The Artful Apprentice

by Christopher Nuttall

  Emily snorted. “You need to learn,” she said. “And I don’t think I’ll be staying here much longer.”

  She scowled, watching the darkened countryside scrolling by. She’d stopped the duke, she’d freed the dragon... but she’d still failed. She hadn’t caught the murderer. The king’s death remained a mystery. And the two prime suspects were dead, along with poor Rogan. She wondered, suddenly, how Willis intended to explain their mother’s death to his half-siblings. Blame it on the duke? Or... or what? How would he explain their father’s death?

  Void is going to be disappointed, Emily thought, again.

  She leaned into the saddle, casting a couple of spells to ensure she stayed in the saddle as she drifted off. Her body was simply too tired. Willis and Elena knew they had to follow the road back to the city... she jerked awake, her body so sore she thought she’d been beaten. The sun was coming up, casting rays of light over the giant city below. She forced herself to sit up despite the aches and pains. A small formation of soldiers cantered towards them.

  Willis moved forward, raising his arm in greeting. Emily silently cursed herself for not stopping him. The soldiers might not be trustworthy. It wouldn’t be easy to prove that a small boy in a tattered tunic was the Crown Prince, or that the older girls were a princess and a sorceress... she gathered her magic, grateful she’d had at least some rest. She could fight her way out if there was no other choice.

  The soldiers came to a halt. “Your Highness,” the leader called. He slipped off his horse and knelt. “Welcome home!”

  Emily blinked in surprise. She’d expected everything from armed resistance from the duke’s sons to a very terse conversation with parliament, if the city hadn’t descended into chaos. But she hadn’t expected a warm welcome... Was it a trap of some kind? Or had the duke’s sons lost power overnight? It was possible someone had managed to get a message to the city ahead of them. A sorcerer wouldn’t need a chat parchment to send a warning to the duke’s sons.

  Willis sat up in the saddle. “I thank you, Sir Walter,” he said, gravely. “What’s happening in the castle?”

  “The duke’s sons are dead,” Sir Walter said. “Sir Mowbray has taken control. We have orders to arrest the duke and return you and the queen to the castle.”

  “They’re both dead,” Willis said. He sounded shaky, but resolute. “You may escort us back to the castle.”

  Emily forced herself to think as Sir Walter remounted and started to lead the trio down to the city. The duke’s sons were dead? Why? How? Even if the hostages had broken free, they shouldn’t have done something that would make an enemy out of the duke. As far as they knew, the duke still had hostages and a powerful army under his control. Sir Walter hadn’t known the duke was dead... Emily could believe the hostages breaking free, but not that they’d killed the duke’s sons. They would have left themselves with very little maneuvering room at all.

  Elena grinned. “It’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said, shortly. There was something about the whole affair that didn’t add up. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  She tensed as they passed through the city gates and cantered through the streets. There were guards and soldiers everywhere, weapons flashing in the dawn. She couldn’t see any civilians, apart from a pair of town criers heading towards the gates. The regent had probably ordered a curfew, insisting that everyone stay indoors until the coup was defeated. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. If the regent intended to put Willis in a gilded cage, he’d certainly taken steps to limit any hope of popular resistance.

  And to keep people out of the way if the duke returns with an army, Emily thought. The duke had probably taken most of his army north, just in case things went pear-shaped. The regent clearly doesn’t know the duke is dead.

  Willis whooped, the sound echoing in the morning air, as they galloped up to the castle and came to a halt. The soldiers removed their caps in salute. Emily glanced from man to man, breathing a sigh of relief as she realized the duke’s livery was nowhere in sight. The castle had been liberated completely, then. She wondered, as she scrambled down and passed the reins to a soldier, just how badly the duke had subverted the Royal Guard. The entire force might need to be rebuilt from scratch.

  A messenger ran up to Sir Walter and muttered in his ear. “Your Highness, Sir Mowbray awaits you,” he said. “If you’ll permit me to escort you...”

  Willis made no objection as he followed Sir Walter into the castle and up a long flight of stairs. Emily exchanged glances with Elena, then slipped after him. Sir Mowbray might lodge an objection, on the grounds they were a foreigner and an underage princess respectively, but until then... she wanted to know what was going on. Sir Walter said nothing as he led them into the king’s public chambers. Sir Mowbray stood in front of a table, looking down at a map. He turned and went down on one knee as Willis entered.

  “Your Highness,” he said. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

  “And you,” Willis said. He stood a little straighter. “What’s going on?”

  Sir Mowbray didn’t smile. “We have control of the city,” he said, in a manner that made Emily wonder who we happened to be. “The remainder of the duke’s forces within the city have either been killed or imprisoned. The army outside the city has withdrawn. It was our assumption they intended to link up with the duke and force the walls.”

  “The duke is dead,” Emily said, quietly. “If his sons are dead too, who takes the reins?”

  “Technically, His Highness,” Sir Mowbray said. “But his faction might not go along with it.”

  “We’ll give them the chance,” Willis said. He held himself like a young man steeling himself to the task. “Father told me that you shouldn’t back someone into a corner if there was any other choice. They might come out fighting.”

  “We can dispatch a messenger,” Sir Mowbray said. “But we have to prepare for the worst.”

  Emily frowned as she studied the map, then shrugged. It wasn’t her problem. She looked up and around the room, noting the movers and shakers who’d gathered to pay homage to the regent. Simon wasn’t there. Nor were the younger royal children.

  And most of them would have sworn homage to the duke, if he’d survived, she thought, cynically. She’d met enough aristocrats to know the score. Without him, they can swear to Willis instead.

  She looked at Sir Mowbray. “What happened to the duke’s sons?”

  A shadow of... something... crossed Sir Mowbray’s face. “It was very odd, Lady Emily,” he said, in a tone that suggested he resented having to answer her questions. “They simply dropped dead.”

  Emily blinked. “They just dropped dead?”

  “Yes, My Lady,” Sir Mowbray said. “I was there.”

  “I see.” A chill ran down Emily’s spine. “I think I’d better take a look at the bodies.”

  “They’re in the resting chamber,” Sir Mowbray said. “I’ll have a guard take you there...”

  “I can take her,” Elena said. “It’ll give me something to do.”

  “A young girl shouldn’t look at dead bodies,” Sir Mowbray said. “It isn’t...”

  “Let her go.” Willis cut him off. “She’s come into her magic.”

  Emily concealed her amusement as Elena led the way out of the room. The princess had — technically — come of age, the moment her magic bubbled into existence. It wasn’t going to be easy for the regent to push her around, not when she had both magic and legal adulthood. And the support of her brother. It spoke well of Willis that he’d immediately defended his sister. It would have been easy to quietly ignore the whole affair.

  She shivered as they headed up the stairs. She’d only seen the duke’s sons once, but they’d both been strapping young men. They wouldn’t simply drop dead, not unless magic was involved. And... her mind raced. The duke was dead, the queen was dead... and the murderer, the regicide, was still alive. There was no way a hired sorcerer would intervene now, not when t
here was nothing to gain and everything to lose. It made no sense. They’d be more likely to sneak away and vanish into the shadows.

  Unless they needed to kill the duke’s sons to get out, she thought. Simon? She doubted it. Simon’s oaths would have kept him from deliberately hurting the king. And the magic felt too odd to be Simon. Did someone leave the castle and vanish during the chaos?

  The resting room felt... creepy. Two bodies lay on the bed, utterly unmarked. Someone had removed their weapons, but otherwise left the corpses completely alone. Emily heard Elena gasp behind her as she walked forward, peering down at the bodies. There were no visible wounds. Their faces were curiously slack. There was no sign of what — if anything — had killed them. She reached out, carefully. A faint haze of unfocused dark magic pervaded the bodies.

  They were killed, she thought. She cast a pair of spells, but found nothing beyond the magical haze. It was strong, stronger than the spells that had tried to kill her. She honestly didn’t understand how the hostages had missed it. Unless... the duke had forced everyone with the slightest hint of magic to drink potion. Simon and the others wouldn’t have sensed anything. They wouldn’t even have known there was something wrong until the boys -the young men, really — collapsed. Someone in the room had magic and...

  She frowned. It wasn’t easy to draw magic out of potion. The technique was so rare that most sorcerers didn’t even know it was possible. And yet... if she’d done it, could one of the other sorcerers have done the same? Simon might have figured it out for himself... she frowned, again. She didn’t think so. He could have made himself wealthy and powerful simply by sharing what he’d learned with others. And yet...

  Her blood ran cold. Someone in that room had magic, she thought, and no one knew it.

  Elena caught her arm. “They were such fun, when they were boys,” she said. “And then they grew up and became... nastier.”

  “I imagine so,” Emily said. She kept her eye on the corpses. “Elena... were there ever any rumors about people having magic, magic they kept to themselves?”

  “A few.” Elena walked around the bed, face grim. “A couple of women were supposed to be brewing love potions for the ladies of the court. A third was sent home in disgrace... I’m not sure what she did. Father did it personally, rather than asking the...”

  Her voice trailed off. “She didn’t do it, did she? She didn’t kill my father?”

  “I don’t think so,” Emily said. She indicated the bodies. “Whoever killed your father and tried to kill me also killed these two.”

  Elena let out a choked little sob. “I suppose we can give them a medal before we hang them.”

  She paced back to Emily. “She didn’t do it and I hated her and...”

  Emily wrapped her arms around the younger girl and gave her a gentle hug. “It’s alright to make mistakes,” she said. “You were wrong...”

  “I was horrid to her.” Elena’s eyes shone with tears. “I... I should have been better.”

  “It’s alright,” Emily repeated. She didn’t know what else to say. Elena had been horrible to her stepmother, but it was too late to make amends. “You do what you can for your younger siblings.”

  “I’m going to have to look after Willis too,” Elena said. Her magic bubbled around her. “I... I can’t leave him here. Sir Mowbray will have him signing documents without reading them.”

  “You need to learn to control your magic,” Emily said. She could contact Alassa or Imaiqah, ask them to send someone to talk to Elena. “Sir Mowbray won’t do any harm.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Elena said. “I wish... I wish things had been different.”

  “We can’t undo the past,” Emily told her. “All we can do is learn from our mistakes.”

  She let go of the younger girl and took one final look at the bodies. The healers would probably take a look at them too, if she was any judge, but it was unlikely they’d find anything she’d missed. The dark magic was fading, as if the murderer had learned a few lessons. It would be gone completely in a few hours. There would be no hope of tracing the killer when it vanished.

  “I think we’d better speak to Simon,” she said. “Take me to him.”

  Elena nodded, wiping away her tears. “The wards say he’s in the royal chambers, with the kids,” she said. “I guess Sir Mowbray wanted a sorcerer watching them.”

  “I guess,” Emily echoed. Simon’s oaths would make him the best possible candidate... probably. Had he sworn to the king, or the entire royal line? “Let’s go find him.”

  She closed the door behind them as they headed down the corridor. There were only a handful of guards on watch, all looking nervous as they glanced from Elena to her and back again. They carried muskets and flintlocks, not swords and daggers. Emily guessed Sir Mowbray had brought parliamentary guards into the palace, at least until he could figure out who he could trust. It wouldn’t be easy. The duke might have been laying the groundwork for years.

  “The younger children share a suite,” Elena explained. She started to push the door open. “Father said Eve wouldn’t get a household of her own until she was a little older. He wasn’t too keen on giving me one, I can tell you.”

  “I guess he thought it would cost too much,” Emily said. “Willis needed one, because he was the Crown Prince, but you...”

  “Am nearly of marriageable age,” Elena said. “Why should any suitor take me seriously when I don’t have a household of my own?”

  “And yet, thousands of people manage to get married without a private army of servants,” Emily said, dryly. She understood the logic. It still irked her. “You’d still be a princess without a household of your own.”

  Elena pushed the door open. Emily frowned as a ward brushed against her battered protections. Simon had woven a dozen protections around the chambers, as if he’d feared assault from anyone and everyone. There was something odd about the spells, something that bothered her. It felt as if he were trying to conceal the royal children as well as protect them. The castle wards might know where they were. Emily was fairly sure no one else knew.

  And there’s no one who can control the wards, not until Willis comes of age, she thought, grimly. Sir Mowbray will have to hire a proper wardsmith to take control...

  Her eyes widened in horror as she stepped into the room. Simon was sitting on a chair, hunched over. A whiff of magic — dark magic, uncontrolled magic — hung in the air. Emily stared at him, then looked past him. Eve was lying on the bed, shaking as if she were having a seizure. Her eyes were tightly closed, sweat beading on her brow. Her hands and feet waved helplessly in the air, magic boiling around her...

  ... And she knew, with a sudden terrible certainty, precisely what Void had sent her to do.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  “EVE?” ELENA SOUNDED SCARED. “WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

  “Stay where you are,” Emily snapped. The magic was utterly unfocused, utterly uncontrolled. It bothered her at a very primal level. Eve was tapping into forces no sane adult sorcerer would ever touch, if only because they knew the slightest mistake could result in a fate worse than death. The sheer power was terrifying. It was... it was worse, in many ways, than necromancy. Eve could do too much simply by wishing it to be. “Don’t get any closer.”

  She leaned forward, trying to gauge the power. It was impossible. She could calculate an adult magician’s power, but not a child... a rush of horror ran through her as she remembered the stories. It was rare, vanishingly rare, for a child to come into magic until puberty had come and gone. No child magician ever survived to adulthood. They simply couldn’t make it through puberty. They...

  She killed her father, Emily thought, numbly. She killed her father... why?

  “Emily?” Elena’s voice rose. “What’s happening to her?”

  “A magic surge,” Emily said. It was a little more complex than that, but... it would do for the moment. “I think...”

  She turned to Simon. “Explain.”

 
Simon seemed to shrink further into himself. “I can’t. My oaths...”

  Emily felt her patience snap. “I think I know what happened,” she said, sharply. “I think you know I know what happened. Your oaths no longer apply.”

  She hardened her voice. “And if you don’t answer my questions, I swear I’ll rip the information out of your head and leave you a gibbering moron.”

  Elena gasped. Emily ignored her.

  “I...” Simon swallowed and started again. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Emily growled. Another surge of magic brushed against her defenses. “What happened to her?”

  Simon’s hands twisted in his lap. “The king — the late king — was very interested in magic. I... his father had been a skilled magician himself. The king told me he’d watched when his brother became a blademaster, when his magical talent was bent to the service of the crown and... he was very interested in magic. I think he intended to make Robert a blademaster when he reached the age of majority.”

  “Really.” Emily clenched her fists. “And what does Eve have to do with this?”

  “The king... he thought it was only a matter of time before there was a real clash with parliament.” Simon looked up at her, pleadingly. “Parliament was already buying modern weapons and arming itself. The Southern aristocrats had had enough of the Northerners pushing them around. The duke didn’t help, not with his attitude. And there was nothing he could do about it. He thought he needed a weapon.”

  He had a weapon, Emily thought. But he would have needed to kill a blood relative if he’d wanted to unleash the dragon.

  Simon kept talking, like a condemned man who knew there was no longer any hope of freedom. “Magic runs strong in his bloodline. He knew... he thought he could bring Eve’s magic out early, that he could convince her to smite his enemies from a distance. It wasn’t easy. We spent years studying the roots of magic, trying to figure out how to... encourage her to develop her powers. Years...”

  “And you just... helped him?” Emily recoiled. “You sentenced a child to death?”