“Good thinking!” Declan said, moving for the door in Lucas’s wake.
A moment later Lucas reappeared, crawling through the hole, Declan’s knife in his teeth. Rushing to my side, he cut first my gag and then the rope around my hands. My arms swung free, every muscle screaming in protest. Painful stabbing pricks sprung to life within my hands, racing up my wrists. Tears sprang to my eyes.
I spat the wad of material out of my mouth and then spat several more times for good measure, trying to clear my mouth of the taste. A hand thrust through the hole in the wall with a water skin, and Lucas retrieved it, holding it to my mouth. After several deep gulps, I gasped and managed to rush my way through a healing composition.
The pain subsided, full mobility returned to all my limbs. A soft sigh beside me told me Lucas had also received the benefits of my working.
“Best not to linger,” Declan called softly through the opening.
“What is going on?” I whispered to Lucas.
“I have no idea,” he said. “But I much prefer it to being tied in a storage room.”
He led the way out into what turned out to be a larger storage area with piles of crates in all directions.
“This way,” Declan said, gesturing into a dim corner.
“And why should we go with you?” Lucas challenged.
Declan looked back at him, confusion on his face. “Would you prefer to go back into that room?”
“We need him to get out of the Academy, at least,” I said to Lucas.
“And you might want my help beyond that,” Declan said. “It’s remote out here. You won’t get far without power, and that power will pinpoint your location like a beacon.”
Lucas grimaced, unable to refute his words but clearly not liking it.
“Very well,” he said. “Let’s get moving then. But once we’re clear, I want answers.”
Declan nodded and led the way, hurrying into what looked like a dead-end corner of the vast basement. But stepping behind a particularly large stack of crates, we found a rickety set of wooden steps.
“An old servants’ way,” Declan said. “Rarely used now. And it’s past bedtime for the trainees, so there shouldn’t be anyone much about anyway.”
I exchanged a glance with Lucas. So we had spent a whole day down here. Had Cassius planned to starve us into submission?
The stairs creaked menacingly, and I wasn’t sure if I was more in fear of discovery or of them collapsing beneath us. But they held solid, taking us up out of the basement and into a passageway that appeared to run within a wall.
“The mages don’t like servants using the same passages as them,” Declan noted.
Clearly the Kallorwegian Academy had a vastly different take on formality and hierarchies compared to our own.
Eventually the path led us to a small door which Declan opened with a key from inside his robe. Outside clouds hid the moon, only the stars providing faint illumination. Somehow we had emerged outside both the building and the wall surrounding it. Declan carefully locked the door behind us before hurrying off across the open ground.
When he realized we weren’t following, he stopped and gestured for us to hurry.
“We need to get somewhere safe,” he said. “Somewhere hidden.”
I made a split-second decision, starting after him without comment. Lucas hesitated a moment longer and then followed me.
We walked quickly, almost jogging, and it took everything in me not to set up a shield around us. But it had betrayed us last time, and I didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
Eventually we crossed a minor road and approached a small cluster of dwellings, more a hamlet than an actual village. Declan led us to the one that straggled furthest from the group, a small, sturdy looking cottage. It didn’t look like much of a hiding place.
Declan knocked once on the door, paused then knocked again, three times. It creaked open, and an older woman ushered us in. Unlike Declan, she wore no robe, and her face looked prematurely aged, lined with grief. She paid no special heed to Lucas or me, merely closing the door firmly behind us.
Crossing the room, she pushed a chest to the side and rolled up a rug, exposing a perfectly ordinary looking floor. Before I could even formulate a question, however, she knelt down and pressed hard on one section, simultaneously reaching across to press on another. A whole section of the flooring lifted, revealing stairs leading down into darkness.
I backed up several steps.
“I’m not walking myself into another prison.” I shook my head vehemently.
She shrugged. “Then the front door is open to you. But if you wish to stay, it must be down there. And it must be quickly. They will search the hamlet when they find you gone.”
Lucas stabbed a finger in Declan’s direction. “You’re coming too, and we’re getting answers as soon as we’re down there.”
“Of course,” he said.
Lucas gestured for him to precede us, and he did so without hesitation, the woman handing him a lantern as he passed her. Lucas and I filed in behind him.
To my astonishment, the steps led us not into a small basement hiding hole, but into what appeared to be a complete house, much larger than the one above us and lacking only windows.
“What is this place?” I gaped around me.
Declan bowed with a dramatic flourish.
“Welcome to one of the headquarters of the Kallorwegian rebellion,” he said.
Chapter 20
“We’ve heard that before,” Lucas said.
“Yes.” A look of disgust transformed Declan’s odd features, wiping away the bumbling, incompetent air he had previously worn. For the first time he looked dangerous. “I had to spend the afternoon lingering near our princeling, waiting to hear where he had stashed you and with what defenses. I heard him laughing with his cousin about how well his plan to lure you here worked.”
He shook his head. “It should be no real surprise, though. The best lies are always built on truths that have been twisted to deceive. You let yourself believe him because it was so evident that there must be those in Kallorway who oppose such a senseless and wasteful war.”
“Wait,” I said. “We want answers, but I’m sure you’ll understand that our trust is low. Will you submit to a truth composition?”
I had expected at least a token protest, but he didn’t seem in the least offended by my request.
“Of course,” he said. “An excellent idea, in fact. My compatriots frequently make use of them.”
I frowned, noting his choice of words. He had claimed to be a mage, but we had yet to see any sign of his using power, and now he did not include himself among those who used truth compositions.
Pushing the matter to the side of my mind, I hurried through the binding words, making the composition as powerful and as ironclad as I could make it. Declan watched the whole process with interest, his eyes dwelling on the glow that appeared in front of me.
“It looks just like the ones I’ve seen performed before,” he said. “Although I can see you are both strong and skilled for a trainee—just as the rumors say.”
“Never mind that,” Lucas said. “Tell us more of this rebellion.”
“I suggest we make ourselves comfortable first,” Declan said, gesturing to a polished wooden table surrounded by chairs. “Your Highness,” he added, and the title made Lucas unbend and take one of the offered seats. The table held a bowl full of apples and a tray with a loaf of bread.
Once we were all seated, Declan cut several slices of the bread, placing them in front of us while Lucas and I both fell on the fruit. When our mouths were full, Declan began talking without being prompted.
“For years now, many of the mages of Kallorway have felt unhappy with the king’s policy of war. He claims we must unite for protection against the Sekali Empire, and his paranoia where they are concerned seems to be genuine, if not exactly rooted in reality.”
My eyes flickered to Lucas, my mouth full of apple. Nothing
in his face suggested he shared some of the Kallorwegian king’s concern. The last thing we wanted to do was undermine a rebellion, if one did indeed exist.
“But,” Declan continued, “it goes beyond that for him. It has been clear for many years now that the king is driven by pride and a sense of grandeur. He wants a southern empire, like the northern one, with himself as the emperor.”
He sighed. “Some of the families buy into his vision, of course, lured by the promise of power and riches. They are the most powerful among us, the ones whose children rarely face the front lines and have little to fear there. But others exist.”
He glanced up at the ceiling. The woman who guarded the entrance to this secret house had not been a mage, but her face had borne the ravages of grief. Had she lost a child to the war?
“As the years pass,” he said, “more and more come to our side. The very strongest still support him, but the numbers are now overwhelmingly with us. And that’s why Osborne and his son grow desperate. Rumors of a new and terrible weapon in Ardannian hands reached us nearly four years ago.” He bowed slightly in my direction. “And all his efforts to acquire this weapon have failed. Then this marriage alliance with the Sekalis. He is afraid, and now his own kingdom is turning against him. He needs a decisive victory, and he needs one fast.”
“You are saying Kallorway is weak. That King Osborne is weak,” Lucas said.
Declan looked him directly in the eyes. “I am saying he is desperate and cornered—or feels himself so. A rat on a sinking ship, who will not hesitate to strike out with tooth and claw. I am saying that if we cannot overthrow him soon, he may yet bring us all to ruin.”
“So overthrow him,” Lucas said coolly.
Declan sat back, sadness in his eyes.
“Many at court now openly oppose the war. Many talk more and more openly of opposing the king. But fewer are the number actually willing to move against him. Those of us who have stood against the war from the beginning have had decades now to hone our network, to bring others to our cause, but we haven’t had the numbers or strength to act. We know once we do, we will be exposed and mercilessly hunted down. We will only get one chance, and we must make it count.”
“A convenient excuse never to act,” Lucas said.
“The time is fast approaching,” Declan said. “As our numbers have grown, inevitably word is leaking out. The king has heard rumors of our existence. We are all on high alert. For years we have worked to place our people in key locations and positions around the kingdom, so that we may be ready when the moment arrives. I myself have been at the Academy for two decades now and working with Mabel up there for ten of those years. This safe house has become one of our main hubs because of its accessibility to the front lines and distance from court.”
His eyes gleamed as he watched us continue to shovel food into our mouths.
“And here I was, perfectly placed, when whispers spread through the Academy that Cassius had left in the early hours of the morning and returned with two prisoners. When I heard who you were, I knew the time—at least for me—had come.”
A slow smile spread over his face. “After two decades, it is good to finally act. We cannot afford for Osborne to get his hands on the two of you.”
“Thank you,” I said, my eyes straying to the light of my truth composition, brighter than that of the lantern. It had never once darkened. “I don’t think we’ve thanked you yet, for rescuing us.”
“It was my honor.” He gave a little bow from his seat.
“And what is your plan now?” Lucas asked.
“I’m afraid I’m neither the leader nor the brains of our rebellion,” he said. “I have sent word to those who are, but we may have a wait on our hands.”
A muffled banging made us all pause, looking up toward the ceiling. No one spoke or even moved as we heard Mabel’s footsteps slowly cross to her front door.
Voices came next, crisp, angry voices, and her cold, sullen one. But I couldn’t make out any of the actual words. Lucas stood, slowly, but Declan gestured for him to retake his seat.
“They will not find us here,” he whispered.
Lucas sank back down, but he looked at me as he did so. His expression instructed me to be ready. I could only imagine how impotent he must feel, stripped of all his compositions.
Boots stomped through the house above us, and the scrape and bang of furniture, roughly moved around, came deafeningly through the floor to us. But no shout of discovery sounded, and no crack of light denoted the opening of the door above our heads.
At long last, when I felt I couldn’t take the tension of hidden waiting anymore, the footsteps retreated, and the door closed. Some more dragging and banging sounded, presumably Mabel, straightening her house, and then everything fell silent again.
“Should we…check on her? Or something?” I asked.
Declan shook his head. “There is no need. She’s watched over this house for years without flinching. She is made of iron, that one.”
“Don’t you need to get back to the Academy?” Lucas asked. “They’ve obviously worked out we’re gone. Won’t they be wondering where you are?”
Declan shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not sure they even remember I work there half the time. I’m neither commonborn servant nor proper mage instructor. Officially I’m a sort of groundskeeper, I suppose, but in reality, they just wanted me out of sight and out of mind. A state of things that I encourage, for obvious reasons.”
He grinned, his lopsided eyebrows giving him a crazed look. I tried to imagine how he might fit among the mage families I knew back home. It didn’t take much consideration to see why they had shoved him into some remote corner to forget about him. He reminded me rather forcibly of Coralie’s stories about her eccentric great-uncle who had chosen to sell compositions to commonborns rather than join a discipline.
“Why did they feel the need to give you a position at all?” Lucas asked, faint traces of suspicion still lingering in his voice.
Declan’s expression changed, something in the tightening of his features giving me the impression it was a topic he didn’t want to discuss. I looked down at my composition glow as he spoke, but it never wavered.
“My family were long ago granted honorary positions as the king’s personal healers. In perpetuity,” Declan said. “We were given special privileges in exchange for our services, including the right to train our children at home rather than send them to the Academy.”
Lucas raised both eyebrows. Even I knew that Kallorway operated the same way as Ardann—every mageborn was required to attend the Academy at age sixteen.
“I believe the intent was that we would always be able to remain near the king. But my grandfather chose to turn his back on court and move his family down to the southern forests. They lived in relative isolation and became…well, they became a little eccentric, I suppose, for lack of contact with the outside world.”
His eyes grew distant. “Eventually only my mother and I remained of our family. She refused to leave her home, and perhaps it was for the best. She had built up quite an…odd reputation. But when she passed away, I made my way north and presented myself to the king. I have always believed it to be a gesture of irony that he chose to place me here, at the Academy, where my family have not attended for generations.”
It was an odd story, by far the oddest I had heard of any mage family, and I sensed there was more to it, despite the glow of my composition remaining steady. I tried to think of a question I could ask that might draw out some answers, but the sound of the front door of the house above us drove all such thoughts from my mind.
There had been no knocking this time, and no urgent voices. Just the sound of the door thrusting open, and then a thud almost directly above my head. Footsteps hurried across the floor, and then we heard the door close.
“Declan! Declan get up here,” called a voice I thought was Mabel’s, the words coming to us only faintly through the floor above our heads.
Decla
n jumped up, Lucas and me with him, and the three of us hurried to the steps and the trapdoor above them. Emerging into the small cottage, we found Mabel crouched next to a young man who lay stretched out on the floor.
Declan dropped to his knees, gently rolling the man over and checking his pulse. Puddles pooled on the floor from the man’s wet clothing, and an ugly looking raw burn ravaged the right side of his face.
I waited for Declan to pull out a healing composition, but he made no move to do so. The man groaned in pain, although he appeared unconscious, and I pushed my way forward.
First I spoke a pain relief composition, and then when Declan neither rebuked me nor commented at all, I continued on to heal the newcomer’s burns. He stirred, groaned again, and then as the skin healed itself, he opened his eyes. For a moment, they held nothing but confusion. Then sudden alertness returned, and he sat up fast, clutching at Declan’s dirty robe.
“I don’t know what happened, but there were king’s mages everywhere searching the fields.” He sounded panicked and distraught despite now being free of pain.
Lucas shifted uneasily beside me. We knew why the area was currently full of searchers.
“We were separated, and I only just escaped and made it here unseen. But Felice is the one who had the information. I got her safely across the border, but we weren’t expecting to run into trouble out here, and they caught us unaware. I couldn’t protect her.”
Mabel turned matter-of-factly to Lucas and me.
“You’ll have to go and rescue her.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” I said uneasily.
Mabel gave me an icy look, so I hurried to clarify.
“Not that I don’t want to rescue her, of course. But I’m not sure us wandering around out there is going to help anyone right now.”
The man seemed to finally see us, frowning as he looked us up and down.
“I don’t know who you are, but if you’re with us, saving Felice is vital to everything. We’ve been working for a year to get her into the right position to find out their plans, and she’s finally done it. We can’t lose her now.”
Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) Page 24
