Siobhan

Month 8 Day 14, Saturday 11:45 p.m.

Siobhan inclined her head gracefully and walked past Professor Lacer as he held the door open for her. His gaze was fixated on her, and she imagined she could feel it hot on her skin as he examined her.

He waved her into his living room, which was surrounded by packed bookcases and sported one lone couch. Only a single lamp was lit, sitting on a small table by one of the couch arms and spilling gentle warm light. It was obviously more of a study than a room set up for entertaining guests. Professor Lacer quickly picked up the stacks of paper that had been sitting on either side of the couch—half-graded homework from his classes, by the looks of it—and motioned for Siobhan to sit.

He hesitated, looking at one of the empty spots on the couch, and then left the room, presumably to bring in a chair.

Siobhan looked around, her back ramrod straight and her hands on her knees. Suddenly, she was even more nervous than she had been on the long walk here. ‘Where do I put my hands?’ she wondered. It seemed unlike the Raven Queen’s persona to sit so primly, but how else could she arrange herself? She tried several different positions in quick succession and was trying to figure out if she could tuck one leg under herself and lounge regally to the side when Professor Lacer returned.

She froze, half leaned over, and ended up slowly tilting onto her side, her head coming down on the couch’s arm. She stared straight ahead, too mortified to meet his gaze as he stood there staring at her with a wooden chair in his hands.

Slowly, so as not to seem too flustered, she pushed herself back upright and crossed one leg over the other. “Do you have anything to drink?” she asked, still refusing to meet his gaze. Maybe if she had something to occupy her hands with, it would help. And sipping on a drink could be a good excuse to stop and think if she needed time to figure out what to say. “Something hot,” she added. The night was still warm, but her palms felt clammy, and she would prefer comfort over refreshment.

“Do you plan to be awake for the remainder of the night?” Professor Lacer asked. While he was gone, he had tied back his hair at the nape of his neck as he usually wore it, and his night clothes were suddenly wrinkle-free, as if he’d free-cast an ironing spell over himself.

Siobhan stared at him. “Yes.”

“How do you take your coffee?”

“Plenty of milk and a dash of sugar.”

His eyes trailed over her face and down to her hands. “I do not have milk. Or sugar. Also no cream.”

Siobhan resisted the urge to ask him why he had even inquired about how she took her coffee, then.

He cleared his throat. “Perhaps some mulled wine instead?”

“That would be acceptable,” she said immediately, regretting that she had brought up the subject in the first place.

The small kitchen was visible from the living room, and Siobhan watched, turning her head to peek over the back of the couch as Professor Lacer puttered around his kitchen. The image was surreal. Obviously, she’d known Thaddeus Lacer existed outside of his classroom, or the battlefield, or whatever it was he did for the Red Guard. But she’d never imagined him doing something so mundane. She almost, almost blurted out, “Do you know how to cook?” as an innocuous conversation starter, but thank the stars she managed to keep her mouth shut until he returned with two steaming mugs filled with dark, spicy liquid.

He took the seat across from her, waiting for her to take a sip.

Instead she said, “I thought it was time we met, Grandmaster Lacer.”

He leaned back, crossing one ankle over the other knee, and sneered slightly. “Long past time, I think. Curious, how you wrote to me denying any near plans for in-person appearances, and yet only a week later made a visit to that buffoon Kiernan.”

Siobhan took a sip of her mulled wine to stall for time, staring at Professor Lacer over the rim as she tried to decipher his expression and tone. ‘Is he upset? How am I supposed to respond to that?’ She swallowed, gave him a small smile, and said, “I needed to speak to him for a very particular reason. I suppose you were very much looking forward to meeting me, then?”

Professor Lacer scoffed and looked away, as if the very notion were ridiculous. “Hardly. I simply find your double standards to be rather rude.”

Siobhan was…pretty sure that wasn’t true. He had expressed interest in meeting her several times, even going so far as mentioning it to her as Sebastien.

“As is showing up in the middle of the night without even the courtesy to warn me in advance,” he added. His tone was hard, but something about the words reminded her of how Theo bickered with Miles.

At least half of Siobhan’s tension evaporated. ‘Is this what Professor Lacer is like around his peers?’ Her smile grew wider. “Let me guess. You are surrounded by imbeciles day and night, and on top of that, all of the children you call your students. Every day that passes without any noticeable progress in accessing the content of Myrddin’s journals is only more galling. A supreme waste of time that my presence much earlier could have alleviated, even if you hoped you would be able to manage it yourself. The High Crown grows ever more impatient and demanding, your peers sink further into desperation, and your patience wears ever thinner.”

She had noticed the signs of his growing irritability in class. As the semester wore on, he’d been snapping at underperforming students and berating stupidity more often than normal. Even she, as Sebastien, had been treading lightly around him.

His expression might have once been inscrutable, but Siobhan had learned to notice the tiny twitches at the corner of his mouth and the way the creases at the corners of his eyes grew slightly deeper. Both signified pleasure, or perhaps amusement. She still wasn’t very good at reading his subtleties. Usually, it happened when she had said something particularly clever or lamented the general state of uselessness that most people walked around in. “That is not an incorrect assessment of the situation,” he said. “Are we to play a guessing game, then, Queen of Ravens?”

Siobhan shook her head. “It is late, and I have had a trying day. Let us set aside games for the moment.”

Professor Lacer tilted his head to the side by a few degrees. “Are you tired? I have heard it said that you do not sleep. You mentioned you planned to be awake for the remainder of the night.”

“I do sleep. Sometimes,” she said. When he stared at her silently, she added, “I slept just yesterday. I know fatigue more intimately than you know the feel of your Conduit, but I am not that kind of tired. Surely you understand weariness? And please, call me Siobhan. You have no idea how tedious I find the obsequiousness and foolish titles.”

“Of course. I suppose you may call me Thaddeus, in that case,” he said, taking a sip of his mulled wine. As she had done earlier, he stared at her over the rim while he did so. “Have you come for your tribute, then? I admit I am surprised it took you so long to retrieve it, though it has remained safe in my custody.”

She leaned back, suddenly curious. “I did not come for that, specifically, but I am curious to know what you have prepared for me. You may present it, if you are ready.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You do not know what it is?” When she shook her head, he stood and moved into the other room. “I had assumed you would have deduced it by now. Unless you are playing a game with me, despite your stated weariness, and I am about to discover I do not have what I think I have.”

Siobhan sipped silently at her wine; she had no idea what he was talking about and did not want to make herself seem stupid.

Professor Lacer brought back a small lead box, presenting it to her with a subtle flourish.

Siobhan took it. Within, a familiar ring was nestled in velvet. “My mother’s ring,” she whispered. She examined it for flaws, but except for the fact that the celerium set within the silver band at the perfect depth to press against the skin was still intact, the only difference from the one she had retrieved from the Gervin manor was the small flaw in this one.

It even still had the rotating base that could be used to activate the Loomis anti-awareness field and chameleon effect embedded into the silver.

Her gaze snapped up to Professor Lacer. “What is this? How do you have it?”

“I take it from your reaction that you did not know I acquired it from Malcolm Gervin’s vault some time ago. I thought it would be a fitting tribute. But I never imagined you would not have learned of the replacement by now. It seemed you had a real interest in…family matters.”

“I did know about the replacement. I just thought it was…someone else.” Siobhan picked up the ring, running her fingers over the familiar tiny scratches in the silver. She slipped it onto the middle finger of her left hand, which she suddenly realized looked quite like her mother’s had, before the woman died. If Ennis hadn’t sold off the celerium from her mother’s heirloom, and maybe hadn’t stolen the book on purpose, did that change anything?If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

But their conversation through the bars of his cell at Harrow Hill repeated in a flash, along with all the other times he had disappointed and endangered her. Those were not misunderstandings or accidents, and Siobhan found that she harbored no regret for her decision to sever that man from her family.

She wanted to try casting with her mother’s ring, so bright and incredibly pure except for that one tiny blemish at the edge. It was rare to find a piece of celerium so small—only finger-width in diameter—that could still channel a Master’s capacity. Of course, knowing more about celerium than she had as a child, she knew that the gem’s size meant it could probably only handle five to six thousand thaums, no matter how pure it was. That capacity could be achieved with about twenty years of dedicated spellcasting.

That was why Naught mothers passed it down to their daughters so early in life. If Siobhan’s mother had only lived a decade or so longer, the ring probably would have become Siobhan’s directly.

Siobhan looked up at Professor Lacer, her eyes narrowed. “You replaced this ring with a diamond one, correct?”

“Yes.”

Siobhan’s voice grew hard and clipped. “And why, pray tell, Thaddeus, did you create fault lines that would cause it to shatter at the first attempt to cast through it? Were you attempting to sabotage me? I would think you, of all people, would understand the danger. A break event does not only jeopardize the thaumaturge, but all those around them.”

Professor Lacer did not look the least bit contrite. “But you are a Naught, correct? As I understand it, your family has some resistance to the overwhelming effects of casting through your own flesh. If your Will were not nimble enough to drop the spell as your Conduit shattered, you would have a backup option.” He watched her unblinkingly, as if he could draw some kind of information from the smallest of her reactions.

That was a more callous response than she ever would have expected from him. “Are you aware of how my mother died?”

“Miakoda Naught? I have heard Ennis Naught’s version of the story.”

“Ennis No-Name,” she corrected immediately. “But if that is the case, you should know that our bloodline does not protect us. Not truly.”

“That may be as you say, but…you are here before me and seem just fine. You are not so weak that such a simple trick was your undoing. And I did leave a hint. The fault lines were noticeable, if you examined the diamond closely.”

Siobhan swallowed. She simply hadn’t assumed someone would have booby-trapped a Conduit.

“I left the ring partly as a message, and partly as a punishment for anyone that might try to use it in your stead. You seem the type that would find that amusing.”

Siobhan stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. “I think you have some misconceptions about my sense of humor.”

“Do I? Well, I look forward to learning more about you.”

“Aren’t you a member of the Red Guard? Do your vows not preclude you from taking such risks with other people’s lives?”

He smiled enigmatically, without the crinkling at the corners of his eyes that indicated the expression was real, and took a long swallow of his wine. “The chance of an Aberrant forming from a break event is quite small, and considering where that would likely be and who it would affect, I deemed the risk acceptable. Gilbratha has several teams on hand to deal with rogue magic incidents, considering the thaumaturge population. Malcolm Gervin’s only child, the only true innocent who was likely to have been affected, is of University age and spends the majority of his time away from home,” he said rather than answering her actual question.

“And the servants? Are they not innocent? Or his wife?”

“I would judge them to hold only different degrees of guilt. And before you ask, the threat beyond that was quite negligible. Even if, in the extreme edge case, the worst were to happen, weak thaumaturges create weak Aberrants.”

“Newton Moore was a weak thaumaturge. And yet the Aberrant formed from him killed several who I would consider to be true innocents.”

Professor Lacer nodded. “Truly regrettable, and I do mean that. If I had the choice, I would have saved them even at risk to myself. But that Aberrant was not an existential threat. And as a statistic, the victims did not even create a blip in the number of deaths that occur in Gilbratha every day.”

Siobhan reached up to run a fingertip over one of the feathers sprouting from her hair. “How would you react if your student deliberately sabotaged a Conduit like that?”

His gaze dropped from her feathers to her eyes. “Are you…chastising me?” he asked, faintly surprised.

“Do you deserve to be chastised?”

His expression fluctuated rapidly for half a second, then smoothed again. He stared down into the contents of his mug for a moment, then said, “Perhaps.”

Just as she was trying to process her surprise, he said, “I take your point, Siobhan.”

The sound of him saying her name—her original name—derailed any other thoughts.

“I have been curious. Why were you there that evening? I don’t believe you caused the Moore boy’s break event on purpose.”

Siobhan let out a long, slow breath and ignored his question. “Let me make another guess, Thaddeus. There is much that I do not know about this world, but I am learning all the time, and it seems to me that the Red Guard, and possibly the Crowns, and maybe even those who run the University, have no true intention to stop break events. Why would that be?”

“Is it possible to stop break events?” he asked, mostly in the leading way that meant it was a rhetorical question, but with a hint of attentiveness in his gaze that suggested he thought she might have a different answer.

Ideas about what the subtext beneath his non-answer might mean spooled off in every direction, but she forcefully reined in her attention. “I suppose the Red Guard might even find weak and easily subdued Aberrants to be beneficial. Quite useful, for the kind of work your agents do. In fact, that leads me to the main reason for my visit. I met four of your colleagues earlier this evening, and while they might have had fun playing with their various toys, I have to say I found the experience quite unpleasant.”

Professor Lacer had been about to take another drink, but instead he set his mug aside and rubbed at his beard. “Are they all still alive?”

“They are. I recognized the backlash effects of the binding magic immediately and kept my response measured, but in the end…” Siobhan sighed, trying to seem as exasperated as possible. “I was forced to activate a particular defensive measure. You see, my grandfather spent quite a while on a project meant to protect me before…well, before he died. He was capable of producing self-charging artifacts, and he wanted something that would be both thorough and versatile. The end result was partially unfinished, but I still found it quite useful.”

Siobhan told him the story of her encounter with the Red Guard earlier that evening, trying to make herself seem as competent as possible. In her version of events, she had been offended by the agent’s words, curious about their strange methods, and then done her best to escape without serious harm to them or herself once she realized the trap she’d fallen into. Unfortunately, the agent had grown frightened and tried to hurt her, forcing her to resort to other methods to protect herself.

“The shadow-familiar spell has quite a few useful aspects, but it really isn’t as powerful or dangerous as it might seem. And I want to be clear that it is magic, and not an Aberrant, because with the way I managed to slip your colleagues’ grasp…” She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose as if she had a headache. “I can already imagine the kind of rumors that might follow.”

Siobhan looked up at Professor Lacer and leaned back, waving a hand derisively. “Surely you have noticed how the average person completely fails to use rational analysis when coming to conclusions, especially about things that surprise or frighten them? It is almost sad how easily people revert back to mysticism and creating fairy tales to explain reality, even when that requires them to discard obvious contradicting facts. And somehow, I doubt that every individual who bears the red shield can be considered an outlier. More likely, they are just more of the same, and even less likely to question themselves because they are so sure they know the truth of this world, the secrets that most people are blind to. People in that position are susceptible to forgetting that they can be wrong, too.”

She was paraphrasing many of the things that he had said to her, so she knew her argument should sound reasonable.

Siobhan raised one eyebrow. “Unless you wish to assure me that members of the Red Guard are trained to actually think, and are not susceptible to the instinctive biases and aversion to real work that stops lesser people from finding the truth, rather than finding an easy answer?”

Professor Lacer smiled at her, without a hint of irony or weariness. He lifted his hand to cover his mouth and then laughed as if he couldn’t hold it in. “I think you know that I cannot argue. I admit, this conversation is…as refreshing as I had hoped. But what would you have me do?”

“Can you act to mitigate their stupidity? Before they work themselves into a tizzy and set out on a hunt? And please instruct them not to accost me so rudely in the future. If they want to communicate with me, they can do so through you.”

“So what should I explain to them about your…shadow-familiar? If I might make a guess of my own, your grandfather’s work is related to the method to encode and encapsulate a consciousness or trap a being within a memory that you were inquiring about.”

Siobhan hesitated before answering with a slight nod.

He smiled again, but this time without the joy. “Well that is truly fascinating.”

“Would it be a problem if you revealed that?”

Professor Lacer rubbed at his chin, looking into the distance. “Not in the way you mean, I think, but there are certain factions and individuals who would likely be enticed by the implications and possibilities.”

Siobhan nodded slowly, involuntarily mimicking him by raising a hand to her chin. “They might want to try creating another Carnagore, or the like.”

“Do you think that might be possible?”

“Of course it is possible. If Myrddin did it, someone else can too. But whether it could be done based on the principles of my shadow-familiar…of that I am not sure. So, will I be safe from harassment if you pass along this information? I refuse to be a test subject.”

“The only way to be totally crossed off the possible hazards list is to allow a comprehensive, in person assessment at one of our field bases. But considering your situation, I would not recommend that course of action for one who values their freedom as much as yourself. While you might not be the kind of threat we are required to deal with, I think several people would find you too valuable to let you slip from their grip once they had you. However, if I arrange myself as your contact and downplay the reality of your shadow-familiar, you might get away with it.”

“If you wish, feel free to explain to them that I can control the form and actions of the shadow, similar to how one would with an illusion spell.”

“You are certain that it has no other capabilities? No dangerous effects? I listened to the Pendragon operatives’ debrief after your retrieval of the people they had kidnapped. In particular, I am referencing the fact that it crawled down a man’s throat and seems to have driven him to a mental break, if not a magical one.”

Siobhan looked down at her shadow, trying to keep the doubt from her face. ‘The being trapped behind the seal…could it possibly have been exerting some influence on the shadow-familiar spell? I have no idea what it’s really capable of. But…I think I would have noticed. I would have felt something. And it was lying about being able to possess my shadow at any time.’

She raised one eyebrow. “It absorbs heat. And it never truly crawled inside that man. It was just pretending. It shrank as it passed his lips, never getting farther than the back of his tongue. It is not actually corporeal. At worst, he might have experienced a headache from the roof of his mouth growing too cold.”

Professor Lacer snorted in amusement. “I see. I will pass that along. I believe you will be able to avoid intense scrutiny. Perhaps not forever, but for a time.”

Siobhan supposed that was the best she could hope for. “Nothing is forever.”