Brightly Woven (12 page)

“My.” Mr. Colar laughed. “What a question! I suppose we could look it up. I believe I remember how to spell the poison’s name.”

The water squelched out of my boots as I followed him through the labyrinth of shelves, running my fingertips lightly over the leather spines. There wasn’t a gap or cranny a book hadn’t been crammed into, red, brown, faded blue. They all looked like they were fighting to slip out from their constraints, to be open on a table or even the floor.

In all, Francis Colar had three hundred twenty-four books on magic, of which fifty had been written in the past thirty years, and only two were of any remote use to us.

“This one,” he began, tugging at a clunky volume, “is a reference guide, covering every possible subject in every possible detail.”

He opened the book, blowing out a small cloud of dust from its pages.

“Black ether…black ether…black—here it is.” Mr. Colar cleared his throat. “‘Black ether, a poison rumored to be developed by a hedge witch community outside of Provincia in the years of King Siegbright. Its contents remain a guarded secret, though its effects are easily recognized. Victims of this poison will display erratic, nervous behavior, severe cramping in abdominal muscles, uncontrollable shaking, and, most noticeably, crescent-shaped welts on the back and chest. Though the pain and welts can be treated with simple elixirs, there is no known antidote.’”

“Nothing about wizards?” I asked.

“Perhaps they have a cleverer way of counteracting it, but the effects would be the same,” Mr. Colar said. “Not even a wizard is immune to poison.”

“If the effects are the same, then any treatment…”

“Would also be the same,” he finished. “But you heard what I read. There is no antidote.”

I still wasn’t fully certain that this poison was causing
North’s strange behavior. It was a strong possibility, though, given the disgust that had rolled off him when he told me about the hedges.

“Remember that it was only
rumored
to be this poison,” Mr. Colar said, snapping the book shut. “Although…if you’re interested in antidotes and elixirs, I do have a book that might be useful to you.”

“I would love to see it,” I said. My eyes followed the line of books in front of me.
A Brief History of Casting, Casting Fire, Reign of Magic
…

He dropped to his hands and knees, digging through the books he had already cast aside. The book that emerged from the pile was also black, but it was soft and worn down. My eyes fell on the gold-embossed title:
Proper Instruction for Young Wizards
.

“It’s what all the young ones use while apprenticing. Must have put out a new edition, though. I had a dozen old copies flood in a few years back. It’ll tell you anything you want to know about elixirs and how to make them.”

“This is perfect,” I said, my eyes drifting over the pages. Seeing I was sufficiently distracted, Mr. Colar returned to the front to sweep out his brother-in-law and the rainwater that had flooded in beneath his door. Mr. Monticelli called out to me as he crossed back into his own shop, but I barely acknowledged him.

I leaned back against the shelf, paging through until I found an elixir that listed honey and lavender as ingredients.
Those were the two strongest smells I had been able to make out in North’s bottles.

Sleeping draft
, it read.
Mix one part honey, two parts lavender with essence of mandrake root. If ineffective and more restful sleep is required, grind and add a strong dose of rosemary and poppy. As is the case with many drafts, dependency may arise from misuse and ill care
.

That had to be it—the night of the battle with Dorwan, he had told me to take it and go to sleep. So why had he decided not to take the elixir himself?

I could be useful
, I thought. I could mix the elixir for him. I had charged the air between us with anger and hate—I had seen him as a villain and nearly missed the fact that he was suffering.

The rest of the book was slightly less useful to me. Most of the sections discussed the proper concentration for casting spells, others were history lessons about great wizards of the past, and I was surprised to find a few outdated maps lining the covers. I was just about to close the book when a passage caught my eye.

Magical inclinations (humans)—often a rare occurrence of a wizard’s blood being diluted by many marriages to non-wizards. Though they are unable to cast spells or break curses, they often make excellent assistants for their ability to mix powerful elixirs and, in some instances, repair a talisman
.

All this time I had suspected that there might have been something else involved in North’s choice of me. I would have
read more had a large crash and a booming voice not broken into my small sanctuary.

“By the heavenly bosom of Vesta! It’s a raging downpour out there!”

I leaned around the edge of the bookshelf, unsure of whether I wanted to be seen.

“It certainly is!” Mr. Colar said cheerfully. “Please come in. I already have one refugee!”

“Oh?” Owain said. “Any pretty girls with hair as red as roses?”

“About
this
tall?” Mr. Colar asked.

“Wearing a blue dress?” Owain replied. “Blue eyes?”

“Lots of freckles?”

“Just a bit on the nose and cheeks—smallish nose, a little upturned?”

“For goodness’ sake!” I stepped out from behind the bookshelf. “I’m right here! You could have just called for me.”

“Oh, lass!”
Owain galumphed the entire distance between us, heaving me into a bone-crushing embrace. The mail across his chest was frozen against my cheek, but his hug was warm and inviting—even if he smelled like a wet horse.

“We’ve been searching all over for you!” he cried. “Going out of our minds with worry, running to the four corners of the world! I thought for sure our boy was going to break down in tears.”

“You mean he sobered up enough to care?” I mumbled. Owain’s large hand came up to stroke my hair.

“How could you doubt that?” he asked in a surprisingly gentle voice. “Poor sod’s probably torn up half the city by now.”

“And who is this?” Mr. Colar sounded hesitant.

“Thanks for keeping an eye on her,” Owain said to him. “I think we’d best be going now. I hate to leave Vesta alone in this storm….”

I tried to give Mr. Colar the book I had in my hands, but he shook his head. “Please, I insist. It sounds as if you’ll need it.”

“I couldn’t—” I protested.

The old man merely smiled.

He really didn’t look much like my father at all, I decided.

Outside, the storm had faded into a gentle relief that I hadn’t felt since the day I left home. I held out my palm to catch a few scattered rain droplets. The streets may have been converted into rivers of white water, but watching them, I could see they were carrying the darkness and filth of the city down with them into the gutters.

“Looks like the rain’s letting up, lass,” noted Owain, squinting at the first tentative stars against the black sky. And I smiled, because it was.

Mrs. Pemberly greeted us at the door, fussing over my hair and dress.

“Found her!” Owain sang out.

“Oh, my darling!” Mrs. Pemberly ushered me closer to her fireplace. “Can I get you something? Hot cider? Tea? Are you hungry? I just pulled an apple pie from the oven….”

“I could use a little bit more water,” I said, trying for a joke. Owain chuckled. I glanced around the room, surprised to find the parlor empty.

“He’s upstairs,” Mrs. Pemberly said. “He got back a little before you, and I sent him to change into something dry.”

I didn’t think North would be wanting to see me anytime soon, but I began to climb the stairs anyway. I held the book against my side, glancing through the thin crack of Owain’s door. North sat on the bed with his back to me, his drenched cloaks still attached and his dark hair flattened against his head.

The door creaked as I pushed it open, but North didn’t turn around. I set the books down on the table and came to stand beside him. The wizard’s eyes were studying the abandoned loom, taking in the smooth rows of dark and light blue as he shuffled a red apple between his hands. I sat down next to him and forced myself to be still.

He nodded his head toward his old gray blanket, a short distance away on the floor, but I turned my face away from it. North’s hands stopped moving, and he lifted the shiny apple toward me. I hesitated a moment before closing my hand over it. I took the apple, but only—
only
—because I was hungry.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that North was
still watching me, but whenever I turned, he would quickly look up to the ceiling. Still, I felt as if for the first time, he was really seeing me. He could see what his words had wrought, that I could and would leave if he pressed me too hard. And I think I saw remorse in the darkness of his eyes, but mainly I saw unmatched misery. I saw what I had done to him.

In the end, we didn’t need to apologize. We understood.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
day later, we were still at Mrs. Pemberly’s, arguing over our next move.

“It makes more sense if we follow this road up to Andover and cut across the plains to Scottsby,” I said, for what had to be the hundredth time. It was the route Henry usually took, and I certainly trusted his sense of direction more than North’s. Yet even with the map smoothed out before them, the two men refused to listen. I was beginning to think I was going to have to knock their heads in and drag them to Provincia myself.

“Wiltfordshire Road runs right from Fairwell to Scottsby, straight as an arrow,” Owain protested.

“But you’ll have to cut around the lakes, and that’ll take you—”

“Going to Andover first would be better,” North cut me
off as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “You and I can handle Wiltfordshire, but it wouldn’t be safe for Syd.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “Why, because I’m a girl? If that’s the case, we’d better stay off
all
the main roads. There are hundreds of men heading up to the capital, and they’re on every one of them.”

North shook his head. “You may know the names of the roads and where they lead, but you don’t know the kind of people that travel on them. Owain and I will sort this out. Go sit down and weave.”

“That’s rich coming from the wizard who can’t tell east from west, let alone up from down,” I snapped. “We’ll go to Andover, but when it takes us a week and a half to get there, don’t cry to me about it.”

Owain was the one to break the tense silence that followed. “Going to Andover first, eh? I’ve never taken that route before, but I wouldn’t mind trying something new. Never fear the unknown, Mother Bess always says.”

We both turned to look at the fuming wizard.

“Fine,” North said at last. “If we don’t follow her, who knows what kind of trouble she’ll get herself into.”

I shook my head, rolling the map back up and handing it to the wizard.

“Are you sure it’s a good plan to bring the lass with us?” Owain asked quietly as I sat back down in front of my loom.

“If I had my way, neither of you would have anything to do with this war,” North said.

“But then it would be your choosing instead of ours,” Owain said. “And there’s nothing right about that.”

I worked the blue thread through the warp, watching North, who was leaning against the wall, looking out the window. “I should just go alone,” he said.

I was on my feet a moment before an earsplitting clap of thunder and a sudden downpour drowned out his next words. Mrs. Pemberly shrieked in surprise from downstairs, but the biggest crash of all came when Owain fell off the bed.

“How can you even suggest that?” I said. “What good would that possibly do?”

“As if you could ever understand,” North scoffed.

I looked at him. With dark circles framing his eyes, an agitated curve to his spine, that ugly sneer: Who was this person?

Seeing that my words had done absolutely nothing to pull North from whatever depths he was clinging to, Owain did what came naturally. He smacked North upside the head hard enough to send him sprawling into the window. And when it seemed that North would turn around and return the favor, Owain hit him again, harder.