Delia turned back to Jonaton. “Then why do the seasons happen?” she demanded. “Why do the days get longer, then shorter, then longer again? How—”
“Oh, you make my head ache with your questions,” Jonaton replied. “Some of us think it’s because the sun bobs up and down a little, like north to south, so when it’s bobbed furthest away from somewhere on the world, it’s colder. That’s the Dancing Sun concept. Ask Ponu. Better yet, ask Koto. He’s the star-minded one, and he loves it when he gets to show off what he knows.”
Hakkon shrugged, as if to say, Don’t ask me, I don’t know and I don’t care.
She might have pestered Jonaton anyway, but Isla caught her eye, and when her sister rose, she rose. As she had expected, Isla drew her into that little alcove of a room and shut the door.
“As I expect you guessed, Kordas and I need to find a way to work out a time when we know neither of us can be scryed so that we can scry each other. Are you familiar with that little leather note-case that Beltran has on him?” Isla asked.
“I should,” she said, with a bit more sting to it than she’d intended. “I made it for Kordas and he gave it to Beltran.” That had been . . . well, a little embarrassing. She’d been hard in the throes of her first love of Kordas and she had put a lot of work into that case, embroidering the Crest of Valdemar into the soft glove-leather of the case, then hand-stitching the rest of the case herself. And Kordas had looked at it, said, “Thank you, Delia, this is exactly what I’ve needed for Beltran!” and given it to his Herald and secretary with a smile.
Humiliating. But what could I do without further humiliating myself?
Isla nodded. “Good. Then do you think you can place a note in that case by reverse-Fetching it?”
She groaned a little, because that was going to be another long-distance try, and . . . well, it would be as hard as personally pushing a wardrobe up the steps of a tower to the top by herself.
But then, what was everyone else doing? The equivalent, of course.
“I’ll try,” she said. “But I can’t promise it will work.”
“Good. Sit down,” Isla said, pulling a stool out from a niche in the wall. “Here’s the note.”
She handed Delia a small piece of vellum, not parchment—thicker, so Beltran should notice the difference from the parchment he kept in the case. It was about the size of her palm. Written on it were the words, Valdemar dawn, husband.
It could not possibly be less incriminating. It could refer to anything. It could have been left in the notecase by accident, or picked up by accident. No one knew either Isla or Kordas were mages, and no one knew Delia had Fetching Gift.
“Will he know what time dawn is where he is?” she asked.
Isla nodded. Delia sighed, put her hands palm up on her lap with the scrap of vellum in them, closed her eyes, and concentrated with all her might on the inside of that notecase, the flap inside of the back cover, how the leather had some perforations in it because she had started to embroider that side as well with a red rose, the symbol of love, and had stopped herself and picked it all out again.
She felt the tension of Fetching building up inside her, and continued to let it build, and build, and build, until her head blazed with pain and she didn’t think she could hold this for one moment longer.
Then she released it, and immediately blacked out.
She came to with her head in Isla’s lap, and a headache behind her eyes that was at least as bad as the one she’d had after Fetching that wretched rock from the wilderness. She winced away at the light.
“I caught you before you fell,” said Isla. “That headache is all reaction-headache. Which is actually a good thing, since it means I have potions that I can give you that will put you to sleep until it ebbs.”
“Did it work?” she asked, around a mouth so dry it felt as if she hadn’t had anything to drink in a year.
“Well,” Isla said, “the note went somewhere. If it didn’t go to the right place, no harm. We’ll know tomorrow morning, I expect.”
Delia sighed and allowed herself to be helped to her feet. Isla helped her stagger to her room, where she dropped into bed and lay there, fully clothed until Isla returned with the promised potion.
Which tasted vile, with a bitter, fetid aftertaste no amount of honey would cover up.
And after a while, relief came, then sleep.
* * *
—
Delia woke, feeling weak, empty, and starving; by the light at the windows it was almost sundown, and she thought briefly about trying to stagger down to the kitchen to get something to eat, or better yet, call for a servant to get something for her.
But there was a tray covered by a linen napkin on a small table that had been moved to the bedside. Under the napkin were a hand-sized loaf of bread, butter, a cold chicken leg, an enormous dill pickle, a cherry tart, a pitcher of water, and a goblet with honeyed wine in it, as she discovered by taste. She ate the bread and butter and stripped every bit of meat from the chicken bones, ate the tart—and looked dubiously at the pickle. She didn’t much care for dill pickles. But Isla knew that, so it had to be there for a reason.
She bit into it, and discovered herself licking her fingers, having swiftly devoured it in moments. Something in her had craved something that was in it.
The wine was gone by now, but it wouldn’t have paired well with that pickle, and the water she poured for herself satisfied much better than more wine would have.
She decided she had just enough left in her to strip for bed and climb under the covers. Which she did, and was insensible until just before dawn.
* * *
—
Because she had gone to sleep much earlier than she usually did, she found herself awake at false-dawn, and was actually dressed when someone tapped softly on her door.
“Come,” she said, and recognized Isla’s familiar silhouette as her sister cracked open the door and looked in.
“Good, you’re awake. I suspected you’d be interested in whether or not your Gift worked,” she said. “It’s down to the cellars for us.”
Isla had a dim mage-light floating over her head, just enough light so they didn’t stumble. Down into the cellars they went, this time into a different one than the one they’d all been using for their Gate-magic.
Mage-lights sprang to life as they entered, and lines of light began to glow dimly on the floor and the ceiling, a pattern that centered on a simple wooden table with chairs around it. Isla extinguished the light above her, and took a seat in one of those chairs. Delia took another beside her.
“I left my maid sleeping in my bed, after I gave her a headache and insisted she lie down,” Isla said, with a grimace. “I hate hurting her like that, but I needed something that wasn’t an illusion in that bed.”