To Bear an Iron Key (26 page)

“Well,” Brend said, blinking his blackened eyes. “Yes, good. Well then.” He cleared his throat. “Good luck to you, Lady Witch.”

“If you are Brend, then I am Bromwyn.”

“Bromwyn. Yes.” He half-turned, then he faced her once more. “If the Wise One doesn’t agree and the wedding remains set, then you and I, we’ll just have to make the best of it. This match may be not as terrible as we thought.”

Her eyebrows nearly flew off her face. “Of course it is! You think my craft is deviltry!”

“Your deviltry saved my life.”

“And that makes a difference?”

His awkward smile returned briefly, there and gone again. “One night’s actions can change everything.”

A torrent of emotions battered her, anger and flattery and others that were too quick for her to name. Here was the man who, as a child, had turned his back on her. Here was her betrothed who, just yesterday, thought her magic was unnatural.

And, just yesterday, her grandmother still possessed the Key to the World Door. Yesterday, Bromwyn and her mother still clawed at each other like cats.

Yesterday, Bromwyn had not known that Rusty loved her, or realized that she loved him.

She calmed herself, and she conceded, “Many things can happen in one night, but … Brend, you should know that I love someone else.”

There was a pause, and then he shrugged. “I didn’t say it would be a perfect match. Just not as terrible as we’d thought. Go on, speak to the Wise One. Who knows? Maybe she’ll do as you hope.”

She saw the skepticism in his eyes. “You think she will not.”

“The Wise One can be … ” He groped for the right word. “Stubborn.”

“So can I.”

Another pause; another hint of a smile. “Your daily visits at the forge are proof of that.” He sketched a bow. “Until tomorrow, Lady Witch.”

Bromwyn smiled ruefully. “Until then, Sir Smith.”

She watched him go, and then, as she continued on the way to her grandmother’s cottage, she thought that perhaps Nick Ironside had taught his apprentice more than the art of forging.

APPRENTICED NO MORE

Bromwyn found her grandmother outside of her cottage, deadheading the lilacs.

Niove, wearing a wide-pocketed apron over her black dress, snipped the old blooms quickly, using her shears with a barber’s precision. The discarded petals fell on the grass and streaked the vibrant green with shades of purple. When Bromwyn was younger, she hadn’t understood why lilacs needed to be pruned; to her, it had seemed as if her grandmother was maliciously killing the flowers. It was only once she had become Niove’s apprentice that she learned about gardening in general and pruning in particular. Cutting away dead things helped make live things grow. When Bromwyn had asked if that meant one day, her mother’s hair would grow long again and she’d find her magic, Niove had replied, “No amount of tending will help that particular garden. Dead is dead.”

And of course, her grandmother would know all about
that
.

Now, in her garden, Niove spoke idly to the flowers that she snipped. “Some children are taught not to speak unless spoken to. I think that is a ridiculous custom, although one can learn to appreciate the quiet. Do not just stand there, girl. Make your manners.”

Bromwyn rubbed her ear as if her grandmother had just clouted it. “Grandmother, I—”

“And that is what you call ‘manners,’ I suppose.” Niove sighed. “Then again, I should expect no less from one who greets the fey rulers while barefoot.”

“Good afternoon, Grandmother,” Bromwyn said loudly, fixing a smile on her face.

“And now she thinks I am deaf. Wheel and want.” Niove shook her head and finally glanced at her granddaughter. “I expected you sooner.”

“Mother insisted that I bathe.”

“And you actually listened?”

“She threatened to scrub me herself.”

“Heh.” Niove turned back to the flowers. “So you passed your test. Congratulations.”

Bromwyn shifted her feet. “You do not sound pleased.”

“Oh, I am quite pleased. It shows that you were not a complete waste of my time. Though based on you forgetting more than you remembered last night, it also shows that your head is not as big as you think it is.” She slid Bromwyn a glance. “How many called you ‘Wise One’ today? And how many did you correct?”

Bromwyn blushed.

“I thought as much. It is fine for the villagers to think you are above your station and act accordingly. But do not forget where you truly stand.”

“And where is that, Grandmother?”

“In my garden, at the moment.”

Bromwyn bit her lip. “What I meant to say was, what happens now? Am I still your apprentice, now that I am a full witch of the Way of Sight?”

Her grandmother cut off another bloom. “You are no such thing.”

Bromwyn’s mouth worked silently.

“Close your mouth, girl.” Niove put her shears into her apron pocket, and then she turned to face her granddaughter. “Tell me this: What was your test?”

“I helped the Guardian—”

“Do not be daft. I did not ask what you
did
. Tell me exactly
how
you were tested.”

“I … I do not know,” she said meekly.

Niove let out a long-suffering sigh. “At least you admit when you do not have an answer. You broke your curse.”

At first, Bromwyn didn’t know what that had to do with her test—and then she understood. “Breaking the curse was my test!”

“I just said that. What did you offer the fey before you finally realized why you were offering it in the first place?”

“Myself,” she said, frowning as she remembered what had happened in the shadow of the World Door. “I begged them to take me instead of Rusty.”

“The boy failed the challenge? And here I thought he actually had a brain somewhere beneath that ridiculous hat of his. Well. You offered yourself to the tender mercies of the fey. Yes, that would indeed be self-sacrifice. Well done.” Niove smiled, then—a proud smile that Bromwyn had rarely seen.

“Thank you,” Bromwyn murmured, pleased and embarrassed and not quite knowing how to react.

“So you are the Guardian now, eh? The Queen must have pitched a fit. That one does not care for it when those she has her eye on manage to slip away.”

“She was quite angry,” Bromwyn said, allowing herself a smile. Then she remembered the King’s final words to her, and her smile fell away from her face. “The King as well. He has promised to challenge me next year.”

Niove waved her dismissal. “That one is more than full of himself. He challenged me more times than I can count, for all the good that did him.”

Bromwyn remembered the hunger in the King’s eyes, and his promise that next Midsummer, her life would be his. She swallowed, and she told herself to stop being a fool. To bolster her courage, she said, “He told me his name, Grandmother.”

“Did he? You must have made quite the impression. Very good, Bromwyn.”

She grinned.

“Did the lady Queen share her name as well?”

The grin faltered. “No.”

“Well, there you go: You have a goal for next Midsummer. The Key is safe, I take it?”

She took the iron key out of her pocket and showed it to her grandmother.

“Nature’s grace, girl—do not carry the thing with you all the time!” Niove sniffed. “I hear there are thieves in the village.”

Bromwyn sighed. “Indeed.”

“So what did they tell you? Do not look so surprised; those two always prod and poke, telling half-truths mixed with lies, just to get a reaction. What did they say to you?”

“They made horrible insinuations about Mother, even going so far as to say I had fey blood in my veins.” Bromwyn laughed uneasily. “I should not have given the lie any thought at all, but I admit, they made me doubt.”

“Oh, that was no lie.”

Bromwyn’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull.

“An exaggeration, maybe. But no lie.” Niove mumbled words from her Way, and the ground answered her with a rumble. A tree stump erupted, blackened and shedding soil, and she slowly eased herself onto it. “Ah, much better. Has your mother told you the truth of it about your father?”

“Just … just this morning,” Bromwyn stammered.

“Oren Moon was a fool and a dreamer,” Niove said, “but his heart was good, and that matters more than the first two things combined. When he vanished, I thought that might be the death of your mother.” She rolled her eyes. “That girl was as heartblind as they come. Her Way’s fault, I suppose. Me, I do not have any patience for the Way of the Heart. Emotions are messy, even when magic does not come into play. She begged me to bring him back from the dead when everyone thought he had drowned.”

“Would you have?” Bromwyn asked softly. “Had he been dead, I mean. Would you have returned him to her?”

Niove eyed her. “Dead is dead, and not meant to breathe among the living. But he was not dead. He had been lured into a waygate in the river, and he was taken to the fey lands.”

“Mother told me.”

“Indeed? Did she also tell you what happens to mortals when they walk beneath the cold sun of the fey lands?”

Bromwyn’s brow crinkled. “No.”

“They become fey themselves. It is a slow process, and a painful one. By the time your father returned through the World Door, fey magic had burrowed into his blood. His time there changed him.” Niove grimaced. “Mortals are not meant to walk the immortal lands.”

“Then—” Bromwyn’s voice cracked. “Then they told me the truth. I
am
fey.”

Her grandmother snorted. “You are as human as I am, girl. But the magic that flows within you, that is a little stronger than that of most other witches. A little wilder. It lets you walk paths that others could not, not without burning out.”

Bromwyn thought of what she had done with Master Tiller’s fields, thought of how she had accidentally spelled her mother years ago and caused Jessamin to age. “So … does that mean I am
not
a witch of the Way of Sight?”

“Every witch is more than just her specific Way.”

“But you are a witch of the Way of Death.”

“I am also the Wise One of Loren, and the mother of Jessamin Moon, and your grandmother, and so much more.” Niove chuckled. “Granted, most people hear the part about ‘death,’ and that is as much as they are willing to hear. Perhaps you thought you were bound to the Way of Sight, and if I gave you that impression, well, that was to help keep you from experimenting with magic too strong for you to handle.” Niove arched an eyebrow. “Which, of course, did not stop you from doing exactly that. Spelling your clothing to keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter? Have you never heard of dressing appropriately for the weather?”

Bromwyn’s cheeks burned, and she bit her lip.

“You are a witch, and suffice it to say that you are no longer an apprentice. There will be time enough for you to declare your Way of Witchcraft; that time is not now. Do not fence yourself in, not when you are first about to explore.”

“I do not want to be fenced,” Bromwyn said, seeing her chance. She steeled herself, and she said, “Grandmother, I do not want to marry Brend Underhill.”

“This again?” Niove rolled her eyes. “I have heard this tale before. Tell the bard to sing another.”

“Please, Grandmother—I do not love him.”

“Yes, I know, you love your friend who thinks himself a thief; otherwise, the curse would not have broken. What of it?”

“Mother has agreed to call off my engagement, as long as you give your consent.”

“The blacksmith boy is a better match for you than your thief.”

Bromwyn’s chest tightened. “Grandmother … ”

“Granted, the blacksmith does not have much sense to him, but who needs sense to swing a hammer? Not that the thief is any better. He should know that sticky fingers can be easily chopped off.”

Bromwyn felt her freedom slipping away. She whispered, “Please.”

“Humph. You and your mother both, so easily swayed by love.” Niove stood, and the tree stump sank back into the ground, which filled in until there was no hint of where the stump had been. “And look how well that turned out for her.”

Bromwyn blurted, “Please! Do not force me to marry the wrong man!”

“Who is forcing you to do anything? Is there some knife at your throat that I cannot see?”

“I am bound by Mother’s promise to the Underhills,” Bromwyn cried. “As you well know!”

“Are you? Why do you not simply run off with that thief boy you claim to love?”

Bromwyn blinked. “Why … because I am to be the Wise One of Loren. I cannot simply run away.”

“So you do understand responsibility. For a moment, I was not so sure.” Her grandmother glanced up at the sky. “The rains are coming. Just as well. The land could use a scrubbing after Midsummer.”

“Grandmother … ”

Niove adjusted her black shawl. “So. Your test is done. You are an apprentice no longer. Now you are a journeywoman, ready to travel different paths until you find the one that will lead you to becoming a master of a Way of Witchcraft.”

Bromwyn clenched her teeth. “But what of the engagement? You would leave me trapped in a marriage I do not want?”

“Listen to the girl, saying she is trapped.” Niove shook her head. “Your problem, Bromwyn, is that you are seeking to escape, when all you need to do is walk out. You of all people should have learned that particular lesson very well,” she said dryly.