Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1)

by W. R. Gingell

  “Don’t be dire, sweeting,” said Melissa, her honeyed tones full of sticky magic and soft promises.

  “Huh,” said Luck interestedly. “I don’t remember you being so boring before. That’s a pity. Stop doing that with your voice. It’s irritating.”

  Melissa gasped in outrage, but Mordion, smiling with eyes as hard as granite, said: “I have the spellpaper. The curse is completely bound. I have it all.”

  Poly looked into Luck’s bright eyes and gave herself a hasty internal check. There was no loss in her– no pain, no draining pull, no irresistible lethargy.

  “You don’t, you know,” she told Mordion. She felt light and free and powerful. Something had been done when her blood sealed the spellpaper, but it had not been a curse that was activated.

  “I have the spellpaper,” said Mordion again, but his eyes were cold and watchful.

  “Yes. About that,” said Luck. “I fiddled with the spellpaper a bit. And the curse is null and void anyway.”

  Mordion, his gaze fixed on Luck’s face, said: “You broke the curse? Impossible! She was still falling asleep in the village.”

  “Everything about Poly is beautiful and impossible,” said Luck. “You of all people should have seen that. It’s one of the reasons you chose her, after all.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, I just kept kissing her,” Luck said dreamily. “It worked out surprisingly well.”

  “I see,” said Mordion. His eyes were without even a touch of his usual cold amusement. “Then I will just have to draw up another paper. I’m sure Melissa and I can come up with something suitable. After all, you did just turn Poly over to the Wizard Council’s Championship.”

  “Yes. About that,” said Luck again, and Poly swallowed a mad little giggle. “I did give her over. But you did, too. That was one of the things I did to the spellpaper. You made a pact of blood, turning Poly over to her own Championship with perpetuity. And if you don’t know what that means, you can go and visit the little grey man in Curzon street. He told me all about it. Gave me a lot of good advice, actually. Oh, and Black Velvet will be here shortly: they were very interested to find out what you were up to.”

  “I see,” said Mordion again. This time his voice was curious, even thoughtful. “This complicates matters. Let me clarify for you all.”

  The Wizard Council, who to a man had begun to look very uncomfortable indeed, looked variously at their feet, Mordion, and the middle distance.

  “There are only two outcomes for you all today,” Mordion told them. “One, you give yourselves up to Black Velvet and accept life-long imprisonment or worse for treason.”

  There was an immediate, low buzz of conversation, and magic flared into being around the room.

  “Naughty wizards!” said Onepiece. He was making a cat’s cradle, loops of frighteningly strong magic that stuck to the ceilings and walls, and threatened to fall at any moment. None of the wizards around them seemed to notice, much to Poly’s relief.

  “I don’t think we ought to let him keep talking,” she said to Luck.

  “It’ll be fine,” Luck said cheerfully. “You look very pretty today, Poly. What did you do to my gate spell?”

  “Two,” said Mordion, his voice low and hypnotic, and somehow managing to cut through all the surrounding noise. “Two: we all join our magic and take not only the princess but the enchanter. Twice the profit with no more risk.”

  “Huh,” said Luck, as Melissa’s aura of magic expanded in readiness. “Didn’t think of that.”

  Separate strands of magic rose all over the room, combining in a vast, piebald reservoir of power.

  Melchior, surrounded by wizards as he was, did something deadly and black with his own magic that would have him killed by the closest wizard as soon as it left his fingers. Poly swept him effortlessly into a corner of the room, boxing him in with impenetrable, invisible unmagic, and left him calling her name in frustration as he vainly tried to escape. She was so busy doing that, in fact, that she didn’t throw up a protection around the three of them quickly enough.

  Poly saw something fierce and poisonous and scarlet in her peripheral, then Luck did something quick and twisting with a snarl. Melissa screamed once, sharp and fearful, and as Poly blazed a wall of protective unmagic into being around them, she saw a crimson cloud stain the air. Mordion pounced on it, quick as thought, and drank it in greedily.

  “Mine this time, I think,” he said to Poly. His voice was oddly muffled through the barrier of unmagic, and the piebald mixture of magic seemed to push more heavily against it. Poly threw an extra layer of protection over Melchior, finessing it with a coating of invisibility, and found that he had stopped struggling. Instead, his obsidian magic was steadily growing and flowing freely around him, an offering for her use.

  When she was finished, she said in a voice that wasn’t quite steady: “Luck, did you kill Melissa?”

  “She threw something nasty at you,” said Luck. “While you weren’t paying attention. Why weren’t you paying attention?”

  “Had to make sure Melchior was safe,” Poly said briefly, swiping with her antimagic hand at several surprisingly strong spells that had managed to get through the unmagic. One of them disintegrated an inch from Luck’s nose, much to his surprise and Onepiece’s disapproval.

  “Ooof! That’s a bit strong for Mordion’s talents,” he said.

  “It’s some of mine,” Poly said, unwinding the magic from its spell-form. It slithered up her fingers and into her hair, comfortably hers again. “Look out!”

  Luck ducked a poisonously yellow spell. “They’re getting through faster. What’s wrong with your unmagic?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” panted Poly, snatching curses from the air. “It’s just that they’re getting stronger, and there are lots of them. Shouldn’t Black Velvet be here by now?”

  “You’ve got to stop mollycoddling Melchior,” said Luck. He covered Onepiece’s eyes with his hand just as one of the spells exploded in a blinding flash of light. “He’s Wizard Council, too, you know.”

  “He’s Black Velvet!” snapped Poly, trying to blink the glare from her eyes. Her hair expanded in response, tangling enchantments and curses in its coils before they could land, but she couldn’t see Luck and Onepiece. “When will they get here?”

  “That might have been an exaggeration.”

  Something hissed between them, sharp and deadly. “An exaggeration?”

  “Well, a bluff. I couldn’t go to Black Velvet with Melissa’s magic all over me– she would have known. I had to leave them more of a clue than a message.”

  Poly closed her eyes and studied the dancing lights that still burned there. “They’re not coming?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. They’re clever, they’ll figure it out. Eventually.”

  There was a flutter as a small, thin spell slipped through the tendrils of Poly’s hair. Luck gasped, then groaned, and Poly reached blindly for him.

  “Luck? Luck, are you all right? Is Onepiece all right?”

  “Strong!” said Luck hoarsely. “Shouldn’t have missed that one. The dog is fine.”

  “I can hold this,” said Poly, blinking madly. There were still bright, black-ringed spots in her vision, but she could vaguely see Onepiece and Luck again. “Get Onepiece somewhere safe, quickly.”

  To her surprise, Luck didn’t argue. He merely disappeared, surprising shouts from half the wizards present, and returned a moment later without Onepiece.

  He did something big and netlike to the Chambers around them, and when Poly looked at him curiously, said: “Don’t want them getting ideas about Shifting out and back in again. Some of them have spells from me that could give us a bit of trouble. Besides, I want ‘em all here when Black Velvet arrives.”

  “I see,” panted Poly. The push of magic had grown significantly stronger. “If Black Velvet arrives, do you mean?”

  “Did you know the dog’s done something to the room?”

  “Yes. It’ll fall in
a few minutes.”

  “Whoops! Careful, Poly! Too late, it’s through. Do you know what he did?”

  “No. Ooh, Luck, this one’s sticking!”

  “I’ve got it. Stand still; you keep moving just as I’ve got it.”

  Poly felt her knees threatening to give way beneath her, and caught a look of fierce exultation on Mordion’s face through the unmagic barrier. “Oh! Get it off! Luck, get it off! He’s using it to draw on my magic!”

  Not just her magic, she realised a moment later, when her unmagic shield flickered and then disappeared. She felt the tail-end of it as it was sucked into Mordion’s orbit, immeasurably expanding his reservoir of power.

  There was a moment of absolute quiet. Then Poly flung herself at Luck, wrapping her arms around him, and saw her hair rise, growing and shifting around them as a furore of magic began.

  Her hair grew. Spells and curses, large and small, fed into it while tiny clever little curses knifed right through the strands. The sense of power building popped her ears and made her dizzy, and before long it wasn’t Poly protecting Luck, but Luck supporting Poly as she blindly took in spell after spell.

  “Luck–”

  “I’m here.”

  “It’s too strong.”

  “I know,” said Luck. His magic was twisted and tarry from the onslaught. “Hold on just a little longer.”

  Poly felt the quick in and out of breath above her ear as Luck set an enchantment spinning around them. The barrage of tiny, stinging curses ceased, and Luck began to unlace her glove.

  “Oh!” said Poly, drunk on magic. “Don’t need to do that. Can get to it without that.”

  “I know,” said Luck again. “But I can’t.”

  The glove slipped to the floor, eddying on currents of loose magic, and Luck threaded his fingers through hers, sparking a warm glow of antimagic from her fingertips to her shoulder. The moment he touched Poly’s hand his enchantment died.

  Mordion said: “I have you!” his voice thick with satisfaction.

  “No,” said Luck. “I have you.”

  He seized Mordion by the throat and used Poly’s antimagic to bring down every piece of wizard magic in the room.

  Mordion choked, grasping for the remainder of Melissa’s magic, and Luck brought that down, too; but spurts of magic were already beginning to restart around the room as wizards discovered that only their spells and not their magic had been dismantled. Above, Onepiece’s intricate enchantment quivered in response.

  “Luck,” Poly said warningly.

  More magic flared into life, building and dangerous.

  Poly gripped Luck’s hand, tugging him toward her. “Luck.”

  “Together, you fools!” snarled Mordion, around the choker of Luck’s fingers.

  “Luck!”

  “Whoops!” said Luck, ducking back into the cover of Poly’s hair as magic pelted at them again. “There it goes!”

  Onepiece’s spell fell on them; sticky, insidious, and strong. A babble of confusion grew in the room, rising over the deadly hum of magic, as wizard after wizard shrank and lengthened and– grew fur.

  Mordion, a scarlet and blue blur of magic, fought tooth and nail but shifted and changed with the rest of them.

  “Huh,” said Luck. “They’re all cats. Who did that?”

  -cats!- said Onepiece’s gleeful voice in Poly’s head. -yowly spitty cats. run, cats, run! onepiece will catch you and bite you!-

  “Onepiece,” said Poly, her voice wobbly with laughter or exhaustion. “He did it. He wants to chase them.”

  “Well, he can’t. They have to stay here until Black Velvet comes for them.”

  “All right,” Poly said, wearily. “I can make sure of that. It would be nice to lose some of this weight, anyway.”

  She pinched away the hair at the nape of her neck, heavy and lustrous with magic, and tossed it outward. It stuck to Onepiece’s magic, snaring cats all over the room, and when she drew it back toward herself, cats snarled and scrabbled through the forms, scratching wood as they came.

  “That’s no good,” said Luck. “Now you have a parliament of wizard cats on leashes.”

  “They’re not leashes,” Poly told him. “They’re threads.”

  Luck followed her eyes to the tapestry across the room, a firelit scene of home and hearth with a dog curled by the fire at his master’s feet.

  “Huh,” he said. “That’ll work.”

  Poly bound the cats into the tapestry–thread by thread, cat by hissing cat–until all fifty-eight cats were still and thready by the woollen hearth fire.

  “That should hold them for a while,” she said. There was a coiled resistance to her binding somewhere deep in the tapestry– Mordion fighting back, Poly supposed. It wasn’t strong enough to worry her, however, and she tied off her enchantment without taking the time to subdue it.

  “Can they see in there?”

  “See us, you mean?” said Luck. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure they could even if they were human.”

  “What do you mean, even if they were human?” Poly asked uneasily. “They are human. They’re just cat shaped.”

  Luck shrugged. He was examining the unmagic box in which she had encased Melchior, and she had the feeling that he wasn’t quite paying attention.

  “Mordion might be. The rest are proper cats: I doubt they’ll even remember being human. We’ll have to get that dog of yours some training before he does something unfortunate.”

  “But what about their magic?”

  “Oh, they’ll love it,” said Luck. “They’ll probably use it to enchant mice and magic balls of string. What is this spell, Poly?”

  “It’s not a spell, it’s unmagic,” said Poly, belatedly remembering Melchior. “I’d better let him out.”

  She dismantled the box of unmagic that had kept Melchior safe through the storm of magic, and found that he was wearing the sarcastic, self-mocking look that she didn’t like.

  “Oh, is it safe for me to come out now? Or would you prefer me to cower a little longer?”

  “Don’t make me apologise for keeping you safe,” Poly said severely.

  A smile swept across Melchior’s face, softening his hazel eyes. “I’d never make you apologise for anything, sweetheart. Thank you. I believe my ego will limp on.”

  “I see you survived,” said Luck irritably. He was leaning on the first row of seats, gently swaying, and his magic had blackened further. “Stop cuddling Poly.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty resilient,” said Melchior, smiling faintly. “Poly, should your Binding be doing that, do you think?”

  Poly’s eyes went involuntarily to the tapestry. It was bulging, stitches straining at the frame, and within the worked picture, cats were moving. They seemed to be chasing a ball of robin-blue string– no, wool. And in the background, one smoky grey cat watched, twitched its tail, and waited.

  “It’s Mordion. He’s done something.”

  “Told you they’d use it to make balls of string,” said Luck in satisfaction.

  “I don’t think they did,” said Poly, watching the ball of wool with narrow eyes. “I think he did. Which means that the ball of wool is–”

  “Unravelling.”

  “Magic!”

  “And unravelling,” reiterated Luck.

  “My Binding! Luck, help me catch it!”

  But there was no catching it all. Poly tried, grasping at the threads as they flew apart, but then the Binding was unravelled, and the threads were gone. The magic Mordion had been using was her own: the last dregs of what he had once stolen from her. He had used it to spark up what remained of the other wizards’ magic, tricking them into unravelling the Binding for him.

  Cats streamed past, yowling and hissing and scratching, and flowed out the door.

  Melchior’s eyes met hers, and Poly saw resolve there. He kissed her, quick and hard, his hands cupping her face.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said. “I can’t– I wish– but you have Luck, and I have to fini
sh this.”

  Then he was leaping over rows of seats for the door, and on the last leap Poly saw only a lithe black cat, springing lightly to the floor and darting through the door.

  “Hey!” said Luck, swaying in the sudden silence. “Stop kissing Melchior!”

  “Luck, we’ve got to stop them!”

  “I don’t want to stop them,” said Luck, but Poly was already running for the door.

  She could see cats at the end of the hall as she ran, flowing toward the front entrance: Melchior was with them, leaping high and fast to catch up with the leaders. She hoped to corner them when they reached the grand front door, but when it came in sight it was open, cats pouring over the threshold and into the street. Poly dashed after them, catching the doorframe to keep her balance before the stairs, and stopped short on the top step, her heart pounding.

  On the golden steps of the Council Building were twenty precise men in twenty precise grey suits. They were prim and proper, and carried behind them a storm of magic that obscured the street.

  Through their legs the cats streamed, yowling and spitting.

  Luck stumbled into the daylight, blinking, and hung on the door-frame behind Poly. He said: “Took your time!”

  “Where are the detainees?” asked the first precise man.

  “That was them. The dog turned them into cats.”

  The precise man blinked precisely once. “Cats. Hmm. We might need to keep an eye on that.”

  “I wouldn’t bother,” said Poly wearily. It was too late to catch them, and too late to stop Melchior. “Melchior is with them. I’m sure he’ll be in contact when he’s able.”

  The precise man seemed to consider this. Then he said: “Very well. We’ll tie all this up.”

  “That’s their way of saying ‘thanks and run along now’,” said Luck, as two rows of precise men marched quietly through the doorway and into the Hall.

  “Do we want to run along now?”

  “Might as well. It’ll only be paperwork and statements for the news sheets. Maybe some cleaning. We splashed a bit of magic about in there.”

  “Where did you put Onepiece?”

  “What? Oh, second floor,” said Luck, just as Onepiece himself trotted into sight along the hall, hotly pursued by two of Black Velvet’s number.