Brightly Woven Read Free

father’s question. “Wayland North, if you’d prefer.”
    “What are you doing around our parts?” Mr. Porter, Henry’s father, asked. I hadn’t realized he was there. “It’s unusual to find a wizard so far west, given that we’re so close to Saldorra and they don’t take kindly to your…kind.”
    A wizard , I thought numbly. The word rolled around inside of me. That man had been a wizard, one of Astraea’s disciples…and I had been so disrespectful. Had he brought the rain?
    “After the king was murdered, some of the details didn’talign for me,” said the wizard. “I needed proof, so I traveled west.”
    I pressed my ear up against the wall.
    “We were told the poison came from Auster. Are you saying that it came from Saldorra?” my father asked. His voice was too calm—I almost couldn’t hear it above the pounding in my ears. Poison? Henry and I had guessed an illness, an accident perhaps…but murder…?
    Wayland North let out a sharp laugh. “I have it on good authority that the wizards haven’t the slightest idea where the poison came from. They only know it was put in his nightly glass of wine.”
    “So we’ve declared war against Auster for nothing?” Mr. Porter asked, and I didn’t need to be by the wall to hear him. “On a whim—a guess? Did the Wizard Guard send you out here to search for information?”
    “The Guard is still pursuing Auster as the primary culprit,” the wizard said. “You have to understand that if we go to war with them, it won’t be because they killed our king. With the king dead, Auster’s king is claiming his right to the throne.”
    “By what right?” Mr. Porter said. “It’s absurd.”
    “No,” my father said. “It’s not. The king of Auster is our king’s second cousin, the last of his living relatives, and you know as well as I do that our laws say that a woman cannot inherit the throne, regardless of circumstances.”
    “You said a law had been introduced to change that,” Mr.Porter said, “on the chance that the queen didn’t deliver a male heir.”
    “There was to be a vote on it next month,” Father said. “We can vote it in, but there’s a real possibility that Auster won’t recognize the law as valid.”
    “They’ve been waiting for an excuse to invade our country under legitimate circumstances,” North said. “Saldorra’s soldiers will join their forces. I would say they’re maybe half a day from overtaking your village.”
    “Sydelle!” a voice hissed. I started, tearing myself away from the wall. It had come from outside, slipping through the small hole in my wall that was meant to be a window, without glass or fabric.
    “Delle!” It was Henry. If he had been any louder, the entire village would have heard him. I looked out to see him hunkered down in the mud, drenched straight through his clothes.
    “What?” I asked, annoyed.
    “Are you all right? I waited for you in the market,” he said. “And out of nowhere you appeared with the wizard—I thought you were dead, you were so pale. Did you faint?”
    “Not now!” I whispered. “I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Just go!”
    I didn’t wait to see if he would listen. Two steps later and my ear was back against the wall, catching the wizard’s voice.
    “…and they won’t stop,” North said. “I used the rain toslow them as much as I could—I didn’t realize it would be such a help to you.”
    “You have no idea what you’ve done for us in bringing the rain. I can’t even begin to fathom how you succeeded where other wizards have failed,” my father said. He sounded tired. “Anything we can give in return, anything , we’ll give you.”
    “If you’re still willing to give up what we discussed before, then there’s nothing more I could ask for.” North cleared his throat. “But we shouldn’t stay much longer. Auster and the officials in Provincia have agreed on a two-month deadline to try to resolve this without magic and sword, but I’m