The Lieutenant bowed, then came sit beside Kendall.
"So what’s your name?" she asked, unfastening the collar of her coat so that it flopped down. She had a round face, spattered with orange freckles to match her tightly-braided hair. Not scary at all.
"Kendall Stockton."
"I’m Jolien Danress. That’s the Grand Magister, Lady Weston, who has charge of the Sentene. And my Captain, Illidian Faille."
Kendall supposed her eyes had gone very round. The Grand Magister, here in Falk. It hardly seemed possible. She stared at the woman settling back onto the floor of Micajah’s taproom. "Why–?" She paused, wondering what to say.
"Why are we here, or why are we taking you with us?" The corners of Lieutenant Danress' light blue eyes crinkled with sympathy. "You because you’re our only link to a woman we’ve reason to trace. You’re the only one who can positively identify her. And, well, you’re a homeless orphan able to sense magic, and Lady Weston would no more leave a potential mage undeveloped than pass up a chance to investigate interesting magical phenomena, which is the reason we came here. We weren’t expecting this morning’s drama." She frowned, then shrugged. "It could still come to nothing."
"I’m a mage?"
"You could become one. Not such a bad thing to be. I’ve always liked it, anyway, and I would have killed to have Lady Weston taking an interest in me when I started out."
Taking her over. Kendall stared from Lieutenant Danress' face to the woman kneeling on the floor. Taking her over, just like Ma Lippon had been itching to do for years. And a damn sight harder to escape from.
Could she say no, and leave? And did she want to? Magister Kendall Stockton. That sounded strange, unlikely. But it meant money, the one thing that had been so central since the fire had taken Gran away. Mages were important, even shoddy ones, so long as they could manage a shield circle. Every farmhouse, every village and town, they all needed circles to keep Night Roamers like Life Stealers out. If she could just learn to do that, she’d be set.
Anyway, she needed somewhere to go, now that the shed had been destroyed. She’d probably get to see the capital. And Lady Weston was surely a busy person, who’d get caught up in other matters once this thing with the mystery woman was cleared up. Nor could she make Kendall stay, or try to hold some kind of debt over her. Kendall was the one who decided what happened to Kendall. No-one else.
She’d just settled this to her satisfaction when she noticed that Lady Weston had opened her eyes again. Her mouth, usually full and generous, was set in a thin line.
"Faille," she said, her voice lacking any note of humour. "Send to Sark for troops. We need to evacuate this village."
Even the grim Captain straightened in surprise at that. "M’Lady–?"
"It’s worse than I thought. Unless I’m sorely mistaken, some fool is trying to repeat the madness of Queen Solace."
"What?" Lieutenant Danress shot to her feet, face incredulous. "The Black Queen’s Summoning? It’s not possible."
"So we thought." Lady Weston brushed dust from the skirts of her dress. "All the same, I cannot see any other explanation. The apparition out there is the first expression of a Grand Summoning, and this village will shortly be destroyed."
Chapter Four
Rennyn found Sebastian sleeping on the window-seat in the Map Room. There were black circles under his eyes, ink smudges on face and fingers, and his hair stood out in spikes where he’d pulled on it. She touched his forehead, which was damp but not feverish, then stroked his cheek gently.
"You didn’t have to do them all," she murmured. He’d make himself sick, if she didn’t watch him. "You’re just like I was, little brother. And Father not here to teach you when to stop to take a breath." She’d been Seb’s only family for five years now, and found it hard to be glad he was as consumed by their task as she’d ever been.
Turning to the map of Tyrland, she studied the scattering of thumbtacks Seb had added, each carefully numbered and bound to the spindle which marked Falk by a long strand of black hair. Most of them were close to the capital, as expected, but she had to shake her head at the location of the tack painted with a minute white 1.
"Almost all the way back along the road just travelled," she murmured. "I think I’ll take a carriage this time." She’d more than enough chafing from the first trip.
Seb had chalked rows of sigils on the wall, the core structure of the spell they’d been training all their life to cast, unchanged since their Great Grandmother had devised it. Rennyn reviewed the transcription for accuracy, then left to wander about Little Mutching cancelling milk and meat deliveries, selling her horse, arranging for a carriage and a cart, for boxes, for people to lift them. She stopped for spiced tea at Miss Cavendish’s shop and made sure the biggest gossips in the town heard all about how the two they knew as Taren and Severian Justane were off to stay with their Aunt Letitia in Braidford.
Only then did she return to check the map location calculations, which took her well into the afternoon. At least it was easier to confirm the math than it was to work it out in the first place. Seb woke while she was carefully dabbing every tack with a drop of her blood, and drawing her finger along each taut hair. She worked in reverse order, finishing with the spindle, then looked at her gloomily silent brother across the wide expanse of the map.
"Ready?"
He pulled a face. "As I’ll ever be."
Rennyn smiled, and stood still as he pricked his own finger and pressed it between her brows. She didn’t watch the sigils light with power, but instead closed her eyes and thought of a white-haired woman lying in grass. A beautiful face.
Around her the air grew heavy, and she lifted her eyelids enough to watch each thumbtack sink heavily into the map. The spindle followed suit, descending with a crushing weight improbable for such a small object, until the model of Tyrland buckled and cracked all around it.
One of the tacks competing for space in Asentyr began to glow, the light spreading through the fine black web to each of the surrounding points. In response, Rennyn’s hair gently lifted away from her head, each strand surrounded by a blue-white nimbus. The ground seemed far away and uncertain, and she had to steady herself with the table edge and concentrate on breathing, proud of Seb because he was not looking at her, was glowering at the wall with a fixity of purpose, with the determination he needed to finish the casting cleanly.
Then it was over, the thumbtacks just bits of metal with a few melted wisps attached, the weight gone. The spindle had been driven so deeply into the map and the table beneath that only its tip remained visible. Seb dropped to the ground beside her, panting and white.
"Well done."
"Was it?" His eyes were dark. "Why was it leaking on to you?"
"I think that might be inevitable. To be a conduit for this thing, and expect no physical side-effect, is asking too much."
"But this is it in small scale, Ren. What happens to you when the whole weight of the Grand Summoning is behind it?"
Rennyn stood looking down at him, then reached out to haul him to his feet. "When that happens, side-effects will probably be the least of my worries." She switched determinedly to practicalities. It was so much simpler to just do the things they had to do. "Can you feel any residue?"
"N-no."
"Good. That’s two steps taken. Let’s go have something to eat and get started. We’ve a lot of packing to do. I’ve booked us on the mail carriage in the morning, and we need the luggage for the cart ready before then. Worry about that now."
Falk was home to one hundred and thirty-seven people, too many fowl, dogs, goats, five horses, several cows and somewhere in the order of fifty dozen cats. A troop of militia from Sark had been given charge of removing everything that could possibly be moved and transporting it to neighbouring villages, or back to Sark. And that was only the beginning, for Lady Weston had spoken of evacuating other villages.