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“I…” Moretz looked from Verol to Marquin, finding no sympathy in either face. The word of even the lowest lord would overrule a street guardsman.
Power, Clare thought. The only story that mattered was the one told by the person in the room with the most power. It was a lesson she’d learned at an early age, but she’d never been in a position to benefit from it before. It was a heady feeling, knowing you didn’t really even have to pretend that a lie was the truth, just let it roll off your tongue and wait for everyone around you to trip over themselves in their eagerness to proclaim you correct.
“What is your name?” Verol asked the guardsman.
“M-Moretz, my lord.”
“And does anyone else know you are here, Moretz?”
“No.”
“How did you gain entry to this room?”
Moretz paled, and a few seconds passed before he answered. Before something made him answer, a thin tendril she could barely sense stretching from Verol to Moretz.
A mage, then. She’d suspected. Between the red stone in Marquin’s staff that practically screamed magic, and the glow she sometimes caught from Verol—one she was certain most people couldn’t see, one that had drawn her out of a swamp and to their campfire—of course she’d suspected. But she hadn’t known, and while she hadn’t known, she could pretend.
Mages. She suddenly understood just what sort of potential apprentice she was supposed to be. Fear worked its way under her breastbone, but Verol and Marquin…they couldn’t know. Not about the Song that even now laughed within the confines of its prison, the ripples leaking out through the hairline fractures in the cage walls.
They couldn’t know. The apprentice nonsense was just that, an excuse, except…except why were they here? How were they here? The answer to that question was vitally more important than it had been minutes before.
Something touched her elbow and she jerked, whirling on instinct and slashing out with the bone knife still in her hand.
Marquin slid out of the path of her weapon with liquid grace. He didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at her attack.
“I’m sorry if I startled you. But I was saying I think it would be best if we waited downstairs.”
Clare’s gaze flicked to Verol and Moretz. The one was glaring murder at the other, and since Verol and Marquin were both lords and mages, she no longer felt it her responsibility to be worried about them facing the repercussions of any actions they might take.
She gathered her guitar case and followed Marquin out. She’d expected the noise of the door breaking to have woken other guests, but the hallways were empty, her path down unlit stairs guided only by the red glow from Marquin’s staff. She stared at the stone as they descended the steps. There was something…not entirely natural about it. Not even natural by mage standards.
The main floor was dimly lit as well, the night clerk slumped over at the bar. She cleared her throat. The clerk didn’t move. Marquin stopped and she arched an eyebrow at him, nodding at the clerk. He shrugged innocently and headed for the door, which was when Clare realized he had no intention of waiting within the inn’s confines for Verol to finish…whatever it was Verol was doing.
Marquin pushed the door open, revealing a waiting carriage on the road beyond, its driver sitting casually, as if the torrential rain didn’t bother him. Marquin looked back, marking her hesitation. “I feel it would be best if we did not linger and draw notice. The carriage will not go anywhere without your permission. We may, of course, simply wait outside, however…”
However, the rain was coming down in sheets now and if she did actually like the rain, she wasn’t keen on standing in it until her skin pruned and her guitar ruined. She glanced around the empty interior of the inn. Thus far, Marquin and Verol had done the impossible and not drawn attention. She would prefer it remained that way.
She nodded and walked briskly to the carriage, which was notably finer than the wagon she’d traveled in with them. But the mismatched horses pulling it—a stocky bay and a palomino—were the same. The bay nickered at her. She might have had a habit of feeding it the sugar cube that was meant for her tea each morning on the road.
She climbed inside the carriage without further hesitation. It wasn’t that she trusted Marquin and Verol—she liked them well enough, but trust was another matter—it was that she trusted in her ability to run, if necessary, and the ability of the Song to protect her from magery. Even caged, as it was, what little magic existed in Renault County had had a tendency to simply slide off her. She hadn’t been oblivious as to where that protection came from. It made her wonder, sometimes, if she had as much control over the Song as she thought.
The cushions padding the carriage benches were so fine they made her uncomfortable. She hid it, but Marquin’s warm brown eyes, watching her, flickered as if he noticed. She’d either completely lost her touch, or he was one of those people it was extremely difficult to fool.
Maybe it was hubris that made her suspect the latter, but she settled further into an easy, relaxed manner, as if nothing about the evening was in the least bit troubling, even though every stray sound rasped against her nerves. She was calmly sitting in a carriage as if waiting in the street wasn’t dangerous. In Renault County, even someone with the connections to possess a carriage would not be foolish enough to remain idle with it unguarded in the streets.
You aren’t in Renault County, she reminded herself. And if you can’t get that through your head and stop jumping at every noise, you’ll never become anything here.
She wanted to close her eyes, didn’t because she didn’t want Marquin to see. She’d been staring him down this whole time, both because it gave her something to focus on, and because she wanted to see if he would blink.
He didn’t.
She smiled at him, wide and brilliant, and he offered her an amused shake of his head in return. Where did you come from, Marquin Arrendon? Because she would bet the two coins she’d earned tonight that he hadn’t been born with the title “lord”.
“Why did Verol claim I was his apprentice?” It was the least important of the questions she could have asked, which made it the perfect starting one.
“Verol once had several apprentices. Though he has not had any for some time, your being a new one was yet a plausible enough reason for us to be arriving at your room so late in the evening.”
“And why did you arrive at my room so late in the evening?”
