She scratched her head as she studied the city.It doesn’t look like I expected. I thought the isolation from the rest of the world—much less the Veneno Conclave—would have been detrimental to Zancara. But I suppose I’m about to findout.
Angelique took a breath, then started making her way toward thecity.
Chapter 8
Angelique wasn’t an idiot.She didn’t charge right in. Instead, she spent most of the afternoon hiding in the trees, trying to get a gauge on thecity.
She spent a night in the forest—only daring to use the heat charm when she couldn’t ward the chill off no matter how deeply she burrowed under dead plant-life for insulation. But by late morning—after confirming a healthy flow of trader and traveler traffic through the city—Angelique felt confident enough toenter.
She kept her mouth shut—the Zancarian people tended to speak quicker, and their vowels were shorter than in other countries. As Luxi-Domus spent years drilling their students in speaking without accents—couldn’t have someone guess what country a mage had once called home, after all—Angelique knew her pronunciation would give her away, and she wasn’t confident she could mimic the accent veryeasily.
Instead, she kept a slight smile on her lips and was quick to make it brighter and wave whenever someone looked herway.
She was thankful to see her clothes didn’t looktooout of place—there were a few men and women dressed somewhat similarly who were clearly foresters. With luck, folk would assume she was a forester aswell.
And though her silver eyes were still off-putting, her dark hair didn’t make her conspicuous at all. Rather, the village was swirled with hair and eye colors of all shades, making Angelique no more remarkable than anyoneelse.
Angelique smiled and nodded as she passed a man and a woman, each wearing a crimson red and royal blue uniform. She assumed they were soldiers. And it wasn’t until Angelique was two stalls down, peering at a table of elaborately embroidered hair veils that Angelique realized she felt a spark ofmagic.
One of them is amage.
She couldn’t tell which one—she wasn’t sensitive or skilled enough in magic detection to follow such a faintspark.
She forced herself to meander to the next stall, so terrified she couldn’t even comprehend what she was looking at as she tried not to attractattention.
Angelique risked glancing back, relieved to find the uniformed duo chatting and laughing as they continued down the sloping citystreet.
Zancara recruits mages for its army? That’s a frightening thought—though perhaps it is necessary depending on the state of the government…but the more I watch them, the more I think those two don’t really feel likesoldiers.
Angelique rubbed her nose in the cold, then began picking her way up the slantingstreet.
She ran into another pair of similarly uniformed men outside an immense brick building that sat in the heart of thecity.
The building was rectangular in shape, although the front door was ornamented by two bell towers, and the massive wall it was set in was capped in a triangular shape. Both the wall and the towers were elaborately decorated with florid columns, carvings, and depictions of the Zancara symbol, alynx.
The rest of the building was simple—except for a few sculptures at the corners—and time and weather had worn it to a muted shade of gray, but the beauty hadn’t faded atall.
The uniformed men leaned against the large building, chatting with a man selling salt-preservedfish.
Angelique didn’t feel magic coming off of either of them as she cautiously walked past, but she did hear pieces and bits of theirconversation.
“—have to get a mage to bless the traps if they keep fallingapart.”
“Thereisa craftmage in the Magus Mercado right now. Or Doña Trini might be able to use some sewing magic to fix it for a cheaperprice.”
“Maybe. How’s thewife?”
Angelique strolled out of hearing, and instead took up a post across the street, watching folk stream in and out of the ornate building for a good hour before she finally worked up the courage to ventureinside.
The building housed what Angelique would have called a market…except there was a strong buzz of magic, and a good number of the stalls only had folk standing at them and no goods insight.
Angelique watched a woman bustle up to a man and set a teapot with a cracked lip on thetable.
“Can you fix it, Don Vasco?” the woman wrung her hands and bit a lip. “It is a family heirloom from my husband’sgrandmother.”
The man smiled soothingly. “Of course—just a bit of alteration magic will fix it rightup.”
The woman heaved a sigh of relief. “Bless you—your regularprice?”
