Shade & Sorceress (The Last Days of Tian Di, #1)(11)

“Not that one,” said Charlie, nudging her and pointing. Eliza followed his finger to the portrait next to her mother’s. A bolt of alarm rocketed through her.

“That’s me!” she cried indignantly. “Why have they got one of me? Who painted it?”

“I told you, no one painted it,” said Charlie, watching her carefully. “Why dinnay you know about any of this mess? I thought you were...you know.”

Eliza couldn’t think of anything to say. She didn’t like looking at the portrait of herself, didn’t like the sullen expression that had been captured on her face. She noticed that all the portraits but hers had a date inscribed on the bottom of the frame, with a line in an unfamiliar script.

“Can you read this?” she asked Charlie, pointing to the inscription under her mother’s portrait.

To her surprise, he nodded. “We learn in school, aye. For reading Tian Xia literature or something. It’s the Language of First Days.”

“Lah, what does it say?”

“Killed in battle,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

Her heart plummeted. Her father had lied about this, too, then. About everything.

“What about this one?” she asked quickly, going on to her grandmother’s portrait.

“They all say the same thing, aye,” he said in a soft voice.

Eliza felt sick. She walked right around the hall, looking at all these women, supposedly her grandmother, her great-grandmother, her great-great-grandmother, and so on, every single one of them killed in battle. Clearly, being a Sorceress was a dangerous business. Kyreth’s talk about the line of the Sorceress had been abstract and confusing, but here in the Portrait Gallery it began to sink in. But even if her mother had been a Sorceress, Eliza thought to herself, she was not anything of the kind. It was a mistake, a horrible mistake. Her portrait did not belong here. She did not belong here.

Charlie left her alone for a while but he came back shortly and pulled her out of her reverie.

“The Mancers are done for the day,” he said. “They’re meeting in the grand dining hall. It’s the only place where they can all sit around a table.”

“Is there a door there?” Eliza asked immediately. “I mean, one we can find?”

“I know a better way if you want to eavesdrop,” he said. “That is what you want to do, nay?”

“Of course,” said Eliza, thinking that Nell and Charlie would get along famously.

~

In the kitchen back in the south wing, Charlie explained that the chimneys to the fireplaces were all connected and he made sure the flues were always open so that sound could flow freely. The two of them crouched right inside the wide fireplace. They could make out a good deal, if not all, of what the Mancers were saying.

“...The only possible culprit. None other would be powerful enough to work Magic that resists our detection,” Kyreth was saying.

“Your Eminence, may I speak?”

“Speak, Obrad,” said Kyreth.

Obrad. The one they had intended for her mother. If her mother had obeyed them, Eliza would not exist.

“If we are certain the intruder came with the girl, as a hitchhiker of sorts, then it did not need to break any barrier. Unwitting, we brought it with us. The spell itself...” Eliza did not hear the end of his sentence, but Kyreth responded angrily.

“How it came is irrelevant. The spell it worked once here was undoubtedly Great Magic.”

“But we have confirmed that the...other one is still safely imprisoned,” came another voice. “The intruder cannot possess much power of its own or we would have felt its presence today from the Inner Sanctum. Whatever spell it worked must have been prepared ahead of time. By her.”

Now Kyreth was speaking softly and rapidly and Eliza heard only fragments: “...until we know more...vigilance...best she does not know too much.”

“And if the girl cannot...?” somebody asked. Eliza strained for the end of the sentence but could not catch it.

Kyreth murmured some reply, the only part of which she understood being, “Tomorrow she will begin.” Then he raised his voice and said, “The sun is setting. Go. Rest.”

Eliza and Charlie sat in the ashy fireplace and looked at each other. Eliza’s heart was thumping painfully.

“I’ve got homework, aye,” said Charlie, abruptly getting up and brushing his pants off. “See you tomorrow.”

“Homework?” exclaimed Eliza. “Is it nay your summer holiday?”

“We get piles of homework for the summer,” he said with a roll of his eyes that she hoped was intended for his teachers and not for her. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and sauntered off, whistling. Eliza sat in the fireplace, alone with her turbulent thoughts, until Missus Ash happened upon her.

“That’s no place to sit about. Lah, you’re filthy! You’ll have to wash up before supper.”

Missus Ash was terribly excited by the day’s events. She put Eliza’s chicken stew in front of her, saying, “I will say, lass, you’ve brought a good deal of excitement with you. Almost all day they spent in the Inner Sanctum! An intruder, we’ve got! We’ll have to keep an eye out. But no need for you to fret. The Mancers will protect you. Powerful, powerful beings they are, aye. What I can nay fathom is how an intruder got in here, with all the mystical barriers they’ve got. They must be puzzling that out themselves.”