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“Hello, Alys.” Clare spoke with neutrality so perfect that it was difficult to say her tone sounded like anything at all, and yet the deep hollows and crevices of the neutrality were filled with the nuanced subtleties of warning, impossible to point at directly, yet present all the same.
“Hello, Clare.” Alys's voice, higher in pitch than Clare’s own rich alto, was nonetheless a studied thing as well. Just as polished, as hidden, as Clare’s, and it held an accusation Clare liked not at all. Though Marquin’s and Verol’s relationship was obviously known, it seemed that fact held little value when they showed up with a young, attractive woman in the middle of the night.
But then, the way Alys was looking at her…perhaps it was not Verol’s and Marquin’s intentions the woman mistrusted.
Verol glanced between Clare and Alys, seeming to sense the unspoken challenge hanging in the air and yet unable to pluck it from the four words that had passed between them. Marquin was not so lost.
“Clare is Verol’s new apprentice.” His voice was gentle, but it brooked no room for misinterpretation.
Alys's gaze did not turn any friendlier as she studied Clare. “You’re a mage?”
“That is why one apprentices to a mage, is it not?”
“You’re a little old for an apprenticeship.”
“I had an unconventional upbringing.”
Alys's gaze flicked to Verol. “Could I have a word with you, Lord Verol?”
Verol nodded, taking Skye’s halter as Alys took Ginger’s, and walked with her into the stable.
“Does something amuse you?” Marquin asked, noting Clare’s smile.
“Only that your stablehand doesn’t hide her roots nearly as well as she thinks.” That ‘Lord Verol’ had rolled off her tongue so easily, so familiarly. Marquin made a noncommittal noise, as if he didn’t understand what she meant, which told her he did.
She followed him across the stretch of lawn from the stable to the house. An ancient, towering tree stood sentinel midway between the two. Its silvery trunk was easily as wide as she was tall, and as she passed it a great rent in the width made her halt. The gash was a vertical four-foot slash, out of which oozed a viscous black sap, as if the tree was slowly bleeding out. She stared up at the wide branches, gnarled and barren of leaves, and was struck with a sense of profound unease.
She hurried past it, up a short series of stairs to a raised porch, and through the doors of the Arrendons’ home. The starlight only afforded her the impression that the house was large and made of stone, and she was not to get a much better view of the inside. Marquin guided their way with a soft magelight, though why he did not turn the primary magelights on she could not guess. The expense would be next to nothing for a lord, but she did not ask him about it. Something in the way he moved, confident and silent in the near-dark, gave the impression that he was both comfortable in the shadows, and found the shadows comforting.
The magelight lit just enough of their way for Clare to see the ornately threaded runner covering the hardwood floor of the hallway they walked, and to keep her from banging the guitar case into the corner they rounded before coming to an abrupt halt in front of a set of ebony wood double doors. She was relieved to be on the ground floor, relieved there were no stairs to climb. Relieved, if her mental mapping of the home’s layout was correct, that this room was on an exterior wall.
Marquin pressed a small metal key into her hand and gave her the magelight. “This is the only key to your room. Sleep. We can figure everything else out in the morning.”
Clare stood before the doors, listening to the fading of Marquin’s footsteps, and she did not turn the small key until she could not hear them anymore. Inside, she closed the door softly behind her, and locked it. She settled her guitar case on the floor and let the magelight guide her to a tall-backed chair set in front of a solid wooden vanity table. Turning the chair so it faced the door, Clare sat, the magelight a soft warmth nestled between her palms, held delicately in her lap, and waited.
What she was waiting for, she did not know, and she did not find out. Exhaustion, so long staved off, overcame her, and she fell asleep in the tall chair, magelight softly glowing.
Chapter Seventeen
We Are Not Good Men. And Other Lies People Tell.
Clare jerked awake to the scritching and scratching of insects scrabbling over the cellar floors and wall. She jumped to her feet, brushing furiously at arms and clothes to shake off the scratchy, feathery feel of little legs crawling on her skin, her face, poking at the corners of her lips, burrowing beneath folds in her clothes. A scream tore at her throat but she choked it off to a strangled whimper.
Couldn’t scream, couldn’t ever scream. If she screamed it would draw his attention and once that happened… Couldn’t scream. But Ferrian, she couldn’t stand the bugs in her hair again, frantic trapped legs kicking and clawing at the tangled locks. She would have to finger-comb the hair to get them out, the little creatures skittering across her hands but there was no help for it because they had to come out.
She reached for her hair, the reflection of her hands trembling in the room’s mirror.
Mirror.
She’d only ever seen one mirror in Renault County, and this was not that floor-length monstrosity. Her reflection looked back at her, face drained of all color, and it wasn’t just her hands trembling but her entire body.
She grasped the back of the chair she’d fallen asleep in and leaned heavily. She forced a breath in and held it, let it out slowly.
Mirror. Vanity. Chair. For a moment, the things sent a wave of revulsion through her. But these were not made of pale almost-white material. These were a glossy cherrywood, shiny and comforting. The large bed was not a soulless white, but covered in sheets and blankets and pillows in varying shades of soft green.
It was all luxurious, yes, but it didn’t feel twisted, as the only other luxury she’d ever known had. It felt tasteful. Comfortable. It felt…clean.
Clare’s head dropped to where her hands curled around the back of the chair, and she gave in to the heaving, shuddering sob that was the aftermath of panic and fear and relief. But no matter how tight she grasped the finely carved chair, how much she stared at the differences between this room and that other room, she couldn’t quite shake the feel of her own skin crawling.
