CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #2
“She did!” Clearly wavering, David turned back to Anya. “I can’t possibly teach you all you need to know. Our own education takes years.”
“I don’t need to know all that,” Anya insisted. “Just enough.”
David licked his lips and folded his arms over his chest. “I know you don’t respect what we do, Miss Degen, but–”
“It isn’t that,” she rebuffed, frustrated. “It’s…different. The forest’s magic. It affected all of you, didn’t it?”
No one responded. But she could see their experience haunted them. They, too, now knew things they could never unknow.
“Well,” she went on, “I’ve been living on its edge my whole life. Hunting in it, eating of it, feeding it, protecting it. Surviving it. That magic is in me, too.”
David waved a dismissive hand. “Why don’t you use that, then, and leave us out of it?”
“Because I haven’t the slightest clue how,” she answered readily. “Your magic, the glyphs. They’re not the only way, but they’re a way, a powerful way, to channel it. If you teach me, I can merge them, somehow – your magic and mine – and stand a chance against her.” Probably.
Well. Possibly.
“Say you save him from the witch,” Bertrand put in. “What then? If word gets out that he’s got that power, won’t this all start over?”
“It might,” she assented. “But if the phoenix’s magic can change forms once, it can again. We’ll put it back in the forest. Hide it, like it was hidden all these years. That’s all we can do.”
They were all quiet, considering her words.
Sabina, her voice small, broke the silence. “There are simple spells.”
“That does not sound like a simple spell,” David said.
“If you teach me what I need to know, then I won’t be doing that one on my own,” Anya returned.
With a heavy sigh, David rubbed his forehead. “What are you proposing?”
“I have a plan. All I need from you is to teach me how to write a spell without blowing my hand to pieces.”
“No.” At the reminder of what she risked, he cut his hands through the air, adamant. “No, no. It’s too dangerous. If you botch it–”
“I don’t care. And he won’t either.” She caught his eye and held it. “You know that, don’t you? Know him, better than anyone else.” Her throat burned. “We can’t leave him there. Like that. I can’t.”
David turned his back on the room, approached the foreman’s window. For a long time, he was quiet, watching the wheels and levers spinning, repeating, below them. “I’m coming with you,” he said finally. “You can’t do it alone.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I go alone. I won’t be able to save him if I’m worrying about anyone else.”
“Very well,” he relented. Sensible man; she admired that about him. “I can see you’re determined, and if I let you go without teaching you the basics, you’ll risk doing even greater harm. That would certainly be a violation of our oath, of the highest magnitude.”
“Certainly,” Bertrand agreed, amused.
David ignored him. “But forest magic or no, it will take time to teach you the fundamentals.”
Anya sighed. She’d been afraid of that. “Two days. That’s the best I can do.”
“Two days,” he repeated, the end of the word lost in an incredulous sigh. David exchanged a glance with Sabina, and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I’m running the factory, watching over my sister, my father is ill…”
“I do not mean to be unkind,” Anya said, as gently as she could muster, “but can you not heal him?”
Sabina answered for him, quietly. “Healing illness of the mind is beyond our capabilities.”
“But turning oneself into a magical creature is not,” said Bertrand.
David shot him a withering glare.
“I’m only pointing out the limits of our – your,” he corrected, flexing his wounded hand, “current methodology.”
“The point remains; I have other responsibilities. I’ll need a month, at least.”
“I’ll help, of course,” Sabina put in. “Perrine will not be back for some time.”
“Even so–”
“A week,” Anya countered.
He turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Two,” he offered.
“Deal,” she relented. It pained her to wait so long, but she didn’t want to drain Sabina, and two weeks should be plenty of time for her blood to replenish if they doled it out accordingly.
“Meanwhile, to keep anyone from sniffing around in the Lichtenwald again, we’re going to spread around that the phoenix is dead; that it wasn’t magic after all. ”
With that, she pulled her final bargaining chip out of her bag.
The phoenix’s dressed corpse, plopped on the floor.
Sabina gasped, and the three of them all covered their noses at the ripening smell.
“We’ll show Edgard himself,” she said, feeling disgust deep in the pit of her stomach at the thought. “Get him to call off the hunt for good.”
“With Preule and the Marchess Empire on his back and the nobles ready to riot, that may not be difficult,” said Sabina, still pinching her nose. “By the skies, it is quite pretty, isn’t it?”
“Put it away,” shuddered David, who had thrust a handkerchief over his nose. Anya did, carefully folding it back into her bag.
“One last thing.” Despite the lingering smell of rot, she took a deep breath; though miles less dangerous, she was far less confident in this part of the plan. “When this is over, I’m going to try to reclaim my inheritance. Some of it, anyway.”
All three of them raised their eyebrows.
“It isn’t that shocking,” she said, pulling her braid over her shoulder, fiddling with the end.
“I know I’ll never get back the estate, or the titles, or any of that, and I don’t want it.
But I may be able to get some compensation for the loss – if, say, I had one or two respectable figures of ?bender high society to take up my case, and vouch for my impeccable character. ”
Bertrand’s eyebrows settled back into place. “I see.”
“I don’t know how much it will be. But it’s something. And I promise you each a portion.”
“You don’t have to do that,” David said softly, clearly offended. “I promised you my aid, and I meant it.”
“And I promised Sy mine,” Sabina said. “I didn’t think I could help him, but if I can, I’ll do whatever you need.”
“I don’t care if he lives or dies,” said Bertrand. “But this is a rare opportunity for interdisciplinary research.”
David pressed the bridge of his nose. “Seven skies, will you leave off the put-upon scholar act?”
“Don’t pretend that isn’t your type.” He turned to Anya, a wry expression on his face. “And clearly David’s principles will never let me hear the end of it if I don’t help. Besides; I would like an opportunity to study that phoenix corpse.”
“David is a fine teacher, and I have a few tricks of my own.” Sabina pressed her hands together, leaning forward conspiratorially. “But what do you need from me?”
Feeling lighter than she had in weeks, Anya grinned. “Here’s what I have planned.”