The Shattered Court - Couverture souple

Scott, M.J.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0451465393 ISBN 13 : 9780451465399

Editeur : Ace, 2015

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PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF THE HALF-LIGHT CITY

ALSO BY M. J. SCOTT

ROC

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Deep the earth

Its harvest life

Bright the blood

Sharpest in strife

Swift the air

To hide and fool

False the water

The deadly pool

CHAPTER ONE

“Milady, please pay attention.”

It was precisely the last thing she wanted to do. For a second, Sophie Kendall rebelled, lingering where she was, hands pressed into the pale gray skirts of her dress, no doubt wrinkling the silk. She had a sudden wild urge to bolt through the half-open glass doors and flee. But then her good sense, or at least her sense of resignation, returned, and she forced herself to turn away and smile apologetically at her tutor.

“But they’re playing so well.” She looked back over her shoulder at the two teams of young men playing roundball on the Indigo Lawn outside the doors, envy biting. Oh, to be so free. Here in the palace she wouldn’t be able to join in the game. Proper young ladies, let alone ladies-in-waiting, didn’t play roundball at court. But she could, at least, sit and watch. Or she could if she ever had the luxury of nothing to do.

Just an hour or two to herself in the sunshine. Was that too much to ask for?

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a spare hour or two alone. And right now she couldn’t imagine when she might next do so.

Captain Turner’s bushy white eyebrows drew together, but his expression was kind. “Milady, your twenty-first birthday is in two days. There will be plenty of time for frivolity then. But now you need to learn this.” He gestured to the large leather book on the table in front of him. “Your Ais-Seann is not a trivial matter. Do I need to remind you that you’re—”

“Thirty-second in line to the throne, about to come into my birthright if I have one,” Sophie said. “I know the speech, Captain. It’s just . . .” I want to be more than Lady Sophia Kendall, valuable broodmare. But proper young ladies didn’t say such things out loud. At times, being a proper young lady was enough to make her want to scream.

“It’s such a nice day,” she continued, trying not to sound too impatient. Sunlight streamed through the windows, making the lesson room seem dull in comparison. The breeze coming through the outer doors was just strong enough to carry the scent of grass and the early-blooming blossoms and possibility into the room. It made her skin itch. It made her want to tell the royal family and the court and everyone else weighing her down with expectation to go to hell. Made her want to run far, far away.

But the captain’s face showed no sympathy for the restlessness she’d been feeling all day, and she doubted he’d show any actual sympathy if she tried a grander rebellion like leaving the room. Most likely he’d just send a squad of the guard after her to carry her back.

The king, the crown princess, and several hundred years of Anglese tradition wanted her prepared for her Ais-Seann, so she would be prepared for her Ais-Seann. Her Age of Beginning. Beginning of adulthood. Beginning, possibly, of magic. Beginning of many things she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to begin.

If indeed she proved to have any magic, her power would be dedicated to the goddess with all the proper rites and her person married off promptly to whichever nobleman the king thought best. A royal witch was a prize for the men of the court, and the stronger she was, the higher ranked and more influential the noble to whom she would be wed would be. Not that any of the available high lords of the court struck her as men she was longing to spend her life with. Most of them were fifteen or twenty years older than her, for a start.

If she turned out not to have any power, she’d be married off less promptly to some more obscure lordling and might at least get to leave Kingswell and the relentless mores and rules of the court.

The lesser of two evils, just. Maybe. She wasn’t entirely sure. Her hands began twining in her skirts again, and she forced them to relax.

There was nothing to be done to protest her fate or escape from it. She didn’t have any control over whether she was going to manifest magic, and she’d been schooled from birth to take her place in the court and the society of Anglion. She just wasn’t entirely sure why, when she’d known since she was old enough to understand what would happen when she turned twenty-one, it was becoming harder and harder to meekly accept with each passing hour. Perhaps it was just nerves.

Perhaps everything would be perfectly fine if she just kept putting one foot in front of the other and did as she was asked to do. So, like a proper young lady, she smoothed her skirts where her hands had gripped them and sat back down next to the captain.

“I know this seems tedious, child,” he said. “But you need to know how to control your magic if it comes in. Royal witches are strong, and we can’t predict how your gift will behave when it manifests.”

“You can’t predict that it will manifest at all,” Sophie said, trying not to let irritation shade her words.

“Given your bloodlines, there is a high probability that you will have power, Lady Sophia.”

“Much good that will do me,” Sophie muttered. One hand strayed to the silver-gray pearl hanging from the slender chain at her throat. Salt protect me. Lady give me light.

Her thumb rubbed the surface of the pearl again, the smoothness a comfort, though she still missed the uneven texture of the strand of five natural pearls she’d worn for as long as she could remember. But they were a creamy white, and as long as the princess was in half mourning, her ladies couldn’t wear white.

The gray had been a gift from the princess herself. Its color alone made it expensive, more than Sophie’s family could afford. It was not as darkly beautiful as the rope of black pearls Princess Eloisa herself wore. But then again, Eloisa’s pearls could have bought Sophie’s family estates many times over.

A true symbol of her family’s wealth. And Eloisa’s power. Both mundane and magical.

The princess was the strongest royal witch yet living. Magic hadn’t ruined her life.

But Sophie was not the crown princess. Magic would bring a woman of her rank only unwelcome attention and an even more narrowly prescribed life: Performing the seasonal rituals. Keeping the water sources blessed. Tending to her husband’s lands or the court’s as demanded. Earth witchery was hardly exciting. Useful, in a prosaic sort of way, being able to coax crops and animals into fruitfulness and supposedly anchor the prosperity of the court and the country. But hardly exciting.

Once, royal witches had been able to do more, to call the weather and do other things only hinted at in the history books. But it had been long years since any royal witch of Anglion had been able to do such things. Eloisa was the strongest living royal witch, and she was gifted with wards and healing and, so it was said, foretelling, but she couldn’t, as far as Sophie knew, move so much as a puff of air.

She’d asked her mother once, long ago, why royal witches no longer did such things. Her mother, possessed of only a little power herself, had said that no one knew. Her father, overhearing, had muttered something about inbreeding but then laughed when her mother had told him not to be an idiot.

Privately, since coming to court, Sophie had decided that maybe they just never got the chance to try to do anything exciting. Royal witches were carefully hemmed in with rules and protocol so that their powers served the Crown as the Crown wished to be served. And after that, they served the goddess and her church. It didn’t leave much time for trying to tame lightning. And with the pampered court life, there was really no need to try for more.

She tried to imagine the look on Captain Turner’s face if she asked him what she would need to do to call lightning. He would probably have apoplexy. And then possibly march her straight to the temple for a lecture on the proper uses of earth magic. She sighed, finger and thumb rubbing the pearl again. It was disappointing to think that actually doing earth magic, or the variety she would be allowed—if she was even able—would be even less exciting than learning the theory.

The captain cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him. “Maybe magic will be of more use to you than you realize.”

“It’s not as though I’ll be allowed to do anything useful with it. Witches don’t fight battles or anything.”

He lifted the book they had been studying. “You’ve been talking to the crown princess again. Earth magic keeps Anglion prosperous. Feeds our people. Fighting battles isn’t everything, milady.”

“I believe your fellow soldiers in the Red Guard would disagree with you, Captain. And it’s difficult to avoid talking to Princess Eloisa when I’m one of her ladies.” The princess, widowed just over a year, had certain views about marriage and the role that women should play in the court. Views that were not exactly conventional. She had, so far, avoided being wed again. Sophie wondered just how long past her mourning time Eloisa would continue to get away with that. Her father doted on her, but he also wasn’t a man to waste a prize in his possession. Not one that could be traded for strength and loyalty. Or he hadn’t been before his recent illness. He was recovering from the sickness that had gripped him most of the winter and spring, but there were whispers in the court that he was weakened for life.

Captain Turner laughed beside her, a friendly deep, rumbly laugh, at odds with his stern weather-carved face. “Maybe so. Still, you won’t need to fight battles, milady. No one crosses a royal witch. No one sensible, at least.”

That made her smile, unwilling as she was. She picked up her notebook and tried to remember the last thing the captain had said about grounding to a ley line. She knew the theory off by heart. After all, she had been schooled in the history and tenets of earth magic and the lore of the goddess since she was fifteen. Captain Turner was charged with ensuring that those lessons were retained. She thought it strange that a Red Guard battle mage was the chosen instructor for potential royal witches, but that was what the temple had decreed. She also had regular sessions with temple priors, but they always stuck to the lore of the goddess and wouldn’t discuss earth magic. She’d even had one nerve-racking session with the icily formidable Domina Skey, who was in charge of the Kingswell temple and therefore also in charge of all of Anglion when it came to matters of the goddess. But Sophie hadn’t learned anything new from her. Anything she hadn’t learned by now, well, it seemed that it was just about too late.

Of course, amongst that learning was a large hole about the actual rites undertaken by a royal witch—that information being deemed unsuitable for those without power to know of—which seemed entirely unfair. But that was another improper thought for young ladies. Until her power manifested, all she was allowed to know was the foundational theories of magic developed by the temple. The ones that underpinned all three branches of power. And there was nothing she could do about that, either. “All right, Captain. We have another hour. The princess asked me to attend her at midday.”

Just after eleven in the morning, Lieutenant Cameron Mackenzie reported for duty.

“You’re late, Lieutenant,” the duty captain grumbled. “The princess rang for you five minutes ago.”

Cameron shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, not meaning it. Wallace—the captain—was an officious toady. One who’d avoided any sort of real danger in his time in the guard. A silk soldier. Cameron might be guilty of many things, but not that. “Business with my father.”

“Your father should not keep you from the Princess Royal,” Wallace said with a flick of his hand toward the roster on the desk before him. But he sounded slightly mollified. Or, rather, reluctant to anger the Erl of Inglewood. Cameron wondered what the captain would think if he knew the duke had been, as usual, berating his son about why he hadn’t managed to make the princess fall in love with him.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to inconvenience Her Highness,” Cameron said, knowing full well that was exactly what His Grace had wanted.

In his father’s convoluted mind, Eloisa would pine for Cameron if deprived of his company. Cameron himself was clear on the fact that Eloisa didn’t pine for anyone—except poor dead Iain, perhaps. But the erl was convinced he could become father-in-law to the first in line to the throne if only Cameron would properly apply himself.

It didn’t matter how many times Cameron pointed out that Eloisa was still in half mourning, and at any rate, was exceedingly unlikely to be given permission to marry someone as lowly as a third son who held only a minor courtesy title and a few acres of northern Scarp land buried far in the high reaches of Carnarvan. Let alone bring up that it was more than improper for a bodyguard to be involved with his charge. His father was ambitious. In fact, Lord Inglewood practically defined the word.

“Just be punctual next time,” Wallace said. “Now, you should go.” He made a note—probably recording Cameron’s lateness—in the ledger, the black letters curving with perfect precision, and waved Cameron away.

Cameron saluted and headed down the corridor. The door guards let him into the suite, and he found Eloisa in her morning room. Alone. He stopped short at that. She was usually surrounded by a gaggle of ladies-in-waiting. He hadn’t been alone with her for close to three weeks.

He bowed, the obeisance instinctive despite their solitude. “Good morning, Your Highness.” He straightened and scanned the room quickly.

Definitely alone.

The room seemed larger without the usual crowd. Eloisa wore a deep green dress—not strictly a half-mourning color, but who would quibble with the Princess Royal? With her witch-red hair caught casually behind her head rather than piled up in the elaborate curls currently favored at court, she dominated the room like a flame against the pale yellow of the walls and furnishings. Cameron told himself not to jump to conclusions about what the absence of her ladies might mean and stayed where he was.

Eloisa tapped her fingernails against the arm of her daintily curved chair and arched an eyebrow at him. “Good morning? It’s practically midday,” she said in a mock-annoyed voice.

Cameron hid a smile. So she was in a mood, was she? Obviously his duties today would include charming a royal witch into a better temper. He pulled his watch from its pocket on the inside of his uniform jacket. “Merely a little after eleven, Highness. Midday is still a ways off. Where are your attendants? You shouldn’t be left alone.”

“Why not?” she asked, with another tap of one long nail against the light-colored wood. “I have such a big, strong bodyguard to protect me.”

“I only just arrived,” he pointed out. He crossed his arms, mock stern as he looked ...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

First in a new fantasy series from the author of the Novels of the Half-Light City.

Entangled in a court ruled by tradition and intrigue, a young witch must come to terms with newfound power and desire—and a choice between loyalty and survival.…

The royal witches of Anglion have bowed to tradition for centuries. If a woman of royal blood manifests powers, she is immediately bound by rites of marriage. She will serve her lord by practicing the tamer magics of the earth—ensuring good harvests and predicting the weather. Any magic more dangerous is forbidden.

Lady Sophia Kendall, thirty-second in line to the throne, is only days away from finding out if she will be blessed—or perhaps cursed—with magic. When a vicious attack by Anglion’s ancient enemies leaves the kingdom in chaos, Sophia is forced to flee the court. Her protector by happenstance is Lieutenant Cameron Mackenzie, a member of the royal guard, raised all his life to be fiercely loyal to the Crown.

Then Sophia’s powers manifest stronger than she ever imagined they would, and Cameron and she are inextricably linked in the process. As a witch unbound by marriage rites, Sophia is not only a threat to the established order of her country, but is also a weapon for those who seek to destroy it. Faced with old secrets and new truths, she must decide if she will fight for her country or succumb to the delicious temptation of power.…

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Ace
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0451465393
• ISBN 13: 9780451465399
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 336