Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) Read online

  Poly yawned and swayed slightly. The thrumming had become a steady hum in her head, lulling her to sleep even as she delved through her memories. An insistent prodding in one shoulder woke her slightly: the wizard was poking her experimentally with his forefinger.

  “Oh, you are awake,” he said, tilting his head back to gaze at her as though he were inspecting an insect. Poly blinked sleepily and frowned, her hair rising and curling in the air. She distantly felt the wizard slide between tendrils of her hair to curl one arm around her waist, then there was a swift, disorienting Shift, and they were outside the castle.

  Poly, jolted forcibly back into the present by the sudden change, watched in shaken silence as the castle collapsed in a mushrooming cloud of dust and rubble. Her hair blew up and away in a rush of dusty air that made her sneeze, then gradually wafted back around her. She thought it was still moving slightly even when the breeze petered out.

  The wizard was picking about in the rubble when it came to Poly’s attention that something sharply uncomfortable was digging into her ribs. She shook herself, eyes heavy, and blinked down at the three books that were clasped in her arms. They were the same size and neatly stacked, corners safely pointing outwards, but as she pulled them away from herself, something rolled woodenly across the cover boards. Poly caught it before it fell into the rubble and found herself holding a small wooden spindle. It had delicate curls carved into the whorl and a design of leaves etched along the barrel: a spindle for decoration, not real use.

  The wizard looked up from his rubble-trawling. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” Poly said automatically, curling her fingers back around it.

  He shrugged and turned his back, gazing away from the castle. Poly looked up, conscious of a feeling of stifling closeness, and discovered that an impossibly tall, thorny hedge had grown up where the moat used to be. So tall and curving was it that it blocked both light and sight of the first two suns in the triad. The weakest, third sun was still in sight, but it was setting and its light was more drear than bright.

  Poly clutched her books closer in cold disbelief, following the line of the hedge until she could see that it stretched around the entire castle, pile of rubble that it now was. The stillness in the air suggested that it was miles thick. Poly swallowed, her throat dry. What in the world had happened to the castle, and why did it feel like it was her fault?

  “How did you get through that?” she asked the wizard, finding a more comfortable question to ask.

  “The incantation they used had a mistake in it,” the wizard murmured, looking at her with unfocused eyes and then away again without recognition. “Shut up. I need to find it again.”

  Poly frowned, pushing up her glasses. If there had been a mistake in the incantation, it had righted itself.

  “Wizard.” His eyes were still unfocused, and Poly could see his magic pushing at the thorn hedge. A little louder, she repeated: “Wizard?”

  “Luck.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Luck,” he repeated, pushing her aside to prowl further along the hedge. “It’s my name. Use it. I’m not a wizard.”

  “Luck, then,” persisted Poly. She’d put a lot of effort into being invisible at the castle, but it was quite another thing to be ignored on sight and without effort. “There isn’t a gap in the hedge magic anymore.”

  That made his eyes focus sharply on her, and she saw with some interest that they were deep green instead of gold as she had first thought. He said: “Can you see the hedge magic?”

  “Of course!” Poly said, surprised. She had thought that everyone could see and touch magic as easily as they saw and touched water.

  “Interesting!” he said, and promptly turned his back on the hedge to gaze rather disconcertingly at her. Poly found that she preferred being looked at as though she wasn’t there. The way Luck was looking at her made her think of the way Wizard Timokin used to look at his dissection specimens: interesting, but just a specimen after all.

  Luck’s magic grew immensely, surrounding her, and Poly felt her hair rising and spreading out tendrils to meet it. Gold threads mixed with the silky black threads of her hair, joyfully twining together with a buzz that startled her, and Luck gave a short, sudden yelp.

  “What did you do?”

  “N-nothing,” Poly stammered.

  “Yes, you did,” contradicted Luck, frowning. “What have you done to my magic? It’s gone all peculiar.”

  The force of his magic became narrower, more subtle; probing at her memories, her thoughts. Then it was sliding, cold and precise, into her consciousness.

  Poly gasped and slapped at the magic. Luck yelped again, this time in pain, and snatched the tendrils back into himself.

  “Stop that!” His magic, which was swirling angrily about his person, now bore a slightly brownish tint.

  “You’ve no business poking at my mind,” Poly said fiercely. She knew that she had hit back harder than the offence warranted.

  “Why is it that every time I touch you, you slap me?” wondered Luck.

  “I didn’t slap you,” Poly protested, flushing. The way he managed to construe everything as her fault was off-putting. “I kicked you, and it was because you kissed me. I don’t go around just kicking people, you know.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Luck remarked. “Nothing about you would surprise me. You’re a horribly violent princess.”

  Poly, gasping at the unfairness of it, took far too long to think of a reply.

  At last, she said sourly: “My name is Polyhymnia. You might as well call me Poly if we’re being so informal.”

  She didn’t want to secede the title of Princess until she knew why Luck was addressing her by it, but it was jarring to hear the title every other time he spoke to her.

  Luck blinked. “Huh. Alright,” he said, and added: “Stay still, I want to try something.”

  He did something tricky with his gold magic and Poly found herself imprisoned in a closed spell circle.

  “Let me go at once!” she demanded, hot and cold by turns with anger and fear. It wasn’t the first time she had been captured in a spell circle: the Princess had been fond of using them to carry out punishments. Living with the princess had taught her very quickly that rugs on the floor were best travelled around rather than over, and that one’s bed should always be thoroughly inspected unless one actually liked being strangled by one’s bedclothes or snuggled in the clammy embrace of a faintly smirking selkie who was just as surprised to find himself in bed with a human girl but by no means as unwilling.

  Therefore, it was with something approaching terror that Poly saw a golden tide flood Luck’s eyes. His magic gathered strength with truly horrifying speed, and a great, pulsing mass of power hurtled toward her. Poly shrieked and instinctively, ridiculously, threw up her hands to catch it. She found herself with a glowing gold mass cupped between her hands, her heart pounding madly in her ears. Her hair roiled around her in a state of excitement, a span longer than it had been when she woke.

  Luck was laughing gleefully, to her indignation. “Wonderful! This is supposed to be impossible. Dear Polyprincess. No, stop wriggling, I haven’t finished yet.”

  Poly was about to tell him furiously that he had better be finished, when another surge of magic hurtled toward her. There was no catching it or stopping it: it was a solid wall of magic, just waiting to break. Her hair unfurled to meet it and the two met with a shock Poly felt to her bones. Her breath caught in the back of her throat, but this time it was with a sigh of contentment, not fear. It was gone just as suddenly as the first lot, and Poly’s hair was once again heavy with magic, streaks of silky gold among the dusky strands.

  Luck gazed at her, an odd look in his eyes. “Magic likes you. My magic likes you. Huh.”

  Poly ran a lock of hair through her fingers, feeling the silkiness of the magic. It refused the call of her fingers and sank deeper into the strands. She could feel a powerful, painless pulling at her hair and knew that i
t was Luck trying to call his magic back to him. It resisted his call as well, hair and magic thread merging indistinguishably with each other. A few moments later her hair was the same slate-black it had always been, and Luck was standing by the thorn hedge, watching her with narrow eyes.

  “I’ll want that bit of magic back later,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t let go,” Poly said, but she wasn’t sorry. “I did try.”

  Luck flickered and was suddenly, invasively closer, a coil of her hair curled around his fingers.

  “It’s growing,” he said, in interest. “It was shorter in the castle, and shorter again when we were in your dream. I think some of the sleep spell is still holding on.”

  Poly had a nightmarish vision of herself sleeping again, perhaps for hundreds of years, and the slight fuzziness in her head cleared long enough for it to occur to her that she didn’t know how long she had been asleep. In the moment of clarity it seemed to her that there was something else she should be remembering; something important, something too dangerous to be left unremembered. Poly tried to force the memory but the fuzziness in her head was too thick. She sighed, and asked Luck the one question she could remember.

  “How long have I been asleep? I only meant to have a little rest because of the Midsummer Night Festival.”

  Luck slid her a narrow-eyed look. “My time scales are relative, but even I don’t call three hundred years a little rest.”

  Poly sat down numbly on a block of marble. She had felt that the castle was chilled with age and decay, but her mind had refused to believe that she could have been asleep for quite so long. “What about the people? Lady Cimone, Melisande and Giselle?”

  Luck, frowning at the hedge, said: “Who are Melisande and Giselle?”

  “The– my ladies-in-waiting.”

  “Oh. They’re dead,” said Luck. “There was a massive battle a few years after you went under the enchantment: no one knows what happened, but the battlefield went up in enchanted amber. It’s still frozen, by the way. Someone knew their stuff. The country’s run by a parliament now; I suppose they thought we were less likely to embalm several thousand people if there was enough red tape to keep us tied by the heels. The Old Parrassians and Royalists cause a few annoyances, but the red tape keeps them in line as well.”

  Strangely enough, the idea that Civet was no longer a monarchy evoked only a feeling of slightly vindictive pleasure in Poly. The princess would have been appalled.

  She said: “Good. It was about time.”

  Luck’s green eyes flicked to her and away again. “Maybe. Every four years there’s an election to decide which party will represent the country, but since both parties have a complete council of wizards the balance of power hasn’t really changed.”

  “At least you can vote them out,” Poly said. The thing with royal families and magic bloodlines was that once one king or queen was dead, you could be sure that there would be another, just as powerful, in his or her place.

  “Yes, but they’re all the same,” said Luck. The way his lips moved out of synchronisation with his words was beginning to give Poly a headache. “Confound the hedge, where’s this glitch!”

  “I told you,” Poly said, inured to repeating herself. No one at the castle had listened to her either. “There isn’t one anymore. It used to be there, but I think it was only one way.”

  “Huh. They did a different casting for the inside. Now what?”

  “Can’t you just Shift us out like you did in the castle?”

  “No. Shifting through magic this thick is impossible. I’ll do a Journey spell once we get away from the hedge.” He eyed the hedge thoughtfully. “It should have disintegrated when the castle did. It’s got something to do with you, Poly; you make magic behave oddly.”

  “I don’t do it on purpose,” sighed Poly, wondering what else she was destined to take the blame for. She was sure that she had never been able to influence magic before she was bespelled: it would have made life a lot easier if she had been able to do so.

  “Anyway–” she added, but Luck was no longer listening. He was surrounded by a swirling and thoughtful mass of golden magic, his eyes tinted slightly with the same gold. Moments later he startled Poly by giving a joyful yell.

  “I’ve got it! Come along, Poly.”

  Poly found herself swept off her feet, quite literally.

  “Put me down!” she demanded. Her hair seemed to have other ideas, however: it was curling around Luck’s shoulders, cocooning them together in a blanket of hair and magic.

  “Very nice,” said Luck approvingly, oblivious to her blush. “No, leave my legs free, Poly; I need to walk.”

  “Tell my hair!” Poly snapped, her cheeks uncomfortably hot. She thought she could still feel the pressure of Luck’s lips on her own, and she didn’t like being cocooned to him. “I’m not doing anything!”

  “Legs,” Luck said, peering down at the hair lashing his legs together. Much to Poly’s relief, the tendrils loosened reluctantly. “Huh. Very unusual. Off we go.”

  Poly gave a suppressed squeak as Luck dashed at the hedge, clutching his coat lapels. Then they were ploughing through huge, thorned branches and green-black foliage. She could feel the magic of the hedge prodding at her magicked hair, sensing the Poly-ness to it, and it struck her that the hedge had been tuned to her particularly, and no one else. As she realized that, she began to feel the hedge probing deeper, sensing the difference that was Luck. As if in response, her hair tightened.

  “Luck–”

  “I know. Put your arms around my neck.”

  Poly muttered, but did as she was told, wriggling her arms to twine through hair and around his neck. As she did so, Luck caught a breath to match his breathing with hers, and Poly felt the scrutiny of the hedge lessen slightly.

  At first she thought they had managed to confuse it, but then she saw it experimentally reaching for Luck’s uncovered legs and gasped: “Run!”

  “Too late,” said Luck’s voice matter-of-factly in her ear, and Poly braced herself for the onslaught of magic. But Luck was still striding forward, exuding surges of magic that were more powerful than anything she had ever seen. A light-headed feeling of relief made Poly’s head spin: Luck meant it was too late for the hedge.

  The next minute they were breaking out into the dimming sunshine of late afternoon.

  Luck put Poly down some distance away from the hedge, breathing easily despite the huge waves of magic that were still rolling off him. Her hair didn’t take kindly to the idea of separation, curling tendrils around his neck just as he freed one wrist and sliding insidiously around his waist just as he managed to free his neck.

  “Poly,” he said at last, plaintively.

  “I’m trying,” said Poly, harassed and pink-faced, and trying not to notice Luck’s other arm around her waist. In desperation, she gave her hair the same sort of mental slap she had given Luck’s magic when it became nosy, and it released him with sulky slowness.

  Poly sat down wearily, feeling as though she couldn’t keep her eyes open another second, and said: “That was harrowing.”

  Luck looked stung and slightly hurt, but Poly was too tired feel herself able to frame a sensible explanation and she didn’t know why he should take it so personally, after all. So she simply curled up in a cocoon of hair, her books tucked in close to her chest, and fell asleep.

  Chapter Two

  When Poly woke up the next morning, it was because of a pain in her nose and the fact that she didn’t seem to be able to breath. Gasping, she awoke to find Luck crouched beside her. He was pinching her nose and frowning.

  “Ow! Luck, ow!”

  “You like your sleep, don’t you?” remarked Luck, sitting back on his heels.

  Poly’s voice was small and pained. “You pinched my nose!”

  “You wouldn’t wake up. Huh. It must be a side-effect of the enchantment.”

  Poly gazed at him balefully. That was no reason for suffocating her in her sleep. There were
spells for waking people up.

  “No, don’t glare at me,” Luck said. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “My nose will fall off.”

  “Rubbish,” said Luck briskly, seizing her chin. “No, don’t wriggle, Poly. I want to look at that curse.”

  Poly, finding her personal space thus encroached upon, ventured a dismayed: “But–”

  Luck twitched her chin slightly to the side, fingers sharp and unheeding. “Huh. There’s something very unusual here.”

  His face lunged closer, invasive and accusatory. “What are you holding, Poly?”

  “What? Nothing.”

  “Yes, that’s what you said yesterday; but it’s not true.”

  Poly looked askance at him, and he looked back, unperturbed. But there was something in her hand, come to think of it. She uncurled the hand with a frown, fingers stiffly reluctant, and they both gazed down at a small wooden spindle.

  “Huh. That’s a bit of a disappointment,” said Luck. “Not a lick of magic in it.”

  Poly said: “Where did that come from? It looks familiar.”

  “It should,” said Luck, losing interest in the spindle and reacquainting himself with her face; “You’ve been carrying it around since yesterday. Stop blinking, Poly.”

  “I can’t have been carrying it around since yesterday,” objected Poly, trying desperately not to blink. The attempt proved counter-productive, and she tried not to blush under a particularly glazed look from Luck. “I’d remember.”

  “You didn’t remember me from the dream.”

  “What dream?”

  “Yes,” said Luck. “Well, it’s no good trying to poke around from the outside. I’ll have to keep an eye on it as we walk.”

  “Walk? You said you could do a Journey spell once we were out of the hedge.”

  Luck gave her a blank look that suggested she was babbling. “You must have misunderstood. Anyway, I can’t.”