Chapter Twenty~eight

Is It My Fault?

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Mistress Jennade's estate was situated in the most fertile countryside of Thalesia. The surrounding land, mostly rented to tenant farmers, was lush with vineyards and orchards of olive and citrus.

The house itself was a sprawling villa that could rival any noble manor house, but upon entering, one would get the sense that to its former occupant, no house could ever be quite spacious enough.

Mistress Jennade had been quite the collector. The house was filled with Alchemical Artifacts as well as old books and scrolls, among other treasures, some elegantly displayed in the front rooms of the house, most stuffed into shelves or stacked in crates filling every nook, niche, and corner of every spare room.

The Artifacts ranged from playful little amusements to quite useful items such as medical equipment or instruments that could measure and predict weather conditions. There were also numerous manuscripts containing theories and plans.

There was a lab in the house, but since Mistress Jennade had been in retirement it was rather small and not well equipped, so Kazia set herself up in the large formal dining room, arranging a workstation at one end of the long table.

Kelvaran would search the house and bring her whatever he found interesting.

Tamyn was tasked with documentation, as well as sorting through the library of Alchemical texts for anything of use there.

The three of them quickly established a routine, and although the work was flowing along smoothly, there seemed a never-ending amount of it. Whether they could really finish in the week was looking less likely by the day.

Autumn in Thalesia was even warmer than in Caedra. It had rained the first few days of their visit, and on the fifth day, the rain moved out and the weather turned almost summery again.

Kelvaran carried a small Artifact into the dining room, but found the long table completely covered over in items awaiting Kazia's attention. Even the floor beneath had run out of space.

He glanced around the room, and spied a small bit of open floor against the wall at the far end, behind Kazia's station. After a moment of hesitation, he walked down the length of the room to deposit the Artifact there.

Although Kazia had insisted that she held no grievance with him, Kelvaran still felt nervous and tense in her presence, so for the duration of this project, he simply ignored and avoided her as much as possible. The separation of their tasks allowed it, and they both could go to Master Ilianus with any queries.

Indeed, it often seemed as if Master Ilianus deliberately inserted himself as a buffer between them. Kelvaran wondered if Mistress Amelys had told him what had happened, or if she had simply instructed him to play peacekeeper.

As he walked the length of the room, Kelvaran surveyed the contents of the table with dissatisfaction. The work was going very slowly, and besides his tension with Kazia, he was also unsettled to be in a country where other Valeskan defectors had been successfully assassinated.

They were given accommodation here at the estate for their stay, so there was no unnecessary daily travel, and the executors of Mistress Jennade's will had posted a heavy guard for their protection and assured them that all the household staff had been thoroughly vetted, but Kelvaran still found it nerve-wracking.

He wondered if he should give these piles of Artifacts another look. Did they really need to examine every one?

As he approached the far end of the table where Kazia sat, he began to avert his eyes, but she didn't spare him even a glance. In passing, he hazarded a look at what she was working on - and stopped in his tracks.

Kazia sat at the head of the table amid an array of tools needed for examination. Her right hand draped lightly over the Artifact on the table before her, and with her elbow on the table, her face was cradled in her left hand and her eyes were closed.

The bright Thalesian sunlight streamed into the room through the gauzy curtains on the large windows, illuminating her face and adding a soft golden halo around her hair, the whole image further softened by the flares of light reflecting on the surrounding metal objects and the glowing motes of dust eddying through the air.

Kazia's forehead shone with tiny beads of sweat, and her eyebrows were furrowed, twitching now and then in a pained expression. Her lips were slightly parted, also showing a slight twitch, but her breathing was deep and even.

Sleeping?

Kelvaran looked back down the piles of Artifacts on the table and huffed with derision. No wonder this was taking so long.

He stood for a long moment, staring at her in disbelief. He considered allowing the Artifact he held to crash onto the floor next to her.

The longer he stood looking at her, though, the warm sunlight and the swirling of the dust in the air exerted a calming, somewhat hypnotic effect on his mind and his mood.

He suddenly realized that he was staring at her lips... and that a memory was pulling at him...

At that moment, Kazia sighed, snapping him back to himself, and he hastened to put down the Artifact and return to the other end of the room.

He began to look over the items on the table again, with an eye to prioritizing. Perhaps he could even do some of the examination to speed Kazia along.

Tamyn wandered slowly into the room, carrying a stack of notebooks in his arms. The book at the top was open and he read as he ambled along. He gave a quick glance around the room before looking down at the page again.

“I found something interesting,” he said. “It seems that Mistress Jennade had done some research into long-distance energy work, and there is a section in here on sound. Perhaps it could be helpful with the transmitter.”

He closed the open book and proffered the stack toward Kelvaran, who only inclined his head toward Kazia and narrowed his eyes.

“Give them to her when she's conscious,” he said, sour with derision.

Tamyn peered down the room, then approached Kazia's end of the table.

“Lady Kazia?” he said gently.

He bent down next to her with a frown and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Lady Kazia?”

Kazia jumped, casting a frightened but fierce glare at Tamyn. Her hand slammed down onto the table and closed around the handle of a screwdriver.

Tamyn took a step back as Kazia raised the screwdriver into a defensive guard.

Kelvaran rose from the seat he'd just taken down the table, ready to step in if need be.

“It's only me!” Tamyn cried in alarm.

Kazia froze, peering at him with some confusion. She took a deep breath and slowly put the screwdriver down.

“Apologies,” she mumbled, rubbing at her forehead, and then her eye. “I must have...”

Tamyn frowned sympathetically.

“Are you still not sleeping?” he asked. “I thought you had recovered. You should have said. We're in no rush here, you can take a rest in the afternoons if you need to.”

As Kelvaran glanced around the piles of Artifacts, internally disagreeing with “no rush”, Kazia gave a sharp glare in his direction.

“I'm fine, really,” she said to Tamyn. “It would seem that I have just had a rest, so I should be good now.”

“Tea, then?” Tamyn said. “I'll ask the housekeeper to send some in. Have a look at these when you can.”

He set the stack of notebooks on the edge of the table beside Kazia and went to find the housekeeper.

~~~*~~~

Kazia opened the topmost notebook, but as she began to read, she felt Kelvaran observing her from the far end of the table. The distance was just far enough that her impression was not too strong, but the air in the room became a bit cloying between the heat and the intensity of his scrutiny.

She glanced at him only to see him looking away. She turned back to the notebook.

“Is it my fault?” he asked suddenly.

Kazia looked up.

“You're having trouble sleeping?” he added.

She gave him a long, measured stare before turning back to the page again, not really reading it now.

“There have been many troubling events of late,” she said quietly. “It's not any one of them alone.”

This only seemed to rile his suspicions again.

“Mistress Amelys has been quite angry with me,” he said, “Why are you willing to let it go so easily?”

Kazia stared at the notebook in silence for a long time, pretending to read. She could feel his anxiety rising, with some irritation at thinking she was ignoring the question.

“I don't blame you,” she said finally, looking up at him briefly. “I'm not saying that what you did was acceptable, it was not, but I do understand your position. If Queen Inaissa were to take on another recruit from Valesk, especially one who came from Devratha, I would be just as suspicious of them as you are of me.

As you've seen, I can't even trust my own brother, so how would I trust anyone unfamiliar? Honestly, if I didn't know your background, I might suspect you as well.”

Kazia felt his surprise with this last statement. It seemed this hadn't occurred to him until now.

But his old melancholy also began to arise, and Kazia was suddenly ashamed to have accidentally poked at his wounds. Her expression toward him softened into sympathy.

“What do you know of my background?” he asked coldly.

“Only what is common knowledge,” she answered. “But that is also why I won't blame you.”

The tension in the room rose sharply now as Kelvaran gathered his cloud of repressive angst about him.

Kazia fell silent and took the vial of Seamist from her skirt pocket.

Kelvaran glowered as he watched her take it.

“No, my background is no secret,” he said. “Perhaps you should reconsider your own secrecy if you wish to convince me that you can be trusted.”

Kazia shook her head and set Mistress Jennade's notebook aside, returning her attention to the Artifact in front of her.

“I have no desire to convince you of anything,” she said. “You've been doing a good job of leaving me alone. Just keep doing that and all should be well.”

 

~~~*~~~