The Sleeping Life

Chapter Two

Kendall Stockton returned to Captain Faille’s quarters to discover her so-called teacher standing daydreaming on a footstool while a pair of dressmakers scuffled around her feet fooling with her hem. Really, there were times Rennyn Claire acted almost as silly as she’d pretended to be when Kendall had met her.

Not bothering to point out the obvious to someone who couldn’t be trusted with stairs and frequently came over dizzy and had to sit down, Kendall instead looked over the dress.

"It’s not as fancy as I expected," she said, considering the floaty, dark blue sleeves and the tiny silver flowers embroidered on the broad black waistband. Not bad, though it failed hide that Rennyn was still too thin, and it was cut low enough to show neck and shoulders. Rennyn didn’t exactly try to hide her throat, but she rarely wore anything that gave a good look at the scar left by her demon uncle. "Wasn’t it supposed to be green?"

"This is just for today’s audience." Rennyn glanced down at her dress as if she hadn’t really thought about it yet. She was the type who would wear exactly the same thing every day, if no-one poked at her.

This dress was a good deal more like what a nearly-Duchess would wear than the plain skirt, blouse and jacket Rennyn usually went about in, but she still didn’t look as expensive as most of the ladies Kendall had glimpsed flitting through the palace. Her teacher’s long black hair was caught back from the sides with a dark ribbon and the rest hung down her back same as always—she never tried to do anything with it. If Kendall had hair so nice and straight, instead of a mop of dirty blonde curls, she wasn’t sure she would bind it up in braids either. Though it was probably just that all the braiding the Court ladies liked was too much effort for Rennyn at the moment.

"How long have you been standing on that?" Kendall asked, handing Rennyn the newssheet she’d been carrying.

"Not long. For this dress." Rennyn’s smile was totally unconvincing. She glanced down at the newssheet and added: "Why does everyone draw me so short?"

While Rennyn wasn’t as unnecessarily tall as her husband, she definitely wasn’t small, so the most likely reason was the people making the newssheet didn’t care. The picture was nothing new: a drawing of a black-haired, dark-eyed woman dangling from puppet-strings held by a shadowy figure with claws, his arms and legs all long and spidery. Rennyn and her Kellian husband Captain Faille. While the picture properly got across the idea that Captain Faille was a scary man, anyone who thought Rennyn the least bit like a puppet really didn’t have a clue.

Kendall didn’t know why her teacher even bothered to read the sheets, though she did privately feel Rennyn had been out of her head, or at least not thinking things through, when she’d insisted on marrying Captain Faille before she’d even been able to get out of her sick bed. People had already distrusted the Kellian for being descended from magical constructs called golems, and not properly human. When the Black Queen—who had centuries ago created the first Kellian—had taken control of their descendants during her attempted return, every suspicion seemed confirmed, for all that the Kellian had had no choice in the matter. A ridiculously powerful mage like Rennyn Claire up and marrying one—in an evening ceremony in the infirmary with the bride propped into a sitting position, her face still black with bruises—well, of course people would say she’d been taken advantage of and start making a fuss. Rennyn was too used to acting like the Boss of the World to imagine anyone would think she could be bullied into getting married.

Kendall noticed the blue sleeves had acquired a distinct tilt. "You need to sit down now."

Rennyn straightened. Kendall just caught her change of expression, but as usual her teacher immediately tried to hide how upset not being able to do anything much made her. "Can you finish it with me sitting down?" she asked the dressmakers.

"Of course, Your Grace. I’ve pinned the level."

Rennyn needed help stepping down off the stool, and blinked and swayed a bit more while Kendall kept her upright. Knowing the looks she’d get if she let Her High and Mightiness fall over, Kendall made sure to keep hold of her elbow until she’d settled in one of the chairs by the window.

"It won’t be much longer, Your Grace," said one of the dressmakers: the older, less-snooty one who looked like a pigeon stuffed into ruby silk. No-one was supposed to call Rennyn Your Grace yet—not officially—but a lot of people did anyway. The huge amount Rennyn was spending on too many clothes—not just for herself but for her brother and husband, and for Kendall and her fellow student Sukata as well—made the dressmaker extra keen to please. Rennyn probably didn’t even notice, since she had her eyes closed and was taking long, deep breaths. She was supposed to be having an audience with the Queen that morning, and should have known better than to tire herself out before she even reached the Old Palace.

After a while she opened her eyes and began annoying herself with the newssheet again, carefully reading all of a long playbill for something called "The Black Queen". How a bunch of players could hope to Reveal All about the Return of Queen Solace Kendall didn’t know, and wondered if there was any way she could sneak off to see them try.

"There you are, Your Grace," said the plump dressmaker, clambering to her feet with just enough effort to show that scuffling about on her knees had been an especial favour. "I will make the adjustments to the other dresses, and have them to you soonest. Are you certain in regards to the decoration of the Court Gown?"

Kendall knew Rennyn’s main interest in the gown she was going to wear to be made Duchess was that it wasn’t heavy. Green and white for the Surclere colours and no and no and no again to all the other things the dressmakers said formal Court dresses had to have. While they were occupied, Kendall spotted a long jacket which she guessed was meant to be hers, and swapped it for her coat, checking that it would fasten up the front with the black wood oblongs that passed through little loops. Very spick, fitting exactly over the new trousers and crisp shirt that were already on the list of all the things Kendall planned to pay Rennyn for after she started earning.

Before the dressmakers could do more than notice, Kendall had it unfastened and off, and then made herself scarce until the pair staggered out under their load of pricey cloth. She had no wish to have them tut over her again with all their comments about how adorable she’d look in a dress and what a shame it was she didn’t grow her hair long. They could take their dainty and shove it up their petite.

Rennyn had made almost as many faces as Kendall while the dressmakers had been saying that, trying not to laugh. But right now she was expressionless, sitting staring out the window, one of her hands closed on the skirt of her new dress, creasing it. Kendall wondered if she could be nervous about her audience with the Queen, or just fretting because Captain Faille wasn’t with her.

"Are you going to be able to go to this meeting?"

"Sitting down and drinking tea? I think I can manage that."

Kendall’s shrug was an unspoken "don’t say I didn’t warn you", but she bent to help Rennyn with her shoes anyway. Rennyn’s broken ribs hadn’t healed properly, and she still had problems with bending and twisting. And laughing and sneezing and coughing and a surprising number of things. At least when she stood up she was steadier on her feet. No swaying as she turned, smoothing the line of her skirt.

"Tell me when you get done preening," Kendall said. "I’m sure Queen Astranelle won’t mind the wait."

"You’re planning on coming along?"

"There’s a pair of guards hanging about to march you up there, but I’ll go as far as the Old Palace with you." Been ordered to, more like. Whenever Captain Faille couldn’t sit around watching Rennyn, he made everyone take turns following her about. Not that Kendall wouldn’t have thought of it anyway. Rennyn would hate fainting somewhere on the way to see the Queen, and not having anyone she knew around.

"Is Seb still at the library?" Rennyn asked, making a snail’s business of the stairs down to the main hall of the Sentene barracks.

"Be there all year," Kendall replied shortly. She had no interest in the spellbooks Rennyn was gifting to the Houses of Magic, and no patience for the endless fuss over the mouldy old things. Except for a couple, Rennyn had said there wasn’t much in them which hadn’t already been done by someone else, and done better. It was stupid for everyone in the Houses to get so excited just because Rennyn’s family had had the only copies.

As they crossed the main hall, she searched again for some sign of life in the barracks. "Where is everyone? Sukata said she had to go to a big meeting."

"It wasn’t a Sentene meeting," Rennyn replied, but then closed her mouth tight as they met up with the two black and gold-clad guards come to escort her to the Queen.

A Kellian meeting then. Kendall closed her own mouth as well, and kept it that way. She could guess well enough why the Kellian were meeting. People were really and truly afraid of them right now, and not just because the Black Queen had been able to control them so totally. They were a lot stronger and faster than normal people, and the pointy fingernails were harder to overlook now that a few people in Court had seen how easily they could be used to cut through flesh. The newssheets and people in the Council had turned into braying asses about the risk the Kellian posed, and totally ignored the fact that the people they wanted to get rid of were busy saving their lives. It was because they were strong and fast that they were so good at hunting down the monsters out of the Hells—the place the mages called the Eferum. And they hadn’t done anything wrong by choice, had been totally under the control of the Black Queen, hadn’t even hurt anyone except Rennyn. But it was as if this was the first time the majority of Tyrland had really noticed the Kellian, even though they’d been around working as Sentene for ages. So there was all this talk about whether the Kellian counted as real people when the first ones had been things called golems, made by the Black Queen. Whether they could be trusted. Whether they should be killed.

Whether Rennyn owned them.

None of the Kellian had been happy to learn descendants of the Black Queen existed, and though they put a good face on it, they still hadn’t recovered from discovering that Rennyn had inherited an ability to command them. Most of them avoided coming near her.

Sukata, who had more to do with Rennyn because she was a rare Kellian mage, said they hated what she represented about themselves. And Sukata wouldn’t even talk about what it had been like to be taken over by the Black Queen, but she’d had nightmares most every night she and Kendall had shared a room at Rennyn’s old house, and the memory surely made Rennyn’s lesser control harder to bear.

No-one had told Kendall it was a secret Kellian meeting. Probably Sukata wasn’t allowed to. Obviously they were going to talk over the choices they had when their ungrateful country wanted them gone, and no doubt what to do about Rennyn and Sebastian and the Claires' evil uncle as well. Kendall was nobody who would get invited to that kind of thing, or told what was decided.

Frowning, Kendall checked Rennyn’s colour. She was walking slower, and it would probably be best if she sat down and rested somewhere before going on. Villemar Palace wasn’t a single building, but a mismatched clunch of them sitting on top of the central hill of Asentyr, with a big wall all around. The part called the Houses of Magic wasn’t that far from the Old Palace, where the royal family lived, but Rennyn was useless at any kind of distance. Kendall had known ancient grandmothers who had more stamina.

Since they were running a little late, Kendall bet Rennyn didn’t want to stop like any sensible person would, so she caught at the woman’s hand and arranged it on her shoulder. The way the thin fingers tightened told Kendall just how well Rennyn was managing, but she’d stick to it anyway. After being so powerful she could pretty much do whatever she liked, Rennyn was just too stubborn to accept being so weak she couldn’t get from one building to the next without help.

Kendall had only been intending to go as far as the entrance, but kept on until Rennyn was safely stowed in a flower-striped chair in a flower-striped room looking dubiously at the delicate flowery cups neatly laid out for tea. Kendall knew her teacher would be thinking of all the problems she’d had dropping things. Not often recently, but her hands still shook when she tired. Fortunately there was no sign of the Queen.

"Have you done your practice today?" Rennyn asked abruptly.

"Not yet," Kendall replied, annoyed. "The bowls aren’t going anywhere." For a whole month now she’d been doing the same thing, and though it was far more than Kendall had ever expected to do, it was achingly dull and pointless. Putting five wooden bowls in a row and lifting and turning them one after another was enough to kill anyone’s enthusiasm for magic, and Kendall hadn’t had much to start with. No-one would pay her for turning bowls over.

"I’ve a different exercise for you then," Rennyn said, in the extra-reasonable tone Kendall distrusted. "Seb brought a small chest up to Illidian’s quarters. The contents are in poor condition since it wasn’t under any form of preservation—there’s cloth gone rotten and turning to powder. Take it out to the Sentene practice ground and try unpacking it without touching it. You can toss the rotted cloth, and sort the rest into colours."

Kendall shrugged, but decided this meant Rennyn was feeling better now she was sitting down. "Do I have to do it out in the practice ground?"

"Since there doesn’t seem to be any way to unpack it without getting everything in the vicinity filthy, yes."

"All right."

Suppressing her irritation, Kendall headed out, wishing she hadn’t decided to stick out playing student while Rennyn was still sick. When Sukata’s mother, Captain Sarana, had withdrawn her daughter from Tyrland’s best school of magic and made formal arrangements with Rennyn for Sukata to be her student, Kendall hadn’t resisted the same arrangement being made for her because she thought she’d learn more than she had staying in the annoying and useless Arkathan. Huge mistake.

Rennyn and Sebastian were both totally in love with how magic worked, and kept trying to get Kendall to understand how to create original spells, when all Kendall wanted to do was learn how to cast the common ones she could get paid for, like how to create the protective Circles around settlements, and make light and heat and cold stones. She was the wrong sort of student for Rennyn and everyone knew it. And felt the need to tell her.

A mage like Rennyn Claire deserves the best students the Arkathan can offer. Don’t you see, the time she spends teaching you the basics could be put to better use? Such a pity. Such a waste.

Those were just the outright rude, but most of the conversations she’d been having lately hadn’t been any more fun. Kendall had had more than enough of mages telling her how lucky she was, and to be properly grateful, and never once minding their own business. Maybe worst of all was Sebastian trying to make her catch his enthusiasm for how things worked, so that she could be a fancy-pants true mage instead of what he called a rote mage.

Rennyn at least didn’t do that. She just said that Kendall could decide what kind of mage she wanted to be after she had a command of the basics, and that memorising a bunch of spells someone else had made up wasn’t the basics. But so far that had meant absolutely nothing but boring lifting exercises and lectures, and if Rennyn hadn’t been so sick, Kendall wouldn’t have stayed a day. She’d already made plans to find a better fit of teacher after Rennyn had recovered some more. She’d miss Sukata doing that, but Sukata would understand, and it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to meet up. No, it was the smart thing to do. Kendall would grit her teeth and put up with being a charity case until then.

Back in Captain Faille quarters she changed out of her best clothes. Finding the chest behind a chair, Kendall carried it down to the sandy triangle where the Kellian came and danced around each other with swords, and their supporting Ferumguard sharpened their musket skills. Fortunately no-one was about, since Kendall hated practicing with an audience. Not only because it had taken her so long to get the things she was trying to move to do what she wanted, but because everyone was all too interested. Rennyn was—or had been—the most powerful mage in centuries. And not only that, she and Sebastian did magic differently from everyone else, using three methods instead of just the one that was safest. It was hard to concentrate when people watched you as if you were about to give away some great big secret.

Sighing, Kendall sat down cross-legged in front of the chest. Thought Magic—Force Magic as most people called it—wasn’t taught because students kept accidentally hurting themselves when they were trying to learn it. Yet the first thing Sebastian Claire had done when he’d met Kendall was give her a Thought Magic exercise to do, just because he couldn’t imagine being a mage without it.

It was simple to explain, if not to do: you willed things to move about and they did. It had taken Kendall a month to be able to pick up a pebble, and now after more than two months she could move things about and turn them over so long as they were light. She had no idea why it was so hard to turn something over, or how this was going to end up making her like Rennyn, who could do all sorts of unlikely things without having to spend loads of time writing out sigils like the other mages.

Unpacking a chest should be simple, though Kendall knew she’d end up feeling almost as tired as Rennyn for the rest of the day. Magical strength was something you built up through practice, and Sebastian had told her to think of herself as a two year-old trying to move furniture.

The chest had a catch, not a lock, and it was easy enough to turn this and then lift the lid, letting out a stink of dust and rot. Inside were little bags, and rolls of velvet that had once been dark blue and now were a faded and mottled grey. Kendall realised she should have brought something to sort it out into, but figured the lid would do. Unpacking the chest was going to be a bit more involved than she’d expected, since getting stuff out of little bags was more than just lifting and turning.

The rolls of velvet looked easier, but even just picking one up was a surprise. It sagged. Kendall sat for a while trying different ways of holding a sausage of cloth that shed little fragments of itself at each attempt to make it sit flat and still. It was a lot harder than making a rock turn over, but before Kendall could puzzle out what to do she caught it somehow by a corner and the whole thing unravelled.

A waterfall of colour. Ruby. Emerald. Sapphire. Necklaces tumbling from the roll of cloth to lie winking in the mid-morning sun. Kendall stared, stunned, then snorted.

"Sort it into colours? Bet you thought that was funny."

An entire chest of the Black Queen’s jewels. The Claires had spent less effort looking after it than the stupid books they were donating to the Houses of Magic, which at least had been under some sort of spell not to fall apart. But what would you expect from a pair who’d never had to earn a coin in their lives?

From the looks of their home, the Claires had lived modestly. They hadn’t kept any servants, had maintained an ordinary three-bedroom house in a smallish town. Sebastian said they owned four other similar houses in Tyrland, and moved between them to keep from becoming too known in one place. Owning five houses seemed a lot to Kendall, but a Duchess was supposed to live in mansions and have crowds of servants and things. Rennyn wouldn’t get that kind of money out of the Duchy she had inherited, since everyone knew Surclere was chicken-scratch poor. Kendall wasn’t entirely certain how much a mansion cost compared to a chest full of jewels, but it looked like Rennyn’d at least be able to pay the dressmaker.

Most of the necklaces were ugly, clunky things: the metals tarnished to black and green. It was hard to picture Rennyn or even the Black Queen wearing them. It didn’t seem likely they were fake though, and it was going to take a while for Kendall to decide how much she didn’t appreciate Rennyn giving her a chest full of jewels to see what she’d do with them.

Still, it was better than bowls. Kendall was well into making piles of red and blue and green and yellow and white when the faint crunch of sand warned her of an onlooker.

The sprat standing before her was no-one Kendall knew, though his robe gave him away as a student of the Arkathan. He was maybe a little older than her, though not much taller, with pale blond hair, peach-fuzz cheeks, and a look like porcelain too fine to use. Peaky.

"Is it true you can’t cast the simplest Sigillic?" he asked, with a glance down at the glittery mess Kendall had spread about.

Kendall sat back on her heels. If there was one thing she was sick to death of, it was rich noble brats. The Arkathan was full of them, and when Kendall had been stuck there they’d only stopped ignoring her when they were trying to squeeze gossip out of her, or making it real clear she didn’t belong.

"I don’t see that’s any business of yours."

"Is it a secret? I was told you’re from one of the villages destroyed by the Grand Summoning, that you don’t have any connection to the Claires. No background in magery, haven’t even passed the first rank of the Sigillic comprehension tests. Can you read?"

It would be interesting to see how much of a necklace would fit up this snot’s nose. It could count as unpacking—or she could say he’d distracted her and it was an accident. Better to ignore him, though she didn’t want to keep practicing while he was there. And it was annoying as spit that he was right, that she couldn’t cast a single Sigillic, that Rennyn wouldn’t let her try.

Lacking a response, the boy went on: "It would be tremendously ironic if an unlettered—"

"Unmannered?"

Sebastian Claire stood in the shadow of the nearest archway. He had the same colouring as his sister, but was nearly ten years younger, having turned sixteen just before the beginning of the Black Queen’s return. The thing to remember about Sebastian was that he lived and breathed magic, and thought everyone else should do the same. For all that, Kendall had seen him be sharp enough about the real world whenever he bothered to pull his head out of the Eferum.

"You must be Sebastian Claire," said the boy, sounding pleased. "I—"

"No, really, you’d do better to shut up," Sebastian said. "I’ve no time for people who are rude to my friends."

The boy looked startled, then flushed and glanced down at Kendall. "I suppose I was. My mouth ran on." He bowed, quick and deep from the waist. "Your pardon. I just wanted to know. Another time, Lord Sebastian." He nodded, bit his lip and left, sand crunching beneath his shoes.

Sebastian plopped down to one side of the chest and looked over Kendall’s piles. "Garish stuff," he said. "I don’t suppose Solace wore much of this, either. A couple of centuries of Surclere heirlooms."

"Did you know him?" Kendall asked, not willing to be so easily distracted.

"No. Probably another one wanting to be Ren’s student. All week I’ve had people making bright suggestions, some more subtle than others, about putting in a good word for this or that promising mage."

"Has she said she wants more?" Kendall asked, warily.

"Everyone wants her to want more. They’d have her instructing classes at the Arkathan if they thought she’d agree. Ren hates the idea of people killing themselves trying to cast like she does, but she knows she can’t personally tutor every would-be Thought Mage in Tyrland."

"It would be good for Tyrland though, right? Teaching as many mages as possible to cast like you and Rennyn?"

"You can’t just teach people to cast like us. You can show them the path, but it’s not like maths, where you add one and one and end up with two. We’re not rote mages." He glanced down at the nearly empty chest. "How were you emptying these bags, for instance?

Kendall, with pleasing surety, reached with her thoughts and tugged open the top of one bag, lifted it and tipped it until a bunch of rings fell out into the sand.

"Like an extra pair of hands, right?" Sebastian’s eyes narrowed and the last of the bags hefted itself. But instead of upending, it writhed briefly, and a dull gold bracelet slid out.

"How do you move the bracelet without seeing it?" Kendall asked, impressed.

"With fingers you have a sense of touch. You can tell weight, texture, temperature—all sorts of things. And Thought Magic is even more than fingers. There’s a big leap beyond making things move, and I doubt many could even learn to do that reliably. Some just can’t attain that sort of mental discipline—they stopped teaching it not simply because it’s dangerous, but because it’s hard."

"I just don’t see how to move something I can’t see."

"It’s a leap," Sebastian said, agreeably. "But keep at it. Thought Magic isn’t as dangerous as they make out—at least not during the extra-pair-of-hands stage—and you’ve more than enough sense to not do anything outside your exercises. It’s the weak-minded and the impatient who kill themselves."

"Do they try and get you to take students too?"

"Not yet—they know I’m far behind Ren."

"The way people act about Rennyn’s way of casting, I don’t know if they’d give up just because she said no to more students."

He laughed, and pulled out a kerchief to pile all the smaller jewellery in. "Good luck getting Ren to do anything she doesn’t want to, now that Solace is gone."

Two months ago Kendall would have agreed wholeheartedly. But the Rennyn who had lost all her massive magical strength, and who got too tired to stand up, was a different prospect. Especially now it was so important to her to protect the Kellian. The Rennyn Claire who pranced around doing whatever she wanted was a thing of the past.