Twenty-Three - Isabel
???
I carried theunconscious duke to the spire room above the library. There I settled on the chaise, his body a warm weight on my lap. I could have set him on the cushion next to me, or even the chair across the room, but that felt callous. I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone the instant he woke.
He would be dealing with so many disappointments, the least I could do was make him comfortable.
I called in the journal with my notes from interviewing Marc and read over his answers. I recalled how he had shaded the truth with each word. My left hand absently stroked soft fur. Felix would not be happy when he heard my report. Marc’s deceptions had begun well before Lady Cecily cursed the duke.
I still had more theories than straight answers, but I felt confident I had pieced together something close to the truth. Marc knew how Cecily had gained her node-tie. And though he hadn’t expected to find Felix cursed into the form of a cat, he must have known when Cecily planned to act. He had likely told her how to create a Truth. The answer to how she had used the node would be in one of the scrolls Marc had never shown Felix, I was sure of it.
We needed to see those scrolls.
Felix stirred in my lap, his claws unsheathing and pricking me through my skirts.
“Ow,” I told him mildly, lifting my hand from his back.
His head slowly came up and his claws retracted. “Isa?”
“Who else?”
“Given that I’m not one-hundred percent sure I’m not dreaming, you could be anybody.”
“Backlash headaches are the stuff of nightmares.” I set my journal on the table next to me. “How are you feeling? I’d call you in a mug of willow bark tea, but I’m not sure if it is safe for cats.”
He started to stand, then winced and collapsed back against my lap. “Marc is still locked up.”
“Did you just use magic to check on him? If you keep using power, it will take you longer to recover.”
“It was more of an instinctive response than a conscious decision to check on him. How long have I been out?”
I glanced at the clock. “Less than an hour.”
While he had been unconscious, I had mulled over my thoughts in peace, but now that he was awake, the power binding me to the contract constricted. “We need the scrolls Marc found.”
“I know. The more Truths we study, the higher our chances of reversing the curse.”
“I think one of the scrolls he is hiding from you explains how Lady Cecily accessed the node power. I think Marc is behind her actions.”
“He hasn’t just been hiding things from me, but he instigated the curse itself? To what end?”
“I don’t know, though I do think you ending up as a cat was not a part of the original plan. Either Cecily went off script or they didn’t understand what they were doing with the curse.” I stroked my hand through his fur, wishing the physical comfort could lessen the betrayal. I couldn’t even give Felix the courtesy of letting him come to terms with my pronouncement, not with the node power buzzing against my skin, demanding I act.
I sighed. “You need to make Marc sign a new contract.”
“I can’t coerce a signature. What’s to make him sign anything with terms in my favor? You heard him before; he isn’t concerned about being locked up.”
“No, but he is overconfident. If you offer him his freedom in exchange for a contract that isn’t obviously in your favor, he might take the bait.”
“Can you write a contract that gets me what I need that Marc would still sign?”
My hand stilled. “Me?”
Felix twisted enough to look up at me. “You’ve seen the contract I signed with Marc. Spotting loopholes is not my strength. You’ll do a much better job than I.”
He spoke so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t doubt his sincerity. The duke trusted me to craft a critical contract without reservation. It was so different from what I dealt with in Leort I didn’t even know how to respond. Every day spent with Felix was a new experience, triggering unfamiliar emotions.
I grounded myself with the mundane, picking up my journal and wishing I hadn’t left my spelled pen in Felix’s office. “This will be tricky. Without knowing what Marc is hiding, it is harder to judge what will make him balk. It’s going to take time to get the contract right.”
Felix narrowed his eyes at the journal. “That’s fine. I don’t mind making Marc wait a day or two. You don’t need to rush.”
“I am contractually obligated to do what I can to break the curse during the day. Much as I’d like to relax, I need to get started, even if I am not rushing.”
“I really am sorry about that.”
“I know.” I ran my fingers through his fur one last time, then gently set him on the chaise as I stood up. I missed the warm weight of him immediately. “I’m going to use your office. You shouldn’t mess with any magic for the rest of the day, so do you want me to summon anything for you before I go?”
He stood up, his movements slow but steady. “I’m coming with you.”
“I thought you trusted me to write the contract myself? You should stay here and rest.”
“I do trust you. I’m not planning to look over your shoulder as you work. But I can rest just as easily in my office. Besides, that way, if I need anything, I can ask you instead of summoning it myself.”
He made that final argument with his nose in the air, the words an arrogant drawl that would have left me sputtering only a few days ago. I was learning to read the duke even without my power, though. He didn’t want to be alone but refused to admit it.
I picked him up without comment, knowing that the walk down three flights of stairs would be torture with the backlash headache plaguing him. He draped his front paws over my shoulder and purred.
???
“There are enoughheretofores, thereins, and parties of the first part in this contract that I don’t even know what it is saying.” Felix tapped a claw against my latest draft of the contract I wanted to offer Marc.
I had spent hours yesterday and today working on it. I started with a basic exchange—Marc’s freedom for the scrolls he had found that might help Felix break the curse—then I added meaningless embellishments and tweaked the language until I had something that might fool the secretary into believing he had the upper hand.
“Are you positive it doesn’t say that I will let Marc go if he only admits to hiding scrolls from me?” Felix continued.
I pointed to a critical section. “Read this bit again, remembering that the party of the second part is Lady Cecily, not you.”
I had fooled the duke, but would Marc make the same mistake?
Felix looked from the contract to me. “You are brilliant. Let’s bring Marc in and see what he thinks.”
“I’ll summon him,” I said quickly. Felix had mostly recovered from the magical backlash that had knocked him unconscious the day before, but I wanted him to avoid using magic a little longer. He insisted he could invoke the castle’s Truths, but I had seen him wince after calling in our midday meal.
He hadn’t realized that he wasn’t on his own anymore. I could help. I wanted to help.
I hummed, matching the sound to the correct strand of power, and pulled the secretary into the office. He must have been sitting in his room, because he toppled over, completely unbalanced, when he materialized.
Neither Felix nor I said anything, waiting for him to scramble to his feet.
Once standing, Marc smoothed down his jacket—even locked in his room for over a day, he was still dressed impeccably. He ignored me and addressed Felix where he sat on the corner of the desk. “I take it you have realized you need me far more than I need you? Out of fish already and need someone to go into Leort to buy supplies? Or did your truth-reader get lost in the archives for a few hours and you realized I am the only one who has a chance of finding anything?”
“I decided it was time to offer you a deal.” Felix radiated unconcern. “You have found scrolls that I want. I will let you leave my castle in exchange for those scrolls.”
“I’m not interested in your deal.”
“You haven’t even read the terms of the agreement.”
Marc saw the contract sitting in front of me and scoffed. “You think I’ll sign a contract?”
I turned the paper around and pushed it across the desk toward him. “Read it. The duke wants to know about the scrolls. He is willing to offer you not only freedom but also immunity from prosecution in return.”
My phrasing—and Marc’s ego—were enough to convince him to look at the paper. Hopefully, he’d fall for my ruse and only see what he expected, the proof of my inadequacy. The contract was long enough that he picked it up, carrying it with him to the chair across from the desk.
He read slowly, and I had to concentrate on not fidgeting while I waited for him to finish. Felix’s tail began to twitch, and I rested my hand on his back. He stilled.
Finally, Marc returned the contract to the desk. “Change the order of the second and third sentences in the first clause, and I’ll sign it.”
I knew without looking that the change would negate everything I had tried to accomplish with the contract. My fingers tightened on Felix, and he shook his head. “No.”
“Then I won’t sign.”
“Why don’t we write a contract together?” I suggested. Felix needed Marc to sign a contract. I had to trick him into complacency. Perhaps giving him a say in how it was crafted would allow me a chance to slip something in without him scrutinizing it too closely. “We might be able to find terms that satisfy everyone.”
Marc leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I can hardly object to making the attempt. Give me a fresh sheet of paper. I’ll start with my terms.”
I pulled a sheet of paper from the desk drawer and gestured for Marc to make use of the normal pen and inkwell. He wrote quickly, not bothering with archaic contractual language to disguise his intent.
I read over his terms and began crossing bits out and adding others. It didn’t even occur to me to ask Felix for his opinion first.
The paper went back and forth until it was mostly a mess of scratched out lines with only a few words here and there left untouched. Marc didn’t bother to try to hide any favorable terms for himself, he simply rejected any terms that favored the duke. Accepting the contract back for the seventh time, I thought about exactly which clauses he had crossed out. Then I thought about what Felix needed.
My pen hovered over the paper, an idea forming. Marc would never sign a contract that required him to hand over the scrolls he had found to Felix. He was toying with us, pretending he might eventually sign, while pushing to see if I might make a mistake. If I offered him a contract with a loophole in his favor, he’d sign it.
“This is getting hard to follow. Let me copy over the bits that neither of us has rejected.” I pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and began writing. I pulled phrases from Marc’s version, piecing together the mess we had made into a single, simple contract. One that had two new terms. The first was an extra guarantee for Marc’s freedom to leave the castle, promising him that Felix would not use Rose Castle magic to pull him back once he departed. The second was a variation on a clause Marc had tried and I had rejected earlier.
It was a risk to only require him to divulge the location of a single scroll. I had to believe, based on his attempt to work a similar clause into the contract earlier, that he wasn’t worried about the contents of all the scrolls he had found falling into Felix’s hands. I had made sure that the scroll in question would be the one most likely to help us understand the curse. But if I wanted to fool Marc, asking for all the scrolls wouldn’t work.
“Here.” I passed the contract to the secretary. “Only one scroll, and plenty of assurances for your freedom once you collect it for His Grace. Is that good enough?”
Marc read over the terms. I knew the instant he saw the loophole I had snuck into the final sentence. He reread the last section, no doubt looking to see if I had left him a second loophole, allowing him to pull a less useful scroll in order to fulfill his end of the deal. Finally, the lure of the opening I had left overruled his caution.
“I’ll sign this.”
Felix walked closer to Marc and dipped a claw in the open inkwell. “Let’s get this done with, then.”
I think the secretary and I both held our breaths as he signed his name without taking the time to read over the contract. Marc probably felt smug that the duke was signing a flawed contract. He probably relished the idea of Felix railing at me in the aftermath.
All I could think about was how much trust Felix had just shown. He knew I couldn’t work against him, but that didn’t guarantee that the contract I wrote was faultless. Yet he would pass it through the node, letting the magic bind him to the terms without even looking to see what they were.
It was foolish.
It was exhilarating.
An emotion I couldn’t name shivered through me. It wasn’t gratitude or pleasure, though they were a part of it. It was at once complex and simple. Something to puzzle over.
But not now. Marc added his own signature to the contract, plucked it from the table, and stood. “Shall we go to the great hall and make this official?”