Chapter Fourteen
The answers came back the next day, Captain Harewood’s and Sister Louise’s together in the mid-morning, and the duke’s just before noon.
Jasper had been out in the open all morning, working on combat magic. His efforts while he was still in dragon form had been focused on changing back, and while he had also vastly improved his translocation skills, that had been a byproduct of keeping Delia comfortable.
Combat magic seemed the next logical skill to master in both dragon and human form. From the sounds of it, Uncle Percy was gone, but Jasper was convinced there were traitors in London, and he wanted to be certain he could adequately protect Delia.
He broke off his exercises to take Delia her letter. She was treating him with a measure of reserve, but at least she was still talking to him. He would open the letter from Harewood and let her read it, and hope she would do likewise with Sister Louise’s message.
She was sitting in the sun by the entrance to the cavern, reading one of the books he’d fetched for her. “Sister Louise’s letter,” he said, handing it over.
She took it eagerly.
“I have one from Harewood,” he offered. It was a single sheet, folded into three. He read it through. Nothing unexpected.
Delia’s letter was longer, but she soon looked up from it, relief evident in both her face and her voice. “They are safe,” she said.
“Harewood says, ‘Pleased to hear you are both safe. After half the castle saw you change and carry Miss N. away, we worried. With Lord P. dead, the Prince of Wales and the Council of Mages ordered me to bring Miss N.’s charges to London. Sister L. and her nuns are with me.’” Carefully phrased to avoid naming Jasper as a dragon lord, or Sapphire as a killer.
As he had hoped, Delia responded in kind, paraphrasing the nun’s letter.
“Sister Louise says that her order has agreed to take charge of Sapphire and the babies. Polly, too. They are going to the English motherhouse in London.” She frowned slightly, and Jasper wondered what about that bothered her.
Was it that she had lost her role as a unicorn maiden?
“I’m sorry, Delia,” he said. “Everything is changing for you. Again.”
To his surprise, she laughed—a somewhat wry laugh, but amused, nonetheless.
“One might say I brought it on myself. You know the saying, ‘Be careful what you wish for?’ I wished for adventure, Jasper, and look what has happened! First, becoming the unicorn’s maiden, then finding out I was a catalyst, and now this. ”
“And was it what you wanted?” Jasper asked, somewhat warily.
She sighed. When she spoke, she looked away into the middle distance, and seemed to be addressing herself rather than him.
“I think I didn’t know what I wanted. As it turned out, it was more of the same.
People telling me where I could go, what I needed to do, what I ought to want.
And how it was my duty and obligation. Just once…
just one single time, I would like to have a choice.
That is what I want. Is that too much to ask? ”
Oh, help. Jasper thought back to yesterday’s proposal. The hole he had dug for himself was bigger than he had thought. “It is not too much,” he said. And then added, after a moment’s thought, “We are all bound by obligation, but within the constraints of that, we should be free.”
She smiled, sadly. “Women—at least women without magic—are seldom free.”
Jasper had never given the lives of women much thought, a fact that shamed him even as she spoke. He instantly saw she was right, though. “Women with magic have power,” he commented. “Men who don’t respect that soon learn better.”
That remark earned him a look of approval. “Except me,” she said. “I have a magical gift I can neither control nor direct.” She waved toward the book she had set down when he gave her the letter. “I’ve found nothing to say one way or the other whether other catalysts could manage their gift.”
Which, he realized, made her a target for the Welsh mage and others who wanted to benefit from her gift. Did she think he was one of them? “I can teach you the exercises young mages are taught,” he offered. “Sensing power. Directing power. Modulating power. They may help.”
He had his reward in a dazzling smile. “Would you? Is it allowed?”
“We can start now, if you wish,” Jasper offered. “Put your book away and come with me.” He didn’t know if she truly could learn to manage her gift, but the implications of a catalyst being able to direct her power were intriguing.
If nothing else, working together as student and teacher might bring them closer.
*
Delia had never imagined her singing lessons would be the first step in learning magic, but Jasper’s first exercise involved breathing in a measured and controlled fashion, and Delia had been practicing that since she was fourteen.
With a word of praise, Jasper moved on to lesson two, and again, she found it was something she could already do. “Sensing the presence of magic is essential to managing it,” Jasper said, which should have been obvious, but Delia had never thought of it before.
“I think I already do this,” she said. “Is it a kind of shimmer that happens when you use your gift? Or when a spelled object is activated?”
His eyes sharpened. “You see a kind of shimmer?”
“Yes, of different colors. Yours is emerald green with gold sparkles, and much brighter now than it was before you first changed, and it was always clearer and stronger than Captain Harewood’s. His is a sort of rose pink.”
“You see other mages’ magic, too?”
“Anyone using a gift,” Delia confirmed. “And magical beasts glow all the time. Isn’t that normal?”
Jasper shook his head. “I have never heard of people being able to see magic use. Auras, yes. Even some thaumatypica can see auras. But not the actual magic. Unless it is something visible, like a mage bolt.”
Delia was amazed. She had always been able to see the shimmer of magic use. It did not seem very useful, so she had largely ignored it, and she had assumed that everyone else was doing likewise.
Certainly, on the occasions she had told someone else, they had appeared unsurprised—though when she thought back to one or two of those, their comments might have meant they simply didn’t believe her.
Like the governess who stood with her to watch her father spell the seed grain against rot, weeds, and pests, who had said, “Shush, Delia. Your father needs silence while he works.”
Or her mother, when they were watching Madame Greensmith spell the pantry against rats and cockroaches. Mama had said, impatiently, “Yes, yes, Cordelia. But I do not have time for that now.”
Since confiding in others was discouraged, she gave up bothering.
“That is a real advantage,” Jasper said, now. “Controlling one’s breathing and sensing magic are the foundation of all spells. Can you ‘see’ your own gift? Because you must sense it to manage it.”
“No,” Delia said absently, her mind absorbed with another question. So, all mages must learn to sense spells, but only I can see them. And only in other people. Useless, as I always thought. “How do you and other magic users sense spells, then, if you don’t see them?”
“There’s another sense,” Jasper answered.
“It is not quite seeing, touching, smelling, hearing or tasting, but it somehow has the characteristics of two or three of those. It is different for each mage. To me, magic is an elusive combination of a taste, a smell, and a sight. Captain Harewood says he can feel it and hear it. A brush across the skin, an elusive fragrance. Give me a minute, please.”
He was frowning in thought. Delia had more questions, but he had asked for a minute, so she remained quiet. Then he nodded, as if coming to a conclusion. “Delia, is there a shimmer on the world around you, even a faint one, when someone isn’t using their gift?”
Is there? Delia hadn’t thought about it. But she looked around her, and concentrated. “I suppose so, but nothing unusual. Everything always has a faint shine to it, like a magical beast’s glow but much fainter.”
“Not to me,” Jasper told her. “I don’t sense magic unless someone is using their gift, or unless a magical beast is present.
Can we try something? Just stand there. It occurs to me that perhaps you can see your gift in action but you don’t know that is why the world is shining, because it always does, for you.
I’m going to walk away to the other end of our field, and see if I can sense your gift. ”
He suited action to word and strode off in the opposite direction to the cavern to the far end of the field about three hundred paces away.
Delia waited. She had been discounting the idea that being a catalyst meant she was magically gifted.
It seemed more something that happened around her rather than something she did.
But if she was actually seeing it in action—if a man like Jasper, a dragon lord, could sense it as magic—perhaps she really was working magic, albeit without any consciousness or control.
In fact, Jasper said that sensing magic was itself a gift, and she had always been able to do that. Could it be true? Had she and her family been ignoring a true magical gift her entire life?
*
Delia had a unique magical signature, so subtle he had not noticed it in all this time. He could best compare the mage trace to aniseed with undertones of other spices and a hint of the scent of violets. But that last might just be her perfume.
Until now, Jasper had convinced himself the whole sensation was partly her perfume and partly imagination, because it didn’t behave like the sensation of a magical gift being exercised.
It didn’t come and go, rising from nothing to a strong signature and then fading away to nothing again.
It was always there, always subtle, always steady.