The Hollow Crown: A Novel of Crosspointe (35 page)

Silence. Then, “Good.”

He clamped the inside of his cheek in his teeth, tasting blood. He was a Pale-blasted fool. She didn’t need to be reminded of her ordeal.

“All right,” she said a few minutes later.

He turned. She was dressed much as she had been when she was prowling his house. She wore a pair of close-fitting trousers and a shirt tucked into them. She laced up the neck and held her arm out. “Will you do the sleeves?”

He obeyed. When he was done, she dug in the bag for a comb. At a loss for what to do or say, he collected the blankets and folded them, then picked up his pack.

Her hair hung to her waist and it took a while longer for her to pull the tangles out of it. He watched her, wondering what it would feel like to run it through his fingers. He pulled back from the hunger in that thought, not daring to examine it more closely.

She clipped her hair at the nape of her neck and put away her comb, then turned back to Nicholas. She glanced down at her fingers. “My rings.” She glanced back toward the spring and a shudder ran through her. Her jaw knotted.

He frowned. He’d found the rags of her torn clothing with her boots and the body of the Jutras priest. He’d found no rings. He said so.

She gave a short jerk of her head, her expression contorting as her hands clenched on the leather of the pack. “He took them off in the water. They are in the spring. They are gone.” She swallowed. “It doesn’t matter.”

But clearly it did. And he could do nothing to make it better.

“Come,” he said. “Ellyn and Keros are roasting two coneys. You need to eat.”

She hesitated, then nodded and started to follow him. Then suddenly she stopped, her face going gray.

“What is it?” He swung around, looking for enemies, then turned back to her.

Margaret’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Her body began to shake. She looked like she was about to collapse. Nicholas dropped the blankets and his pack and put a steadying arm around her. She drew a breath, then finally squeezed the words out: “Forcan—Uniat’s hound. He’s loose in Crosspointe!”

Nicholas frowned. “Uniat’s hound? What is that?”

Margaret sagged against him, breathing like she’d been running uphill. He pulled her close, rubbing her back and shoulders to calm her. Keros and Ellyn appeared and halted when they saw the two embracing.

“She says Uniat’s hound—something called Forcan—is loose in Crosspointe,” Nicholas told them.

Both exchanged a frown, looking perplexed. Nicholas shook his head to indicate he had no better sense of it than they did. But Margaret’s reaction told him whatever it was, this Forcan was not to be taken lightly.

He picked her up and carried her back to their camp and settled her beside the fire. Ellyn handed him the blankets and Nicholas wrapped them around her. She clung to him still and he held her as she slowly gained control of herself. At last she sat up straight. She groped for his hand and held it tightly.

Without any prompting, she began telling her story, starting with her capture. None of them interrupted, and when she stumbled and her breathing turned ragged, Nicholas pulled her tight against his chest.

When she was done, the silence lay thick and heavy. The fire crackled and an owl hooted and swept low over them. The smell of the roasting rabbits turned Nicholas’s tense stomach. Margaret snuggled against him and he didn’t know if he could have let her go if she chose to pull away. Not after hearing the fullness of what had happened.

Suddenly Keros stood and stalked away. A few minutes later he returned.

“Sylmont is—” He waved his hand, his mouth twisting. “The lights of it are chaotic and there’s Jutras majick tied up in it. I can
feel
it.” His gaze flicked to Ellyn and away. “We have to get down there. We have to go stop the majicars from destroying themselves and Crosspointe. If there are any majicars left.”

“How?” Margaret asked, sounding stronger now.

With a heroic effort, Nicholas forced his arms to relax as she sat up.

Keros hesitated. “I need to speak with you alone,” he told her. He didn’t look at Nicholas or Ellyn.

Margaret drew back, frowning. “I don’t think—”

“This is a Crown matter,” he said, interrupting. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a king right now. If you think this is information for Azaire and Weverton, then that’s up to you.”

She nodded and stood, walking out of the light of the fire. Keros followed close behind. Nicholas had climbed to his feet with her and watched them go. A hollow space opened in his chest. Whatever Keros was going to say, it could only mean danger to her. Danger she might not share with him because he was a Weverton and she was a Rampling and there were lines that could never be crossed.

Nicholas looked at Ellyn. Her expression simmered with fury and perhaps a dash of hurt.

“They need us,” she said.

He nodded, turned away from the darkness and sat back down. “They do. But they may not want us.”

Margaret followed Keros into the darkness. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, finding herself missing Nicholas’s warm strength. Her eyes narrowed. His care of her had seemed . . . personal. More than just the common kindness of a man looking after an ailing woman. He’d seemed to be truly worried for her, and she had felt safe with him.

She grimaced. If she was truthful with herself, she’d been attracted to him for some while—even before this journey—but he was Nicholas Weverton, her family’s enemy, and she’d never dared even think of it. Her father had taught her to uproot such feelings ruthlessly from their first birth. She knew she should crush them now. She couldn’t afford to have any deep attachment to anyone. That’s what being a Rampling meant—putting Crosspointe ahead of everything and everyone else. Caring for people interfered with that, or meant eventually betraying them in horrible, ugly ways. As her father’s weapon, she had even less choice in such matters than the rest of her family.

But the idea of killing those tender green shoots was more than she could bear. She huddled around them, taking warmth and strength from them.

Keros led her a good distance from camp. Finally he swung around to face her. “I know what’s driving majicars insane.”

Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. “What?”

His mouth pulled down and he looked away. His hands knotted and he began to pace as if he couldn’t stand still. “Somehow, I don’t know how, the Jutras have infected them—us—with their majick, in a similar manner to the way that
sylveth
infects us.”

Margaret could only stare, despite the roar of questions that spun through her mind.

He grinned at her astonishment—a violent, bitter expression. “
Sylveth
majick resists the blood majick infection. That’s what’s driving majicars mad. That’s the feeling I had of something inside my head.” He rubbed his hand over his beard. “I don’t think it’s any more curable than taking away the transformation by
sylveth
.”

“You said you thought it was the backlash from the Kalpestrine falling,” she said, her stomach plummeting as she thought of the ramifications of his news.

“It was a reasonable thought and it may be having some effect on the situation. But it is not the cause. I am sure of it.”

“Why? How do you know?”

He looked away again. “In breaking the spell to rescue you, it was necessary for me to use blood majick.” And then he told her what had happened, from breaking through the crimson mist and capturing the firefly star, to melding the two majicks into a weapon and using Margaret’s pain and terror to do it.

When he was finished, he stood in front of her, his shoulder slumped, his arms hanging loose at his sides, his face a wash of horror and despair at himself and what he’d become. He dared not look at her.

“You think all majicars are . . . infected?” she asked, knowing the answer already.

“Yes.”

“And there’s nothing anyone can do about it?”

He shook his head.

“And if the majicars don’t accept this transformation, then they will go insane?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “Ellyn is infected?”

He nodded, then slowly, like the words were pulled out of him, “But she is not fully transformed. Not yet. Not like me.”

“The star—she needs that to finish the trans formation?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. I think it likely, though it could be that she simply needs to try the majick.”

“So the Jutras don’t fully have a hold on her?” Not like Keros. He flinched and stepped back.

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

Margaret was silent a moment. It was only long training that kept the froth of her emotions from spilling out in a terrified wail. If what Keros said was true and the Jutras had managed to infect all of Crosspointe’s majicars with blood majick, then it was a disaster beyond all imagining. The majicars would be driven to madness. She shook her head. They already were, if the destruction in Sylmont was anything to go by. Which meant they would spread destruction like a disease, and what was left of Crosspointe would have no defenses when the Jutras armada arrived. It was coming. Margaret couldn’t doubt it. She didn’t know how they would navigate the Inland Sea, but they would. They already had at least twice.

She swallowed hard, reining in the panic that flashed through her. “We have to get this news to Ryland and Vaughn.”

Keros shook his head. “There’s no time”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

He drew a breath. “Ellyn says that those poles are hoskarna and they allow the Jutras gods to establish themselves in the land. They are pushing down into the land even as we speak. She wants to knock them down.”

Suddenly she remembered the story Saradapul had told her about the Jutras gods and how they wanted to return to these lands. “Do it.”

“What if they are fueling my new blood majick powers? Meris’s tits, don’t you see?
Sylveth
majick is failing. Even if all our majicars were sane, we might not have the power to stop the Jutras wizards. Using their own blood majick against them could be our only chance. I defeated that Jutras priest because he couldn’t fight the combined majick. If we knock out the hoskarna, we might kill our chance to defend ourselves.”

She stared. She couldn’t see any flaws in his logic. Except . . . infected with blood majick, was he still loyal to Crosspointe? Was any majicar?

He saw her doubts and his face twisted. “I don’t know either,” he gritted from between clenched teeth. “I hate the Jutras with every part of me. But have I become their tool? I wish to the gods that I knew.”

His anguish was real. He looked sick.

“No. You saved me. You are my friend and until you do something that screams Jutras spy, I trust you,” Margaret said, knowing her father and brothers would have slit his throat just to be sure. But that was why she was entirely unfit to rule. She didn’t have the necessary ruthlessness.

His eyes closed and then he opened them slowly. “You are certain?”

She nodded. “Ryland and Vaughn may have other ideas,” she warned him.

“Perhaps you should take your cue from them.” She smiled tightly. “I can’t. That’s not—” She drew a breath and blew it out, her throat thick with emotion. Her chest ached. “I don’t want to. Now, we have to remove the hoskarna. We can’t chance leaving them.” She explained what Saradapul had told her. “We’ll stand a better chance of defeating the Jutras if their gods aren’t here helping them.”

He nodded, but there was something reluctant in his expression. Margaret frowned. “What is it?”

“What about Ellyn? Do I tell her? Do I help her make the full change to blood majicar?”

Whether she liked it or not. He didn’t say it, but Margaret knew that’s what he meant. Sympathy made her reach out and take his hand. He’d been made a majicar against his will, and now a blood majicar. Forcing Ellyn would hurt him deeply. But he’d do it—for Crosspointe. If she needed confirmation that he did not belong to the Jutras, she had it.
Unless it is a ploy to create another Jutras majicar
. Her father’s voice niggled up from the grave. She quashed it. No. She had to trust him. She couldn’t stop the Jutras alone. Without him, without Nicholas and Ellyn, too, she had little chance, especially with Forcan wandering about. She shuddered, remembering the enormous beast. Her hand clenched on Keros’s.

“We’ll talk to her,” she said, prevaricating. And if she said no . . . Margaret didn’t know what she would do.

“And Weverton? What do we tell him?”

“Everything,” she said and knew in this her brothers would disagree as well. Perhaps even put a dagger through her throat for treason. But Nicholas had resources, and right now the Crown was in shambles. Crosspointe needed him whether anyone liked it or not.

Keros nodded. “I agree, for what it’s worth. He seems to have learned some things on this journey. He will make a good ally.”

“And Ellyn? She belongs to Azaire. How much can I rely on her?”

“She has done more for us than is justified by her service to Azaire. But I don’t know. She hates the Jutras. That much is true. She would not like to see them overrun Crosspointe.”

“Then let’s go get this over with.”

Margaret started to turn away, but Keros caught her arm. She turned back.

“There’s something else. I didn’t have time to tell your brother and now—I don’t know how it fits into any of this, but you should know.”

Something in his voice sent a chill racing across Margaret’s skin. She folded her arms and clutched them tight, bracing herself. “What is it?

“What do you know of Lucy Trenton?”

“My cousin? As far as I know, my father confided everything to me about her.” As far as she knew, but her father kept a lot of secrets. Keros’s wince told her that he was equally of aware of her father’s penchant.

“She is a majicar of the magnitude of Errol Cipher,” he said.