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Synopsis

Fellian is a Lamplighter, able to provide illumination through magic. A group of rebel Monarchists free her from indentured servitude and take her on a journey to rescue trapped compatriots from an underground complex of mines.

Along the way they get caught up in a conspiracy to kill the latest royal child and wipe out the Monarchist movement for good.

But Fellian has more than just her Lamplighting skills up her sleeve...

Excerpt

By mid-afternoon the back courtyard of the gentles' wing of the inn lay quiet. The last of the customers departed, having lingered over a ?ne midday meal in sumptuously decorated dining chambers. While the kitchen sta? prepared for suppers that would be served by Lamplight, the boss was either out ?attering well-connected suppliers or sequestered in her chamber with a glass of wine and a comfortable couch for a nap.

This interlude made mid-afternoon the best time to clean the fancy privies, according to the boss. That suited Fellian just ?ne once she'd realized how she could take advantage of the only time no one was directly overseeing her.

She had ?nished her upstairs chores scrubbing the private dining chambers. Now she carried two buckets from the inn's well into the empty courtyard with its painted walls and ?agstone pavement. Three fancy tiled steps led up to the fancy tiled porch with three separate privy doors, each fancifully painted with visions of ?oral extravagance. After setting down the buckets, one with soapy and one with clear water, she checked the pocket of her faded canvas apron. She had just enough charcoal for today.

She set to sweeping the ?agstones, trying to calm her fretful thoughts with the steady scrape of bristles against pavement. Her gaze drifted across the elaborate murals that adorned the courtyard's walls, but she didn't really see them. Would Nish come? Servants never knew when they would be assigned elsewhere, when scraps of freedom would get revoked at the whim of a boss, when new restrictions would be levied by the council so virtuous people need not fear the corrupting power of mages.

The rattle hung on the alley side of the back gate rustled as someone shook it. She hurried over, swung up the crossbar, and cracked open the gate. When a pleasant scent assailed her, she opened the gate a bit more.

Nish's round face greeted her but her usual cheerful smile was creased down into an anxious frown. She clutched a basket against her chest, fragrant bundles of herbs tied and stacked inside.

Fellian took a step outside to look both ways down the alley, a restricted corridor between high, blank walls. To the left the lane bent out of sight around a corner. To the right it ran straight for some ways. No one was in sight in either direction, but a servant on an errand could come along at any moment. "You know what will happen if we're caught."

"I promise he won't rat on us. It's my uncle."

Caution warred with a ?erce, reckless desire to poke a de?ant pin into the underbelly of the oblivious beast that had destroyed her life. "All right. I trust you."

Nish's frown brightened into a smile. She whistled a phrase from one of the council-approved songs sung nightly by maudlin drinkers in shabby vulgars' common rooms. About twenty strides to the right, an alcove had been built into the wall. Its lintel was carved with a bundle of ?ve arrows set between two curved cattle horns. Such alcoves appeared at regular intervals along straight paths but were long abandoned to dust. Fellian had no idea what they'd been used for before the revolution. Nish's uncle had used this one to stand out of sight of anyone looking down the straight stretch. He stepped into view and hurried to the gate.

His steps slowed as he looked her over with his one good eye.

"You're just a girl, and a mage too," he said as accusingly as if he'd been assured he'd be meeting with a loyal Liberationist only to be presented with a criminal cabal of Monarchists.

"Uncle!" Nish cast an apologetic glance at Fellian.

"It's all right. I know my letters. I can teach them to you if you wish."

His suspicion wavered as he chewed on his lower lip. "You can teach me to read? Truly?"

"I can. But you have to come inside quick."

Nish tapped the man's arm to bestir him. With a skeptical frown, he came in. His gaze ?ickered as he took in the porch's tile work, but mostly he gaped at the murals.

The scene spread across three walls depicted the ?nal battle when the forces of reform under the leadership of the August Protector had overthrown the disgraced and corrupt monarchy. Such murals were to be found anywhere people might have to wait their turn and thus have a chance to contemplate the Great Liberation, even in an inn's back courtyard where monied folks took to the privy. The artist had portrayed both sides in vivid colors and stirring emotion: the last dragon queen in her moment of death at the hands of a humble foot soldier whose ditchdigger's shovel hung at his back; the courageous Liberationist troops who fought with purity and righteousness; the stalwart but doomed Monarchist warriors and their legendary champion, the straw-haired barbarian known as Jojen the Wolf, who chose death over dishonor.

Nish's uncle closed his big hands into ?sts. "This is no schoolroom."

"That's right, it's the courtyard to a privy." Back home, Fellian would have called him "uncle" too, but people didn't appreciate that courtesy here. Still, it grated to have no respectful way to acknowledge his age and whatever accident had scarred his face and ruined his left eye. "We use the steps as a writing board. Do you have your charcoal, Nish? You can show him the letters."

"I know my letters," he said sti?y. "Got them when I was a boy. Then the revolution happened. Recruiters came through town and took us to the army."

He paused, as if waiting for her to ask about his injuries, but she'd learned never to ask. It was better to wait for people to tell you what they wanted you to know.

"Then afterward the councils put us to work. Lost a lot of people to famine. There wasn't time for anything else. Anyway, the August Protector says it is sel?shness for hungry folk to ask for luxuries like school. But I never for-got my letters."

"Of course you didn't." Fellian smiled encouragingly. "To start with why don't you write all the letters out for me on the bottom step while I replace the herbs in the privies?"

He glanced toward the courtyard's entrance porch, shaded beneath wide eaves. Closed doors led into the inn. "I can do that. But what if someone comes? If we're caught we'll be thrown in prison."

"There are no customers this time of day. Only customers are allowed to use these privies. I clean, so it's no surprise if people ?nd me here. Nish delivers herbs. After the lesson I scrub o? the steps."

He nodded. "That's clever."

Nish ?shed a rolled-up leaf from her basket and un-wrapped it to display three new charcoal sticks. "I roasted these two days ago. Do you want one, Fellian?"

She wanted one so hard it burned, remembering how her mother and fathers had taught her to make charcoal in bulk for writing. But she choked down the sting of tears. "No. You'll need them to practice at home."

Nish handed one of the sticks to her uncle.

Fellian said, "Write out your name ?rst. That's always a good way to begin."

A ?ash of panic widened his eyes.

As Mother had always said, people learn best when they don't feel ashamed.

"I'm sorry, I forgot your name even though Nish has mentioned you before," Fellian lied.

"Oran."

"Spelled O-R-A-N?"

"That's right!" he said with a sigh of relief, lips mouthing the four letters as he repeated them twice under his breath.

"Can you start with that?"

"Yes, yes. I can start with that." He took a charcoal stick from Nish and knelt at the bottom of the steps, staring at the ?at surface as if it were a poisonous toad. He sucked in a breath, then laboriously began to write in distorted but recognizable strokes, ?rst the letters of his name and then the parade of letters that was the staple of every schoolroom.

"You watch over him, Nish. Teaching others is the best way to learn."

Fellian took the basket from Nish and went to the ?rst privy door. Inside, a polished wooden seat with a lid kept the worst of the stench down, but to keep up the high ranking of her establishment the boss had a deal with Nish's herbalist boss for a fresh delivery of strong-smelling herbs every other day.

At each stall Fellian crumbled the withered previous bundle into the lime-whitened pit before placing a vibrant new bundle into a wire basket. Afterward she swept the courtyard and scrubbed the porch, all the while keeping up an exchange with Nish: new words to spell, long phrases she wrote out for Nish to read aloud. Oran doggedly worked on writing out a parade of letters, over and over, with the tenacity of a man who has fought his way back from the cli? of despair.

Nish was wiping o? words to give herself space to write again when Oran went still. His hand, scratching out a letter, halted. He looked toward the doors that led into the inn.

"Someone is coming," he said in a low, frightened voice. "More than one person."

Fellian heard nothing except distant street tra?c: the grind of wheels, the clop of hooves, a wagoner's shout.

He got to his feet with some trouble; his left leg didn't straighten easily. "Nish, we best go. Hustle up."

Nish grabbed the charcoal out of his hand and the basket o? the porch. "He's never wrong." Her drawn expression shouted its own message as her gaze dropped to the mage's badge Fellian wore.

Oran ?ushed. "It's not like that," he said in the tone of a man who's been caught out.

"No, of course not," said Fellian, knowing exactly what he was hiding and why he didn't want a servant mage indentured to the government to know. All those born with mage gifts owed them to the liberation. They weren't to be sel?shly hoarded for private gain. Any who tried to hide their gift would see their families imprisoned as punishment for not reporting to the authorities. Afterward, of course, the discovered mage would be bound into service anyway.

"Hurry," she added, abruptly out of breath as she considered what would happen to her if it was ever discovered she'd known and hadn't reported him.

She followed them to the gate, let them out, barred it, and ran back to the steps. Cheeks hot, hands shaking, she dropped to her knees and began scrubbing away the damning letters that had been so methodically written onto the lowest step.

A door into the inn slid open.

Copyright © 2022 by Kate Elliott

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