The ride to Phaleinas took up the rest of their day. Marshal Perdiccas cursed loudly when the warded, wooden palisades of the town came into view. The charter her mother had granted them did not include the right to ward and wall, and if they were so blatantly flouting such physical limitations, what else were they guilty of?

The local magnates were wise enough, at least, not to bar the gates against her and hers.

“We shall be here for a night and a day at the very least,” Mydea said to Tomas.

“I see,” Tomas said. “If you don’t mind, I would find my own lodgings. There’s some private business I must see to.”

Out of courtesy, she asked, “Shall you need a guard, or some coin? I would be a poor host to leave you without any means of support.”

He untied his coin pouch and it landed in his hand with loud, crisp chinking. For good measure, he even showed her the contents, and her jaw nearly dropped. Not only did Tomas have gold and silver with him, but he carried Imperial Stars of bright platinum stamped with the clear likeness of the Empress too. “I thank you for the offer, but I will be fine on my own,” Tomas said. “I wish you good fortune, my lady.”

As their party proceeded deeper into the heart of the town, the mayor finally made himself known. He was a man more blubber than skin, and it was obvious his many-jewelled hands had never known the bite of a plough or a sword.

“Lady Mydea!” the mayor said jovially. “What brings you to our city?” He spoke not in Monsi like his skin would suggest, but in Syngian’s High Speech, albeit with a gruff accent.

So the games begin, Mydea thought. “To your town, Mayor.” Her words wiped the frown from his face. “I’ve come to collect the taxes owed to my brother.”

“Ah, this is most unusual, my lady,” the mayor said. “My memory grows poor as of late, but I am sure we’ve already sent you our payments this year. Perhaps the caravan was beset by bandits?”

“Whatever the reason, it has not been received,” Mydea said. “I’ve also been informed by the farmers surrounding your town that you’ve collected taxes on my brother’s behalf. You overstep yourself.”

“It was the city council’s opinion that we ought to ease the burden of the young Lord Aspyrtus,” the mayor said.

“He is a grown man now,” Mydea said. “There shall be no more need for that. Now, the taxes?”

He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that’s beyond my authority. The city council must be called to order if new taxes are to be raised, and they shall not be happy about it.”

“Let them convene then. I shall impress the importance to them myself,” Mydea said.

Mayor Symon blinked. “You wish to attend the city council?”

“I wish to address the town council,” Mydea corrected. As if she would subject herself to a court of craftsmen and coin counters.

Symon glanced at the sky. “It will have to be on the morrow then, my lady. It is nearly dusk, and by decree, no one may stay on the streets after the bells ring.”

“Will your watchmen come after me if I do?” Mydea asked with an amused grin. “They shall fare poorly against my knights. Still, I would not have it be said that I abused your town’s hospitality.”

Though watchmen with clubs could do little to an armored knight, in theory, a town as large as this could muster a thousand members of the militia in case of siege. More than a day’s march away from its adulterine walls, and they could maybe sustain just sixty people arranged by guild with good arms and armor. Them she would consider a threat.

“Might I offer you and your father my manse for the night?” Mayor Symon asked.

“You may,” Mydea said.

A look at his manse and it was clear that Mayor Symon was involved in the trade of whalebone, from which the town derived most of its wealth. Phaleinas was home to the Empire’s northernmost harbor on the Sundered Sea, and the first port of call for any whalers in the Sunless Sea, to say nothing of their own exertions. His parents may have tilled the soil, but he would never need to with such a lucrative trade. It would not even surprise Mydea if his sons and daughters were married to the poorer stoneborn, for the two mixed more often than the aristocracy would admit.

“They even have warm baths here,” Mydea said to her father that night.

Father shrugged. “We have warm baths at home.”

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She rolled her eyes at him. “Not everyone is a fount of power like you. The man must have more servants than we do to have the magic to spare.”

“So what role shall I play for you tomorrow?” Father sank into a seat beside a table with a clear mirror. “Will I get to burn down their walls?”

“If they remain incalcitrant, it is a distinct possibility,” Mydea said. If the mayor had any listening ears in their room, and she suspected he might, it was important he knew of the lengths they were willing to go to. “He will have forged a city charter. It is just a question of whose name he has stolen.”

“How do you know?” Father asked.

“Because they have raised wards and walls to safeguard their town,” Mydea said. “The Monsi are different, but not stupid. They would not be so brazen without at least some legal cover, no matter how fictitious.”

“So they’ve forged the Empress’ signature then? Or Pleonexia’s?”

“If they have, it would be a grievous mistake. Neither will take kindly to forgery. Lord Pleonexia is not so short-sighted that he would allow his authority to be usurped, even if it resulted in our house’s weakening.” The man was slighted, not suicidal.

Father’s forehead bunched up. “Then… they’ve used the name of House Kolchis?”

“We would have the right to grant them a city charter, as well as wards and walls as a house external,” Mydea said. Even a house principal’s right to ward and wall was limited to their castle and some number of settlements. Only a house external or eminent were entirely unshackled in that regard.

“That makes no sense,” Father said. “Is the whole issue not that they do not recognize our house as so? How then can they use a status they themselves do not recognize to empower themselves?”

“They might claim it was done during Mother’s time. That would be the neatest way to enact their scheme, if I am correct,” Mydea said.

“You have a plan then?”

“Don’t I always?” she asked.

Father bobbed his head. “So you do,” he said as he pulled out his leather-bound journal and began flipping through its pages with his right hand while his other summoned a quill and some ink from a nearby shelf. It was a wasteful display of magic that would have sent a hystor into fits.

“I don’t see why you refuse to tell us about what spell you’re crafting,” Mydea said. It was rare for a house to be raised to lords without a signature spell of their own, and to her knowledge, House Kolchis was the only house external in the Empire bereft of one. Much depended on the utility and strength of the spell in question, but even a middling one would do much to solidify their house’s position … maybe even enough to put an end to their current troubles.

“It is not complete yet, and I would rather be struck by Ygeia than speak of its purpose before then,” Father said. Guarding one’s secrets, especially when a signature spell was involved, was well and good, but her father kept those secrets even from family. It was excessive. “It is my life’s work and the reason your mother married me, and so it must be perfect.”

That Mother had married Father for his magic was no secret, though their mutual affection certainly helped things too. Few mages could match his might in magic, but his mind held a keen edge to it too … when he cared to apply it. Mydea couldn’t help but think what a tragedy it was that her grandfather had died when he did, and that mother took ill, for both were made even more terrible by robbing Father of the chance to graduate from the athenaeum. The stoneborn might have accepted him then, though his propensity for excessive violence would have remained an issue.

She watched his left hand flit around the page, and she could only conclude he was sketching something by the motions he made. Then, his hand stilled and his body stiffened. Father muttered something beneath his breath, shook his head, and with a growl, tore out the pages and reduced them all to cinders.

Mydea gasped. She’d seen him done the same on this trip, but never so many pages. The journal when shut looked thin to her now. “Father, your work!”

He waved away her concerns. “It was a flawed path, and would have led to nowhere.”

“But you worked so hard on it.”

“Better that it burns than distract me further,” Father said. “Besides, it is not truly gone.”

Mydea frowned. She knew of no magic that could stitch ashes back to paper, or divine truth from wind. “How do you mean?”

“This isn’t my only journal,” Father said. “I have another back home whose leather binding is made from the same calf’s skin, whose pages are from the same tree. They are twins birthed by the same craftsman and gifted by the same woman.”

“You speak of mimicry,” Mydea said. Whatever he had written in one book would appear in the other as well, for they shared a soul still bound together by an ethereal weave.

“Modified, of course, so that destroying one will not undo the other.” He smiled and rapped his head with a fist formed from his left hand. “I remember every single word I’ve ever written down too. I can jot it down again if need be.”

There was a rigor for records in him the hystors would have praised. Had he not married Mother, he would have done well for himself as a researcher of the athenaeum. “Aigis has its own library, but we’re not the match of an athenaeum. Perhaps it’d serve you to spend a season there?”

Father snorted. “I would rather cut off my own nose then subject myself to the Thalassian Athenaeum again.”

“It need not be that one,” Mydea said. “The Imperial City has its Archive—a grand repository of secrets and spellcraft. Surely there’d be something there that could help with your work?”

“No, I would do this alone. Let no one say Aetos of Kolchis built his spell on the back of another’s work.”

Her father’s damanable pride was a match for any of the Marcherkin. He insisted on remaking the wheel in his image, rather than consult with the work of centuries of scholars. To what ends? Mydea thought. To prove his worth to the memory of my mother? To prove something to himself? Father held two great loves—her mother and his magic, and he could be stubborn when either of those things were involved.