The Scrivener s Tale - By Fiona McIntosh Page 0,204

his mind. 'He would lay down his life for the Crown.'

Cassien nodded. 'That's settled then.' He sighed. 'Fynch, there is one thing I want to ask.'

'Go ahead.'

'I was told that my power ... magic ... call it what you will, can learn.'

Fynch's gaze snapped back from Romaine, who he was stroking, to Cassien. 'You were told?' Cassien nodded. 'By whom?'

'By a hedgewitch, I think you'd call her. Her name's Tilda.'

'When was this?'

'At the palace,' Cassien answered.

'He doesn't know about the killings,' Florentyna prompted. 'Fynch, Cassien's magic caused a lot of deaths,' she confided to the older man. 'Was it yesterday or the day before?' She looked to Cassien, but he was so unhappy to be remembering, she pressed on alone and told Fynch all that had occurred.

Afterwards, Fynch's expression was clouded. Cassien couldn't tell what his father was thinking.

'I thought you might have known,' Cassien lifted a shoulder with a rueful expression, 'you seem to know so much.'

'I have my ways of observing,' Fynch replied without telling them more. 'But I didn't know about the deaths. Poor Burrage.'

Florentyna closed her eyes briefly, and Cassien quickly leapt in. 'I came out of my roaming trance with a sickening like I've not experienced previously. Ham immediately fetched a woman he'd met in the palace kitchens who supplies Florentyna with herb teas. We met with her in Micklesham.'

'She organised to meet with you?'

Cassien scratched his head. 'No. She told me she was heading north. I don't think she expected to see me again, although she did look at me in a way that suggested I should follow, maybe catch her up. The point is, she gave me a curative which helped my headache and nausea, but Tilda warned that my magic learns.'

Fynch stared at him for several long moments. 'I can't see how. It is what it is. You control where you roam, when you roam, how you roam, if you roam and why you roam. The roaming magic is there for you to use or not. What is she suggesting it learns?'

'I don't know. She didn't have time to explain.'

'She did, over our supper, Cassien,' Florentyna chimed in, then shrugged an apology at him for the interruption.

He didn't seem to mind. 'That's true.'

'She had the perfect opportunity because we were discussing the roaming magic.'

'You discussed it?' Fynch asked aghast, looking at Cassien in horror. 'With a stranger?'

'Not really a stranger, Fynch. She already knew about my skill, my roaming, my murderous ways. She was helping me.'

Florentyna was frowning, picking at invisible lint on her riding clothes. 'Cassien, I want to say this and I'm not going to try and say it carefully. I think I'll just air my thoughts.' Both men looked at her. She swallowed. 'I could be wrong, but I sensed something was slightly amiss with Tilda.'

'Why do you say that?' he asked, aware that Fynch was fixing the queen with a wintry stare.

'Just a feeling, call it womanly intuition. I thought she became curiously quiet and watchful at one point and then when I thought it likely she would travel on with us, she seemed to be in a hurry to leave us.'

'Yes, I noticed her eagerness to depart,' he admitted slowly, then frowned. 'I didn't feel startled or surprised, though.'

'She cut me off a couple of times when she sensed I was going to ask a pointed question. I'm her queen, let's not forget, so what she did was unusually rude. I didn't react to her impropriety but, even so, she took the risk of offending more than once.'

'What are you saying, majesty?' Fynch urged.

Florentyna shook her head. 'I don't know. The fact is, I don't know Tilda at all well. She seemed very friendly - too friendly - with Cassien and with me, given that she barely knew us and that I, her sovereign, was sitting down to break bread with her. She seemed neither surprised nor cowed. It was odd, that's all. I don't enjoy provoking the reaction, but most ordinary people find it hard to speak in my presence simply out of respect for the Crown.'

'Does everyone have to be scared, your majesty?' Cassien reasoned.

She threw him a sharp look. 'No, not scared. But it's fair to assume that most people are going to be shocked, surprised or unnerved, if their sovereign suddenly takes supper with them. But Tilda seemed to take our presence in her stride as if ...'

'As if what?' Fynch pressed.

'Well, as if she was expecting us. There,