“More than that. For it was an article collected by your mother during the War of the North that enabled Mad King Victor’s rise to power.”
“What?” He had her attention now. “But, the Mad King… he tried to slay my mother and father. My mother would not have helped him.”
Vi had seen the raised and angry scar that ran from her mother’s shoulder to the center of her breast. Vhalla had let her run her fingers over it as a curious child, and said a wicked man had given it to her, but never elaborated further. When Vi finally had a name for the “wicked man,” she never asked again.
The scar was not unlike the one on Taavin’s face, Vi realized. Then instantly shook it from her thoughts. She had to remain focused or Martis’s limited patience for her would run out.
“He did. Buthowhe did it is of great import, for it was the start of the end of the Crystal Caverns.”
“So, how did he do it?”
“Do you remember the lore of the crystal weapons?”
Vi nodded. Long ago there were said to be four crystal weapons, one in possession of each of the unique geographical regions of the Main Continent. They seemed to be things relegated only to tall tales… yet two of those crystal weapons surfaced, marking the rise of the Mad King. But that was all Vi knew. As she conveyed the fact to Martis, it suddenly seemed a glaring deficit in her education.
“Just so,” he affirmed. “One of those weapons the Mad King Victor used was a crown that had been in your family’s possession for centuries.” Vi wasn’t sure how a crown could be a weapon, but she did know that crystals were strange, powerful, and extremely dangerous. “The other was an axe that was retrieved from the North.”
“An axe?” Vi repeated, her mind spinning, trying to recall every fireside story she’d been privy to and every mention of lore from Ellene. “Like the axe Dia, the fallen star, used to carve civilization from the boughs of the Mother Tree?”
“If you believe these Northern stories.” Martis’s sniff clearly conveyed that he didn’t.
Vi bit back a retort asking why it was so unreasonable to believe Southern histories of crystal weapons and a power that could turn men into monsters… but similar Northern oral histories were mere “stories” to be dismissed. Even if she felt in the right, arguing with Martis would get her nowhere. Vi had long since learned that some minds, once made up, could not be changed.
“I think, perhaps, it is more than just coincidence that an axe shows up in their stories and our history.”
“Yes, well, I am not here to speak about that. I am here to speak about what your mother has passed on to me in her letters.” Martis tapped a series of papers on the desk. What Vi wouldn’t give to leaf through it. But her parents’ correspondence with her tutors was as private as their correspondence with her. “She would have me tell you of when she retrieved this weapon with the intent to benefit the South, and protect it from falling into the wrong hands. But all she did was foolishly—her words, and I think them far too harsh—think that she could make the axe safer than its own people had by placing it in a Northern tomb.
Tomb. Vi sat a little straighter. She’d heard the word before, and recently. Perhaps too recently to be a mere coincidence.
“She was here during the encampment, and on the edge of the city…”
* * *
Ellene and Jayme were waiting when Vi finished with Martis. Seeing people occupying her sitting room was truly a welcome anomaly.
Jayme had made the long table in Vi’s sitting area her weapon smithy. She currently had a whetstone atop layers of rags; the sound of the metal sliding over stone made a soft yet sharpshhingnoise that had the hair on Vi’s arms standing near immediately.
The young heir to the Northern throne was lounging on a sofa, clearly much less bothered by the noise as she hummed to herself a tune that was scribbled out on a sheet of paper. Vi vaguely recognized it as something she’d heard being sung recently among the city commoners. But she didn’t recognize the words.
Both perked up immediately on seeing her.
“You’re done for the day now, right?” Ellene asked eagerly.
“Not quite.” Vi hated to see her friend deflate, but there was nothing she could do. “I promised your mother I would work with her on something.”
“On what?”
What, indeed… Vi had been half hoping Sehra would’ve told her daughter something to explain their new tutoring arrangement, and spare Vi the lie she’d now be forced to think up on the spot. “Going over details for when my family comes to collect me.”
“That sounds tiring.” Ellene flopped back onto the cushions.
“But necessary,” Martis interjected from the doorway, pausing briefly to give Vi a bow. “Thank you for your work today, princess.”
“Yours as well.”
“I look forward to continuing our discussions. Hopefully, next time, they will not be so one-sided.” He gave a thin smile, and left.
“Rude,” Ellene muttered. “Is he allowed to talk to you like that?”
