Bern’s eyes bulged. Oh dear Gods, she couldn’t be wanting to stay! “Why, Lady,” he gasped, “you do us great honor, but.. .”
Striking out like a serpent, the Magewoman gripped his wrist in a blackened claw. “Listen, you despicable little turd—you owe me, and never forget it,”
she snarled, gesturing around the refurbished bakery, to the comfortably appointed living quarters in the room beyond. “Without my gift of that grain, you’d have none of this.”
Despite his fear of her, Bern’s grasping, mercenary nature revolted at such a claim. “Lady, with all respect, you seem to have forgotten that the grain was not a gift but payment, for infiltrating the rebel camp and—”
“And luring them out of their lurking place so that I could deal with them—a task which you singularly failed to accomplish.” There was steel in Eliseth’s voice. “You thieving Mortal scum! Having failed to keep your side of our bargain, how dared you appropriate that grain? You had no right to it whatsoever!”
Bern wrenched himself from her grasp and fell groveling to the floor. “Forgive me, Lady—I didn’t mean to steal your grain,” he wailed. “But what was I to do?—When I got back there was no longer a spell on it, so I thought you must have meant me to have it....”
Belatedly, Eliseth remembered that, in the interests of ridding herself of an irritating distraction, she had dissolved the wardspell that protected the grain once Bern had left for the forest. Frankly, she hadn’t cared at the time whether he profited from the stuff or not—but now it gave her a convenient lever to use on him.
“It would have been a crime to waste that grain . . .” The baker was still whining. “Besides, I thought all the Mages were gone!
“Evidently,” the Mage said flatly. “But you were wrong—and now you must atone for your mistake. Unless, that is, you would prefer your wife and children to pay for it in your stead.” Her voice was as cold and deadly as a steel-jawed trap.
Bern shuddered to think what she might do to his unborn child. Having no other choice, he throttled his anger and subsided in defeat. “Very well, my Lady,” he whispered.
Alissana barely had time to leap back from the door at which she’d been listening as her husband burst into the room.
“The Lady will be staying with us.” Bern spat out the words as though each one tasted vile. “She’s demanding a hot bath and food,” he added with a scowl, “so I’ll stoke up the fire and start the water heating, while you start cooking—and for both our sakes, you’d better make it the best meal you’ve ever produced in your life. Well go on—don’t just stand there gaping, you brainless baggage. Get to the stove, and get busy!”
His wife scurried to obey him, suppressing a chill of trepidation at the thunderous expression on his face. During the years of their marriage, she had become all too well accustomed to her husband’s temper, for he had a tendency to take it out on his family whenever anything went wrong. As she assembled the meal, Alissana fretted. She was a sensible, even-tempered woman who had been well aware of the baker’s failings when she wed him. She had chosen him in any case, however, for in the aftermath of the Magefolk vanishment, he was the only man of any substance among the impoverished laboring folk of Nexis.—She had learned perforce to shield herself and the children from the worst of his rages, and this time she understood his anger, for she shared his anxiety.—It had stunned Alissana to discover that their prosperity had stemmed from some unholy bargain made with the Magefolk in the past. Difficult and sometimes brutal as Bern could be, he represented security and even luxury for herself and her children. Alissana shuddered at the memory of the twisted black claw that the Mage had held out to her, and Eliseth’s ice-cold eyes. The Lady terrified her. Alissana feared for the safety of her children—and now the Mage had accused Bern of stealing.... Her hands trembled as she rolled the pastry for her pie. What if Eliseth should slay him in a fit of pique, or turn him into something unnatural? What would become of his family then?—Grumbling and swearing all the while, Bern was testing the temperature of the water in the big copper that was built into the side of the fireplace. His back was turned toward his wife. Almost of their own accord, Alissana’s eyes went to the metal box with the tight-fitting lid that was placed safely up on a high shelf, out of the children’s way. Rats and mice were a frequent problem in the bakery and recently Bern had gone to the local herbwife and purchased a new batch of poison. Swiftly, Alissana reached up for the box. Bern’s back was still safely turned as she sprinkled the white crystals between the layers of apple in her pie. Before her husband had time to turn around, the deed was done, the box replaced on its shelf, and the crust clapped into place, hiding the results of her deadly handiwork. Only when Alissana came to put the pie into the oven did she notice that her hands had stopped shaking.
Some time later, Eliseth, clean and refreshed now, sat before a blazing fire in what was evidently the best bedchamber in the house. The fact that Bern and his pregnant wife had been forced to give up their room to her caused her not the slightest qualm. It had been most uncomfortable and inconvenient to have no servants around to tend to her needs, but now, for the first time since her precipitate return to Nexis, she was filled with a soothing sense of life returning to its proper course. She savored the thought of the baker staggering up and down the stairs with his buckets to fill—and later empty—her bath. At least Mortals were useful for something!
The Magewoman had been immeasurably relieved to see that, though he had aged, the baker did not seem to be so very many years older than she remembered, and the expression on his face as he’d answered the door had afforded her a good deal of malicious amusement—enough, perhaps, for her to overlook the fact that he had looked anything but pleased to see her.
Now she had found that she was not too far astray in time, Eliseth’s chief concern was the condition of her hands that had been so badly seared by the Sword of Flame. Oh, how she wished that she had bothered to learn more than just the most basic of healing arts from Meiriel. Though she had tried everything at her disposal, all her best efforts could only buy freedom from pain and a certain amount of sensation and flexibility in her clawlike fingers—sufficient to allow her to use her hands again, but not enough for very delicate or complex tasks. The skin remained seared and blackened, and nothing seemed to change that. She had an ominous feeling that nothing ever would. The Weather-Mage bit her lip and swallowed against a tightness in her throat. Demons take the accursed Sword of Flame! What had it done to her?—The arrival of Bern with a tray of food interrupted Eliseth’s brooding. She was surprised to see him, for she had expected that he would find himself above such menial service when there was a woman around to do the work. He had certainly been surly enough about filling her bath. But Alissana might be too frightened to approach a Mage—or, in all probability, Bern was trying to keep his pregnant wife away from her.
As he put the tray down in front of her, Eliseth laid her other worries aside for the moment. “Sit down here, Bern, and keep me company while I eat,” she said. “I want to know exactly what has been happening in the city.”
Little by little, Eliseth extracted a picture of what had taken place in Nexis during her absence. She had, she discovered, been missing for over seven years—easily enough time for the foolish, gullible Mortals to convince themselves that the Magefolk were all safely dead and gone. Nonetheless, it was fear of Miathan’s restless ghost that had kept the Nexians from sacking the Academy—a fact that Eliseth noted with interest. It was difficult to contain her shock and anger, however, when she discovered that the Council of Three had been abolished and that upstart Vannor, of all people, now ruled the city. Since the night she had tried to fuel her magic through the pain of his mangled hand—and he had first defied her, then gone on to escape her grasp entirely—Eliseth’s hatred of the merchant had been virulent, her grudge against him deeply personal. No mere Mortal could make an idiot out of her and go unpunished!