The Red Knight

The Abbess passed wine. She had the captain on her right, and Amicia on her left. When the talk had become general, she turned to the captain. ‘You have my permission to engage her in conversation,’ she said.

The captain tried to smile. ‘I’m not sure my eyes aren’t still glowing,’ he said.

‘Anger and lust are different sins,’ said the Abbess. ‘Amicia is going to take holy orders, Captain. You should congratulate her.’

‘She has my fullest congratulations. She will make a remarkable nun, and in time, I expect she will make a remarkable Abbess.’ He sipped his wine.

‘She is not for you,’ the Abbess said, but without rancour.

‘So you keep telling me, while dangling her like a tourney prize.’ He took a bite of meat. His tension was only visible in the force he used to cut the mutton.

‘I’m right here,’ Amicia said.

He smiled at her.

‘Once again, you bite her with your eyes.’ The Abbess shook her head.

After dinner, the Abbess held the magi back. Mag was surprised to be invited. ‘My working is very slow,’ she said. ‘I never even know-’ She shrugged.

Amicia put a hand on the seamstress’s shoulder. ‘I can feel every stitch you sew,’ she said.

Harmodius snorted. ‘You share a mixing of gold and green,’ he said. ‘I should have come to this place years ago to have all my notions of Hermetics shattered.

The Abbess said, ‘It is my will that we should stand in a circle, and link.’

Harmodius winced. ‘I’m granting my secrets to every woman in the room!’

‘You have little time for mere women,’ Amicia snapped at him. ‘We’re too patient in our castings, are we not?’

‘Women are all very well for healing,’ Harmodius said.

Amicia raised her head, and a sphere of golden green sat in it. She projected it to a point roughly halfway between herself and Harmodius.

‘Try me,’ she said.

The captain was surprised by her vehemence.

The Abbess, on the other hand, merely smiled a cat’s smile.

Harmodius shrugged and slapped at the sphere with a fist of phantasm.

It moved the width of a finger.

Then it shot across the room at Harmodius. He caught it, struggled with it, and it began to move – slowly, but without pause – back.

‘Of course he is stronger than you,’ the Abbess said, and she extinguished the globe with a snap of her fingers. ‘But not as much stronger as he would have expected. Eh, Magus?’

Harmodius took a deep breath. ‘You are most powerful, sister.’

The captain grinned. ‘Let us link. I reserve some memories. But my tutor taught me to hold some walls while opening other doors.’

‘I give a great deal for very little gain,’ Harmodius said. ‘Bah – and yet, the Abbess is right. I am not an island.’ He extended his hand to Amicia.

She took it graciously. They took hands around the circle, like children in a game.

‘Captain, I intend to pray. Try not to vanish in a puff of smoke,’ said the Abbess.

She began the Lord’s Prayer.

Prudentia was standing at the door. ‘If you were having guests, you might have asked me to sweep up,’ she said.

The Abbess appeared in his hall. She was young, voluptuous in a tall, thin way, with an earthy power to her face that belied her spirit.

Amicia was elfin and green.

Harmodius was young and strong, hale – a knight on errantry, with a halo of gold.

Miram was shining like a statue of polished bronze.

Mag looked just like herself.

He was at once in his place of power, and simultaneously in Amicia’s, standing on her beautiful bridge. He sat in a comfortable leather armchair in a great tiled room – that had to be Harmodius – surrounded by chess boards and wheels with wheels. He stood in a chapel surrounded by statues of knights and their ladies – or, as he realised, ladies and their knights, each with a golden chain attaching them. A chapel of courtly love – surely the lady’s place of power. He knelt before a plain stone altar with a cup of red blood on it. Miram’s place of power.