David Niemitz
patreon
Guild Mage 306
🕑 Added 2025-11-20 16:04:16 +0000 UTCChapter 306: Betrayed with a Kiss
Wren was already in the air by the time Liv and the others came out the door of Acton House and piled into the carriages. She wasn’t specifically watching them, and she hadn’t wanted Kaija, Ghveris or the rest to count on her in the event something happened, but she did think keeping an eye on how people in the city streets reacted to their passage might be a good place to start. If someone began obviously following the procession, Wren would have found a spy.
Unfortunately, she had no such immediate luck. If someone was tracking Liv’s journey through Freeport toward the royal palace, they were doing so with enough care and stealth that Wren didn’t pick up on it. Really, though, why would anyone need to? The reception was, after all, in Liv’s honor – it was a given that she would be attending. There was no need to waste time and risk exposure trailing the carriages when you could just set your spies up at the palace in advance.
Because there would be spies – of that, Wren had no doubt. In some ways, she’d taken the hardest job of all for herself, while they were in Freeport. Even as far north as Whitehill, there’d been rumors about how the priests of the Trinity had torn through Houses Sherard, Arundell and Fane, questioning every noble, each soldier, and every servant, in a furious effort to root out any trace of Ractia’s cult.
If those three houses hadn’t just been on the losing end of a war that destabilized the entire kingdom of Lucania, and if the temple priests hadn’t had the full and explicit backing of the council or regents, it was the sort of move which would have led to conflict between the barons and the church.
Wren was willing to trust that the priest would have found any obvious cultists within the houses they examined. She even assumed that they would have tracked back the connections of the cultists they did find, exposing even some of those who weren’t rooted in noble households. What she didn’t trust, however, was the idea that they’d found everyone in the entire city of Freeport. Ractia had never evacuated her followers from Lucania because there hadn’t been someone like Keri hunting them for decades: there hadn’t been a need. And after losing Nightfall Peak, Wren wasn’t certain that she could pull off the required rift manipulations even if she wanted to risk exposing herself. To Wren’s mind, that made it a certainty that cultists remained in hiding, spread throughout the kingdom.
If the Temple had already scooped up the most obvious of their enemies, that left only the most subtle for Wren to hunt. She didn’t have the slightest idea where to begin; Wren had originally come into Lucania through Courland, and this was the first time she’d ever even stepped foot in Freeport. Her best chance was, unfortunately, to use Liv herself as bait.
So, she flitted between manors, watching over the two carriages and the procession of guards on horseback, following all of the way to the palace. There, Wren found extensive gardens, where she could roost in the highest tree branches, out of the light of the hanging lanterns. She sent out pulses of sound to map the area in her mind, unseen and unheard by the servants bustling about, or the couples who snuck out from the ballroom to catch a moment alone on the balcony, or down the stairs in the gardens.
Wren listened for plots and plans, but time and again was disappointed to overhear little more than soft sighs and moans in between desperate kisses. She was able to catch glimpses of her friends and companions in the great ballroom, through the enormous paned windows which made up nearly the entirety of one wall. There was Miina, being whirled in circles across the ballroom by the too-pretty ambassador Keri had appointed.
The door to the terrace opened for the dozenth time, but this once Wren recognized the small knot of people who stepped out. She flitted closer, trusting to the sound of the closing door, and the night-blindness of those who’d just emerged from the light of the chandeliers, to keep her undetected.
“You should go and speak to her,” Cecily Falkenrath urged. “Everyone knows that you were part of that group at Coral Bay.” The raven-haired daughter of Duke Thomas was wearing a gown cut entirely of jet-black cloth, from the underskirts, to the bodice, to even her gloves. The only relief were subtle embroideries in purple thread, which matched the amethysts set into her bracelet and rings, and even the silver carcanet around her neck.
“I haven’t seen her in months,” Tephania protested. “The last time we spoke, it was with a backdrop of corpses dangling from gibbets. And I didn’t go with her when she left Coral Bay.”
“That conversation ended with her telling you that you were welcome in Whitehill,” Thurston Falkenrath pointed out. “I was there, if you recall – and that was more warmth than she gave any of the rest of us. And from the look on the archmagus’s face when he walked out, she wasn’t any kinder to him or the dukes.”
“Just go and greet her,” Cecily repeated. “At the worst, she won’t wish to speak with you. But perhaps she will – she may even invite you to sit with her for the evening, or to visit her at Acton House. We could learn a lot about what she’s planning from a single conversation.”
“She’s my friend,” Teph said. “I don’t want to spy on her.”
“Your friend broke an army,” Thurston said, his tone hard. “And she’s our northern border. If you want Courland to survive, we need to know what she intends to do. If she ever decides to attack Lucania, we’re going to be the front line.”
“Liv wouldn’t do that,” Teph said, clearly miserable.
“Did you think she’d hang those men?” Cecily asked. “You need to consider, Tephania, that she’s capable of things you never imagined. Listen. Do you understand why I put up with being Milisant’s lady in waiting for so long?”
“Political power?” Teph ventured, but the older woman shook her head.
“Information. As long as I was standing next to the princess, I could report back to our father everything that was happening here at court,” Cecily explained. “Information is power, Tephania. And you have been closer to Livara of Whitehill than practically anyone left south of the mountains.”
“Cade –”
“She tossed Cade Talbot aside long before the war,” Thurston interrupted. “The man’s wed to another woman now, and by the looks of it, your friend is far more interested in that Elden prince on her arm than her girlhood infatuation. If it was Matthew here, I would be the one to go and speak to him, but it isn’t. It has to be you.”
“You don’t need to ask her anything in particular,” Cecily said, placing a hand on Tephania’s arm. “Just go and say hello to her. Have a conversation. Stay for as long as feels natural, or as long as she allows. And then afterward, the three of us will talk over what you’ve heard.”
“I don’t want to betray her,” Teph muttered.
Wren shifted her wings. If the other two would leave the blonde woman alone on the terrace for a moment, she might be able to risk shifting forms.
“Give us a moment,” Thurston said to his sister.
“Fine.” Cecily stormed across the terrace, opened the door, and rejoined the glittering throng inside the ballroom.
To Wren’s surprise, Thurston reached out and took Tephania’s gloved hands in his own, drawing her closer to him. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was much softer. “My sister gets like this sometimes. She can be rather ruthless, and she doesn’t always understand when other people don’t see things the same way she does.”
“I’m afraid she’ll hate me now,” Teph admitted.
“No.” Thurston shook his head. “I’ll speak to her and smooth it over. You have nothing to worry about.” He leaned in and kissed Tephania for a long moment.
“Someone could see,” Teph murmured, once the two young people had broken apart to breathe. “My father would –”
“I can handle your father,” Thurston said. “And mine as well.”
Wren could see the moment that Tephania bit her lip.
“Would your father be more likely to approve if – if I do what Lady Cecily wants?”
“If you renew your friendship with the foreign queen that everyone is terrified of?” Thurston asked. “If you can bring back some kernel of information that’s useful to him, that no one else knows? Of course he would, Teph. He’s a duke. He wants to know that whatever woman I wed will be an asset to the house, and that means playing politics.”
“I won’t repeat anything that she tells me in confidence,” Tephania decided, after a long moment’s thought.
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” After one more kiss, Thurston opened the door into the ballroom and ushered Tephania back inside, and shortly after Wren lost sight of them.
If Wren could have scowled and swore out loud, she would have done it right then. She was not looking forward to telling Liv what she’d seen – but she also couldn’t risk that Liv would let something important slip to Tephania out of ignorance and a misplaced trust. The biggest problem was that Liv was somewhere inside, surrounded by crowds of Lucania’s aristocracy, and Wren had to get a message to her.
There was a plan for how to deal with this, but it required Wren leaving her post by the garden. Wren dropped from her roost near the terrace, beat her wings, and soared off through the garden, flitting around the trunks of carefully trimmed trees, ducking under trellises where the rose-vines had turned brown and bare before the coming winter. She flew around to the enormous palace stables, where two of Liv’s personal guards had been left to watch over her carriages.
There were far too many barons – and their families – for all of them to have left their transportation at the palace; most would simply be picked up at an appointed hour. But Liv was a visiting queen, and for visiting queens, exceptions would be made.
Wren put the carriages between her and the palace, shifted into her human form, and landed with her boots scuffing the packed earth of the stableyard. Orella, one of the women who’d originally come from Ashford, ducked around the wheel with her polearm at the ready.
“Commander Wren?”
“I need you to go inside and pass a message to Liv,” Wren whispered, taking Orella by the helm and drawing the other woman close. If they were lucky and moved quickly, no one would notice the conversation, or even that Wren was present at all. “Tell her that anything she says to Tephania Lane might as well be said to Thurston Falkenrath and his entire family. You understand?”
Orella nodded. “I’ll bring her word right now,” she promised.
Wren shifted back into her bat form and beat her wings for height, trying to get high enough above the buildings, up into the night, that no palace servants or royal guards would notice her. She let out another pulse of sound, as much to make sure that no one was following her as anything else –
– and was surprised to find someone hurrying out of the palace kitchen, down a short road paved with ground seashells at the back of the palace, toward a rear gate manned by only a single guard. Wren couldn’t keep one of her ears from twitching back in the direction of the gardens, the ballroom, and the terrace, where she was certain the southern nobles would be ducking out for private conversations all evening long.
And yet, this was odd. She could always circle back to the gardens, once she knew where this servant was going so urgently. Most of what Wren had overheard so far had been the torrid whispers and pillow-talk of secret affairs; good for threatening one house or another with a scandal, perhaps, but not the reason that she’d come, not the prey she was hunting. Perhaps this would go somewhere different.
Wren swooped down, flying low enough to get a better look at the young man. The guards must have known him by sight, for they let him leave, swinging the gate closed and locking it behind him after he’d passed. He was wearing a butcher’s apron, stained with the mark of his trade, and Wren observed that he kept looking back over his shoulder, as if afraid that he would be followed.
Thankfully, he didn’t think to look up – not that human eyes would have been likely to notice a bat against the night sky, in any case.
Wren followed him out of the wealthy districts, away from the city-homes of the dukes and the more powerful barons, through narrow alleys between the homes of merchants and shops that had shuttered for the night, past inns and taverns where warm firelight spilled out of paned windows, and the roar of conversation and music nearly hid the clink of mugs and bottles, always uphill, toward the waystone.
When they came to the guildhalls, Wren became ever more certain that she was on to something. She followed past the Hall of Bricklayers and Masons, two buildings obviously joined together by more recent construction. The Masterful Guild of Framers and Joiners, smelling of timber and sawdust, stood across the street from The Order of Chirurgeons and the Most Honest Guild of Traders and Merchants. Above the entrance of each hall was an ornate, painted sign, proudly displaying the name of the guild, each more fanciful than the last.
Wren’s suspicious servant ducked down an alley which led around the back of the Merciful Society of Butchers and Drovers, where cattle and sheep were kept in great paddocks, not far from where they would be butchered and the meat prepared. There was, it turned out, a side door, somewhat out of the way and discrete, which had been kept unlocked for the young man, and she slipped through just behind him, before he could pull it closed. There, she got a grip on one of the exposed beams, and let him get ahead of her.
It was always more difficult to go unnoticed inside a building, at least until Wren had found a good hiding place. She had to stay close, simply because there was less room away from the open spaces above the city streets. It would be easy for the scrabble of her feet to be heard, or the rustle of her wings.
Not for the first time, Wren allowed herself to be a bit jealous of the Erskine’s word of power. If she could cast a spell, if she could use mana, that would have been the first word she imprinted. It would have been worth keeping the man alive if she could have gotten that magic out of him.
Carefully, so, so carefully, she followed the servant to a stairway which led down into the cellar of the guildhall. At the bottom of the stair was a great corridor, with doors to either side which radiated cold. These were the meat cellars – she recognized the feeling from where they were storing her father, at Bald Peak. Wren knew that the guild had a contract with Liv’s family, from before she was even born, by which they licensed enchantments to preserve meat.
A sign had been hung over the last door, and it read, ‘Enchantments broken. Do not use.’
It was through that door that Wren’s quarry passed. He fished a key out of his belt-pouch, set it into the lock, and turned. One might have expected that he would have some difficulty turning a lock that had been left to rust for a while, or that the door might have stuck, but everything moved easily and quietly, on well-oiled hinges. Once again, Wren slipped in behind him before the door swung close, up above his head, and from there she flapped up into the rafters which supported the floor of the main guildhall, above.
Someone was clearly paying no attention to the sign.
Nor, it seemed, had all of the enchantments been broken. It wasn’t too cold near the door, so perhaps there was some truth to the warning, but the further into the cellar Wren followed the palace servant, the more the temperature dropped. She passed empty meathooks, then rancid, half-butchered carcasses dangling from chains anchored to the beams, and then finally into the furthest part of the room, where full sides of beef hung, frozen and well preserved.
When she saw the first human corpse, Wren knew that she’d found the right place.
There were half a dozen, at least, both men and women. Each hung naked, throat slit to drain the blood, with no more bother than if they’d been a calf or a pig. Here and there, an arm or a leg had been removed, and one meat-hook pierced only a single, severed head. What had been done with the rest of the body, Wren would prefer not to imagine. She’d seen her tribe’s blood-letters at work often enough to have a good idea.
Past the final row of hanging bodies, the glow of lanterns lit a statue of Ractia, and a sacrificial basin, as well as half a dozen figures, each concealed beneath a robe and a deep hood.
“Did you see her with your own eyes, brother Tobias?” one of the robed figures asked. “Can you confirm that the pretender is in the city?”
The young man in his butcher’s apron fell to one knee and nodded. “Yes. Queen Livara is in Freeport, at the royal palace, this very night. The Great Mother’s prophecy is true.”
