“I’m here to see my lady mother. Is she in residence?”
“You’re in luck, Lady Rose. And I believe the blue salon is unoccupied. I’ll send her ladyship a note to meet you there.”
“Ah, no.” Rose didn’t know how to request this in a subtle way, so she simply barged ahead. “The ceremonial chamber, please. The warded one.” Where she’d been bound with the blood geas. She couldn’t recall if it had a name, or if knowledge of it would even fall within the cook’s niche set of responsibilities, but Durst nodded.
“Ah, yes. The poppy room. Begging your pardon, Lady Rose, I should have realized. I’ll send refreshments. Do you still favor chocolate cookies?”
Too bad she’d stuffed herself on Jada’s expensive and selfishly hoarded delicacies, but that bit of spite had been too delicious to pass up. Still, she told Durst yes, agreed to a delivery of tea and cookies, and suggested to Adsila that the kestrel might be happier waiting outside. Adsila took the hint, winging away. That was for the best, as Rose wasn’t ready to answer questions about her recently acquired companion. Especially as she had no answers. She followed Durst down a narrow side passage to the ceremonial chamber she’d been inside of only the once, when she was six years old—and had not recalled as having a name, certainly not one as putatively cheerful as the bright and florid poppy.
Not surprisingly, the room had changed from her memories, either due to the passage of fifteen years or because she hadn’t noticed much beyond the sorcerer and his tools on her previous visit. The long, rectangular table had stayed the same, with probably the same heavy chairs around it. They lacked the chains she recalled so vividly, though they had been assembled with heavynails and studs, which made her think she’d embroidered that image with her overwrought and childish fears. Though she wasn’t supposed to remember receiving the blood geas, she did. She particularly recalled being strapped down to one of those massive chairs.
The memory of that day flooded back in crisply unpleasant detail. A strange man with cold eyes had awaited her in that room, rising slowly from a seat at the far end of the table, where an array of arcane instruments shone silver and black against the polished wood. He wore robes made of rich furs and studded with jewels, finer than any she’d ever seen, even on the fanciest courtiers visiting the keep.
“This won’t take long,” he told her parents. “You can wait outside.”
“Be brave,” her father instructed, ruffling her hair, “and it will be over in a minute.”
“What will?” Rose asked.
“A necessary evil,” he answered, jaw and voice tight. He glared hard at the strange man, who only gazed back, unbothered.
Her mother knelt down to meet her eye to eye. “It’s only a rite of passage. We all went through it. Your father. Me. And see? We’re fine. You’ll be fine, too.” But Rose caught the welling tears in her mother’s eyes as she stood.
“Sit in the chair there.” The robed man indicated the chair nearest all the tools, and Rose slowly shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she said, very politely, then looked to her father for support. Surely he wouldn’t allow—but her parents had already left her there, sealing the door behind them without another word. Wildly, she looked around for escape, already knowing there wouldn’t be any.
“No need to panic,” the sorcerer said. “You’ll barely feel anything and, if you do, it will hurt only a moment. You won’t even remember the ritual. No one does.”
But it did hurt and she did remember.
When he reached for her arm, she jerked back. “Don’t touch me,” she commanded. “I don’t like it.”
“Then don’t fight this.”
She sat in the chair, figuring she had no choice, trying not to flinch when he strapped down her wrists and ankles, his hands as cold as his eyes. She didn’t exactly fight, doing her best to be cheerful and obedient as she’d always been, as her parents expected her to be, but fear made it difficult and she struggled more than he liked. Still, it was no contest. She ended up immobilized, by straps and by magic, and—to her additional humiliation—in tears.
“Tsk,” the sorcerer chided. “So many tears and for what? I haven’t hurt you.” He turned to the array of implements, selecting one with a long, fine blade. “I won’t even leave a scar on your young pretty skin, little rosebud.”
His magic fell over her thick as irresistible sleep, a shroud that dimmed the small chamber and dulled her mind. Yes, the fear, the desire to resist also faded—but a thorny, hard part of her will remained sharp and alert. She couldn’t yet perform the sorcery to put one person to sleep, let alone entire cities like the great and terrible Oneira, but resisting magic isn’t the same as making it and she could muster enough mental discipline to keep herself awake.
He’d strapped her left wrist and elbow to the arm of the chair with her forearm up. The adult-sized chair made her lean awkwardly to the side, her arm nearly at the level of her shoulder. Magic intensified, smelling dank in the air, flashing in her vision like black sparkles. The almost ticklish slide of the blade down the length of her forearm hissed like a thin scream inside her head and she would have thrashed at the excruciating noise more than the rising pain from the slice except that she couldn’t move.
“That’s why we strap you down,” the sorcerer commented with a genial smile, tapping her on the nose. She couldn’t jerkher head away. “Some of you sprogs just aren’t sleepy enough to be biddable.” Humming a jaunty tune, he used another device, something that looked like a clear glass bubble, to suck up the blood that welled from the cut. “Nice and bright.” Her blood vanished within, no sign of the crimson in the transparent sphere. Magically disappeared. “Lovely density of magic, too,” he observed. “You’re going to be one of the greats, rosebud. Remember me kindly when you are, if you do remember. Some of us aren’t so gentle as I am.”
He busied himself with the glass bulb, performing a complex incantation involving passing it over and through a scroll dense with words. Rose couldn’t make them out, her vision dim, her mind woozy. But the tingling in her heart penetrated the fog. Like a stomachache, but centered in her chest, the burning sensation grew, sending out tendrils from her heart into her torso and winding into her backbone.
The sorcerer observed her with those cold eyes. “You’d have done better to sleep,” he noted, “but the discomfort will soon pass. And the memory, if you have any, will soon fade.”
She gasped, wanting to say something, but her throat and mind closed on the lost words. The tendrils snaked up her spine, through the back of her neck, and slipped inside her skull. She lost more than words for a spell, time moving with a sluggish thickness, and when her thoughts and vision cleared, the sorcerer was unstrapping her and offering her a glass of juice. He grasped the scroll in his other hand, holding it aloft like a torch.
“Sip,” he said, not unkindly. “It helps.”
She didn’t want the juice, but something that felt like a net under her skin flexed and she obeyed before she’d realized.
“Excellent. One more test.” He lifted the scroll. “Stand up.”
She slipped out of the chair and stood, rather cross with herself for complying so easily. But that golden-feeling net under her skin buzzed and did it for her.
