Changes

Finally, the words penetrated the fog of anger and grief and guilt that swirled around inside him. Sedric. Prince Sedric. Herald Prince Sedric. The son of King Kiril’s first marriage—made when the King himself was still a very young Prince—a marriage of state, in which the poor bride, very, very much older than the Prince, had not survived the birth of her son.

A son who had been raised by the very young second wife, the love match, a situation that in ballads, at least, was not inclined to end well.

“Mother was incensed on my behalf,” he said fondly, then sighed. “Dammitall, these bastards have a wretched sense of timing. She’d be beside herself with joy except that right now she’s beside herself with worry over Amily.”

“It’s—it’s all my—” Mags began, the grief starting to overpower everything else.

“You can just stop that foolishness right now, Trainee,” Sedric said fiercely, looking up at him through the rain, his eyes blazing as Dallen’s had. “I know that you are thinking that if you had been with her, she wouldn’t be in their hands now. It is not your fault. It cannot possibly be your fault. Did you call this damned storm?”

His relentless logic startled Mags. “Uh... no . . .”

“There you are. Now listen to someone who knows. From experience. If you wallow in guilt, you are wasting time you could be using to help figure out a way to get her back. You have only so much time and so much thinking power, so concentrate it all on her.” When Mags nodded slowly, he appeared satisfied and hunched his head down against the rain again. “Now. All I know is what I’ve been getting from Father’s letters and in bits and pieces from everyone mind-shouting right now. Begin at the beginning. What in hell has been going on while I was gone?”

Chapter 19

For all of Sedric’s grim determination, no solutions presented themselves, and Mags felt himself teetering on the very brink of utter despair. Nikolas had already plunged headlong into that state, and for once it was the King and Queen who were trying to comfort the King’s Own, not the other way around.

Lena blamed herself. She was the one, after all, who had persuaded Mags and Amily to leave the safety of the Palace to go to Marchand’s concert. Mags, of course, knew that this was his fault—he should have said no. He could have asked to get off from that last class and gone with her. He had done neither, and this was the result.

Marchand, who had made all the arrangements, babbled about them to anyone who would listen and had not thought anything amiss when a strange carriage and driver appeared instead of the one he had hired. He blamed everyone but himself.

The Karsite agents had made no contact nor any demands, but that was only a matter of time.

. . . or Amily’s lifeless body would turn up.

That was something no one wanted to think about, but it hovered in the back of everyone’s thoughts like a specter. If the Karsite agents wanted to destroy the King’s Own now, it would be heartbreakingly simple to do so. They had to know that.

If that happened... .

Well, Mags would find them and kill them, or die trying.

If Amily’s kidnapping had affected only those who loved her, it would have been hideous, but the situation was being made even worse by the fact that it was getting political, with one faction demanding that Nikolas resign his position (as if he could!), another faction spinning hysterical suppositions about what demands the kidnappers were going to make, and a third faction quite ready, willing, and able to declare war on Karse and take the Army across the Border.

“And we all know how well that works,” Sedric had said, dryly. “Always supposing that the goal is to get an innocent girl slaughtered and send her father and probably a good portion of the Heraldic Circle insane.”

By the time the third day of Amily’s captivity dawned, every possible wild scheme had been floated, from sending an army of bloodhounds (which they didn’t have) to quarter Haven, to turning out and searching every single building within the boundary.

Mags was nursing a cup of tea—which was just about all he could manage—when Bear finally turned up and sat down beside him.

“Talk to me,” Bear demanded. “Seriously. Talk to me.”

Mags shook his head; Bear grabbed him by the shoulder. “Look,” he said sharply. “I’m not asking you to talk to me because I want to go all softy oozy-woozy-oo on you and pat you on the shoulder and go ‘there there.’ I want you to talk to me because you haven’t offered up any ideas, but I know you, Mags, and I know there are ideas in there.”

“Half-ideers, mebbe,” he muttered, staring down at the tea.

“That’s the point. They’re half ideas because they’re still in there.” Bear tapped Mags’ forehead. “If you talk about them, you’ll move them outside into the light, you’ll be able to get a good look at them, and then you can turn them into whole ideas. But you can’t do that till you get them out.”

“Right,” Mags replied, dispiritedly. “ ’Cause I’m so good at thet.”

Bear smacked him in the shoulder. Hard. More than hard enough to make all those bruises shout in protest. “Stop it,” Bear said angrily. “Or I swear by every god there is, I will beat you senseless.”

The mere idea of Bear even trying to beat him senseless, much less succeeding, finally roused Mags out of his lethargy. He sighed. “Aight. Look. Prollem is, we don’ know where they got ’er. We know they ain’t left Haven, ’cause a flea couldn’ leave Haven right now. The whole edge of city locked down when I yelled. So they gotter be in Haven, on’y nobody kin find ’er, an nobody kin find them. It’s them shields. I ain’t niver seen anythin’ like ’em. They—like—clamped down, like a river clam, when I got too near ’em, an’ thet’s made them Karsite bastards so’s nobody kin find ’em. It’s like they don’ exist.”

Bear’s brow furrowed as he was joined by a dispirited Lena. “But they don’t have a shield on Amily, do