Page 39 of Magick and Lead (Dragons and Aces #2)

Rohree and Clua were bid to sit at a low table while Ayal dished up a dinner of stew, bread, and goat cheese.

The boys galloped around, engaged in a game of trying to pull each other’s hair, but their father silenced them with a single barked command, and they came to the table and sat sullenly.

Rohree noticed the shadow of a bruise around one of the boys’ eyes—a shiner in the last stages of healing.

She’d known plenty of roughhousing brothers in her day. She’d even had one of her own.

But her poor Gregohree had been sent off to the Front four years ago. The letters had stopped coming shortly thereafter…

The aroma of the stew drew her from her reverie, and she brought the spoon to her lips.

“Mmm,” she moaned. The food was every bit as good as Clua had promised it would be, and she ate with such rapturous abandon she was hardly aware of the conversation going on around her.

Mik was talking about his brother, Clua’s former master. According to a letter he’d received, Bootham had joined one of the crews working to rebuild Issastar until his forge could be rebuilt.

“Those damned necromancers from across the sea. What they did to that fair city…” Mik shook his head.

“And what’s worse is Queen Synaeda let them do it,” Ayal added.

At those words, the blissful stupor that food and rest had lulled Rohree into faded. She blinked, as if waking up.

“You don’t mean that the attack was the queen’s fault?” she asked.

The husband and wife both looked at her.

“Not entirely,” Mik said, rubbing his chin.

“From what I understand, the princess was also to blame. And all those dragon riders. All those years they had to end the war, and all they cared about was maintaining their own power and their old traditions. If we hadn’t had the prelate and his good Brothers to rally the nobles, who knows what would have happened. ”

“Necromancer tanks would probably be rolling over our bones,” Ayal said grimly.

“But…” Rohree started to speak, but Clua grabbed her hand beneath the table and squeezed.

Hard as it was to sit there and listen to someone speak ill of Essa, Rohree took the message and went silent.

But she didn’t let go of Clua’s hand. As her heart beat faster, a feeling of panic and dread rising in her, she felt the hand was the only thing keeping her from slipping off a precipice into madness.

“But you knew the Princess Essaphine,” Ayal was saying. “You must have seen it firsthand. How she betrayed us to the enemies across the sea. They say she was more concerned with bedding men than with defending the kingdom.”

“Before she treacherously killed her own cousin,” Mik put in.

“And her mother was no better,” Ayal added. “ She cared more for her dragons and her fancy balls than her own people. Folks in Admar have glittering gowns and twenty-story high palaces to live in. Meanwhile, here we are living in the muck with these damned goats and sheep.”

Rohree glanced around. The cottage looked perfectly pleasant to her. Idyllic, even. Could it be that these good country folk were now jealous of the Admites? What was happening?

“We’re lucky the Gray Brothers send their boys around to share the news. Otherwise, we’d be none the wiser about what those royals were doing to our fair country,” Mik sniffed.

Ayal nodded. “Yes. At least the prelate and the nobles are in charge now. And they say Kortoi is even now working out a peace deal with the Admites. I thank the void for that.”

Rohree’s mind swam. She felt she ought to correct these people, but where to begin? They were so tangled up in lies and half-truths… and Clua’s grip on her hand was tight—a warning.

The boys were shoving one another off their stools.

“Stop!” one said to the other.

“You’re a butt!”

“You’re a goat’s ass!”

“Hey!” Mik slammed the table with a fist.

The boys both went sullen and silent—fast enough that Rohree wondered where that black eye on the smaller boy came from.

Rohree brought the spoon halfway to her mouth, then stopped and dropped it back into the bowl. She wasn’t hungry after all.

Ayal stood, straightening her apron. “Now, clear the table, boys. It’s scrying time.”

“But the festival,” the eldest boy whined.

“It’s too late to go now,” Ayal said. “We’re entertaining guests, instead. But don’t fret. The festival will be going on tomorrow as well. It’s scrying time now—then bed.”

Mik smiled at his guests. “Do you scry?”

Clua and Rohree both shook their heads. Sprites did not scry.

Rohree had always been warned against the practice growing up.

It had disturbed her how much Queen Synaeda relied upon the practice—may her soul fly.

Demons of the void did sometimes share visions with those who looked into scrying basins.

Visions of the past, the present, the future.

.. And the things they showed were usually real.

Usually… But the visions were often deceptive, too.

Often enough, they led the scryer who followed them to ruin—or madness.

“There’s another practice the Gray Brothers introduced us to,” Mik said, leading them into a sitting area where a large bowl sat upon a low table.

“The gods know the royals never encouraged us to scry. No, they’d keep all knowledge to themselves.

But the Gray Brothers have taught us the way.

They want to share knowledge, not hoard it like the dragon-folk do. ”

“And they hand out coin as well,” Ayal said, bustling into the room. “Taken from the treasury of Charcain after it fell. A refund of taxes, they call it. And about time after all we’ve paid to fund the dragon riders’ cursed war...”

They all settled into chairs around the low table. Even the boys knelt before the basin and stared into the black depths of the water.

Rohree exchanged a dark look with Clua, but they followed along as Mik dragged a couple of chairs over from the table and urged them to sit.

They all watched the water. It sat, perfectly flat and still as a mirror, its only feature the blackness it borrowed from the stone basin.

Rohree always thought that it took some dark art to summon visions out of the water, so she wasn’t surprised to see nothing there.

And yet, the host family leaned in with such hungry anticipation that curiosity rose in her, and she looked again.

The water was blank no longer. Something swam within it, at a depth that should not have been possible given the shallowness of the bowl.

Its movement was somehow both graceful and spastic, like the wriggle of a startled fish.

But this was no fish. It was a form unlike any Rohree had ever seen.

All bony knuckles and bulging eyes. But it was shifting too.

Now it had teeth—not sharp teeth, but human ones.

Now, what looked like a broken bone jutted out of it.

Now, it was formless, just a swirl of black ink.

Someone hummed, a low, off-key tune, but whether it was a member of the family or whether the sound came from within the water, Rohree couldn’t tell.

The temperature in the room seemed to drop, sending a shiver through Rohree that seemed to shudder her very bones.

Then, the swimming form diffused altogether, and from the depths of the water, a scene emerged like a vision rising in a dream.

It was Essa—only it wasn’t. Her hair was cut short, and she wore a strange, glittering dress that revealed almost her entire legs.

Raucous, energetic music played in the background, and she danced strangely to it with a handsome man Rohree had never seen before.

He was comely, but for some reason, Rohree immediately didn’t like him.

Then the scene was shifting again. Moonlight fell across an unnaturally straight road that ran among farm fields. Essa was riding a two-wheeled necromancer vehicle behind Kit (no, Charlie. Clua had said his real name was Charlie…)

Then, the scene shifted again—to a vision from a nightmare. Essa was in some opulent place—a palace or a merchant’s mansion. Kortoi was there, and another man, a terrible man. The upper part of his face had been ripped away, revealing eyes like burning coals.

The scene abruptly changed again, and Essa was in a vast, empty space, like a meadow in which the grass had been replaced with flat stone.

Above, necromancer airplanes buzzed through the sky, battling golenae.

A trio of ghouls in black Admite suits hemmed Essa in.

They were human—or had been—but Rohree somehow knew they were dead and resurrected, with long canine teeth and tongues that lolled out, licking the air, hungry for blood.

They came toward Essa, inexorable as death itself.

With a cry, Rohree shut her eyes, and the spell was mercifully broken.

When she opened her eyes again, everyone was looking at her.

The wife, Ayal, came and put an arm around her. “What’s wrong, dear? You alright?”

Rohree shook her head, running a hand over her eyes. “I… No… I mean yes, I’m fine.”

“What did you see?” Mik asked.

“The rest of you… didn’t see it?” she asked.

One of the little boys shook his head. “Didn’t see anything,” he grumbled.

Rohree hesitated, glancing at Clua, who was looking back at her with concern.

“It was… nothing…” Rohree said quietly.

“We always share what we saw,” Mik said. “The wisdom of the void is for all to share. I saw something. I saw a bad crop. Plants withering in the fields. See? That’s good knowledge. We can start planning now. Forging for berries and roots to preserve for winter.”

“I saw a dog with a hurt leg,” the smaller boy volunteered.

“I didn’t see anything,” the other boy grumbled again. “I never see anything!”

“I saw a baby,” Ayal said, and her hand went to her belly. “I don’t know if it was mine or someone else’s, but I know I loved it.”

Mik smiled and put an arm around her. His eyes went back to Rohree, expectant.

“I saw nothing,” she said again.

“Come,” Mik said. “You must’ve seen something to make a sound like that.” His tone was casual, but there was steel behind it.

“I saw nothing, either,” Clua said quickly. “Except black water. Now, forgive us, but we’ve been walking all day. We’re very tired.”

Ayal kicked the boys out of the loft where they usually slept and made their straw beds up with fresh blankets for Rohree and Clua. Then, she bid them goodnight.

Rohree and Clua lay there, listening to the crackling of the fire and the slow breathing of the two boys who slept down near the hearth.

Rohree longed for sleep. Every fiber of her body seemed stretched to the point of unraveling, and she ached to let all the tension drop out of her, to replace her dread and anxiety with sweet nothingness for just a little while.

And yet, the events of the day kept replaying themselves before her eyes.

Those black pennants flying over the village.

The words of this couple praising that traitor, Kortoi.

And then that strange and terrifying vision of Essa…

The specter of the witch loomed behind her, a trauma she’d never forget. And what lay ahead? Issastar, her beloved city, destroyed. The Skrathan, decimated and scattered. Essa deposed. The kingdom fallen.

Even falling asleep was frightening, for sleep sat adjacent to the realm of the void. And that was where monsters like the one responsible for her scrying vision waited.

She felt a tear slip down her face.

Gods, it was all too much…

Then a hand was on her face, a finger wiping the tear away. Clua came up onto one elbow, looking at her.

“You’re crying,” she said softly. “Is it the vision?”

Rohree took a steadying breath, trying to gather herself, then shook her head. It wasn’t the vision that had bothered her most. She didn’t even know what the vision was, or what it meant. It may have been nonsense, for all she knew. No. What bothered her most…

“It’s just… these people…” she glanced down to where the family slept. “I can tell they’re good people. But they hate Essa. They’d hate us if they knew where our loyalties lay. Kortoi and his Brothers have completely warped their minds.”

Clua nodded gravely. “I know,” she said. “And how many others throughout the kingdom have they brainwashed? How many others blame Essa for the golenae? How many are ready to rise up and rebel against her, ready to fight for traitors who would betray them all…?”

She shook her head bitterly.

“It’s all backwards,” Rohree said. “It’s as if the world’s gone mad.”

Clua nodded, her fingertips still resting on Rohree’s cheek.

“We must get back as fast as we can. We must warn Essa,” Rohree said. “And get her these.”

Her hand drifted to the satchel full of scrolls, the correspondence they’d stolen from the witch. In the haste of their escape, they still hadn’t even cracked a wax seal to read one, and she was too exhausted to do so now.

“We’ll get back to Essa,” Clua assured her, laying her head back down. “But for now, we must get some sleep.”

Rohree rolled onto her side, shifting into a more comfortable sleeping position. Lying like this, she could see Clua’s face in the firelight, could study her. The long lashes on her closed eyelids. Her chin-length dark hair. Her blunt, dwarfish features. The scar on her cheek.

No bard would ever write an ode of beauty to Clua Understone. Of course, no one had ever accused Rohree of being a beauty either, even by sprite standards, with her wrinkled face and her crooked antlers.

And yet, though the world seemed to be falling apart, having Clua near somehow made it all bearable.

Clua seemed to be asleep already.

Tentatively, Rohree reached out and took her hand.

“I’m glad we’re together,” she whispered in a voice so soft she was sure it wouldn’t wake her up.

Clua didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t speak. But ever so gently, she squeezed Rohree’s hand back. And they stayed like that throughout the long night.