“It must be hard,” I said tentatively. “Seeing need but knowing what it will cost you to meet it.”
He smiled a little wistfully. “You see straight to the heart of the problem. And that is why my grandfather decided to take action. When he was still a young man, he healed the wife of his king. But it was not the first time he had been called upon to serve, and the working cost him greatly since the queen was pregnant at the time, and so there were two patients draining his energy.”
The moon reappeared, showing sadness lurking in Declan’s eyes.
“The composition weakened him near to death,” he continued. “He had grown up alongside the king, and the two were close friends. I suppose when the king saw the cost, his heart must have softened because he was convinced to release my family to go and dwell in isolation.”
“Away from all temptation,” I whispered.
He nodded. “But even then, we had those we most loved with us. And everyone falls sick eventually. You can either choose to watch them suffer, perhaps die, or eventually give so much of yourself away that you might as well gift them the rest before you fall into permanent slumber.”
“You said in the end, only you and your mother remained,” I said, the house now looming before us, our goal nearly reached. “Is that what happened to her?”
His eyes grew soft, and a smile lingered around his mouth. “She was…eccentric. She believed that her energy was meant to bring good to the world, and that she would always know when she saw someone in need of it.”
“And did she?” I asked.
“She seemed to think so. She knew how much she was giving away, but she didn’t care. She just made me promise that when I was the only one left, I would leave the forest and return to the world. And one day—when her energy was already so depleted that she barely had the strength to get through a day—a young couple found us. They had heard rumors of my mother’s miraculous acts.”
My heart seized, my mind freezing and my stomach churning. He kept talking.
“She said she knew as soon as she saw them that they were the ones. She never hesitated when she wrote out the compositions for them. Two—so extravagant. And she didn’t want them to know the ultimate price she paid. She said farewell to me before she bound her energy into those two rolls of paper, and she insisted I not tell them her fate when I met them to hand over the completed compositions.”
Tears sprang to my eyes and choked my throat. Was he saying what I thought he must be saying? We reached the house, and he pulled open the door, stepping aside so Lucas could maneuver Felice inside, giving me a strange look as he passed. But now that I had stopped, I couldn’t seem to move again.
Declan paused and looked at me.
“When I heard about your ability…And then about your brother. When I calculated your age. And now…you can manipulate energy…”
I looked at him, my eyes awash with unshed tears.
“Our compositions cannot grant a commonborn the ability to control power,” he said. “It makes no sense. And yet…I never heard of anyone else in my family using their ability to shape a child not yet born. Perhaps, perhaps somehow…”
I nodded, unable to find the words to confirm his hope. I bore my parents’ blood, as all the tests had confirmed, and yet apparently I also carried a mage’s energy, transferred directly into my very moment of creation. And that energy must somehow have mingled with the seed of control passed down in my father’s blood from his Sekali ancestor—the seed he had apparently passed to me and not my brother.
In some strange way, it felt almost as if Declan was long-lost family. But, at the same time, I knew now without any further doubt that the circumstances that had led to my gift had been unique. I wouldn’t stumble on another spoken mage. And the knowledge made me lonely, in a way I had never felt before.
“Elena?” Lucas reappeared in the doorway. “Is everything all right? We need to get below.”
And just like that the strange loneliness dissipated. I was not alone.
“Felice says she has important news,” Lucas said as Declan and I entered the house, the old man still darting me hopeful looks. “But she’s refusing to tell it to me.”
Chapter 22
“My instructions were clear,” Felice repeated stubbornly. “I am to report only to General Haddon.” She looked over to Lucas and me. “And while I’m more than grateful to you for rescuing me, you’re Ardannians. I’m waiting for the general.”
Lucas stood, his hands balling into fists, and his frustrated breaths coming fast. I put a hand on his arm, and he looked down at me, deflating.
“In that case, I can’t remember the last time I slept,” he said. “Wake me the second the general arrives.”
He disappeared in the direction of the beds that Declan had been trying to coax us into for the last half hour.
“I think I’m going to sleep too.” I paused as I walked past Felice. “I highly recommend you don’t forget to wake him when your general does arrive. I suspect you’re going to need us again before this is all over.” I didn’t bother mentioning myself. Lucas wouldn’t let me sleep through anything important.
Not that I thought I would be able to sleep. I had used the extra energy I had taken from Lucas and Declan, but my mind buzzed with the news of Declan’s strange ability, and the part it had played in shaping me.
The feeling that he was family lingered, sitting strangely beside the hatred of the Kallorwegians that had been the background of my life growing up. Despite the revelations I had already received about my origins, I had left for Yanshin feeling fully Ardannian. And yet now, only weeks later, I had to acknowledge that both the Sekali Empire and Kallorway could lay claim to a piece of me. And I didn’t entirely know how I felt about that.
I tossed on the pillow, despite it turning out to be deceptively soft given the rough appearance of the small bedroom. I had chosen Ardann over the Empire, but did that mean I had to reject everything of the Sekalis? They had found a way to release their commonborn, and I would emulate them if I could. And Kallorway had killed my friends…yet I couldn’t blame Declan for that, or Mabel.
Despite my churning thoughts, my consciousness faded, slipping into sleep in spite of everything. My body had been alert for too long now, and my mind couldn’t win the fight.
When someone shook me awake, I couldn’t place the passage of time, the windowless underground house looking exactly as it had when I went to sleep.
“The general is here,” Mabel said. “If you want to hear the talk, I suggest you hurry.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Just gone dawn,” she said.
“Thank you,” I called as she left the room.
She paused and looked back, a shade of surprise on her face. “All who serve our cause are welcome here.”
“Who did you lose?” I asked.
Her worn hand tightened on the door frame.
“My sons. All of them.”
I sucked in an involuntary breath, my stomach contracting. All of them?
“We do not have your policy here of one per family,” she said. “Things are not so evenly spread.”
I winced. “And you don’t hate me? For being Ardannian?”
“My hate is directed where it belongs,” she said firmly. “At the person who started this war, and the one who commanded my sons must fight in it. Anyone who opposes King Osborne is welcome in my home.”
She disappeared out the door, and I rushed to follow. Out in the main room, I found the chairs around the wooden table had been filled but for one beside Lucas. Mabel was already making her way back up the stairs toward the open trapdoor, so I slipped into the empty seat.
Lucas nodded at me, and Declan smiled and murmured a good morning. The man at the head of the table, a tall and imposing older mage who carried himself as if he knew his own worth, regarded me with undisguised interest. General Haddon, I assumed. Head of the Kallorwegian Royal Guard.
I shook my head. Learning he was the head of
the rebellion had left even Lucas taken aback. It made their organization seem real in a way it hadn’t before with only Declan, Mabel, and the injured intelligencers as its face.
“I came in response to Declan’s summons,” the general said. “Though it wasn’t easy to get away without raising suspicion. It is fortuitous indeed that Felice has returned at the same time. We shall hear your report first, Felice, and then discuss what is best to be done with our…new arrivals.”
Felice stood.
“It took us years to embed her deeply enough in the ranks of our intelligencers that she was given a prime assignment,” Declan whispered to Lucas and me.
“So she has spent the last year spying on Ardann,” Lucas said, his voice tight.
Felice caught his words.
“Ostensibly, yes,” she said to us. “But in reality, I was there to serve the rebellion. We have long known that someone from your kingdom is colluding with King Osborne, but he keeps their identity extremely close to his chest. The ancient historical tome that sparked his obsession over ruling a southern empire came from an Ardannian library, not a Kallorwegian one. We knew that if we could get an intelligencer sent to Ardann, the information would eventually come to light.”
“And a year ago we succeeded,” General Haddon said.
She nodded respectfully in his direction.
“Our Armed Forces conducted two simultaneous raids as an opportunity to get two intelligencers across the border. The other agent was truly Osborne’s man, and he was sent across the Wall. I don’t know his mission. I was tasked with infiltrating Bronton and taking up residence in the Kallorwegian safe house there. Osborne already has an intelligencer manning the house, but they wanted back up for him.”
“And obviously you succeeded,” the general said.
She nodded. “He has a house against the wall with a secret way in and out, so that our agents don’t have to get past the gates. Getting in was laughably easy once I made it to Bronton. Osborne’s intelligencer does a perfect Ardannian accent and has passed as a local for many years. I posed as his niece, arrived to stay after losing my family to the green fever the year before and bouncing from relative to relative.”
She shook her head. “No one suspected a thing.”
“We had hoped to hear from you before now,” the general said.
“I’m sorry. My supposed uncle was reticent, to say the least, and I had to tread slowly, at risk of being exposed by both sides. In terms of Ardannians, he dealt mainly with a young lieutenant.”
She grinned. “One who thankfully turned out to be rather susceptible to my charms. He assumed I knew more than I did, and I was able to get him talking. I planned to gather just a bit more information before returning—but he appeared at the house, full of excitement. He told me it was all finally happening, and the plan was at last in motion. Something had happened to trigger it earlier than planned.” She glanced toward Lucas and me. “That’s when I sent out the message to send someone to help me across the river.”
“The plan?” Lucas leaned forward. “What plan? What did he tell you?”
She looked to the general for confirmation, and after regarding Lucas for a moment, he nodded.
“The royal family are to visit the Academy for some sort of grand gala.”
Lucas frowned and nodded. “The anniversary of the Academy’s construction.”
“They are to be assassinated at the Academy,” she said. “And in the chaos that follows, Kallorway will push across the border and take the kingdom.”
Lucas’s muscles tensed, his face going pale.
“Impossible,” he said. “These days the Academy is an even safer place than the palace. No Kallorwegian assassin could penetrate its layers of protection.”
“Lucas.” I gripped his arm, my voice coming out small and strangled. But I didn’t look at him. A horrible realization had held me silent as Felice’s story unfolded, and I directed my question at her.
“The traitors! Who are the traitors?”
I could feel Lucas’s arm tense beneath my fingers as Felice stared at us.
“The Ellingtons,” she said at last. “Or at least some of them.”
My stomach turned, surging so strongly I had to clamp my lips closed and fight to keep it in its place. The Ellingtons? A parade of faces flashed through my mind. Walden. Dariela. Acacia. Finnian’s mother. Duke Lennox. Duke Magnus. Martin. After a moment, in which everyone at the table stared at us, I managed to gasp out some words.
“It was Martin, wasn’t it? The young lieutenant you charmed?”
She nodded, hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to speak, and then said, “I was there you know. In a back room when Martin led you through the wall last year. He came barreling in, said to open the wall and get a message to the breach team that he was bringing both of you out to them. Said to tell them that he’d circle around and come between the rocks and the trees from the west. I hadn’t had much of a chance to get to know him at that point, so the agent instructed me to stay out of the way and leave everything to him.”
“We were trying to keep our mission quiet,” Lucas murmured, his voice flat. “I assumed that was why he didn’t take us through the gate. But he just needed a chance to get a message out, to let the breach team know to set up the ambush.” He shook his head. “We were fools.”
“How could we have known?” I said softly. “And with everything that happened, it never occurred to me to mention to anyone how we left the town. If I even thought of it at all, I would have assumed it was a bolt-hole of our own.”
Lucas laughed bitterly. “We weren’t supposed to come back, remember? No doubt he didn’t think it mattered what we saw.”
But as foolish as it made me feel, it wasn’t the thought of Martin that had nearly made me lose what little I had eaten in the last day.
“The book,” I said. “The ancient history from an Ardannian library. And the gala.”
Lucas met my eyes, his face draining of all remaining color.
“Walden.”
“He boasted to me once about how much time he has spent in the Academy library,” I whispered. “About how well he knows it. What if he found some remaining true history and sent it to Osborne? If he had heard rumors that the king favored the idea of aggressive expansion, he might have guessed it was just the spark needed to propel him to action.”
I swallowed. “And then he acted as Academy Head in Lorcan’s place the whole time we were at the front last year. Who knows what he might have done to sabotage the protections—what entry points he might have hidden in them?”
Tears slipped unheeded down my cheeks. Walden had pretended to be my friend. He had helped me train, and I had confided in him, had told him my secrets.
“Now we know how Cassius knew of your ability,” Lucas said grimly.
I felt a new stab of anger, alleviated only by a background relief that Beatrice and Jocasta at least were innocent as I had longed for them to be.
“So it’s true?” General Haddon leaned forward. “When Osborne warned me of the measures I might be called to defend him against, I wondered if his sources had turned against him and were feeding him fanciful stories.”
“It’s true,” Lucas said shortly. Any question of keeping my secret was long gone.
“The potential…” Haddon said with a speculative gleam that made me straighten my back and re-engage in the conversation.
“Yes,” I said. “I am possibly the strongest mage who has ever lived.” I suppressed the urge to glance toward Declan. My origin wasn’t important in this moment. “And that is why Lucas and I will be going to stop the assassins. Alone.”
These people appeared to be genuine in wanting to end the war and maintain the separate sovereignty of Kallorway and Ardann. But that didn’t mean I was going to walk any of them past all our defenses and into the heart of our kingdom.
“We will save my family,” Lucas said, his voice implacable, “and then we will crush the Ellington t
raitors and remove their blight from Ardann.”
The general stood. “In light of all that is happening, I must return quickly to my post. But I promise you this. If you do your part, we will do ours. If you defeat the assassins and expose the traitors, you will cripple Osborne’s war plans. In that opportune moment we will strike. Osborne will agree to peace with Ardann or he will lose his throne.”
Lucas stood also. “We will not fail.”
Mabel gave us a small bag of food and two skins of water which would last us to the border. The group had dispersed quickly, and only Declan remained to see us off, providing basic weapons to go with Mabel’s offerings. He must have stayed up with Felice, rather than sleep as we had done while waiting for the general’s arrival since he hadn’t regained the energy I took from him. I pushed down a brief surge of guilt as he pulled me aside just before we left.
“You have become everything my mother could have wanted,” he said. “I know she wouldn’t regret her decision to help your parents.”
“Thank you.” My emotions had been pulled in so many different directions in the last few days, that I felt strangely numb.
“I feel we are connected,” he said. “Although we don’t know each other. Part of me wishes I could accompany you, to see you in action, but I know my place is here. I need to see Kallorway on the right path again. But I want to give you a gift.”
For a moment I thought he wanted to offer me some of his energy, and I nearly recoiled. But he handed me instead a small yellow silk pouch. I took it tentatively, but Lucas called my name impatiently from the door.
“Thank you,” I said again, tucking it safely inside my clothes. “I hope we will meet again when our kingdoms are at peace.”
Lucas and I stepped out of the door into full daylight. We had discussed waiting for night, but we couldn’t risk losing any more time. Spring wouldn’t officially start until the next day, and I seemed to remember the plans for the gala placing it several weeks into spring in the hope of warmer weather. But Felice had said something had happened to trigger the plans. We couldn’t risk being too late.
Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) Page 26
