The Scofflaw Magician (The Artifactor Book 3) (21 page)

“Hence it’s
safe to double the water, diluting the thickness and color of the ink, without
disrupting the power level,” Master concluded aloud.

“In essence. We
can apply it to regular parchment first, and if that’s too thick, then we can
add more water in and let it sit overnight before trying again.”

“You sure that
will work?” Master asked doubtfully.

“I specifically
asked before I left, on how important it was to get the order of the
ingredients mixed together. Their master ink maker assured me it wasn’t the
order so much as the
timing
. They do the order like this to get the
consistency right, more than the power level. If we need to add water after
everything’s mixed, we can, but it has to sit for twenty-four hours to let it
blend in with everything else.” Sevana hoped it didn’t come to that, as she
didn’t want to be adding in water and waiting a day for days on end before
knowing that she finally had the right mixture.

“I’m assuming
you’ll get the blood you need from Arandur?”

“You assume
correctly.”

Master gave her
that annoyingly paternal look again. “You two seem quite companionable.”

“He’s an easy
man to get along with. Unlike certain old goats I know.”

He grinned at
that, as she knew he would, as he was a perverse old man and liked it when his
former students insulted him. “Nothing wrong with being friends with the Fae.”

“That’s nice,”
she said sarcastically. Heavens, but it was like she was eight years old and
asking for permission to play with the kid next door. “If I promise to be home
by dark, can I go out and play?”

Master laughed
outright at this, not at all bothered by her tone. “Certainly, sweetling. Ah,
how does this look?”

Sevana peered
into the bucket. “Time to add in the ash. Not quite as much as the rest of it.”

“How much
less?”

“A cupful.”

Master grabbed
one of her measuring cups off the shelf nearby, measuring it all out carefully.
“This much?”

“Half a cup
more.” Sevana eyed the mixture, calculations flashing through her head. She had
watched two batches of ink being made while up north, and the memory of it
served her well now, as she knew what to look for.

Master poured
the last bit in, capped the bottle again, and went back to stirring. The ash
did not want to easily mix in with the gooey substance in the bucket. It was a
real struggle for Master to get anything to move. With gritted teeth, he stuck
with it, and slowly things started to absorb and blend together.

“While we’re
waiting on these things to percolate, I vote that we run some calculations and
figure out how to piggy-back on the existing portation spell.” Sevana lifted up
two of the top journals, scanning the open pages, but couldn’t figure out at a
glance which one had the information she needed. “You took notes on it
somewhere?”

“Bottom left
journal,” Master directed between his teeth. A vein was popping in his forehead
as he strained to mix it. “Sweetling, is it supposed to be this hard?”

“To the Fae, it’s
not. You’re just weak.”

“Love you too.”

Sevana chortled
at the sarcasm. Master was fun to tease. Picking up the correct journal, she
scanned through the chicken scratch that passed as handwriting until she found
what she wanted. Putting her back to the table, she started to read in earnest.
Yes, alright, with these numbers she rather saw what Master meant. This might
not be as complicated as it first sounded.

“How’s this?”
Master asked.

Moving the book
to her side, she bent over the bucket. “Looks perfect. Cover that with
something and let it sit. We’ll have to wait for Aran to come back before we
can start the other half.”

“Do you want to
call the Sa Kaon king and queen before or after we run the numbers?”

Oh, right, they
did need to update their clients. “After,” she decided after a moment’s
thought. “Let’s make sure that we can really do this before talking to them.”

Hopefully she
hadn’t missed anything and it would work as she expected it to.Otherwise,
they’d have to come up with something else, and Sevana frankly didn’t know what
else to try at this point.

They ran the
calculations and ran them again, triple-checking their work. The only thing
they weren’t sure about was if the portation spell really would extend properly
to the mirror. It wasn’t designed to do so, and they could alter the original
spell only so much before it would start warping. Sevana had a sixth sense that
it would be this part, more than anything else, that would cause them trouble.

When Aran
arrived, she promptly waylaid him at the door with a needle and a glass vial.
“Aran. I need blood.”

He eyed the
needle in her hand with misgiving. “There
are
other people you can
ask…?”

“Your name came
up,” she disagreed pleasantly. Sevana wasn’t in the least inclined to go hunt
someone else down, not when he was handy.

“Why does that
keep happening?”

“I’m assuming
one of your ancestors did something unforgiveable to a nice old lady in the
deep woods,” Sevana responded, trying to look thoughtful instead of giving into
the urge to cackle evilly. “That was a mistake. But if you decide to go on a
quest to break your curse, let me know.”

He arched an
eyebrow at that. “You’ll go with me?”

“Heavens no,
sounds dangerous.” She grinned at him. “But I’ll write.”

Resigned, he
rolled up a shirt sleeve. “Wrist please.”

“Your
cooperation is appreciated.” Sevana angled his wrist closer to her, stuck him
without even a word of warning, then tipped the limb so that the blood would
drip into the vial.

“I don’t even
get a one, two, three?” Aran complained.

“I was hovering
over your arm with a needle in my hand. If that’s not warning enough for you, I
don’t know what is.” Satisfied she had her six drops, she dropped the needle
into the vial before reaching for a handkerchief in her pocket. She pressed it
against the pinprick wound on his wrist for a moment before taking it back.

Aran blinked
down at his skin. “It’s healed.”

Why was he
surprised? “You heal fast.”

“Not quite that
fast,” he disagreed. “It usually takes a few more seconds.”

A few more
seconds, was it. “There’s a minor healing spell on all of my handkerchiefs.
It’s more convenient that way, when something happens.” Sevana despised having
to hunt down either medications or bandages when she had minor injuries. The
handkerchiefs were a neat solution to the problem, as she always had a few of
those lying around.

Rolling his
sleeve back down, he asked, “I take it that preparations are going well?”

“Quite well.”
She inclined her head to the workroom, indicating he should follow her in. “We
have part of the mixture sitting, and with your blood, I can get the other part
started. How did Aranhil take the news?”

“He was quite
pleased with all of our progress. He did state that after this is resolved, he
wishes for you to come and visit our territory for several days, examining the
wards and shields that we have in place. We want to make sure that our own
places are secure from human tampering.”

Probably wise.
Especially since they were in her own backyard. “I’ll plan to do just that.”

“Master Joles,”
Aran greeted with a polite nod of the head as he stepped into the room.

Master was
hunched over the table, feet propped up on a cushion, well ensconced with tea
mugs and stacks of papers sprawled in a half-circle. On Aran’s greeting, he
looked up from the calculations scrawled out in front of him with an automatic
smile. “Arandur. I take it that Sevana leeched you of the blood already.”

“I asked,” she
defended herself.

“She did,” Aran
admitted although with a Look at her that adequately stated his own thoughts on
the matter. “Aside from my blood donation, is there anything else I can do to
help?”

Master pointed
him to the chair next to him. “Sit, sit. Wait, where’s Baby and Grydon?”

Come to think
of it, she hadn’t seen them either. Pausing in her work, Sevana waited for this
answer.

“They told me
they wanted to do a perimeter sweep around the mountain before coming in,” Aran
informed them both, taking the seat as indicated. As he spoke, his eyes
gravitated to the numbers scrawled out on the papers. “Speaking of which,
Sevana, I am under orders from the children. Whenever you come to see us, you
have to bring both of them with you.”

Sevana rolled
her eyes heavenward. “Yes, yes, I’ll do that.” Her creatures would probably
sulk if she didn’t and then skulk in after her even if she tried to leave them
behind. Shaking her head, she went back to carefully measuring out the Fae
blood and the spring water into a large glass jar. It was fascinating to watch
the reaction. When the blood hit the water, it turned different colors, nothing
lasting for more than a second before changing into something else. It finally
settled into a transparent blue-black. Relieved that it still looked the same,
even though she had twice as much water as the recipe called for, she stuck a
glass stopper in it and sat back.

“Done?” Master
checked. “Good, then we can test the wash tomorrow evening.”

“Perhaps, while
we are waiting, we can consider how best to catch the magician responsible for
all of this,” Aran suggested. “That was one thing that Aranhil asked me that I
could not answer. We need a plan.”

“For this man
especially, we do,” Sevana agreed darkly. She dropped onto the bench next to
Master, it being the only other available seat in her workroom. After being on
her feet for several hours, sitting was a definite relief. “He’s particularly
good at disappearing.”

Master grabbed
a journal and flipped towards the back, finding a clean page. “Let’s first
detail everything that we know about him.”

That would be
the best way to start. Sevana had told both men things but neither of them knew
everything she did. It would help if they were all working with the same
knowledge.  “First, he has mostly the same magical signature as the previous
times.”

“Previous
times?” Aran asked, not following.

“With the
artifact being stolen and Bel’s and Aren’s curses,” she clarified.

During the
course of that long journey up north and back, she’d told him about both
events, so he recognized what she was referring to. “Ah. But you said mostly?”

“It’s him,”
Sevana assured both men darkly. “I know it is. But he’s somehow able to change
his magical core just enough that it’s never quite the same.”

Master shifted
uneasily. “That’s not safe. Or sane.”

“Tampering with
one’s own core is the height of folly,” Aran agreed.  He looked just as
perturbed by the thought.

“But that must
be what he’s doing. It doesn’t explain why the magical signature is different
every time, or how he got past the Fae wards.” Uncertainly, she added, “I
thought it would kill a person to do that, though.”

“It’s supposed
to, yes.” Master had a faraway look in his eye. “Every person who’s ever tried
it supposedly died and in quite a horrible way, too. But…mercy, I haven’t
thought of this story in years.”

Sevana’s ears
perked up. When Master said something like that, it was always a good thing, as
he usually remembered something that proved to be vitally important later.

“When I was
still an apprentice, perhaps fifty or so years ago, my master told all of his
students a story of one prodigy that went against convention and experimented
on his own magical core. The story went that instead of killing himself, he
actually succeeded, but in doing so it warped him. His core was never the same
after that, shifting and fluctuating unpredictably, and it altered his mind in
a terrible way. He was chased out of the magical community and afterwards was
hunted as well like a rabid dog. But he was never caught, to my knowledge.”
Master looked down from the ceiling before continuing, “It was supposed to be a
cautionary tale. Master wanted to impress on us that nothing good came out of
changing your magical core. Even if you didn’t die in the process, it warped
you so much that you wished it had. I thought it just that—a story.”

“Every story
has a grain of truth in it,” Aran disagreed. For some reason, he was studying
Sevana as he said this. “A prodigy, you say? Like Sevana is?”

“That’s what
the story said, at least.”

“I’m inclined
to believe it.” Aran ticked things off on his fingers as he spoke. “You tell me
this man has amazing magical prowess, like an Artifactor. You say that he can
get around wards and shields, that he’s cunning in doing so. Then you tell me
that he’s good at disappearing, as if he were never there to begin with. Would
not an Artifactor prodigy, one that has many decades of experience, be able to
do all of this?”

Sevana couldn’t
disagree with any part of it. “We’ve often said that it would take an
Artifactor’s understanding of magic, elements, and spellwork to do what he
does. Master, have we really stumbled across that man?”

Master rubbed
both hands over his face, blowing out his cheeks in a puff of air. “I hope not,
sweetling. Chasing a man with no morals who is talented with magic is one
thing. Chasing after a man that is insane and a prodigy at magic is another.
I’d rather not chase an evil version of you.”

Sevana grimaced
agreement. “I second that.”

Aran lifted a
hand. “Thirded. If that’s the case, we really don’t want to track this man
down. A wolf is the most dangerous in its own den, as the saying goes.”

“It’s better to
bait and trap,” Master agreed. “But with what bait?”

“Knowing that
I’ve reversed his spell and released everyone will…not be enough,” Sevana
concluded aloud. “I’ve done that before, after all, and he didn’t come after me
because of it. So what can we offer?”

Aran took a
look around her workroom, head craning this way and that to see all of it.
“Anything that you have here is something that he can create himself. Is it
fair to say that?”

Sevana snorted.
“The man can sneak into Fae territory unnoticed. I think it’s fairer to say he
has things
I
want.”

“Fae
territory…” Master drawled out thoughtfully. He sank further into his chair,
crossing his legs comfortably at the knee and went back to staring up at the
ceiling. Sevana recognized it as his ‘thinking pose’ and held her breath. It
was even odds that the next thing he would say would either be stupid or
brilliant. “Sweetling, could you track where he went exactly in Fae territory?”

“More or less.
Aran could see his path more clearly than I could. Why?”

“Where did he
go?”

“The storage
room,” Aran answered.

“Yes, but where
in the storage room? What all does it hold?”

Sevana hadn’t
gotten more than that one good look inside, so she looked to Aran for the
answer. Whatever was Master building up to, anyway?

Aran rubbed at
his chin before rattling off, “Inventions, prepared items like ink and cloth,
specialized items that are waiting for trade, things of that sort.”

“Did he go
anywhere near the other things?”

“He only
wandered down two aisles before finding the ink. After that, he promptly left.”

Master finally
took his eyes off the ceiling. “He only took the ink?”

“Perhaps he was
limited to how much weight he could carry and safely escape?” Sevana offered.
“Or he just didn’t have the time to browse.”

“Makes sense,”
Master allowed. “It could even be a combination of both. Well, regardless, it
makes my idea plausible. I don’t think we should bait him with something that
we have. I think we should use something we
might
have, something that
he missed in his hurry, and wants.”

“Something out
of the Fae storerooms?” Sevana had to admit that the idea had merit. She could
only see one glaring flaw. “But if we say that, wouldn’t he try to go back to
the storerooms again? He managed it once, after all.”

Not done,
Master shook his head, his hand making a staying motion. “Arandur, you say that
the storeroom holds inventions and specialty items. I assume this is well known
in trade circles?”

“It’s common
practice in all of the Fae nations.” A light sparked in Aran’s eyes. “You think
we should air it about that Sevana was gifted with a specialty item?”

“Hardly anyone
knows that we have a solution to the problem. Only the royal families in Sa Kao
and Beren do and they’re keeping that under wraps for now. They simply know
that we’ve found a way to undo the spell and will be able to return their
family members soon. I didn’t tell people
how
.” Master’s expression
suggested he was on the verge of grinning in sheer evil glee. “So what if we
bandy this story about? ‘Artifactor Sevana Warran went to the Fae for help,
found that undoing the spell would be impossible, so the Fae created a
specialty item for her that can do…something amazing.’ Nullify magical spells,
perhaps. We can fine tune that part later. What’s important is that this is
new, it’s one of a kind, and it’s something that our evil Artifactor would
dearly like to lay hands on. Now, we know that he’s a master at getting around
wards and shields. They probably mean little to him now. Which would he prefer
to do, brave Fae territory again or walk into an Artifactor’s home and take
what he wants?”