9:26 Dragon
Lothering, Arling of South Reach, Ferelden
Kaycee almost stuffed her whole fist in her mouth, trying to smother her yawn. She blinked rapidly, trying to dispel the dry burning of her eyes. Outside the barn, there was a pink edge to the gray sky, and the birds were chirping. Maker, Miriam would be expecting her in a couple of hours, and there were a million things to do before then.
Wake up Mama.
Make sure she changes her clothes, washes her face, and gets a bite of bannock before she goes to sleep again.
Bethany will get the eggs and feed the creatures, but if Carver didn't milk the nanny, Bethany will be late with breakfast again and I might not have any at all—not to mention how uncomfortable that poor goat will be.
Sweep the floor.
Finish the new herbal rush mats so we don't get insects.
Pour a pitcher over Carver . . .
But first, the money book. Kaycee looked down at the figures she had been staring at for the past half hour and the coffer at the edge of Father's old work table. The figures hadn't changed, and the coffer remained stubbornly, hopelessly empty. Just a handful of coin in the corners, enough, maybe, for a week's worth of the foodstuffs they didn't grow themselves. There was less of that all the time. Mama had just about given up doing any of the cooking, cleaning, or spinning, and Carver hadn't been home before dusk once for the past three weeks, and with him interested more in spending coin than making it, Kaycee had been away a lot too, working long hours for Miriam and doing odd jobs for the neighbors to make up the difference. With Bethany too bothered about the mess inside to attend to the one outside, the garden resembled a jungle or a wilderness more each day. What edibles they were harvesting for it were weaker and sicklier each day.
Which just means we have to buy even more.
Kaycee snapped the book shut. She could sell or trade some of Father's old possessions at market, she decided. That might give them a little more time, and certainly, sentimentality wasn't going to feed any of them. But then—priorities were going to have to change.
Magic couldn't heal their mother's grief or shake her out of her despair. Nor could it make Carver stop acting like an insect, stand up, and try to be a man.
At least, not Chantry-approved, safe, demon-avoidant magic, Kaycee thought darkly. But no. If she hadn't given into the temptation to make a blood bargain to save Father, she wouldn't disrespect his memory by making one now to force her mother and brother to act like rational people. Use magic to force them to come back, and she'd end up losing them anyway.
But Bethany—she could work with Bethany, no magic required. It was more a question of focus. Bethany wouldn't like it if Kaycee told her to stop paying attention to the things that worried her most and attend to the things that would keep them alive. But then, at this point, it wasn't a question of what Bethany liked or didn't like. It was a question of survival.
Kaycee braced herself on her knees, spent and gasping. Sweat stood out on every part of her body, and her hair had fallen down into her face. She didn't think she could stand and walk if she tried now.
Never before had she hit the limits of her personal magic. She'd hit blocks in her concentration, her imagination, her will; encountered and overcome every one of those obstacles in turn, because the power, the ability had always been there, waiting for her to do so. But now, there was simply nothing left to her. Nothing left in her. She could wait for hours for her personal stores to return, but she knew already they wouldn't do any good. She could no more burn out the illness killing her father than she could raise the dead with body, reason, and soul intact.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I can't. If I knew another way to work, more precise, or if we had realized earlier, but I—I've failed." Her voice broke, and her vision blurred.
Her father's hands, too hot, dry and feverish, closed around hers. "Kaycee. Look at me."
She did and immediately couldn't. A sob tore from her throat, and she pulled one of her hands from Father's to stuff into her mouth and stifle her cries. What business had she to cry? She wasn't the one who was dying!
"Kaycee."
"We could bargain, just this once," she said. "We could ask for help—"
He crushed the hand he still held with his then, enough that she yelped in pain. "Never," Father said. "Maleficarum say 'just this once,' because they need power, because they are desperate. It is never 'just this once.' And whenever a mage crosses that line to defy the Maker's will, there is no guarantee of safety, no guarantee she will not be overcome or deceived and end up losing herself as well as that she thought to bargain for. The line is too treacherous. Never for me, nor anything, Kaycee. Promise!"
Kaycee looked through her tears at her father, the strong center of their little world. Mentor, teacher, protector, first and firmest friend. She shook her head, helpless, tried to choke and snort back the mucus dribbling out of nose and mouth and making her look as well as actually be the disgrace she felt.
Her father crushed her hand the tighter. "Promise!" he thundered. Then, in a softer voice, "Kaycee, if you reach out to the demons for this, from your desire to see me safe and your fear for a life without me, what ends will your magic serve? What kind of entities will come to your aid?"
Kaycee bowed her head and sobbed. "I'm sorry," she repeated.
Father was silent for a long moment. Then his hot, dry fingers laced through hers, and she felt him kiss her head. "So am I," he admitted. "Now. Take a breath, wipe your eyes, and think. Magic will not help us here, and while you are a fantastic herbalist, we should probably face the fact that soon, the only thing all your plants and concoctions will be able to do for me is help me manage the pain . . . or end things on my own terms."
"No—" Kaycee started, clutching at him, but Father stopped her.
"I won't be taking that route, Kaycee. Your mother would never forgive me. At any rate, I want to make the most of what time I've got left. But part of that involves considering what the rest of you will do next."
Kaycee shook her head, unable to think of it. His deep, measured voice dug at her, though. He squeezed her hand—not painfully, this time. "Come now, my clever girl. I know you'll have had a plan these last seven years in case I was wrong about this place and got taken up by the Templars. What was it?"
Kaycee shuddered and closed her eyes. Then she opened them, lifted her chin, and looked Father in the face. Frost had begun to creep into his curly black hair and beard years ago, but over the past months, the golden undertones of his skin had turned yellow. His skin was frequently marred with dark bruises from stresses he could hardly ever remember. The flesh had begun to hang off of his bones, and the green eyes which she alone had inherited from him were now sunk in their sockets. He almost looked like a corpse she had reanimated with forbidden magic, walking, talking, but rotting away all the same.
This wasn't like him being taken up by the Templars. It wasn't like that at all.
Kaycee was stopped at Mistress Farrer's stall in the market, looking at her supply of woolen thread, when Egan backed out of the bakery with a barrow of day-old rolls to sell for two coppers each. With each of them looking their separate directions, Egan walked straight into her. Kaycee staggered two steps left, but the barrow tipped. Five whole round rolls tumbled out into the street. Egan cursed, then turned, red-faced, to shout down the child or dog who'd stepped in his path and cost him ten coppers. Then he saw Kaycee.
"Mistress Hawke!" he said, returning with almost comical abruptness to a color resembling his normal shade. "My apologies. I never looked where I was going! Didn't hurt you now, did I?"
Kaycee brushed the flour that had transferred over from the baker's apron off her trousers. "No harm done, except maybe to your discount profits. I fear I owe you the apology, serah, standing in your doorway."
Egan waved off her apology. "Not at all, not at all. Should've known better, backing out of a store on market day."
"Can I pay for the rolls you dropped, then? I'm afraid I don't have much money, but I could clean your kitchens tonight so you could get a head start on tomorrow's baking."
"Never you mind about it, Mistress Hawke, never you mind. You just get home and take care of that mother of yours."
Kaycee was hot. "Please, serah, you're making me feel ancient! You've known me since I was a girl. Cannot you call me Kaycee?"
Egan blinked at her. "Didn't I? Blight—ah—my apologies." He grinned, and for all he was forty winters if he was a day, Kaycee could see the boy he'd been, all round-cheeked mischief, spitting apple seeds at the sisters on rest days. "You just look so much older in that black, you know. Not that it doesn't suit you down to the ground. Look just like your father would've done, Maker rest him, had he been a woman, and he was always the best-looking bast—ah, best-looking gentleman in town. 'Scuse me."
Kaycee bowed, let him pass with the rest of his barrow, and turned back to Mistress Farrer, who had been watching their exchange.
"And how is Leandra these days, dearie?" she asked. "Poor soul. Such a gentle, delicate lady, real way with a needle, and I never saw no one love her man like she did."
"My mother still loves my father," Kaycee answered. "The love doesn't stop when a person returns to the Maker. Sometimes I think it'd be easier if it did. My sister and I bully her into eating, most days. Beyond that . . ."
Mistress Farrer clicked her tongue. "Heartsick. My great-uncle pined away and died after the death of his second wife. Must've been thirty-odd years ago now. Just didn't have the strength to live without her. But you'd think a woman could try for her children. My uncle didn't have none still in his house when my old auntie died."
"Well. Carver's always saying the three of us should have up and left years ago. Maybe this is repayment for trespassing on our parents' hospitality too long."
Kaycee selected an undyed cord, good for repairs on winter coats and shirts. Not very pretty, but it would hold longer than the thread Mistress Farrer and her sons had spun and dyed for fancy work. "How much for this spool?"
"Practical, that," Mistress Farrer said. "Not my Bob's best work, but it'll keep the clothes on your back. You can have it for a bit, Mistress Hawke."
Kaycee froze, then dug in her purse and produced the copper. "My thanks."
"Thank you for your custom," Mistress Farrer replied, stowing the copper in her own bulging purse.
Kaycee put the thread in her purse, which, sadly, had space enough to hold it, and walked down the market. It was the fifth time someone had called her "Mistress Hawke," today, and the second time someone had referred to Mama as "Leandra."
You'd think a woman could try for her children.
To the townsfolk, Mama wasn't a woman. She was the child, the invalid, deserving of pity but no respect. That, they'd passed on to her daughter.
But I didn't want to be Mistress Hawke. Not yet. It's not fair I've got to be.
"There now. Rosemary cheese bannock, some blackberries, and a nice hambone broth. It all came out rather well, if I do say so myself."
"It smells fantastic, darling," Mother told Bethany. "Kaycee, dear, can you pour the ale?"
"I'd really rather admire the craftsmanship on this tap, to tell you the truth, Mother," Kaycee answered, already filling everyone's horns in the corner. "The shine on the brass is just incredible. Did you polish it special, just for us?"
"Oh, stow it, Kaycee, I'm half-starved!" Carver complained.
"Well, the half that's not keeps you talking, more's the pity for us," Kaycee returned, bringing the horns over to the table, three in one hand, two in the other. She placed them around the table and drew an extra bottle out of her apron to place beside Father's plate. He tilted his chin at her, but she thought that was the limit of any acknowledgement he could make tonight. His lips were chapped and thin. They looked like moth-eaten woolens, kept in a trunk too long without airing. His hand beside his serpent-carved fork was almost transparent, it was so pale.
Kaycee took her spot to Mama's right, across from Carver and Bethany on Father's left. Bethany smiled at her, Carver tipped her an ironic toast with his ale, and they all began to eat.
"I've been meaning to ask you, dearest," Mama told Father— "the roof's been looking a little thin since the storm last week. I don't suppose you could find your way to repairing it before more bad weather blows in?"
Father coughed for at least three seconds before he could reply. "I suppose it would be unpleasant to be woken from our beds by a leak over our heads. I'll handle it, Leandra."
"No, you won't," Carver interjected. "I'll do it, Mother."
"I think that's a much better idea," Bethany agreed.
"If he figures out one end of the thatching knife from the other, sure," Kaycee said. "But maybe Father can help with that part, Mama."
"Stupid to even suggest Father do it," Carver muttered.
"Carver!" Father said, eyes flashing out of their sunken hollows. "You will apologize to your mother at once."
"Oh, it's fine, Malcolm," Mama said. "I think it's lovely Carver wants to help, and it'll give you more time to help me in the garden or repaint the fence like you were saying you would last autumn. I think we're all just a little worn out lately. You know what? I think we should all take a week's vacation to Lake Calenhad. It would do us good to get away—breathe in the mountain air. A change of scenery. Don't you agree?"
Around the table, Bethany looked close to tears. Carver was white with fury, fists clenched around his utensils. But Father just sighed. "If we can afford it, Leandra," he said.
Kaycee stared at the parchment piled high on her workstation. Not that staring at it was going to make the pile shrink, but she'd got to the point where all the words were beginning to blur together on the page. It would never do if she mixed up a sore throat cure to treat Mistress Kirk's headache.
How she hated sneezing season. Sure, it meant a lot more coin in the till, but with Bethany serving nights in the tavern now, she'd just bet there was no one at all at home making supper, and when Carver got his late, he was even grumpier than usual. And buying a hot supper from the evening market every night was still a little more than they could afford, even in sneezing season.
Kaycee moved her fingers across the table to count the order slips she'd written out for Miriam over the past few days. It didn't make any difference counting them separately after she made up and checked off each new curative, but she felt compelled to do so every half hour anyway. Maybe she'd miscounted the last nine times.
Sixteen.
And still at least a dozen remedies to prepare before tomorrow.
She moved around the stillroom, collecting more ingredients from dried herbs hanging from the ceiling and jars on her various shelves. Then she looked over her shoulder. Miriam was out on call with a croupy infant on a farmstead. Once she returned tonight—if she returned tonight—she would head straight to her living quarters to prepare her own late supper. She wouldn't come back to the stillroom; Kaycee had had a key to the lock on it for years now. She wouldn't know if Kaycee . . . sped up her remedies a little.
And it would save on ingredients. It's economical.
The summons was in her head, but as Kaycee began to move her fingers to make the call, she set her teeth.
"No," she said aloud.
All the benign spirit wisps in the world hadn't done Father any good. Kaycee grabbed another clean tub for Master Craddock's itch-relief lotion, stuck it on her worktable, and stalked over to the basin to clean her mortar and pestle once again.
Miriam found her at her workstation an hour after sundown by the candlelight still glowing in the window. The door creaked as she entered.
"Oh, love, oh no," the old woman said, rushing over. She bent over Kaycee, wrapping an arm around her shaking shoulders.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to waste candlelight on . . . being silly." Kaycee sobbed.
"It's only natural to grieve, dearie. I'd be surprised if you didn't, even so good and strong a girl as you. It's something we all have to face: the whole height and breadth of our knowledge and all the herbs in the world can't stop a soul from going back to the Maker when it's their time. And when we have to learn that lesson with someone we love, it's the hardest thing in the world."
The stillroom got cold evenings in the springtime when the stove wasn't on. Kaycee hadn't noticed how cold she was until Miriam began chafing her arms. She combed through Kaycee's hair, fussing like a mother bird. It didn't help the problem, but it helped to know someone other than her own family cared. Kaycee opened her mouth to thank the healer but collapsed into another paroxysm of sobbing instead.
"Void take it all!"
Miriam pulled over the stool that was usually Kaycee's own seat when they worked together in here. She sat beside Kaycee, holding Kaycee's chill fingers in her own warm, dry, wrinkled ones. She waited until Kaycee could breathe again, then said, "It's unfair to you, dearie. Your dad should've had years and years yet—years to grow old with his wife, to watch his children marry and have children of their own. Why, you're just young yourself, and your brother and sister just a little better than children. But my mother died while I was still expecting my first, before I was even twenty, and my sister after she gave birth to her third. You get through it, love. You do."
"In the meantime, though, I have to go through it," Kaycee said. "And, Miriam, what am I going to do?"
Rest-day mornings in Lothering, the entire village and surrounding countryside was quiet. There were seven cranks and invalids Kaycee knew of, but aside from them, the whole town was straightlaced and Chantry-going. Even the gamblers, ruffians, and drunks washed their necks to show up for the service. Because of that, Kaycee and Bethany couldn't miss too often themselves; it made them too conspicuous. But, so long as they varied the days they actually missed, rest-day mornings were also excellent times to practice. Most people didn't travel, and they could know exactly where their friends and neighbors were and mitigate the risk of picnicking or day-tripping observers.
They were focusing more on combat magic than on exploratory or healing magic these days. It was good to exercise, to move, to feel that they would be able to defend themselves if they ever needed to . . . without Father. Bethany was excellent at force manipulation—pushing and pulling objects with her magic—and she had a knack for defense as well. But she still had difficulty with more lethal magics, particularly those ones that drew directly on the power of the elements or of the Fade. The problem was purely mental; though she didn't have quite as much raw power as Kaycee, she had "more than enough to be getting on with," as Father had used to say, and her technique had always been a bit better than Kaycee's. But she wasn't overly aggressive, and although Bethany had never said so, Kaycee suspected her sister was a bit shy of some of the more arcane magics: the ones that made her feel least "normal."
"Again," Kaycee said, settling into a defensive stance and casting out a barrier. "Imagine I'm a bear, or a murder of hungry crows coming to feast upon the garden. I can become one, if you'd like."
Once upon a time, that would have had Bethany asking exactly how Kaycee intended to become a whole murder of crows, or challenging whether she'd actually managed full transformation into a bear yet (she hadn't; she could do a wolf, which was roughly the same size and mass as she was, but she hadn't worked out yet how to set her own mass aside to become something smaller or borrow some to become something so much larger than she was). These days, Bethany merely shrugged. "You can do what you like," she said.
She closed her eyes, and her hair seemed to extend around her head as she stretched out with her senses, feeling for Kaycee's energy. She breathed in through her nose. And then she tensed.
Kaycee leapt aside, reached for the Fade, and shot a pillar of green-veined rock directly at her sister. A half globe of energy instantly formed around Bethany, and the rock shattered against it. A spire of ice shot up at Kaycee's feet, but she had already moved. She used the ice as a springboard, swinging her staff about to smash a second spire, releasing a spurt of flame from the end as she did so. Bethany caught it in a globe of swirling wind that asphyxiated the flame in an instant. Then the globe exploded into a windstorm that whipped the branches around them and ripped leaves from twigs by the dozens. But the storm was half-formed, lacking any ice, lightning, or flame of its own to make it more than an irritating distraction.
Kaycee encased her feet in greaves of stone to keep her grounded against the wind and forced her way out of the blast zone. Then, shattering the boots with a thought, she sent them hurtling back at Bethany, a score of missiles harder than hail. Bethany managed to get her own rock shield up in time. It kept off the worst of the offense, but crumbled under the onslaught, leaving Bethany exposed again, chest heaving.
She was nearly done, but she also needed a win, so Kaycee took the wolf's form, falling down on all fours. The colors of the clearing faded into grayscale, and the scent of every deer, wildcat, and earthworm around came into sharp relief. She bounded toward her sister with a growl and was thrown aside with a kinetic shove. She hit a beech trunk hard, whimpered, and crumpled into her own natural form.
Bethany stood over her, frowning. "Don't go easy on me, Kaycee," she ordered.
"Hey, I need to practice my shapeshifting too."
"It's more useful for reconnaissance or escape than for outright combat, and you know it. I was falling apart, so you did something stupid and gave me the bout."
Kaycee winced and climbed to her feet. Bethany's hands lit up with soft green light as she connected to the Fade. She passed her hands over Kaycee's ribs, and the throbbing pain there eased. "I just really wanted to try out that wolf form," Kaycee insisted.
Bethany met her gaze. "What gave me away?" she asked.
Kaycee sighed. "You shift to your back leg when you're about to attack. It isn't much, but it gives me a split second to get clear and get ahead of you. It's also not as much of a problem as the brittle ice spires that probably wouldn't penetrate plate armor, the half-assed windstorm, or the rock shield that crumbles the first time someone gives you a good poke."
"Alright," Bethany nodded, accepting this. "And I can't make do with force magic and aeromancy because . . .?"
"You know why: the more versatile your defenses, the better chance you have of catching an enemy off guard during an actual combat. If you're a one-trick pony, you're also predictable."
"No, it's better I know a dozen different ways to kill people just doing their jobs." Bethany's expression and tone was neutral. "Let's get back at it, then. We only have an hour or so before final prayers conclude at the Chantry and everyone is out and about."
Kaycee knew Bethany would rather be singing final prayers at the Chantry. The two of them squared off once again. "This time, no shapeshifting," Bethany told Kaycee. "We'll work on that next time. Bring Carver and Sergio and try a tracking exercise."
"You think Carver would be up to bringing our dog out to the backwoods to help his sisters learn to successfully transform into beasts of the wild?"
"It's better than leaving him to stew with Mother over how the two of us are getting into trouble," Bethany answered. And without ado, and without signaling this time, she attacked. This time, Kaycee didn't get her barrier up. She barely dodged the pillar of fire Bethany shot her way in time.
Kaycee came up from her roll, clenching her fist, and forces closed in around Bethany, holding her mobile, preventing her from moving. Kaycee's sister narrowed her eyes, and her own barrier came up, along with a full set of rock armor like the greaves Kaycee had used in their last bout. Kaycee grinned approvingly and attacked.
The sixth rung of the ladder to Kaycee's loft creaked, but Kaycee heard Bethany stealing out of the twins' room before she got that far, because their door squeaked too. Kaycee sat up and saw her sister making her way across the dim, firelit interior of the main room, around the outskirts, giving Mother and Father's bed a wide berth.
If it hadn't been for the squeaking door, she might not have heard her sister at all, Kaycee thought. Bethany could move like a mouse when she wanted to. Her bare feet were hardly audible, even when she walked over wooden boards instead of the rugs.
Kaycee retrieved a clay teapot she kept on the bottom shelf built up under the alcove of the roof. She found the box of calming and sweet herbs she kept next to it and threw a few pinches into the pot. She ladled out some water from her personal bucket, then summoned fire with her hands to heat the tea.
By the time Bethany had climbed up her ladder and into her loft, Kaycee was handing her a small cup of tea without a word. Bethany took it and breathed in the steam. It curled against the pale oval of her face, red in the distant hearth light. "Thanks, Kaycee," she murmured.
Kaycee shrugged, waiting. Bethany would tell her what she wanted when she was good and ready. Bethany's face was turned to the room below, to the sleeping forms of their parents. There was a rough edge to Father's breathing, harsh and labored. "We don't have long, do we?" Bethany asked finally.
"There could be a few months yet," Kaycee answered, "but no, we don't have long."
Bethany was quiet for a long time. She sipped her tea. "Kaycee, I don't know what I'll do," she whispered finally. "Every day I pass the Chantry, every time we sit through a rest day service under the gaze of the village Templars, I worry. People in the village know about us. You know they do. Or one or the other of us, anyway. We live on their good will, and maybe that's good enough for Mother and Father. Maybe that's good enough for you. But what if it runs out someday?
"And I know it's selfish and terrible to be thinking about all this while Father's dying, and I know I was one of the ones who wanted us to settle here in the first place, but I can't help it! Without Father's brains and charm, all the tricks he knows to get people to like him, to accept apostates living and practicing magic in their midst, what will we do?"
Bethany spoke in a whisper, but her words came much too fast. She was trembling, despite the hot tea she held cupped in both hands.
Kaycee hesitated. She'd never known what to say to Bethany on this. Ever since Father had told Bethany what could happen to apostates caught by the Chantry, she'd been afraid. She'd never completely believed his assertions that she and Kaycee were the equal and more of any Circle mage, never completely discounted the sermons she heard in the Chantry every week that the three of them were wicked and dangerous to live outside the prisons the Templars called protection.
She didn't want to lose her sister. It would kill Mother, and as much as Carver complained about both Kaycee and Bethany's magic, she knew he would do anything to keep their family together too. But Father had also always said that both of them would eventually have to make their own choice about how to live with the magic his and mother's bloodlines had given them.
She clenched her hands in the fabric of her nightgown. "You don't have to stay with us," she said finally. "You could surrender to the Templars. Claim you only just manifested. You're still young enough that it could be true."
"Right, and spend the next several years paranoid about my every move, terrified of everything I've already learned and the day it might give me away," Bethany hissed. "If I surrender and start off with a lie, if I ever slip up, I'll spend my life under suspicion as a potential blood mage spy."
"So, tell the truth," Kaycee suggested, though the idea made her even more uncomfortable. "You were raised by an apostate and his wife, a woman who agreed with his decision to stay in hiding. But as soon as you realized how wrong that was and were old enough, you left your family to join the Circle."
"So, betray everything you and Father stand for. Leave the rest of you in your grief, abandon Mother and you and Carver forever, just to be safe."
Bethany sounded angry. Kaycee sighed. She felt a headache coming on. "Those are the options, Bethany. Surrender to the Templars or stay an apostate. I don't understand what part of that is any more difficult to comprehend than it has been the past twelve years. We could leave Lothering again. Split up to make ourselves faster, smaller targets. You and I could leave Carver and Mother and seek out other apostates in the wild—"
"Carver'd kill Mother in two weeks without us. Then starve to death or get himself impaled in a bar fight," Bethany joked. "And anyway, what are the odds any other apostates we'd find actually would be blood mages?"
"I don't know," Kaycee answered. "I've never met any."
"I've never met any other mages at all," Bethany observed after a moment, shifting to lean against the wall and balancing her cup of tea on her upright knee. "It might be nice to know we're not alone out here." She was quiet for a moment. "I'll stay," she promised finally. "The four of us will need one another, after."
She glanced back down at the bed where Mother and Father were sleeping. "I'm not strong like Father," she said then. "Like you. I'm resentful. I'm frightened. And I can't help wondering if the Maker got it wrong when he was making Carver and me. He'd have loved to be a mage. Me? I just want to be normal."
"I can't imagine Carver as a mage," Kaycee said. "I think the Maker got it right. You can only have so much destructive potential in one family."
"You're going to have to ease up on him, Kaycee," Bethany told her. "I know Carver can be difficult, and he can be even worse with you, but you know he's just jealous. He admires you so much. We both do, but Carver feels there's no way he can ever catch up, especially with Father. So, he lashes out, or he acts like a child. But whatever he does, he's wrong with you. Which just makes things even worse. But if you keep picking at him like you do, even though he deserves it, we're going to lose him. And Mama and I both need him. I think even you do, if you're honest."
"I'm never honest."
"That's a fun paradox. If the statement is true, it disproves itself."
Kaycee rolled her eyes at her sister, but she smiled. "Clever boots."
Bethany wriggled her toes, and one corner of her mouth turned up. She handed her empty cup to Kaycee, and Kaycee put it with her own teacup and the pot on the side of the shelf that told her to wash the dishes in the morning. Then, without warning, she lunged across the loft to grab her baby sister in a one-armed hug.
Bethany hugged her back, snuggling against her.
"I'll look after us, Beth. After," Kaycee promised, speaking into her sister's hair. "You and Mama, even Carver." Bethany squeezed her forearms, but Kaycee knew that even if she sometimes did get forced into telling the honest truth, this probably wasn't one of those times.
The job was just too big. Monumental.
"I hate ale!" Bethany said passionately, flinging her stained, sooty apron into the corner. "Wine, mead, all of it! I don't care how undersized and pale you're supposed to get without it, it makes too many decent men and women into dribbling, bumbling idiots! There has to be a better way."
"Usually, it's more meat and vegetables than a small village can afford in the average year," Kaycee said mildly. "Or a regimen of very nasty teas every day."
"Then they should drink tea, then, and give you and Miriam the business! If Mistress Felds could have seen the way her husband behaved tonight!"
"She'd have blamed you for it and spread it all over Lothering you're a whore just asking for it. Odds are, someone will do that anyway."
Bethany's eyes flashed. "Might as well have kissed the pig and got it over with, then? Is that what you're saying?"
Mother had been watching the two of them, and now she welled up. "Oh, girls, don't fight, please don't fight. I couldn't bear it if you two started fighting on top of everything else."
"I wasn't fighting, Mama," Kaycee sighed. "Just a bad joke, is all. Of course, you shouldn't go around kissing those lechers at the tavern, Bethany. Or, not unless you want to. To each her own, I suppose. Maker. You shouldn't have to put up with any of it. The drunks, the gossip. I'll write up advertisements and begin a word-of-mouth campaign immediately for village-wide abstinence and a regimen of health teas."
Bethany looked mollified. "Miriam and the Chantry sisters would thank you, if Mistress Boggs didn't."
"You shouldn't be working in a place like that to begin with," Mother said. "My daughter, a barmaid in a pub! What would your grandmother say? Oh, I'm a terrible mother."
Bethany was at Mama's side at once. "Mama, it was a bad night, is all. It's alright. People mostly behave themselves, and Cor usually is faster to kick out anyone who's had more than he ought, if he starts being a problem. You're not a bad mother. I'm glad to help. I made more than both the other girls last week, and it's going to help us reseed the garden this fall. Maybe even buy a new laying hen."
"I should be working, not you," Mama insisted. "Instead of sitting here, useless. Instead, I let you and Kaycee and Carver go out, wear yourselves to the bone. Walking all over the bannorn like peddlers, get pawed over by every dissatisfied old lecher in the district . . ." She was crying again now, tears streaming down her face, rocking back and forth on her stool.
Bethany started up the old routine, holding Mama's hand, reassuring her that all those patently true things were completely false, that she was grieving, they knew she was grieving, but she was the best mother in the world. Offering to make her a cup of tea, fetch her a bannock or fry her an egg—she didn't eat enough . . .
Kaycee walked to the window, smoldering. The stars were out, and the moon was high in the sky by now. It had to be nearing midnight. Carver still wasn't home. And she knew, if Mother didn't, that he wasn't in the village or the countryside on a job or looking for one. He was down at the tavern with Bethany's lechers and every deadbeat and ruffian in Lothering, losing a good portion of the coin his sisters had earned last week.
Bethany's apron was in a balled up mess in the corner to be laundered tomorrow morning, but the greasy handprint over her dress front was still plainly visible, even by firelight. And Mama was making it about her.
Damn right, Mother should be working. But she wasn't, and she wouldn't, any more than Carver would. Miriam and the Chantry sisters told her everyone grieved in their different ways, at their own pace, and nothing she could say or do would change that.
But it wouldn't hurt if they could grieve a little faster, or at the same time as they were working to help us to survive.
Someday, I'll just leave. Just take Bethany and go, and if Carver kills Mother in a fortnight then gets himself knifed in a barfight, at least they wouldn't be dragging the two of us down.
She knew she wouldn't really do it. But if Carver wasn't home in an hour, she would go drag him out by his ear in front of all his friends. And if Mother cried tomorrow morning, she probably would take her on a hike and toss her in the lake.
Kaycee was up in the loft, working with a Tevene history Father had wheedled from the Chantry's prized, restricted collection. Unfortunately, not a very good history; most of those were in major cities and universities. The tome Kaycee was reading had several damaged pages and was mostly on a minor spat between the two major magisters of two cities several hundred years ago, and they were cities Kaycee hadn't really heard of. A lot on crops burning, a lot on petty grudges, and a lot of places where the history's author had obviously exaggerated or just failed to research topics that hadn't caught her interest. And of course, anything really juicy was always in a damaged section and barely legible. Kaycee was mainly using the work in tandem with her Tevene dictionary to improve her understanding of the language. Because the language used in the history was not modern Tevene, this meant an extra step of translation.
She was writing down words and phrases she didn't understand as she went in her own little book and enjoying the activity. Good history or not, it was pleasant to really stretch her mind on something. But it did require a certain level of conversation, so when Carver burst into the room like a stampeding druffalo, calling over his shoulder at some of his friends still outside, Kaycee was more than a little bit annoyed.
"Aye, I'll see you tomorrow, Coll," he said. "You too, Silver!"
"Coll and Silver again?" Father's voice below was harsh from coughing, but still low and deep, with a distinct note of disapproval.
"Oh, not again," Carver complained, letting the door close behind him. "They're alright. Just because they know how to have a little fun in this village where nothing happens—"
"Lots of things happen. People learn trades. They go to work, trade at the market, study with the sisters and brothers at the Chantry—or with the Templars, if they are so inclined."
"Yeah, because we're so pro-Templar in this family. That would go over well with Kayce and Bethany. Hi, Kayce! I'm going to learn magic neutralization from the Templars! That okay with you?" Carver shouted the words up at her, even though she could hear him perfectly well to begin with. Kaycee sighed.
"Whatever keeps you out of the house so I can read," she called back.
"Yeah, well, some people need more than reading and herbs and magic, or whatever their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did for centuries before," Carver said, turning back to Father down below.
Sergio whined, and Carver sighed. "Don't give me that, Serge. It's just a bit of fun, Father. Look. I know Coll and Silver have a bad reputation. I don't go in for that—bothering girls who aren't interested, even though they only do it for a laugh and never actually touch anyone. I haven't joined a merc crew to 'protect' merchant caravans yet, either, if that's what you're worried about. Though sometimes I think it'd be a damned better use of my skills than any of the work round here. They're just buddies—drinking mates, good for a card or dice game now and then, with a bit more knowledge of the world than the butcher, the baker, or the carpenter next door."
"A person is judged by the quality of their companions," Father told Carver. "Even if you do not participate in some of your new friends' more questionable activities, you have already begun to defend them. I would rather see my son live a life of honor than one of high adventure."
Carver made a disgusted noise. "Look, where're Mother and Bethany? If supper's not on yet, I might as well walk back out into town for a while as stand here and listen to this rot."
Kaycee shut her book with a snap and pushed her translations aside. "The only rot I hear is the rot coming from your lips, Carver," she said. "I see you've escalated from insect to ass."
"Better ass than shrew," Carver retorted. "Maker, no wonder you're reading on a summer afternoon. Where are your friends, Kaycee? At least I have them."
"Boorish brutes who like winning all your money, halfway to murderers and sure to make the transition someday, rather than anyone you could actually call a friend," Kaycee shot back, stepping down two rungs and jumping the rest of the way down to the ground floor. "But, no, you're right. I'm devastated I don't have people just as charming in my life."
"With your personality, it's a wonder!"
Father had been having another coughing fit in the background as Kaycee focused on Carver's stupid face, tried to focus on Carver's stupid face. But now he sounded like he was hacking up a lung, and Kaycee turned to where he sat over his own book—an old favorite copy of Transformations, a translation from the Elvish, half fairy tale, half fable, and half magical instruction, and as Father said, if that was too many halves, that was just the kind of book it was.
Sergio was pawing at Father's knee. Kaycee pressed her lips together and poured a cup of tea from the kettle they always had on the big stove. She added some herbs and honey and handed it to Father. He took it with a weary nod. His eyes were pinpoints of green light lost in the caverns of his skull. His whole face looked skeletal now.
"Listen . . . listen to your sister, Carver," he said. "Just because she can be unkind doesn't mean she is wrong. She always has your best interests at heart."
Carver snorted. "The only person Kaycee cares about is herself."
According to one off the last time-telling candles Father had made, Carver staggered home two hours after Bethany got in. Sergio let out a deep but soft whuff of alert and jumped off the foot of the big bed where Mother was sleeping. Kaycee followed the dog to the door and opened it while Carver was still fumbling with the lock. In the blackness of the night, all she could see was that Carver's clothes were in worse shape than Bethany's had been. He started to smile, to explain, but Kaycee shook her head.
"Save it," she hissed. She slung his arm around her shoulders so she could support him. One look had been enough to ascertain he needed it, the way he'd been swaying in the doorway. Hushing his drunken excuses all the way, she ushered him through the main room and back to the room
he shared with Bethany as quickly as she could. The bunk beds they had used to sleep in were no more; the twins each had their own little shelf bed, built on either side of the room, and Father had built a wooden partition six years back, so the room was actually subdivided into two small cells and all three of them had at least the illusion of their own private space. But of course it didn't subdivide their stove, and anything that happened on Carver's side could be heard on Bethany's, and vice versa.
Of course, Bethany was still up. She took one look at Kaycee and Carver and jumped out of bed, exclaiming, and Sergio, who had followed them into the twins' room, let out a whine. Kaycee took another look at her brother, taking in the whole sorry spectacle by the light of the small potbellied stove and Bethany's bedside lamp. Their brother was a mess. Some stain that could be thick ale, stew, or vomit covered his whole front and a bit of his trousers. His left sleeve was torn, and some blood was visible through the slash. His knuckles were bruised and skinned, he had a fat lip, and the makings of a magnificent black eye. And those, Kaycee thought, were just the visible injuries.
"Damn it, Carver," she murmured. She helped Carver to sit down on his bed. "Heat a kettle and get some rags ready," she told Bethany.
She left the twins' room and moved through the dimmer interior of the main room. Kaycee kept her bag of healing supplies on the coatrack near the door, ready for the days she went on house visits for Miriam instead of mixing remedies in the stillroom or making routine deliveries. Anti-inflammatories, cleansers, and coagulants were some of the supplies she always had on hand. She swung the leather bag over her shoulder and hurried back.
"Couldn' jus' let him get away withit," Carver was explaining to Bethany in a slow, reasonable slur. "You're ma sister, righ'? Ma sister. He shouldn' treat you like tha. Shouldn' treat anyone like tha."
"And I appreciate your standing up for me," Bethany said. "Do you think maybe you could have done it when Cor and Riggs weren't in the middle of a shift change? Or when Mr. Felds didn't have two friends backing him up?"
Carver gave them both a lopsided smile. "You worried? Father taught me to take on twish as many! I could take on twish as many! I'll show you!"
He started to lurch upward, but Kaycee stepped forward and put her hand on his chest, pushing him back down. He didn't resist her. "Maybe you could show us tomorrow, Carver. Or next Thursday at high noon. Come on. Off with the shirt."
Carver, wincing, lifted his arms over his head so Kaycee and Bethany could strip him out of his shirt. Kaycee handed it to her sister. "Put it with your apron and the other laundry. I'll take a trip to the lake tomorrow." She turned to the dog, then, sitting by Carver's bedside and looking up at him with soulful, sad brown eyes. "You move. I need to be there." Sergio whined but obeyed, trotting to the foot of Carver's bed.
"'Lo, Kayce," Carver said. "You gonna magic up a ghostlight? Make me feel all better?" He was as sarcastic as he could be through the cloud of ale fumes around his head, but his expression was hopeful.
"Oh, no," Kaycee told him. "You earned those bruises. I think Mr. Felds and his two friends would be disappointed if you didn't show them off for a week at least."
Even drunk, Carver got the point: it would be too suspicious if he wasn't sporting evidence of his beating tomorrow. "Whas the point of havin' two mage sishtersh?" he complained. "You got to suffer like everyone elsh, and lifesh jus' tha much more dangeroush."
"And full of that much more excitement and sparkle," Kaycee answered, opening her tin of elfroot ointment and spreading it over Carver's various hurts. The sharp, spicy scent cut through the ale fog and blended pleasantly with the smell of the log burning in the stove. Carver winced again but didn't flinch under her fingers.
"Thank you for hitting Mr. Felds for me," Kaycee told him softly. "I was going to have to do it otherwise. Or call him out in the marketplace in front of his wife and son."
"Any time," Carver promised.
"His son's a good man and deserves a better father." The kettle on the stove whistled, and as it did, Bethany came in with several rags and lengths of linen for bandages—a good deal more, Kaycee thought, glancing at them, than she would probably need. Bethany, fussing again.
Bethany wet the cloths and handed them to Kaycee as they cooled, one by one, just enough to clean Carver's open wounds. Kaycee bathed her brother's arm and knuckles, adding a drop or two of disinfectant to each wound afterward. Carver hissed but didn't complain again.
"I also brought honey to add to the poultices," Bethany told Kaycee, breaking the silence.
Kaycee took the small jar from Bethany. "Well done." She started work on dressing the open wounds. "How did you know about what Mr. Felds did to Bethany, Carver?" she asked. "The fight would have happened earlier if you were there for the incident."
Carver's face reddened and his fist clenched. "Heard 'im talkin' filth with 'is friendsh when me 'n' the boysh headed up for lasht call," he grunted. "Not whili'm 'ere! Not whili'm 'ere."
"One of them pulled a knife?" Kaycee asked, pulling a bandage tight over Carver's bicep.
"Saw it a momen' too late," Carver confirmed. "Movin' . . . movin' a little slow. Othersh too busy cheerin' to be much hel' . . . But I thin' I broke 'is wris' anyway. He'll be comin' to see you 'n' Miriam in tha mornin'." He chuckled. "Have to pay for 'is smar' mouth. More 'n once."
Kaycee sighed. She handled the bloody cleaning cloths to Bethany, who held out her hand for Kaycee's healer bag too, now that they were finished. Kaycee gave it to her, then moved up Carver's bed so her brother could lie down, head in her lap. She grabbed the comb on his bedside table and started working it through his thick, course hair. He breathed out ale fumes, and Kaycee thought what he really needed was a toothbrush.
Carver closed his eyes. "Shorry," he murmured. "Shorry. 'bout before. With tha mages." He waved a hand vaguely in the air. "You're the besht sishtersh 'n tha worl'. No' your faul'."
Sometimes, Kaycee wished she had the heart to blackmail her brother for some of the things he said when he was really far gone. Really, when he wasn't taking on knife fighters or losing all their wages in the tavern, Carver could be a total sweetheart. Bethany came back in. "Get his boots?" Kaycee asked.
"Alright," Bethany agreed, moving to do so, "but he'll just have to sleep in his dirty trousers and smallclothes. There has to be a line somewhere, even if the idiot did just get stabbed defending my honor."
"s'barely a slice," Carver protested, without opening his eyes.
"I bet it will still get infected and turn all green and stinking," Kaycee threatened.
"You'd magic up a ghostlight 'fore it got tha' far," Carver said confidently.
Kaycee sniffed. "Someone's awfully sure of himself." She put Carver's comb down but kept running her fingers through his hair. There was a pain in her stomach or maybe near the bottom of her ribs, and as furious as she'd been with her brother earlier tonight, now all she really wished was that she'd been there in the tavern with him, long after any decent folk had gone home, when his so-called friends had cheered him on but let him fight three grown men alone, one of whom had had a knife. "But I'll make you a hangover cure in the morning."
"Use up tha las' of tha' root thingy, if you do tha'," Carver said, opening his eyes to look up at her and frowning. "Father would say I earned tha hangover too." He closed his eyes again, curling his legs into his body. "I'll go to the market," he promised. "Buy some more 'n' plant it tomorrow. Weed, too."
Bethany pulled his coverlet out from under him and situated it over her twin as he yawned, rolled slightly over in Kaycee's lap, and began to breathe deeper, signifying he'd fallen asleep at last. Kaycee maneuvered out from under him and laid his head down on his pillow. She traced her fingers along the line of his jaw. The stubble there was still patchy. "No, you won't," she murmured.
Sergio leapt up to fill the new vacancy on Carver's bed, lying down at Carver's feet instead of Mother's in the other room. Father hadn't thought he was pure mabari; the colors were off, and he was a bit taller and leaner than the classic breed—and if he was pure mabari, that they'd found him wandering around in the wilds made no sense. Mabari were too valuable. But Sergio had the same intelligence. Somehow, he knew Carver might need him more tonight.
"Good dog," Kaycee told him, trying to pretend her voice hadn't gone thick. "Stay."
She walked to the door of the twins' room. Bethany was standing there, eyes shining brighter than they should in the lamplight. She opened her arms without a word, and Kaycee walked into them and buried her face in her baby sister's shoulder, letting Bethany wrap her up like Mother had used to, just for a moment. After all, Bethany needed it as much as she did.
There weren't a lot of people at Father's funeral. He'd learned over the years to be careful about who he let in and had spent most of the past twenty years as a temporary farmhand, builder, tutor, or scribe. Moving with the work, turning his hand to anything that could make some coin, never staying long enough to allow his employers to really get to know him, because if they really got to know him, it could be too dangerous. Still—Miriam was there with her grown-up children. Their neighbors, the Carpenters. Robin, Darine, and their children. And three of the Chantry brothers besides the sister who had sung the service, Father's drinking and debate buddies, who had supplied many of Kaycee, Carver, and Bethany's learning texts for the past several years.
Mother held on through most of the service. She wept, silently, wringing out at least four different handkerchiefs, and flexed her fingers in Sergio's neck ruff again and again, as though looking for something to grasp. But when Brother Otis, Brother Landon, Robin, and Gorse Carpenter walked with the torches to the corners of Father's pyre—a point of confusion for a lot of people in town, who hadn't understood why Father would rather be burned than buried—Mother began to scream.
"No! No! Not yet, please not yet! Leave him alone!"
Sergio started barking, loud, anxious barks, and Bethany was physically restraining Mother from leaping forward onto the pyre, tears streaming down her own face.
"Mama, please!"
"I can't stand it, Beth, let me go! Just another moment . . . another moment!"
"In another moment, he'll still be dead!" Kaycee burst out. "Pull yourself together, Mother! Give him the dignity he deserves!" Her face was hot. Suddenly, she had altogether too much hair, and it wouldn't get out of her face. There wasn't just a frog, there was a whole dwarf with a pair of daggers sitting in the back of her throat and kicking at the pit of her stomach. And Mama had gone ghost white and suddenly looked fifteen years older, but she'd shut up, she had shut up.
She collapsed in Bethany's arms, falling to her knees. Bethany hunched over her, holding her tight. Kaycee ripped her gaze away from the pair of them, over Carver standing next to them like a deactivated golem, and nodded at the torchbearers. The flames cast gruesome light over their set, masklike expressions. They were embarrassed for her, embarrassed for her mother.
The pyre went up, and both Mother and Sergio howled.
Carver covered his ears, but Bethany couldn't. She just sat there, tears on her lashes and mouth distorted, listening to it, because she had to hold Mother back. Not that Kaycee thought even now that their mother would willingly leap on Father's funeral pyre and perish among the flames. But she wasn't in her right mind. She hadn't been since his death two days ago.
Suddenly, Carver was in her face. "Why couldn't you just leave her alone!?" he demanded, and he was crying too. "Just leave her to grieve? You could have given her two more minutes with him, if you had a heart, but you don't, you never have, you're just this heartless . . ." he sputtered out into nothing, face contorting, fists clenching.
"Carver," Bethany started helplessly, and "Carver Hawke!" Miriam cried, but Kaycee swept her gaze around the clearing, silencing everyone there, stepped forward, and took her brother into her arms. He clung to her. She'd known he would, and he was crying all over her neck, and she just wanted away—to run and scream and cry her own self, but there was no time, and everyone right down to Father's dog still needed her, because who else was there, now that Father was dead?
"Who put you in charge anyway?" Carver was muttering. "Of Mother, of the rest of us? The last person who should be telling any of us what to do, putting all of us in dang—"
Kaycee was suddenly furious, and scared, too. She shoved him away, but kept grip of his arm, tight enough to hurt him. She hoped it hurt him.
"Thank you for coming, everyone," she said to the people still gathered, all of them looking either awkward, a little bit sick, or sickeningly interested by the scene. Oh, this would be the talk of the village for months. "If you could leave my family and I for a while to mourn my father in peace. There's food and drink at the cottage. We'll be along shortly and take some time to remember him together."
She dragged Carver through the trees, ten or twenty or thirty feet away—out of earshot, anyway. She muttered a small spell under her breath that would let her know if anyone came into earshot and sent it pulsing outward. Invisible, so it wouldn't give her away.
Then she turned, hands on hips, to face her brother. "Would you like to call the Templars while you're at it?" she demanded.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "I was out of line. I was—but the point stands, Kayce! This whole Blighted family's paralyzed by magic. Ever since Mother finally accepted Father was dying, you've been acting—it's not right to begin with, and it's stupid on top of that."
"Who's going to handle things, if not me?" Kaycee demanded. "Certainly, Mother isn't. You saw her back there, same as I did."
"Her husband just died!"
"Our father just died, and the only one of his children losing their mind over it is you. Strong argument that you should call the shots."
"Better than you," Carver retorted. "Another mage, making everything about staying away from the Circles of Magic. It's no way to live, Kaycee! I won't live like that forever!"
"With a roof over your head, neighbors that help and respect you, a family who loves you? Oh, poor unfortunate Carver, our family is just beggared, withering away!"
Carver threw up his hands and walked away a few paces. His voice was thick and choked. "You know what I mean!"
"What I know is that you will never own me or Bethany, just because we have magic and you don't. We're people with rights, just like you and Mother. That was the whole point of Father's choice. I will never give that up, to you or anyone else."
"Do you think I'd stop you?" Carver demanded. "Or Bethany?" He made a disgusted sound. "All I'm saying is while you're up on Father's high horse, maybe think. Mother used to be a lady, and she's down in the dirt right now. I can never be anything, for fear of exposing you. Andraste, you talk about my owning you!"
"You would hate being a lord," Kaycee pointed out. Carver was crying again, but this almost made him smile. Kaycee's mouth twisted. "You—you do what you want, Carver," she told him. "I don't want to order you or anyone around. I'm just trying to keep us sane. I can't help that you're Father's son. If you can't take being my brother or Bethany's . . . leave."
"So, I'm the bastard who broke Mother beyond repair. Yeah. That'll work. That won't haunt me my whole life or anything." Carver scrubbed his hands over his face. "I'll watch my mouth," he promised.
"Try. I don't want to have to curse you."
Carver took his hands away and met her eyes. His eyes were red, and his face was a horrible mottled mix of red and white. "So. That's it, then. You're in charge?"
Kaycee swallowed. "That's it, then."
"You aren't going to be able to make up for Father."
"I know."
"Or for Mother being . . . the way she is now."
Kaycee swallowed again. "I know."
Carver closed his eyes, then lunged forward and caught her in a grip that was half headlock, half hug. She pounded on his chest. Being in a headlock from Carver was no joke now. He was head and shoulders taller than either her or Bethany. Still as scrawny as a weed, but strong like one too, and promised to be as big as Father, or bigger.
"Come on," he said, when he was finished. "Let's go find Bethany. We shouldn't leave her alone with Mother too long."