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He lifts the muffin toward his hooded face.
At that very moment, a sharp female voice hollers, “Juliette! Oh, Juliette!”
I turn toward the sound. “Mistress Caviston. How are you?”
Mistress Caviston bustles toward me, accompanied by her two daughters, Elbina and Fray, both of whom are nearly my age—just a few years short of thirty. I think they’re both attractive, but the eligible men of the region seem to disagree. Elbina and Fray have made several envious comments to me about the offers of marriage I’ve refused, hinting that maybe I could direct some of my suitors their way. And I’ve tried. But the men of this region like a woman with a richer kind of beauty, one who looks like she either cooks well or can afford to eat well. So far they haven’t taken my unsubtle hints about the many good qualities of the Caviston girls.
“Did you hear the news?” squeaks their mother. “The king has decreed that he’s going to marry a sorceress! The announcement went out this morning—it’s posted absolutely everywhere, and Master Hobbs said he saw royal guards riding in through the north gate half an hour ago!”
“The king says he doesn’t care about noble birth,” exclaims Fray. “He wants the hand of the most powerful sorceress in all of Darthage.”
“That would be Lady Kessalif, wouldn’t it?” I ask. “She’s about his age, and she possesses the most powerful magic Darthage has seen in two hundred years.”
“But she can’t have children,” Mistress Caviston replies. “He wants someone younger, someone fertile. They’re collecting the candidates now, from every city and town—all the unmarried, magically gifted women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five!”
“What do you mean collecting them?” I frown.
“Oh, well…” Her expression changes a little. “The guards are sort of… shoving them into carriages. They don’t get to pack anything, but of course they’ll have everything they need when they get to the palace. And their families receive a bag of gold from the Crown. Isn’t it wonderful? I’d give anything to have magic!”
“Surely the women get a choice, though,” I persist. “Or is the king buying these women from their families?”
“I’m not sure they have much choice,” Mistress Caviston admits. “Why do you look so worried, dear? Have you been hiding some magical gift from us?”
Before I can respond, a familiar voice rings out across the square. “There she is!”
I exhale with relief. Prain, at last. Maybe he hasn’t spent all the money yet. Maybe he thought better of what he did and came back to…
But my hope fades as I spot him on the street corner across the square. My handsome, shiftless brother is surrounded by four royal guards. A handful of ruffians are lurking nearby as well, and their gazes follow Prain’s pointing finger toward me.
I recognize those lurkers as debt enforcers for Dom Echelin, the owner of the biggest dice house in town. They’ve stopped by the mill before. Last time, I had enough money to pay them, and they left peacefully. That was two months ago, and Prain swore it would never happen again. He vowed it to me after they left—sobbed at my feet, with his head in my lap. “Never again, Jules,” he choked out. “I’ll never do it again.”
And I, like a fool, believed him. Pa used to say it’s my greatest fault—believing the best of everyone. Trusting their words when their actions speak differently.
And now Prain shows up with royal guards and debt enforcers? What has he gotten himself into this time?
Leaving my basket by the fountain, I walk toward my brother. The market-goers make way for me as I cross the square. They’re curious about the ruckus, the shouting, the presence of the soldiers and ruffians. They want a show. They don’t care that my stomach is knotting, that my mind is racing, that I’m frantically trying to size up the situation and determine how to get my brother out of whatever trouble he’s landed in this time.
Prain has a black eye and a bloody lip. He wears a strained smile as I approach.
“There she is, like I told you,” he announces loudly. “My sister, the most gifted sorceress in this town.”
Gasps sift through the people in the square. Everyone’s gazes swerve to me; I can feel the pressure of their questioning eyes.
“And what is her gift?” asks one of the royal guards.
“Changing one thing into another,” says Prain, with a theatrical flourish of his hands. “Wheat, straight from the field, transforms into the most delicious breads and cakes, without a recipe or an oven! Bits of grass transform into new shingles for the roof of the mill or the barn! How else do you think she keeps our buildings in such good repair? You’ve all tasted her baked goods—can you doubt the magic in their delectable flavor? Why, she can spin straw into gold!”
One of the guards pulls out a leather-bound notebook. “We don’t have a woman with those powers on the registry for this town, and no one has reported a sorceress with any such gift.”
Prain steps away from the guards, spreading his arms as he speaks to the gathering crowd. “Modest, humble creature that she is, Juliette has kept this a secret from all of you. But I will not keep silent when her gift could finally win my sweet sister the life she deserves.”
The guard with the notebook has fancy epaulets—I think he’s a captain. He nods and gestures to two of the other men. “We don’t have time to test her here—we’re already behind schedule. Put her in the wagon with the others, and give this man his gold.”
A page comes forward and hands my brother a leather bag. Immediately Dom Echelin’s enforcers surge out of the shadows and surround Prain, clearly intending to collect whatever he owes them. One of them grips his shoulder roughly, and Prain winces.
The pieces of the puzzle slide together in my mind. Prain owes a debt—one that might have cost him his life if he hadn’t thought of this scheme. He’s selling me to the King so he can pay his debts to Dom Echelin.
It’s absurd. It will never work. The moment the guards tell me to do magic, and I can’t, they’ll know I’m a fraud.
