Eight
Mina
???
An avalanche ofemotions threatened to bury me. Rage and joy. Greed and despair. Everywhere I looked, I saw them flickering. Growing. Dying. Feeding off each other and smothering each other.
I pulled my hand from the node, taking a large step away from the throne that sat partially within that wellspring of power. I grabbed my father’s hand and looked up at him, but I didn’t see the crown on his head. Instead, I saw a steely aura, his determination visible, even now that I no longer touched the node.
He smiled down at me, his expression one of sympathy, though his steely focus didn’t waver. “Never forget, ruling is a burden, Charmina, not a reward. You must feel what your subjects feel. Even when you don’t have access to magic, you must read their hearts. Learn to see what people hide. Sometimes it will be secrets, but other times it will be hurts.”
I woke with a gasp, the memory of my father’s voice fading. For a moment, I thought I could see those wisps of emotion around me, but it was only a remnant of my dream. I was too far from the castle to access the magic. I was not a mage myself, but the Devaoile family had a blood tie to one of the nexus points of magical energy that crisscrossed the world. Centuries ago, one of my ancestors hadlocked the node to his bloodline. That node now granted his descendants the power of heart-readers, but only when we were close to the node.
When the first Devaoile became king, he had built his throne room around the node. My dream had been a memory of the first time I had accessed that empathic power. As I readied myself for the day to come, I wondered why that memory had drifted to the surface. It wasn’t the most pleasant. With no experience to guide me, I had felt like I was drowning in emotions that first time, though using the node no longer overwhelmed me.
Tucking my necklace under the neckline of my shirt, I remembered the ring in my coin purse. Pulling it out, my father’s words from the dream took on new weight. Emotions. Secrets.
Hurts.
Alan had fled from me last night, and I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t know what had caused me to call him a disappointment. What I had seen of his work proved his talents. No one in their right mind would be disappointed in his skills.
I rubbed my thumb over the ring, feeling the details he had included, imprinting them on my skin. Those first few days after I visited the forge, I had been determined to solve the mystery of the village smiths. Then I had forgotten. Or, not forgotten, but decided there was no mystery worth my interest. I had acted like everyone else, dismissing Alan’s worth without hesitation.
Something very wrong was going on here.
I shoved the ring back in my coin purse and went down to breakfast, my determination to get to the bottom of the mystery once more strong.
Though the east-facing window in my bedroom ensured I didn’t lie abed too late, I still was the last person to rise every morning. I wasn’t used to country hours. Conrad and Sam had usually eaten and left for the village hall by the time I woke up. Eliza would always join me for breakfast, but I suspected that she had changed her habits to make sure I wasn’t left to eat alone.
This morning, though, everyone was still at the table when I made it downstairs.
Conrad saw my surprise and explained without waiting for me to ask. “I have a trial in Laer today. It doesn’t start until after noon, and I’ll be gone several days for it, so I’m taking a little extra time at home this morning.”
“And since Pa can’t very well scold me for shirking when he isn’t at work either, I’m being lazy,” Sam added with a grin.
Since he was managing to prepare a mug for me, slice bread, and take a bite of his own breakfast as he said this, I wouldn’t have described Sam as lazy. If anything, he had an abundance of energy.
I accepted my tea with cream and sat. “You aren’t going to Laer with Conrad?”
Out in the countryside, most villages didn’t have their own magistrate. Conrad lived in Skorsa, but he was the highest legal authority for several villages. Sam was an arbitrator who worked as his assistant.
“No.” Sam dropped the slice of bread he had just smothered in strawberry jam on a plate and passed it to me. “When he has trials, I stay in Skorsa and do the same thing the other villages’ arbitrators do when Pa is in Skorsa.”
Of course. Arbitrators took care of plenty of legal matters that didn’t require a magistrate’s official ruling. They weren’t assistants, much as it seemed Sam was. That was simply the byproduct of him living in the same small village as a magistrate.
“Unless something unexpected happens,” Sam continued, “I’ll probably spend the day writing reports on the trifling spats the villagers have had in the past few weeks.”
“Sam.” Conrad's voice held an edge of reprimand.
Sam rolled his eyes. “Sorry, the non-critical disagreements the villagers have had.”
I smiled, knowing that whatever Sam called them, he didn’t dismiss those problems as beneath his notice. He sought them out, hisintention to solve issues before they spiraled out of control. Which reminded me of the issue no one in Skorsa seemed to recognize.
“Conrad,” I asked after swallowing a bite of bread and jam. “Did you ever go speak to Alan?”
He rubbed at his chin. “Alan Smythson? Why would I need to talk to him?”
“We spoke about it a few days ago. You said you would talk to him.”
