The Women's War Read online

  women will for the first time have a degree of control over their own lives. From now on, no woman will conceive or carry a child unless she wishes to of her own free will. This is women’s magic, and it is subtle. The spell will know the difference between true free will and coercion.

  “Impossible,” Alys muttered under her breath, shaking her head. And yet even as she said it, she found herself believing it wasn’t so impossible, after all.

  The change we three have made is based in the Wellspring itself, and it will affect all the world. It’s likely that such a disruption of the Wellspring will cause other changes, ones we could not anticipate, but we believe unequivocally that with time, the lives of women everywhere will be greatly improved.

  How could a spell affect the Wellspring itself? And how could casting a spell on the Wellspring bring anything but disaster?

  Had the earthquake and the flood been an example of those “other changes” the spell might cause? Or was there more to come?

  The men of this world are going to do everything they can to reverse what we have done, but rest assured that it is not possible. The spell is a culmination of generations of work. Myself, Nadeen, and Vondeen are the only ones who know what we’ve done and how we’ve done it, and the knowledge dies with us. Which brings me to you, dearest daughter.

  You will have inherited some of the magical abilities that were bred into my blood. Not enough to reverse the spell, but enough to make you vulnerable. Your father will protect you, but he will not live forever, and the crown prince will not be so forgiving. You, your brother, and your family are all in danger, and for that I am deeply sorry. My best hope of protecting you is through this book, which you must keep hidden at all costs.

  Each time you put Rho into the book, a magic lesson will appear in these pages. I have tailored these lessons to the abilities I know you have and the elements I know you are capable of seeing. Read and absorb everything carefully—the book will not present a new lesson until you have mastered the current one.

  I wish I could say with certainty that the magic you will learn from this book will be enough to protect you. I cannot control what my foresight allows me to see, and I’ve had no glimpse of your future nor Tynthanal’s. Take care of your brother as best as you are able—and as best as he will allow. You are both more precious to me than I can possibly say.

  Alys closed her eyes, fighting a wave of dizzying panic. Once Delnamal found out the spell had been engineered by Alys’s mother and two descendants from the same bloodline, he would want her and her brother and her children dead. More than he did already, that is. Thanks to the divorce, neither she nor Tynthanal was legitimately in the line of succession, but their half-brother had always seen them as a threat to his future throne—and as competitors for their father’s love. And now he would have a legitimate-sounding reason to call for them to be thrown in the dungeon, at the very least.

  What magic could her mother possibly teach her through this book that would protect her if the crown prince wanted her dead? It seemed ridiculous to think Alys could protect herself, much less herself and her children and her brother.

  Her head suddenly pounding, she closed the book and closed her eyes. She couldn’t even begin to understand how her life—and the lives of so many others—had changed so drastically over the course of a single night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Princess Ellinsoltah groaned, then coughed and tried to gasp. The weight of the man lying on top of her pressed the air out of her lungs, and she pushed on his chest, hoping to move him. He didn’t budge.

  She coughed again, breathing in clouds of dust from the settling debris, blinking against the darkness. Her whole body ached, and her mind felt sluggish as she tried to make sense of what had just happened.

  Moments before, she’d been delicately sipping a glass of wine, dreading the inevitable conclusion of the intimate family dinner. The king—her grandfather—planned for the dinner to end with the announcement of her betrothal. The end of life as she knew it—though her father would insist she was being melodramatic. Perhaps if he were the one who had to upend his life and move to the dismal principality of Nandel to marry someone he couldn’t stand, all for the good of a stupid trade agreement, he would see things her way.

  She pushed harder on the body that held her pinned, her heart pounding as she tried to struggle out from under him. Around her, she heard someone moaning softly, and the occasional patter as loose bits of debris shifted.

  Never had Ellin struggled as mightily to play the role of the dutiful daughter and loyal subject of the king than during the endless hours of that engagement dinner. Beside her, Zarsha of Nandel—her intended—had been his usual genial self, his clever tongue ever quick with the witty rejoinder that everyone but Ellin found so charming. He’d been courting her—despite his certain knowledge that she had no say in the marriage arrangement—for two months, and the only thing she truly knew about him was that he was an expert courtier, who always played to his audience and never revealed the smallest hint of what was truly behind the multitude of masks he wore. Not until they were married and living in Nandel—where she would have no more rights than his horses—would she see what truly lay behind those masks. But one did not wear such masks if one did not have something truly dreadful to hide.

  The dinner had been drawing to its end when the earth had started to shake. Earthquakes were rare in the Kingdom of Aaltah, but they were unheard of in the Kingdom of Rhozinolm, so at first everyone was confused by the shaking. When it had grown stronger, more than one person at the table had pushed his or her chair back and stood indecisively on the swaying balcony with the lovely view of the palace grounds. Some laughed nervously and grabbed glasses that were about to topple, but Zarsha—for once—had not been amused.

  “We should get inside,” he said, pulling back Ellin’s chair with her still in it. He wasn’t even looking at her, but was instead staring at the columns that bordered the balcony—and held up the roof. Ellin followed his gaze and realized the columns were bowing and bending in ominous ways.

  “Everyone keep your seats!” the king demanded, and the family was so used to following his orders that they all leapt to comply.

  But Zarsha was not yet part of the family, and Ellin doubted he was much in the habit of following orders anyway. For all his skill at ingratiating himself to others, there was a degree of arrogance in him that Ellin thought might be a glimpse of his true self. He always thought himself the cleverest person in the room. To be fair, he usually was right, but Ellin thought a touch of humility would do him good.

  “This balcony was not meant to withstand earthquakes,” Zarsha shouted. He had the audacity to grab Ellin’s arm and bodily pull her to her feet, shoving her chair out of the way and dragging her toward the nearest door. Perhaps a prelude to how he would treat her when he no longer felt obliged to follow Rhozinolm custom and acknowledge women as fellow human beings rather than possessions. He’d shown a great deal more courtesy to women than had other Nandel-born men Ellin had encountered, but she had no doubt that was just another one of his masks.

  There was a deep, groaning sound, followed by a sharp crack. The earth continued to buck and writhe, and Ellin let out a gasp as she felt the angle of the floor beneath her feet change. Their dinner was being held on the upper of two balconies, and the crack they’d all heard came from the lower level.

  “Hurry!” Zarsha shouted, shoving her toward the door.

  The rest of the diners hastily decided Zarsha’s was the correct approach and started struggling to their feet. Ellin tried to pull free of Zarsha’s grip when she heard her mother cry out in pain as one of the luminants from the ceiling fell and struck her a glancing blow on the shoulder.

  And then there was another sharp crack from much closer.

  Zarsha plowed into Ellin, shoving her toward the door as the entire balcony lurched be
neath them. Ellin’s heels caught on something and she toppled backward. Everyone was screaming now—cries of terror and pain as the floor buckled and cracked and ultimately fell. From her vantage point on the floor, Ellin could see her husband-to-be cast one longing glance at the door. But instead of running for safety, he threw himself down on top of her, protecting her with his body as everything around them crumbled.

  Ellin’s confused sense of time couldn’t decide whether that had all happened just a few heartbeats ago or whether she’d been lying dazed for hours.

  But the shaking had finally stopped, and Ellin was pleasantly surprised to find herself alive, though she wasn’t sure how long that would last if she couldn’t get Zarsha off her. It was pitch-dark, and she couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but he certainly wasn’t moving. The pressure of his body on top of hers kept her from taking a full breath, and the drifting clouds of dust meant every breath she managed caused her to cough out more air than she took in.

  To her immense relief, Zarsha shifted and groaned. She pushed on him some more, and he finally moved to the side just enough to let her draw in a deep breath. Another spasm of coughing followed, her ribs screaming in protest at the sharp movements.

  There were no lit luminants anywhere in sight, but there was a full moon, and Ellin’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. She pushed up onto her elbows—the most movement she could manage with Zarsha still lying half on top of her—and looked around.

  All that was left of the balcony were a few feeble wooden beams, and most of those were broken. Ellin and Zarsha were lying on one of those beams right where it joined the outer wall of the palace at the doorway. The extra support of the sturdy wall had preserved a few floorboards around the beam and kept Ellin and Zarsha from crashing down to the floor below, though they were both covered in dust and glass shards and splintered wood. Zarsha was bleeding heavily from a gash on the back of his head. He was the only person in her field of vision.

  “Mama!” she called. “Papa!”

  But there was no answer.

  She tried to crawl to the edge of the floor, but Zarsha had regained his senses and held her back. “It’s not safe,” he said in a raspy, cough-roughened voice.

  Almost everyone she knew and loved had been on that balcony with her. Her mother, her father, her grandfather, her uncle. She let out an incoherent cry of rage and grief and fear.

  Maybe they were all right, she told herself. The fall hadn’t been from any great height, after all. They would be injured, certainly, and they were probably too disoriented to respond to her cries. But surely they weren’t dead.

  “Mama!” she screamed again, desperate to hear her mother answer back. Lights were flickering around the edges of her vision now, servants and palace guards with hastily lit candles and torches converging on the ruined balcony and calling out urgently in search of survivors.

  Somehow, Ellin ended up wrapped in Zarsha’s arms, sobbing against the dirty and torn silk at his shoulder as he made soothing sounds and rocked her. She was in too much pain, both emotional and physical, to care that she was taking comfort in the arms of a man she despised.

  * * *

  —

  Ellin felt numb in body and mind. The numbness was caused at least in part by the potion the healer had bullied her into drinking. As promised, it had soothed her raw throat and eased the pain in her ribs, but she’d barely drunk a quarter of it before her head had started swimming. She poured the rest out while the healer wasn’t looking, having no wish to fall into oblivion until she’d received word about the rest of her family. She’d demanded information from no fewer than five people, and no one had been able—or willing—to tell her anything.

  To get out from under the watchful eye of the healer, Ellin had retreated to her bedchamber, swaying on her feet as though the healing potion were in full effect. The healer looked smugly satisfied as Ellin leaned on her ladies and allowed them to guide her to her rooms. But when the ladies tried to undress her and put her to bed, she stopped them and ordered them out.

  It was well past midnight by now, and Ellin was more exhausted than she could say, but she refused to go to sleep. While no one she had yet encountered had been willing to tell her anything, she knew there was one person who was not afraid to tell her the truth, even when the truth was unpalatable. She spent a few minutes in front of a mirror, brushing off the worst of the dirt and debris that was ground into her skin and clothes. There was a swath of Zarsha’s blood in her hair, but she cut off the pink hair ribbons that showed the stain, and the rest of it was barely visible against the black braids and coils. She still looked a mess, but at least she could roam the halls without everyone stopping her to see if she was injured.

  She slipped into the hallway, trying to decide where best to look for Graesan Rah-Brondar, her master of the guard. He’d been off duty tonight because of the family dinner and the presence of the king’s honor guard, but she was sure he’d have joined the search for survivors in the rubble of the collapsed balconies. If any of her family still lived, he would know.

  She’d taken no more than a dozen steps from her doorway when he turned the corner at the opposite end of the hall. Her throat caught at the sight of him, and it was all she could do not to fling herself into his arms. Not until she saw him did she realize how frightened she had been that he, too, might have come to harm.

  Graesan was everything her intended was not. Loyal, genuine, kind, and easy to talk to. While Zarsha was quick with the easy quip and empty, shallow banter, Graesan actually listened to—and cared about—what other people said. She’d developed what she’d thought of as a teenage crush on him when he’d first joined her honor guard. But that was five years ago now, and the “crush” showed no sign of fading away with maturity.

  Objectively, Zarsha was the more classically handsome of the two. His blue eyes, which forever marked his Nandel origins, were a little off-putting, but his high cheekbones, his arrow-straight nose, and his full lips carved out a beautifully symmetrical face, and his tall frame and nicely muscled body made nearly every woman in the kingdom watch him admiringly when he walked past. But it was Graesan’s slightly hawkish nose and his lean, wiry build that made Ellin’s pulse race, and if she could choose any man in the world to be hers, she would choose him.

  Graesan gave her a formal bow as she hurried to close the distance between them. She wanted so badly to reach out and touch him, to reassure herself that he was unhurt. His clothing was filthy, his hands covered in dust and scratches, his nails ripped and ragged. Her guess had been right; he’d been digging through the rubble.

  “Are you all right, Your Highness?” he asked when he rose from his bow, his eyes scanning up and down her body in a way that would not be considered strictly proper. There was too much fear, too much genuine concern in those eyes. Usually, he was more careful and reserved—if anyone guessed they had feelings for each other, he would be summarily dismissed, no matter how proper their outward behavior. But unlike Zarsha, he had no aptitude for subterfuge, and he could not hide his feelings at a time like this.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing worse than a few bruises, which the healer has already taken care of.” Zarsha’s injuries had been far more serious, but he’d been conscious and alert when the healers had separated them, and she presumed he wasn’t in mortal danger. It occurred to her that if he hadn’t dragged her toward the doorway and then shielded her with his own body, she might be dead right now.

  Was it possible she owed Zarsha her life? Ellin shuddered, thinking about how a man like him might take advantage of such a perceived obligation.

  Then she shook off thoughts of her injured husband-to-be and met Graesan’s eyes as she steeled herself for the question she had to ask, no matter how badly she dreaded the answer.

  “My family?” she asked in the barest ghost of a whisper, her eyes already stinging with tears. I
nstinct told her that if there was good news to be had, her repeated questions earlier would not have been so roundly ignored.

  Graesan winced in sympathy, his hands twitching toward her as though wanting to offer her physical comfort. “You and Zarsha of Nandel are the only survivors from that balcony.”

  She covered her mouth as a half-gasp, half-sob escaped her. “My father?” she choked out. “My mother? My uncle? The king?”

  Graesan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” he said, and she heard genuine sorrow in his voice. He swallowed hard, struggling against emotions his fellow guardsmen would almost certainly mock him for letting show. “The tragedy is…unimaginable.”

  Tears flowed freely down Ellin’s cheeks, and she leaned against a wall for support as her knees threatened to buckle. Her relationship with her father and her grandfather had been strained—and that was putting it mildly—ever since they had decided to ship her off to Nandel in a marriage she’d made no secret of objecting to, but to have lost them both, as well as her mother and her uncle, in one night…

  The pain stole her breath and made the floor feel unsteady beneath her feet once more. She was utterly alone in the world now, and the desolation of that knowledge was unbearable. Graesan finally set aside concern for propriety, taking both her hands in his and squeezing, lending what support he could. She wished he would take her in his arms, wished she could hide her head against his shoulder and sob out the renewed burst of pain as she’d done with Zarsha. But Zarsha was her intended husband and her social equal, and Graesan was not. He would face censure even for holding her hands if anyone were to see them. Certainly he could not afford an embrace.

  Clinging to the hands that were her only lifeline, Ellin searched for the strength she so desperately needed to help her endure the agony.