Battles of Salt and Sighs by Val Saintcrowe

CHAPTER NINE

MAGDALIA WAS SURPRISEDwhen there was a knock at her door, because no one ever knocked. It was superfluous anyway, because her door was locked, and anyone who came was equipped with a key to let herself in. Most of them were female fae who wordlessly served her and paid her no mind if she attempted to speak to them.

She went to the door and rattled the locked knob. “I’m afraid I can’t let you in. The door is locked from the outside.” She’d watched when a fae had come in and removed the lock, turned it about, and then reattached it so that she could be locked in.

A chuckle from the outside, and she recognized it.

Duranth.

Folding her arms over her chest, she turned and stalked across the vast and lush room to the window. She spent a lot of time here, gazing down over the courtyard at fae going to and fro, looking out at the ruins of the capital city beyond. The city wasn’t entirely ruined, of course, but it had never looked like this before.

She heard the door unlock and heard Duranth enter, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She gazed out the window instead. “Come to take me to a bigger room?”

He laughed again. “These were the csaerina’s chambers. Are they truly beneath you?”

She had known it. Of course he’d done that, and there were all sorts of implications. He thought of himself as the new emperor and her as his wife. He wanted to be in her bed and he wanted her at his side, doing his bidding, ruling at his side.

Of course it was ridiculous. He was like a child, playing at being a ruler, but he was fae, and fae were not meant to rule. He must be stopped, because he was pure evil. All the fae were.

She could not let herself be seduced by his attempts to use her for his awful purposes. She had to remain strong. She was human, and she was better than he was.

He was standing behind her now. “I wondered if you’d accompany me somewhere today.”

“Is this a request?” She glanced up at him over her shoulder. “What has prompted this unprecedented courtesy?”

“Your comment about being silly and flighty, of course,” he said, leaning closer. “Have I misjudged and underestimated you, my little Magda? If so, I long to be proved incorrect.”

She turned to look at him. “What if I say no?”

“Aren’t you curious?”

She pressed her lips together in a firm line.

“Aren’t you bored?” This was a pointed reference to her childhood, when she used to shout at the top of her lungs about her boredom and demand that someone go and fetch her Duranth to her, because he was her favorite playmate, the only thing that amused her.

The thought of that hurt her. She didn’t need a reminder of his duplicity, how he had tricked her into thinking he was something other than what he was. His evil ran deep, and he must have always had it, even as a child. Perhaps, even that young, he’d been planning these revolts, planning to massacre humans and burn down the capital.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She turned back to the window, hoping he wouldn’t see.

“Oh, dear,” he said, mocking her, “what is it I’ve said to upset you?”

“Your existence upsets me.”

This made him laugh.

She turned on him again, tears spilling out of her eyes, and she dashed them away. Now, she was angry. “You pretended with me, Duranth, always pretended. Pretended to be my friend, when all along you wanted to destroy me and everyone I ever loved.”

His eyebrows shot up. “That’s what you think?” He sighed. “You really are stupid.”

She hit him.

He caught her hand, crushing her smaller fist in his much larger one. He looked at her, a fierce expression on his face. “Yes, Magdalia, I have gone to great pains to seek you out and bring you here because my feelings for you are only pretend. I have clothed you in fine clothes and given you the best room in the palace, and that is because I don’t actually like you. Didn’t I kill my own men for you the other day? I suppose that was because I’m pretending as well.”

“It was. You are trying to use me, to make me think that—”

“We have had a number of conversations about how I can force you to do anything I like, and I have not used force against you once.” His eyes flashed.

“That is part of your evil plan,” she said.

“Oh.” He let out a wild laugh. “I see.” He turned his back on her and stalked across the room, heading for the door.

“Are you leaving then?” she said. “Don’t you want me to accompany you anymore?”

“You don’t want to accompany something as evil as me anywhere, I’m sure.”

“Well…” She glared at his back. “Where did you want to take me?”

He stopped, hand on the door.

It was quiet.

He bowed his head. Now, his voice was soft. “You are very wrong. You are one of the few people who can wound me with words, even now. You are the only person who I want to see me as…”

“As what?”

He turned around. “How could I be evil, Magda? What? Just because I have this magic? I was born with it.”

“It’s unnatural.”

“How? How is it any more unnatural than your magic? In fact, my darling, it’s the same. When you touch a plant and make it flower before its time, you call it growth, but growth is death. You hasten its end, just as I do. And when I touch a plant and make it wither, make it break up and fall apart in the soil, I hasten its ability to feed the new growth of a new plant, so I also make life.”

She furrowed her brow, because that… well, that made too much sense. But then, he had always been good at talking, and that was what had gotten him in trouble with her father in the first place. That was what had cost him his cursed hand.

“Nothing to say to that?”

“I suppose I’m too stupid,” she said in a nasty voice.

“My apologies, Magda, I shouldn’t have said that to you. You are not stupid.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say she forgave him. Forgiveness was the way that one responded to an apology, after all, but she wasn’t going to do that, because he didn’t deserve her forgiveness. All of this was a trick, and she could see that now.

“The legions must come back and wipe you all out,” she said. “You must be back under our control. Look what you have done to the city. What havoc will you wreak on the world if left unchecked?”

“The city was mostly like this when I arrived,” he said. “It was done primarily by human revolutionaries. They are the ones who started this. It is even human businessmen who are financing the war effort. So, if you think it’s all evil fae magic, think again, little Magda.”

“But then you arrived and you took over,” she said. “Now the Croith—”

“I want to take over,” he said, “but all men are beholden to their financiers. If you would help me, however—”

“I can’t help you.”

“Because I’m evil,” he said.

“Precisely.”

“Well, then, I now must insist you come along with me on this excursion I have planned. If you truly believe I am evil, I will want you to account for what it is we will see together.”

“Insist, hmm? Is this when you start using force against me, then?”

“Are you refusing to come?” He lifted his chin, waiting.

She should refuse. She shouldn’t give in. But she was curious, and she was bored. And she couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said, about their magic being the same, about growth being death. “Well, as it happens, my day is quite clear of engagements.”

He smirked. “Excellent news, dominissa.”

“I suppose I have no reason not to accompany you.”

He offered her his arm.

She thought of taking Cassus’s arm in the capital and felt cold all over. What had she come to, considering taking the arm of a slave as if he were an equal? She couldn’t do it.

Duranth uttered an annoyed sound, and then he stalked over and clasped her by the hand and dragged her out of the room.

She didn’t resist, and she didn’t try to get her hand free from his.

They went down through the palace, all the way down to the ground level, where a carriage was waiting for them, not an open chariot like last time, and she was pleased about this, because it was far too cold for an open chariot.

They climbed inside.

He let her sit opposite him on her own seat so that they were no longer touching.

Inside the carriage, there was a stack of papers and a ledger, and he immediately began going through them, ignoring her entirely.

The carriage ride was not too long, but he paid her no mind for the duration.

They traveled out of the city gates to a nearby villa. It was in disrepair, the walls and part of the main house having been destroyed by cannon fire.

There were fields and fields of corn, but it hadn’t been harvested in time and had withered on the vine. Some of it lay on the ground, rotting, other husks were browned and drooping from the plants.

She gazed at the corn as they disembarked. “You took the workers from where they were needed.”

“Hmm?” He was setting the ledger on the seat of the carriage.

“The corn,” she said.

“Ah, that,” he said. “Yes, it’s a pity that it wasn’t harvested. Interesting you noticed that right off.”

“It’s not a pity, it’s a travesty, and it’s because of your rebellion. If that wasn’t happening, the workers would have been in the fields picking the husks.”

“Well, cutting them down to feed them into machines, anyway,” he said.

“Your financiers,” she said disdainfully.

“Ah, you see, you are far less ignorant than I would have guessed.” He smiled at her. “Well, Magda, this is within your capability to remedy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, not the corn on the ground, I suppose. That’s beyond your help. But the husks still attached to plants in the ground. Your magic could wind back the clock and bring back life to them, could it not? I have seen you do it before.”

Her lips parted. “I… all of this? It’s fields and fields of it. I couldn’t possibly be strong enough.”

“I could help you,” he said. “Together, our magic—”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I see what you are about, and I won’t ever, ever help you or use my magic to do anything you want me to do.”

He nodded. “I see.” He shrugged, then, as if he hadn’t expected her to say anything different. “Let’s go inside.”

He escorted her down the drive and into the house, which was in as much disrepair as the rest of the place, badly vandalized inside, and full of people—former servants and slaves, she supposed. Many of them were human, but there were also a number of fae. They were all rushing through the place, carrying various things—sheets, pots and pans, pokers for fireplaces.

They paused to bow or curtsy to the Croith, but he waved them on, telling them to see to what they were working on.

He deposited her in a room with bare walls, which was filled with dirty children, watched over by several tired and similarly dirty young women, all of whom seemed to be pregnant, their bellies swelling in a way that seemed almost terrifyingly obscene to Magda. The children were playing with whatever they could get their hands on. They had broken pieces of wood and chipped stones, and they had imaginatively turned these into trains and swords and animals.

The children were bright-eyed, seemingly engaged and happy as they played.

“I have some things to see to,” said Duranth. “I’ll be back for you soon.”

“You’re leaving me here? I thought you were insistent I come here in the first place.”

“Well, you are not the only concern I have, as much as that may shock and surprise you,” he muttered.

She gave him a truly hateful look.

He barely seemed to notice, because he was walking away from her.

She sighed, leaning against the wall and watching the small children.

A pebble rolled over to her feet. She reached down to pick it up.

Immediately, a small fae boy was there, his blue hair curling around his pointed ears. He smiled up at her, holding out his hand. “May I have my ball back?”

She looked down at the pebble in her hand. It could hardly be termed a ball, but this boy didn’t seem to mind. She thought of Duranth as a boy, how he could imagine anything from nothing. “Of course,” she said, handing it over. “It’s a fine ball.”

“It’s small,” said the boy, “but I like to pretend that it belongs to a race of very tiny people. I have called them Littlies, and they have gills here.” He touched under his jaw. “Like fish, so that they can swim in the pond and they can eat things like fish do. It’s much easier for them that way. They’re never hungry.”

Which was when she realized how gaunt the little boy looked. She raised her gaze to look out amongst all the children and realized they did too. And—oh!—that was why the pregnant women were so repugnant to her. It wasn’t easy to see how the women were too thin because of their swelling stomachs, but they were.

“Are you hungry?” she whispered to the boy.

“Me?” He shrugged. “Sometimes, but I don’t cry about it, not like my little sister. She never stops crying about how her tummy hurts, even though she has had all the food there is.” He rolled his eyes. “She gives me a headache. I don’t cry like that.”

“I see,” she said, nodding. “Of course you don’t.”

“Thanks for giving back the ball,” said the boy, running off to the rest of the other children.

When Duranth came back, she pulled him out of the room and spoke to him in a harsh whisper. “Why can’t you send food from the capital to these people?”

“You think I’m not?” He raised his eyebrows. “These are refugees from further south, and more people arrive daily. We are stretched thin, Magda, even with our financiers, and some of them are getting cold feet, because this is not helping their bottom lines if all the farms are turning to violence and the harvests are being ruined.”

“But we eat well at the palace—”

“You eat well,” he corrected.

She drew back.

“I thought that you needed it,” he said. “I thought you were silly and flighty and concerned primarily with your own comfort, because it is all I have ever seen of you. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is some depth to you, Magda. Is there?”

“Not everyone is fed the meals that I am fed? What do you eat?”

“You saw the corn out there,” he said. “We could feed these people. These children.”

She didn’t say anything. Oh, he had played her. He had manipulated her. What was this but not further evidence of his innate evilness?

“Come now, Magda, you can’t truly believe that those children are evil just because of their fae blood. How does that make sense?”

“Everyone knows that the fae are evil.”

“Do they? Or do they simply tell themselves lies to soothe their guilty consciences? Of course they wish to have slaves whose contracts can never be earned out, who are property for life. Of course they wish to work us to death and not to pay us in return. But deep down, Magda, you must see that slavery is the true evil, owning other people. These are children. They are not property.”

Magda had heard bits and pieces of these sorts of sentiments from the mouths of demonstrators in the streets of the capital city, but she’d always dismissed them, never really listened to them.

“You are the reason they do not eat,” she said finally. “If all was as it should be, there would be food for everyone. You chose some ridiculous ideal over food, and now you will starve to death for your supposed freedom.”

“I don’t deserve freedom, you mean? Why? Because I am evil?”

“Yes,” she hissed.

“The children?” he said, gesturing to them. “Are they truly evil?”

She was shaking. “Did you put him up to it? The little one who looked like you with the pebble and the pretend Littlies?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I hate you, Duranth. I despise you. Everything about you is horrid.” She broke away from him, and she started to run.

He came after her, but she picked up her skirts and ran faster.

She burst out of the door of the house and she ran into the fields of corn, the browned stalks slapping her face and arms as she ran.

She fell down to her knees and she put her palms against the soil.

She pushed.

Her magic rose up within her. It was easy to summon. She had practiced so long in the capital with her magister that it was second nature to her. And plants, well, she had always been good with plants. They were easy to work with, so willing to take to the magic, to be moved by it. Animals were harder, of course, and people the hardest of all.

But she had healed people, knitted them back together, put their skin back to rights, sealed up their wounds.

She shut her eyes and felt the soil, the roots, the stalks of the corn plants and she pushed her magic into all of it. It was similar to healing, because she was setting it back to the way it had been before. She could do that, but she could also push a thing to grow more quickly—this was what Duranth had said was only hastening death.

She felt the magic roll out of her, going out in ripples from her hands, pushing itself into every stalk.

And her eyes were closed, so she didn’t see the stalks turning back to green, the leaves stretching out green and bright, the corn filling back with water and health and color. Instead, she felt it, seeing it through her mind’s eye.

She pushed and pushed and pushed, sending her magic through the fields as far as she could go until she felt resistance, her body in pain, tired.

Too much, she thought.

And then he was there, at her back, kneeling behind her, hands over hers, his stomach pressed into her back, straddling her body from behind. The position was scandalous and lewd, and she knew it, but she was too grateful for his power rushing into her, mingling with hers, strengthening her, to care.

She let out an audible sigh.

It felt good.

Their magic mingling always did. It always felt right. She was wreathed in warmth and safety and goodness.

He let out an answering sigh, sounding pleased as well.

She sagged into him.

He laced the fingers of his good hand with hers, lifted both her hands, and pulled her into him. They settled together, both still on their knees, her body against his, her back cradled against his chest, their fingers entwined, the magic surging out from them and into the ground everywhere that their bodies made contact with the soil.

Now that they were connected, the power seemed nearly boundless. She was stunned at how much power they had together, and she could tell that it wasn’t simply his own power, that when their power touched, their magic joined and grew in a miraculous way.

She knew from her magister that magic shouldn’t come from nowhere. She must use her own body’s resources, combined with whatever potential was in the object she was attempting to manipulate, to have the power to perform magic.

But with Duranth, their mingled magic created power. The magic multiplied, strengthening as they touched, as they worked together.

It was heady and blissful, and she liked the way it felt.

It went on and on, their bodies touching as they sent out their minds and their magic through the fields. And when each and every row of corn had been restored, they stopped.

She was exhausted, loose-limbed, barely able to hold herself up.

Duranth held her. “That was good, little Magda.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m not so little anymore.”

“You fit in my arms perfectly,” he murmured. “You are small and sweet and soft.” His mouth pressed into her temple, a kiss.

She groaned. She should stop him, but that had been nice somehow, and she liked being close to him. It felt so right being close to him, like she belonged here. She leaned her head back into his shoulder.

He put his lips against her neck, and she realized she’d exposed that to him.

She made a humming noise.

He brushed her hair away from her skin. He kissed her jaw and then her ear lobe. He kissed the hollow below her ear.

This made a sweet tremor go through her. She moaned.

He made an answering noise, guttural.

She turned her head, facing him. She put her mouth against his.

He made that noise again.

She should stop this.

His tongue stroked hers—startlingly good, sending tingles through her that were reminiscent of the way it felt to use magic with him.

She slid a hand up into his hair. She moved her tongue with his, losing herself in the sensation of it.