Cinders of Magic

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Alara stopped her march in front of the heavy wooden door and took a moment to wipe the dampness from her eyes. She looked down either side of the hallway, but of course, it was empty. She took a deep breath, ready for the plunge, and with a click opened the door to reveal the bedroom beyond. Alara grabbed the tray of tea on the table nearby as she headed inside.

In the room, a woman sat in a chair near the large blue-stain windows. Her crimson hair was purple in the gentle refracted light, but her red eyes, the same eyes Damian had, kept their amber color.

“I’ve brought tea, Mother,” Alara said. Lara Di’Vinincia’s eyes took the full measure of her daughter in an instant, inspecting her posture, how she held her chin, and even placing value on the way Alara’s black mourning dress hugged her figure. Alara saw no recognition in her mother’s eyes: a bad day.

“I didn’t know father had taken an interest in Leorin girls. You will need to train that affectation from the way you speak. In the proper tongue, we address our betters with miss and sir.”

Alara set the tea tray on the table in front of her mother and sat while she poured a cup. “I will keep that in mind.”

“Have we met?” Lara asked as she took the offered cup of tea. “I’ve been away a while, but you do look familiar.”

“Yes. We’ve met.”

“I apologize then. I am so terrible with names and faces.”

Alara knew her mother’s lie for what it was. Remembering every name and face you encountered was one of the first lessons her mother had taught her, and it was a difficult one to master.

“If you would remind me, dear.”

“Alara.”

“What a pretty name. I am biased, of course; my name also comes from the scriptures. Is your mother a faithful woman?”

“She was.”

“I see,” Lara said. She set aside the tea and started to gather her red hair on her shoulder. “While you are here, would you assist me with my hair? Yesterday’s return trip was a very long one, and it seems my braid came undone in the night. The curse of my hairs’ over smoothness.”

Lara fixed her daughter with her eyes, her calm smile lent no weight to the request, but her eyes made it all but a demand, the perfect way to interact with a servant. Alara set aside the teacup she was ready to pour for herself and left her seat. Her mother’s hair was smooth as silk between her fingers. The near liquid texture was one of the few things that the two women shared.

It took Alara’s fingers a few minutes to remember the motions while the woman sat in the chair perfectly prim, ignoring Alara’s fumbling with saintly patience. Alara found the rhythm to it after a moment and sought to take her mind from her hands by looking about the room. Varnished furniture consumed the bedroom almost completely, leaving little space for anyone to move. There were far more books strewn on the shelves than she remembered being here before. Some were ripped and burnt where they rested half-destroyed, and similar black scorch marks decorated the deadwood walls of the room in a mad pattern.

Alara’s heart started to ache as one mark, in particular, pulled at her attention. A doll sat on a far shelf blackened and flaking where the linen that covered its insides had been torn away. The face had been so badly burned that it was unrecognizable. She tried to cast aside the feeling with little success and set to simply search the room to distract herself, but each blackened scorch mark along the wooden walls of the room only served to deepen the aching. Tears started to come to her again.

“We buried Hessaux today,” Alara said. Immediately she hated herself for saying it.

“I’m sorry.” Lara placed her hand on Alara’s arm, stilling it. “Were you close?”

“Yes.” Alara dropped the braid half-finished. “I should go.”

“No.” Lara held her arm tight. She released Alara’s arm and turned to look at her, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I feel anxious today, and I do not understand why. Has a messenger come by chance?”

“No, mother...miss. No postage today.”

“Good. Good.” Lara took a moment to smooth her bunched dress. “Still, you should stay. You could do with a distraction. Would you like to hear of my trip to the capital?”

Alara knew the story backward and forwards by heart. Once it had been an amazing experience to hear, but that, of course, melted away with each retelling and eventually became just another part of her mother’s day. The same cursed day her mind trapped her in on occasion. Those occasions were becoming more frequent.

“Very well.” Alara picked her mother’s hair up once more and began to unweave the braid so that it could be started again properly.

“You are very good.”

“My mother taught me.”

“That sounds wonderful. My mother taught me to braid as well, though I have never been able to manage to do it with my own hair. I cannot seem to envision what is happening behind me properly.

“So yes, the capital, Highland. I doubt you have seen the White City on the Hill, but it takes my breath away every time that I see it. Truly, the jewel of the kingdom. My mother escorted me there this time. She has taken to a new project, renovating the Highlord’s Cathedral that overlooks the city. It is a massive undertaking, she said, one that will require years and years to complete, but when she is finished, you can be sure that the palace itself will be put to shame.

“The life that the city nobility lives is what I have always enjoyed best about our trips. When the night falls, it is almost as if the entire city sleeps, except for the gentry, which gathers in ballrooms throughout the city to practice dance and politic in the moonlight. Each affair is an extravagance that you would never find here so far out in the country and is simply impossible to do justice with words.

“I attended every night that I was in the city. A difficult thing to do given that with only such a small period, I would require a different gown for each event, but this time I came well prepared. There is a feeling of being exotic. Novani heritage helps a great deal.”

Novani“I’m sure,” Alara said.

“Yes. Speaking of exotic, I saw very many women walking with woven vines through their hair there. It is a style that has begun to be incorporated from opened dealings with the Saike. The people there grow almost all of their foods on vertical gardens that can stretch hundreds of feet high.”

“A passing fancy. It won’t last but a few years,” Alara said.

“Most fashion is a passing fancy. It is important to keep up with what is being done.”

“To attract respectable men.”

“Yes, there is that. It is also good to project your best self, and wrapping your hair in vines can assist you with that now and again. As long as everyone agrees that is what you should be doing.”

Lara paused; she could see Alara’s tiny reflection from the hanging mirror across the room. She moved as if dead, hands slipping over each other in harmony but without any enthusiasm in the task.

“Tell me about yourself,” Lara said. “There must be something that can excite you, girl.”

“Excite me? There is plenty. A good story, an amusing play, a night spent enjoying good company is an especially good time, and, of course, there is catching up on the local gossiping. I try to do that whenever I return, but sometimes it is so difficult to find the time.”

“And you’ve so little time,” Lara said.

“This time, it would seem so. Family duties, you understand. Men placing their deadlines on my shoulders expecting the world to just change to match their expectations.”

“Ah yes, family can be that way. If I were in your shoes, however, I would tell them all to eat thorns.” Lara saw the girl in the mirror start at her declaration. It brought a small bit of glee to her heart.

“You would? Eschew familial duty, and just do what you want?” Alara asked.

“That, or something cleverer. If someone thinks that I will just be doing what they expect and not do my best to turn their plans on their heads, then they have another think coming. Tell me, Alara, do you plan to just let these men tell you what direction you are going to walk?”

“No,” Alara said smiling, “I never intended to.”

Alara cinched her mother’s braid and laid it on her shoulder so it could be inspected. She caught sight of herself smiling in the mirror across the room as she stood over her mad mother. The same mother that was not even able to understand her eldest son had been buried only a few hours ago. The smile fell away, and Alara moved to fill the cup with tea once more.

“I really must be going now,” Alara said.

Lara’s hand reached out in a blur and seized Alara’s arm. Her grip was painful at first, but Alara knew her mother meant nothing by it. Alara searched her mother’s gold-flecked eyes that were wide in momentary panic and rested her hand on the vice on her forearm.

“There’ll be no post today, Mother. Do not worry yourself.”

Lara blinked, and at once, the panic was gone. She let go of Alara’s arm and pulled her own hands into her lap, embarrassed again. “I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s fine.” Alara turned and began to head for the door.

“You’re too familiar for a servant,” Lara said. “I don’t mind it too much, but father will look to whip it from you if you speak to him that way. Be careful.”

“I will,” Alara said, half out the door.

“I would like to speak again. Will you come later today when I am feeling ready to go out. Father has seen fit to leave me only this black dress, and it seems incredibly dour to go about in that given how beautiful the day is.”

“Of course.”

She looked like she would say more, and Alara waited at the door for her. After a minute, Lara clicked her jaw shut and nodded to the girl at the door. Alara slid into the hallway and shut the door with a click.

“That was cruel of you.”

Alara spun and fell against the hall table, which screeched terribly as it slid on the stone floor. Her brother, Agillan, leaned against the wall in front of her with a smile of absolute amusement playing across his lips. The wicked grin faded fast enough anyone else might have thought they had only imagined it, and it was replaced with a charming smile. Agillan’s black hair and ice-blue eyes flecked with silver matched Alara’s own perfectly. His hands clenched his cane with white knuckles, but the rest of his form was so relaxed anyone other than his twin would be unable to see the tension. It struck Alara that his beauty had outstripped her own in the past year; it made him all the more dangerous.

“She won’t remember in the morning,” Alara said as she collected herself.

“Not to her, to yourself.” Agillan pulled himself from the wall, and the brace on his right leg groaned with the shifting of his weight. He steadied himself with his cane and laid a hand on Alara’s shoulder. “You’ve been crying.”

Alara pulled away, and Agillan was good enough to allow her. “You haven’t?”

“Plenty enough for the both of us. We received his body some time ago, and I was properly inconsolable down in the crypt with him for days. It took the coaxing of three young maidens to pull me from wailing over his body.”

“This is no time for jokes,” Alara sneered.

“You should leave me that much, sister. My brother is dead, my mother is mad, and now my sister conspires behind my back. She blames me for the death of the brother after all, so why shouldn’t she.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Agillan approached, and the wood of his cane creaked under the pressure of his hand. “You wouldn’t, would you,” he said, his face darkening. “I suppose the brooding adjudicator in our guest house is merely here to get in touch with old contacts and mourn the loss of his grandchild.”

“Yes,” Alara said. Her heel kicked against the table leg as she tried to step away and found herself blocked. “Also, he thinks it will irritate father to no end.”

Agillan took another step forward and moved an ebony lock of hair from Alara’s face. The man was so slight that were he not a channeler, no one would have ever considered him a danger. Given that Agillan held the Gate of the Blocker in his mind, he could call on the strength of ten men, and also, given that Agillan was a preternaturally gifted channeler, that number was probably closer to thirty. The simple brushing was meant to be a threat to anyone wise enough to see it, but Alara feared nothing from her brother. Threats were merely the tool that he used to connect with others; he needed the fear for some reason.

“Yes, of course.” Agillan stepped around her. “Grandfather always does like to play his games. Push people this way and that, or just try to get a rise out of them. I wonder if he understands how dangerous politicking can be. If he pushes the wrong person a little too harshly, things could go catastrophically wrong.”

“You, for instance,” Alara said.

“Me, for instance,” Agillan repeated. “I do have a terrible temper and such difficulty controlling it.”

“You’ve always controlled it for me.”

Agillan frowned and tapped his cane against the table three times. “I have.”

“I appreciate it,” Alara said. “I think grandfather understands the dangers of politicking quite well. Some people may feel harmed by his actions, but he works for what is best for everyone.”

Agillan held his quiet a moment. He looked over his sister from head to toe, evaluating her with new eyes, and glanced back to the door to their mother’s bedroom. He gave the table one more rap to bring the number of his strikes to a holy four before smiling back at his sister.

“Of course, he does. I trusted that was the case. I’ve taken up the hobby of politics myself given my new lot.” He trapped the brace on his leg, which gave a tinny clank. “I must say I think I am picking up the knack for it.”

“Agillan I--”

“Say no more, sister.” Agillan gave Alara a bow and turned to take his leave. “We’ll speak later, I’m sure. Yes, all important meetings happen later.”

He proceeded to limp down the hallway towards the east wing and left Alara struggling to find something to say. He was gone before anything came to her. Alara swallowed the pain in her chest and set the table straight once again in the hallway. She headed in the opposite direction without a destination in mind. Her mother was right about one thing, it would be terrible to spend the day inside.