Malice, page 18
“It might be locked for good reason,” I warn her. “The Nightseekers were tolerated before the war, but they must have been wiped out with the Vila.”
She grins. “I suppose we’re about to find out.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Briar King had not been exaggerating when he promised my first commission would arrive quickly. I find it as soon as I open my Lair the next morning. A nondescript box waits on my worktable, along with a black envelope. My heart pounds at the sight of the dragon seal on the parchment, at the thought of one of the king’s minions skulking about this place. How did they get inside? Besides myself, only Delphine and Mistress Lavender hold keys to this room. But I suppose there’s little that can stop the Briar King from having his way.
I hold my breath, bracing for the Briar King’s first request as I break the seal and unfold the parchment. The missive is short:
The drinker forgets all matters as instructed by the king. Deliver in a fortnight.
A drinker? Two weeks? I unlock the box. My breath catches. There’s a chalice inside, silver with scrollwork around the rim. It’s not as fine as the crystal flutes served at the royal dinner. This one is simple, meant to blend in with the other dishes. One even a servant might use.
Tarkin wants me to curse this? My mind sifts through a hundred possibilities as to how to accomplish it, each of them more unlikely than the last. Kal said there’s magic in everything—even a chalice? And how do I make it erase someone else’s memory?
But these are questions for later. A fat velvet sack rests at the bottom of the chest. I untie the strings. Three times my normal rate of gold glistens in the light of my hearth. Gold that will carry me across the Carthegean Sea. Away from this life forever.
* * *
—
It’s just under a week before I see Aurora again. She secures my last appointment of the evening, under the name “Mistress Nightingale,” and arrives right on time.
“I was right!” She hefts a burlap bag onto my worktable and begins digging through it. “The chest in the library did contain books about the Nightseekers. I suppose we’re lucky the masters left that place alone. These would have been burned if they found them.”
She thrusts one under my nose. It has the raven emblem stamped on the cover.
The apple pastry I’d been eating suddenly tastes of ash. “I take it you’ve read them?”
“As much as I could. They’re filled with little spells and rituals. Some of them look like nonsense. But here, this one is for summoning.” She shows me a diagram of a large wheel labeled Summonus. Beside it, a list of ingredients and instruments and instructions that might as well be written in a foreign language. “Do you think you could manage this? It might summon the Vila who cast the curse. She must be able to break it.”
“From what I know about my magic, that’s a dangerous game,” I hedge, wiping my butter-stained fingers on my skirt. “Vila power can only be used for ill intent. Curse breaking is too pure.”
“What harm could it do to try? These books were written by Nightseekers. They learned from the Vila.” She taps the wheel on the page, impatient. “Surely using your own breed of magic isn’t too much of a risk.”
Dragon’s teeth, she’s stubborn. But I can see I’ll get nowhere trying to dissuade her. I change tactics. “Your curse was cast centuries ago. We can’t summon a dead Vila.”
“No.” Aurora riffles through her stack of books, undeterred. A tiny crease forms between her brows and the peach-pink glimmer of her tongue appears as she concentrates. “But Vila and Fae don’t die the way humans do. Look.” She gestures enthusiastically at an illustration of a dense forest. The trees are silver and obsidian. “This was a battleground during the War of the Fae. Both Etherians and Vila died there. Trees sprouted from the remnants of their magic.” She points to the fruit in the branches, like hanging gems. “Trees that grew apples stuffed with rubies or plums laced with nightshade.”
A tremor ripples through me. Is that what will happen to me when I die?
“And here.” She flips a few pages. “A lake in Etheria where a light Fae drowned. If you drink from it, you gain immortality.”
“These sound like legends. Has anyone actually seen these places? Know anyone who drank from that lake?”
She closes the book with an irritated thump. “You said you would help. And if we use the ritual to summon the Vila’s magic, maybe we can find a way to reverse it. You’re the best shot I have.”
She nudges the summoning ritual under my nose again with a pleading expression and I heave a sigh. She might be right. The Vila may not be able to overturn the curse herself. But if her magic could be located, perhaps it could be destroyed. And then Aurora’s curse would be ended for good.
* * *
—
At Aurora’s unrelenting insistence, I find myself at Hilde’s the next day with the copied-out list of ingredients we need for the summoning ritual in hand. I still think it’s a terrible idea to attempt the thing. But Aurora was so certain. At least if we try and fail, we can forget the whole business and she won’t blame me.
“What chewed you up and spit you out half-eaten?” The apothecary drums her beet-stained fingers on the countertop and cocks her head at me.
My shoulders hunch. Aurora said she’d be back as soon as she could, and so I’d spent the rest of the night poring over the ritual’s instructions. Dark circles smudge beneath my sleep-deprived eyes. My hair sticks to my scalp in greasy clumps.
Another customer, pimple-faced and gangly, slides me a sideways glance before deciding he can finish his business later. The shop bell clangs behind him.
“Have those Graces sent you again?”
“No.” I pass her the rumpled list of what I need, written so hastily the ink is smeared. “I’m here for my own enhancements.”
Hilde peers at the list, fishing out dingy spectacles from an apron pocket. “Trying to make me go blind, I see.” She points. “Is this bogswort or beetle brains?”
“Bogswort,” I answer, reddening. “Obviously.” I’ve never heard of beetle brains being used as an enhancement.
“Don’t sass me, little miss.” She slaps the list down and sets to work filling my order. “Keeping busy, I take it.”
“Extremely.”
“That nasty turn at the castle didn’t keep ’em away for long, eh?”
At the mention of the Weltross incident, I squirm, becoming suddenly fascinated with a selection of peacock feathers Hilde has displayed on the counter. “No.”
“Oh, don’t mind me.” Hilde chuckles. “I don’t hold it against you. Anyone who comes knocking on your door deserves what they ask for. And not in a pretty-wrapped silk package.”
I forgot how much I appreciate Hilde’s wisdom.
“But tell me.” She returns from the back of the shop, passing over three jars filled with various shades of powder. “Is that all the Dark Grace has brewing?” The wrinkles on her brow deepen. “You look like a sailor blown in by a hurricane, but there’s still a spark in those eyes.”
I look away, at anything but her knowing honey-brown gaze.
“Has my Alyce found a special someone?”
“Absolutely not.” I busy myself with stuffing the jars into my sack, fire bursting from the tips of my toes and lifting the roots of my hair. “Don’t be daft. It isn’t allowed.”
“Daft am I?” Hilde’s voice curves. My pulse rockets up my throat. The last thing I need is a rumor like that to get started. Rose would give me no peace. “I must be mistaken,” she says at last, sly as a cat. “You don’t have to share your secrets with old Hilde.”
She stops me from shoving the last jar into my sack with one tawny, scarred hand over mine. “But you do know, Alyce.” Her tone is soft. Almost motherly. “If there is someone, I hope they deserve you.”
From anyone else, I would expect that comment to be cruel. That the apothecary means she hopes the object of my affection is as wicked and hated as I am. But there’s an openness in Hilde’s features. The pressure on my hand is reassuring. Safe.
“Don’t let them make you into their monster. Not the Graces. Not anyone.”
“There’s no one.” The lie is salty.
“Very well.” Hilde sighs, pulling on her familiar mask of indifference. She reexamines the list. The corners of her mouth turn down. “Deathknot? Why do you want a thing like that?”
I rearrange the jars in the sack. “Do you really want to know?”
She watches me for a moment. “It’s not your usual sort of thing. Deathknot gets people into trouble, to my knowledge.”
“Trouble doesn’t sound like the Dark Grace’s area of expertise?”
The moment hums between us. Hilde rubs her thumb along the edge of the list. And I’m worried she might refuse me. But then she turns on her heel and stalks back into her stores. Muffled grunts and curses fill the room, and she re-emerges with a fat glass container in both hands. The lid is covered with dust. Inside is the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen. Like a black root of some huge, deadly plant. Knotted, as the name suggests, and riddled with green, furry scabs. Tiny white hairy things poke through the leathery skin and writhe in the fluid.
Glass scrapes against the worn wood of the counter as the apothecary slides the deathknot over to me. But she doesn’t let go immediately.
“Remember what I said, Alyce. About monsters.” The words are low, spoken in a tone that wakes something deep in my core. “Take care you don’t become what they think you are.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My deadline for the king’s commission looms like a storm, and I still have no idea how to manage it. I’ve thought of coating the chalice in an elixir—like how the innovation Graces use their elixirs to create enchanted fabrics and ornaments and flowers. But even if it worked, the effects of such an elixir would eventually wear off.
Kal would know what to do.
Unfortunately, my patron schedule prevents me from visiting him during the day. And I expect Aurora to return to my Lair immediately. But apparently not even she is capable of absconding from the palace every night. When there’s no Mistress Nightingale booked on my schedule late the next evening, I whisper a hope that she doesn’t call on me unexpectedly, finish with my last patron, and sneak away.
“What troubles you?” Kal asks as soon as I arrive.
The sea is as agitated as I am. It churns and then launches itself into the cliff face, spraying up the outer tower walls and through the gaping hole in its side.
“I don’t know how to curse a chalice—or anything for that matter,” I say after I’ve finished telling Kal about the king’s commission. I sit on a stairstep and Callow flaps unsteadily from my shoulder. “The only thing I can think to use is an elixir, but—”
“Elixirs?” Shadows curl around Kal’s ankles. “You have known for some time that you do not need those to command your power. The Vila who cursed the royal line certainly did not simply wrap up a vial of ‘curse water’ and bid the princess to drink it.”
I bristle, even though I know he’s teasing. “How else am I supposed to get my power to manipulate a human’s without my being near them?”
“Your magic hinges on intent—that’s the only thing that matters. Your elixirs worked because you wanted them to work. Because your blood carried your command. It is not the most direct way to use your power, but it can be very effective—as with the curse on the royal line.”
Icy flecks of spray land on my cheeks and I swipe at them. “You’re saying that if I can’t reach a heart of magic, all I have to do is smear my blood on something and it’s cursed?”
“Your blood holds your intent, Alyce. It lends a spark of your power to whatever you curse.” He laughs at the scowl on my face. “Is that so difficult to believe? When you have spent over half a decade crafting—what are they called? Ugliness elixirs?”
The tower groans against the sea wind.
“Those wore off,” I argue. “The king wants something far more powerful.”
“And why do you think your power weakened so quickly when you were serving your patrons?” He sneers at the very idea of the nobles.
I begin to pace. Callow complains when I tread too close and interrupt her feasting among the grainy mortar. She snatches an insect out of the air and crunches it in half. “Because I wasn’t using it properly?”
“Maybe.” The buttons on Kal’s doublet shine in the night. “It could not have been because you desired your elixirs to weaken?”
The next wave roars. “Because I…”
Dragon’s teeth. My elixirs worked because I commanded my power to behave like the Graces’. And the effects of the Graces’ elixirs Fade. I never intended to permanently harm anyone. My power understood that.
“Yes, Alyce.” Kal grins. “The stronger the intent, the stronger the curse.”
A shudder runs through me. The Vila who cursed Aurora’s line must have been crazed with bloodlust. I shake myself a little.
“Try it yourself.” Kal gestures around the chamber, at the graveyard of broken furniture and debris. “Choose something and curse it.”
I consider my options. A rusted chair. A rotting beam. Not particularly inspiring.
“Curse me if you will.”
“No,” I answer automatically. When I was first learning to use my power, that’s exactly what I’d had to do. Mistress Lavender was certain I could command light magic if I only tried hard enough, and so she ordered me to charm the maids and the cooks, the way the Graces do when they’re practicing in the nurseries. But I produced only scaled faces and garbled voices and hunched backs. The attempts wore off, as they always do, but the effect on my reputation was long-lasting. And why it used to be that we couldn’t get many servants to stay at Lavender House for more than a month. “You’ve had enough cursing for one lifetime, I think.”
Something glimmers near Callow. I kick a few stones away, revealing a small hand mirror covered in cobwebs and brine. I wipe it clean with the hem of my cloak, frowning at my own spotted reflection within. And then I remember something I read about Etheria. That mirrors crafted from the sand of their lakes can be visual portals to other worlds. My Vila power couldn’t create something like that. But perhaps I could do something else.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I dig out the small knife I keep in my sack, draw my blood, and squeeze a single drop of it over the glass.
“Give it some direction,” Kal coaches. “Intent.”
“Whoever looks in this mirror,” I begin, even as doubt chews away at my resolve, “will see their deepest fear.”
Blood the color of hemlock splatters on the glass. And then it vanishes. A plume of emerald smoke unfurls from the surface. The tarnished silver is warmer to my touch than it should be, the glass undulating like water in the frame. As if my blood brought it to life.
Holding my breath, I tilt the mirror toward my face. For a moment, all I see is myself. But then my reflection ripples. The angles of my face sharpen, my cheekbones lengthening and stretching until twin points of bone protrude above each ear. Spikes of bone erupt along my collarbone and above my eyebrows like the peaks of the Etherian Mountains. My eyes blare green fire and a charge blazes up from my toes, filling my lungs with the smell of woodsmoke and leather and another scent that isn’t mine.
I am her.
The realization tears through me like an arrow striking home. The Vila who cast the curse on the royal line. On Aurora. My mouth opens and tips of jagged yellow teeth gleam. Lips curve into a smile without my bidding. Screaming a curse, I hurl the mirror across the tower. Glass explodes when it meets the stone of the opposite wall. Callow shrieks and hops away.
“What did you see?” Kal nears me slowly.
Numbness tingles across my scalp and I wrap my arms around my middle, needing something to hold me together. “Am I as bad as she was?” I whisper. “For working with the king? For cursing innocents?”
“Is that who appeared to you?” His shadows brush my skirts. “The ancient Vila? You have no reason to be frightened of her. She cannot harm you.”
“It wasn’t just that I saw her.” I shut my eyes at the image of my bones morphing into hers. Of the feeling of otherness inside my skin. “I was her. She became me somehow—or I her.”
Kal grips my elbows in his strong, cold hands. Bracing me. Darkness cocoons us both, veiling the rest of the room. “The people you will curse—are they innocent?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“And how many of them have come to you for their own desires, uncaring how it affected you? That it enslaved you?”
My chest tightens. “Too many to count.”
“This arrangement with the Briar King is a means to an end, Alyce. It may not be pleasant, but it is your way out. And I vow to you—whatever happens, I am your ally. Your own kind. You are not alone.”
Heat replaces the frozen current of my blood. I lean in, clasping my arms around his neck and pulling him close.
“Thank you.”
I stay at the black tower until dawn blushes against the whitecaps. Autumn has fully spread its roots, an undoubtedly harsh winter soon to follow. I make it back to Lavender House in time to change my dress and prepare for the day.
And the first thing I do is curse the king’s chalice and send it to the palace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When I break the seal on my schedule a few days later and find an appointment with Mistress Nightingale booked for late in the evening, anticipation buzzes through me. Given how determined she was to attempt the summoning ritual, I thought Aurora would have returned by now. But her duties at the palace must have kept her away. And it doesn’t matter now. She’s coming.
