Chapter 1
Fear found me first. Chilling, clenching, fear. I couldn’t escape it. More alarming, I couldn't remember anything before it.
A voice shrieked, “You’re cursed!”
A closer voice screamed, “No!”
The word reverberated through me. I was separate from whoever had spoken it, but also within him. Him. A man. The bones, skin, and brain surrounding me were firmly male, though I don't know how I knew that. Fear twisted all the meaty bits inside his body and mind. How did I know what fear was, or how did I know anything?
At my center, I sensed a working of thoughts, my own mind. I didn’t remember putting anything in there, yet there it was, ready to supply me with information I needed and feelings I did not.
Who was I? More importantly, what did I want?
“Don’t move!” shouted the accuser. “You’ll touch someone else and curse them too!”
“I’m not cursed!” I—the man—cried.
The beat of his heart thundered up his throat, blocking his lungs and making them sear with heat. Even though I pushed to get away from the emotion, I didn’t expect the man’s body around me to move at my command.
That was different. But what was normal?
I tried moving the body again, and…yes, I could control it.
A sharp sensation hacked through his thoughts as a cry of agony echoed outside and inside my mind. Pain. It felt like fear, but deeper—pulsating waves of jagged sadness. I hated it, but it gave me the “want” I was searching for. I wanted to get away.
“I’ll cut you again if you move!” The accuser’s voice spiked.
Color bloomed as I focused through the man’s eyes. Red, my mind told me. That was the color pouring out of several sliced fingers. Blood. Soaking into the woven strands of the man’s shirt cuff before running in a small warm stream down the skin of his arm.
Just as I processed the ability to see, the ability to smell overwhelmed all other senses. Sticky sweat mixed with the tang of…lacquer?
“I’m not the one moving me.” The man’s voice broke with confusion. “But I’m able to speak, so I can't be cursed!”
“Quick!” the accuser called to someone else. “We need a member of the Ten to take him to Master Leiv.”
“No, please! I don’t have the curse. I was with the king. I helped bring back his body. That’s all!” The man’s voice pitched even higher in hysteria.
I identified more colors as I looked for an escape. Brown mixed with orange to box the room. The walls and ceiling were rich with the combination. A memory I couldn’t remember making told me it was spikeberry wood, but I couldn’t confirm since the accuser blocked the way with a sword that was gray save for the blood on its tip.
I commanded the man’s head to turn. The large room allowed several people to be inside while also staying an arm’s-length away. Terrified faces, open mouths half hidden behind hands. Why weren’t they running? Why choose to stay with the fear in this room?
Something gently brushed the man’s back. Wind. An open window beckoned the edges of my vision. Outside, tall, sprouting grass waved to the wide leaves dipping from branches above them. The breeze carried another nudge and a tickling scent from the vivid, blue-veined petals framing the window.
The man’s legs were harder for me to control. His instinct to reach out for balance was a good one that I unfortunately ignored. As he stumbled, I directed him to grip the windowsill so tightly that splinters shot into his fingers. The accuser’s voice broke as he shouted again for a member of the Ten.
Ignoring him, I bent over a small offshoot from the tall flowers that curled inside the window’s open wooden slats. I brushed the man’s fingers over the vine. At the touch, a new doorway opened in my mind. Instead of the hysterics that currently enveloped me, the vine’s mind wrapped me in quiet. It whispered to the breeze, to the sunlight outside. Away from here.
I flowed into this new connection, content to bask in the warmth. Now inside the flower, I twirled in the sun’s rays. There were more vines, more flowers. I found a deep connection to the other plants around me through touch, and I considered following one up to the second-story roof where there was less competition for sunlight. In this form, I was everywhere at once.
I could stay forever, spinning in happiness. But the warmth disappeared as thunder heralded a thousand drops of rain bouncing off a hundred leaves above me. The flowers tucked their petals back toward their centers, closing down their senses. Something was ending. It startled me.
I could return through my first connection, but the man’s mind on the other side still resounded with screams and reeked of fear. I liked that I could pick and choose, creating new connections or returning to an old one. They all met up on a road in my mind where I could freely travel back and forth.
A coldness seeped from the rain, threatening to drown all the warmth this form had offered me. I needed a new option. Then someone nudged one of my vines where it had crept in through the next window. At the touch, a third doorway opened to another mind.
As the rain buried the vines around me, I transferred into the new connection. This form, an older woman, firmly held on to a younger one. The younger woman’s mind opened to me through the touch of her fingers clasped in the older woman’s hand. The younger woman’s thoughts spoke in small whispers. Insistent, but also restrained, calm. And more importantly, warm, drawing me toward it. Flowing to her from the old woman was an easy choice. Of the four minds I’d inhabited since awakening to find my own, this was my favorite.
The room changed when looking at it through her eyes. The ceiling beams now stretched above me, and I doubted the young woman could touch the top of the window since she wasn’t tall. She barely took up any space at all.
She watched as several people wearing stained yellow aprons rushed to angle the window slats against the rain. Others lit mirrored lanterns secured to the room’s walls, further enriching the brown tone of the wood.
Everyone else disproportionately clumped together on my side of the room, away from the lone figure gripping his bloodied hand inside the tight fist of the other. Red drops squeezed through his fingers, and I recognized him, my first connection. I had been right not to return to him. He’d only become more frantic since I left.
I also recognized his accuser’s voice. It belonged to a man with bare arms holding a long knife. “Leave, girl. You may not want to see this.”
A mixture of emotions ran through her mind—initial irritation at being called “girl,” and alarm that she had somehow lost control of her body. Then, like the man I’d left, fear froze over her. She tried to move her arms. I left them where they were, still unsure how to command them myself.
New thoughts sprang up inside her mind. She feared for her life. But not just that—she feared for the life of the man I had left. This twisted the fear, somehow lightening it with…compassion. It felt beautiful. Better than spinning as a flower in the sun.
A flurry of green robes burst through the doorway. The small crowd of people split to create a direct path for the newcomer, blocking her from my view as she advanced on the man with the bloodied hand. I pulled a thought from the young woman’s mind and learned that this newcomer was a member of the Ten. A sorceress. Ambrosine.
“Someone get Master Leiv,” she ordered.
The man with the bloody hand sank to his knees and whispered, “Master Leiv will kill me. He kills them all. Please.” His gaze traveled from one end of the room to the other. “I wasn’t cursed! One never connected with me.”
The word “kill” resembled another word, “death.” The fear I’d experienced before was nothing to the sunken depths surrounding these new terms. Since the words sparked the emotions I was trying to escape, I left them in a dark corner of my mind.
The man’s hysterical screams returned. He stumbled back to his feet, causing Ambrosine to shout in order to be heard. When the man tensed to run despite Ambrosine’s protests, the crowd swept me up in a mass exodus from the room. The press of people helped keep me on my feet as I learned how to use them. My last glimpse showed Ambrosine raising a sword.
In the next room, I managed to stay standing by experimenting with the arms of the girl I was inhabiting. I kept my balance as screams shot out from the room we’d just left. Wanting to know what had happened, I checked my connection to the first man I’d inhabited and found it dark. That was nice. He wasn’t feeling fear anymore, something that should relieve him.
A voice called, “The curse is dead!”
Someone muttered, “Fool, not the curse. Only its connection.”
Another spoke around a cascade of sniffles. “Wasn’t cursed, couldn’t be. He was speaking.”
Still, most around me cheered, though the young woman didn’t join in. At first, I thought she’d calmed herself, but realized she was in a state of shock. The bits of emotion I could get from her were jumbled. I concentrated harder, and the emotions formed into words, then into sentences.
One repeated over and over. They killed him.
I pressed again but went too far. She sensed me, and her mind focused on a new sentence. I have the curse.
Oh. She was talking about me.
I was the curse.
I knew she believed it, but how could I be what caused so much fear? A disembodied spirit with knowledge, but no memory. Sighing, a natural reaction I only realized I’d done after the fact, I tried to piece together what a “curse” meant so I could identify if I was one. Since I have the curse was currently the only sentence in the young woman’s head, I needed to find this information somewhere else.
Across the room, a woman with wrinkles on her pale face and apron rested her hip against a wall. She was the one who had held the hand of the young woman whose mind I was sitting in. She spoke so fast to the bodies clustered around her that I couldn’t differentiate any words. Except for one.
Curse.
I traveled back through my connection to enter the mind buried under short and wild hair, careful not to push or pull on anything that would let her know I was there. Enough fear had been caused already, and the emotion sickened me.
The older woman agreed with a man on her right side, then whirled to argue with the woman on her left. Voices got louder in a game the entire room was playing.
“They say a curse killed the king.”
“Who would be stupid enough to speak a spell to kill the king?”
“It wasn’t a spell! It was a curse!”
“If the body’s not in pieces, a curse didn’t kill him. They never leave enough to bury.”
“The body they brought in this morning was the king’s.”
“So, the queen is now sovereign?”
“Girl! You listening to me?”
I recognized the last voice. It was the accuser, now talking to my favorite connection, the compassionate young woman. A head taller, the accuser bent over her short form. She tilted back as though all the stains on his apron would leap onto her white shirt and pants.
Intrigued, I returned to her and found myself staring at the accuser through her eyes. A sheen of sweat covered his face and inched up to grease the roots of his hair.
“Girl, what’s your name?”
I took the new word that floated to the surface of the young woman’s thoughts. “Eth-eh. Um, Eth-then-knee. Ethene,” I said through her mouth, speaking for the first time. And what an odd word to start with.
Wrinkles lined the accuser’s forehead.
I cleared her throat. “The name is Ethene.” I said the words slowly, using Ethene’s muscle memory to talk. I sounded slurred. The accuser paused for a moment, but the wrinkles on his forehead disappeared, so I guess he didn’t care.
“Yes. Well, you’re the girl from the queen’s service they’re looking for?”
I understood Ethene’s original reaction to being called “girl.” She might be short, but she was definitely older than the age the term referred to. She’d seen eighteen rainy seasons, a source of pride for some reason.
The accuser thrust a stiff finger capped with a broken nail across the room. I moved Ethene’s body carefully, unsure how to coordinate everything so she wouldn’t tip over. Feeling unwelcome heat, I looked down and caught the accuser placing a hand on Ethene’s hip.
He whispered, “Maybe, when you see the queen, you tell her I captured the curse’s connection so the Ten could kill it, yeah?”
Ethene revolted at the touch, so I chanced a quick step to the side and nearly knocked over the two women crowded behind me. The accuser’s face flushed red. He opened his mouth to say something, but shuffled away as Ambrosine entered the room, unrolling the sleeves of her green robes to cover her arms. Her robe’s light fabric swung around her legs down to her knees as she walked toward me, a red-bladed sword swinging from her belt.
Ethene’s panic climbed her throat, and I had to swallow to keep it down. Ambrosine stopped with the sword’s tip dripping onto the floor. She ignored the red-faced man, who seemed grateful to slip away.
“Ethene of the queen’s service?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered immediately, somewhat pleased with myself. I was also impressed that I’d stopped Ethene’s knees from shaking. Emboldened, I studied this sorceress. Ambrosine’s head didn’t have any hair. Her dark skin traveled all the way behind her ears. Smooth and shiny. I wanted to touch it.
“The body has arrived. I believe the queen requested you to confirm in her place?”
I waited, unsure what to do or say. Heat from the bodies smothered the space around Ethene and thickened the air. I managed to trickle an “Ehhh…” out of her bobbing throat.
Yes, Ethene thought.
“Yes,” I repeated.
Ambrosine turned, walked several paces, and called back, “Follow me.”
I’m still alive, Ethene said to herself. She didn’t kill me. She must not know I’m cursed.
“Honored!” the wrinkled woman called. “Who killed the king?”
Ambrosine’s jaw clicked into place. “Madam, someone from Redon killed the king, and I suggest that you—”
“But no one in Redon can create a curse. Only a member of the Ten can. Why would they do that if not to kill the king?”
Until that point, the crowd in the room had listened to the conversation with open curiosity. Now they all turned away as though their averted attention could distance and pardon them. Ambrosine rotated, her firm chin pointing at the wrinkled woman.
She shrank back. “Pardon, busy day. Killings all over the floor of my kitchen…”
“Redon killed the king,” Ambrosine repeated loudly. Though everyone’s back was turned, I sensed them listening. “The curse undoubtedly returned to those who tricked the king into meeting with them. They will have to deal with it. It can’t find its way back here to the Citadel now that we’ve killed its connection.” She gestured to the room she’d come from. The one with the first mind I’d inhabited. “Be grateful for your safety.”
“I’m satisfied.” With that, the older woman shuffled out of the room, her eyes scouring the floor as if trying to find a hole she could escape through.
Ambrosine turned back and gestured at me as she walked out of the room. After a few clumsy steps, I moved quickly enough to stay behind Ambrosine and her swinging sword. I found myself climbing steps before I realized what I was doing. I almost tripped, but I kept Ambrosine's pace.
Learning was a joy. Experimenting, I swung Ethene’s arms around and around until we reached the second floor.
No! Her mind worried she’d hit something. Or someone. They might guess she carried a curse.
I frowned but stopped moving her arms. I didn’t like causing Ethene to have dark thoughts. I wanted her compassion to return, the warm emotion that had drawn me to her.
I caught a distorted bronze reflection off a hanging shield and leaned in closer. The warped image only confirmed dark hair and eyes. Her skin was warm, like the shield. Like her. Ethene didn’t look cursed. I shuffled to one side, then to the other, delighted by how the shield’s angles contorted my reflection. Short, tall, skinny, wide…
“Why are you staring at yourself? Are you vain or just forgot what you looked like?”
Vain—the word meant caring about yourself. That sounded correct. I very much cared about me. I intrigued me, and I wanted to find out how to always feel light and warm. Not cold with suffocating fear. Therefore, being vain must be a good thing. But the way Ambrosine curled the edges of her mouth around the word “vain” made it sound like a bad thing. Turning away from the shield, I squinted into Ambrosine’s face for clarification.
Ambrosine held my gaze and curled her mouth again. “There is nothing in your appearance to inspire vanity.”
So, being vain was a bad thing and she didn’t think it applied to me. “Oh, good!” I clutched Ethene’s chest and hiccupped a relieved laugh. “Thank you.”
A sarcastic thought pricked Ethene’s mind, but her relief that Ambrosine mistook being cursed for vanity smoothed it over. Ambrosine’s eyebrows, the only hair on her head, rose. She turned and gave the same “follow me” gesture as before.
Since I couldn’t risk moving Ethene’s arms without alarming her, I experimented with her eyes—blinking rapidly, rolling them from side to side—but her head began to pound from the distorted images so I focused on my surroundings instead. The same red and brown wood made up the floors and walls here, but unlike the lower level, intricate metals and colored fabrics covered them. Then gleaming spear points, polished shafts, fabric bubbling with bright contrasting threads—they could all entertain anyone for hours.
On my right, the window slats angled down to keep the rain from getting inside. Instead, the water cascaded in thin sheets into the sea of waxy green tree leaves below. How clever. The left side of the hallway didn’t have windows, only doors.
The walkway ahead of us continually curved. I spun to look behind me, then forward again. We might be walking in a circle. Now that I knew how to use Ethene’s legs, I wanted to run to see how long it would take me to get back to this starting position. Once Ambrosine wasn’t watching, I would do just that. Maybe I could reach out and rub her shiny head as I passed her.
Something fluttered inside Ethene’s nose, but I couldn’t identify the smell. I finally decided the air smelled like a baby made of dirt and rain, and then that baby had thrown up moss.
I frowned, trying to remember what throw-up was. Or how I even knew what regular throw-up smelled like.
A chill traveled up Ethene’s spine as we walked down the silent hallway, though the air hugged her like a blanket. A warm, moist blanket. Too warm.
A man wearing a sleeveless dark blue shirt and a sword at his waist, thankfully not dripping with red, guarded a door ahead of us. His matching blue pants ended at his knees. I frowned. Why wear only half of them? I could see the skin from his knees down to his sandals. A stream of sweat ran down my back. Concentrating, I could feel it collecting behind my knees, too. Ah, this was why the fabric of Ambrosine’s robes and Ethene’s shirt and pants were so light. This place was hot and friendly, cozying right up to you.
I stopped staring at the guard’s knees when he raised a single thick eyebrow. I shifted to look at the arched door behind him. The wide carved frame depicted trees intermingling their branches and leaves. Unlike with Ambrosine’s head, this time I didn’t resist the urge to reach out, running Ethene’s fingertips over the silky polished wood with its divots and curves.
The guard stepped aside and opened the door. Whiffs of bodies pressed together announced the occupants inside before I saw them—clusters of men and women in green robes like Ambrosine. Swirling hems and low murmurs filled the room as much as overwhelmed bookcases and empty high-backed chairs. The only person not fluttering about was a still body in the center of the room surrounded by mesh drapes pulled back on posts stretching to the ceiling.
Between the gaps in arms and torsos, I studied the prone form. A coldness clung to the stillness, offset and hostile to the life and movement around it. It felt—it felt…horrifying.
A figure I’d mistaken for a solid post turned, silencing the room as he fixed his attention on me. “Confirm for the queen.”
Like Ambrosine, this pillar of a man wore green, but his robes traveled all the way to the floor, and he didn’t wear a sword. He also looked nothing like Ambrosine. Unfortunately, he had hair. Sharp and gray. Not inviting. His skin was lighter than Ethene’s, but not as pale as the wrinkled woman from the kitchen. Intricate designs chased down his robe and up the heightened collar, but the muted light coming through the room’s two windows didn’t allow me to make out more defining details. The man didn’t gesture at Ethene, but merely raised an eyebrow.
Master Leiv. Leader of the Ten. Ambrosine and the other sorcerers who made up the Ten all took orders from this man.
I took one step, and when the crowd parted, I walked up to the bed and looked down. I could feel Ethene’s jaw drop. I didn’t know why I opened her mouth—it might have been her instinct. I didn’t have anything to say. Rather, I hardly had any breath as I stared.
The king’s face was gray, as were his cloudy, sightless eyes. The pupils were round, staring straight up at nothing. It looked…I didn’t like it. He did not look peaceful.
Ethene’s stomach churned, and her mind darkened with the limits of mortality that I couldn’t ignore anymore. I realized, staring at the deceased face of the king, what “death” meant. What the men downstairs thought they’d done to the curse. To me. Death was an ending.
They’d wanted to end me.
A chill shot out from Ethene’s chest that I felt in her trembling fingers.
No.
I did not want to end.
I had only started.
Fear, this time my own, cracked me into trembling bits that could be stepped on and broken. I curled Ethene’s fingers into fists, placed them on the bed, and leaned heavily against them for support.
Killing wasn’t right. Death wasn’t right. Ending wasn’t right.
Master Leiv spoke sharply, but I didn’t hear the words. A thousand winds were running through my head. I knew now what had happened to the man I’d controlled before Ethene. They’d killed—ended—him. He was no longer here, and that's why I couldn’t find him through our connection. If I’d stayed with him, I would be dead, as they’d intended.
A single purpose rang through my entire being.
Stay alive.
Something bubbled from Ethene’s stomach to the back of her throat. Ah, yes. Real throw up. I desperately tried to swallow. I didn't know how to handle her body while feeling all these emotions, and if I did something odd, they might realize she was cursed. They might kill her too. We would both end.
No, no, no, no.
More bile churned in Ethene’s stomach. I had to leave.
I bolted through my connection to the flowered vine, not caring about the rain. Choosing to risk being pelted with water over surrounding myself with murderers wasn’t so much a choice, but sanity. The vine’s roots touched other plants, bigger, stronger, with branches and leaves reaching high enough into the air to see the sky. Trees. Here, I could travel so quickly that no one would ever catch me. I wouldn’t be able to feel warm emotions anymore, the kind that hugged your mind. But I would be safe. It was enough.
So, why didn’t my thoughts slow down? Why couldn’t I find peace in this decision?
I’d abandoned Ethene.
When I left the first man I’d inhabited, they’d killed him. I couldn’t let anyone else die. Could I? Dying was wrong. No one should die, especially because of me. I didn’t know if flowers got sick with bile, but I was about to test that theory. If Ethene died and I didn’t help her, I would be guilty of ending someone else. The highest crime.
I could return. Tell everyone that they shouldn’t end people.
Yes…yes. I could do that. If needed, I could always escape back here to the trees.
No other option presented itself. Life before all else. A foundational truth.
I returned to find Ethene on the floor, her knees having collapsed. I’d done this to her. Back in command of her own body, she gulped deep breaths.
I created a list of priorities. First, don’t die. Second, don’t let others die.
The guard who’d let us inside the room appeared by her side. She turned to look at him, and I caught sight of the sword hanging from his belt, now at eye level with her.
Ethene spoke, low and soft. “It hurts to see the king dead.”
The guard pursed his lips, but he moved his hand away from the hilt of the sword. “Your loyalty to the sovereign is admirable.”
Placing a hand on the floor to steady herself, Ethene pushed back to her feet, her heartbeat pulsating to each extremity. In awe, I tried to discover how she had fought through her fear. I delved back into her thoughts and was surprised by the answer. She hadn’t pushed past the fear.
She’d used it.
Ethene turned to deliver a shallow bow to Master Leiv. His light brown, almost yellow eyes scrutinized her, as unsettling as a spider skittering across her face.
Ambrosine whispered into his ear. Ethene and I watched for any sign indicating the nature of the information being shared. About the curse? About me? I took control of Ethene, preparing to run.
Master Leiv spoke, his voice cutting and exact. “Why did the queen send you while she stayed in her rooms with the youngest member of my Ten? I’m interested to know.”
Was he? His features didn’t reflect what I thought “interested” would look like.
I opened Ethene’s mouth, but Master Leiv jerked his chin to the side, indicating Ethene should leave now that her task was complete. Asking questions without requiring a response must be a sorcerers’ tradition.
Hope exploded through Ethene’s fear. Master Leiv was letting her leave.
I thought back to the snippets of conversation I’d heard about how sorcerers created curses. Maybe a sorcerer had created me. Master Leiv was a sorcerer. The sorcerer. People must not understand that death was a terrible idea. If they did, the king wouldn’t be dead, and they wouldn’t have tried to kill me. I needed to explain it. Once Master Leiv understood, he would protect Ethene, and I could return to the soft peace of the vines, trees, and flowers.
Before I escaped with Ethene out of the room, Master Leiv said, “Tell Zota I need to speak with him when he’s finished his audience with the queen.” Then he covered the king’s body with a silk sheet. The landscape masterfully embroidered across it couldn’t hide the ugliness of what lay underneath.
At the mention of his name, Ethene started thinking about Zota. The scholar sorcerer. If I had questions, he might be the better person to ask.
I formed a new plan. I would stay with Ethene and let her take me to the queen and Zota so I could explain the evilness of ending someone. The queen sounded more influential than Master Leiv and would have the power to stop death.
I’d hesitated too long. “Why are you still here?” the guard asked, his thick brows drawn together as one.
Ethene couldn’t hide her thoughts. I’d been reading them since I’d first inhabited her, and I knew I frightened her. But more than that, she was afraid of taking me somewhere I could infect the queen. With the king dead, she was sovereign and had to be protected.
More eyes followed Ethene. The guard’s hand returned to the hilt of his sword.
Ethene was nothing like me. Fear of her own death was overpowered by the fear of someone else’s. She would die for others. Ethene’s mind pushed against me to retake control, but my command overruled hers in a blur of colors. I brought one of her hands to her forehead to concentrate. The world refocused, but a second too late.
“Are you all right?” The guard placed a hand on Ethene’s neck seemingly to support her, but his fingers dug into her skin.
I had to fix the situation. Now. Before it slipped away from me and into someone else’s control. Except I didn’t know what to say or do to alleviate the guard’s ever-tightening grip. But…maybe, he did.
Through his touch, I created a connection and entered his mind. I sank past his current thoughts and discovered paths leading to stacks of memories. I couldn’t stay long to search, though. If I didn’t return to Ethene soon, she might gather her senses and signal someone that a curse was here in an effort to protect the queen.
Quick as a heartbeat, I traveled back and forth between my connections to Ethene and the guard to use what I’d learned in his memories.
I opened Ethene’s mouth. “I fear what…” I made her cast her eyes down as though trying to prevent tears. “What the queen might say.” I dropped her voice lower into a whisper. “What she might do when I bring her this news.”
I’d followed a well-traveled path in the guard’s mind to a sore memory, a path so worn that all current thoughts traveled past it. I winced at the pain radiating from it.
I cleared Ethene’s voice and continued, “In the past, she hasn’t been kind. Particularly during the meeting with the Redonian delegation this past summer.”
I’d referenced the guard’s own memory of the queen, who had tried to demote him for bringing bad news from the border with Redon. An instant surge of empathy traveled through the guard. He removed one hand from the hilt of his sword and the other from Ethene’s neck.
I pulled at the corners of Ethene’s mouth until the last of the guard’s suspicions melted away at the smile I offered, as unsure as it was insincere. “Please forgive me.”
The guard looked at Ethene with a new perspective. In the short time I’d been in his mind, I’d seen how he thought she was too short for her age, and thought she tried to look older by tying her hair straight back. He wasn’t all critical, though. He detested that the queen insisted her servants wear white silk pants and shirts. It was cruel. It kept them from straying from their tasks and making sure they were always erect in their posture, a reflection of the position they held. Any dirt, wrinkle, or smudge would indicate a punishable dereliction of duty.
The white pants Ethene wore had brown scuffs at the knees from when she’d collapsed at the sight of the king. The guard mentally winced at what her punishment would be. He pitied Ethene.
I’d won. Ethene wouldn’t die here, though she apparently wanted to, given how quickly I kept having to return to her from the guard’s mind to stop her from alerting the room to my presence.
I firmly tucked myself back inside Ethene’s mind as the guard drummed his thumb along his belt and traded curt nods with those around the room. The robed sorcerers gladly turned away from the resolved situation and back to their low-murmured conversations. The guard took Ethene’s elbow in an unexpectedly kind manner and led her to the door.
“I understand your difficulty,” he said in a voice so low, only she could hear. “If you need any assistance, please let me know.”
Then I walked Ethene out of the room and into the hallway, with the door shutting behind us.
She still didn’t want to take me to the queen, but in thinking that thought, she accidentally gave me the memory thread I needed to follow to find my own way to the queen’s rooms. Skipping, a delightful pastime, I wound my way down the curved corridor, all while searching Ethene’s mind.
This place was called the Citadel, and I was inside its outer ring. There were four spokes, or hallways, that connected it to the center. A circle within a circle, like a wheel with a hub. Unlike the wooden outer ring, the center portion was constructed of stone. A protective measure to shield the inner courtyard. Or rather, what stood inside it.
I sniffed. A lot of effort had gone into protecting the inner courtyard, and that same effort should have gone toward protecting lives. I would tell Zota. Once he shared that knowledge, everything else would be better. Fear would go away. People wouldn’t panic at the mere idea of me. They would be glad, and Ethene would feel more warm emotions.
A thrill of excitement buzzed through me. Maybe this was why I was created—to help people. Why else would a sorcerer make me? Yes, yes! This is why I was here—to stop death.
I darted through my connection to the wrinkled woman who worked in the kitchen to find more about Zota. My ability to jump between previously established connections proved to be a real asset, though having to return to Ethene frequently to keep her from alerting anyone about me made the trips quite short.
The wrinkled woman had oceans of information. Everybody came to talk to her about everything. They venerated her with the honored title “Old Gossip.” While I entered her mind to get information on Zota, I found so much more. Not only did she know who Zota saw on his nights off duty, and his nights on duty, and what bed netting worked the best to keep blood biters out, but she knew why the queen had been legally connected twice before contracting to be the king’s wife. Something to do with “ex-husbands.”
The Old Gossip was a treasure. A true wealth of information. If the fate of all life hadn’t depended on me, I would have stayed inside her memories much longer. But in appreciation for her help, and in honor of her conviction, I added an item to my list of priorities. First, don’t die. Second, don’t let others die. Third, watch out for ex-husbands.
Rounding the curved hallway, I saw a member of the Queen’s Guard, also dressed in white. I reluctantly stopped exploring the Old Gossip’s mind to maintain full control over Ethene. The guard didn’t move until I’d stopped her in front of him.
“The queen’s waiting for you.” The guard twisted the tree branch-shaped handle and opened the door. I flexed Ethene’s fingers and flashed a smile as bright as the hope I was about to bring.
Time to fix everything.
