Make Her, page 4
After several days of presents, it looked like we were stuck on Darkest Day inside my tent, despite the brief flashes of bright sun I got through the tent flap when Jelena came inside.
“Who knew there were this many eligible Kers?” Jelena muttered, bringing in the morning’s lot. “How many of the Seven is your father trying to sell you to?”
I flipped through the growing pile of handwritten notes on the pile on my desk while frowning. “Three, I was told. ”
Jelena made a thoughtful sound then, before picking up a new note attached to a rather large fabric and ribbon-covered square. “Make it four. ” I had learned that Jelena couldn’t read, but she was more than smart enough to recognize each country’s stationary flair.
I bit back a growl and turned it into a sigh as she handed the newest letter over. “The Ker of Calraith sends his best regards and wishes me good health on this auspicious day,” I said, reading the letter aloud for her dryly. Perhaps Rhaim and I had floated over Calraith before. In the sky, borders felt imaginary.
“That’s longer than most,” she said, unlacing the braids of ribbons around the object itself.
“Better handwriting, too,” I said, adding it to my stack. To anyone else, it might’ve looked like I was saving them for later, but for me, they held the possibility of future kindling. I’d taken to sorting gifts according to what I assumed their flammability might be, and had arranged them in a spiral about the tent’s floor accordingly, the boxes and ribbons they’d come with too.
Maybe this was why women who learned magic burned.
To escape.
A gasp from Jelena stopped me from thinking about setting everything on fire. “Oh my,” she said, peering into the fabric case at whatever was inside.
“What?” I asked. I stood and crossed the tent to her, as she finished freeing the object.
It was a portrait of me, atop a unicorn, wearing a flowing dress much like the one I had on now. I noticed Rhaim was nowhere in the painting—and neither were any of my father’s mages or guards.
“Well that’s highly inaccurate,” I muttered, taking it from her.
Jelena’s lips twisted to the side like she had eaten something sour. “By now, people who weren’t there think the unicorns were coming to rescue you from him. ”
A bitter taste flashed across my tongue. “You’re kidding,” I said. There were at least a hundred witnesses to my retrieval, so there was no excuse for people not to know the truth—
“I wish I were,” she said, with an apologetic wince.
My fingers curled around the frame’s wooden edge. “These aren’t even truly for me—they’re for my father, my brother, or to impress one another. None of these men know me in the least, nor do they really care what I think of them. ”
Because if they did. . . they would be afraid to be in my presence: there was magic in me now, that Finx had put there.
I only had to be good for a few more days.
I knew I could manage it—I had no choice.
“I’m allowed to see her,” announced a stranger’s voice from outside the tent, talking to the guards. Jelena looked at me, and Finx ran from where he’d crept out to inspect the painting back to underneath my cot. The guards complained, as the stranger continued. “Your wife wants to leave you. She’s sleeping with your neighbor, the one with the apple trees. And as for you—the man who shares your tent is in love with you. He is a good match, and you should tell him so. ”
Jelena and I both stepped back, as seconds later, a mage in robes, with a very long, white beard, stepped through the fabric door.
“Who are you?” I said, pulling Jelena behind me, protectively.
The stranger had white-blind eyes and took deep, almost distrustful, inhales before speaking next. “I am the mage Filigro. I was told you’d be expecting me. ”
My heart flung itself into my throat, and I turned to look at Jelena. “Remember the item we talked about getting yesterday? Go get it—tell Helkin you need them immediately. ”
She squinted her eyes in question. “Are you sure?”
“I have no interest in her honor, girl,” Filigro assured her, waving a dismissive hand. “But please hurry—my appearance must be brief, as I cannot spell the guards outside to lose too much time. ”
Jelena nodded quickly and danced out.
“We’re alone now,” I said, once the tent’s flap had fallen back into place because I thought he couldn’t see.
“She’s gone,” the mage agreed, then took another sniff of the air. “But he’s not. ”
Finx crept out from underneath the cot again. “Hello, old man,” he whispered.
A warm smile cracked the mage’s face. “Hello to you, too, my eight-legged friend. ”
If he and Finx knew each other. . . I felt better already. Unless— “Nothing’s happened to Rhaim, has it?” I asked, taking a step forward.
If it had—if my father had gone back to hunt him down and kill him—the magic Finx had already imbued me with sprang to my hand, and the mage’s head snapped up, as if sensing it.
“Calm yourself,” he commanded, and I did so, slowly. Filigro nodded at that. “He’s the one who sent me. ” He made his way further in and sat on the edge of my bed. He seemed to have no problem finding it.
“Is he. . . all right?” I asked, biting my lips after.
“Depends on your definition. ” Filigro sighed, and then gave me a prim look, his lips set into a thin line inside his beard. “He’d be better off if he never met you—but that’s not your fault, not entirely. Your father is a stubborn man. ”
“And you’re here to take me away?” I asked quietly. A hopeful Back to him? went unsaid.
“Oh no. No no no, girl. No. This is your life now,” he said, twisting his head as if to look at my four fabric walls. “I’m here to tell you you’d best get used to it. ”
I gawked at him. “Is that really what Rhaim sent you to say?” My voice rose higher as I said it.
“No. He told me to tell you he was ‘sorry’. ”
I frowned at the old mage, even though he couldn’t see me. Rhaim wouldn’t have abandoned me—it wasn’t in his nature. My time at the unicorn glade would’ve set him back—but I knew he wouldn’t have given up on me entirely.
“He also told me to tell you to quit using magic,” the mage went on.
“You’re lying. ”
The older mage took a deep inhale and appeared to study me. “No. I am not. He requests that you do that, because he wants you to be safe. ”
“Safe,” I repeated, and huffed. “There’s no such thing. ”
“There’s alive, and then there’s dead, and he’d prefer you’d choose the former. ”
I squinted at him. “I’m not afraid of Ascending. ” And Rhaim knew that—which made me question why he’d sent Filigro here.
The old man clucked. “But you should be. The pain is almost incomprehensible and, once you gain the knowledge of how you die, it is not so easily forgotten. Especially because your death will probably be at a fellow mage’s hands. ”
I took a moment and stared at him, blinking. “Knowledge? Of how I die? What do you mean?”
“When you Ascend,” he said curtly, then it was his turn to squint. “Did Rhaim teach you nothing of being branded by fate?”
“No,” I said truthfully.
Filigro began what I assumed was cursing, only with words I’d never heard before.
Rhaim had told me he’d kept parts of other mage’s journals hidden from me, because he didn’t want me to know mage ceremonies. . . but I had assumed he would stop, once I’d begun my apprenticeship.
I just hadn’t had a chance to read a single journal after that, though, what with my training, other than the one this mage had sent me to warn me off of training. . . and I did not have any to read here.
“Is that what happens?” I pressed.
“If he didn’t—”
I cut him off. “Would it kill a mage to just tell me the truth for once?” I hissed.
Filigro cursed again before answering. “He must have had a reason. ”
“Perhaps he did. But he’s not here—so—what is yours?”
The old mage pulled a handkerchief out from somewhere and furiously blotted his brow, shaking his head in a profound fashion. “What you are is not allowed, girl. Not ever since the olden days. If men find out you can do magic, they will do anything to stop you. ”
“Mages, you mean,” I corrected him, licking my lips thoughtfully.
“Oh, no, men too. Mages are probably the most open-minded of the lot. You think your father would let you go now? Or any of the Kers lined up to take your hand?” he said, and scoffed. “But you can’t overturn all of society just because it displeases you. And Rhaim wouldn’t want you to take that risk. ”
He said Rhaim’s name like his opinion ought to have special meaning for me, and it did, but. . . he wasn’t here, was he?
And if my options were literally dying, or just wishing I was dead, I would opt for the former every time, something I was sure Rhaim knew. “If I don’t Ascend, do you know what will happen to me?” I asked the mage in all seriousness.
Filigro made a dismissive sound. “You will become a queen. You’ll have servants and children and a husband who dotes on you. ”
“Do you think I want any of those things? Or rather—do you think I want any of those things, at the cost of my freedom, until the end of my time?”
One of his furry eyebrows rose. “I fear I know the answer. ”
“Then it seems you do. ” I stood, noisily, so he would hear me. “You should go. ”
“Rhaim—” he began, but I cut him off.
“I have strong feelings for Rhaim, yes,” I whispered quietly. “But I also have strong feelings about windows, and sunlight, and moonlight, and grass. I want to touch snow. I want to ride horses whenever I like. I want to learn how to swim, if it pleases me. I want to count the stars at night. And while Rhaim may want me to be safe, he knows all that about me, too. So thank you for coming here, but you may tell him that I am also sorry, because none of those things can happen until I am free, and as I will never be free without the ability to portal—my studies will continue. Please go. ”
He didn’t move a muscle. “You’re as stubborn as your father, girl—mark that I did not want to tell you this,” the older mage said. “But if you won’t behave for your own sake—you must do it for Rhaim’s. He is close to his death. I can smell it on him—and I suspect it has something to do with you. ”
A hand raced to my mouth in horror. “Why would you tell me such a thing?”
“Because if you use magic, he will feel compelled to save you, and doing so would surely hasten his demise. ”
I knew it was true—the sound of his beast’s lost baying at the unicorn glade haunted my nightmares every night. Given the chance, he would have fought to the death for me, my heart knew it. “Tell him not to, then. Tell him I hate him. Tell him if I ever see him again, I will never forgive him. ”
“Would any of that work on you?” he asked, without giving me time to answer. “I think we both know the truth. So promise me you will behave, Princess of Tears, lest you give your heart more reasons to cry. ”
My mouth opened and I took in a breath. . . then I paused. “Did he tell you to tell me that?”
Filigro shirked back. “No. What of it?”
“Rhaim knows me. ” I put a fist to my stomach for strength. “Is the death fate shows you always accurate?”
“Yes,” he said, emphatically.
“Yet he didn’t send you here to tell me not to do a thing. ”
He glowered, the beardless skin of his face reddening. “He shouldn’t have to! You should be possessed of sense!”
I shook my head at him. “He sent you to warn me, maybe. . . but only told you to tell me that he was sorry. ”
And Rhaim had a very long list of things to be sorry for: not telling me how I came to be in his possession, what happened to mages when they Ascended, and now, this, the story of his own passing, which if he had known was upcoming, he should have shared with me the second our feelings crossed.
But instead of any of that. . . he was apologizing for a fate that neither one of us would be able to avoid.
I had risked everything to save him once already.
I loved him.
But he knew, and I knew, who I was at heart.
“Then tell him I love him, instead. ”
Filigro swept to standing. “I am not your messenger, girl. ”
I ignored him utterly. “And I will always love him. And no matter what happens I am certain of his love for me. But I cannot go below ground again, nor can I idly wait for another man to rut me. Tell him that I am his, and his alone, but I do not need his help—he has given me the strength to find my own way,” I said, walking for the tent’s door. “You need to go, now. For all I know, he dies because they catch you whispering to me. ”
I put my fingers on the fabric door for the first time and opened it.
One of the men who I presumed was supposed to be guarding me was having a heated conversation with someone nearby, and beyond him, across a muddy road, was everything that I longed for, the city my father’s encampment had created, in all of its squalor and its glory, beneath a blue sky and a blazing sun.
Then I looked back for the mage—and he was gone.
Of course. Going home, Filigro didn’t need to use the door.
He knew how to portal.
I let go of a small breath.
Then someone I didn’t recognize came running up, a handsome-looking man, with tan skin and blond hair. He stopped a safe distance away, just as I was about to step back.
“Princess?” he asked, upon seeing me—and I watched his gaze roll up and down my body. “I see now the portrait I commissioned didn’t do you justice. ”
I swung the tent’s door halfway closed, hiding myself in shadow. “Are you from Calraith?” I asked, and a bold smile lit up his face.
“Did you read my note, or did someone else read it for you?”
My hand tightened on the fabric. “I can read. ”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“What do you care what I enjoy?”
“Because I might desire to have a conversation with you. ”
And then Jelena returned, brushing past him, and finally attracting the attention of the guard, who caught me on the edge of sunlight. “Princess!” he exclaimed, urging me back with his ceremonial shield.
I let the door fall shut behind Jelena.
“I got what you asked!” She held out the scissors I’d told her to get from Helkin. “Who was that?” she asked, looking behind herself.
I took them from her hand. “The Ker of Calraith,” I said. “Go chase after him. Tell him I do like books, very much. ”
“Really?” she asked me. I nodded. She shrugged, then ran to do as she was told.
Because as far as gifts went, books were far more flammable than portraits.
6
Rhaim
The actual idea of how I would turn my fortunes around came to me rather easily, but the implementation of it was a bear—and not the kind I could easily tame with my magic.
I needed someone’s help on the inside, and there was only one mage left I would reluctantly trust with my life, so I portaled a safe distance away from Jaegar’s encampment and plagued it with fleas, trusting that eventually one of them would hop on Sibyi.
After I’d figured out where he was, I kept a discreet group of creatures at the ready around him, much as I’d kept an eye on Lisane when she was outside of town prior, until I caught him holding a portal open for a group of soldiers to pass through, giving a dragonfly, a toad, and a shrike all the chance to see what was on the portal’s other side: a pine forest near evening-time. It was nothing after that to give him a head start, and then portal in after him, waiting for him to finish dealing with a commotion of Deathless, before sending snakes in to draw arrows on the ground near his feet to my location. I smiled to hear him groan when he realized they were there, and what they meant.
“I’ve got to go relieve myself—I’ll be back in camp shortly,” he said, funneling the soldiers he brought with him back through an open portal, until we were alone, which was when I stepped out from behind a tree trunk and he whirled on me. “Rhaim. ” He said my name like it was a curse. “Talking to you is as good as treason. ”
“Says the man who wrote to me in the sky. ”
He took a deep inhale and released it in a rush, his thin lips turning prudish after. “Did you really bite her?”
There was no point in denying it. “I did. ”
“Why?” He gave a disgusted shudder. “Could you just not hold your beast back any longer?”
I shrugged bodily, unwilling to divulge Lisane’s secret to anyone else. “It was a mistake. ”
“I’ll say,” he said and stabbed the end of his cane between his feet.
“And how are things going for the war?” I asked.
He eyed me dourly. “Don’t pretend you give a shit about it. ”
“Fine,” I said, shrugging, and asked what I wanted to know. “How is she?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t even seen her. She’s guarded night and day, and it’s not like she ever gets to come out. ”
And at the thought of my beautiful little moth, trapped, something in my soul started howling. “Does her tent have windows?”
“No. Why would it?”
“Because if she’s not safe in the war camp, with a hundred mages around her at all times, plus Jaegar’s protective ring of them, guarding the camp from the Deathless themselves—when will she ever be?”
“Never,” Sibyi said with a groan, then caught the way I was looking at him. “Because, unlike you, they probably know it’s not good for her to get used to freedom. ”
A snarl rose up in the back of my throat. “I should’ve left you in that cave. ”
“I’m just being rational, Rhaim—”
“Cruel, more like,” I corrected him with a growl.
