A Spoiled Apple
Gabriela held up the spoiled apple, taking in its sharp scent. Others might cringe and gag, but it reminded her of home. She glanced over her shoulder at the packed market. No one had noticed the little wave of her hand, but she knew she had to undo it. Gabriela called to the powers that responded sluggishly on this side of the Crack and waggled two fingers over the apple.
Before she could enact her will, the fruit seller turned to her, frowning and extending a hand to Gabriela. “I’ll get rid of that for you. Take two on me if you don’t tell anyone about it.” She winked.
“No, thank you.” Gabriela held the mushy apple close and smiled at the vendor. “I’ll find a bin and toss it for you.”
“As you like.” The apple vendor moved to her next client, the exchange already forgotten.
Gabriela took a few steps away and lifted the apple again, breathing its fragrance deeply. She glanced up as the crowds parted for a moment, creating a path to the town square and the three riders atop their horses. The lead man, a noble by the shine of his dark, wavy hair, strong jaw, and perfect cut of his wool coat and leather riding gloves, stared directly at her, despite the hundreds of others to stare at.
Why is he staring? Did he see…
Gabriela looked down at the spoiled apple in her hands and quickly hid it behind her back to let it roll to the ground.
One of the other riders, with longer blond hair tied back in a leather strap, said something, momentarily pulling the noble’s attention. He looked back to Gabriela once more before nudging his golden palomino into motion, and the crowd shifted to fill the space between them.
Gabriela wrung her hands and glanced across the shoppers, looking for anyone who might have noticed the exchange, but no one paid her any mind. Keeping her basket of dried herbs and fresh greens close in the crook of her elbow, she wove through the crowd, making her way to the town’s outskirts. Pulling up the hood of her vermilion riding cloak, she kept her head down, wary that each turn might leave her standing alone in front of the handsome noble with piercing eyes. She exhaled fully when she finally saw her pony and escort at the crossroads. As she approached, she glanced south to the sheer cliffs overlooking the sea and north along the well-worn road leading to every other living town in the world. Beyond her pony and guardian, a fourth path could barely be made out among the weeds and overgrowth.
“You took quite a while, Princess,” came the hollow voice from the fine suit of leather armor. “Much longer, and I might have risked coming in for you.”
“Sorry, Lord Sebastian,” said Gabriela and busied herself with stuffing her purchases into the gelding’s saddle bags. “I couldn’t find the egelberry. I had to circle the market four times before I saw it at the spice merchant right at the front.”
“I needn’t remind you that we should already be on our way home. We won’t make it to the inn by nightfall if we don’t leave now. Or at least very soon to now.”
Gabriela turned to him with a smirk. “Whatever would I do without your timely reminders about things you needn’t remind me of?”
“Clever as always,” Lord Sebastian gave a single, echoing chuckle. “Have you seen Aura?”
“No, but she’s always around somewhere. She must have been as overwhelmed as me in the market. It’s not like her to miss a chance to knock things over. Just let me make sure…” Gabriela compared her scribbled list beside the contents of the saddle bags. “Oh, fish eyes! Ice ginger! I looked right at it and… I’ll just be a minute.”
Lord Sebastian creaked and shifted with unease. “Now I really must remind you, Princess. Mum will be furious if I don’t return you on schedule.”
“Oh pish, we both know you’ve never seen my mother angry a day in my life. Twenty minutes, in and out, and we’ll be on our way.”
“I doubt whoever is waiting for that ice ginger back home is so impatient that it can’t wait. Mum might not let you come to town again if you annoy her.”
“Fifteen minutes, in and out.” Gabriela took a single step toward the bustling market but hesitated. “You were one of them. Do nobles ever come to a town like this?”
Lord Sebastian hummed. “I should think not. Mytara may seem a bustling metropolis by local standards, but the nobles from Vinby or the capital would see it as a backwater peasant town. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” Gabriela focused back on the little city. “Be right back.”
Her soft boots sounded thunderous on the worn cobbles, only drowned out by the clomp of a passing horse and the squeak of a cart.
Gabriela thought of the noble on the horse and his piercing, deliberate stare. She shivered but still smiled as she pulled her hood a little closer.
Maybe something was going on behind me. I never looked around until after he was gone. That’s probably it.
The merchant selling ice ginger must have been lonely. Gabriela grinned and made noncommittal noises while the vendor prattled on about harvests and what underground bugs worked best with which fertilizers before flowing into talking about a nephew with foot fungus, seeming in no rush to make change or hand over the roots. Lord Sebastian’s warnings buzzed in Gabriela’s mind, and she finally snatched the ice ginger from the merchant’s hand with a mumbled “thanks” and “keep the change.” She turned quickly and ran into a solid wall of soft brown wool.
Gabriela gasped and hopped back, but a hand clad in supple leather touched her shoulder.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” said the deep voice with a twang like her mother would use when telling a story from the capital. Gabriela looked up at the noble’s strong jaw and piercing pale gray eyes, no longer on horseback. He half smiled at her, exposing whiter and straighter teeth than she had imagined possible.
It’s like his teeth have no personality.
She realized his hand was still on her shoulder and debated how best to remove it.
Mama always says to use your words first.
“You didn’t startle me,” Gabriela said, losing herself in those eyes like moonlight across the— “Can I help you?”
An unseasonably chill wind blew across Gabriela’s cheek and through the man’s hair. He pulled his hand back to brush it back into place.
“Actually,” his smile broadened the slightest. “I think you could. Care to take a walk?”
Gabriela breathed in, calling the sluggish powers to come a little nearer should she need them. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, no.”
He looked genuinely hurt, and Gabriela wanted to change her answer, but Lord Sebastian would be upset, and that would be worse than harming the feelings of a random, very attractive noble. He could be the romantic lead from any of the books in her mother’s library that made her blush.
His grin returned, and though her experience in reading people was woefully lacking, Gabriela thought his look was genuine. “Five minutes,” he requested with a wink.
Twenty years of her mother ingraining warnings about the people from town, and much more the nobles from the wider world, went out the proverbial window with that wink. They could still make it to the inn tonight with another quick delay.
“Five minutes.”
“Glorious. Let’s step just around the corner, where it’s quieter,” he said, sliding his hand around her elbow, gently directing her. She instantly decided she hated the gesture. Two men standing behind him, the blond man that spoke to him on the horse and perhaps that man’s brother, shifted to let the pair pass.
Gabriela pulled the powers a little nearer still.
They stepped around an apothecary’s shop, and the ambient noise of the market was cut in half. His hand dropped from her elbow as they continued at a stroll moving south. “As I am sure you know,” the man started, “I am Brynmor Highgate, Marquess of Melodis.”
Gabriela did not know that but assumed all nobles introduced themselves with the assumption you should already know their story and that giving their name was a mere formality.
“Gabriela,” she said, leaving off any exciting titles. “Gabriela Marwol.”
“Beautiful name. Unusual name. Were you named for your mother? Grandmother?”
“No.”
“A woman of few words. I can respect that,” he chuckled. “Mysterious.”
Gabriela stopped and turned to Brynmor. “I do have somewhere to be. How can I help you, Marquess Highgate?”
“Please, call me Brynmor. Jon, Job,” he waved at the two men trailing them. “I’ll meet you at the tavern this evening.”
The men clearly disapproved of their dismissal but nodded and turned back toward the market. Brynmor gestured down the narrow alley of damp cobblestone shaded by the apartments leaning inward from two or three stories high on either side, and they continued their walk.
“I’ll be quick,” said Brynmor. “My uncle, Duke Rhys Highgate, wishes to include this area in his duchy. Mytara and the surrounding region stand alone, isolated between Melodis, the sea, and the Crack. He sent me to open a dialog about such a prospect.”
The alley opened to steep stairs leading to a lower section of Mytara. Gabriela could see over the roofs below and a sparkling view of the sea beyond. Lord Sebastian was right. By the sun’s position, they would have difficulty making it to the inn before the full moonrise. Though they didn’t really have to make it that far.
Gabriela paused at the first step. “Why me? You should go to the local queen or…” She stopped to remember titles from her books. “The mayor or city council.”
“I thought you might help me with exactly that.” Brynmor took his eyes from her to focus on smoothing the front of his wool coat. “You see, I’m a complete outsider here. I don’t know the customs of Mytara. If I come to them with talk of annexation with implied assimilation, they’d toss me out. I’d return to my uncle a failure.”
“Why would you think I could help?” Gabriela kept an eye on the sun, hoping her barely restrained annoyance would help to expedite the conversation.
“I feel a kinship to you, Gabriela.” Brynmor’s eyes drifted back to meet hers. “Not kinship. An attraction. You’re an outsider, too.”
“What? How did—”
“I wouldn’t ask that you help with any of the negotiations; just tell me some of what you first did when you came to Mytara.”
“Why do you assume I’m not from here?”
“Your clothes are a century outdated, though they fit you quite nicely. Up close, I see your eyes twinkle with intense mystery. But I first noticed your hair. Everyone in the region has straight, dark hair. Your soft curls are as pale as fresh snow.” He reached a gloved hand to touch a stray lock that lay across her cheek.
Gabriela felt her initial interest in the marquess shrivel up with the inane comparison.
A brick smashed into the cobblestone, missing them by a few feet.
Brynmor looked down at the brick, then up at the building roofs with more confusion than worry.
Not now, Aura!
“That only got my initial attention, making you stand out in the crowd, as it were. Then I saw you perform dark magic,” he finished.
Her heart leaped to her throat. “What? No, that’s absurd.”
Brynmor let out another slow chuckle, waggling his fingers over his palm, miming what she must have looked like with the apple. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Gabriela let out a puff of breath. Her mother had been clear about her remaining unnoticed in town. She had to steer the conversation away from that. “Why do you want to blend in? You’re a noble. You can go and do what you want.”
“Maybe so, but my uncle has put much into securing his borders. I want every advantage here. The duchy overlaps the Crystalwood Gardens, and he’s regularly fighting off the dead abominations that rise from there. If his territory included Mytara, he could close his lines right up to the Crack.”
Gabriela turned from him, looking down the twenty steps of hard, flat stone quarried from the cliffs just south of town, like most of the city’s construction. Her mother saw little need for Gabriela to know the intricacies of politics, but she knew enough that a solid front along the Crack would soon mean a solid front beyond it. This man’s uncle, this duke, would invade her home in time. “I can’t help you, Brynmor.”
He stepped in front of her, on the edge of the first step. “I’ll admit, there was more. I honestly thought you could help my mission, but also…” He pulled the glove from his right hand and traced his knuckles down her cheek. “You’re beautiful, Gabriela.”
The power surged, and she slapped his hand away.
Time seemed to catch its breath as Brynmor stumbled backward, flailing his arms in the empty space over the steps. Gabriela’s fingertips briefly reached the edge of his pristine woolen overcoat, only to close on air. She watched his horrified face, the piercing grey eyes suddenly vulnerable, fall away from her. Tumbling feet over neck down the steps, each impact punctuated with a crunch, he finished in an awkward pile at the bottom.
The power was no longer sluggish, now flooding through her. Without thinking, she performed the motions she’d seen her mother do a hundred times.
