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“Nostra,” Ren repeated, a little breathless. “It would seem fate is with us. As of two days ago, there was a changing of the guard at Nostra. A new watcher was placed there.”
Dahvid and Nevelyn exchanged worried glances. She silently cursed their bad luck. They’d researched the old watcher of the valley extensively. He was the very fulcrum of their plan.
“Don’t look so worried,” Ren finished. “The new watcher is Theo Brood.”
PART TWO The Strategy
14 REN MONROE
Their plan proceeded like the first, gentle turnings of a set of carriage wheels. Ren’s first duty was to do nothing. A most infuriating task. But she’d discussed this with the Tin’Voris before parting from Ravinia. She knew when she returned to Kathor, she’d be watched more closely than ever.
Landwin Brood reacted as expected. It was a great delight to realize that he didn’t actually know where she’d gone. The Brood scouts followed her with a deliberate lack of caution as Ren led them on a rather boring hunt. Nothing she did connected to their larger plan. It was her mother who was executing the first crucial steps instead. Ren just hoped she was being properly thorough about it.
One of the other unexpected consequences of her brief disappearing act was a slew of invitations. A letter for this dance or that gala. A birthday party one night in the Heights, followed by a wedding the next day in Safe Harbor. Landwin Brood was clearly shifting his tactics. He would rather welcome her into those circles of power than lose track of her in the city at large. Ren would occasionally raise her glass from across the room, offering a smirk, just to screw with him.
She was also forced to walk right into Landwin’s trap for her daytime hours. The invitation that had come before Theo left for Nostra wasn’t one that she could turn down. It was a prestigious research position. Lacking any alternative, Ren accepted.
And so—two weeks after her encounter with the Tin’Voris—she found herself walking up the steps of the Peeress Observatory. She’d been here before. The entire first floor was a museum that cataloged the history of magic. Primary schools came here at least once a year. Ren doubted she’d have time to take a tour. Her lettered invitation directed her to the basement of the building instead. There were two paladins posted at the door for security. She saw the markings of the Brightsword Legion on their uniforms. Her papers were quickly checked and approved. The guard shoved open the looming double doors.
The hallway deposited her into a far wider room. The ceilings were relatively low, but the actual space was staggeringly large. Ren wasn’t even sure she could see the opposite wall, which meant this underground wasn’t connected only to the museum but to several buildings. The entire space could have comfortably fit several thousand people.
Her first impression was that it was completely empty. There were no walls dividing the room. Not even support columns to keep it from caving in. Just a great, vast emptiness. It took a few moments to notice the small displays. They were like odd little pieces of art. The nearest one was a single leather chair smattered with some kind of berry compote. Just beyond that, she spied a dozen ropes dangling from the ceiling. All of them were carefully twining together with the help of unseen hands.
Each new curiosity drew her deeper into the cavernous space. Only after passing a dozen similar oddities did she spy the other researchers. The group stood in the far corner of the room, all gathered around the base of a wide tree. Its uppermost branches brushed the low-hanging ceiling. As Ren approached, one of the figures detached smoothly from the others.
He was devastatingly good-looking. Nearly a head taller than her. The smile he offered was as sharp and pretty as any knife. Every angle of him was perfectly complemented by a tailored brown suit, which happened to match his eyes. Ren thought she was woefully underdressed in comparison.
“Hello. You must be the newest addition to the team.” He sidestepped a small bucket that appeared to be filled to the brim with discolored forks. “I’m Ellison Proctor.”
They shook hands. Ren recognized the name. He was the older brother of Ash Proctor. An image of Cora knifed through her memory with brutal quickness. She could see the girl walking beside her in the woods, shyly discussing her own opinions about the best-looking students back at Balmerick. Cora had claimed that Ash Proctor was one of the most handsome, but she’d taken him down a few notches for having small hands. It was the last time they’d all had a good laugh together, before all the dying. Ren swallowed once and slammed that dark cabinet of her mind shut.
She recovered just in time to shake Ellison Proctor’s hand.
“Ren Monroe,” she said. “It’s a pleasure. I’m excited to work with you.”
There was a small outburst from the group. Ellison grinned at her.
“Come on. I’ll introduce you to your team. I’m more of a property manager here. Day-to-day magical maintenance. These are your fellow researchers.”
He led her back to the waiting group. Ren quietly adjusted the collar of her shirt before following. It was a great relief to find that the others were not dressed in suits, or anything fancy at all. Ellison made a Wait one moment gesture as they reached the group. No one else looked her way. All of their attention was determinedly fixed on the tree. Ren spied traces of magic in the air.
The tree was being forced to blossom. She recognized the brightney apples that dominated the valleys south of Kathor. They started out small and bloodred, but as the spell accelerated their growth, each one colored in with the traditional white speckles. All but one.
Ren thought she saw the shape of the experiment. A single apple began to shrivel unnaturally. Far more rotten than normal. Red faded to brown, deepened to black. She saw it shriveling and twisting until it looked like a curse from a fairy tale.
“The moment of truth,” one researcher announced. Ren noted the woman was by far the oldest in the group. “Time to see if you were worth the money, Pecking.”
One of the other researchers snorted. Ren watched curiously. This wasn’t a particularly new application of magic. The law of guided decay was very established agricultural magic. It channeled instances of rot from the collective group to a singular entity. Instead of twelve half-decent apples, an application from this category of spells would assure the harvester of one grotesque apple, but eleven others that were mostly flawless.
The common mistake, Ren knew, was in pushing the spell too far. That was on the verge of happening now. The spell had clearly been cast too wide. The decaying apple was preparing to hit a natural threshold. It was fully dead. Something so withered could not accept any more rot. Ren felt the subtle flick of magic in the air as a secondary spell activated.
Usually a severance charm came next. The apples would continue to grow naturally from that point on. A few of them might suffer the occasional imperfection, but most of the potential rot and disease would be mitigated by the first apple. Farmers had accepted this ratio as their standard for decades.
Except the second spell wasn’t a severance charm at all. Ren heard an uncharacteristic pop. The apple directly above the first one started to fade and brown. As the process repeated, there was a raucous cheer from those gathered. The other researchers crowded around and slapped the back of the youngest-looking person in the room—just a boy to Ren’s eyes. He couldn’t have been a day over sixteen. His round cheeks blushed violently at their outburst.
“Great work,” the older woman said. “Go ahead and get the secondary studies going. I want this to be foolproof before you present it. You’ve got something here, Pecking. Excellent work.”
The woman’s attention swung in Ren’s direction. She had silver-streaked hair and her eyes narrowed to dark slits. She looked familiar, but Ren couldn’t summon a name under such scrutiny. The woman didn’t offer to shake hands. Instead, she gave a perfunctory nod.
