The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way (29 page)

On the third day, it occurred to her that she was supposed to be distracted by his manners and good looks. She wasn’t. His pale complexion reminded her of goat’s milk, and the very thought of it made her stomach flip. Little Spinner, turn him away, he must have been close to thirty! His every attempt to engage her failed.
 

Finally, on the fifth day, he asked her to sing a song.
 

“We hear rumors of the power and skill of the musicians of your empire, but I have never heard the work. Would you sing a song for me?”

The idea was ludicrous on its face. Cazia was tempted to take a bowl of broth from the table and dump it over his head. Still, Ivy and Kinz thought it was a fine idea. When they saw that Cazia wasn’t enthused, they encouraged the Captain to go first.
 

He did, and it was awful. Not that his voice was bad--it was fine and clear--but the song itself would have bored Peradaini children.
La dee la dee la dee la dee
was the entire melody, with a brief
leelee dee
thrown in here and there. He sang it for much too long, but when he stopped, he said he’d cut it short. It was a walking song, he explained, used to help people find their way in the days before map-making.
 

Ivy and Kinz wanted to hear the one she’d sung for them on the mountain. Didn’t she remember the one?
 

She did, of course.
River Overrunning
. The song that had made Old Stoneface--Tyr Tejohn Treygar, she corrected herself, since he wasn’t an Enemy anymore--famous. Did they really want to hear it? She wasn’t much of a singer, Song knew.

She sat up and took a deep breath. When she’d sung for the girls in their tunnel, she had been on the verge of being hollowed out. Perhaps she’d gone over it. In any event, she'd felt a certain detachment from the grief that every ruined scholar feels. Her hollowed-out grief had come from some other place, from something awful that exists behind her magic.
 

None of that was available to her now. She had only the grief of her lost magic, and with it the loss of everything she had ever hoped for her life.
 

She began to sing without planning to start. How long had it been since she’d thought of Old Stoneface, the man who had tried to hurl himself to his death to save the prince and all of his friends, her included? It was such an odd thing to remember at a moment like this.
 

Lar had told her not three months before that Peradaini songs were made of symbolism, and as she sang about being helpless while loved ones were washed away, she realized this was a song about war.
 

Suddenly, she was singing about more than just the loss of her magic. There was also Tyr Treygar and Lar himself, both surely lost to The Blessing. There was Bitt and Tim and Jagia and Pagesh and also her own brother, dead by her unknowing hand. Song preserve the memory of all they had known, because Fire had taken them and Cazia was alone among strangers in a crumbling world.

When the song was over, the captain only stared at her, openmouthed. His face was paler than it had ever been, and his helmet, which he normally held on his left knee, had nearly fallen to the floor. For the first time ever, she thought he looked handsome. Without his careful manners and knowing, patronizing expression, he seemed like a genuine human being. Cazia suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss him.
 

She turned toward the wall and lay down. The Captain stood, took his leave, and locked the cell door behind him.
Enemy
, she thought unkindly. She’d hoped to put that instinct behind her, but not yet. Not yet.
 

The door swung open. This time, it was an older man with dark circles under his eyes and thinning red hair. The older man dragged that same Peradaini scholar into the room and pushed him at Cazia.
 

“You look like you’ve slept and eaten,” Cazia said to him. It was true; he looked almost healthy.

“I won’t lie to them for you no matter how polite you are,” he responded. He laid his long hand on her shoulder—Great Way, he was so warm, he felt almost feverish. He kept it there, his eyes shut tight. After a moment, he lifted his hand. “Nothing,” he said to the red-haired man.
 

“How can it be nothing?” the older man demanded. His voice boomed in the stone room. He must have been the one in charge; an underling would have been taught to control his tone. Also, the princess was right; he spoke Peradaini as if he had little stones in his mouth. “How can it be nothing?”

The scholar shrugged. “It’s not magic. She hasn’t been trained. She’s never cast a spell in her life. I could tell if she had.”

The old man glared at the scholar, who only shrugged again.
 

Ivy stepped forward. “It is a song, commander. Not a magic spell. Only a song.” She looked at the scholar, who seemed to be uncomfortable with her attention. “Is there a form of magic that can make a man weep? Or that can break someone’s heart?”
 

The scholar turned toward the commander. “There isn’t. It’s the truth; magic can only affect the physical world.”
 

“Well,” the old man said. He ran his fingers through his thinning red hair. “Well well well. I wonder if I could ask you to sing again, young lady. There will be a feast tonight with quite a few Toal nobles present. I’m sure they would be fascinated to learn more about this Peradaini song.”
 

“You’ll let me out of my cell?” Cazia asked. “So I can sing for the entertainment of your guests?”

“Obviously. You would also be invited to dine with us, if you impress us.”

“After one of your soldiers shot an arrow through my hand? An arrow that would have killed the princess?”
 

The commander didn’t hesitate. “Obviously.”

She turned to the scholar. “What are the odds that you have trained in healing magic?”

“Answer her.”

The scholar nodded. “I worked in a mining camp. I can make blocks, crumble them, create water...”

But Cazia had already turned her back on them both. She pulled her legs onto the cot and faced the stone wall. “Go away.”

“If you think there is a need,” the commander said, “I can provide you with a lash to pay back the man who shot the arrow at you. If you think there is a need, I can see that you punish him right there at the feast, with everyone to see. If that is what you want.”

Yes!
“Go away. What good would it do to whip a soldier, even one who shot at a group of unarmed girls? He’s your man, isn’t he? If there’s someone who should be whipped like an untrained dog, it’s you. Bring me a lash and I’ll use it on you.”

He could have done anything to her in retaliation. Her bandaged hand was right there on her hip, completely exposed. All he had to do was touch it to punish her. All he had to do was knife her in the back.

Instead, he began to shout in his own language, but the princess cut him off. With three sharp words that Cazia couldn’t understand, she brought silence to the room. Once that was accomplished, the princess began talking in a low, rapid-fire voice that sounded very much like a little girl who thought things had finally gone too far.
 

The commander tried to break in, gently, but Ivy wouldn’t have it. After a few moments, Cazia stopped paying attention.
 

She had lost the use of her hand. Unless she could find a sleepstone where she might be safe from the grunts, or a medical scholar willing to work on her, she was going to have to rely on
her own body
to heal this wound, like she was a savage or something.
 

Fire take her, she could not be giving in this way. She had been locked in a cell and brought food like a prisoner. She had nothing to do; she couldn’t even talk to the other girls for fear of eavesdroppers. The Toal had done everything they could to make her helpless.
 

But she wasn’t helpless. She didn’t have her magic and she couldn’t speak the language, but she was still the same girl who had terrorized her tutors back at the palace, who had crossed into the Qorr Valley and flown out again with the help of the giant eagles. She was Cazia Freewell, daughter of the man who had nearly stolen an empire.
 

She was never going to be helpless again.
 

Cazia rolled over and stood, then looked from Ivy to the commander. “I’m going to talk to you in Peradaini right now. It would be polite to hear responses I can understand.”

“Of course; I’m sorry,” Ivy said, but Cazia didn’t let her finish.

“Don’t apologize, little sister. This isn’t my country and I can’t expect everyone to talk my language all the time. However, for this conversation, it would be nice.”
 

“Of course.”

Cazia looked straight into the commander’s eyes. “You put us in here because you thought we might transform into The Blessing, right? You were afraid we would become grunts.”

“I did,” he said. “We will hold you until the end of the month—”

“It takes three days for a person to change into a grunt. That’s it. Three days.”

“Whenever a man or woman of Peradain tells me a fact,” the commander said, “I assume the opposite is true.”

“Have you at least sent word to the princess’s family that she is here?”

The commander bowed to Ivy. “I have many duties to attend to.” When he turned to Cazia, he gave her a beady, condescending smile. “It is time for me to have myself whipped. I have decided to run my command—the post it has taken me thirty-five years to earn—on the advice of a teenage girl.”
 

“It’s time for you to let us head south, so we can take Vilavivianna home.”

“Peradaini girl, perhaps you should next ask for more food so that I will starve you.” He turned his back and walked out of the room, the scholar following close behind. Cazia watched them both, hoping that at least her fellow countryman would look back at her. Neither did.
 

Fine. The scholar had new masters. He’d told her as much. And why should he help her? So he could end up in a cell, too? Or worse?

Kinz went to the door and gently, slowly pulled on it. It was barred from the outside. “We have been stuck here too long. I do not want to be trapped in this room when The Blessing make to attack—or the Tilkilit, for that matter.”

“They do not believe me,” Ivy said. “It is only clear to me now, but the commander and the soldiers do not believe I’m Alisimbo’s daughter. They must think this is a Peradaini plot to overthrow the Alliance. I do not think they have even sent a runner south to tell my family I’m here.”
 

The little girl’s face was stoic, but Kinz and Cazia stepped forward and took hold of her hands. “We have to find a way. We will. I’m not sure how, but we will.”
 

“How?”

Neither Cazia nor Kinz had an answer for the princess’s question right away. They talked over their options for the rest of the afternoon. The doctor, who had already come that day, was always wary when she came in, and so were the servants who brought their food twice a day. What’s more, they knew that any escape might earn them a whipping. Kinz was adamant that they could not do that to the servants, and Cazia felt she owed the doctor too much. Making that old woman take a lashing would have been a betrayal. If anyone was to be blamed for their escape, it had to be the soldiers.
 

The Captain was not wary but he was watchful; Cazia thought he could be overcome if they rushed him as soon as the door opened. Kinz would grab his legs, Cazia would shove him, and backward he would go.
 

The other girls weren’t keen on the idea. To Cazia’s surprise, Ivy liked him very much, and Kinz glanced sharply at the floor at the mention of grabbing his legs. Great Way, had they falling for that smarm?

Cazia, who had always been the expert at watching everyone around her, had been too wrapped up in her own problems to notice.
 

Eventually, night fell, and when the three female soldiers arrived to search them, the girls were already crouched by the door. They had tossed aside their jackets, leaving only their underclothes on.
 

They were so quiet they could hear the bolt drawing back and the women outside talking about their next hunting trip. As the door swung outward, Kinz bolted toward the gap.

She was the oldest, the largest, and the strongest, and she struck the lead guard full in the stomach with her shoulder, lifting her up and flinging her back into a second guard.
 

Ivy was right behind her, moving as quick as a sparrow. She dodged low under the grasping hands of the third guard and, as the woman bent to catch her, Cazia slammed into her armor.
 

Cazia hit her with her right shoulder, but it still jarred her left hand so badly that it felt like someone had stuck a twig into her wound and wiggled it. The idea that she could outrun all the guards, every step jarring her hand with a dull throb, seemed suddenly impossible, but she couldn’t stop. If she hesitated at all, Ivy and Kinz would as well, and they would all be caught.
 

The first two guards lay in a tumble of bodies, but one of them had the wit to catch hold of Kinz’s ankle. Before the older girl could break free, Cazia ran between them, trampling the guard’s forearm. The woman cried out, but she sounded more in shock than pain. Then Kinz was free and they were all following Ivy along the wall toward an open doorway made of rough logs.
 

It was a laundry. The princess had assured them she’d seen it on the way in. They ducked beneath the outermost line of hanging clothes and moved into the darkness.

Behind them, they finally heard voices raised in alarm. “These!” Ivy shouted, pointed toward a line of clothing that looked like a blanket with a hole in the middle. Kinz yanked them down and they pulled them on, barely breaking stride.
 

Cazia saw the thick coil of rope handing on a peg--a line for hanging wet clothes, supposedly--and collected it. “Got the rope!” Then they followed Ivy up a flight of stairs.