Chapter 13: A New Horizon

  ++The inciting incident that was my kidnapping caused a lot less change to the Vornholt family than you might expect in the long-term, but immediately after it, things were starkly different. Inevitably, I came to see this upheaval as I did all others. As an opportunity. ++

  - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E

  I was actually worried that I may simply be captured all over again, once my father collapsed, but fortunately that did not come to pass. His victory had already been cemented by the time he hit the ground, and before he had awoken once more things were already cleared up.

  Of the men who had helped free myself and Agrian, perhaps two thirds still lived. The heaviest casualties by far were found among the group who had engaged the enemy with Doctor Brown, they were the ones forced to fight outnumbered and outmatched to such an extent that even the element of surprise, and their enemies’ internal struggle, did not allow for a remotely close match.

  Doctor Brown himself surprised me by living. I had thought, judging by the extent of his wounds, that he would expire, if not at the scene of the rescue then on the way back to Vornholt estate. Instead the man not only remained among the living, but actually regained consciousness before we could return. By that point, my father had already come to, as well.

  He was entirely mobile, despite his injuries, but even he could not help but show pain from them. Even this, however, revealed itself only after he had first spoken with myself and Agrian. We were both hugged, which I found utterly repulsive, and both lined up to look into his eyes as he knelt down beside us and asked a thousand trivial questions in the hopes of finding out how affected we had been by the ordeal.

  “Are you both okay? Are you hurt? What happened?” It was the most sincere concern I had ever seen from him. Ordinarily Baron Vornholt’s emotions regarding his children were hidden behind an iron mask of indifference and amusement, even the scrapes and tumbles we suffered in rough play—typically, just Agrian the Younger striking me—were chalked up to harmless and juvenile.

  It almost felt odd to see him so openly worried. What was less odd, now at least, was Agrian the Younger, and how receptive he proved to our father’s dotage. The boy’s bluster had been burned away by captivity, and now that I was no longer the eldest relative he had access to, he had taken to hugging our father’s leg and clinging tight like some sort of parasitic insect. Our father reciprocated this for once, not pushing the boy away and allowing him to weep and hug him as much as he wished. I, reluctantly, mimicked Agrian the Younger, deciding that it may be suspicious if I differed from his reaction by too much.

  In hindsight, I doubt our father would have even noticed.

  Carriages were called to take us back to Vornholt estate, and of course the rest of Lachfel’s police force had a large number of highly pointed questions regarding the explosions caused by our fighting. I once again enjoyed the benefits of being a child, and completely beyond suspicion, while my father enjoyed the benefits of being a wealthy aristocrat, and well-connected enough that anything shy of a public murder on his part would essentially be ignored.

  This meant that we were riding back to our home within half an hour. Our father was seated inside the same carriage as us, and alternated between looking at his children and peering out through either of the two windows. Even with our police escort—consisting of two other carriages holding several armed gunmen each—he appeared wary of another potential disaster. I actually approved of this much. The way I saw it, his duty in life was to protect me, Lord Dread, and he would do that best with constant vigilance. Hopefully this little incident would leave me with a higher quality of guardian in the future.

  What it left me with at the moment was a lot of questions to answer.

  My father wished to know the details of our escape, how we were treated, where we were taken and by whom, all sorts of other things. It was a mix of practical information, needed to compare with whatever was drawn out of our arrested enemies, and simple fatherly concern for how his children had suffered. I practically saw his eyes inflate with rage at the sight of Agrian’s growing bruises, though the Baron did not go so far as to comment on them outloud.

  With everything we were being asked, even I may have struggled to explain it all. I was unable to even see a lot of details once the fighting broke out, for obvious reasons, and had also been denied access to certain others by how we were held prisoner. Regarding the events of the actual kidnapping however, I could have answered them all.

  And I did, albeit with a fair helping of deception sprinkled in.

  “We were scared, father,” I replied. “I was scared. I thought I would die, but Agrian…he took care of me! He was so clever, he had a plan to trick the men holding us prisoner, and turn them against each other. He made distractions while I looked around, and broke their carriages, and lots of other things! We never would have gotten out if he had not been so brave!”

  I did have the option of being truthful in this story, had I wished. My intelligence was already known to be greater than was expected for a girl of six, or even than Agrian the Younger’s own uncommonly bright, eleven year-old mind. Telling things as they had actually happened would still have revealed more about my maturity than I wanted to be known however, particularly my skill in remaining composed and manipulating adults. Better by far for Agrian to take credit.

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  It was unfortunate, then, that the boy managed to surprise me by barking in outrage.

  “No I didn’t! Isabel did all of that,” he looked at me with a mix of confusion and, I thought, awe. I could understand that much at least, from his perspective I was barely half his age and somehow conducted myself better than most adults would have. I almost wished I could clear up the mystery for him. Maybe one day.

  “Isbael is six, son,” our father sighed. I could see that he actually looked to be considering Agrian the Younger’s side of things for a moment, but in the end he seemed to favour mine. Still, he reached out and ruffled my brother’s hair affectionately. “It’s nice that you’re trying to make her the hero, but I know you did as well as you could have. Better than anyone could have expected.”

  For once, Agrian the Younger did not just mindlessly argue. I saw him quieten down and withdraw into his own mind as the carriage rolled on, and by the time we had arrived at the mansion, my brother was already fast asleep.

  Then came the scramble. Father Johnson saw to both me and Agrian, finding only superficial scrapes and bruises to heal in the latter and nothing at all in myself. Doctor Brown, too, received his healing hands, though as the priest worked I heard him mumble about the depth of Doctor Brown’s injuries, and the man looked far from confident. My father, heavily injured himself but remarkably stable for it, was among the last to receive treatment. By then the priest looked rather exhausted, almost wrung out, but he still managed to close up the most grievous of wounds in short order. I enjoyed seeing how his magic worked, but immediately recognised a whisper of divine power. Godtouched, the word for a human who was imbued with strength through service to a God. They had existed in my era, and I was not pleased to find them in this one.

  Police remained outside the mansion following that night, and the next. By the third night they departed, and a great many changes followed them.

  Most notable were the new guards. My father had ranted and raved about how this would not happen again, over the duration of the night, and I had listened while seated in my mother’s lap, tolerating her constant touches and mindless affection while I attempted to piece together what it was that Baron Vornholt intended for my home.

  The first clue for that question was exactly what kind of man had shown up to begin defending it. At first I mistook them for homeless vagrants, the sort of which I had seen more than once on my family’s tedious church visits. There were at least a dozen of them in all, and each one stank more than the last, wearing threadbare attire that seemed stained with more substances than I could identify. They were disheveled and had always-drooping eyes, with perpetual sneers on their lips that promised nothing but contempt for the world.

  And yet when I watched from a keyhole as they gathered up before my father, the men saluted. I had seen this gesture before, though so far only between officers at the social events I was dragged to on occasion. This was my first time seeing it in a group of rank-and-file infantrymen.

  And it was certainly my first time seeing a man violently puke on his own shoes immediately after giving one.

  These men were to become permanent fixtures in the Vornholt estate, and within a few days I had to admit they were somewhat more impressive than when they had arrived. Clothes cleaned and changed, faces forcibly shaved raw, hair washed and untangled. No longer could they be smelled a good twenty paces before they were seen, and now they carried guns. Longer-barreled, two-handed affairs that I gathered were called ‘rifles’. I could only hope both they and their wielders proved superior to the ones I had seen already.

  Putting aside the consequences on my ability to eavesdrop, I will say the new guards were a generally positive addition to the household.

  A less positive addition was the new clinginess of my parents. My father was not so bad, he had the pathological urge to keep all his affection hidden so as to avoid being seen as weak, but my mother was practically stalking me by the end of the first day, and only got worse from there. Myself and Agrian were rarely out of her sight for as long as a minute, and for the wider duration of my life I had nothing to do but tolerate her presence and wait for Doctor Brown to finish recovering as much as he could from his wounds.

  My sole saving grace was that I was now, fortunately, of an age and education where practicing magic by myself was not seen as suspicious, allowing me to get at least some progress made in continuing to strengthen myself, despite the un-optimal conditions. I was very particular about doing so, because my kidnapping had made it abundantly clear to me that the world would not wait until I was an adult before turning its attention to me.

  Talent like mine and Agrian’s drew in attention whether or not you did anything with it. From the perspective of Garamon’s people, I was a future investment of the most lucrative sort. A super-weapon waiting to be made. There would be no peace for me, not until I was confident I could defend myself.

  Agrian, of course, did not understand this at all, or at least did not care. While he worked alongside me on his magic, enjoying it for its own sake rather than having some long-term ambition to fill by gaining strength, he was perfectly content to let our mother dote on him.

  I tried to pretend that I did, as well, but I fear that I was too irritated by the sudden delay in my education to make it convincing.

  “What’s wrong, Isabel?” my mother asked me after a few days, concerned as she always was now. I thought it was rather an amusing question, given that, from her perspective, I was just a six-year-old who had recently been terrorised by a kidnapping. But then, I had not made much of that kidnapping at the time. Perhaps my mother knew me well enough to sense the difference in my faked emotions compared to my current, real annoyance.

  “I am scared,” I told her, swallowing my dignity and adding in a pathetic, affectionate hug for good measure—just the sort of thing people tended to expect from small children. She reciprocated, as was to be expected, but looked far from relieved.

  “You’re safe now, you know that. Daddy won’t let you be taken again, he’s watching you and Agrian carefully, and now you have more guards.”

  All valid points, though if I were stupid enough to remain scared with such assurances I imagine having them merely pointed out would do little. I was starting to get annoyed by this new conversation, but while trying to think of a way to escape it, I ended up stumbling on a potential advantage to having it.

  “I want to learn magic better,” I told my mother. “Like Doctor Brown, he protected me and Agrian, he is so powerful! I want to be strong like him.” Repeatedly reminding my parents of the Doctor’s contribution to saving us was, in all likelihood, the only reason he was still being given expensive treatment from the family’s household priest. I had been ensuring that happened because I desired more training from him in the future.

  Now, though, I was seeing an alternative.

  “You will learn, my love,” my mother smiled in perhaps the most unconvincing way I had ever seen and cupped my cheek with one hand. I smiled back.

  “I want to go to Winzorth,” I told her.