Chapter 5 #3
Gabriel understood, having thought down all the same paths, but they needed to make a plan and not act hastily.
It was an ironic turnabout, as Nic usually was the one to restrain his impulsive actions and emotional volatility.
“Take a breath,” he advised, as she so often did to him.
“We came here for information and now we have some. We’ll make a plan now. ”
Nic took a deep breath that broke into a sob that she quickly contained, then took another, deeper, shuddering breath, and nodded.
“Lord Harahel Emeritus,” she called, still looking up at Gabriel, steadying herself by holding his gaze.
“Are there truly absolutely no Ratsiel couriers or wizards in house?”
“Eh, call me Bertie.” He waved a hand at them.
Nic held Gabriel’s gaze a beat, her mastering impatience over Bertie’s lack of answer obvious. “Thank you, Bertie,” she said smoothly, as if entirely unbothered. “Please call me Nic. And the Ratsiel couriers?”
“Nary a one,” Bertie answered, sounding like this was something they should be delighted to hear.
Nic growled under her breath. “We can’t get a message to anyone; we’re stuck out here in the back of beyond. We could fly out.”
“No.”
She firmed her chin and mouth in a way that boded ill for him, eyes no longer teary, but glittering with determined fury. “I will protect my daughter, Gabriel. I will help my sister. Don’t try to stop me from doing what’s necessary.”
“I’m not stopping you. I will help you. This is my daughter, my sister, too. Let’s find somewhere private and discuss our options.”
“There isn’t time,” she snarled, her magic spiraling hot again. “I feel fine and even if I didn’t, which I do, I’ll risk anything to help Bria and Alise. I’m flying. You can come with me or not.”
So they were doing this with an audience. “Don’t make me remind you that you can’t take alternate form without me.”
She punched her fists to her hips. “So help me, dark arts, Gabriel Phel, if you don’t—”
Bertie snorted loudly. “A fireball for sure there, you’ve got, young lord. Not many a leash can contain that one.”
Nic’s eyes and magic flashed. She started to turn, but Gabriel held her firmly in place, knowing she’d later regret not giving the pretense of being a submissive familiar in front of a high house. Even Han and Iliana watched with wide eyes, and they were accustomed to the freer ways of House Phel.
“You’ll do as you’re told, Familiar,” he said, deliberately letting the sensual command purr through his voice.
They hadn’t spent time in the arcanium since before Bria’s birth.
Gabriel had flat refused to potentially compromise her well-being in the late stages of pregnancy and post-partum, not because Nic hadn’t suggested, even begged.
Typically he only addressed her as “Familiar” inside that safe and private space, where they’d found exquisite pleasure in playing out dominance and submission.
Using it here and now was an exception—and caught her attention enough to cut through her panic.
Her eyes going luminous with arousal, desire replacing her fear and frustration, she relaxed under his grip, sanity flowing into gaze, and nodded. “Yes, Wizard.”
Thank the dark arts. “Iliana, Han, can you give us what you’ve discovered regarding the archives in a quick summation?”
The two familiars looked a little startled, but nodded.
“Good. Lord Emeritus Harahel, can Lady Harahel meet with us before we leave?”
“Bertie,” the old wizard insisted.
“Bertie,” Gabriel corrected himself and offered a smile, learning from Nic’s experience. “Do you think Lady Harahel can meet with us or not?”
“Not,” he answered decisively. “órlaith went off to Convocation Center. House business.”
Nic didn’t move, but her magic seethed. Gabriel understood the feeling, his own magic gathering involuntarily. “Is there a reason, Bertie, that you didn’t mention this to us earlier?”
The ancient wizard looked up, black eyes twinkling. “Sure there is.”
And he said nothing more.
Outside, thunder rumbled menacingly and Nic narrowed her eyes at Gabriel in implicit warning. He nodded and attempted to wrestle back his own frustration.
Iliana, well versed in House Phel idiosyncrasies, said brightly, “Let’s adjourn to the study we’ve been working in and give you that summary. It’s all warded for privacy and silence. That will give you the information and time you need to decide how you want to go from here.”
“And where,” Han added, nodding.
That sounded like an excellent idea.
“So,” Iliana concluded, “once Cillian figured out that these super dull booklets on stuff like wasp larvae and which ballgowns and accessories the then Lady Phel wore to various parties were actually code for Anciela Phel’s experimental data, he had a few copied and took off for Elal to show Alise, hoping that would remind her of what she’d originally set out to do in discovering the House Phel archives. ”
“Brilliant.” Nic continued to study the original journal of Gabriel’s ancestress and her meticulous entries detailing each outfit, the jewels, the fabrics, the dates and times of the fictional social events. “I’m amazed Cillian looked at this twice. Many ladies keep such records.”
Gabriel was sure he hadn’t made a sound, studiously focused on the treatise on wasp larvae, but she slid him a narrow look.
“It won’t do to wear the same thing twice to a given house unless a decent interval has elapsed,” she informed him, archly enough that he wasn’t entirely sure if she was joking.
“Of course not,” he replied neutrally.
“People might think your house is struggling financially,” she pointed out, “and you can’t have that.”
“Absolutely not,” he agreed.
She gave him one last suspicious stare, then turned back to Han and Iliana, leaving Gabriel to his study of the wasp larvae manual, along with one on the effects of spring temperatures and rainfall on the peach harvest over the course of fifty years. Something about that niggled at his memory.
“You can see though,” Iliana was explaining with excitement to Nic, “how the dates and times could easily indicate experiments, with the types of jewels and fabrics indicating outcome.”
“It’s very clever,” Nic allowed, “and impenetrable. How can we ever know what a jewel or fabric corresponds to?”
“Or a certain kind of wasp compared to rainfall and temperature resulting in a given price for peaches,” Gabriel said, that sense of something just beyond his memory teasing him.
“That’s why Han and I stayed behind,” Iliana explained, “to look through all of this for a key. Some kind of translation tool that tells us that silk means six or that a dozen peaches means an MP score of nine or something like that.”
“Except it probably won’t be straightforward as that,” Han said wearily. “We don’t know what it would look like except that we’re pretty sure we haven’t found it yet.”
“I’m frankly amazed you were able to discover this much,” Nic said. “How would anyone look at a booklet on peach harvests and think it was anything but deadly dull, obsolete farmer’s records?”
“Even worse with ballgowns,” Gabriel retorted, knowing that last bit had been directed at him. Nic gave him a sunny, innocent smile. A relief that, as it indicated she was regaining her usual equilibrium.
“Cillian deduced that the earliest books hidden away must have been the most important. Critical enough that Anciela thought to collaborate with a librarian wizard to hide the documents in a folded space to protect even the encrypted data after that disastrous meeting with the committee,” Han explained.
He’d shown them the meeting minutes secreted in the folded archive, which indicated the explosive findings Anciela had brought to the Convocation: that familiars weren’t incapable of wielding their own magic and becoming wizards.
And that Anciela had discovered some technique to make that happen.
“Amazing to think that all this time we assumed it was House Phel enemies who hid the archives,” Nic commented, “and not our own people preserving information for us.”
“Well, it’s difficult to know what the motives were for the initial concealment,” Han said thoughtfully.
“We’re only guessing here. And we cannot overlook that our enemies did ultimately take over maintaining that concealment.
House Hanneil went to lengths to keep Alise and Cillian from finding and removing that archive. ”
“But did they know what was in it?” Nic asked.
“Maybe?” Han tapped a finger on his lip. “It seems the House Phel enemies had to have an idea that Anciela had discovered a method for removing whatever block keeps familiars from working magic—enough of a concern to want to stop anyone else from ever finding out.”
“It wouldn’t take much to give wizards a concern about that,” Nic commented drily. “The entire power structure of the Convocation rests on that supposedly immutable fact.”
“But Cillian theorizes,” Illiana put in, “that the librarian wizard recruits who came along later didn’t know why they were hiding these materials. They just took any- and everything that referenced House Phel and stuck it in the folded archive.”
“Following orders with no thought or sense behind it,” Han said in bitter disapproval.
“How recently?” Gabriel asked.
Han and Iliana paused, clearly following his thought. “We’d have to ask Cillian,” Han said slowly. “He’d know for sure, with his library magic, but there is an index.”
“I worked on that for a while,” Iliana said, producing the stack of paper, “before I switched to looking for the key. Cillian started the index with the first books he extracted from the archive.”
Nic looked at the first page, then scanned the books stacked around the study on every available surface. “Where is this one?” She put her finger on the first entry.
“Ummm.” Iliana looked around, counting on her fingers, then walked to one of the neat piles. “Here. Cillian was upset that we stacked them this way, but this study has no shelves and we, of course, can’t let any of these books out of the room until we’re sure they present no danger.”
“Hidden traps and so forth,” Han explained. “Lady Harahel was insistent.”
Nic trailed a finger down the stack, checking the spines. “Several of these are recent publications,” she noted. “Within the last year.”
“My index includes the publication dates,” Iliana said, sounding a little put out.
Nic smiled at her. “Just being thorough.” She slid one out, deftly without disturbing the pile. “Here’s the Convocation record of your application to reinstate House Phel, for example.” She held it up, meeting Gabriel’s gaze. “You know what this means.”
He nodded slowly, soberly, and feeling a spark of keen excitement, an avenue to take action. “Whoever was most recently tasked with hiding documents is still working in the Convocation Archives. Or was, up until very recently.”
Iliana opened and closed her mouth in shock. “Why didn’t Cillian think of that?”
Han grimaced. “He did. I’ll bet you anything he did.”
“But house loyalty would prompt him to keep that quiet,” Nic said.
“Except he’d go to his house head, wouldn’t he?” Gabriel asked her. “He’d have discussed this with órlaith Harahel.”
“Lady of his house and his grandmother,” Nic agreed with resignation. “Who insisted on keeping this project secret from the rest of her house and has, perhaps not so coincidentally, gone off to Convocation Center.”
“If it were me,” Gabriel said slowly, “I would want to find who it was from my house that was betraying their contract and endangering us all by risking the wrath of the Convocation.”
“Yes.” Nic sighed. “Looks like we need to go to Convocation Center. If we’re in luck, that’s where Alise and Cillian will go, too.”
“No haring off to Elal along the way?” Gabriel asked, just to be sure.
“As I have no wish to see my father and my husband battle to the death, no,” she answered acerbically.
“Will you worry about Bria too much?”
“No. Yes.” She looked unhappy but resigned. “You’re right. Bria is as safe at House Phel as anyone can make her. She’s safest there and we need to do this.”
“Han and Iliana?” Gabriel asked, letting that particular conversational thread die on its own. “Coming or staying?”
They barely had to check with each other. “We’re coming,” Iliana said, speaking for both of them. “I don’t think the key is here. We don’t, that is.”
“We’ve been discussing it as we searched. Why hide the key in the same place as the encrypted documents?” Han asked. “It must be somewhere else.”
“Like in Convocation Archives,” Iliana said with renewed enthusiasm.
“Only maybe misfiled in some way,” Han added. “More misdirection.”
“Anyway,” Iliana said, efficiently stacking documents. “All of this can wait here. It’s safer here, locked and warded, than anywhere else. We’re coming with you.”
“I’m coming, too,” said Lord Emeritus Harahel.
Everyone jumped out of their skin. The ancient wizard had simply appeared inside the room without a buzz of warning from the wards, and apparently having soundlessly opened a locked door that he shouldn’t have been able to even knock on. He laughed gleefully at their expressions.
“This was my house first,” he reminded them.