“There’ve been mages here. There’s one still here,” insisted Bethel.
“Oh, pish,” said Eff crossly. “Be logical! If she was going to harm you, she’d have done it by now.”
Typical of Eff. She always expected the world to run on logic, and it didn’t. It ran on unreasonable things like love and fear.
“Couldn’t you wait till someone attacks you, before he puts on the paste?” I suggested. “Surely you’d be safe enough hiding in the mine till then.”
“I don’t reckon you should worry about Lady Sparklea, Bethy,” said Dannel.
“What about the other one? She’s seen us now. When you are fit, we’ll find another home.”
Hard to know what Chatoyant would do. I could see her being malicious enough to hunt down the Mooncats, but I didn’t really know her. Or Scintillant either. Was it possible to ever really know a mage?
I wasn’t sure if I knew Klea any more either. I felt so sorry for what I’d learned about her and Radiant, and pity and understanding for what she’d done. Yet a part of me was still very shocked that she would give her baby to strangers. I mean, why not give it to me and Eff? Perhaps it was because I was a foster child myself that I found it so hard to accept. The thought of money changing hands bothered me too. I knew what people were capable of doing for money. Lady only knew I’d seen enough of it in the last few days.
So I was in an uncomfortable place where someone I liked had done something I deeply disapproved of for reasons I understood. What stance should I take? How did I react? Was it even for me to judge?
You should go and thank Klea. Katti’s thoughts intruded on my mind. Isn’t that what you monkeys do with your allies?
I flicked her ear. She knew I didn’t appreciate being called a monkey. But she was right about gratitude. And she must have known how uncomfortable I was about Klea, because when I went outside to talk to her, Katti came with me and sat with her head resting against my thigh for the whole conversation.
Klea was outside sitting on the branch of a tree. She’d gone out as soon as she’d seen how unhappy the Mooncats were with her. She was swinging her feet and enjoying the view of the valley around us, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. After all she’d been through, said the mean part of me. Shut up, said the generous part of me. Why should she always be miserable because someone had done something terrible to her in the past?
She jumped up and threw her arms round me.
“Shine! So glad you’re safe. And Katti.” She scratched Katti’s sweet spot and Katti allowed it. “Did Eff persuade you to come up to Elayison with us? Do come! We’ll have such fun. I know a good inn. We can see the sights.”
The thought of the baby came unbidden to my mind.
“I’m not sure. I...”
She drew back and looked at me questioningly.
“What’s the matter?”
“I found this. Hagen had it.” I gave her the letter.
“Shine, my letter!” she cried, seizing it and pulling it open. “Oh, Ladybless you, Shine. You saved me.” She threw her arms round me again and stepped back and held the letter up in the air. It burst into flame. In a moment it was ash.
“So that’s that,” she said, wiping her hands together.
“Klea?” I had to ask
“What’s the matter?”
“She not dead, is she? You lied to the elders.”
Her face hardened. She looked at me for a long moment. “So what? Since when did they deserve truth?”
“But why did you have to give her away?”
“I wanted to keep her safe from this family,” she snapped. “They’re poison, always plotting and watching. Look what happened to Bright. I didn’t want her to grow up like I did. Everyone says it’s fine now Flara’s gone, but I know her. She’s up at court whispering into people’s ears, making friends. You don’t know what she’s like. She’s scary. And she wants Radiant to come back, too.”
“But Klea, you’re a grown mage. What’s that to you?”
She turned on me.
“Listen, I made my decision. It was the wrong decision, but it’s done now. And it’s none of your business anyway. So if you want me to take you to Elayison, you can keep your disapproval to yourself, thank you very much.”
“I’m not disapproving,” I lied, unable to help myself. “I just don’t understand.”
She gave a bitter laugh.
“You don’t know? I thought everyone in the family knew. When I was nine Radiant used to come into my room and get into bed with me at night...”
“I know, I know. You don’t need to tell me about it. Bright told me. I’m so sorry.”
She took me by the shoulders. “You’re all the same, aren’t you? Nobody wants to hear what it was like. How much it hurt, and how I wanted him to stop. But he was a mage and I wasn’t, and the servants were all Flara’s creatures. Blazeann and Lumi were at school, and they hated me anyway, and Mother was always away ‘taking the waters’ and when I went to Uncle Batty he told Flara. He didn’t have the guts to face Radiant. Or maybe he didn’t want to believe me. Nobody wants to believe me.”
“I believe you,” I protested. I had been willing to hear, to support her if she wanted it. But it had all gone wrong. I tried to tell her this, but she wasn’t listening. She was shaking me, her face in my face.
“Flara beat me and told me to stop telling lies. Radiant... I thought he would strangle me. And he said he’d hurt Lucy if I told anyone else. And I knew I had to take it, because there was nobody to help me. So I took it. For almost two years I took it.
“Then they found out about all the money Flara was siphoning away for her own purposes. And then they found out that Radiant had been servicing Blazeann and Lumina.” She let out an angry growl. “He’d sired children for both of them, Flara had encouraged him to do that, but it wasn’t so bad because they were mages—they could have stopped him if they’d wanted to. Servants started talking, and Great Uncle Lucient came to see me and asked me if Radiant had done anything to me. And I was able to tell him. But he told me to keep it to myself for the sake of the family, because a mage mistreating a non-mage—and a child at that—breaking Shola’s pact in an Imperial household... He said they’d send Radiant into exile and they did, but they should have taken his crystal for what he did to me. But there would have been questions, and a scandal, and there mustn’t be a scandal in an Imperial household...”
Her voice had risen to a shout.
Her words felled me with pain. I was ashamed for even starting this topic.
“Klea, I’m so sorry, I... It’s such an awful story. I didn’t want to make you talk about it.”
She dropped my shoulders and pulled away.
“Maybe it doesn’t justify what I’ve done,” she said. “I know I’ve made a terrible mistake. I didn’t want to go back to the Family House. I wanted so much to be free of the family. And they offered me so much money and said they’d take good care of her. But I’d never have done it if I thought she’d have the same childhood I did. These people were friends of mine. I cared for the man. It seems like a decent family. The children are happy and there’s only the woman and her brother... The brother is the sire too, so she’s got the safety of being a blood relation. I stayed with them in the country while I was pregnant and I promised myself that I wouldn’t hand her over if there was anything amiss. And believe me, I looked.”