Brightly Woven (27 page)

Hecate made sure that North and I were in rooms on opposite ends of the castle. I wanted to protest being so far away from him, but after what had happened with Henry, North wasn’t in any mood to speak to me. Pompey brought us to the second level of the castle, where North would be staying. The wizard didn’t acknowledge either of us as he strode into his chamber and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Still has that bad attitude, I see,” Pompey sighed. “Well, come on, then. We still have a ways to walk.”

My room was located somewhere on the fourth level, in the west wing. Pompey chattered about this and that as we climbed staircase after staircase, but I kept to myself. My insides were still in such a jumble after seeing Henry that I tossed and turned in the ornate bed. If that hadn’t kept me up, trying to fall asleep in an actual bed might have. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to sleeping on the hard ground until I had a pillow under my head.

The next day, North seemed to disappear completely. He needed to find Owain, his mother needed to speak with him again—a hundred excuses for why I couldn’t stay with him. He said good-bye at breakfast, leaving the insufferable Pompey to act as my minder and tour guide for the day. It was a blessing in a way—I wasn’t sure I wanted to see him or Henry, not until I could sort out my thoughts.

“And
here,”
Pompey said, throwing both arms above his head. “This ceiling was constructed in the last years of the Golden Age. Do you know how you can tell, Miss Mirabil?”

“It’s made of gold?” I answered dryly, adjusting the strap of my bag. I had brought it with me in the hope that I could find a loom to finish North’s cloak, but Pompey had other plans.

“Very good!” he said cheerfully. “Would you like to see the armory?”

“Actually,” I said, a new thought striking me. “Would you mind showing me the tapestry room?”

Pompey gave me a strange look. “Why would you ever want to go there?”

“Humor me,” I said sourly. He gave me another curious look; he’d been given orders to watch me, not appease me, but the chance to launch into another long, tedious history lesson was simply too great for him to pass up. He took my arm again and we ducked down a different hall, his uniform looking especially smart next to my simple brown dress.

The door was locked, and it took several minutes for
Pompey to flip through his enormous ring of keys to find the right one. Even then, the iron key was hard to twist, and the lock stubborn. It took both of us to pull the door open, and we were rewarded with an explosion of dust for our efforts.

“The tapestry room”—Pompey coughed—“hasn’t been viewed frequently over the years.”

I frowned, taking in the bleak scent of mold, never a good sign where fabrics were concerned. The room was virtually black—both from dirt and lack of light. Pompey fumbled his way through the darkness, pulling the heavy draperies away from the windows one by one.

Each burst of light hit the opposite wall to reveal a new scene, a new moment in history perfectly captured in thread and time. There were battles and coronations, wizards and kings. The very first tapestry depicted Astraea blessing the holy grounds of the capital. The red and gold thread used to create her long, flowing hair had been caked over with dust. My hand came up to touch my own hair.

“There we are!” he said. “Just needs a spot of cleaning.”

I placed my fingertips lightly on the landscape of faded colors. The tapestries had suffered serious neglect over the years, and several faces had been eaten away by bugs and moisture. “You’ll need to be careful,” I warned. “They’re quite old, and you wouldn’t want to ruin them.”

Pompey waved me off. “We’ll just have new ones commissioned.”

I whirled toward him. “But these are part of our history—they were created by the master weavers of the kingdom!”

“Yes, well.” He pushed his finger through one of many holes. “They haven’t held up very well, now, have they? And anyway…”

The midafternoon bell rang, drowning out the rest of his words. He drew out his gold watch.

“Oh, dear, time for tea!” He moved toward the door.

“Will you take me to the room that they do the weaving in?” I asked.

Pompey hesitated. He had far more pressing things to attend to, I was sure, than looking after a troublesome nobody.

“All right—hurry up, then.”

I nodded, letting out a deep breath as he led me back into the darkened halls of the castle.

The weaving room wasn’t truly a weaving room, after all—rather, it was merely a workroom, bustling with women washing, dyeing, and sewing. It was cramped and humid, and all ten of the women working there were red-faced and sweating. A woman with thick, dark hair and a severe expression met us at the door. Her apron was stained with Palmarta’s dark purple, as was the skin of her hands.

“A new worker?”

“Just a visitor,” Pompey clarified. “You’ll behave yourself, won’t you? I’ll return later to show you back to your room.”

The woman studied me, her hands on her hips. “Not many would choose to visit the washrooms on a grand tour of the castle.”

“I asked to see the weaving rooms,” I said, looking around for any sign of a loom.

The woman’s face immediately softened. “We used to do a lot of weaving on the big looms, but the king began to import tapestries and cloth from other countries.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

“Are you a weaver, miss?”

“Sydelle,” I said. “And yes, since I was a little girl.”

“I’m Serena,” she said, holding out her stained hands. “If you promise not to tell, I’ll show you where we hid a few of the frame looms. It seemed like such a waste just to throw them out with the rubbish.”

In the back of the chamber was a small closet, and inside, stacked against each other, were two frame looms—much larger, nicer versions of my old one.

“May I borrow one?” I asked. “I’ll keep it down here, and I promise I won’t tell anyone. I just have to finish something; I won’t forgive myself if I don’t.”

Serena looked startled, but she helped me string the cloak onto the loom, showing me how to adjust its frame.

When we were finished, she stepped back and called a few of the women over to see it as well.

“This is excellent work. I’m surprised it held up so well for how many times you said you took it off the loom.” Serena
leaned in to examine the dragon’s scales. “Are you making this for someone?”

“Yes,” I said. “I should have finished it by now, though.”

“You must care for this person a lot to make him something so beautiful.” Serena looked at me knowingly.

“Well,” I said, trying to stop the color from rushing into my cheeks. “He deserves it.”

They left me to return to their own work. I worked on the cloak for an hour, adding Arcadia’s hills to the scene I was depicting. Weaving put me in a peaceful mood, but it also gave me time to think about the events of the day before, to wonder what use the Sorceress Imperial would have for us. North had been so furious, violent even—and that worried me more than anything. The problem of Henry was nothing compared to what was going on around us. I would meet him later, but first I needed to find North.

Without waiting for Pompey’s return, I said good night to the women, telling them I would be back the next morning. I cast one final look at the cloak before escaping into the cool, damp air of the castle. Every passageway and staircase looked exactly the same to me in the darkness of evening. Though it took me far longer than I had hoped, I did eventually make my way to the east wing of the castle, to North’s room.

I started up the last worn staircase just as an argument spilled out into the corridor above me.

“…have no sense!” Oliver, the Sorceress Imperial, and
North stood a little ways down the hall. I stayed where I was, listening.

“Stop right there, Wayland,” Oliver warned. “I won’t have you speak such treason.”

“Let’s go inside,” Hecate said. “This isn’t a conversation for the castle’s many ears.”

“As if that really—” The door to North’s room creaked as it pulled open and shut, the voices disappearing. I traced their path down the hallway, straining my ears.

I stood close, my ear pressed against the wooden door, and listened.

“…will you do when the city is destroyed?” North asked.

“If we keep Auster in the Serpentine Channel, it won’t even come to that,” Oliver said.

“Fine, but even if you hold them there, what will you do about Saldorra marching from the west?” North said. “Dividing the Wizard Guard is a terrible idea—you won’t have anyone left here to defend the city, especially if Dorwan takes it upon himself to pay the queen a visit.”

“If you believe that, then why won’t you stay and fight?” Oliver demanded. “You criticize our methods of leadership, and yet you won’t lift a hand to aid us?”

“I did help you. I brought you everything you needed to stop this war,” North said, “but it obviously meant nothing coming from a dirty, unranked vagrant.”

“Wayland,” Hecate said, her voice hard. “Now is the time for
you to come back, don’t you see? Everything will be forgiven.”

“No!” North said. “I didn’t come back here for you, or for this life. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“You’re doing your father a great dishonor,” she said severely.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only one doing his memory justice,” North shot back. “He would have done everything in his power to deal peacefully with this threat.”

“Really, Wayland?” Oliver asked, sneering. “Auster is no more of a threat to the people of Palmarta than the girl you’ve brought here.”

I tensed, my heart giving a strange lurch.

“She has nothing to do with this,” North said.

“Don’t think we didn’t realize what she was the moment we both saw her,” Oliver said. “Other wizards may not be powerful enough to sense it, but unfortunately for you, we are.”

“Oh, how foolish of me,” North said. “How could I
ever
forget how very powerful you are, Ollie?”

“You know what we’ve done with her kind in the past,” Hecate said. “I thought at first that you were bringing her to me to use in the war. That kind of power would devastate Auster’s armies.”

“Sorry to ruin your plans,” North said, “but I’ve been sorting out the threads of her magic since the first day I met her. It’s not as simple as you would think. She radiates magic, yes, but all the different kinds are knotted together, so she
can’t necessarily control the effect she’ll have on the world. I’ve closed off most of her ability to use it, willingly or not. She’s no danger or use to you, not anymore.”

My mind, or at least the portion that wasn’t slowly spinning it all together, was telling me to stop listening. To turn and walk back down the stairwell, to leave before I learned the full truth.

“All you’ve done is repress her magic,” Hecate said. “A single wizard can’t strip that type of power, Wayland. She’s not like us. She doesn’t just channel magic; she creates it
—is it
. You must understand why the Guard has handled things the way they did in the past. The jinxes were detected and put to death before the age of seven, when their magic would have manifested.

“Does she even know?” Hecate continued. “Does she know what she is, or have you kept that from her, too?”

“She doesn’t,” North said. “And I’ll skin the both of you alive if you tell her.”

Oliver laughed. “Oh, this is too good! The dumb thing follows you around like a lovesick puppy, and she’s never put it together?”

I cringed, shrinking away until Hecate’s voice caught me and held me there.

“That’s unfair, Oliver,” she said. “How could she possibly know? Most wizards wouldn’t recognize the magic, let alone a human. I’m assuming that’s what the duel with Genet was about? And the quake that followed?”

“I had to fight,” North’s voice was strained. “She releases so much magic into the world that it draws other magic to her, and there hasn’t been a wizard who’s been able to resist it.”

“I felt I had to touch her,” Hecate said. “Even with the bracelet, I could still sense it, weakened as it was.”

“Yes, and I noticed how well you resisted it, Mother.”

“You touch her all the time,” Oliver snapped. “It’s disgusting how little restraint
you
have.”

“Because I want to, not because I feel compelled to! There is a difference!”

“Wayland,” Hecate said. “I’ll use her, or I’ll end her life—either way, she will not leave this city until I’ve made my decision.”

North was practically pleading now. “Magister helped me create a lock. I’ve been strengthening it over the past few days, making sure that no one else can sense her power. It’s contained completely. She’s not any danger to Provincia!”

I could hear Hecate’s sharp breath, even through the thick wood. “That is highly unsafe, Wayland! If the lock breaks, all of the repressed magic will spill out—who knows what disaster that would create!”

“She’s created very few disasters,” North said sharply. “A drought, a quake, a storm, and a landslide—that’s
it
. And the only reason they came about was because she was upset!”

“So she stubs a toe and creates a whirlwind?” Oliver said scathingly. “Tell me how that isn’t unnatural or dangerous?”