*

The sad patter made by Marigold’s slippers on the steep, winding stairs of Black Crux Manor’s inner sanctum contrasted oddly with the heavy boot falls of her two minders. She had grown so used to Lady Gilliana’s grim swordsmen that it hardly struck her to consider how silly it looked that such killers were needed to guard a stooped old woman in a robe and slippers. At least, that would be the outward appearance. She was well aware that with the sweep of her hand, she could have both these guards imprisoned within a Barrier on these very stairs for a week.

But, then what? Gilliana would sense the spell. And while she was neither Journeyer nor Master, she still exuded such power in Barrier-Casting that Marigold was loath to test her. Certainly not in this weakened state. Plus, Gilliana aside, the castle was crawling with many more of the foreign soldiers than the two who guarded her presently. Could she trap all of them and shamble out of the manor before at least one got close enough to jam a knife in her ribs? Because that was what they claimed Gilliana had commanded them to do if any of them saw her attempt a Casting. One of Marigold’s guards in particular—a tall woman with a thick accent who seemed to delight in the sadistic—gleefully reminded Marigold of this near daily.

This was the first she had been allowed out of the room they kept her in since she had arrived. She refused to think of it as her chambers, despite the fact they were the very same she had once occupied and thought of as her home. They were a cell to her now. She had been locked inside and guarded night and day. She had been allowed to bathe, once, and then given clean clothes and regular meals. But for the first few days, she had not been let out and no one had come to speak with her. Not once had she seen Gilliana.

The bitch, Marigold thought. It was just like her to go through all the trouble to imprison Marigold here, only to leave her waiting for days wondering why, up until summoning her this evening. She suspected now was the time she would find out at last what her fate was to be.

They turned and went up a thick-carpeted hallway. Marigold knew where they were going now. The audience chamber. No one but Gilliana herself would be awaiting her there. But, as familiar as she still was with the layout of Black Crux Manor, the other changes in the place saddened her. Keeping her head down, she swept her eyes across the rooms and halls they passed. No more was the manor a place of austere dignity. Lord Marcus’s minimal but tasteful decor was long gone. Strangely, it hadn’t been replaced with sumptuous accoutrements, like the kinds of things Gilliana had always adorned herself with in the form of gowns and jewelry. In fact, it appeared as if Gilliana had done nothing at all to make Black Crux Manor her own. Familiar wall tapestries and paintings were missing. The ornate old candelabras that Lord Marcus had retained from his forebears were gone as well. Ornamentations of wood and metal had not been polished, and dust caked candle alcoves. In some places, the plaster had crumbled away to reveal the stonework beneath. In one room, Marigold even witnessed what looked like fresh blade gouges in the mantle of a fire hearth. What had gone on there?

She wasn’t given pause to wonder.

“In there,” one of her guards instructed, and gave her a rough shove.

Marigold bit back her response as she stumbled into the audience chamber. This room, at least, had been kept in order. The audience chamber always had been one of Lord Marcus’s rare concessions to extravagance. All the better to impress visiting diplomats. Rich tapestries from other lands draped the walls, underneath an ornately carved and decorated ceiling. Fresh flowers sprouted from fine vases set in the corners, each one masterfully painted with scenes from Black Crux’s surrounding landscape. At the end of the room was the elaborately carved chair upon which Lord Marcus used to hear out his petitioners. A servant had recently lit tall candles all around the room. Their warm glow could not dispel the coldness Marigold felt here now.

And there stood Gilliana. She made a motion with her hand and the two guards who had accompanied Marigold took up places to either side of the door.

“What in the hells have you done to Lord Marcus’s castle, you stupid girl?” Marigold spat. “It looks like a rat-gnawed old barracks now. It’s disgraceful.” She would not give Gilliana any satisfaction by asking any of the many questions burning within her. Least of all the one she almost feared to ask.

In the short time it took Marigold to speak her piece, she also assessed the room. Gilliana stood by the window, her arms crossed under her bosom, face composed, the sunset outside silhouetting her. After all these years, she looked much the same to Marigold. Physically, she had matured, a full woman now with half her life under her belt. Yet, behind her eyes, Marigold still saw the ambitious, aggrieved girl she had always been. A commoner raised up thanks to her beauty and the desire of an older man, who had quickly forgotten where she came from. No, that wasn’t quite it. Marigold doubted Gilliana would have turned out any better even if she had never married Lord Marcus. Such potential this girl had had. And all of it a waste.

While she was mindful of the two guards on the door, they did not worry Marigold. Nor did Gilliana. Much. It was the other individual in the room who truly unnerved her. Murzagis, the man who commanded all these soldiers, perched nonchalantly in what had been Lord Marcus’s chair, elbow on the arm rest and chin in hand. He showed no reaction to Marigold’s vitriol. It was Gilliana who answered.

“Have you had enough time to rest, Mage-Matron?” she asked. Her voice was neither honeyed, nor mocking. She sounded almost distant. “It was a long trek for the both of us, but soon I will expect you to resume my lessons in Barrier-Casting.”

Marigold gawked at her in astonishment. “Your what?”

“My lessons, Mage-Matron,” Gilliana said more loudly. “When will you be ready to continue?”

“Are you mad, girl?” Marigold sputtered. “Fuck your lessons! Release me and let me go home!”

Lady Gilliana rolled her eyes and then turned them upon the man in the chair. He shifted and Marigold felt a quiver of fear run through her. Gilliana strode purposefully up to Marigold, and to her shame, Marigold cringed. When she was close, Gilliana leaned in, so her face was quite near, and when she spoke, her voice was a dagger wrapped in silk.

“Thirteen years apart and that is how you greet your apprentice?” She emphasized each word. “I will be clear. You are mine. You agreed to the contract and took the coin. Running away did not release you from your obligation to teach me. And, since you would not come out from your hiding place in that frigid cattle town on your own, I decided to take you back myself.” She inhaled through her nose, lifted her chin, then turned and strolled back to the window to stare out at the dimming sky. “You will resume your place here training me in Barrier-Casting. You will raise me to Journeyer. You will teach me how to imbue my Barriers with Intent ...”

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She had gone mad. Marigold listened, but couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This was why Gilliana had abducted her, using carriages and sellswords and secrecy? All this trouble because she still could not accept that Marigold had turned her out from her training? Marigold could not even recall what words they had said to one another all those years back when she had fled the castle following Lord Marcus’s death. Yet, here was Gilliana picking up the conversation as if it had begun only yesterday.

“Were my other refusals not clear enough?” said Marigold, not caring that she interrupted. “No.”

“You do not get to refuse me this time, Mage-Matron. You’ve been—”

“Don’t call me Mage-Matron. I’m not. Not to you anyway. Get that through your spoiled head, girl. I ain’t yer teacher anymore. I’ll teach a cart donkey Barrier-Casting before I ever teach you again. That clear enough? Now, let me leave.”

“Cart donkey?” Gilliana turned back from the window with a feigned look of bewilderment. “Oh. Your skinny tavern girl of an apprentice?”

Marigold’s throat went dry. She tried to swallow and could not. “What ... where is Lily?” The question she had dreaded to ask. She had not felt Lily even once since first waking tied up in the carriage. She knew the girl had not been taken as a captive with her. But, then, where was she? Marigold could only hope she’d been left behind and unharmed. She hoped that so fervently.

“Lily.” Gilliana sang the name, imbuing it with honeyed mockery. “Shaky, ill-formed Barriers,” she reflected. “Brittle. Like the girl herself. Tell me, Mage-Matron, had you raised that one up to Journeyer yet? She looked of an age. But who cares?” She dismissed the thought by returning to her sky-gazing. “Forget her. You have a student with real talent before you once again.”

“No. No, no, no.”

Gilliana rounded on her again, and this time she gave vent to her suppressed anger. “How dare you continue to deny me! I am Lady Iris of Black Crux! You will teach me, because I command it! It’s because of your selfishness that our kingdom has been robbed of more than a decade it could have been benefitting from my skill in Barrier-Casting. The extraordinary things I could have done already, for my hold, for all the holds. I could have surpassed your skills years ago and offered my service to the king himself. I am the best candidate to inherit your teachings, as you well know. With how much raw power in magic I have ...”

“Who cares!” Marigold shouted. Her aged voice sounded thin in the big room, but it still caught Gilliana off guard. “The best pile o’ horseshit in the barn is still a pile o’ horseshit.” She chewed the inside corner of her mouth, shaking her head. “That pile is you, if you didn’t take my meaning. All the magical potential in the world doesn’t amount to a heap o’ manure without the discipline and restraint to use it properly. As you well know.” She lifted her hand to point a gnarled finger at her once-student. “You never had that and you never will.”

That final dig had hardly passed her lips before one of the guards on the door grabbed her raised arm and wrenched it painfully back behind her. “No magic, old woman!”

Murzagis stood up from Lord Marcus’s chair, but Gilliana, with a gesture, invited him to sit back down. She approached Marigold again herself, commanding the guard, “Don’t injure her arm. She’ll need it for teaching me.”

Marigold felt the hold on her arm loosen enough that it would not injure her, but it still hurt. She could see by the pinch and flare of Gilliana’s nostrils, the tense lines in her face, how the woman seethed under the surface. In her younger days, she would have exploded in a fit of rage by now. Perhaps she had learned some restraint, after all. But not in any way that put Marigold’s mind at ease. Were she not being restrained so painfully by the guard, she might have attempted a Barrier then. She’d had just about enough of her former apprentice for a lifetime and wished only to flee this place once and for all. She stared her defiance at Gilliana. Despite being in no position to fight, she would not tolerate such disrespect from this insipid little girl a moment longer.

Craning her neck forward, she spat on Gilliana’s fine slippers. “Piss on teaching you.”

This time, the commander of the sellswords was not slow in rising from his seat. Faster than Marigold could account for, Murzagis crossed the floor and dealt her a vicious backhand across the face. It caught her flush in the mouth. She whimpered and crumpled to the floor, while white spots popped and sparked across her vision.

With another gesture, Gilliana ordered the soldiers to lift her up, which they did by grabbing her under her arms and dragging her roughly to her feet again. Head lolling and ears ringing, The Maiden of Moonfane Forge watched through her lank gray hair the stark drops of blood falling from her mouth to the floor.

“Make her look at me,” commanded Gilliana, and they did. Gilliana stooped to put her face level with Marigold’s.

When it was clear she had Marigold’s attention, Gilliana took a step back, lifted her hand, and performed a slow, intricate gesture. Marigold felt the way the magic focused and formed into the shape that Gilliana dictated. Then it hung there in the air between them, a Barrier shaped into a perfect representation of a human heart, shimmering in translucent gold. Marigold stared in astonishment. Could any master Barrier-Caster, past or present that she knew of, cast a Barrier into such a complicated shape, let alone an apprentice? But it was more than that. What Gilliana did next chilled her. With another gesture, she caused the heart-shaped Barrier to constrict, making it smaller and tighter. This was an application of Barrier-Casting that shouldn’t have been possible. Marigold herself could not imagine performing such a thing, even if given an entire second lifetime over which to train. But her surprise was far outweighed by her revulsion at what her former student was showing her plainly.

“You did it,” she said, her voice quavering around her loosened teeth. “You murdered him. Killed your husband with magic. Always knew, but never knew how.”

Gilliana made her voice a near whisper, so Marigold’s old ears strained to hear her. “You will finish teaching me, Mage-Matron. If you refuse, I will allow these soldiers to beat your compliance out of you. Even a mage as powerful as you can do nothing against that for long. And if you continue to refuse me even then ...” She raised her hand once more. The Barrier she cast this time was a simpler shape, a cylindrical collar around Marigold’s neck. While she went on speaking, she caused the collar to tighten just enough that Marigold could feel its press on her windpipe. “Do not expect it will go as quick and easy for you as it did for my husband.”

“Gilliana ... please,” Marigold choked.

“My name is Mage Iris.” Iris dashed her hand through the air, dispelling both Barriers. “Take her back to her chambers,” she ordered. Turning, she resumed her place at the window. Murzagis joined her.

Marigold gasped for air as she was partly led, partly dragged out the door by her two guards. Once they had unceremoniously deposited her back in her cell and locked the door behind her, she collapsed to the floor. She clenched her eyes shut and tasted the salt from her tears on her lips mingling with the iron of her own blood in her mouth. Gilliana would break her. If she did not accede, she would break her or kill her. There was no doubt about that, and naught she could do.

The brief flash of magic she felt caused her to snap her eyes open. There. Somewhere below, in the town!

Lily.

Quick as she could, Marigold swept her arm across her chamber’s door, casting a Barrier before it. If Gilliana had felt the Casting from the town, perhaps this new one could disguise it enough that she might mistake both of them for Marigold acting out her frustrations in her room.

She could only hope. Hope, as she hoped Lily would not find her, but would give her up for lost, and not come into this terrible place, where The Lady of Black Crux reigned.