“You were an awful person,” she muttered, “But…”

Was there anything to add to that? 

Issi shifted on her feet, recalling those rare conversations they’d held late at night, the ones where he’d talk of his family, or the court, and twice very, very quietly, about the wars.

The fear she’d first identified at the king’s dinner had been bright in his eyes then, too.  She just hadn’t known to look.

He’d been a child when he was thrust into a world of violence, coercion, and manipulation.  He’d been abandoned, starved, made to watch his friends die, and somehow, against all odds had still managed to climb the ranks to Grand Mage.  That didn’t make what he’d done to her any better or forgivable, but she was beginning to understand why he might have done it.

And there was nothing more she had to say.

Ipheoth’s blessing rested on her tongue.  Grant him forgiveness for the sins he’s committed.  Maybe it’d been easier to speak over the nameless soldiers who’d only done as they were ordered.

But no one had ordered the Grand Mage to strike her.

No one had ordered him to carve her.

No one had made him touch her. 

He’d done all that on his own.

She was supposed to trust the gods in times like these, believe they’d know better than to let his sins go uncleansed, that Naya in all her wisdom would punish him appropriately.  But she couldn’t.

The words were still warm on her tongue as she left him.  She shivered as she pulled herself through the window and landed with a splash in the puddle that’d formed on the other side.  Issi set her master’s severed digit in a bowl before returning to her cage to change out of her sopping wet clothes and wring what she could from her hair.

A half-moon.

If everything fell into place, if she was clever enough, she could keep the Grand Mage’s death a secret for a half-moon.

If she could get rid of the body. For a chance to succeed, she needed twice that.

And she needed help.

She sorted through her closet, pushing aside her gaudier gowns, searching for something that might, if looked at sideways, pass for something current and fashionable.

She couldn’t pay someone for their silence.  Firstly, she’d have to know someone she was sure wouldn’t feel enough patriotism to report his death, and secondly, more importantly, the Grand Mage hadn’t kept much money on hand.

He’d dealt mostly with promissory notes that completed transactions directly through the king’s treasury.  It’d be traceable and if the body were found beforehand, that would be a much bigger problem.

She chose a gown that would fit a bit too tightly to conform to the modest standards of the courts, but it might pass if she tied a scarf about her waist to obscure her hips.

It was the best she was going to manage.

Issi ticked a dozen or so ill-conceived notions and ideas, circling the choice she knew she’d have to make.  There was one person who had the power and knowledge she needed.

She put it off for as long as possible. 

After changing out of her wet clothes, she returned to the workroom, prepared the paperwork, and started to read pages upon pages of medical reports, ignoring the symptom catalogues and focusing squarely on the hallucinations and delusions as she waited either for her master’s finger to thaw, or night to fall.

Her eyelids grew heavy, the text on the page became nonsensical smears of ink.  She dug her nails into her arm.

A soft shuffling sounded behind her.

Her heart leapt in her throat.  For a brief, insane moment, she was convinced she’d turn to find the Grand Mage standing behind her with his twisted neck, and the stump of his stolen finger weeping blood onto the floors.

Her breath came ragged.  She wanted nothing more than to squeeze her eyes shut and pray he go away but that particular prayer had never worked.

She turned.

The Chousalian she’d dreamt of that day lifetimes ago in the kitchens stood before her.  Vines gathered at the girl’s feet and climbed up her legs.  Issi reached out and pulled her hand back like she’d been burned.

The girl was warm and very, very, solid.

She grabbed for Issi’s hand.  Issi felt the heat from the girl’s fingers, the roughness of her palms.  She smelled of green things, like the Grand Mage’s garden after it’d gone wild. Like the forest Issi wandered in her sleep.

The girl opened her mouth to speak.  No voice came out, she frowned, tried again, her grip tightening until her nails dug into Issi’s skin.  She started to mouth words.

Issi woke with a puddle of drool clinging to her cheek.  She wiped her mouth as she looked around for any sign of the Chousalian using enough magic to make the room feel seconds from blooming. 

Her body shook with the memory of it.

There was nothing but the faint shadow cast by the dim glow from the mage’s fire that danced in the hearth.

She scrubbed her palms over her face in frustration.  Right, vivid dreams, another symptom to add to her ever-growing list.  The memory of the girl’s hands still wrapped around hers. 

She ran slow, whatever amount of sleep she’d stolen hadn’t been enough and she ached all over.  Her palm stung, her legs and torso were stiff with bruises, even her fingers hurt. 

Not to mention the soreness from having sprinted for what she expected was the first time in nearly a decade.

She fussed with her dress until it lay right and picked up a sheathe of papers, and a forged lending charter, before she donned a pair of satin gloves that climbed to her elbows.  Outside the sun had long set, not that it felt like it’d properly raised at all.  The rain clouds had blot everything out.

Despite the stars she’d seen so clearly the night before. 

She braced herself against the front door, she wanted to leave through the servant’s exit, but the Grand Mage had never allowed that.  She held her breath as she pushed against the paneling. 

A sprawling green landscape, sat behind the door.  She studied the hills that rolled off into the distance and the trees that lined the horizon, before blinking them away to find the guards watching her with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.  There was no greenery in the hall, just rough stone and the light from the torch by the door.

Nalav’s face showed more disgust than anything else.

Issi’s heart sank.  She lingered hoping he’d smile or crack a joke.  He did neither, just turned back to his companion who was moments from bowing and forced him upright.

“Don’t, she’s just his whore.”  She winced, but what had she expected?

The soldier, this time a young man with wide eyes, looked at her uncomfortably, “But—”

“She won’t say anything,” Nalav turned to glare at her, “Right?”

She bit her lip to keep from responding.  He knew what Del sounded like, the illusion had done nothing to alter that.  She offered him a hurried bow and rushed off with the quiet complaints of the younger guard pressing against her back.

The halls spat her into the atrium before guiding her through a series of mismatched rooms until Kothen palace’s nonsensical layout left her before the soaring ceilings and brightly lit halls of the royal wing.

She felt the moment she crossed through, the magic that spilled across her skin was likely some sort of perimeter casting, the type used to secure the boundaries of war camps.  She waited, her eyes taken by a tapestry that smelled of fruit tarts and summer warm evenings. 

Since the illness and the wars, magic was very rarely used for artistic purposes.  Her master held some enchanted tapestries and statuettes, but nothing so grand as the one she was looking at.

It ran the length of the hall. A bright portrayal of a battle spanning meadow and forest.  Battalions with proud banners waving in the wind were posted on either side.  One leader, perched atop some beast Issi couldn’t hope to name, raised their sword and hunkered down as their mount started forward at breakneck speed.

“Pardon me do you—, you need to go home.”

Issi dragged her attention away as the first clashes began. She’d forgotten to breathe.

“I, uhm,” she bowed hurriedly, grasping tightly at the papers in her hand, “I having, I have been sent to meet the thir—, our Prince Tiremalv.”

The royal guard was a smartly dressed woman.  She stood a full head above Issi.

Her eyes rested on Issi’s neck, “Where’s your collar?”

Issi’s free hand rushed up to feel for it.  Her fingers brushed skin.

“Ah, I’m sorry, it was such short notice, we got a request from th—, our prince and the lending charter had to be drafted.  It was all a bit of a…rush.”

“Our prince requested you?”

Issi hesitated, “Uh, yes.  Exactly.”

The woman was unmoved, “He doesn’t do that.”

According to the rumors, he bedded all sorts.  What was one more?

“He specifically requested my master send me,” she tried.

“He doesn’t accept Pets.”

Issi’s heart thrummed, she just needed to see him, but to come as Del was to invite people to look closer at what the Grand Mage was doing.  Rumors from the kitchen and a few guards could be dismissed as idle gossip. 

A royal guard was something else entirely.

 “I have the form,” she picked a paper from the pile, sparing it a glance before holding it to the woman who shook her head.

“Not my first time getting a forged charter,” she explained, “Go home.”

Issi swallowed.  This was the only option that had a chance in Naya’s hells of working.  She could try to promise bind someone, but to do that to an unwilling soul…well that was a much bigger sin than breaking a finger off a corpse.

Issi forced as much righteous indignation into her voice as she could, “Don’t you know who I am?”

The woman nodded unimpressed, “You’re the Grand Mage’s Pet, Curly or something.”

Issi didn’t have to fake the outrage that crossed her face.

“I am not some common dog,” though to be given the rights of one, would certainly have been a step in the right direction, “my name is Nydelissi Anders, and I serve the Grand Mage of Qasha,” she tried to conceive of a way to look down her nose at the woman who towered above her at a dozen paces, “Are you willing to tell him why I’ve been turned away?”

The guard paused.  Everyone knew of the Grand Mage’s temper, the incident with the healer hadn’t been the first time he’d sent someone to the infirmary.  And rumor was Issi frequented quite often herself.

And she did.

“I—”

“He’s in an awful mood.  The Grand Mage doesn’t just lend me.  I am his most prized possession.  Have you ever heard of me being lent out before?  Do you think the Grand Mage would really send me here, if it wasn’t a direct order from our royal family?”

The guard rocked on her feet, “And if you’re lying and the prince didn’t call for you, and your master sent you here as a bargaining chip?”

“He would never,” Issi hissed.

The guard nodded, looking vaguely unnerved, “Alright, come on.”

The woman turned neatly and started down the hall.  Issi hurried behind her, trying to keep an air of confidence around her.  But she started to lag, the façade falling away, as they passed more and more enchanted items.

Magic hung thick, dyeing the air with scents of favorite foods, and seasons, and places.  She paused before a book that smelled of baked persimmon and flipped a page only to squeal as a striped four-legged monstrosity leapt at her from its pages.

The guard chuckled softly before telling her to hurry up.

Issi was left gawping like a child at every new rune, and smell she encountered.  Her fingers ran over the bases of moving statues that made her master’s look like an ill-crafted trinket.

“So…you like magic?” the guard called from ahead.

Issi had paused by a sculpture of a young boy casting a net from a boat.  The net flew out in an expanding arc that reminded her of misting rain.

          “No,” she lied, “It’s too…hard for me to pick up.  I just like watching the little people move.  They’re pretty.”

The guard sighed as if Issi’s answer disappointed her, though what the woman had wanted Issi to respond with remained a mystery.  Pets weren’t allowed to have interests in things like magic, or fighting, or strategy, or anything that could make them dangerous to their masters.

She did not try to make conversation again.

The halls shrank abruptly, wide marble expanses giving way to ancient stone that would be right at home in her master’s wing if the hall hadn’t been illuminated by light castings instead of mage’s fire.

Even the door was a better dressed cousin of the one belonging to her master’s corridor.

          The guard coughed politely, “Are you going to knock?”

          Issi felt the blood rush to her cheeks, “Of course, I will.”

          She reached for a golden snake shaped knocker and hit the door twice.  The door reverberated, the sound echoing down the hall before fading to nothing.  She glanced at the guard whose eyes stayed trained on the wood.  Moments passed and nothing happened.

          She raised her hand to knock again when the door swung open.

          A sleepy looking maid frowned first at Issi, then at the guard.

          “What is this?” her voice was a sharp thing Issi associated with rigid instructors and rapped knuckles.

          “A present for our prince, apparently,” the guard answered swiftly.  She had the decency to keep from looking Issi over. The maid did not.  Her eyes lingered on Issi’s raised hand, which received a disapproving grunt, before drifting down the rest of her with an air of disappointment.