Chapter 146 (Book 3 Chapter 1): Taking Stock (Patreon)

The library was still empty, and Lira made sure to close the door behind her. She placed her journal on the desk with the mana obfuscation bookmark still inside it, then sat down. There was one thing she had been putting off since the courtyard, and she could not put it off any longer.

“Ladar. Kalma. Hano. Syneth. Velar.”

The threads burst out of her chest, hundreds of them running through the walls and out over the palace grounds. With Velar in the incantation, she was able to narrow them down. She held Aric in her mind: the blue gambeson, the tilt of his head when he was thinking, the tired smile after healing a child. Every thread faded except one.

It ran south.

It kept going straight until she lost track of it, past the wall behind the history section. A link should need two ends to exist, as far as she could guess. It was still there, so Aric was probably alive. That was the only thing that reassured her. She could not tell where he was, whether he was safe, or whether the stillness at the other end meant calm or trouble. The Kalil Desert was in the south. She decided not to think about that yet.

His side was mostly green, but it was not as simple as it was with Tessa. There was blue in it, the colour of debt and obligation, and she knew where it came from: all the knowledge she had gathered about Almara and the lost Age of Magic, which had led to this expedition, and the time she had spent teaching Lyth. As an older brother, Aric felt grateful to her for helping Lyth, and that gratitude showed as a smaller mark beside the rest. Under the blue lay a thin line of red that she nearly overlooked. It was the same tint she had found in her own strand toward Celene, the one that came from spying on someone. So he had probably been investigating her. She thought of Henry at once, visiting childhood home, and standing by the door in Lyth’s chamber and pretending not to listen.

Her own strand toward Aric looked like the one she had toward Lyth, only weaker. It was green, since she considered him a friend, but it lacked the bond between teacher and student. The red layer was there too: the confession she had never given, the half-truths she had told him, and a brother he did not know he had lost.

She cut the spell, and the threads slowly vanished.

With the library quiet, Lira had time to think for the first time in days, so she went through the last few days in order.

Kavard’s death came to mind first. She had turned the ink blot into the Canary rune under his tub, and she had watched as he slid slowly beneath the water while the air around his head turned unbreathable. Then she hid Lira Velora behind Lira Tenlan, a girl with a different childhood and a clear conscience, so the Truth Stone would find nothing but honest answers. It worked. Estophon looked at her with eyes like a storm and let her go, and Tenlan spent half a day comforting Lyth while he cried for a brother Lira had killed, without remembering that she had. The memory came back through a slip of paper in her own handwriting. She couldn’t help but think about how light Tenlan had felt, and whether Tenlan’s life would have been a better one than Velora’s.

Emberborn came next, as a candle flame in her library at night, while the real man supposedly sat at dinner with the royal family. He had known about her magic since her first wind spell, when she collapsed in the freezing library. Apparently, Marco, the footman who carried her out, had been sent by him. The court mage knew about Kavard’s death, though he did not arrest her. Instead, he traded for the Canary spell and gave her a single word, Kalma, meaning karma. It was technically the first time she had admitted to anyone that she could cast. She still did not know for sure why he had let her walk away.

The spell she built from the word, Karma Sight, showed her a vision of her own deeds and her place in the world: blood on her hands, black tears, and iron shackles in a mirror. It was so heavy that she collapsed. She split it into smaller spells afterward, but she still could not tell whether she was reading the scale of the universe or only her own conscience.

Then Kelroth arrived, and in the courtyard she saw the web of his control. His karmic chains were around the necks of nearly everyone present. The king had a thin one. The spymaster, Harwin, and Dalwin had thicker ones, though Estophon’s neck was left bare. It was then that Sir Garrick arrived with the news that Aric had vanished in the Holtarry Mountains. She had told him her theory about the portals opening in the coldest places, and now he was missing. She hoped he would find his way back easily and that this would blow over, but deep down she knew she could not be that lucky. Despite everything between them, she did not want him gone. He was one of the few decent people in the castle, and with him gone and Kelroth here, she had fewer and fewer allies.

Now that she could sit down and think about it, the Karma Sight was terrifying, since it gave her so much information for so little effort. And if she could read Kelroth’s karma, it meant he could probably read hers.

His strand toward her was as red as blood. Hers toward him was a blue so dark it was nearly black, the debt of her father’s death. A man who ruled half the palace through karmic debt would have a much better lens through which to see them than she did. The only thing in her favour was that she was not the only person who had been harmed by him enough to want his blood. But if he ever met her face to face, or alone, it would be easy for him to pick her out.

She needed a shield, something that hid her karma and her animosity from anyone who looked.

Memory Concealment was the first idea she considered, though upon reflection, she decided it wouldn’t work. Her karma link was not about her memory but about what had happened between her and Kelroth, and no layer over her mind would change that. She also could not operate at full capacity as Lira Tenlan instead of Lira Velora. What she wanted was a forgery, an ordinary karma that looked like that of a maid with nothing to hide. She was a forger, after all, and now she needed to forge the signature of her own soul.

Lyth was the next problem.

With the king compromised and many of the nobles along with him, and Aric missing and Kavard dead, Lyth was the only heir. That made him Kelroth’s most likely next target. While spying on Kavard, she had heard him being propped up as a puppet. Now, she surmised that Kelroth would want another one on the throne to act on his behalf. Estophon had ordered six more guards on him, but guards could only stop a knife. They could not stop a smile, or a favour, or a gift. Nobles would soon start lining up to be kind to a grieving prince.

The best protection she could give him was to teach him to recognise a chain before it formed. Books on karma would do it, if she chose carefully. But that would be far too suspicious, especially the timing. A maid handing the new heir those kinds of books now would look like someone with inside knowledge, and Henry noticed everything.

Then she remembered what Lyth had said on the window seat: unlike him, Kavard had been good at reading people and understanding what they wanted and needed.

She often taught him, so it would not be suspicious to help with something he had admitted he had trouble with. It was the perfect excuse.

She could do it through books, subtly, so that it would not raise anyone’s suspicion. It was still manipulation, even if she was doing it to protect him, and she did not like how easy it had become.

Emberborn was next. She did not understand his aims and motives. He had given her Kalma, and he probably wanted her to look at Kelroth. She was almost sure of it. She also remembered the blue ribbon around his heart, running southwest toward somewhere she could not see, and she did not know what to make of it. Either way, she could not trust him, and she did not want to remain under his eye.

That left the idea she had been avoiding. She could kill Kelroth and run. Pallan would get her out within a day. But a second suspicious death in the same week would turn the whole palace into a hunting party. She also did not know what the chains would do if he died. They might snap and free everyone, or they might hurt everyone tied to him, from the king down to Hana, the maid.

Every plan she had, from teaching Lyth, escaping Emberborn, running away, or killing Kelroth, depended on one thing: not getting caught. And for that, she needed something to shield her from Karma Sight.