He paused.

  “May I have my hands free?” he said. A humble petition, eyes downcast.

  Vaucourt and Prichard exchanged a look.

  “Very well,” said Prichard after a moment, and untied them.

  “He gave me this,” said Mr. Robic. His slim, callused right hand dipped into the pocket of his coat, and brought out what looked like an ordinary copper coin, dull and green with age. “In case I should be caught, or fail in my task.”

  He raised the coin to his lips. Sophie saw what he was about to do in the heartbeat before he swallowed it; she leapt forward out of her seat, shouting, and Lucia and Roland with her—but too late, too late, too late.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  In Which Joanna Draws Conclusions, and Gray Is Taken by Surprise

  Having spent the night of the disrupted concert with Lucia at the Royal Palace, Sophie was returned to Grosvenor Square early the following evening in a state of numb, unspeaking horror which Joanna had seen before.

  “What has happened?” she demanded, clasping Sophie’s chilled hands. Treveur, who had been hovering in expectation of collecting Sophie’s hat and gloves, instead vanished momentarily and returned with a woollen shawl, which Gwendolen wrapped about Sophie’s shoulders.

  Sophie’s throat worked; she blinked slowly, once, twice; her lips opened, then closed again.

  “You are ill,” Joanna decided. “Let me take you upstairs and tuck you up in bed, and ask Lady Maëlle to—”

  “No,” said Sophie. Her throat worked again. “Not . . . I am not ill. This morning . . . the young man who attacked Lucia—he had been bespelled—” Her silence being now broken, the words tumbled from her lips faster and faster. “The interdiction delayed the inevitable, but the effect wore off, I suppose, or—and he remembered. He told us what he knew—what little he knew—but then he—then he—”

  This was not a conversation for the front door, but there was no question now of going upstairs, or anywhere else; Sophie was weeping almost too much to draw breath, and clutching at Joanna as though she feared her being snatched away.

  The storm at last eased, however, and Joanna and Gwendolen succeeded in spiriting Sophie up to her bedroom via the servants’ stair, so as to avoid for the moment any further necessity to answer questions. Over the course of the next hour, the ugly tale slowly emerged.

  “And if I had not made him speak,” said Sophie, “then perhaps—”

  “No, Sophie,” Joanna said firmly. “He was to be punished for his failure, whatever you did or did not do; that much is clear.”

  For some little time they all three sat silently contemplatin
g the horror of it.

  To fall on one’s sword might be an honourable end; but this—this poisoning-by-proxy—had been no more or less than foul murder.

  “Orléanais,” said Joanna at last.

  “I beg your pardon?” Sophie looked up, dull-eyed.

  “On the one hand we have, by Mr. Robic’s account, a mage-officer from Orléanais,” said Joanna, “who bespells a young Breizhek officer to compel him to commit . . . well, both murder and treason, to begin with. And a very particular murder, which if successful might have been expected to outrage not only Britain but Alba as well; certainly it must end any hope of alliance between us, and perhaps—very likely—it might constitute an effective casus belli, and thus draw our attention to our northern border and away from the eastern ones.

  “On the other hand,” she continued, “by the evidence of Lord Merton, we have the Duc d’Orléans, who styles himself Imperator Gallia and desires to control all the former territory of Roman Gaul, principally including, we must suppose, Britain’s own three provinces on that side of the Manche. Who seeks to bring all the peoples of this empire of his to the worship of the Roman gods alone. Who has somehow persuaded at least half of his neighbours to unite under his banner, and who apparently is searching the Duchies for mages to train up to his sorcerer-centuries—meaning, I suppose, to erase the only two tactical advantages which we have always had over the armies of the Duchies.

  “We know now, in fact—do we not?—where Gray is likely to be, and the Professor and Amelia too.”

  Sophie nodded; she did not look comforted.

  “I quite see why a man who is collecting mages should be eager to get his hands on Mr. Marshall,” said Gwendolen, “but what should this Imperator Gallia want with your sister?”

  Joanna had asked herself this question more than once, and thus far had arrived at no satisfactory answer.