by Terah Edun
“I’ll just bet you are,” Rivan muttered darkly in a voice low enough only a few people could hear.
Mae almost laughed at his snide commentary as her great-aunt’s daughter glared at him over her mother’s shoulder.
“I’ll do my best to make more trips, great-aunt,” Mae said obediently. She didn’t tell her that she had been making weekly and not daily trips to see her sisters because she had been so desperate to find a cure that she hadn’t been sleeping through the night for a while.
It would only make her great-aunt come down all the harder on her. And thinking on this woman chastising her when Mae knew for a fact that she had something to do with the siblings’ sickness was just too much.
So she bowed her head and said “So sorry for my lapse in judgement” like a properly compliant child and waited for the woman who represented evil incarnate to let her move on past.
11
Her great-aunt did not look appeased.
“Well, what else?” her great-aunt’s daughter prompted.
Mae blinked but still she unglued her tongue from the top of her mouth and said politely, “There’s nothing, I didn’t mean to detain you.”
Her great-aunt sighed.
“Dear child you didn’t,” the older woman said. “But it’s clear you aren’t quite fit for any public role in this house yet.”
“I think she’s done a fine job showing us around,” demurred Donna Marie from Mae’s side.
Her great-aunt didn’t even bother acknowledging the foreigner’s comment.
“It is simply unreasonable that I walk past you in a hallway only to discover that you seemed to have lost your mind and manners!” her great-aunt complained.
“Great-aunt?” Mae asked hesitantly, she was honestly confused.
“Well good heavens girl you smell like you’ve been rolling in the muck,” her great-aunt said while looking her up-and-down in dismay. “Is this any way to represent the family in front of our guests?”
Mae blinked and glanced over at her entourage. Two outside men, Donna Marie, Rivan, and herself. The mercenaries were dressed as traveling wayfarers now that they had left their long swords and armor buried just outside the gate. So she supposed they did indeed look like Mae had been assigned to show them around.
Brightly Mae said, “I was just on my way to show them back to the guest rooms great-aunt…we got caught in a light rain on the trail is all. I had to wade the horses through the flooded field myself.”
Her great-aunt frowned.
Then her daughter once more leaned forward and whispered, “It did rain today Mother.”
“Oh very well,” Mae’s great-aunt said with an irritated wave of her hand. “Be off with you then.”
She turned to Donna Marie then and gave her a small nod which the foreign woman returned with a serene look herself.
With no more words to say her great-aunt’s party was off back down the hallway and Mae was left to lead her entourage over to the guest quarters.
But first we’re going to take a look in that sickroom, Mae though to herself darkly.
Before this day concluded she would make certain of it, the pain and suffering that hung over her household would end. If she had to break traditional chains and pay off some thugs with a year’s worth of compensation to do it, so be it. Her elders could chalk it up to payment for their betrayals.
As Mae turned to lead them back the way they came, she made sure to drop back by Rivan’s side as they made their way into the noisy great hall. The acoustics of competing conversations were plenty loud enough to mask her personal conversation with him.
“What were you thinking?” Mae spat at him with fire in her tone. “Trying to expose me to her with that little quip about my siblings?”
“I was thinking that maybe it’s time you recognize who your real enemies are.,” Rivan said in a slow drawl. “That woman could have cared less about who you are, she didn’t even recognize you by name!”
“Forget being warned to look out for your face,” Donna Marie sniffed in agreement. “She would have passed you by if not for the state of your accoutrements.”
“So?” Mae said shortly. “I wasn’t aware the two of you were such experts on family bonding.”
“So she clearly has no fear of being found out,” huffed Rivan. “Now that should tell you more about where the power in your family resides than anything else. As well as who not to cross.”
Mae was silent for a moment, because he was right.
But that didn’t mean she would back down. The conversation with her great-aunt had troubled her but not precisely for the reasons they suggested. The fact that her great-aunt could stand there and offer sympathies when she was at the center of the darkness that fed on her siblings’ ailment? Well that just made Mae even more furious. It was impossible to forget that cloud of inky black illness rising from her siblings’ very bodies, and along with it the very energy that gave her siblings’ life. It had been clear as day that great-aunt and her ilk hadn’t been trying to save them. They were draining them and as Mae pondered over what Rivan and Donna Marie had said, about her great-aunt being unafraid, she knew the dark coterie would be drawn back to the siblings’ bedside. They would do it again and soon. Because power was impossible to walk away from and the siblings were helpless to stop them.
“Alright, alright,” Mae said testily. “We’re about to enter the healing corridors now. You wanted to unlock my gifts; well you’ll have to do your part as well.”
Her companions were silent as she knocked on a door and no voice answered.
Testing the handle, Mae turned it and pushed open the oak door into the sickroom of darkness that had haunted her thoughts and dreams for so very long.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she walked in and it was empty.
But then she noted the room was too empty.
It only took her a few hurried steps to reach the raised platforms that acted as both the siblings’ bed and the center of a performance chamber for all the quacks and charlatans who had come here before.
Mae stood between the two bedsides as she shouted in shock, “The children aren’t here!”
She fell so sick she nearly fell over as a death keen began to rise in her throat. She’d been gone so long that they had already died and she hadn’t known. All that work was for nothing.
She heard a step behind her and a soft hand touched her upper back.
Mae sniffled as she felt the sobs threatening to break through in her voice as it rose.
“Just let me grieve,” Mae snapped with anguish in her voice.
She couldn’t be bothered to be polite in this scenario.
They were strangers all of them, they didn’t even belong here! She thought as despair roiled through her. All this effort for nothing.
To her consternation, the voice who answered wasn’t the foreign woman or her collective of strangers. It was family.
“Mae what on earth is the matter with you?” Mae heard her stepmother say stiffly from behind her.
As Mae turned around two things surprised her. The room was empty except for her and her stepmother. And the others were nowhere to be found. Her eyes swept from the right where the doors to the exterior were laid to the left where the entrance was through which they had entered. But none of the group could be found.
Mae briefly wondered if Donna Marie had conjured some kind of shielding that prevented anyone else from knowing they were there, but if she wasn’t careful, she’d still be found out? Just because a new person couldn’t see them didn’t mean they couldn’t physically stumble over them. But she couldn’t be worried about that at the moment, her gaze was pinned on her stepmother walking ever closer.
Mae couldn’t focus on anything else but the swift clip of her heels on the stone floor as her stepmother reached her quickly and immediately put a hand up to grip her shoulder. She didn’t want that woman touching her flesh. Her step back was automatic and her stepmother couldn’t have missed it.
Concern flashed in her eyes as her hand paused mid-reach and her stepmother let her arm fall back uselessly at her side.
Mae gave her stepmother an awkward smile to cover the faux pas as she asked weakly, “Where are they?”
Her heart was still beating fast from the rush of adrenaline at thinking they were dead only to learn her siblings were very much still alive.
“I had them taken outside into the gardens for some fresh air,” her stepmother said as she searched her eyes and Mae ducked her head down.
Mae had never been shy but she didn’t want her stepmother reading the sudden aversion to her presence that was sure to be building up in her eyes. Especially since they had had a particularly cordial relationship up until now. In fact Mae would have described it as just as loving as the one she had with her father.
But now? Mae couldn’t even stand to be in her stepmother’s presence and she wouldn’t be able to explain why. So she would just keep up appearances just for a little while longer until they had been cured…and the Council of Elders had been informed of that secret group’s gross malfeasance.
Getting her face under control Mae lifted her head and pushed her hair behind her ear as she said, “Oh, stepmother I, I was so worried.”
The other woman nodded as she handed over a handkerchief.
“You must have been shocked when you wandered in,” her stepmother murmured as she gave Mae an out.
Mae gratefully wiped away tears that had slipped out of the corner of her eyes.
“Yes,” Mae said in a rush. “They were just gone and I didn’t get say goodbye and for a moment I thought the worst!”
Her stepmother sighed and crossed her arms loosely.
“I decided to take the advice of those healers who came by before,” her stepmother said ruefully. “They didn’t agree on much but they all seemed to think that getting fresh air occasionally would be good for them.”
Mae nodded and bit her lip.
“How were you able to get them outside?” Mae asked with interest. “They’re still bed-bound, aren’t they?”
A nod was her answer as her stepmother said, “Some of your stronger cousins and a nice pallet of blankets and cushions we scrounged from the greater hall for their comfort.”
“What a lovely gesture!” said a voice that shocked all of them.
It came from the second-floor landing or close enough that the similarities between Mae’s frantic escape and a secret presence on the same floor were impossible to ignore. She was sure her stepmother remembered it too because she jumped practically a foot in the air and paled when she heard someone coming down the stairs from above. As they both looked up with similarly nervous expressions on their faces, Mae had to admit it was a relief to still be unknown. She would hate to see the ire that had briefly flashed across her stepmother’s face directed at her.
Fortunately for Mae, she knew exactly who it was as she watched Donna Marie, Rivan, and the two guards descend the staircase from above their heads.
Her stepmother swiftly turned around as she said, “Oh my, I wasn’t aware anyone else was here.”
“Yes,” said one of the guards who was keeping an eye on them all. “We just slipped upstairs to give the little mistress some privacy in her time of grief. We all thought the worst.”
“Oh, well, that was quite kind of you,” her stepmother said clearly still flustered.
It didn’t take her long to gather her wits about her as she turned to Mae and said in a pointed voice, “Mae there usually aren’t guests in this part of the holding. Family quarters especially are off limits.”
“Yes, you’re right stepmother. I apologize. I would have told you of their presence before but I’d forgotten they were here until now,” Mae said, lying through her teeth.
Her stepmother watched her carefully as she asked, “And what would encourage you to risk breaking such a rule so blatantly?”
Mae gave her a tight smile. “Desperation,” Mae said honestly.
If her stepmother was taken aback, she didn’t show it.
Instead she said tightly, “Explain what you mean please.”
“Well,” Mae said while biting her lip and looking down with sadness. “I just thought the foreigners might have some ideas about treating them somehow. Some things we didn’t know.”
“Are they healers?” Her stepmother asked with interest in her eyes.
“No,” protested Mae weakly. “But they seemed to have a bit of magic and they were curious. It couldn’t hurt to try, after all we’ve invited so many strangers here in pursuit of a cure before.”
“Healers, hedge witches, and sages,” her stepmother reminded her quickly. “Not just strangers.”
“Charlatans, quacks, and crooks,” Mae said with a bitter edge in her voice.
They stared at each other, two women across a vast difference of opinion and Mae knew that before the week was over that rift would only grow worse.
12
Her entire family knew just how she felt about the people they had supposedly paid all of the family’s money to over the years. If even one of them had cured one of the children in their tenure here it would have been worth it, but none of them had. Some of Mae’s cousins had died an even quicker death under their ministrations, which is partly why her father and stepmother had instituted a rule that a family member must always be present when an outsider, even a healer, was with their youngest children.
“Who’s with the siblings?” Mae asked as the thought passed in her head that out of her immediate family, three of the six were currently held in vulnerable states.
Ember was back in the forest in a glass cage.
Her two siblings that all this angst was over should be here with her and her stepmother but they weren’t. So that left very few people Mae trusted to have their best interests at heart with no doubts.
“Your father,” her stepmother immediately said. “You know I wouldn’t leave them alone.”
“Of course, stepmother,” Mae said politely. “That I know, I just figured with both of us here that left precious few to watch over them.”
Her stepmother narrowed her eyes. “How curious. We’re surrounded by family Maer, all of whom I could ask to watch over my daughters without worry. I seem to remember a few of them at your childhood sick bed as well.”
“I was never in any danger of death though,” Mae said while waving aside her remarks. “Besides there’s nothing quite as comforting as having your parents and siblings by your side even if you can only hear their voices.”
“That is true,” her stepmother acknowledged. “Speaking of siblings, where is my other daughter? I haven’t seen your sister since…oh my…it’s been too long.”
She turned around as if she planned to leave the room that very minute in search of Ember.
Mae quickly reached out to grab her hand and prevent that.
Leaning over she hastily said, “She’s fine. Just tired. Ember and I were up all last night and into the morning.”
“Before you encountered our guests?” her stepmother asked with a raised brow.
“Uh no,” Mae said simply. “They came just after. Ember and I were parting in the hallway when I ran into the group and an adult said I should give them a tour of the facilities. We started outside first but that was a mistake. Started raining almost as soon as we left through the stable gates…”
She trailed off her rambling awkwardly. Mae had tried to go with the same story she’d told her great-aunt just in case her stepmother decided she needed to check and see for some reason.
“That’s too bad,” her stepmother said as she stepped back and covered Mae’s hand on her wrist with her own.
“Well, you two know you’re among the apples of my eye,” her stepmother said after a pause. “I may not be spending as much time with you lately as I’d like but I want you to know I am watching out for you even when I’m not there.”
Mae was hoping she imagined the almost sinister end to that declaration but she di
dn’t think she was.
Smiling weakly, she pulled her hand back and said, “We’re both grateful for that stepmother and in the same vein I came here to see my siblings to assure myself they were still surviving as much as they were able.”
Then Mae turned slightly to indicate the heretofore group that was silent in the back of the room as they witnessed the spectacle.
“I know it was wrong,” Mae said as if she just a little bit of emotion into her voice. “But if bringing these strangers could have the slightest possibility of giving us an advantage against their illness, then I wanted them to be here.”
“Well, I will have to object as their mother,” her stepmother said. “Your father and I don’t know any of these people nor have we seen their credentials. Frankly, I’m surprised that you do something so casually like this.”
Mae bit her tongue to keep from saying something she would regret.
Instead she pasted a regretful expression on her face as she said, “I apologize again for not asking your permission first stepmother but desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Not too desperate I hope,” was the only reply Mae heard before an enraged bellow had them all jumping in their skin.
Everyone whirled and the guards flew out from behind Rivan and Donna Marie so smoothly that they might as well have practiced the move a thousand times.
For a moment they all froze as everyone tried to figure what had made that beastly sound.
Then there was another sound from out in the hallway but this time it was closer and it was very clear that it was not something that came from a human throat.
“Close the door!” Donna Marie yelled at the guards just before a second bellow sounded that shook Mae to her bones.
One guard immediately rushed to do her bidding while the second took up a wary stance just off the center of the room. Close enough to jump into the middle if called for but also out of line of sight if they needed to make their attack a surprise.
Mae watched as the first guard lunged across the room to slam the door closed as her stepmother beside her put a hand to her mouth and murmured, “What it in the world is going on?”
