Jaclyn Dolamore - Magic Under Stone

“It’s not all you have done. You helped prove that Smollings murdered Garvin, and removed him from the council. You can’t know how much that means to me, Nimira. Have I ever thanked you properly?”

I made a vague sound. I couldn’t remember. “I didn’t do anything with the thought of being thanked.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “But you should remember that your bravery helped more people than just Erris. You brought me peace, knowing that Garvin was avenged, and that is no small thing.”

I smiled, just a little, at that. Sometimes my bravery only brought me trouble, and it was good to know that it could bring someone peace.

“I know it all must look a little bleak right now,” Karstor continued. “But we never know what fate has in store for us.”

It was true. A year ago, I was just a foreign girl of no importance, dancing in a cheap show, and today I was having breakfast with one of the most powerful men in the country. Tomorrow, I would be on a train north to find a man who would, I hoped, be more powerful still.

The train brought us as far as Cernan, the northernmost stop on a route that stretched almost the entire length of the coast. This place was a far cry from where we had begun, the grand station in New Sweeling, with its golden halls and stairs, statues and glittering gaslights.

There was no one to meet us, of course, although plenty to stare at us. The train station was hardly more than a shack, and the few people who had gotten off with us were quickly met by their relations. At least, I assumed they were relations because they looked the same, but as I glanced at one lean, weather-beaten, dark-haired individual after another, I wondered if the entire town wasn’t related.

I halted to check my map. “I didn’t think this town would be so small. I hope we can hire a hack.”

Erris was quiet, as he had been for most of the journey. We had started out talking about the sights flying by our windows, and he had made jokes, but I could tell he was relieved when I fell silent for long stretches.

A young man approached, perhaps only a year or two older than my seventeen years. He hitched up his trousers with the hand not grasping a cigarette. “You people looking for something?” He placed a subtle emphasis on you people . I wondered if he could tell Erris was a fairy, but perhaps not, for I was the one who seemed the focus of his scrutiny. Fairies looked much like Lorinarian humans, but my black hair and brown skin marked me as a foreigner.

The man at the ticket counter, the porter, the families greeting each other-all their attention subtly shifted to see what we would say.

“Yes, we are,” I said, folding my map halfway. “Ordorio Valdana.”

You could have heard the trees growing in the ensuing silence.

An older man who had just stepped off the train marched into the conversation. “Ordorio Valdana? What would you want with him? What’s going on?”

Erris finally spoke. “We’ve come a long way, from New Sweeling, looking for Mr. Valdana.”

We could have told them the ambassador of magic himself had sent us, but the less talk we left in our wake, the better.

The younger man took a drag on his cigarette. “The minute I saw them, I said to myself, I bet they’re here to see that old lunatic. Well, he’s not even home, so you might as well get right back on that train.”

I had grown sadly accustomed to being condescended to ever since I’d arrived on these shores. They’d have to do better than that to get rid of me. “When will he be back?”

“Probably not until spring,” the older man said.

The older man’s wife had been waiting behind him, but now she joined his side and the conversation. I half expected the man in the ticket booth to abandon his post and trot out his opinion as well. She said, “You know that man sold his soul to the devil?”

“Come again?” I didn’t know if she meant it literally, or if the fact that Mr. Valdana was a necromancer had biased the town against him.

The men nodded. “You don’t want anything to do with him if you know what’s good for you.”

“What’s good for us?” Erris repeated. “No, we certainly don’t know that. Where does Mr. Valdana live?” he pressed.

The townspeople exchanged looks, as if deciding to wash their hands of our fate. The old woman pointed toward the bald-topped mountain looming north of the train station. “On the shore by the mountain.”

“Thank you,” Erris said, bowing in a courtly way that left them flustered. “Come on, Nimira.”

I was relieved to see him taking charge, but then, finding Mr. Valdana was the only thing he cared about since learning that his sister had been married to the man. Melia’s husband was, in a sense, the only tie Erris had to what once had been a boisterous royal family of ten children. Yet, I was terrified that after we met Mr. Valdana and heard the fate of Erris’s sister, he would have nothing else to live for.

I didn’t delude myself that I might be enough. Never mind that he was all I had too. It had been a long time since I’d had anyone to care for.

Erris carried both our bags to a waiting hack. “We’re headed for the shore, by the mountain.”

The driver’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Valdana?”

“Yes.”

The driver snorted. He could have been a brother to the old man we’d spoken to a moment before; they shared the same large nostrils and jutting chin. “You’ve got money?”

“Of course.” I patted my pocketbook.

When the man pointed his eyes forward again, we took that as permission to board. Erris gave me a hand. He touched me only sparingly now, perhaps ashamed of what he was, and yet every time our skin met, my body betrayed me with tingles.

I settled my skirts as Erris climbed up beside me, the weight of the clockwork skeleton beneath his clothes making the bench groan, but the driver didn’t notice.

“You young folks know that Mr. Valdana’s sold his soul to the devil, don’t you?” he said, snapping the reins.

“Truly?” I asked. “How do you know?”

“His parents were good people,” the man continued. “But Valdana was always a strange one. When he came back from New Sweeling after all those years with that half-fairy baby-”

Erris leaned forward. “Baby? Half-fairy baby?”

The driver stiffened and withdrew like a lumbering old tortoise pulling in his shell. “Who are you folks, anyway?” he said. “I’m sure you heard he isn’t even home.”

“We just want to look at the place,” I said. “We heard he’s a legendary sorcerer, and we’re… curious.”

“I’m a sorcery student,” Erris added. I was glad he had offered a good explanation. Women were not permitted at sorcery schools in Lorinar, so I couldn’t think of much reason I would seek out a famous sorcerer myself.

No response from the driver, but I didn’t think he believed us. We made such a strange pair I doubted any explanation would legitimize our presence.

I was a little surprised no one recognized us from the papers, for that matter, which showed how far we had traveled. Just a month ago, the story had been on the front page of the New Sweeling Times: the lost prince of fairy, Erris Tanharrow, found trapped in the body of a clockwork man, thirty years after the war in which he had disappeared! Here, we were anonymous again, if not unnoticed.

The carriage jolted along the surprisingly well-maintained road, past trees just beginning to turn color. Autumn began early this far north. The cool sea breeze felt pleasant now, but I could tell winter would be long and bitter-already the air whispered a warning of things to come.

We drove through thick forest around the foot of the mountain, turned a corner, and there, visible in the distance where the land jetted toward the sea, was a formidable stone house with red trim around arched windows, giving it a surprisingly fanciful air. I knew it must belong to Mr. Valdana.