Chapter 24
Cillian hated to break away from the work.
He was making actual progress. After all this time of beating his head against the wall of Anciela’s multiply encoded legacy, the progress felt like finally being able to breathe.
The keys had all been translated and the ciphers were working to decrypt the mountains of data and results.
It turned out the pamphlets on peach production that had seemed so off to Gabriel were the summaries of Anciela’s final findings.
Since those were the critical pieces of information to take to the council, the others who would be handling the politics had been concentrating there.
It was still a lot to work through, complicated by the fact that only one, perhaps two, people could work on any single document at a time.
Cillian, himself, had been rather imperiously assigned by Jadren to work on the pamphlets that appeared to delineate Anciela’s methods.
To be fair, Jadren knew more than any of them about scientific method and the experimental process—even if it had been from the lens of being the subject of those experiments.
Apparently Katica El-Adrel, whether oblivious to Jadren’s pain or sadistically enjoying it, had shared a great deal of her thoughts with him, even inviting his input from time to time.
The thought made Cillian feel ill and Jadren had certainly taken on a greenish tinge while discussing it—but he’d also pointed out, in no uncertain terms, that what they most needed to be accurately decrypted and recorded was the how of turning familiars into wizards.
Regardless of all else, they needed that information so Asa and the others could begin testing.
Everyone agreed that person had to be Cillian, which only intensified his desire to keep working through the night.
It was an uncomfortable feeling, having everyone waiting on him, poised to act and implicitly trusting the information he gave them.
He fretted that there might be critical pieces in the documents still at House Harahel that hadn’t gotten copied, but nothing to be done about it right at that moment—except perhaps appeal to his grandmother to transport the files in their entirety to Convocation Center, preferably as fast as possible.
So, he’d agreed to her request for a private meeting, all the others taking the opportunity to grab some sleep.
Their accuracy would be improved by proper rest. Alise had given him the hairy eyeball and said that applied to him, too, and he’d agreed to come to bed as soon as he spoke with his grandmother.
Gabriel had sided with Cillian, though somewhat reluctantly, agreeing that Lady Harahel would be far more likely to tell her grandson about who’d been the newest archivist to contribute to the folded archive, than to tell Lord and Lady Phel.
He’d suspected that órlaith hadn’t been transparent when he’d briefly sat in on interviews, so he’d left Bertie to assist, hoping Lord Emeritus Harahel would play them fair.
Cillian had assured Gabriel—and the rest—that his grandmother was cagey and paranoid by nature and nurture. She habitually kept house secrets, regardless of their import to anyone else, but she wasn’t malicious. She would be on the side of right with the rest of them.
Still, he put away the moonsilver key books, and covered up any information that could be observed with a casual glance. It made sense to meet with Lady Harahel in the shielded room, but that didn’t mean he was ready to expose the fruits of their hard labor yet.
He opened the door at her knock, admitting his grandmother. Statuesque and imposing, órlaith Harahel gave the room a good, long, sweeping look, making Cillian glad he’d set anything pertinent out of sight.
“I didn’t give you permission to leave House Harahel,” she informed him before saying anything else.
“You weren’t there to ask,” he replied mildly.
“Lady Harahel,” she corrected, after a long moment.
Oh, so that was to be the way of it. “You wished to speak with me, Lady Harahel?” he asked, gesturing to a table with two chairs set away from the main work area.
She glanced, rather longingly, Cillian thought, at the table of stacked documents, but followed his lead to the chairs. Settling herself into one, she crossed her legs and gave him a piercing look. “So,” she said, whirling her fingers in the air in a come-along motion, “give me your report.”
“I was under the impression that you were going to tell me what you found from the interviews,” he countered, feeling uneasy for no good reason.
She huffed impatiently. “What I have or have not discovered falls under my private aegis as Lady Harahel. You are not privy to house business unless and until you agree to be my heir, which will require you to take certain vows of discretion.”
Increasingly, Cillian worried about what his grandmother—and more importantly, in her role as the head of his house—was getting at with this interview.
It seemed very odd. “And House Phel? What about your responsibility to them to report what you’ve discovered regarding the systematic removal and concealment of the archives related to their house? ”
She waved that off. “That’s the responsibility of Convocation Archives. They employ Harahel wizards and thus they—and you, as you should recall—become the responsibility of Convocation Center.”
He paused a moment, feeling as if he’d stepped into a maze of twisted reasoning. “Wait, which am I—your minion or an employee of the Convocation?”
“Your status is quite unclear at the moment, isn’t it, Cillian?
” She pierced him with sharp black eyes that were all high-house wizard.
“You have not obeyed me as a minion of my house, nor are you actually employed by Convocation Academy any longer. You seem to be more of a hanger-on to a dangerous crowd. Especially that Elal girl. You are young, but you should know by now that the world is not kind to a houseless wizard.”
Cillian rather suspected that Tandiya Uriel, if pressed, would claim him as an employee, rather than allow him to be considered adrift and houseless.
For that matter, he was certain Nic and Gabriel would immediately take him on if his legal status was called into question.
House Phel had already gained a reputation for taking in the iconoclasts and outcasts.
It rather amused him, the staid, quiet librarian, to qualify for those ranks.
But his grandmother wasn’t going to press that matter, he felt sure. This was about Alise.
And about something else even more fraught.
He played along. “I don’t mean to get myself into trouble like this,” he said humbly, averting his gaze as if ashamed, but watching her in his peripheral vision. “I don’t quite know how I get drawn in, but then I am and I don’t see a way out.”
She smiled in satisfaction, as she wouldn’t have, he thought, had she known he was watching for it.
“You’ve always been vulnerable to these beautiful wizard girls in apparent distress,” she said soothingly, sliding back into the nurturing grandmother he’d known all his life.
“First Serafina, now Alise. But these girls are not in the least helpless. They’re using you, twisting you around and getting you to humiliate yourself by serving their whims like you’re their familiar. ”
He had to bite back the retort that there was nothing wrong with being a strong partner to a wizard, nor anything humiliating about being a familiar.
As much as House Harahel disdained the use of familiars—though he suspected that moral position would change if Harahel wizards truly needed the extra punch of magic—his grandmother would likely be ashamed of him offering to effectively be Alise’s familiar, to share his magic with her whenever she needed.
Never mind that Alise had unstintingly given her magic to him when he needed it most. Lady Harahel wouldn’t see it that way.
In her eyes, Alise was ever and always an Elal predator.
But that wasn’t the only thing going on here.
He worried that this conversation had the stink of Hanneil manipulation and he’d been the one to let it in the room.
He regretted now, the privacy that prevented him from accessing help.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said miserably, which was a lie.
Her next words proved it. “I’ll help you, boy.
” She clasped his shoulder with a firm grip.
“I can help you understand your findings. Let’s go through the data and I’ll counsel you on what to do next.
I know that Elal girl has her claws deep into you, but you don’t need to be her puppet any longer.
I helped to extract you from Serafina’s clutches; I’ll help you get out of this.
You can trust me.” She gave him one more squeeze, then pushed to her feet and strode toward the worktable.
Cillian fancied he could see the greed in the lines of her posture, which seemed unlikely, though her library magic reached out with palpable avidity.
What was certain was that he could not trust her.
But he also wasn’t sure how to stop her, other than bodily throwing himself across the documents she’d eagerly begun sifting through.
The door burst open and Alise entered, seeming much larger than her usual diminutive self.
A spirit boundary swirled around her and her wizard-black eyes practically sparked with her powerful magic.
She might not have direct access to the Elal arcanium at the moment, but that tutelage with her father had changed her, had somehow expanded her ability to absorb and retain magic.
Han and Iliana had given to her generously—and Nic and Seliah had offered—but Alise also seemed to have increased her native ability to generate magic.