[The Elustria Chronicles 03.0] Magic Betrayed

by Caethes Faron

  Thaddeus held up his hand. “There’s no need. We still have to review everything, but you used your magic to protect us. I believe we can trust you with your talisman. Besides, you could call it back to you anyways.”

  I secured the clasp. “Thank you. It must be something about being a pidge that allows me to summon it. However, I think I have to be relatively close to it for it to work.”

  “Your offer is noted but not needed,” Thaddeus said.

  Lilibet stood next to her father, and I met her eyes. She favored her ribs, but her breaths came at a steady pace, unaltered as they would be by a broken bone. Hopefully the ribs were only bruised. I held her gaze, wanting her to confirm, and eventually she gave a slight nod. “I’m fine.”

  “All righty, if everyone’s here, we’ll get a move on,” Millhook said. He placed one hand on me and the other on Calista. Everyone in the small group touched, forming a chain, making sure no one would be left behind. “Where to?”

  “The infirmary,” Thaddeus said. I had thought they would use Calista’s office. This many people porting in to the infirmary at once would raise questions, and since we were all CCS agents, our work was confidential. It surprised me that Thaddeus would compromise that to get some wounds looked at. Not to mention we’d be coming in with the dead body of a Councilor. I wondered how they would explain that away.

  In that second before we ported with all of us touching, I looked around at the faces who had survived the same thing, who were united in a common purpose, and I felt more a part of the CCS team than I ever had. It might be the last time.

  When we arrived at the infirmary, there was a flurry of activity. A medic saw me and rubbed a salve onto my burns, instantly soothing them.

  “The burn on your forehead is superficial and should heal fine. Your chest, though, that’s a deeper mark from dark magic. It could scar. What kind of spell did this?”

  “I don’t know.” Until I got permission, I didn’t want to reveal any restricted information.

  “Figures. I’ll check on it after the salve has had a chance to do its work. In the meantime, you should get some sleep.” He walked away, his pouch of salves and potions following him.

  No other magic could help me now. Alex stayed by my side. When I rose from the bed they assigned me to, Alex stepped in my way. “Hold on, you heard what the medic said. You need to sleep. All the magic in the world can’t make up for exhaustion.”

  “I have to talk to Calista and Thaddeus first.”

  “No, you don’t. Besides, they have their hands full right now dealing with the Gareth situation. Sleep for now. I promise, I’ll make sure they know you need to speak with them.”

  My body took over, and I didn’t have the strength to argue. I sank back down to the bed. “Promise me you’ll wake me up as soon as they’re available to talk.” A yawn consumed the last word.

  “I promise I’ll have them speak to you.”

  That wasn’t the same thing, and I opened my mouth to tell him so, but before I could get the words out, my body succumbed to sleep.

  Thirty-Seven

  When I opened my eyes, I was disoriented. The events of the last day whirled through my mind. Where was I? Millhook’s house? The middle of the Flamewood Forest?

  The Citadel.

  Calista and Thaddeus. I had to speak to them, but I was so tired. Sleep coaxed me back into its warm arms with the promise of ease and rest.

  This was more important. I shot up out of bed before sleep could lure me back. I looked around frantically, trying to find who I needed to speak to among the rows of beds in the infirmary.

  “What’s wrong? Are you all right? Kat, you need to be sleeping,” Alex said as he placed his hands on my shoulders, ready to steer me back to the bed.

  “No, I told you, I need to speak to Calista and Thaddeus. They need to know it was the Director who attacked me.”

  “They can hear about it once you’ve rested. You’d barely shut your eyes when you woke up.”

  “You don’t understand. I know who the Director is.”

  Alex stopped trying to move me toward the bed. “How? He was completely cloaked.”

  “For starters, it’s not a he. When she was attacking me, the magic from my talisman lit up her face.” I looked around, making sure no one was close enough to hear. Then I went on my tiptoes and whispered in his ear. “It’s Aunt Marguerite.”

  Alex pulled back in shock. “Are you sure? It could’ve been an enchantment to make you see someone you know.”

  I hadn’t considered that. I played the memory back in my mind. It wasn’t just her appearance, it was what she had said. “No, I’m sure. She spoke to me. I have to tell them what I know. They need to move quickly, and they need all the information. I can sleep afterward.”

  “All right, calm down. We’ll find them together.” I nodded and let Alex lead the way. At this point, I was running on pure adrenaline. If I stopped moving, I was sure I’d collapse.

  “Where are you two going?” Millhook called from behind us. When I turned, Millhook had almost caught up to us carrying a basket of food. “I leave to get snacks and come back to find you making a run for it.”

  “Kat insists she needs to talk to Calista or Thaddeus,” Alex said as I continued walking.

  “That’s craziness. She needs to be asleep,” Millhook replied.

  “You two sleep. You’ve been awake as long as I have.” I waved my hand behind me, shooing them away if they weren’t going to help. I didn’t understand why I was the only one who needed to sleep when we’d all been through the same thing. Alex had shifted and healed mages as they fell while Millhook had fought alongside the agents. Why weren’t they taking their own advice?

  “Neither of us is recovering from a direct attack,” Alex said, but he and Millhook both followed me.

  Some of the beds were curtained off for privacy. Gareth’s body had been removed. I wondered what they did with their dead here. For all the death I’d seen, all the mages I’d killed, I still didn’t know how mage culture handled death.

  Thaddeus emerged from one of the curtained-off beds. When he saw me approaching, he broke away from the agent he spoke with.

  “Kat, you should be resting,” he said when he reached us. That seemed to be the constant refrain from him, but now I saw his words as caring rather than patronizing.

  “I will later. First, I need to be debriefed.”

  Thaddeus smirked. I about fell over from the shock. “While I admire your dedication to protocol, a debrief will go better when you’re rested.”

  “I have information you need to act on now. I know who the Director is.”

  Thaddeus sobered and his eyes darkened as if he waited for me to utter the name so he could hunt the Director down himself, today. Instead, he walked to where Calista spoke with one the medical staff, and Alex and I followed.

  “Excuse me. Calista, I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need to speak privately.”

  All it took was one look at Thaddeus’s face, and Calista knew not to question him.

  “Very well, let’s go to my office.” She turned back to the medic she had been speaking with. “You’ve done great work here today. The Council thanks you.”

  During the walk to the teleportation rings, the fatigue grabbed hold of me and beat back the adrenaline. I wanted to ask Millhook to port us all, but that would appear weak in front of Calista and Thaddeus. When we got to Calista’s office, I apparently looked as tired as I felt.

  “So what is it that couldn’t wait until you got some proper rest?” Millhook asked as soon as the door shut behind us all. “I swear, you act like the world’s going to come to an end. I’ve got news for you, I’m over three hundred years old. The world existed long before you came, and it’ll exist long after you’re gone. Never hurt anyone to get a little sleep. Me, I take a nap any time and anywhere I can. You learn to value naps the older you get. Young’uns just flit about here and there constantly wanting to stay awake. Ain’t no shame in sl
eeping.”

  “Millhook, quiet, please,” Calista said. “Now, Kat, what was so urgent? You look like you’re asleep on your feet.”

  “She knows who the Director is,” Thaddeus said as Alex and I sat.

  “You saw his face? And it was someone you know? You were able to identify him?” Calista’s gaze intensified with the urgency of her voice.

  Given all the suspicion I’d been under, all the times I’d had to prove myself to the Council, separate myself from my mother and her work, I didn’t relish having to do it again. I didn’t look forward to revealing that not only did I know the Director, we were related. We had vacation plans to go to Perthos together later in the year. But this was about trusting them and them trusting me. “Yes, and I want to say, I had no idea until she attacked me today.”

  “She?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Yes, the Director is my aunt Marguerite. I saw her face, and she spoke when she attacked me.”

  Thaddeus looked at Calista with concern as she collapsed on the chair behind her. Only then did I remember she had been friends with my mother, which meant she had to know my aunt. During the time I spent with Marguerite since coming to the Citadel, we never spent time with Calista. She was always too busy. Besides, they’d probably drifted apart since Meglana had gone away.

  Thaddeus kept his focus on Calista. There was more than friendly concern in his eyes. He held a great deal of affection for Calista, perhaps even something deeper. “That whole family is rotten,” he said.

  Alex shot to his feet in my defense. “Hey, Kat is nothing like her mother or her aunt.”

  Thaddeus turned his gaze from Calista to Alex, a glint of admiration and respect in his eyes. “Excuse me, I misspoke. I wasn’t insinuating that Kat was like the rest of her family. To be frank, I don’t think of her as part of that family, and I don’t mean that to offend. I only meant that between Meglana and her mother and now her sister, they don’t know when to stop. I’m sorry, Kat.”

  Thaddeus’s apology caught me by surprise. “Thank you, but there’s no need. I agree with you. I don’t think of myself as part of that family either. Now that I know who Aunt Marguerite really is, I can’t see any future for me there. At least now I won’t have to feel guilty about not wanting to see my great-aunts again.”

  A shiver went down my spine at the memory of my first meeting with Marguerite and my great-aunts. Come to think of it, Gareth had been the one to suggest I meet Aunt Marguerite. He’d taken a great interest in my relationship with her. All along, he had known who she was.

  “I can’t believe it,” Calista said, staring off to the side. “I mean, of course I can. But Marguerite always distanced herself from Meglana, even when we were little girls. How long has she been planning this? All growing up she acted like she didn’t care about her mother’s research and Meglana’s interest in it. All this time it was to mask her own interest, her own ambitions. I can’t…I’m speechless.”

  While I felt betrayed by a member of my family, I barely knew Marguerite. My connection to her had been one of hope for a future relationship rather than an actual one. I’d confided in her during my time at the Citadel, but we hadn’t spent much time together yet. I was grateful for that now. Calista, on the other hand, was dealing with a betrayal of a lifetime.

  I yawned.

  “Oh, Kat, you need to rest,” Calista said as if my yawn had pulled her from her thoughts.

  “No, there’s more you need to know. It can’t wait. She doesn’t just have a list of the CCS personnel, she has everything.”

  “What do you mean everything?” Thaddeus’s voice lowered a register, and all warm concern vanished.

  “When she attacked me, she put her hand on my forehead and on my talisman and sucked memories out of them. Except that’s not right. She didn’t take them from me, I still have them, but she has them too. I’m sure of it. So every page of my mother’s notes that I saw, every journal I read, she has it.”

  “We’ll need you to tell us everything you remember from Meglana’s notes.” Thaddeus levitated parchment that would take notes as we spoke to a nearby table.

  “It’ll be easier if I reproduce them. The good news is, Meglana only wanted someone who was worthy of the knowledge to find it. She didn’t make it easy for anyone to get a hold of her work. She left clues. We had followed them to a safe-deposit box in Vienna. There we found all of her notes and a letter left for her heir.”

  “She intended for you to inherit all of this?” Calista asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. I did at first when I found them and before I knew what it was she had done, but the more I think about it, the more I think her heir was meant to be someone of her choosing, someone who she thought could continue her research. Maybe she hoped it would be me someday, but I don’t know if she ever planned to find me. I think maybe she wanted it to be Sibelius.”

  “I take it this Vienna is a place on Earth?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Yes, and I think most of her secrets are hidden on Earth. Alex and Millhook already followed another clue to Scotland, but Sadie, a mage who worked for Casper, had gotten there first. I had Priya match an imprint of her magic. Because of that and everything I know looking at the whole picture, I believe it was Mikael, Sadie’s brother, who was going through the portal at the Cushing Sea. I believe he gathered the clay there, created a golem, and gave it to Gareth. Sadie and Mikael lost their parents to sorcerers, and their sister, their only remaining family member, died in the same fight that killed Casper. They’ll be pursuing this both for the Director and for their own sense of justice and revenge.”

  “We need to get our Earthside stations on this right away,” Thaddeus said.

  “You can’t.” I shook my head. They didn’t understand. “The personnel list the Director has includes every agent’s current assignment. Every CCS agent and location is compromised.”

  “We’re going to have to dismantle and rebuild the entire CCS before we can do anything,” Calista said, her voice slow and airy as the realization dawned and despair set in.

  I didn’t relish being the bearer of bad news, but I had to be sure they understood the scope of the compromise. “And remember that she’ll also have an intimate knowledge of the Greenhouse, all of our operations, our protocols, everything. We have to assume that when Kellan was acting as the golem, they saw everything.”

  “We’ve got to get to work,” Calista said.

  I nodded and stood.

  “Not you, Kat. Let us handle this for now. You go rest.”

  “No, I can help.”

  “You can’t help us when you’re this tired,” Calista said. “If I gave you a piece of parchment and asked you to write one page of your mother’s notes, I’d find you asleep on top of it. Go get in your own bed. Besides, we still have to decide how to proceed from here. Those were quite the revelations you gave us back there.”

  That last bit stung, but I should’ve expected it. “I understand. I lied to you, if not directly, then by withholding information. But I hope you know the only reason I did it was because there was a traitor, and I couldn’t risk it. Even if there was someone I could trust, all of you are too close to each other and to the situation to view it objectively. My intention wasn’t to hurt anyone.”

  “We know, really we do, and it makes a difference.” There was something in Calista’s eyes I had never seen there before: compassion. “That still doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot to be decided. Get some rest. Alex, Millhook, you’re welcome to stay here as our guests. Now if you’ll excuse us.”

  We didn’t need to be dismissed twice. I moved to the door, but before I could reach it, Millhook grabbed my hand and Alex’s and ported us to my room.

  Thirty-Eight

  Alex and Millhook’s hovering stressed me out. I kept sensing their presence and waking up in alarm, so I banished both of them from my room. Millhook went to see if he could be of use to Calista. Alex didn’t go far. He sat curled on a tree bran
ch below my window in his panther form.

  A guard stood outside, but I didn’t know if he was there to protect me or keep me inside. Probably a little of both. My periods of sleep and wakefulness had been so sporadic that I had no idea what time it was when a knock sounded on my door.

  “It’s Thaddeus. May I come in?”

  I wasn’t scared of Thaddeus anymore, however the thought of having him in such a small space alone still intimidated me. But what choice did I have? “Sure.”

  He shut the door behind himself. My earlier private encounters with Thaddeus left something to be desired. I had expected him and Calista to tell me what decision they’d come to, but I supposed they were too busy for both of them to come. It surprised me Thaddeus came instead of Calista.

  “I take it you’ve rested,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You don’t like me very much, but I hope you can respect me. It’s important going forward.”

  I hoped that meant I would still work for the CCS. “Yes, sir. Before, I thought you were the mole.”

  Thaddeus lifted one eyebrow in such a way that I would have sworn he practiced in front of a mirror if I didn’t know better. “That’s good, but you shouldn’t have let it affect you so much.”

  “Everything you did seemed to be because you wanted me dead. I thought you were going to kill me that day we sparred.”

  “I have killed many people, but I’ve never tried to kill someone. If I wanted you dead, you would be. I did what I did to protect you.”

  “I know that now.” The situation with Thaddeus humbled me. I felt like a small child being taught a lesson. “I let my anger at you get in the way. I resented you telling me to leave when you and Calista were discussing my trials. You seemed determined to treat me like a child.”

  “The reason I didn’t want you there was because I knew even after almost dying you’d argue to go into the field instead of asking for a desk job like a sane mage would.”