So easy, thought Meralda. So easy…
She heard voices. Distant, yes, and faint, but familiar, somehow. Friends, perhaps.
Voices full of concern.
Still, such power, so close, so simple to take.
“Ma’am, he’s hurt! Please! We need you right now!”
Someone tugged at Meralda’s sleeve.
Kervis. Kervis was speaking.
“Mr. Mug! Say something! Mr. Mug!”
Mug.
Meralda let go of the staves. They leaped into the sky, vanishing instantly, something very like approval hanging briefly in their wake.
Meralda’s head spun. She forced her Sight away, fell to her knees, blinked and squinted until she saw nothing but dirty cobblestones and the wild fearful eyes of Kervis and Tervis.
Kervis held Mug’s cage. He was carefully prying away the tangled bed sheet. Meralda gasped, her stomach knotting when she saw Mug’s bird cage was crushed nearly flat in the center.
Angis caught her by her shoulder, keeping her from toppling over.
“I think you got rid of the buggers, Mage,” he said. “You tend to your friend. I’ll watch your back.”
Tears welled up in Meralda’s eyes and she saw Mug’s motionless leaves caught in the bent bars of the bird cage.
One of his eyes stuck through the bars. It was crushed, and leaking sap.
“Oh Mug,” she said. “No, no, no.”
Kervis bent down, his dagger in his hand.
“I can pry the cage apart, ma’am,” he said. “Then we can get him out of there. Will you let me do that?”
Meralda managed to nod. She laid her hand on Mug’s crushed leaves, but he did not stir.
“Mug.”
Kervis gently pushed her hand aside, put the tip of his knife through the crushed cage’s frame, and then slowly pried up.
“Hold the other side,” he said, to Tervis.
The cage slowly expanded. After moving the knife, Kervis was able to pull it out far enough to remove the cage’s bottom, and free the motionless dandyleaf plant.
“Water!” bellowed Angis, at the circle of confused faces Meralda could just barely see through her tears. “A pitcher of water, man! Crown’s business!”
In a moment, a pitcher of water was thrust in Meralda’s hand.
She poured it onto the clump of dirt that had survived the blow. Mug’s roots trailed from it, limp and still.
Angis gripped her shoulder.
“A wee bit more, lass.”
Crying, Meralda emptied the pitcher.
Mug’s stalk twitched. His roots underwent a spasm, and then clutched hard at the clump of soil.
A single green eye opened, swiveled up to hang close to Meralda’s nose, and blinked.
“Please tell me you did bad things to whatever hit me,” he said, in a tiny, weak voice.
Meralda cried, unable to speak. She stroked Mug’s wilted leaves and nodded.
“I’ll need a new pot,” said Mug. His open eye began to wobble. “And some of that fancy Eryan peat.”
Booted feet charged up, and shouts to make way sounded.
“The guard is here,” said Kervis. “Keep an eye on them, little brother.” He sheathed his sword and turned to meet them.
“I’ll be going to bed now,” muttered Mug. “Don’t mind the dishes.”
Then his eye closed, slumped, and fell.
Meralda hugged him to her chest, wet roots and all.
“We’re here,” said Kervis, gently. “May I take him? The wards…”
Meralda managed a nod, and carefully handed a wilted, drooped Mug over to Kervis.
Forty special palace guards surrounded Meralda and the Bellringers, ringing them in steel. The captain himself stood at Meralda’s back while she opened the laboratory doors and spoke the word that soothed her wards.
“You lads go first,” said the captain. Meralda didn’t argue.
Mug groaned softly as she took his cage.
The guards closest to the stairs tensed and called for someone to halt. Meralda turned, watched Donchen slowly take the last pair of steps, his arms raised, his face grim and smeared with something dark.
Oil, thought Meralda. He’s got oil on his face.
“Let him through,” she said. The words caught in her throat the first time, and she had to lick her lips and take a breath and try again.
“I said let him through.”
The ring of guardsmen parted, and Donchen made his way to Meralda.
Donchen was filthy. His clothes were torn and streaked with filth. He stank of the gutters, and something even worse.
“I was there,” he said. “They were waiting in the sewer beneath the street. I tried to stop them.” He dipped his head in a tiny bow. “I failed.”
“Come inside.”
Kervis and Tervis sidled past Meralda and entered the laboratory, hands on hilts.
“It’s empty,” said Kervis, after a moment.
Meralda took Donchen’s hand. He looked up at her, eyes wide in surprise, and then smiled.
His hand is warm, thought Meralda. What a silly thing to notice. Of course his hand is warm. It’s a hand.
“We’ll be right here,” growled the captain. “If anything wants in it can see how it likes being cut to pieces first.”
“Thank you, Captain,” said Meralda, feeling her face flush crimson at the stares of so many guards.
She pulled Donchen inside, and quickly shut the door.
Donchen mopped at his face with a clean washcloth as he perched in her rickety spare chair.
“So you think he’ll heal?”
Meralda gently pushed Mug’s new soil down. Mug remained upright, his leaves twitching now and then. All his eyes were closed, and he muttered now and then, but never quite formed words.
“He will.” Meralda frowned and cleared her throat. “Of course he will. His roots are intact. His stems are bruised but not broken. He’ll be fine.”
Goboy’s mirror streamed bright, warm sun onto Mug. Meralda gave him another half-turn so all his leaves could take in some light.
Donchen nodded. His lower lip was split. His right eye was going puffy and dark. Meralda could tell from his stiff posture and barely hidden grimaces he had bruised, if not broken, ribs beneath his soiled white shirt.
I’ve never seen a more handsome man in all my life, she thought.
“I smell like an outhouse,” he said, grinning. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for that. It is not a practice in which I habitually engage.”
“Nonsense. Tirlish sewers smell of roses and perfume,” said Meralda. “You still haven’t told me what led you to enter one in the first place.”
“I carry a device similar to the one I gave you. It showed the presence of Hang magic along your route. I happened to be traveling ahead of you, so I took a bit of a detour and found a group of singularly unusual ropes gathering below the street.”
“And you tried to fight them all, at once?”
Donchen shrugged and grimaced at the effort. “I did first attempt to reason with them, Mage. But they were determined to do you harm. I decided to slow them down by entangling myself in all of their various lengths. Oh, how they struggled to escape my implacable grasp!”
Meralda smiled. “I see that. I imagine they were close to surrender when my carriage arrived.”
“Very nearly. Another moment and I’d have made bell pulls of them all.”
“Grapefruit,” muttered Mug. “Prancing hornbill.”
Donchen laughed, wincing.
“The truth is, Mage, they overwhelmed me from the first. My own magical defenses failed. Almost as if they were anticipated. Troubling, that.”
“I thought your butterflies revealed all the Hang conspirators. Have they not been…?”
Meralda hesitated, searching for words.
“Tried? Executed? Boiled in oil?” Donchen shrugged. “Truly, Mage, I don’t know what, if any, actions have been taken against them. The machinations of the House of Chezin are often well beyond my understanding.”