Page 45

THE DRINK OF MAGIC

I t wasn’t hard to find Mal. Not that it was ever hard to find Mal these days, since she could point to his location with her eyes closed.

But she didn’t need the magical bond between them to know where he’d be, with Skymallow afraid and weakened.

It was only a question of which ward-point he’d be checking first.

It turned out to be the front door, strangely naked without its usual ornate goldwork, like a winter tree shorn of leaves. Her stomach clenched at the sight.

Mal held a drop spindle in his hands, and he was so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t bothered to mask his expression.

Despair etched his features as his hands moved feverishly, feeding straw into the spindle.

Tiny glimmers of gold sparked and went dim between his fingers, like struck flint continuously failing to catch.

Straw rustled, falling uselessly to the floor, slightly more glittery than normal straw but still undeniably straw, and the lines on his face deepened.

Zingiber sat nearby, watching this show with his fur bristling.

The cat perked up at her arrival. Oh good; you can cheer him up. He’s being boring and miserable.

“How long does magical drain take to recover from?” she asked.

Mal gave a start, his despair well-hidden by the time he’d turned to face her.

Their eyes met, and a current of something shivered between them, wholly unrelated to any subject except the two of them.

Something hot, quickly damped. It’s all artificial , she chanted to herself.

He doesn’t want you. You don’t want him, not truly.

“Too long,” he said. “All the goldwork I used to build the wards has gone, and Av—the prince will be searching with renewed enthusiasm. I can’t afford to wait.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t know this would happen.”

“Is Apfela right that her presence will help Skymallow?” Gisele asked.

Mal made a face.

“Is she?”

“Siden draw power from the people connected to them,” Mal allowed.

“So yes.”

Mal made another, even less enthused, face. “Did she tell you what?—”

“She told me. Is it so different to your own history? Haven’t we all made mistakes in the past? Apfela wants a place to belong just as badly as you do. Don’t people deserve the chance to start again?” Her heart was suddenly pounding.

“She could start again somewhere other than my house,” he protested.

Gisele tried to hide her flinch, but his eyes went wide and he took a step towards her, hand outstretched as if to offer comfort before he remembered himself.

He let his hand drop, standing now an awkward distance of too close for casual conversation and too far for intimacy. “The cases are not the same,” he said firmly, snuffing any faint hope that he hadn’t realised the reason for her reaction. “Besides, Skymallow wants you here.”

Was her shrug careless enough? “Skymallow wants Apfela here too, or you wouldn’t have had half as much trouble keeping her out of the orchard in the first place.

Are you really going to throw her out when it seems like we need all the help we can get?

You said it took years to put enough power into the wards last time—if Apfela’s presence can speed that up, then why aren’t we inviting everyone we know to join us?

You wanted to keep people out before because you thought it would make the prince more likely to find you—but the situation has changed now, surely? ”

“Must you say such logical things?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”

He sighed. “It’s not as simple as inviting everyone and their parents. Casual strangers don’t generate anything like as much power as those connected to the house. There’s a theory about mindful dedication, that a labour of love for a siden generates the most power of all.”

“Apfela loves your orchard. Or she would, I think, if you let her.”

He made an unhappy sound and looked upon his work with the doorframe with dissatisfaction. “A drunken ant could push through this right now. Yes, fine, you’re right. The infernal waldfrau can remain, if she swears the house-oaths.”

“Thrilled to hear you say so,” Apfela drawled from behind them.

Gisele jumped, but Mal simply turned with a sour expression.

Apfela sized him up. “Nissa would claim the stream that runs through your house, if you put it to her in the right way. And there’s a local family of brownies who would move in in a heartbeat if they were allowed.

Can’t see how you’ve been getting on without them; a siden this large ought to have its own brownies already. ”

“Can’t you be satisfied with your own victory for one day before pushing for more?” Mal complained.

“Nope. Best to spring when the sap runs hot.” Apfela put her hand to the frame, murmuring something. There was a sense of wind in the trees and the smell of ripe apples. “Under star and sun, I pledge allegiance to the house of Skymallow, to honour its magic, guard its heart, and keep its secrets.”

Gisele could feel Skymallow responding gratefully to the power she’d given, and even Mal couldn’t hide his relief. The cracks in the door smoothed out, leaving good wood behind. The ward Mal had been uselessly trying to renew flared back into being—insubstantial as gossamer but there .

“There you go.” Apfela spoke carelessly, but Gisele could tell the act had drained her by the way she leaned on the wall for support.

“Thank you,” Mal said, only a bit stiff.

Apfela’s lips curled up. “Oh, he does have manners when he wants to, does he? I’d never have guessed.”

Mal raised his eyes heavenwards. “I’m going down to the orchard to see what sort of cleansing it will require before I can further restore the wards. Gisele?” His tone was light, and yet she could feel that he wasn’t asking casually for her company.

“I’ll come too,” she said.

Apfela cocked her head to the side. “I think I’m superfluous to this bee-circling-flower dance. I’ll be in the kitchen garden. Call if you’ve need of me.” She strode off before Gisele could protest this characterisation. Zingiber followed her.

Mal’s posture had tightened at Apfela’s remark.

“Don’t worry; I won’t sting you,” Gisele assured him, trying to lighten the complicated current between them.

Mal’s lips quirked. “I assumed I was the bee in this scenario.” Opening the door, he admitted quietly, “Thank you for accompanying me. I didn’t want to face it alone.”

They kept a careful distance as they walked, their joint tension increasing as they drew nearer to last night’s battle scene.

Was Mal driven by the same morbid curiosity as she, the need to face the horror in the light of day?

Not that there was much of that, the sky dark with impending thunderstorm, the air thickly humid.

They probably had less than an hour for whatever it was Mal hoped to achieve in the orchard.

“How long will it take to get the wards back to full strength, with Apfela’s and my help? If I can help.” She wasn’t sure whether her chaotic magic would be any good here.

The shadows under his eyes were more pronounced under the trees. “Your presence will help. Your magic… I’m not sure.”

“A diplomatic way of saying you’re not sure whether my magic might just make everything explode even more than it has already.”

“I did learn some skills at court,” he said lightly. “But then again, we may have no better option but to try it. I’ve been weaving wards out of power not well-suited to it for years.”

“How long will it take, then?”

He was scanning the overhead boughs, and she could see the memory of last night’s webs in his eyes. “It depends how strong the wards need to be. To keep out elsterfae? Skymallow might be able to do that now, for a while. To keep out a royal fae…?” He trailed off.

“He doesn’t know exactly where we are, though.”

“Not yet.”

Gisele steeled herself for the sickly-sweet scent of rot, her stomach knotting itself tighter as they drew closer. The air, however, was clean. Leaves rustled in the rising wind, but only one thing attracted her attention.

The orchard glittered .

Gisele stopped, staring at the nearest trunk, where a cobweb-thin whorl of gold sat within new-sprung leaves.

Tracing the line of it down, she found similar thin whorls of gold in the long grass, harder to see but undeniably present.

She knelt and pressed the grass flat to see more clearly.

Small seedlings had sprung up along the line of gold, only as tall as her thumbnail.

They exchanged glances. Mal’s tail lashed like it, too, was caught in a high wind, but his expression was as baffled as hers.

The golden lines grew thicker as they neared the solshant corpse, and the sprouted seedlings and new leaves got taller.

There was something familiar in the patterns.

She puzzled at it but couldn’t work out exactly what it was.

“It’s going to be a nightmare trying to un-thread all this metal.” She examined one more closely. “Is that what cleansing entails?”

Mal shook his head sharply, his ears flat against his skull as he stared at the webs.

Abruptly, she realised what they reminded her of. “They’re like your tattoos,” she whispered.

No surprise showed in his expression; he’d already made the connection.

“Mal, why are they like your tattoos?”

He shook his head again, striding towards the mass at the centre of things with renewed energy. There he drew to an abrupt stop, staring down at the dead solshant.

Touching the dismae for reassurance, she reluctantly did the same.

The sight was both more and less bad than she’d feared.

She’d known that daylight would reveal the colours of the scene, had imagined a crimson stain spreading from the body, but the solshant hadn’t bled red . Gold-and-blue seeped from the corpse.