Guild Mage: Apprentice-Chapter 153: A Year Come and Gone

“I was half afraid you wouldn’t be there by the time I got back,” Wren said, as the two women burst out of Blackstone Hall into the courtyard.

“I’m just glad you understood what I meant, and that they came,” Liv said. Her hands were trembling: she paused in the middle of the courtyard and lifted them up in front of her, and could actually see the shaking.

“Come on,” Wren said, wrapping an arm around Liv’s waist. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

The lower floor of High Hall was dark, save for the oil lamps that lit the stairwell, which were kept going all night. The first years, and even the old students who hadn’t joined the guild, and thus weren’t allowed to join the conclave, had nearly all gone to sleep. Every creak of the stairs beneath Liv’s boots made her flinch, as if she was going to disturb them.

On the second floor landing, Rosamund and Arjun waited with Sidonie and Tephania, all four of them clustered on the chairs and padded benches around the fireplace. Thora was fussing with a pot of tea, but straightened as soon as Wren and Liv stepped off the stairwell.

“M’lady!” Thora almost looked, Liv thought, as if she was going to dash forward and give her a hug, but something – perhaps a sense of propriety – held the lady’s maid back. Instead, it was Rose who reached her first.

“Liv, you’re trembling,” Rosamund murmured. “Are you alright?” The dark haired girl put an arm around her and guided her over to a seat on one of the benches.

“I’m fine,” Liv said, though Genevieve Arundell’s words wouldn’t stop tumbling around her head. “They took me into an office – they must have given her a set of rooms like the professors have, it looked like those – and Benedict’s spymaster was there, and Merek Sherard, and she had this enchanted globe that could tell whether you were lying or not, and –”

“Liv,” Wren said, coming up behind her and placing a hand on her back, “You’re rambling. Slow down. Take a breath.” The huntress sighed. “You’re safe here. Sometimes I forget how young you all are.”

Liv nodded, then closed her eyes. She took deep breaths, held them, and then released them, just as Master Grenfell had taught her so many years ago. Such a little thing, it had seemed at the time. When she’d been a young girl, she hadn’t understood, had thought it was silly and stupid. On how many occasions, now, had her old teacher’s lessons calmed her down? She focused on the feel of Wren’s hand on her back, Rose’s arm around her waist, and let herself lean into them. The physical contact was comforting.

For a moment, she let herself miss the feeling of being held in Cade’s arms. Liv hadn’t thought of him in months, but it would have been nice to be wrapped up and embraced by someone right now. The idea wasn’t enough to regret ending things, exactly, but it did make her wonder whether there might be someone else who loved her, one day.

“Alright,” she said, opening her eyes again. She couldn’t afford more than a moment of weakness, and now it was time to be strong. “It was a trap,” Liv said. “An ambush. Arundell had an entire room full of supporters, and they wouldn’t let Wren in. I did my best to hint really strongly that she should go get Jurian.”

“The old man wasn’t in his office,” Wren said. “So I went to Loredan next, and that’s where I found both of them. It took a little bit to tell them both what was happening, and bring them over.”

“While you were gone, she started badgering me with questions,” Liv explained. “About the attack on Coral Bay. She knew that I wasn’t up on the battlements, and apparently the birds told Merek about –” She paused. Wren knew, and Liv suspected that Sidonie had guessed, but she couldn’t be certain about the others.

“What?” Teph asked.

“If I tell you this, it could get you in trouble,” Liv admitted.

Rosamund laughed. “Imagine that, Liv getting us into trouble,” she teased. “I think we’re all used to that by now, after the trip up north and all.”

“No,” Sidonie broke in. “She means real trouble.” Liv met Sidonie’s eyes, and nodded to the other girl. “The kind that could see you questioned by the king, or arrested. Anyone who isn’t ready for that should leave now.”

“I thought you’d put it together,” Liv said, and smiled.

“I’m less concerned with the laws of Lucania than the rest of you, I think,” Arjun said, and shrugged his shoulders.

“You already know?” Rosamund asked Sidonie, who nodded. “And you’re staying? Fine. I’d be a pretty bad friend if I left now.”

“They’d question me anyway,” Thora said, her voice quiet. “If you were in trouble. They always arrest the servants. So it won’t make a difference.”

Liv, and then everyone else, turned to look at Tephania.

“Just me, then,” Teph said, looking down at her hands in her lap.

“It’s alright if you walk away now,” Liv said. “You’ve already said you want to be a court mage. I don’t want to do anything that will take that from you.”

“Neither of you are from Lucania,” Teph said, looking from Arjun to Wren. “This is where my family is. There’s not really anywhere else I can go.”

Liv shrugged out of Rose’s arm, stood up, and walked around the table where the teapot rested. She reached down for Teph’s hands, drew her up, and embraced the other girl. “Go to bed,” Liv told her.

“Is it really alright?” Teph asked, finally meeting Liv’s eyes.

“It is.” Liv nodded, and gave her friend a slight push toward the rooms she shared with Florence and Helly. Tephania crossed the landing, and when she looked back at the door, Liv made certain to smile. Still, once her friend had left, she couldn’t help but feel that something had irrevocably shifted in their relationship.

“I don’t have two words of power,” Liv said, keeping her voice low as she wheeled back around to face her other friends. “I have three. One of them is Luc.”

“And she used it when she fought the war machine on the reef,” Wren explained.

“The royal word,” Rose said, raising her hands to her face to rub her temples. “And you knew?” she asked Sidonie. “For how long?”

“I suspected since we all went north,” Sidonie said. “Lightning storms in the morning when Liv rode out – and I knew that Duchess Julianne had the word. Add to that the fact she adopted Liv, and it all came together.”

“It makes me feel like an idiot,” Rose admitted, leaning back into the cushions.

“I’m sorry,” Liv said. “I didn’t want to make anyone else keep my secrets.”

“Are there more?” Rose said, standing up and pacing around the landing. “Tell me you haven’t murdered anyone, at least.”

Liv reached back and touched the comb in her hair. “I had this made so that no one would be able to see the imprint,” she said.

“So you not only committed a crime, you then went out of your way to get an enchantment to hide it,” Rose muttered, ceased in her pacing, and then looked at Liv with wide eyes. “This is the kind of thing they execute people for, Liv.”

“Arundell threatened to, actually,” Liv admitted. “She said they’d execute both Julianne and I. The archmages burst in before she could make me answer, though.”

“That won’t be the end of it,” Sidonie said. “They had an enchanted object of some kind? To tell whether you were lying?”

Liv nodded. “A crystal globe. When she told a lie, it filled with a dark cloud, like ink, and when she told the truth it lit up like a candle.”

“What word did it use?” Arjun asked, his gaze sharp. “It could be a fake.”

“She said she got it from Triss’ family, years ago,” Liv said. “So that would be Bheuv. The word of seeing clearly.”

“A better translation from the Vædic is ‘to be aware,” Arjun said. “It’s one of the two words imprinted by the priests. Bheuv, and Sed, to calm.”

“It’s the one Vivek Sharma used to tell who was lying,” Liv said. “I never saw Triss using it that way, or talking about it.”

“The Crosbies are focused on holding Valegard against a horde of war machines,” Sidonie pointed out. “That means they focus on using it in combat, to search out the weak points of their enemies, to find ambushes, to scout. Not a lot of call for questioning prisoners, there. But with the correct incantation…”

“When Sharma used it on me, though, I could feel his Authority,” Liv said, and Sidonie nodded. “An enchanted object shouldn’t have authority.”

“Which means that someone who is well trained could fight off the effects,” the other girl completed the thought. “An object like that would never work on an Archmage.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Rose asked. “You’ve been training to fight off the Ward girl’s magic for months and months. Some rock should be no problem.”

“So what, I should just lie my way through when she questions me?” Liv asked, looking from Sidonie to Rose. “Because she’s not going to drop this. She had the king’s spymaster there with her.”

“It’s either that,” Wren pointed out, “or run.” The huntress had been quiet for long enough that it was something of a surprise to Liv when she spoke up. She turned about to hear what the other woman had to say.

“We could just leave,” Wren continued. “Look. The only reason we’re still in Lucania is for you to learn magic, right?” Liv nodded. “If it wasn’t for that, you’d already be up north, or west over the ocean in Varuna. That’s where we’re going eventually anyway. Is there really anything to be gained by staying here?”

“The original idea was to stay long enough to learn Cei,” Liv said.

“And they’re not teaching that to anyone but masters,” Sidonie broke in. “You’ve already imprinted Aluth. You’re not realistically going to learn anything else without years of work.”

“Everyone here has,” Liv said, glancing between Rosamund and Arjun.

“But there is one very strong reason to stay,” Sidonie continued. “How much do you care about your family in Whitehill?”

“What?” Liv asked.

“If you leave now,” Sidonie explained, “It’s going to be taken as an admission of guilt. It’s going to look like you’re a criminal fleeing justice.”

“Which means that next they’ll go after Julianne,” Liv sighed. “I can’t, then. I can’t do that to her. I’m going to have to lie my way through, somehow.”

☙

The knowledge of what was coming ate at Liv’s stomach all through the night and into the next morning: this once, there was no comfort in having made a plan. She didn’t even know for certain when the moment would come – the king’s spymaster could be around any corner.

When she stepped out of her bed chamber into the sitting room and saw a strange girl with black hair pulled into a tight bun, Liv whipped her wand out of the sheath on her belt before she even knew what she was doing. The girl screamed in fright and ducked behind the bench in the center of the sitting room.

“Sorry,” Liv said, gulping breaths to try and slow the pounding of her heart. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect you there.” She stuffed her wand back into its sheath.

“You’re insane!” the girl exclaimed, from behind the bench. “You could have killed me!”

Sidonie’s door creaked open, and she emerged just long enough to look back and forth between the two girls, then adjust her spectacles on her nose. “Ah. Liv, you’ve met our new roommate, Semila. Good.”

The prospect of having to learn to live with a strange girl, all over again, immediately put Liv’s back up. It wasn’t entirely fair, and she knew it: if she hadn’t been so busy and preoccupied, she probably would have met the poor girl already. And just because Edith had been misery walking, didn’t mean that Semila was a bad person.

“I’m sorry again,” Liv said. “Look. Why don’t we take you out to dinner tonight at the Crab and Gull, and we can get to know each other?”

Semila carefully emerged from behind her makeshift shelter, then nodded slowly.

“Good,” Liv said. “Alright, I need to get down to the training yard. Now the schedules are out, I have an entirely new crop of remedial students to beat into shape.”

“...which class?” Semila asked.

“Remedial Magical Combat,” Liv told her, and watched the girl’s shoulders slump.

“I think you’ve found one already,” Sidonie pointed out.

“Well, at least I know you’ll never be late,” Liv remarked. “Come along then.”

On Liv’s first day of classes, a year before, everyone had been focused entirely on that. Clusters of first year students, she recalled, had grouped together based on the first tentative friendships they’d formed, anxious about what the professors and journeymen would ask them to do. This morning, however, the conversation was about something entirely different.

“- journeymen,” Liv caught a fragment from one of the conversations happening in small clusters. The word ‘guildmistress’ was being whispered about the stands at the edge of the training ground, and her stomach immediately began to roil uncomfortably. Whatever Genevieve Arundell was doing would almost certainly not be good news.

“What’s going on?” Liv asked, coming to a halt next to Archmagus Jurian, Wren, and the other journeymen who assisted with the classes.

“Genevieve has announced that her first act as guildmistress will be to approve the imprinting of Cei for journeymen,” Jurian explained, with a grimace. “A clear attempt to gather support with a bribe.”

“But people won’t be stupid enough to fall for that, will they?” Liv asked, frowning. “Will they?”

“Get the first years running,” Jurian said, and Liv broke off with the other journeymen to do just that. In the time since she’d returned from Lendh ka Dakruim, she’d managed to get most of her stamina back, and the morning runs could only help with the process. The students were even more pathetic than she recalled her own class being: they were hardly even down the bluff before the complaints began.

By the time they were on the trail out of town, the students had begun to collapse. Those who’d never been pushed to exercise were panting, red-faced wrecks along the side of the path, and Liv volunteered to gather them up and shepherd them back up the bluff. She suspected that most of those who’d failed at running would be hers, anyway, so it was time to begin learning who they were.

When she’d finally bullied the stragglers all up to the stands, however, Liv nearly stumbled over her own feet in surprise.

“Hey there, little sister,” Triss Summerset shouted, a wide smile on her face. She stood up from where she’d been lounging in the stands and swaggered over to Liv, one hand on the hilt of her rapier. She was wearing green and white, now, instead of black and red, but those high boots of soft black leather were just the same.

“Triss!” Liv said, and grinned in spite of herself. “I’d given up on anyone from Whitehill coming!” She didn’t even resist when her sister-in-law wrapped her up in a great big hug.

“I didn’t come from Whitehill,” Triss whispered in her ear, “and I’m not here for the Conclave. We need to talk, Liv. Finish your class, and then we’ll sneak off somewhere, alright?”

Liv nodded, and backed up just far enough to search Triss’ eyes. She’d been so surprised – and happy – to see the other woman that she hadn’t noticed at first, but now that she had a closer look, she thought she saw faint, dark circles that hinted at exhaustion.

For nearly an hour, Liv taught her first years how to point a wand at a straw target and aim a knife of raw mana. Most of them had never used an enchanted object before, never mind a real spell themselves, and they seemed as frightened of the wands as they were of Liv. The entire time, however, Liv couldn’t get her mind off Triss’ presence. What had brought her to Coral Bay, if not the conclave?

Whenever she glanced over at the stands, Liv saw Triss and Wren sitting next to each other, talking quietly. It was odd: the two women had only met briefly, beneath the rift at Bald Peak, and then during the ride back to Whitehill afterward. She wondered what they had to talk about, and itched for the class to be finished so that she could join them.

Finally, the ringing of the bells at Blackstone Hall sent the first years off. Liv locked the chest in which the wands were stored, and then joined the other two women on the benches. “So why are you here, then?” Liv asked. “If not for the conclave.”

“It’s funny to see you teaching,” Triss told her, with a smile. “You’ve grown up a lot in a year, Liv.” She sighed, and the smile fell away from her face. “We couldn’t send anyone because we can’t spare anyone to come,” she admitted. “Something’s happening at the Foundry Rift. My father sent a messenger to Whitehill calling for help, so Matthew and I went over with Duchess Julianne. That was two days ago, and the war machines haven’t stopped attacking the walls of Valegard since. We need help, Liv. I came here to get anyone I could find and bring them back home.”

“I can’t,” Liv said. “I can’t leave. If I go now, the king will come after Julianne.”