A Host of Fallen Dreams - After the Rising Book 1

Chapter 18

Janellia

The City

Janellia knew her husband very well.

Since their marriage, she had studied every aspect of him, from his morning routine to what he liked to drink last thing on Sunday before the working week began anew. She also knew just how much amorous activity it took for him to fall into so deep a sleep he may well have been comatose. Horace, she thought, must be very silly to not have realised that she was up to something.

She was lying next to him in their bed, waiting for him to drift off into one of these stupors, when her earlier conversation with Lyra came back to her.

Lyra was another person Janellia thought was rather silly. The stupid girl didn't know how good things were for her - at the moment. And yet, the only thing the idiot had complained about in the four years she had been forced to live with them was those damned tarot cards. As if she had the right to question whether she had touched them. She should have been getting down on her knees and thanking her from the bottom of her heart for having them returned to her.

It was true, Janellia had touched them. Well, actually, she had done more than that. She had tried to read them. She had spent over a year trying to read them, to no avail. In the end, Janellia had been forced to conclude there was some kind of spell or charm of protection over them, which prevented anyone but Lyra Ridgeway working with them.

Yet Janellia had never been able to find out if this was so. The private detective she had hired (behind her husband's back, of course), could find no information that suggested Lyra had any interest in, let alone any working ability of, magic and witchcraft. Her area of expertise had been divination only.

That, naturally, wasn't a surprise given the context of the history of The City. Witchcraft had been outlawed many centuries ago, and even the academic study of it was severely marginalised, not to mention, frowned upon. Divination might have been taught at the Academy, but no other mystical arts were tolerated.

Nevertheless, the tarot deck belonging to Lyra Ridgeway had refused to allow Janellia to read them. She would set them down on a table, ready to work with them, when something, it could be anything at all, would distract her. She would glance away and the next moment, the cards were gone, only to turn up later somewhere else. If they weren't disappearing and reappearing, they would suddenly get caught by a gust of wind, which of course, affected nothing else in the room, leading to their widespread dispersal. Another trick of theirs was to act as if stuck to the table with glue, so she could not turn them over to reveal which cards she had drawn.

For a whole year she had fought with them, but nothing changed. What was so special about Lyra's tarot deck? For that matter, what was so special about Lyra? For four years she had found herself asking that question. Why was she here and not in one of the prisons? Horace's answer had been simple:

'Well the girl hasn't really committed a crime. She's only guilty of being her parents' daughter. Hardly bad enough to house her with all the dirty miscreants in The Flea Pit now, is it? And she's such a beautiful thing. Imagine what they'd do to her.'

Janellia suspected her husband had imagined that very thing. He could be a dirty old man when he wanted to be. The thought brought her out of her musings, as she rubbed her hip where Horace had grabbed her a little too hard. She could already feel a bruise forming, and glared at the face of her sleeping husband in the dark.

Another reason she thought Lyra a fool was that her life could have been so easily improved if only she thought to lure Horace into her own bed. There was no question of whether Horace would go if he was invited. He would. Unquestioningly. And then, as his mistress, it would have been effortless to command a better life for herself. If Janellia had been in her position, it's what she would have done, and she certainly wouldn't have waited four years to do it.