Engine of Lies ebook Read online

  My opinion counted for nothing. Several days after we arrived, we gathered in a large open valley for the first round. Soon the players were dodging through billowing smoke as thick as an ash cloud rising from Grímsvötn. Waves of magical energy shooting in all directions blurred and confused the magical signatures, until I couldn’t tell which wizard was which.

  Somehow Mjöllnir’s flame-haired granddaughter, Hildur, kept track. I taxed her command of Frankish, demanding a running commentary while butterflies danced in my guts.

  At least they weren’t throwing flame at me. “No place for a woman,” Jean had said. I did not argue. So why did the butterflies sometimes give way to steam? “You are not forceful enough,” he had also said. Rubbish. I had more power to draw on than all but three of the men in the tournament; if war called for it, I could punch through a level-three wizard’s shields as if they were paper. I shied away from that thought. No point in getting sick.

  Despite my worries, searing pain exploding across my abdomen took me by surprise. I screamed and doubled over. A moment later, forcing myself upright, I jumped through the fire to where René lay on the ground, curled into a whimpering ball. Flame billowed at me and bounced off the mirror shield I slammed into place. I grabbed René and dropped him at the feet of a trio of resigned earth witches on the sidelines. We were soon in our guest quarters, with René sleeping off the effects of a bad burn, and me regretting my impetuous decision to bond with him. And praying Jean hadn’t noticed I’d jumped into the arena without my shields up.

  At the end of the day, the wizards still standing emerged one by one from the smoke, more or less singed. Most nursed several burns, some serious. Jean, untouched and unruffled, congratulated the other wizards on a battle well fought.

  He assured me René had put up a good fight against everyone short of Thule’s warlocks. They would not draw on the volcano in a tournament, but experience showed in other ways, and neither was inclined to pull their punches, even against a thirteen-year old.

  “One cannot afford to let one’s guard slip for an instant,” Jean said, “when facing a lightning-wielder. Those two make me nervous.”

  I said, “I don’t believe you.”

  His lips twitched. “You are a warlock, my dear. Would I lie to you?”

  On the tournament’s second day, I jumped into the arena with my shields up when René got burned. That evening I put my foot down. “You are done with this tournament. Fighting lightning-throwers is dangerous, and you can’t keep a shield up for hours.”

  I glared at both him and Jean, daring one or the other to argue, but neither did. René seemed relieved, though he tried manfully to hide it.

  “You were right,” he said. “I can get hurt, even if I live through it.”

  “Good,” Jean said. “I am glad you have learned that lesson. We must send you back in a few years for a refresher—you will hold your own very well by then.”

  René grinned. “I’ll be able to jump through the fire by then. I’ll get myself out of the fight. Lucinda won’t have to do anything but watch.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Learned your lesson, did you? What makes you think I’d come back with you?”

  “You’ll have to. You think you can jump all the way across the ocean to Thule? You want to feel me get burned and be too far away to help?”

  I glared at Jean. His eyebrows rose. I said, “Why did I think this bond was a good idea?”

  The last day of the tournament, I stayed in our guest quarters and attempted to read, but René relayed Hildur’s commentary on who scored against whom. I couldn’t shut him out of my head. He was lucky I didn’t torch his dinner.

  That night, René cornered me with Matt, Jean’s valet, and Tom, the secretary, in tow.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Arturos said about you not getting better fast enough,” René said, “and I’ve talked it over with Tom and Matt. Even if Warlock Quicksilver’s letting you out of fighting, we’re not. We’re going to treat you just like one of the boys.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to have to be ready for us to throw fire at you any time, anywhere, whether you like it or not.”

  “Why, you wretched little—”

  “Just giving you fair warning.”

  “I’ll get you for this, you—”

  He danced out of reach. “Go ahead, flame me. I dare you.”

  I hit him square in the chest. He ducked out the door, laughing. Later, I asked Jean, “If tapping into the volcano is so dangerous, why do you want to teach René? He’ll have the Token of Office someday. Can he handle it now? He’s not a level-five yet, anyway.”

  “His lack of maturity does concern me, but with the protective spells he will not be in grave danger until he is a level five. When he is Fire Warlock, he will be in less danger the earlier we begin, and it will be easier on all three of us if you two learn at the same time.”

  “Yes, I can see that, but what will you tell him about why I’m learning, too—and why I’m in more of a hurry?”

  “I will tell him part of the truth: that we intend to unlock the Water Office, and the lock is the strongest we have ever seen.”

  René, when told, shrugged. He was stirring the fire and didn’t even look up. “I figured it was something like that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made us all work so hard on locks.”

  A week later, while we were making merry in the perpetual cool light of a far northern summer, Warlock Mjöllnir gave us two rings, one for me, the other for René. I put mine on and held out my hands. The simple gold wedding band on the ring finger of my left hand, the silver rune-inscribed band on my right—these were all the rings I needed.

  “Wear it at all times,” Jean said. “Do not ever go out in public without it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Easier to remember that way. But I am surprised. How did you convince them to do this for us?”

  “These spells cannot be secret forever. I showed the Thule Guild Council that the Europan Empire has already recreated them. It is only a matter of time until there are other lightning-wielders.”

  I said, “They have? But…”

  Jean smiled. “You surely do not expect me to ask them for help.”

  I didn’t return his smile. “If they have them, why didn’t they have half-a-dozen warlocks throwing lightning at the Fortress? Could even the Fire Office have stood up to that?”

  The two men exchanged glances. Jean said, “There will never be that many of the highest-ranked warlocks in the Empire—the political forces within her will not allow it. Frankland is a thorn in her side, but not a threat to the emperor’s hold on power. Any warlock who began the training without the emperor’s permission would be executed by the emperor for treason or assassinated by any of a dozen competing factions.”

  Mjöllnir said, “Emperor can’t learn—too old. Warlocks young enough to learn don’t have enough clout to grab the throne when the old one dies.”

  Jean said, “A foolhardy emperor with dynastic ambitions might let his sons learn, but only one would survive the infighting. Relax, my dear.”

  The prospect of even one lightning-wielding enemy warlock fighting our Fire Warlock was nightmare fodder, but that problem, if it ever arose, was far in the future. We had more immediate problems to worry about.

  “Empire’s put a bounty on your head, girl,” Mjöllnir said. “Big one. Boy’s head, too, but not as big.” He frowned at me for a moment. “Be careful. Even lightning throwers can be ambushed.”

  Mjöllnir took us to the rim of a volcano, miles from any settlement, and we began the long, hard work of building up the strength to channel the earth’s fire on our own.

  Jean said, “Now, and for years to come, you will draw as much power from me as you can handle, as quickly as possible. You will each learn your own limit, and go up to, but not beyond, that limit. With time, your
limits will expand, and you must continue going up to the new limits.”

  René said, “If we’re pulling through you, why is it dangerous?”

  “I might mistake your limits, nor will I always be there to restrict the flow. Some day you will call the lightning on your own, else these exercises have no purpose. Before we begin, it will be instructive for you to experience the power flowing through me. Put up your own shields, and take my hand when ready.”

  As ready as I was ever going to be. I took his outstretched hand.

  The crash blinded and deafened me. Scorching pain crackled up my arm. I snatched my hand away and screamed. I hugged my right arm against my chest with my left, my heart pounding. When my vision cleared, I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and flexed my hand. It was undamaged. “We don’t have to do that again for a while, do we?”

  “No, my love, not for many months. René?”

  René stared at me, his eyes wide. He swallowed hard and took Jean’s hand.

  CRASH!

  “Yow!” René jerked his hand back, as I had done. When he could speak again, he said, “Didn’t you teach him a lock so he can’t accidentally draw on Storm King? Would you teach me, too?”

  Jean laughed. “Smart boy. Now, Lucinda, are you ready to begin?”

  No. Not then. Not ever.

  I massaged my arm and eyed his outstretched hand as if it were a viper. “How long does it take to learn to tap into the volcano?”

  Mjöllnir shrugged. “Ten years—”

  I yelped, “Ten years?”

  He held up a hand. “Easy. We start as soon as he shows he’s a warlock, but most are too hot-headed in their teens, so we stretch it out.”

  “How long will it take if I work at it day in and day out?”

  He shrugged. “Five years, maybe, or four.”

  After my arm stopped aching, I took Jean’s hand. He said, “Draw as much power as you can control, as fast as you can.” Half again as much as the biggest blast I had made on Hooknose Ridge would be good. Heat like a blast from a blacksmith’s forge flowed through me.

  “A respectable start,” Jean said, “but your experience with the lesser lock on the Water Office has stretched your limit. You can handle more than that.”

  “More?” I tried to pull my hand away. He wouldn’t let go.

  “Quicker, too.” Mjöllnir said, “Timid now, pay for it later.”

  Timid, was I? We’d see about that.

  “Do it now,” Jean said.

  I reached for more, much more. More than three times what I had handled on Hooknose Ridge surged through me. I reeled from his grasp and fell. Mjöllnir caught me and lowered me to lie on a flat boulder, pulling the heat away until I shivered. Spots clouded my vision, and I couldn’t hold my head up.

  The blood had drained from Jean’s face. He pulled glasses and a pitcher of water out of thin air, and knelt beside me, propping me up to drink. I leaned against him until the spots faded and I could hold the glass without sloshing the water out of it.

  Jean gave René a wan smile. “I would advise approaching your limit more gradually, and not coming quite so close. Ready for your turn?”

  “No, sir.”

  René said that?

  I said, “Sure you are. You can’t be bested by a girl, can you?”

  “Sure I can. I don’t mind.”

  I turned my head and stared at him. He returned the stare with eyes as big as an owl’s.

  Jean said, “There is hope for him, yet.”

  “Just kidding.” He took his time getting up. He made three blasts, each one larger than the previous. After the third, he swayed on his feet, and would have fallen on the rocks if Jean hadn’t propped him up. Sweat poured off him, and he drained his glass of water in one long sustained breath. After a second glass he lay down on the boulder beside me, said, “I’m tired,” and went to sleep.

  The colour had returned to Jean’s face. “I must be more careful what I order you to do. No more for today.”

  “Good start.” Mjöllnir grinned. “Four years. Maybe three.”

  When I wrote to Beorn with what Mjöllnir had said, his reply was terse. “Too long. Make it two.”

  A Quiet Oasis

  From Thule we hopped across the ocean to the New World via Ultima Thule. Jean’s contacts were eager to talk with him for hours on end about governance, and he began a steady correspondence with the Frost Maiden, polite but cool in tone, describing the conversations in detail.

  The discussions were enlightening, but I could not sit still for long with so much else to see and do. René and I often slipped out and went exploring with our staff while Jean talked. Usually, I hid the group’s talents behind locks to make us less conspicuous. More than once we encountered robbers expecting easy prey. Our staff found these incidents comical. The robbers, not so much. We also fended off assassination attempts, amateurish and easily deflected. After several of these, Jean raked us over the coals for becoming complacent.

  We settled into a routine for our practice sessions, jumping to remote locations twice a week; on the days in between engaging in ongoing but unsatisfactory exercises with locks, attempting to draw power from more than one person. Finding isolated places to practice was not a problem in the New World, but after we returned to the Old World, skirting the Empire, we often had to jump long distances to find a mountainside we could blast into heaps of charred rubble. I pushed myself as hard as I dared. Jean didn’t forbid it, but reminded me the four Officeholders had agreed we had years to prepare. I eased up to reduce the danger of heatstroke only after getting pregnant. René tried his best but couldn’t keep up, as he had not yet reached level five.

  If I could have helped the competitive wretch along, I would have, because he made me pay for besting him. The Fire Eaters tormented me, and each other, day and night, until Jean stepped in and ordered them to slacken the pace before they drove away the mundane local servants. Not out of pity for me, I noted. If anything, he egged them on, pointing out that while René had the quickest reflexes, I had the best aim. When Tom or Matt attacked me as I rummaged for a snack in the middle of the night, Jean, drown him, slept through it. I confounded them by keeping a mirror shield on at all times—a feat none of the Fire Eaters could match—and the assaults became more cautious after I gave them each reason to be grateful my attacks were feeble.

  As my belly expanded, I spent half my day shoving food in my mouth, eating quantities that amazed our staff and shocked our hostesses. I lost interest in seeing everything, choosing to stroll on Jean’s arm through only the most interesting sites. The Fire Eaters saw everything; I listened to René’s running commentary and waited for him to show me the most interesting bits in the evening’s fire.

  At the beginning of my ninth month, we stopped in a city built millennia ago around thermal baths, and I discovered immersing my gravid body in the water eased the strain on my back. I astounded Jean by going, night after night, to wallow in the tepid water at the shallow end of the pool in our host’s seraglio, but there was nothing for even a fire witch to fear in water no deeper than a bath. I didn’t remind him he had said the shields around the seraglio, particularly the ones barring men, were solid. Out of the Fire Eaters’ reach, I could drop my shields, and rest my psyche as well as my aching back.

  One evening, after a hard practice session on a remote mountaintop far to the north, all three of us were drained. Jean was dismayed when our host, an athletic warlock in his prime, announced he had arranged for a sporting event, of some aggressively bloody variety, to take place that evening for Jean’s benefit.

  I said, “You don’t have to do anything other than watch, right?”

  “True, but I would rather not. This so-called sport is less about skill and play than about instilling aggression in young men, with no proper outlet other than beating each other senseless. I have seen more than
enough war; I do not approve of encouraging belligerence when not needed.”

  “Oh. Well.” Pointing out that was how I viewed the tournaments would not be diplomatic. The endless hours of fighter training had one purpose: kill our attackers before they killed us. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in saying ‘have fun’?”

  He gave me a sardonic smile and left.

  I shuffled to the pool and slipped into the water with a deep sigh. Perhaps there was some point in learning to swim. I looked up, jolted, and then relaxed. René had not overhead my heretical thought.

  I lay like a beached whale on a ramp in the shallows, with my bugling belly rising out of the water. My headache intensified, and I recognised the signs—my sense of prescience was warning of trouble ahead. I cast about, checking with René, but he seemed in no danger. Together, we went over our plans for the following day, and found nothing there.

  Jean did not respond to my call. As silly as it seemed to worry about him within the palace walls, Mjöllnir’s warning—even lightning throwers can be ambushed—nagged at me, and I couldn’t let it rest. I slipped in and out of René’s mind with no effort, but my husband’s was a stone wall. Whatever he had to hide was safe from me.

  Of course he didn’t have anything to hide from me. I refocused on the lamplight’s rippling reflections on the surface of the water, but tonight they failed to soothe me. My lady’s maid was sidling out into hip-deep water, looking pleased at her own daring.

  “Katie,” I said, “You’re making me nervous. Don’t go in over your head.”