Queen of the Unwanted Read online

  That was hardly the impression Chanlix had formed, but she refrained from saying so. After all, Kailee knew Lady Vondelmai far better than Chanlix did.

  “I will endeavor to get to know the abbess,” Kailee continued. “Maybe figure out what she’s about. As I have mentioned, people tend to speak more freely around me than they probably should, so who knows what she might let slip? And I will use my study as an excuse for my extended presence in the Academy. Putting me in the room with novices will make perfect sense, and it will be useful for me to learn magic anyway. I will keep careful mental notes of what the abbess does and learn to recognize the elements as we go.”

  Kailee’s argument was logical enough, and yet the idea of using an innocent young woman as a spy was more than a little unsettling. “Again, I know that your intentions are good, but this proposal of yours seems to me…unsafe.”

  “It’s not like I will be creeping about in the shadows,” Kailee argued. “I’ll merely be sitting in the same room with the abbess, in full view of everyone. There is no danger in that.” She leaned forward in her chair, her expression one of earnest entreaty. “I mean to be an asset to Women’s Well. I have spent all my life being hidden away and regarded as a burden on my family. I am to be wed to a man who does not want me and who, for all his kindness, cannot help resenting me. If I cannot bring real value to the marriage, then I can at least bring value to my new home.”

  “You bring value just by being here,” Chanlix said, and meant it. But she knew too well herself what it meant to be unwanted—or, in her own case, Unwanted—and she could not help but sympathize. “I will have to run the idea by Princess Alysoon before I can say yea or nay.”

  Kailee gifted her with a smile that lit up her whole face. “Thank you, Lady Chanlix!”

  “I make no promises,” Chanlix warned. But she and Kailee both knew that Alys would not pass up this opportunity.

  * * *

  —

  Delnamal stared at his trade minister, the pleasant buzz of his after-luncheon brandy swept instantly away. Surely he’d been allowing his mind to drift into flights of fancy, as he was wont to do during the most tedious parts of council meetings. He could not possibly have heard what he thought he’d heard.

  “They what?” he asked, his voice so loud and sharp the trade minister flinched, and the rest of the council shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

  “They’re growing Aalwood trees,” the trade minister repeated timidly. “From all reports, it’s only a tiny grove so far, but the trees are growing at an astounding pace.”

  “They should not be growing at all!” Delnamal insisted. “Aalwood trees grow only in Aaltah.” How he wished saying the words would make it so. History taught that any number of attempts to grow Aalwood outside the influence of Aaltah’s Well had failed miserably. Planted seedlings died, and seeds failed to germinate, and no amount of growth potion or careful tending made the least bit of difference.

  He glanced around the council table and saw that every one of his councilors bore a similar expression of horror as they contemplated the possibilities. Aaltah’s economy depended on its abundant supply of Aal, and Aalwood was by far its most prized export.

  “I needn’t tell you what a disaster it would be if Women’s Well became a viable alternative source of Aalwood,” the trade minister said. “Especially if they were to undercut our prices.”

  “No, you needn’t tell me!” Delnamal snapped. He turned to glare at his lord high treasurer. “Now do you see why it is so vitally important that we increase the budget for our military? We cannot just sit idly by and allow that counterfeit principality to threaten the livelihoods of every man, woman, and child in Aaltah. We must crush them, and we must do so without leaving ourselves vulnerable to invasion from Rhozinolm. For that we need more men!”

  As terrible as the news was, it had a hidden benefit as well, for instead of remonstrating with him, the treasurer merely nodded his silent agreement. Unfortunately, the lord commander was not as immediately accommodating.

  “Lack of budget is only one concern,” Lord Aldnor warned. “As well defended as we found Women’s Well the last time we marched, they will be at least doubly so now. To have enough men to defeat them while still holding off Rhozinolm, we would have to conscript a great deal more men, and yet having a large number of conscripts in the city while we are not actively at war is…not ideal.”

  His lord commander was right, of course, but such objections were hardly helpful under the circumstances. “What would you suggest we do, Lord Aldnor?” he asked, hoping he did not sound quite so frustrated as he felt. All his life, Aaltah had been at peace, and though he was sure his father had had to handle many a diplomatic crisis, the stakes had never been so great as they were now, nor the cost of failure so dire. Why did things have to become so difficult now that he’d ascended to the throne? “Alysoon will not rest until she destroys us, and if she can’t do it with her pathetic excuse for an army, then she will try to do it by undercutting our trade agreements. We can’t simply sit back and do nothing.”

  There was a long and uncomfortable silence in the council chamber. A silence that left Delnamal seething, for he could well imagine what most were thinking, which was that it wasn’t Aaltah that Alysoon was bent on destroying, it was Delnamal. And that it was he himself who had created an implacable enemy when he’d tossed Jinnell’s head at Alysoon’s feet. Not a man at the table was aware that Jinnell had already been dead at her beheading and that Delnamal had merely been taking advantage of the unfortunate situation.

  “I fear you have the right of it,” Lord Aldnor said, interrupting the lengthy silence. “No matter how fast the Aalwood trees grow, Women’s Well will not offer us any significant competition in the near future, but the knowledge that they might do so is enough to make us vulnerable all on its own. The conscription will begin as soon as I have funds available.”

  It was not the most satisfying of victories, but at least now there would be some palpable progress toward the goal of wiping Women’s Well off the map. Combine an overwhelming army in Aaltah with the ongoing difficulties Alysoon would have adhering to the terms of her trade agreement with Rhozinolm, and it was possible Women’s Well would lose what support they had and become easy prey. Especially if Delnamal could use the hope of a marriage between Prince Waldmir’s daughter and Delnamal’s unborn heir to keep the Queen of Rhozinolm from marrying Prince Waldmir’s nephew and renewing their alliance. With Waldmir firmly on his side, providing Aaltah with iron and gems while cutting off Rhozinolm’s supply, Aaltah would be positioned for a swift and decisive victory.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mairah was not a bit surprised to find that the grand magus had made room for her and Norah at a workbench in one of the Academy’s small side rooms as far away from the main workspace as possible. Nor was she surprised that they were not left unattended in that room. A small class of fledgling spell crafters studied under the tutelage of an elderly ex-abigail, who spent much of the day with her Mindseye open. It was impossible to gauge the direction of that unfocused gaze, but Mairah was certain the teacher’s attention was focused squarely on herself and Norah.

  Lady Chanlix had kindly provided Mairah with a single sheet of parchment depicting the unique Women’s Well elements she believed would be most helpful in the quest to cure the supposed plum blight. Although the list would be of little real use to her in her true quest, she was nonetheless thankful that the grand magus had thoughtfully written the descriptions of the elements in Parian. She studied each one carefully, for though she and Norah had no need to cure the plum blight, their days at the Academy would be spent feigning research into the issue. Even if she’d seen no sign of anyone watching, she would have had to assume that they were being carefully scrutinized at all times, which made the charade necessary, if annoying.

  “Let’s see how many of these we can each see,�
� she suggested to Norah after they’d looked over the page of eight new and unique elements. Norah gave her a sidelong, surly look that Mairah had no trouble interpreting. She rolled her eyes. “I’m not trying to lord anything over you,” she said, although she fully expected to find a significant disparity in their abilities. “I’m just being practical.”

  Norah grumbled something under her breath, but Mairah ignored her and opened her Mindseye.

  The instant her Mindseye was open, Mairah let out an embarrassingly loud gasp of amazement. She was physically closer to a Well here than she had been when she’d worked her magic at the Abbey of Khalpar, and so expected the density of the elements to be greater. But she’d had no idea how much greater, how the air would be so alive with motes she felt momentarily smothered by them all.

  “So many,” she heard Norah whisper beside her, though the old woman likely saw less than a quarter of the number Mairah did.

  Was the Women’s Well truly putting out more elements than the Well in Khalpar, or was it just that the high concentration of feminine elements here made it seem that way? She had no way of knowing, but for several minutes, she could do nothing but sit there with her Mindseye open and stare around her at the bounty.

  Every feminine element she could name was visible in that vast cloud, and there were a reasonable number of neuter ones as well, though far fewer than she was used to seeing in Khalpar. She was taken aback, however, by the number of elements she didn’t recognize, which made her realize just how stingy the list Lady Chanlix had given her truly was. She easily recognized and located each one on the list, but there were so many others…

  “How many on our list do you see?” she asked Norah when she finally recovered some of her wits.

  Norah didn’t answer at first—no doubt guessing that Mairah could see far more and reluctant to admit her own shortcomings. “Three,” she finally admitted, the discomfort in her voice making Mairah smile.

  Mairah remembered seeing all those volumes of leather-bound spell compendiums on the shelves of the main room and wished she could run back in and crack one open. Not that she expected she would be allowed to do such a thing. It had been impossible to miss the hush that had fallen as she and Mairah had been hurried through the main workshop into the seclusion of this back room, nor had she missed the way the spell crafters covered their notes against her curious eyes as she passed.

  Searching for a patience that had never been one of her virtues, Mairah reminded herself that not so long ago, no one had known of the existence of any of these elements, much less their functions. If the former abigails of Aaltah could work out how to use them in a few scant months, then surely Mairah could learn enough to suit her purposes in the time she’d been given.

  There were quite a lot of abigails working on it, Mairah’s gloomier and more practical side murmured. And they had many months to experiment whereas I will have only one. And they’d not had to spend their daylight hours pretending to tackle a task that did not need tackling.

  “Between the two of us,” she said to Norah a little too loudly, trying to drown out the voice of her own doubt, “I have every confidence we’ll find a cure for the plum blight in no time.”

  Internally, Mairah winced at her admittedly ham-handed statement. While she doubted anyone in the room truly believed she and Norah were here to cure a plum blight, there was no reason to make the subterfuge any more obvious than necessary.

  Wondering how she would ever get through the long days of playacting, Mairah closed her Mindseye and began scribbling some notes about which elements might work together to cure the imaginary blight.

  * * *

  —

  Mairah wanted to scream from the skin-crawling feeling of being constantly watched. She could hardly take a step without tripping over one of the surly guards from their delegation. There were always at least two of them dogging her heels, and though they were supposedly meant as “protection” for the delegation, their constant scowling vigilance made it clear to everyone that their true purpose was not so benign.

  And of course, it was not just the guards who watched her with such attention and suspicion. Mairah suspected some of the “novices” were aiding in their teacher’s surveillance efforts. Every time she looked up from her feigned work in the Academy, she found at least two sets of eyes fixed on her, and she felt those gazes even when she looked away.

  It was only in the night that Mairah could dedicate herself to the task of securing her position as abbess. Ever since Norah had revealed Melred’s vision of the two of them working together in Women’s Well, Mairah had turned the problem over and over in her head. She’d quickly dismissed the possibility of actually trying to undo the Curse. It was true that if there was a secret to undoing it, that secret might lie in Women’s Well, but Mairah saw no point in throwing herself at a seemingly impossible task. Convincing the king she had the potential to undo it seemed a far more attainable goal. Besides, she had already set up certain expectations when she’d told Jalzarnin about her fabricated vision. She had claimed to see herself combining a secondary spell with a seer’s poison to trigger a vision on a specific topic, so that was what she had to accomplish.

  The task she had set herself might be easier than curing the Curse, but it was still far from simple, even with the vast array of elements she could see here in Women’s Well. She felt certain many of the elements she did not recognize would be helpful to her task, but so far her hopes that she could steal the occasional forbidden glance at any of the Women’s Well spell compendiums had been in vain.

  Suspecting that Princess Alysoon would not leave her and Norah completely unobserved even when they were in the privacy of their room at the inn, Mairah did her nighttime spell crafting under the cover of one of her bedsheets, draped over the simple writing desk that was wedged under a window. Perforce, her first night of work—and, she was certain, many thereafter—would be spent trying to figure out what some of the unfamiliar elements could do. It was necessary work, but she was achingly aware that the king had given her a ridiculously short amount of time to perform what was surely a miracle.

  Frustration chewed at the edges of Mairah’s self-control, and it seemed like she spent the entirety of the next day swallowing snappish responses and reminding herself that murdering Norah would bring a death sentence upon her own head. There was no missing how much Norah enjoyed Mairah’s dilemma. No doubt the old hag dreamed sweet dreams of Mairah’s downfall at night when her head hit the pillow.

  Inspiration struck Mairah on the morning of her third day at the Academy. She’d so far been able to recall only the tiniest smattering of vocabulary from her girlhood lessons in Continental—which was a sore hindrance to her efforts to learn snippets of forbidden knowledge by eavesdropping. She had a brief, offhand thought that perhaps a modified version of a memory-enhancement potion would help bring more of those lessons back to mind and realized, suddenly, that such a potion might be exactly what she needed to convince the king she could craft the spell she had described. What she wanted was to create a vision of a past event—which could at least loosely be termed a memory.

  Mairah cursed herself for not thinking of this idea the night before, when she could have explored the possibilities. Now she would have to spend all day researching a cure for a make-believe plum blight when she finally had a promising lead!

  While she sat stewing at her workbench, trying to keep her impatience in check, a young woman she had never before seen suddenly appeared in the doorway. She was walking arm in arm with one of the novices, her eyes milky white—though why she was walking around with her Mindseye open was a mystery. She was an extraordinarily beautiful young woman, dressed in a gown of peach-colored silk embroidered with tiny white flowers. Mairah suffered a pang of envy, for though after years of wearing nothing but robes, she enjoyed wearing the simple dresses Princess Alysoon had so graciously gifted her, she covete
d that gown with an unreasoning hunger.

  A pretty gown would do nothing to fix that face of yours, a voice that sounded very much like Norah’s whispered nastily in Mairah’s mind.

  She would have wrenched her attention away and opened her own Mindseye to get back to work if the novice hadn’t led the newcomer to the workbench at which she and Norah sat.

  The novice said something in Continental that Mairah couldn’t understand, although she gathered from the gestures and hearing her own and Norah’s names that they were being introduced. Norah, who’d been absorbed in her fake work, blinked to clear her Mindseye, seeming to notice the other women for the first time.

  “Thank you,” said the stranger in the peach gown to the novice—that much Continental even Mairah could understand—smiling graciously while still keeping her Mindseye open. She then turned that smile toward Mairah. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mother Mairahsol,” she said in fluent Parian. “I am Kailee Rah-Kailindar, and I am also a relative newcomer to Women’s Well, so I thought I’d arrange an introduction.”

  The novice looked uncertainly between the two of them, and across the room, the instructress closed her Mindseye and frowned in their general direction. For a moment, Mairah thought the woman was going to demand that Kailee leave, but then she seemed to think better of it.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mairah said, at a loss for how else to react. Why was Kailee walking around with her Mindseye open? And, if she was a respectable young woman, as her dress seemed to indicate, why was she arranging an introduction to an abbess?