Bookworm III (46 page)

You think they deserve it. Maybe you’re right. But does that mean that you should be a bastard to them – or worse? All I can tell you is that the choice is yours.

I like to think I would have done something to help you, if I’d known. I could not have claimed Right of Blood, as I severed myself from the family magics, but there were other options. There were ways to separate you too from the family, so your existence posed no threat. But I didn’t know. How many people have I heard say the same thing? It feels no better to say it myself, than to hear it from someone who should have known and didn’t.

The pendant I’ve included in this letter is the sole heirloom I kept from my mother, when I left House Lakeside. The magic was removed when I took the skull-ring and, right now, it isn’t really worth more than twenty pieces of silver. However, I would like you to have it and gift it to your future wife, when – if – you marry.

There’s nothing else to write, save this. If I died – and I must have done, if you’re reading this letter – I hope I died well.

Yours

Cassandra Lakeside, Inquisitor 1st Class

Johan looked down at the letter. “She was related to me,” he said. “Was that true?”

“She said so,” Elaine said. “What did she tell you?”

“That ... I don’t know what to make of it,” Johan said. “Can you read the letter?”

Elaine shook her head. “You can read it to me later, if you like,” she said. “But she charmed it against prying eyes.”

The door opened, revealing Daria, carrying a small tray of food. Johan suddenly felt ravenous; he folded the letter, placed it in his pocket and then reached for the closest sandwich. Ham and cheese wasn’t his favourite, but it tasted wonderful after walking so far. But he couldn’t help feeling melancholy. He hadn’t known he’d had a decent relative. No one had known.

“We should honour her,” he said, finally. “Can we say something?”

Elaine reached out and rested her hand on his for a long moment. “We can and we will,” she said. “Once we’re out of the city, we’ll stop long enough to bury the charm.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Elaine couldn’t help keeping a wary eye on Johan as they finished their meal, then waited for the innkeeper to escort them around the back of the inn, where the horses were kept ready for clients. On the surface, Johan looked normal, but she could tell he was lost in his own thoughts. Apart from the request to hold a proper ceremony – or as close as they could – for Cass, he hadn’t said anything.

“I’m no good at horses,” she said, in the hope it would cheer him up. “I used to keep falling off.”

“She’s a well-trained beast,” the innkeeper assured her. “Just trade her in at the next inn, or keep her for yourself, if you wish.”

“I can handle her, if necessary,” Johan said. He sounded tired and worn. “Just climb onto the back, then hold the reins.”

Elaine did as she was told, although she was nervous. She might have learnt how to ride at the Peerless School, but she wasn’t used to riding; indeed, she hadn’t ridden a horse since she’d left the school, years ago. The horse gave her a look that promised mischief, then settled down when Johan scrambled onto the other horse. Perhaps, Elaine decided, the horse could sense someone who knew what he was doing.

Or perhaps she is just biding her time
, she thought, sourly.

“Thank you,” she said, to the innkeeper. “You might want to go elsewhere for a while.”

“I have work here,” the innkeeper said. “But good luck.”

Daria scrambled up behind Elaine, then hung on for dear life as Johan led the way out onto the streets. Elaine gritted her teeth, then held the reins as tightly as she could; Johan didn’t seem to have any problem steering through the streets, then out into the countryside. The population shot them dark looks as they passed, but did nothing. Elaine was almost pitifully relieved.

“Here will do,” Daria said, once the city was out of sight and the fields were closing in around them. “Don’t worry about the horse. I’ll catch her if she runs away.”

Elaine snorted as Daria dropped to the ground, then pulled off her dress and passed it back to Elaine. The horse neighed uncomfortably as Daria snapped into wolf form, then started to slowly canter after Johan, Daria loping along behind it with casual ease. Elaine suspected the horse wasn’t even remotely comfortable with a werewolf following in her footsteps, but there was nothing to be done about it. Besides, Daria was right. If the horse
did
decide to run, a werewolf could catch her before she managed to throw Elaine off.

It was nearly an hour of hard riding before the fields were replaced by forest, flickers of wild magic sparkling through the trees. The wind blew colder, threatening them with gusts of snow or sleet, although it still seemed warmer than the Golden City. Elaine shivered, cast warming charms around herself, then allowed the horse to keep following Johan. Her apprentice was brooding, she sensed, but she didn’t know what to say. What had Cass said to him, in her letter? Elaine’s imagination provided too many answers.

“This would be a good place to stop,” Johan called back, as they reached a small clearing. There was a large pond in the centre of the clearing, slowly icing over as the weather cooled. “I think she’d like it.”

Elaine wanted to ask what made him say that, but instead she just pulled the horse to a halt and slid down to the ground. Her legs felt weak, after riding for so long, yet it was a relief to stand on solid ground again. Johan gave her a concerned look as she started to rub aches and pains out of her body, then turned to look towards the pond. There were animal tracks all around it, suggesting that nothing dangerous lurked within the murky water. Or so she thought. It had been years since she’d taken any classes on surviving outside human settlements.

“There’s a nice patch of ground over there,” Daria said, pointing to a gap in the trees. “That would be suitable, I think.”

Johan nodded, tied the horses to the trees, then walked over to the grass. There was something about it, Elaine decided as she followed him, that was definitely charming, a sense of agelessness in a world undergoing rapid change. She lifted her wand and performed a simple charm, looking for hints of wild magic that might interfere with the rites, but found nothing. Once she was sure the place was clean, she reached into her pocket and produced the life-charm. Cass’s once-golden hair was now rapidly decaying into dust.

“Deferens will not have kept her body,” she said, as Johan turned to face her. “I think he would have simply ordered it cremated.”

“No doubt,” Johan agreed. He knelt down, then dug a small hole in the ground with his fingers. “Do you know what to say?”

“Only in general terms,” Elaine said. “I have no idea what gods she worshipped – if she worshipped any.”

“She was from House Lakeside,” Johan said. “Wouldn’t they have household gods?”

“I wouldn’t know their names,” Elaine said. The Great Houses rarely shared such details with outsiders, even outsiders who had married into their families. “Besides, Lady Lakeside isn’t here to bury her.”

“Call on them, if you can,” Johan urged. “I don’t know if my family’s gods would accept her.”

Elaine swallowed, then knelt down beside the tiny grave. “Gods of Lakeside, we speak to you, even though we are not of your family,” she said. There was no way to address the prayer more precisely, not without knowing specific names. “We ask you to take unto yourselves the soul of Cassandra Lakeside, who was born into your family and died upholding your family’s finest values. We bear witness, before you and our own gods, that she is worthy of the name she bore. We could not honour her more had she lived and died as one of us.”

She took a breath, feeling tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. “Cassandra saved my life,” she said, simply. “She sacrificed much to save me from a fate worse than death. For that and so much more, I do her honour.”

Johan cleared his throat. “Cassandra saved my soul,” he said. His voice was even, but Elaine could sense the bitter guilt that flowed through his mind. “For that, and so much more, I do her honour.”

“Cassandra accepted me for what I was,” Daria said, after a long moment. “For that, and so much more, I do her honour.”

Elaine held the life-charm over the tiny grave, then dropped it into the earth. There was a flare of light as it touched the soil, which faded rapidly into nothingness. Elaine wiped the tears from her eyes, then carefully picked up a piece of soil and dropped it into the grave, covering the life-charm. Johan and Daria did the same, burying the life-charm until there was no sign that anything had been buried there at all. Elaine lifted her wand, sketched a hex sign in the earth covering the grave, then rose to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly. “You deserved so much better.”

She had gone to five funerals in her life; three of them for children who had died at the orphanage, one for a co-worker who had been killed by a book sent to the Great Library and one for the Inquisitors who had been killed during Kane’s attack on the Golden City. She had felt guilty as a child – they had
all
felt guilty – at being torn between grief for their lost friends and relief that they were gone, that they would no longer be consuming food that was sparse enough as it was. The other funerals had been better, but still poignant And they had all been attended by more than three mourners.

“She would have understood,” Daria said, quietly. “She knew she could die in the line of duty.”

Elaine shook her head. Cass had had no obligation to risk her life, not after the Grand Sorceress had released her from her oaths. She could have escaped the city in the chaos caused by the Watchtower’s destruction, escorting them all the way to the border if necessary. Instead, she had stayed, fought and died. Deferens had had to summon a
dragon
– two dragons – to deal with her. There were times when Elaine wished she had had that sort of courage, when she’d been in school. But maybe it came with the power. No one could ever have accused Cass of lacking in magic.

“Maybe she would have understood,” she said, as she looked towards the grave. “But it still feels sad.”

She looked over at Johan, then walked towards where he was sitting, staring down at the freezing pond. He smiled weakly at her as she approached, then rose. Elaine hesitated, then gave him a tight hug. He started in surprise, then returned it.

“I was never good with emotions,” Elaine admitted, “but do you want to talk about what you’re feeling?”

Johan frowned as he let go of her. “Am I turning into Jamal?”

Elaine blinked. “Is that what she told you?”

“Not really, but close,” Johan said. He passed her the letter, but it was blank to her eyes. “I ... she told me that I was terrorising my family.”

“You weren’t very nice to your sisters,” Elaine said. She wondered, suddenly, what had happened to the young girls. Lady Lakeside might just have taken them to the Arena ... or she might have handed them over to someone else, if she didn’t feel like taking care of them any longer. “But I’ve never had sisters, so I don’t know if they deserved it or not.”

“You grew up with sisters at the orphanage,” Johan said. “Didn’t you?”

“They weren’t
real
sisters,” Elaine said. “I always knew they would snatch the bread from my mouth if they had a chance – and I would do the same. We were always competing, hoping to be chosen by a family and taken home ... one day, a girl would be with us; the next, she would be gone. Your family will always be part of you.”

Johan rubbed his eyes. “She could have told me she was related to me,” he said, finally. “I could have taken it.”

“You scare people,” Elaine said.

“I don’t scare
you
,” Johan objected.

“I know you,” Elaine reminded him. “I know you’re a decent person, under the anger issues and the determination to prove yourself, but most people don’t know you. Your very existence threatens everything they hold dear.”

“I didn’t want to be anything but a person who lived his own life,” Johan said. “Is that wrong?”

Elaine sighed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “But fate handed you a different set of cards.”

She sat down on the hard ground, shivering before she managed to cast yet another warming charm. “A couple of hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have been invited to the Peerless School,” she said. “My magic wouldn’t have been reckoned strong enough for generalist training. I would have either apprenticed myself to a potions brewer, if I’d been lucky, or been offered a chance to serve as breeding stock for one of the Great Houses. They would have taken me for a very weak bloodline, but with some careful breeding my grandchildren might have amounted to something.

“If I’d been born in Deferens’s homeland, I would have been raised to worship men and do whatever they told me,” she added. “I would have been sold to a man in need of a wife, or sent out of the country if they realised I had magic. They would never have taught me to read and write, let alone do anything beyond cooking, cleaning and churning out babies. I would have lived and died without ever realising there was a bigger world beyond the walls of my home – my prison.

“If I’d been born to one of the Great Houses, they might have considered me an embarrassment too ...”

“No,” Johan said. “You have magic.”

“Not very much of it,” Elaine said. “Would I still have been allowed to go to school? Or would they have given me a little private tutoring, then passed me to someone who needed a wife who might share her gift with their children?”

Johan started to pace, angrily. “I wish I’d known,” he said. “If I’d known she was related to me, I would have listened to her ...”

“Or would you have snapped at her?” Elaine asked gently. “You cannot say what
would
have happened when you have the benefit of hindsight.”

“I don’t know what to feel,” Johan admitted. “What
should
I feel?”

He stopped in front of her, his eyes pleading for understanding. “I don’t regret what I did to Jamal, or my father,” he said. “Is that wrong of me?”