Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) (25 page)

It? Said the jinx, in its queer, non-vocal way. Magic, big and bright, spluttered in the beginnings of a spell, enamel-blue and dancing. Poly had a startled moment to realise that it was
her
magic,
her
spell, before the jinx pounced on it, swallowing the magic whole.

Something in the world around her went terribly, terribly wrong. Life cork-screwed painfully, twisting her with it, and Poly had the brief, unpleasant sensation of meeting herself through the back of her own head. She might have imploded–or perhaps
ex
ploded–for one painful second; but in that second Poly found herself more
complete
somehow. When the world untwisted and then twisted back the opposite way, it brought with it a sense of loss so overpowering that at first she didn’t notice the distinct lack of jinx.

Poly gave a miserable little sniff and looked vaguely around at jinx-less soil. Only it wasn’t quite jinx-less: in fact, the jinx was still running quite strongly through the soil. It was just that it was somehow–
backward
.

Michael’s voice hailed her from somewhere very near. “Poly, you beautiful woman!”

Poly stood up tiredly, just in time to find herself enveloped in a chalk-scented hug. Even her tiredness didn’t prevent the thrill at being swung gaily in Michael’s arms, and by the time he lowered her laughingly to the ground, she was pink and pleasantly flustered. Fortunately, there was Onepiece to attend to, and the process of unwrapping his arms from around her knees gave Poly time to recover her complexion. He was still muttering “
Bad
Poly! Bad,
bad
Poly!” when she managed to heave him to her hip instead, and wrapped his arms around her neck in a stranglehold.

“I’m terribly sorry, dear,” said Annie. “For someone so wobbly about the knees, the child puts on a terrifying turn of speed!”

“I’m only glad you managed to keep him out,” said Poly gratefully. “I can’t imagine what the jinx would have done with him.”

“Dear me, no; it was the Wizard who did that,” Annie scoffed. “I couldn’t have stopped him if I tried: not after the spell he put on me!”

Poly found herself looking over Annie’s shoulder with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “Oh. It’s you.”

Luck gave her a particularly bland look that made Poly blush. She’d sensed Luck there all along, of course– childish to be caught showing her ire.

“Imagine, at my age! To be caught by a standard little Imoblio spell!” said Annie, shaking her head wonderingly. “It just shows you what a few years out of practise does to a mother.”

“I hate to interrupt your cluckings, Mother mine, but I really must borrow Miss Poly.”

“Oh, go along with you, then!” said Annie good-naturedly.

“Here, sit down on the stile, Poly,” Michael said, sweeping her back toward the fence. “You look tired. That’s right, mind your legs, pup!”

Onepiece made a rude noise at him, but unwrapped his skinny legs from Poly’s waist for long enough to let her sit down. She did so, and looked enquiringly at Michael, who was studying her in a mix of awe and fascination, a host of questions dancing in his eyes.

At last he sucked in a breath and said conversationally: “You know, I have so many questions that I’m not sure I won’t choke. There’s
that
,” he nodded at the inverted jinx; “And then there’s
that.
” This time he nodded at her antimagic hand: which, Poly realised belatedly, was still ungloved and very noticeable.

“Perhaps we’ll start with the jinx, then,” she suggested, trying for the safer ground.

Michael gave her one of his sparkling smiles. “Very well, Miss Poly. How did you do it? No, on second thoughts,
what
did you do?”

“I
think
I turned it inside out. Things were a little bit confusing in there. Everything I tried to do, the jinx twisted and turned on itself, so I thought, why not let it fix itself?”

Michael looked like he was trying hard not to smile. “Why not, indeed? Poly, has anyone ever told you that you’re beautifully, maddeningly understated? No? Luck must be blind.”

“Well, it wasn’t terribly difficult!” protested Poly, fighting off a blush more or less successfully. “It was mostly uncomfortable. Once I’d painted the jinx with– that is, once I’d attached a spell to its tail, it more or less ate itself and then spat itself out.”

“Fascinating!” said Michael, his eyes sparkling. “Poly, you must never leave the village! Life would be far too boring without you.”

“What else did you want to ask about?” Poly asked him hurriedly, one eye on Luck and Annie, who had begun to stroll towards them.

“This, of course,” said Michael, lifting her antimagic hand with one of his own. He traced the spiral with one finger, and Poly’s fingers curled defensively to stop the pleasant shiver that ran up her arm.

“What is it?”

“Time to go home, Poly,” said Luck’s voice. “Margaret’s waiting. The pot’s probably already boiling.”

Poly’s glove dropped silkily into her lap, and she looked at it stupidly for a moment before it occurred to her that it must have fallen from her pocket while Michael enthusiastically swept her in circles.

She tugged it on while Luck said cheerfully to Annie: “What? No, it was an easy fix: I knew Poly could do it by herself. No need for me to get involved at all.”

Poly felt her fingers twitch with a renewed urge to slap Luck, and she looked up to find his eyes on her as if he was quite well aware of her thoughts. He grabbed her hand and Shifted them away from the jinxed field, and into the main road.

Onepiece sneezed, then giggled.

Poly meant to say: “Why must you always be so rude!”

What came out, however, was: “I think we should go on to the Capital very soon.”

“Huh,” said Luck, sliding a look at her. “Interesting. I wouldn’t listen to anything
it
said, you know.”

“Oh, well, the jinx was right about some things,” said Poly wearily. The sense of loss was still tugging at her soul, continuous and almost unnoticeable. “Nasty things have been happening around me for as long as I can remember: even before you woke me. Now someone is trying to kill me. Perhaps next time it will be Margaret who gets to the chocolates first. And all those
people
, Luck! It was right: Mordion only chooses people who can help him. The Frozen Battlefield–”

“Not your fault,” interrupted Luck, sharply. “What on earth did that have to do with you?”

“I don’t know, but
it
did.”

“Rubbish!” Luck said. “The jinx only knows what you know: it works on any pieces of information it can sneak out of your mind.”

“I know,” Poly said. “It also said I have magic.”

“Well, you don’t have magic, do you?” said Luck unanswerably. “What does it know?”

Poly opened her mouth to mention the robin-blue spark of magic and the way it had twined with her unmagic to bring about the jinx’s downfall. Then she shut it again. If it came to confessions, she may well tell Luck that she wasn’t the princess at all, and she wasn’t sure she was quite ready for that. Goodness knew it would be a relief if he decided that a mere lady-in-waiting wasn’t worth the same time and attention that was accorded to a princess, but she found herself reluctant all the same.

Luck, mercifully oblivious to the pregnant silence, said unexpectedly: “Still have that spindle, Poly?”

A mild shock fizzed through Poly’s mind, and she instinctively slipped her hand into one of her pockets. It came out clasping a spindle.

Poly, gazing at it, thought that she might know what this particular oddity meant. The longing in her sharpened and focused.

She said quietly: “Yes, of course.”

Barely aware that she had stopped walking, Poly breathed in the cooling afternoon air and looked without really seeing at Luck, who had also obligingly stopped. He was looking distinctly encouraging, which made Poly think that he had been egging her on to discover exactly what she had discovered.

She ignored the annoyance the thought caused, because she did know, now. It was even easy to ignore the faint smile he gave when she said decisively: “I’ll need my books back, Luck.
All
of them.”

Chapter Thirteen

When Poly woke the next morning, it was with the teasing thought that she had puzzled out something very important last night.

Mordion wanted me to forget it
, she thought drowsily, stirring beneath the covers. Her movement toppled something off the foot of the bed in a series of thumps, and Poly sat up to find her books strewn on the floor beside the bed. Even
Angwynelle
was there.

With them was a dusty note in Luck’s handwriting. It said:
Don’t forget the spindle. And wait for me.

Spindle!
thought Poly, with a fizz of confused awareness.
What spindle?

She would have thought it was merely Luck, talking in riddles again, but the framework of the idea she’d had last night was still there in the back of her mind, clever and sound and...missing something. The structure of it was there, but its object and conclusion were ungraspable and ephemeral.
That
must be the thing that Mordion had made her forget.

Added to the certainty of what she had known last night was Poly’s certainty that Luck, while odd, off-kilter, and annoying, had not yet been wrong about anything.

Poly began a systematic search of her clothes from yesterday, and at last found a small wooden spindle in the front pocket of her apron. She frowned at it in silence for a long time, turning it over in her fingers while her mind turned it over as well. If she was right this spindle was very important, and it was likewise very important not to forget it again.

Only how could she do that if, as she was beginning to suspect, she would forget it as soon as she was not looking directly at it? Poly was certain that she and Luck had already had a similar conversation several times now; and if she didn’t remember what the conversations had been
about
, exactly, she did remember that there had been such conversations.

Poly turned the spindle over once more, and felt the corners of her mouth turn up. She searched for a sign of that deep blue flame she had seen yesterday; and, finding it, tiny and bright somewhere deep within her, pulled out a miniscule flare of it. After some moments of puzzled searching for the thing she had meant to attach it to, Poly found Luck’s note again; and by default, the spindle.

“And that’s enough of
that
!” she said to it. The blue flare stuck nicely to the spindle, piercing the air of fuzziness that surrounded it, and to her delight, Poly found that it was now always in the corner of her eye, just as it must always have been somewhere about her person. Mordion had been very careful to make sure she didn’t remember the spindle, and she very much wanted to know why. There were, in fact, a lot of things she wanted to know; and if the jinx had shown her anything, it was that there was a large part of her missing.

Poly thought that she might just know how to get that missing piece back.

A cautious glance down at Onepiece showed that he was still asleep, and another at Margaret gave the same result, much to her satisfaction. The triad was only just peeking over the horizon with its first sun, so there was time to spare before either of them woke. Poly began on her investigations with a kindling hope.

Luck, as usual, had been entirely correct: it
had
been her fault every time his travel spells went awry. It had something to do with the spindle and her mother’s books, and that exciting and unremembered part of her that had been missing for so long that she barely felt the loss of it any more. She had been holding
Angwynelle
the first time a travel spell went awry. Poly remembered the bright, fuzzy unreality of the hermit with his indecently short cassock, and remembered suddenly also the feather he had given her. Her fingers went instinctively to the place it usually occupied, just below her right ear, and ran lightly over the soft, thin edge.

The unremembered bit of herself
was
trying to get somewhere: somewhere that meant something to the full Poly.

Experimentally, she tried to pull the feather out. It didn’t budge, and Poly let her mind run forward to the next botched travel spell instead.
That
had brought them to the Frozen Battlefield: and to her parents. Only the spell hadn’t been a travel one, she thought, frowning. It had been a spell for shelter that Luck put up to get them out of the rain. Besides, the Frozen Battlefield hadn’t been frozen when she was cursed to sleep, so how would she have known where to send herself?

She was still gazing at the spindle with narrow eyes when someone tapped at the window. Poly jumped slightly, a nervous, half-guilty thought suggesting that it was Luck; but when she pulled aside the curtain, it was Michael’s appreciative smile that took in her chemise and bare arms.

Poly gave him a stern look, repressing the urge to snap the curtains shut again as a hopeless loss of dignity, and cracked the window open a smidgen.

Michael’s blue eyes twinkled at her, defying the stern look. “Don’t be cross, Poly. I ran away from work just to see you.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Poly, managing to repress both a smile and a blush.

“Well, perhaps Mr. Pinks was under the impression that he’d excused me from marking out patterns to help Mother Mine plough our allotment; but can I help it if I already did it last night?”

“Is Annie planting this morning?”

“Yes, and I’m under strict instructions to stay away, and to make sure you stay away, too. Mother Mine is under the impression that you’ve done more than enough for us, and asks if you’ll come to dinner tonight. Actually, I came to say thank you and see if I could reciprocate.”

“Reciprocate?”

“Well, you’ve that nasty curse still holding on, and I’m tricky when it comes to magic. I’m even prepared to brave Luck’s annoyance. I promise I won’t send you to sleep again!”

Reluctance to reveal more than was prudent warred for a moment with anticipated pleasure at Michael’s undivided attention. Anticipation won.

Poly said: “Do you have any Shift spells? Small ones will do.”

“Oh, a good handy couple. Where are we going?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Poly. “I’ll be right out.”

Fortunately, Michael wasn’t a slow learner. In fact, his brief head nods and the occasional ‘yes, that makes sense’, insensibly made Poly feel better about her reasoning. If Luck and Michael both thought she was on the right track, it stood to reason that she
must
be.

He was quick to understand the need for travel spells, too; though he seemed to think that the source of her effect on magic was within herself rather than her books or the spindle.

“They’re not bespelled,” he said patiently when they were settled on a comfortable little hillock just in sight of the forest. “They
can’t
be doing anything.”

“Yes, that’s what Luck said,” said Poly. “He still took
Angwynelle
away from me, though.”

“And he gave it back? Will wonders never cease!”

“Yes.
And
he was looking smug about it. I hate it when people pat me on the head for a good girl.”

“Did he–”

“Not actually. But that’s what it felt like.”

“Does he know what you’re up to?”

“More or less,” said Poly, ignoring the prick of paper in her pocket that bore the words
Wait for me
. She didn’t particularly feel like pandering to Luck at the moment. “Wait until I’ve got the book open before you begin the Shift.”

“What do you think will happen?”

“Last time, I met the hermit,” said Poly. “Who knows? Maybe this time I’ll meet Angwynelle herself.”

Michael plucked a butterflower and swished it lazily at Poly. “Why the hermit?”

“I think that might have been the picture that flipped open when I nearly dropped
Angwynelle
.”

“Oh good, we can add that to our calculations,” said Michael, in a pleased voice. “The more information I have, the better our chances. Which picture would you like to use?”

Poly flipped through the pages gently, bypassing the hermit’s mad, grinning face, and came to the second illustration.

“How about this one? Angwynelle’s chambers, before the ball.”

“Are there any guardsmen in it?”

“No. No assassins, either. We should be safe with Angwynelle.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Michael cheerfully; “Because if we die, Luck’s going to kill me.”

The Shift went wrong straight away. Michael said he was trying for the allotment (‘Give Mother Mine a shock, good fun!’) but when his magic sparked, silvery and much weaker than Luck’s, there wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation before everything went sideways.

“Oh, you’re
pretty
,” purred a voice behind them.

They turned to see Angwynelle climbing into the room through the large cathedral window behind them, her breeches rather the worse for wear and her feet bare. She was looking appreciatively at Michael through her lashes, which didn’t surprise Poly. What
did
surprise her was the look Angwynelle shot her: complicit, understanding, and– yes, mischievous. She circled them slowly, returning a sparkling smile from Michael with one of her own, and came to a stop in front of Poly, twirling one red-gold curl around her forefinger.

“Well, you took your time,” she said.

One of Michael’s brows went up. “Expecting us, were you?”

“Oh yes!” said Angwynelle easily. “The hermit told me you’d been to see him. I’m a bit hurt you didn’t come to see me first, actually.”

“The first time was an accident,” Poly said, her lips curving despite herself. “Luck did a travelling spell and it went wrong somehow.”

“Well, it would, wouldn’t it? What do you expect when you weave a book into the fabric of time and space?”

“
Weave– I
did? I only have the most rudimentary spark of magic: I can’t even Shift without help!”

“I wasn’t talking about your magic; though now that you mention it, there’s more of that hanging about, too. No, I was talking about the Other Thing.”

Poly’s eyes flickered briefly to Michael. “Oh. That.”

Angwynelle’s amused gaze caught the look. She said casually to Michael: “Be a darling and find my cerulean skerry-silk scarf, will you? It’s in my boudoir.”

When the door snicked softly shut behind Michael, Poly found herself the subject of a thoughtful look.

“You don’t want him to know?”

“No. He thinks I’m Princess Persephone.”

“Good heavens! Really? How did that happen?”

“Mordion was playing games: I think it might have been his idea.”

Angwynelle’s mouth opened soundlessly. Then she said, slowly: “You still don’t remember.”

“Not very much, no,” said Poly, a little curtly. “What do you know?”

“Only as much as you do. Did. Well, this is awkward.” Angwynelle pursed cherry-red lips and narrowed her eyes at Poly. “You knew what I meant when I said
the other thing
.”

“Unmagic, you mean? Yes. I found it yesterday.”

The dismay on Angwynelle’s face was plain to see. “Only yesterday? You were meant to remember much sooner. What about the hermit? Didn’t you get his spell?”

Poly wordlessly twitched the feather from beneath her hair.

“Why haven’t you used it?”

“It wouldn’t come out.”

“Oh,” said Angwynelle again. “You know, I don’t think you planned for this. You should know everything by now.”

“I don’t remember planning for
any
of it,” Poly complained. “Look, what do you know about Mordion?”

“Oh, you had a
lot
to say about him. Let’s see: when you wrote me he was trying to cut the spindle out of your mind, but you appear to have fixed that already. A bit more than the standard Look Away/Forget Me spell to prevent it being any use.”

“Luck said there was no spell on the spindle.”

“You didn’t put it
on
the spindle, exactly. You were trying not to let him see you do it, so you sort of spelled a part of your own mind. The spindle, plus a reasonable bit of magic, and
ha!
there you are! Hidden memories regained.”

Poly’s gaze sharpened on Angwynelle. “Oh! And to activate the process–”

“One pricked finger and a little bit of blood,” nodded Angwynelle. “But when you wrote me, Mordion was being difficult, and you had to improvise awfully quickly. I don’t know what else you did to that spindle, but I know there
was
something else.”

“And the books?”

“You wanted somewhere to store all your magic so that Mordion couldn’t use it. The curse on you was put to spell-paper to make it legally binding: you, as servant to the Crown, were at the disposal of the Crown, for the good of the Crown, etcetera, etcetera.”

“How much did he get?” asked Poly, feeling suddenly very sick. She had been right– or at least, the jinx, in delving through her mind, had been right. “And how much was there?”