I read Keltic history as I stir molasses pudding, the text propped up on a shelf just above the stove, half ignoring the thick bubbles popping up to the pudding’s surface like hungry fish mouths. I learn that the ancient Kelts’ ships were met by Fae aggressors, who forced them to their knees, separating families and shackling them all into servitude.
It’s enough conflicting information to make me want to scream.
“You’re reading Mikael Noallan,” Yvan observes flatly, pausing after dropping an armful of logs onto the growing pile beside my stove, his green eyes flashing.
I eye him with defiance. I can read Keltic history if I want to. “Professor Kristian lent me some books.”
Yvan meets my defiant stare full-on, and my pulse quickens.
“Ignore the Roach,” Iris sounds out from across the kitchen, and my muscles go tight with offense.
Let it go. Just let it go.
Yvan’s head whips around. “Don’t call her that.”
The entire kitchen goes silent and motionless. I gape at him in shocked surprise.
Iris glares hard at Yvan, her eyes catching fire, her lip curling with overwhelming, trembling disgust. “You’re defending...a Roach?” She can barely get the words out.
There’s danger in his eyes. “I said, don’t call her that.”
Iris’s eyes glaze over with tears as her eyes flit from me to Yvan, her fury collapsing into raw hurt.
“Iris.” Yvan relents, holding out a conciliatory hand.
Shaking her head violently from side to side, Iris bursts into tears, throws down the rag in her hands and runs out of the kitchen.
Yvan shoots me a brief, storming look, then strides out after her.
My heart is racing fast as a hare, the kitchen workers slowly and carefully launching back into their respective tasks, their eyes darting warily toward me.
Completely astonished by this turn of events, I absentmindedly notice that one of the pots is starting to boil over and reach for its iron handle without remembering to use a mitt.
Heat sears my palm, and I cry out and lurch back, pulling my hand protectively in. Pain streaks up my arm, and I dare a look at my palm, a red half-moon already rising up.
Everyone ignores me, going about their tasks with silent deliberation. I blink back tears and turn toward the stove, grasping my wrist, raw from the pain and from their pointed indifference.
There’s a gentle tug at my tunic arm.
I turn to find Olilly staring up at me with wide, amethyst eyes. Clear eyes. And skin free of red spots.
She used the medicine after all.
“Here, Mage,” she says softly, fishing a small glass container of salve out of her tunic pocket, opening it and holding it out to me. “For burns.”
I blink back more tears as an overwhelming gratitude washes over me.
“Thank you, Olilly,” I say, my voice breaking as I rub the creamy salve into my already blistering burn, the pain quickly dampening.
She ignores the subtle looks of censure thrown her way and gives me a small, tentative smile.
*
“I’d like a copy of this week’s Mage Council Motions & Rulings,” I tell the Gardnerian Archivist.
It’s late that same evening, my left hand wrapped with a thin bandage, the burn tamped down to an annoying sting by Olilly’s healing salve.
I think about Olilly’s debilitating fear of Gardnerians the whole walk over here. Her enforced servitude. Her shy doe eyes and gentle ways. And she’s so young—too young to be facing the rest of her life as a virtual slave.
Professor Kristian is right, I think. It’s time to start paying attention to what my own government is doing. And the Gardnerian Archives are a prime place to begin.
The archivist is bespectacled and has gray hair tied up in a loose bun, her eyes set on me with awed approval. There’s a white ribbon neatly tied around her arm.
“I’m so sorry, Mage Gardner,” she says with an apologetic smile. “They’re all checked out.” She motions with a subtle flick of her finger toward the crooked, taciturn Mage hunched over the papers at a table clear across the room.
Tierney.
I thank the archivist and make my way to Tierney’s table. The Gardnerian Archives are thinly populated at this late hour, the lighting dimmed to a soft amber glow.
“Can I see those when you’re done?” I say with no preamble.
Tierney looks up at me, her expression full of its usual grim sarcasm. “I thought politics wasn’t your domain.”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind.”
Her sharp eyes flick toward my arm. “Still no armband.”
I throw a pointed look at her arm, as well. “You, either.”
Her eyes narrow to slits. “I hope Marcus Vogel rots in a fiery hell,” she whispers scathingly.
I stand there blinking at her for a moment. “Well, I might not phrase it quite like that, but I certainly don’t want him to be High Mage.”
Now she’s blinking at me like she doesn’t quite know what to make of me.
Without a word, she slides over and makes room for me next to her so we can read the papers together.
*
The Mage Council Motions & Rulings are deeply boring reading, and I have to bite my tongue more than once to keep from nodding off. Mind-numbing details regarding Council building, shipping and military contracts, tax figures and land disputes make up the vast majority of the tiny print.
But then my eye catches on a motion presented by Marcus Vogel and struck down by Phinneas Callnan’s majority.
“Look at this,” I whisper, pointing. “Vogel wants to make wandfasting mandatory by the age of eighteen.”
There’s tight strain around Tierney’s eyes, her mouth twisting into a grimace. “He’s been pushing for that for months. Refuse to fast, and the Council will pick someone for you.”
I bet Aunt Vyvian would love it if this motion passed.
“How old are you, Tierney?” I hesitantly whisper.
She takes a shuddering breath, her expression haunted. “Eighteen.” Her tone is the fall of an ax, final and inescapable.
I swallow, an uneasy chill working its way down my spine. I pull one arm protectively around myself and look back down at the papers.
There’s another motion, again presented by Marcus Vogel, to iron-test every Mage seeking admittance to the Guilds.
I look to Tierney. She’s sitting back, watching me read now with dark patience as if waiting for the full catastrophe that is Vogel to completely sink into my mind.
Wide-awake now, I follow the print down the page with the tip of my index finger.
There’s a motion presented by Marcus Vogel—and struck down—to execute any Urisk found to be in Gardneria without work papers. And a motion presented by Marcus Vogel, passed as a ruling, to execute a band of Keltic Resistance fighters for setting fire to the Sixth Division’s military barracks. Another passed motion to execute two Resistance workers found to be smuggling Urisk east.
A slim thread of fear pulls at my insides. Vogel seems fond of executions.
There’s one last motion passed to ruling, also presented by Marcus Vogel—to block trade with the Amazakaran in retaliation for their offer to give amnesty to Urisk women, even those here illegally. The Amaz leader, Queen Alkaia, is quoted as saying, “The Amazakaran Free Peoples of the Caledonian Mountains will not recognize any bindings of servitude placed on any woman.” In addition, the Amaz have made the “incendiary and outrageous” decision to also give amnesty to any women with mixed or even full Fae blood.
I look to Tierney, my finger resting discreetly and hopefully on the ruling.
Her face tenses, and she looks carefully around the empty archives, the archivist filing papers clear across the room, her back to us. Tierney glances sidelong at me. “The Amaz won’t give amnesty to males,” she whispers, the sound constricted and almost inaudible.
Tierney’s father. And brother. Are they Fae, too?
“At least we’re in Verpacia.” I reassure her. “Your family could come here, maybe?”
Tierney shoots me a deeply incredulous glare. “You don’t follow any politics, do you?”
“No... I haven’t in the past,” I stammer, worry rising.
She lets out a jaded breath. “The Verpacian Council’s elections were held just last month. There’s now a Gardnerian majority on it. For the first time ever.”