Her first inclination—that it would be harder—proved to be correct.
It wasn’t anything like a one-shot fight. Prepping for Zaffi, for instance, and then defeating him had taken a few days. Fighting Kovel Below was a matter of driving herself hard all day with magical work and physical fighting, and then resting for eight hours only to get up the next morning and do it all over again. For three months. Straight. To say they were all exhausted by the end of the process was an understatement.
Wrangling back Kovel Below was repetitious, and harrowing, and tedious. Sometimes she saw their victory in inches and feet of ground reclaimed. Other days she felt they’d never get through it all.
Although seeing Veles pop up with an unconscious Gong dragged behind him like a kill trophy—that had put a smile on her face the rest of the day. Veles had shown no mercy to the god and had promised them all that Gong would not rise again.
And then he’d promptly dropped Gong like the decaying carcass he was and dove right into helping them restore the city back to rights. And they’d needed the help. The hunting god had taken to fighting alongside them as if he were an old friend. To Shunlei, he was. Nothing faced those two and lived to tell the tale of it afterwards. Veles had been very proactive in putting things back to rights, and some of the creatures from Below could only have been defeated by a god.
He also seemed to have a lot of fun, but that was a side benefit.
Mei Li walked through the streets of Kovel with a smile on her face. Defeating Kovel Below had been a challenge and a half, but they’d succeeded. It had taken a great deal of teamwork. Without everyone working so hard, there was no way Kovel would have been restored. Tomes or not, Mei Li would have been here for the next twenty years if she’d been working by herself. Abe, alone, was a huge benefit she hadn’t seen coming. She was over the moon to have him back, no question. Mei Li slept better knowing Abe was finally back with them. She’d missed him dearly.
Emotions aside, he was precisely the help she’d needed to tackle the insanity that was Kovel.
With Kovel Below now firmly sealed once more, the city’s inhabitants had thronged back in. There was some reconstruction going on, of course, as quite a few buildings had been smashed in various incidents. A few things had burned and needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. As Mei Li walked from the market, she heard the sounds of construction going on all around her, saws cutting into fresh wood, the hammering of nails.
And while she witnessed some sorrow as people reflected on what had been lost, she saw just as many smiles. They were all relieved to be home again, even if home wasn’t in the best of shape. Many had feared this day might not come at all.
They’d only moved back in this very week. The market didn’t have much to it—the basics and little else—but Mei Li had found some sweet buns, and that was all she’d been craving. She returned to the inn with a skip in her step, anticipation making her mouth water.
“Tomes!”
She turned at the hail, her foot barely through the inn door. “Oh, Prince Cavanaugh, Prince Pari. Hello.”
“We wanted to catch you before we left,” Prince Pari told her, gesturing for her to come sit at their table. “Bai has offered to fly us home tomorrow.”
“That was very good of him.” She would around the tables in the main room and came to sit at theirs, seeing that they’d been waiting long enough to be served tea, still steaming in the mugs.
“Almost all the dragons have already left for home, so we were glad he lingered long enough to make the offer.” Prince Cavanaugh gestured to himself with a sweep of his hand. “Flying will certainly be easier on me than riding a horse.”
“Granted, it would be. I’m glad to see you are healing so well.”
“I’ve got two canes to aid with the walking, so I’m not precisely mobile, but I’m at least upright under my own power. Took far too long to manage that.” Prince Cavanaugh made a face before brightening. “But the bandages come off completely in another two weeks or so, and I’m told I’ll get my full strength back.”
It had taken multiple surgeries to put his body back to rights, not to mention healing spells Mei Li hadn’t even known existed. No one had even thought of doing anything less, not after the service this man had given the world. It was a relief that he was on the tail end of his recovery.
“Then you should be able to put boots on the ground the second you’re home. Excellent.”
“That’s my hope. But before we leave”—he braced an arm on the table, leaning in a little—“Liasa said to speak to you about this. Something about a Tomes in every country?”
These two were the ones she’d been trying to speak to, but she’d failed thus far, as everyone was running about like mad pixies. At least she had a chance to bend their ears before they left.
“Right. As I’m sure you know, we Tomes spend half our time on the road. It’s really a waste of time in many respects, and there’s only one solution I can think of. We can delegate—have a trained Tomes for each country, and then a single Tomes to oversee them.”
“It would cut down on travel time,” Prince Pari admitted slowly, frowning down at the table. “But finding even one person with the intellect and memory to be a Tomes is a challenge for every generation.”
Mei Li lifted a finger to correct him. “I’m not suggesting that the in-country Tomes will have to remember everything I do. They will only be responsible for the problems in their own country. If I were to delegate just Bader’s problems, for example, the Tomes in question would only need to remember about two hundred volumes’ worth of information. That’s easily doable for most mages; they consume that amount of coursework within their training.”
“Ah, this makes more sense,” Prince Pari said with a nod. “And the Tomes overseeing the others would be trained like you and Abe to fill in the gaps and act as a support if any of them need it?”
“Correct. It has many benefits, as I’m sure you can see. You’d have someone more readily on hand to solve problems, and you wouldn’t have to wait for a Tomes to finish one project on the opposite side of the continent before coming down to you, etc. I truly think this is the saner approach, going forward. If you think of what almost happened, with me and Abe both lost—”
Prince Cavanaugh shook his head like a dog refusing a bath.
“No, thank you. I lived through two years of that; I don’t need to imagine it. My question to you is, doesn’t this mean you’ll need to teach the mages both the language the Tomes are written in and an entirely different branch of magic?”
“We will, yes, as the old seals and such still need Wu Xing. I’m not saying that any mage can be a Tomes for a country. It will still need to be someone who’s very sharp and has a good memory. Abe and I discussed it, and we think we can train people for the position in about five years.”
Mei Li paused and waffled a hand back and forth. “More or less. This won’t be a quick and easy fix. It’ll take time to set up branches, find the right people, train them, and all of that. It might well take a decade to get all of this properly in place and running.”
“But isn’t Abe close to retirement?”
“No, don’t take apprentices away from him,” Mei Li pleaded. “He’ll burn the house down. That man is not to be trusted living alone.”
Prince Pari let out a laugh. “That bad, eh?”
“Worse. You have no idea how many times I’ve saved something from the stove. But he did say he’ll retire from actively solving problems—unless it crops up right in his backyard—and focus more on training people.”
“I think after forty years of service, he’s due to take it easier.” Cavanaugh gave the tabletop a light slap with his palm. “Tomes, I’m excited by this idea. Really, someone should have come up with it sooner. As always, you have my family’s support.”
“We Tomes really are blessed by your family.” Mei Li meant that sincerely, as she had no idea if the Tomes would have ever existed in the first place without the ruling family of
Horvath. “Thank you. I’ll send messages along to keep you up to date on our progress.”
“We look forward to them. But, what’s next for you?” Prince Pari inquired.
Cavanaugh sat back, picking up his cup for a sip. “Yes, you’re obviously done with Kovel. Where do you go next?”
“Well, we want to stay for the celebration tonight. And then Abe said he’d take over for a while, let me focus on contacting all of the country leaders and convincing them to cooperate with our new plan.” Mei Li made a face. “He only said that because he hates the politics involved.”
“I don’t blame him,” Cavanaugh said sourly. “I’m of the same mind.”
“In the immediate sense, I’ll fly about with Shunlei and visit everyone, get things rolling. The truly major situations have been dealt with, so we have a little breathing space. And Abe was so excited to get back into the swing of things, I almost feel sorry for any creature trying to create trouble.”
Prince Pari snorted. “Truly. Even three months of working on Kovel Below hasn’t seemed to curb that enthusiasm much.”
“Noticed that, did you?”
“Rather hard to miss with the way he acted, bouncing over to a dragon to fly out of here.”
“True.” Mei Li shook her head. “Anyway. Safe flight home. I hope I can send you good news soon.”
“We eagerly await it. Safe travels yourself, Mei Li.”
“Thank you.” She rose from the table, gave them a last smile, and headed up the stairs. Really, she wouldn’t have minded talking with them more, but her energy levels weren’t really up for that kind of conversation. After three months of hard, nonstop work, she just wanted to snack. And sleep.
And currently she had a very handsome husband curled up in their bed upstairs, who was awaiting a snack before they took a long afternoon nap.
Mei Li had priorities, alright?
She went steadily up the wooden stairs and sailed through the door, shutting it firmly behind her as if to keep the world out.
Shunlei was stretched out on the bed, only in sleep pants, dark hair in a loose plait over one shoulder, reading. He put the book down as she came in, a smile lighting up his face.
“There you are. It took longer than you expected.”
“Well, the market doesn’t have much of a selection, no surprise. They’re barely back up and running.” As she spoke, she put the buns down on the little round table in front of the window, then toed off her shoes. “I ran into the Horvath princes as I came in, and they wanted to talk, since they’re leaving tomorrow. Bai is apparently flying them home.”
“Ah, yes, he mentioned that to me.”
“They were grateful, as Prince Cavanaugh’s legs aren’t well enough to handle either a saddle or a carriage comfortably just yet. Anyway, I finally got a chance to tell them about my plan, and they were very supportive and excited about the idea.”
“We expected they would be.”
“They, of all people, know how challenging the logistics can be when there’s just one of me, after all. And I think we all want to avoid the disaster of having no Tomes. Two years was enough to drill that lesson home.”
Shrugging off her coat—the spring weather wasn’t quite warm enough yet to go without it—she finally got free of her outside clothes and joined Shunlei on the bed.
He accepted the offered sweet bun and bit into it with relish.
“Ooh, are they good?” Mei Li bit into hers and smiled with delight. Perfectly sweetened without being cloying. Excellent.
“Good shopping, wife.”
“Thank you, I do try.”
“After our nap, I suppose we have to put on clothes and go to the party.” Shunlei eyed the clothes in question—draped over a chair in the corner—with distaste.
Mei Li eyed hers with just as much disinterest, growling out a sigh. “Why did we agree to that, again?”
“Something about being polite. And the party being in our honor. I don’t remember, Liasa of Kovel caught us while we were in a fugue of fatigue. I barely remember agreeing.”
“That all sounds right, though. I vaguely remember it.” Mei Li bit into her pastry, because pastries didn’t betray her. Unlike her past self. “Maybe after a nap, we’ll feel better about going.”
“That’s very wishful thinking.”
“Hush, I’m trying to gear myself up for this.”
There was an urgent knocking at the door. “Tomes! We need aid!”
Mei Li gave the door an angry stare. Now what?
“You have to answer that,” Shunlei urged her with no actual urgency in his voice or body language.
“Why?”
“Because you have clothes on.”
He was, unfortunately, correct; he was still in pajamas. Growling out a curse, she put her bun down before stalking to the door and ripping it open.
Captain Jacobs was on the other side, looking a bit white around the eyes. Before she could get a word out, he quickly relayed, “There’s a stone golem rampaging along the coast, near the fisheries, and we can’t stop it. Mage Dolan said it’s been taken over by imps and they’re the ones causing mischief, but he can’t get them out, either. He’s tried. Please, come quickly.”
A stone golem.
Overtaken by imps?
Mei Li decided right then and there, this one was not hers. Nope. Turning on her heel, she gestured her husband out of the bed. “Your turn.”
Shunlei had a mouth full of sweet bun, so couldn’t talk, but pointed to himself with objection written all across his face. “Mnh?”
“Yes, you. I went out for the sweet buns. Your turn to leave the room and go deal with something.”
Swallowing, he demanded, “What am I supposed to do with an imp-infested stone golem?”
“Melt it.”
They locked eyes for a second, a silent battle of wills. Mei Li made it very clear that she was absolutely not leaving this room again until she’d had her nap. She had earned her nap. This was an established fact with evidence to back it up.
Sighing, Shunlei threw the covers back. “Fine. I’ll go melt it. Let me put clothes on. Captain Jacobs, a moment!”
Captain Jacobs was shifting from one foot to the other, antsy and ready to move. “You’re really going to leave this to him?” he asked, incredulous.
“It’s not the first time he’s melted a stone golem. It’s just animated stone, after all, and stone melts under a dragon’s fire. And I already went out today. His turn.”
The face the captain made was an odd one, as if he really didn’t know how to react to this logic. “You’re making the Master of All Dragons go out to deal with a stone golem?”
Shunlei slipped past her, having quickly thrown on clothes and boots, a wry smile on his face. “The phrase happy wife, happy life applies even to me. And she had gone out for the sweet buns.”
Mei Li nodded, a little self-righteously. It was only fair, after all.
Shaking a finger at her, Shunlei warned, “Do not eat all of those. I want at least two when I get back.”
“Fine, fine.”
“And we’re still taking our nap.”
“You’d better be quick, then.”
“I’ll have this done in seconds.” Shunlei headed down the hall, stomping a little and muttering about golems and imps as he went.
Mei Li returned to her half-eaten sweet bun with a satisfied smile. Nothing else had better disturb Shunlei while he was out. He might well melt it, too. Just on principle.
As for her, she had a nap and two more sweet buns to get to.
There was a knock at the door.
Mei Li eyed it, honestly considering casting fire at whoever dared to disturb her nap. But she was an adult—supposedly. She grudgingly got up to answer it.
Rone gave her a crooked smile and lifted the basket of cookies in her hand. “Care to snack and talk?”
“If you bring sugar, you are welcome.” Mei Li was willing to put her nap aside if Rone was finally approaching her with
a smile instead of a frown. “I’ve got tea, too.”
“Good.”
They settled at the small table, pouring tea and taking cookies. Mei Li saw the cookies as a peace offering and hoped that was what Rone intended them to be.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said.” Rone stared down at her tea for a moment before glancing up. “You said you’d need my help with the bonding spell you want to enact. What type of help?”
“Mostly interference.” Mei Li brightened. Oh, Rone had accepted her enough to help. Actively. Amazing. She hadn’t been sure if that day would ever come.
“Interference with…who?”
“The world?” Mei Li didn’t mean that as a joke, but Rone snorted. “The truth is, this spell is highly illegal. If anyone caught wind of it, they’d likely try to stop me. But there’s also the real concern that I’ll keep getting interrupted during the prep. With my magical power generally so low, I have to store as much as I can in preparation for this spell. It’ll take three weeks, by my calculations.”
“So, you shouldn’t be using any magic at all. For three weeks?” Rone let out a low whistle before sipping at her tea thoughtfully. “I don’t know if the world can handle that. They seem to be pounding on your door every day.”
“They basically are. You see my concern.”
“I do, indeed. So, I need to keep all others away from you while you’re preparing for this.”
“That sounds easier than it will be.”
“Oh, of that I have no doubt.” Rone gave her a firm nod. “But I’ll help you. I realize I had a hard time accepting this and coming around. But you are my friend, Shunlei’s practically a brother, and I want you two to be happy. I’ll do whatever it takes for that to happen.”
“I’m very glad. I didn’t like being at odds with you.”
“Me, neither. And since you’ll be coming back to live with us at Dragon’s Peak, I want to remain friends.”
“I’d like that very much. You’re one of the few friends I have there, after all. I’d miss you sorely if you weren’t around.”
Rone smiled at her, dimples peeking out. “Tell me all the good stories you have on him during the winter months, when we have nothing better to do. I look forward to hearing them.”
Master of Tomes Page 23