A Fistful of Water: Chronicles of Marsdenfel, #3

By Misti Wolanski

She can regain what her father gave up, but it’ll cost all she has to get it…

Geddis Feyim is tired of others complaining because they have all she ever wanted. Her father and sister serve as prophets for the king, her uncle, but that doesn’t help the rest of the family. Her mother’s dead, her brother’s insane, and she’s working herself sick to keep her uncle’s castle clean despite other servants’ incompetence.

Something has to change.

She can’t become nobility or earn a title, but she’s a reasonably educated young woman, with Finding magic and blood ties to a few of the more powerful realms in the area. She has options. More than she wants to consider.

Whatever she chooses, it’ll shape the rest of her life.
—
ALERT: Contains some mature themes, including infidelity.

Sequel to A Fistful of Earth.
To Be Followed by A Fistful of Deception.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Misti Wolanski
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502212559

Book preview

A FISTFUL OF WATER

CHRONICLES OF MARSDENFEL: BOOK 3

MISTI WOLANSKI

http://mistiwolanski.com

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D2D Edition

Copyright 2014

All Rights Reserved

She can regain what her father gave up, but it’ll cost all she has to get it…

Geddis Feyim is tired of others complaining because they have all she ever wanted. Her father and elder sister serve as prophets for the king, their father’s half-brother, but that doesn’t help the rest of the family. Her mother’s dead, her brother’s insane, and she’s working herself sick to keep her uncle’s castle clean despite other servants’ incompetence.

Something has to change.

She can’t become nobility or earn a title, but she’s a reasonably educated young woman, with Finding magic and blood ties to a few of the more powerful realms in the area. She has options. More than she wants to consider.

Whatever she chooses, it’ll shape the rest of her life.

This is a work of fiction. People, places, and events are made up; any that aren’t made up have all been processed through the shredder of the author’s imagination and therefore at best bear only superficial resemblance to their originals. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental.

This work is licensed in its original format for your personal enjoyment. It is not licensed for resale or sharing by e-mail, torrent, or other file-sharing method. You may quote or share up to 7,000 words of this book without requesting written permission from the author, as long as you give proper attribution and don’t plagiarize. If you have some reason to wish to quote or share more than 7,000 words, please seek written permission from the author; otherwise you could end up in violation of copyright law.

Cover Designed by Misti Wolanski

photo © Houchi on DeviantArt

Author’s Note

This is the third book of the Chronicles of Marsdenfel. If you’re just coming to the series now, please go back and find A Fistful of Fire. Otherwise, come in and discover what Geddis does after the events of A Fistful of Earth.

The narrator differs for each book in this series, so it’s entirely possible that you might like one narrator and not another, or that you might find Geddis infuriating enough that you aren’t sure if you want to finish the series. Rest assured that she doesn’t stay the same forever.

I hope you enjoy the story!

—Misti Wolanski

Year 523, New Calendar

THE HUMAN KINGDOM OF SALLES

Winter, before Solstice

After I answer yet another question incorrectly, a classmate beside me snipes, You would’ve known that, if you actually came to class.

My face burns, but it’s not my fault that family emergencies often keep me out of school. I’m the only child of the Prophet of the King who doesn’t take after our father. Father is the king’s illegitimate older brother, and my brother has already been taken to the faery insane asylum, so sometimes there are also political reasons I can’t leave home.

My uncle on my mother’s side runs the charity school I attend, so at least I don’t get in trouble for the lessons I miss, but… Faery magic deals with probabilities and the manipulation of reality, and as a result, faeries are far more likely than most people to go insane. Prophets are people who have enough faery ancestry to prophesy sometimes, which gives them a lower likelihood of insanity than a full faery…while leaving them more likely to go crazy than the average whatever-else-they-are.

Usually, mixing faery with some other race results in prophets with some measure of control over their gift, or at least they don’t suffer from it regularly. Human prophets are usually quite stable. But thanks to a spell done badly, my sister, Silva, will go insane someday, either from her magic or from being twin to our magic-insane brother.

Magic gets funny with twins.

That leaves Mother and me as the only two who are entirely sane…which puts a lot of life’s the day-to-day work on the two of us. Thus why it isn’t unusual for me to leave school early or to miss class entirely. Between that and some other things—my family used to be noble, but we lost that before I was old enough to remember the governess—I’m the least-educated in the family.

The worst about it is that people assume I’m stupid because I don’t know things that nobody ever taught me. The only part of my family that pays me any mind are Mother and her siblings, but they all work and have little time to bother with me.

Today I notice Aunt Trelanna—Mother’s sister—in the doorway. I start packing up, even before she catches the attention of the headmaster, who’s her brother and one of my uncles. Uncle likes to teach.

Uncle glances at me and addresses Aunt in a low tone, in another language, but the inflection reveals it as a question. She answers in the same tongue, and soon she and I are outside the building and on our way toward her shop—or toward the city gate near her shop, which opens to the bridge that leads to the castle.

As I keep up with my aunt’s waddle down the late afternoon street, I scuff my boots against the cobblestones. Mother’s working?

Mother is the king’s head cook, though I’m unclear on if that started before or after Father lost his noble title. So even though she’s busy a lot, particularly when preparing for holiday season, she has lackeys she can leave at work while she picks me up. Aunt Trelanna, who’s the personal seamstress and tailor for the royal family, doesn’t really have anyone she can leave to mind her shop when she isn’t there. She’s usually who I help, when the family needs me to work, even though I’m old enough to help Mother in the kitchens.

I do know how to cook, but Mother usually prefers to have me help her sister…maybe because the head matron of the castle, Morgana, loathes my family. I’m not sure why, but she and a lot of the other maids are brutal. Silva has to put up with it, because she’s a prophet and therefore works directly for the king, Uncle Aldrik, but since I don’t have to, maybe Mother would rather I not do so.

Aunt Trelanna wheezes a bit. "When is that woman not working?"

I shrug. Mother gets so sick on her moontime that she can’t work, so she has to make up the missed hours sometime, but I’m not about to say that outright. When she’s sleeping?

Aunt snorts, and we continue on in silence that’s at least partially due to her difficulty breathing while she waddles so quickly. As much as I hate being so much bigger than all the other girls my age, at least it’s only from the giant in my ancestry. I’m not fat, like her.

The guards at the city gate know us by sight, and they let us pass without comment. We step onto the bridge that separates the city from the castle grounds. I strain to feel something, anything, from the water below, but nothing changes.

My magic will be solidifying any month, now, leaving me able to use it. Water magic runs in the family because of Uncle Aldrik’s royal magic, which ties to this river. Grandfather was a fire mage, for example, and I think the aunt who died before the takeover was an air. Part of me hopes that I’ll have faery magic, like my brother and sister, but most of me prays to the Creator that I won’t be a prophet. I don’t want to go insane.

I’m not so terrified of the risks that I’ll avoid using magic, though. Even my brother would’ve been fine if he’d only bothered to spend a little more time setting up the spell that drove him insane. Magic’s perfectly usable, as long as you’re careful.

And as long as you don’t have one of the dangerous forms of it.

We reach the gate to the castle entrance. The castle is a village of its own, really, with walls and gates to keep out the city. These guards likewise ignore us as we pass through.

By the time we reach the servant halls, I realize we’re headed for the family’s suite, and I outpace my aunt and enter my family’s main room several steps ahead of her. I find one of the Runners—castle messengers—standing at the window, staring out. William’s my age, and I know him because he’s who my royal uncle usually sends with messages for my family. He’s proof that Uncle Aldrik isn’t above breaking the labor laws, himself, if he wants to see even a too-young child cared for.

What are you doing here? I ask.

He pivots on his heel and glances at me with sad eyes. As Aunt Trelanna enters the doorway, he meets her gaze and shakes his head. Aunt deflates and looks away.

All Runners know proper court decorum and are necessarily hard to rattle, so William’s expression makes my mouth go dry. What? What’s wrong? My voice quivers. Is it Silva?

William looks to the floor for a long moment, then glances pointedly at the side table by the fireplace, where Father keeps his chess set.

A chess set that’s no longer there.

I draw a sharp breath. Father’s leaving?

Appears that way, he says quietly. Some of the hunting party’s returned, and they found…

I flinch. I know what they found—or rather, whom. I was an infant when the family made the arrangements that mean I see my father rarely enough as it is, and once she gets here…

My eyes burn, and a sob catches in my throat. Don’t I get to say good-bye?

William and my aunt exchange another meaningful look. Even this boy knows more about what’s going on with my family than I do and he’s just a castle hireling. I try not to think about it, but my stomach sours.

He isn’t back yet, William replies, but your mother’s prepping everything for him to leave as soon as possible. We’ll try to get him to stay a day or so, to make a proper fare-thee-well, but Elwyn’s a stubborn one.

We? Since when was my father on a first-name basis with the Runners?

He pauses, glancing again at my aunt. His Majesty has tasked me to help delay your father’s departure.

You? I ask stupidly, not comprehending why Uncle Aldrik would task a boy my age with that job. Not Head Matron Morgana?

It’s best she be left out of this. William’s expression softens. People ignore Runners, for the most part, so we can be good for certain…quiet jobs.

Just be careful, Aunt Trelanna says. That woman is vicious.

If she’s so problematic, why doesn’t Uncle Aldrik fire her?

William smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. Yes.

My aunt grimaces and flushes. Well. Thank you for alerting me so I could fetch Geddis, she manages to say. Need anything else before I go back to my shop?

No, thank you. William answers politely.

Aunt nods and gives me a weak smile before scurrying out, away from the Runner…who bothered to see me alerted about what was going on, even though my mother and sister have not. Had it been up to them, would I have even gotten to say good-bye to Father, before he left?

I take a deep breath. Mother’s probably been too busy to find one of the Runners who’ll actually deign take messages for her. I’m sure she could use some help, and while I’m here…I might as well.

And though I can’t say what gives me the idea and she never goes there, somehow I know I’ll find her in the second travel pantry.

Year 533, New Calendar - I

THE TELVEN REALM OF BREIDENTEL

Late Autumn

Sometimes, I hate myself.

Eating at a king’s table is not one of those times, even though the king’s wife is insane and began life as a charity case that my uncle, King Aldrik of Salles, took pity on, after she saved my sister’s life.

That charity case-turned-queen consort, Lallie Nonsire, is drenched in blood, as if she bathed in it. She killed this realm’s previous king and has probably finished off all the guards who owned more loyalty than prudence. Her husband, King Liathen II of Marsdenfel, now rules this realm, Breidentel, in addition to his own, Marsdenfel.

I guess Lallie’s a good choice for him, if he wants to make a habit of this sort of thing. As a Shifter freak who can change into a wildcat at will and heal almost instantly from injury, she can wipe out a platoon of soldiers and likely survive. Magic-insane people don’t handle threats well, and this realm’s previous king tried to kill her friends a time too many. Or maybe Lallie just snapped when the king decided to use her cousin Tuelzi for target practice.

Beside me, Tuelzi—who’s a freak like Lallie but takes longer to heal and isn’t nearly as crazy—hands me some butter for my bread.

Thank you. I was young when Father lost his estate to others’ political scheming, but Father and my sister, Silva, both still have ranks of their own, thanks to their abilities to prophesy. That means they practice the etiquette I don’t get to use. Kitchen maids don’t sit and eat with their betters.

I’m a guest right now, though, because my uncle King Aldrik of Salles needed me to Find—magically track down—Lallie. Today’s a glimpse at what I should have been.

And today reminds me why, when one of my royal relatives or their spouses start pitching fits about being highborn, I want to slap them silly. Don’t they understand what they have?

A queen won’t go hungry if she’s sick and can’t afford to work or buy food. A queen doesn’t have to work her hands raw, scrubbing the pots by her lonesome because the scullery maids have decided to go dally with their men. People don’t spot a queen in the hallways and snicker, gossiping about what a shame it is that the faery blood skipped that one, because she certainly won’t fetch a husband for her looks.

Lallie eats readily, most of it meat, and the rest of it bread and butter. Blood from her hands and clothes contaminates her food, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

She’s a Shifter; she can smell and see the blood far better than I can. I’m only human, with a bit of giant and a little more faery in me. The human gives me the family water magic, and the fae gives me the finding magic. The giant, the blood I have least of, just makes me big. I’m as broad as Silva and a good head shorter.

Might have been better if I were more like Aunt Trelanna and outright fat. At least then I’d be interesting to look at, rather than disproportionate.

Is there a problem, Housemaid Feyim? King Liathen asks, tone calm.

I grit my teeth at the question, one that calls me a servant even as it mentions my surname, which stems from my prophetess of a grandmother, who got my family in a mess where only a few of her descendants would benefit from her faery blood. What idiot decides to give an unmarried king an illegitimate son? Your Majesty?

The elfin king looks through me as he gestures at my platter of…whatever we were served. You aren’t eating.

Some of us don’t eat as much as your wife, I answer.

Uncle Aldrik—my king because I’m a native of Salles, a human realm—raises an eyebrow at me. The aforementioned wife ignores me, but Lallie’s like that. She’ll ignore your insults up until she decides she’s had enough. Then she kills you.

Geddis, Silva says sharply. Mind your manners.

I look pointedly over the blood-soaked Lallie. Where are hers?

"She the queen," replies Tuelzi, Lallie’s much-bruised cousin. The dead king that Lallie murdered this morning was Tuelzi’s father, and I think Lallie offed her brother and mother in the aftermath. I know she killed a lot of Tuelzi’s half-siblings last year, since the old king had a lot of baseborn children, and he used the lot of them as soldiers and pawns.

Tuelzi doesn’t seem bothered by the deaths of her parents and siblings, though, as she grins at Lallie and says something in a language I don’t speak. Probably the language of those healing freaks, since Lallie replies.

King Liathen’s mild manner reminds me of Uncle Aldrik’s, so I doubt he’s as oblivious as he seems. Would you prefer something else to eat?

I look at my plate. No, thank you. I take another bite of fruit—fruit! for supper?—and vegetables I mostly recognize from the few stories my father’s told me about the years he lived here.

Years in which my mother died, my sister got engaged, and I grew up.

King Liathen’s half-sister, Evonalé, is the reason my father missed so much of my life. I could call King Liathen the fault, too, if I squint, since his own safety was tied up in hers. But I’m not that petty.

I pick at the beets. Not my favorite, but my stomach’s getting upset, and there’s no lemon balm available. Have to take the remedies where I can get them. With the butter and…cassia, I think that is, these are pretty good. For beets, at least.

A neatly dressed elf in the uniform of maids everywhere—clean, plain, and rough quality fabric—approaches me and fumbles through a curtsy. She says something, her gaze darting toward Lallie. I can only assume she’s using telvish, the native language of this realm.

Dessert? Tuelzi asks matter-of-factly in her accented mountaineer.

Thank you. Most wouldn’t bother to translate for a maid, but as the former king’s baseborn daughter by one of his mistresses, Tuelzi’s as outside the proper structure as I am, at the moment. At least my current displacement is temporary. What is it?

Tuelzi addresses the maid in a quick, clipped cadence that seems more her than the language in general from what little I’ve heard of it. The local dialect, telvish, sounds…different than the felvish I hear more often, though I can’t quite identify how. She turns to me with a frown. Saltbread pie?

I blink. Hard to forget she’s elfin—seriously, she’s like a taller, curvier version of King Liathen’s half-sister…who married my cousin, Prince Aidan, last year. And that girl, Evonalé, speaks far better mountaineer than Tuelzi does. What?

She shrugs helplessly and calls over to Lallie, again—switching languages, by the sound of it—and gestures as she explains something.

Lallie wrinkles her nose, then turns to me, mirroring her cousin Tuelzi’s frown. Sounds like a fruit-and-cream pie variant that uses crunchy rope bread for the crust.

My father perks up and says a word.

The maid nods as she curtsies to him.

My father smiles broadly at my uncle. It’s delicious. You’ll like it.

Uncle Aldrik nods acknowledgement and gestures lightly with his fingers to tell the maid that he’ll take some. What fruit is it?

My father asks, the maid answers, and he turns to Uncle Aldrik and says, Apple.

Apple? Of all the options available in autumn, apple is the best that the royal cook for this realm can come up with?

The dessert sounds interesting, though. I’ll try some.

Tuelzi briskly translates for me.

The maid sweeps out and quickly returns with the three-layered dessert. She serves High King Liathen first and offering some to Lallie—who flatly refuses by shaking her head—and then Uncle Aldrik. After that, she gives some Father, Silva, and the little honey-skinned woman sitting with Uncle Aldrik.

I’m next. I poke at my serving with my fork. Whipped cream tops the concoction, and the fruit’s been gelled together, somehow, atop the crunchy crust that looks browned by sugar. Odd.

Tuelzi accepts her own dessert. Enjoy.

I shrug. Not a huge fan of apple, but…

I take a bite. There’s salt in the crust, so that part’s salty and sweet. The cream has vanilla and cane sugar, and the apple… Hmm…

Definitely not the sour pie apples, but it isn’t the soft sweet ones, either. These have a bit of crisp to them, with sugar and a touch of nutmeg and allspice in the gel.

I like this—salty and sweet, smooth and crisp. What kind of apples are these?

Tuelzi blinks at me blankly. The maid shrugs helplessly.

Nobody else seems to hear my question, all focused on enjoying their own desserts.

Except for Lallie. She isn’t eating dessert, and she definitely heard me, but she’s still stuffing her face. She came late to dinner, but that woman eats more than a full-blooded giant. And most of it meat.

I focus on my dessert, picking off a little of the apple to eat that separately. I’m not sure I’ve ever had that particular variety, before.

The maid taps my shoulder. I look up at her. She curtsies and offers me a fresh apple—the kind used in the dessert, I presume.

Not even my family notice my interests like that. Thank you.

She curtsies again—I guess communication methods are limited, since we don’t share a language—and scans the table. She leaves and returns with a pitcher of water, and she refills my half-empty glass before proceeding to everyone else.

Treating me, housemaid to King Aldrik, as if I, too, am a highborn guest. As if I’m nobility. Which I was born.

Which I was born, because my grandfather gave his illegitimate son—my father—a title before he died. A title that other nobles of Salles forced my father to give up, so Uncle Aldrik could pass another law he needed.

So just like that, I was born nobility and downgraded to commoner, all before subadulthood.

My father’s never told me what law Uncle needed so badly, but I can guess: Something to protect Evonalé or her mother. Uncle Aldrik and my father gave up a lot to protect that paranoid klutz. Uncle Aldrik lost his wife and daughter to Evonalé’s half-sister.

I lost my mother to death, and my father to distance, as he spent years negotiating with other elven realms to mitigate the damage done by the enslavement of their high realm. Evonalé—and my