Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) (3 page)

“At least you can vote them out,” Poly said. The thing with royal families and magic bloodlines was that once one king or queen was dead, you could be sure that there would be another, just as powerful, in his or her place.

“Yes, but they’re all the same,” said Luck. The way his lips moved out of synchronisation with his words was beginning to give Poly a headache. “Confound the hedge, where’s this glitch!”

“I told you,” Poly said, inured to repeating herself. No one at the castle had listened to her either. “There isn’t one anymore. It used to be
there
, but I think it was only one way.”

“Huh. They did a different casting for the inside. Now what?”

“Can’t you just Shift us out like you did in the castle?”

“No. Shifting through magic this thick is impossible. I’ll do a Journey spell once we get away from the hedge.” He eyed the hedge thoughtfully. “It should have disintegrated when the castle did. It’s got something to do with you, Poly; you make magic behave oddly.”

“I don’t do it on purpose,” sighed Poly, wondering what else she was destined to take the blame for. She was sure that she had never been able to influence magic before she was bespelled: it would have made life a lot easier if she
had
been able to do so.

“Anyway–” she added, but Luck was no longer listening. He was surrounded by a swirling and thoughtful mass of golden magic, his eyes tinted slightly with the same gold. Moments later he startled Poly by giving a joyful yell.

“I’ve got it! Come along, Poly.”

Poly found herself swept off her feet, quite literally.

“Put me down!” she demanded. Her hair seemed to have other ideas, however: it was curling around Luck’s shoulders, cocooning them together in a blanket of hair and magic.

“Very nice,” said Luck approvingly, oblivious to her blush. “No, leave my legs free, Poly; I need to walk.”

“Tell my hair!” Poly snapped, her cheeks uncomfortably hot. She thought she could still feel the pressure of Luck’s lips on her own, and she didn’t like being cocooned to him. “I’m not doing anything!”

“Legs,” Luck said, peering down at the hair lashing his legs together. Much to Poly’s relief, the tendrils loosened reluctantly. “Huh. Very unusual. Off we go.”

Poly gave a suppressed squeak as Luck dashed at the hedge, clutching his coat lapels. Then they were ploughing through huge, thorned branches and green-black foliage. She could feel the magic of the hedge prodding at her magicked hair, sensing the Poly-ness to it, and it struck her that the hedge had been tuned to her particularly, and no one else. As she realized that, she began to feel the hedge probing deeper, sensing the difference that was Luck. As if in response, her hair tightened.

“Luck–”

“I know. Put your arms around my neck.”

Poly muttered, but did as she was told, wriggling her arms to twine through hair and around his neck. As she did so, Luck caught a breath to match his breathing with hers, and Poly felt the scrutiny of the hedge lessen slightly.

At first she thought they had managed to confuse it, but then she saw it experimentally reaching for Luck’s uncovered legs and gasped: “Run!”

“Too late,” said Luck’s voice matter-of-factly in her ear, and Poly braced herself for the onslaught of magic. But Luck was still striding forward, exuding surges of magic that were more powerful than anything she had ever seen. A light-headed feeling of relief made Poly’s head spin: Luck meant it was too late for the hedge.

The next minute they were breaking out into the dimming sunshine of late afternoon.

Luck put Poly down some distance away from the hedge, breathing easily despite the huge waves of magic that were still rolling off him. Her hair didn’t take kindly to the idea of separation, curling tendrils around his neck just as he freed one wrist and sliding insidiously around his waist just as he managed to free his neck.

“Poly,” he said at last, plaintively.

“I’m
trying
,” said Poly, harassed and pink-faced, and trying not to notice Luck’s other arm around her waist. In desperation, she gave her hair the same sort of mental slap she had given Luck’s magic when it became nosy, and it released him with sulky slowness.

Poly sat down wearily, feeling as though she couldn’t keep her eyes open another second, and said: “
That
was
harrowing
.”

Luck looked stung and slightly hurt, but Poly was too tired feel herself able to frame a sensible explanation and she didn’t know why he should take it so personally, after all. So she simply curled up in a cocoon of hair, her books tucked in close to her chest, and fell asleep.

Chapter Two

When Poly woke up the next morning, it was because of a pain in her nose and the fact that she didn’t seem to be able to breath. Gasping, she awoke to find Luck crouched beside her. He was pinching her nose and frowning.

“Ow! Luck,
ow!
”

“You like your sleep, don’t you?” remarked Luck, sitting back on his heels.

Poly’s voice was small and pained. “You pinched my nose!”

“You wouldn’t wake up. Huh. It must be a side-effect of the enchantment.”

Poly gazed at him balefully. That was no reason for suffocating her in her sleep. There were
spells
for waking people up.

“No, don’t glare at me,” Luck said. “I’m only trying to help.”

“My nose will fall off.”

“Rubbish,” said Luck briskly, seizing her chin. “No, don’t wriggle, Poly. I want to look at that curse.”

Poly, finding her personal space thus encroached upon, ventured a dismayed: “But–”

Luck twitched her chin slightly to the side, fingers sharp and unheeding. “Huh. There’s something very unusual here.”

His face lunged closer, invasive and accusatory. “What are you holding, Poly?”

“What? Nothing.”

“Yes, that’s what you said yesterday; but it’s not true.”

Poly looked askance at him, and he looked back, unperturbed. But there was something in her hand, come to think of it. She uncurled the hand with a frown, fingers stiffly reluctant, and they both gazed down at a small wooden spindle.

“Huh. That’s a bit of a disappointment,” said Luck. “Not a lick of magic in it.”

Poly said: “Where did that come from? It looks familiar.”

“It should,” said Luck, losing interest in the spindle and reacquainting himself with her face; “You’ve been carrying it around since yesterday. Stop blinking, Poly.”

“I can’t have been carrying it around since yesterday,” objected Poly, trying desperately not to blink. The attempt proved counter-productive, and she tried not to blush under a particularly glazed look from Luck. “I’d remember.”

“You didn’t remember me from the dream.”

“What dream?”

“Yes,” said Luck. “Well, it’s no good trying to poke around from the outside. I’ll have to keep an eye on it as we walk.”

“Walk? You said you could do a Journey spell once we were out of the hedge.”

Luck gave her a blank look that suggested she was babbling. “You must have misunderstood. Anyway, I can’t.”

“Why not?” she demanded, determined at least to get an answer out of him.

“Journey spells make me ill,” Luck said, with dignity. “It’s time for breakfast. Eat your eggs before they go cold.”

And there
were
eggs. They were sitting lopsidedly on a sloped boulder, dribbling golden yolk down a flimsy plate and surrounded by a decent amount of bacon and two slices of toast. Poly was too hungry to be surprised. She was even too hungry to ask where Luck had produced the eggs from, or why she hadn’t seen the change in his magic. She had a small, terrified feeling that it was such a small effort for him that it hadn’t even registered. Poly, who had a basic knowledge of the theory of producing somethings out of nothing–not to mention
cooked
somethings–began to feel that she might have been safer with the princess than she was with this wizard.

She wasn’t even sure he was a wizard, if it came to that. His magic was just a little bit too golden and strong and abundant to make him a mere wizard. Poly thought she might be glad of the princess’ mantle if it came to travelling with an enchanter, since a princess must command respect, after all.

She was still hoping rather doubtfully that this would be the case when she finished scraping the last golden drops of egg from her plate with a strip of buttered toast.

Luck said: “You eat more than a Capital Footsoldier,” and it came to her attention that he was watching her in fascination.

“I haven’t eaten in three hundred years,” said Poly, trying for dignity despite the flush of heat that had crawled into her cheeks. “I was hungry.”

“Yes, you have,” Luck said. “The enchantment had a sustenance clause built into it. I don’t suppose you know exactly what sort of enchantment it was that they laid on you, by the bye?”

“I thought
you
knew,” Poly said, in a rather accusatory tone. He was the wizard, after all. Or enchanter, if one subscribed to the view that the worst possible outcome was the one most likely to occur.

“I don’t know everything,” said Luck, levelling a vaguer than usual gaze at her. “Your enchantment is three hundred years old. It’s based on an ancient sort of ritual that dates back even further, and it’s all convoluted with a curse as well. There’s only a few scraps of information on it apart from the spellpaper that bound the enchantment in place. I searched the whole Capital Library looking for clues.”

Certain that she was about to be told again that it was her fault, Poly asked hastily: “Where did you get the spellpaper?”

“The Head of the Wizard Council gave it to me,” Luck said, removing the golden gaze, much to her relief. She wondered if he’d been trying another sneaky spell on her, and thought that yes, he probably had. “The elections are only half a year away and everyone’s digging for filthy rumours and backstory about the opposing party. Then you turned up like a gritty little pearl just waiting to throw everyone out of balance, and suddenly the Council’s housecleaning doesn’t seem quite so perfect.”

I’m housekeeping
, Poly thought, her eyes narrow and somehow hot.
Well!

“Why did he give it to you? Why not just find me himself?”

Luck shrugged. “Probably didn’t want to be assassinated. Or kicked, if it comes to that.”

“Very well, then,” Poly said briskly, still annoyed and ridiculously hurt. “Thank you for rescuing me, and I’ll be quite all right by myself now. You can go on without me.”

“No, I can’t. I have to bring you back to the Capital with me. It’s in my contract.”

“C-contract? Oh!”

That was even worse. As if it wasn’t enough that someone had decided to use her as a common-or-garden ingredient in an enchantment, now she was being bartered and arranged for as if she were simply a commodity.

“Don’t be silly, Poly,” said Luck. “If I don’t take you back with me, Mordion won’t give me the books.”

A shock of cold surprise fizzed through Poly from her head to her toes, freezing out the anger. “
Who
is giving you books?”

“Mordion. You don’t know him.”

There was an unpleasant feeling in her stomach. Poly said: “Do you know, I think I might.”

“Rubbish. You can’t.”

Poly bit down on a sharp retort since Luck was quite right: it was very unlikely that the Mordion she had known could still be alive after three hundred years. However, the memory of what that Mordion had been capable of inspired in her a fear powerful enough to say: “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Luck blinked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, and said with interest: “Huh. We’ll see.”

There was a momentary build-up of ridiculously powerful magic that Poly’s hair extended, quivering, to meet. Displaced air huffed coolly in her face, and then everything...stopped.

“Right,” said Luck; and Poly, whose only sense had been one of stillness and relief that nothing seemed to have happened, found to her stupefaction that she could no longer move.

“Let me go!”

“No,” Luck said, busily drawing loose threads of magic back into himself. “For one thing, you’re too dangerous: also, you’d probably kick me. Here we go–”

This time the Shift was nothing like instantaneous. Every moment was marked and precise, drawing out in the suddenly thick air until Poly was convinced that she was not breathing the air so much as drinking it. Her spindle dropped from her fingers with a preciseness that felt almost deliberate, and in the same moment one of the books she had rescued fell into her open palm, binding down. The pages flicked through the thick air until at last they rested on an ink illustration. It swam in Poly’s gaze, black and definite against the vellum, but her dazed eyes didn’t have time to register which picture it was, because at that exact moment there was a sharp snap and a tug. Poly tumbled into grass, free and breathless, and found with some relief that the air had regained its customary consistency.

Luck’s voice, somewhere above her head, said: “Huh. That was interesting.”

Her head was resting on something soft. Poly allowed herself to enjoy the comfort until it occurred to her that her headrest was rising and falling in a rhythmic manner that suggested...breathing.

Oh.
Poly sat up hastily. It was Luck’s stomach that her head had been cushioned on.

“A lesson in history, princess,” said Luck, without seeming to notice either that she’d been reclining on him, or that she’d moved. He was dreamily watching the clouds, and Poly thought that she could have continued using his stomach as a cushion without him noticing.

“Roughly three hundred years ago–”

Poly sighed. “I was alive then. I
know
–”

“You’d just gone to sleep. Don’t interrupt. Roughly three hundred years ago, just after you’d gone to sleep, someone cast a huge enchantment with sharp edges and a wobbly middle that should have stopped it from working altogether.”

Silence fell briefly, and when Poly looked down at Luck, he’d gone back to gazing at the clouds. Just as she thought he’d forgotten her, he said: “If the magic they used hadn’t been so powerful, the enchantment would have collapsed. As it was, it ran away with Civet, and before Parras knew what was happening there was a feral army marching for the border and killing everything it came into contact with.”

“You said there was an enchanted battlefield–”

“Two days,” said Luck, as if she hadn’t spoken. “That’s how long it took Parras to capitulate and accept terms. There were still enough Civetan knights who hadn’t gone rabid to make sure the terms were kept up, but when they went to stop the army, they couldn’t. Idiots. I could have told them that.”

Poly felt sick. “We invaded Parras?”

“Fortunately for the rest of Parras, something or someone finally interfered with the enchantment and the whole battlefield went up in enchanted amber. The Parrassians that weren’t dead were safe but the enchanted Civetans were all trapped.”

“So when you talk about Civet and our capital city–”

“New Civet and the Capital,” nodded Luck. He sat up, grass clinging to his hair. “They moved it further into what was Parras and had a Council run the country instead of royals. As far as we knew all the royals were dead, anyway. The enchanted battlefield stayed where it was. Officially, it’s a civic reminder, but I think they just couldn’t clean it up.”

Poly nodded numbly, meeting Luck’s eyes briefly and finding only vague disinterest there.

“Impressive work,” he said. Poly thought she must have imagined the swift green glance that momentarily pierced his blank disinterest. “The kind of thing that makes you think there were a couple of enchanters mixed up in it all.”

Poly said: “Oh,” rather listlessly. She wished Luck would get to the point.

“I mention it,” continued Luck dreamily; “So that next time you throw off one of my small Shifters, you know which direction to go.”

“Throw off– I didn’t throw off your Shift spell!”

“The Capital is in Old Parras, for your information. Also, they don’t like people Shifting in and out because it makes security difficult, so there are magical filters that tend to shred people who try to get in. I don’t particularly like the idea of being shredded.”

Poly reached unconsciously for her books and found them all stacked neatly together. She must have imagined that stretched out period of time before the Shifter brought them here.

“I didn’t–”

“Next time,” added Luck, seizing her chin between two fingers; “Try to get us closer to the Capital, not further away. And I want to know how you pushed my Shifter off course– there’s nothing of it in your eyes.”

Poly pushed her glasses up on her nose, using the movement to jerk her chin away from his fingers. Unfortunately, scowling at Luck didn’t remind him about the small issue of personal space: he merely shuffled invasively closer again to peer into her eyes.

“I didn’t do anything to your spell,” she said, edging back. “Whatever went wrong, it’s your own fault. I wasn’t even
moving
.”

“Funny, that. Can’t find any traces of it on you.”

“I told you,” said Poly. “I didn’t do anything.”

Luck gazed at her with his head tilted back. “I know you did it, I just can’t see how.”

Oh, bother you then
, Poly thought. She waited until Luck sat back on the grassy hill again, and asked: “Where are we?”

“
I
don’t know,” said Luck annoyingly. “
I
didn’t do it.”

“I didn’t either,” muttered Poly, because Luck had stopped listening.