by Deanna Chase
David had received the pen on the day he first took up his warder’s burden. It had belonged to his father, and to his grandfather before that. He only used it to record the most important documents he maintained as a warder—an annual oath he renewed to me, the formal inventory of the Osgood collection he was sworn to protect, his official correspondence with Hecate’s Court.
Well, there wouldn’t be any future correspondence with the Court, not after the events of the past few months. But the griffin quill remained as valuable to David as the Morningside Athame was to me.
Neko’s fingers twitched, and I imagined him turning the griffin quill into a ragged cat toy with a single swipe of his impeccably manicured nails. I hurried to divert his line of destructive thought. “I read something, in one of these books…” I gestured to the volumes that surrounded us. “If a griffin quill is used with some special ink, it can only write the truth.”
“That would be terrible!” Neko looked scandalized.
“Not for a warder,” I said firmly, ignoring all the confessions my familiar might be forced to divulge. “A good warder could apply a truth-telling device in all sorts of ways. I just need to find the reference. I can’t remember what type of ink I need. But I’m going to track some down for Yule.”
“Have fun,” Neko said, starting to back out of the vault.
“Not so fast,” I said. “You’re already here, so you might as well help. Could you please bring me that copy of Warders and Witches?”
I gestured toward the appropriate shelf, then took the volume Neko handed to me. It was unassuming, a stout, hard-cover book covered in a paper dust jacket, printed by the recently defunct Alchemical Press. I carried it to my bookstand and placed it in a baize-covered cradle, supporting the sides with fabric-covered pads. I’d give that level of care to any of my older books—and one day, Warders and Witches, a Historical Analysis of Successful Pairings would be an antique. No reason to break the spine now.
I flipped to the table of contents, hoping for clear, concise chapter headings that would guide me to what I needed, to what I vaguely remembered was recorded there. At a glance, I could see that the book contained an introduction, summarizing the characteristics of successful witch and warder pairings. After that, each chapter discussed a famous team in magical history, beginning with the possibly legendary Luigsech and her supposed warder Seisyll.
It would take me hours to read through the whole book. But I didn’t have hours. Not if I left time to actually track down the ink in the two days before Yule.
“Come here,” I said to Neko. His curiosity won out over his reluctance to fuel David’s potentially life-changing pen. He peered at the book in front of me, cocking his head at a discerning angle.
I rested my hand on his shoulder and took a few centering breaths. There wasn’t a spell for the type of magic I wanted to work, not exactly. But I bolstered my own powers by drawing on Neko’s, using the reflective well of his familiar’s magic to expand my own energy. Magic tingled in my fingertips, jangling up my entire arm.
“Truth.” I thought the word clearly, creating a channel for all that sparkling energy. The word shimmered before me, each letter picked out in the careful font the book’s printer had used. “Truth,” I thought again. My magic drifted over the pages like a fog, enshrouding the entire volume. Well, third time was the charm. Or so I could hope, because three was a number sacred to Hecate. “Truth.”
The fog collapsed on itself, drawing close and disappearing into the book, like water poured into sand. But a faint glow persisted on a handful of pages. I flipped to the first and read, “From that point forward, Magdalena never doubted that Antonio was telling her the truth.” I skimmed the events leading up to “that point”—battles between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in medieval Florence. There was a lot of intrigue, but no mention of special ink.
I flipped to the next glowing page. “Cosette discovered the truth when Pierre brought her the head of her enemy.” Yeah. I wasn’t going to decapitate anyone, not in the service of a Yuletide gift. And the brutal Renaissance beheading didn’t seem to involve any special ink.
Next passage: “Mei relied on Huang to bring her the truth serum she required, ink made from the antler of a qilin.”
“That’s it,” I breathed.
Neko looked aghast. “What’s a qilin?”
“An animal of some sort. One with antlers, so it’s probably an herbivore. Can’t be too nasty.” I closed Witches and Warders and handed it back to Neko. “Thank you,” I said. “When you put that back, could you grab On the Bynding and Banishment of Magickal Creatures?”
By now, Neko was caught up in the research, even if he didn’t want anything to do with magical, truth-telling ink. He crossed the vault to the far wall and tracked down the ancient bestiary. It was bound in forest-green Moroccan leather, and the cover was set with a trio of cabochon-cut emeralds. The title was picked out on the spine in gold leaf. I nestled it in the cradle and turned to the handwritten table of contents.
Basilisk. Kraken. Manticore.
Qilin.
I flipped to the entry, which began with an enormous illuminated Q, the letter filled with an illustration of a qilin. The blue-green creature had four legs, each sporting a tufted hoof. Its ropy tail ended in feathery golden plumes, echoing its flaming mane. Its body was covered in scales, and its dragon-like snout trailed two long whiskers, like a catfish’s antennae. And on its head, branching into a dozen points each, were two flaming antlers.
Neko stepped back. “Where the hell are you going to find one of those?”
Where, indeed? “That’s the challenge,” I said. “That’s what’ll make this Yuletide gift special—the effort to track it down.”
“Better you than me,” Neko said. “I still say a plateful of Melissa’s Dream Puffs will get the job done.”
“You would say that.” But I didn’t bother retorting further. I was already reading about qilins.
* * *
In the end, I spent the rest of the afternoon reading up on qilins. I learned they were China’s answer to the unicorn. (Yes. They had two antlers and no horn. But all those books in my vault couldn’t be wrong. “Unicorn” they were.) They were shy creatures, related to dragons. In ancient China, giraffes were mistaken for qilins, in part because the giraffes’ reticulated hide resembled the magical beasts’ fiery scales.
Qilins shed their antlers each year. And those antlers could be ground to dust, mixed with rainwater collected on the night of a full moon, and turned into an iridescent black ink that would not transfer to paper if the writer was recording a lie.
If, you know, you could find a qilin in the first place.
There wasn’t exactly a Yellow Pages of mythical creatures I could use to track down a qilin. And www.qilin.com took me to a strange blank page on the Internet. I didn’t have the means to travel to China, not without asking David to transport me by warder’s magic, and I didn’t have a clue who I’d talk to once I got there.
But I was a reference librarian by training. I didn’t give up easily. I knew exactly who could put me in touch with a qilin. I just had to figure out a way to see her without David catching on that something was up.
It was harder than I’d imagined, keeping up a screen of normalcy. My first thought was to cook David a soothing dinner, lulling him from suspicion with my culinary expertise.
Who was I kidding? I could boil water. Even scramble a few eggs in a pinch. But a gourmet supper? He would have seen right through that, even if I used magic to make it happen.
So I settled for plating the Jane Madison special—artisanal crackers from a boutique around the corner and three types of imported cheese. I added some glacéed chestnuts and little bunches of grapes, all arranged with pretty little plates on the small table by the kitchen window.
I slapped Neko’s hand away from the cheese three separate times, finally ordering him to get out of the house and go bother his boyfriend, Tony. I opened a pinot noir to br
eathe, a pricey bottle from the local wine store. I went upstairs and changed into a sweater I knew David liked, and I took the time to apply some makeup.
When I came downstairs, David was just shutting the front door behind him. I let him stomp sleet from his shoes and shed his heavy overcoat. Then, I swept up to him, kissing the cold from his lips. I shuddered as his icy hands closed around my hips, but we were both a lot warmer within a few minutes.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” David asked, his lips barely leaving the corner of my mouth.
“Baby, it’s cold outside,” I quoted. I took him by the hand and led him into the kitchen. “How was your day?” I asked, after pouring us each a generous glass of wine. I felt like some strange chimera of 1950s housewife and twenty-first century vamp.
David made a face. “How is any day in the dead of winter, when you’re stuck in an overheated office with four different insurance adjusters whose sole job is to tell you they don’t have to make good on your contract?”
“That bad?” I asked, passing him a rosemary and pink sea salt cracker smeared with cambozola. We’d both known it would be a challenge to collect on the homeowner’s policy for the farmhouse that had gone up in flames before we’d escaped to Blanton House.
He chewed carefully and swallowed before answering. “Just frustrating. We’re on track now. They should pay out by summer.”
“Summer!”
He plucked a grape with a particularly vicious twist. “It’s better than nothing.”
Better than nothing, yes. But I cast a guilty eye at the spread of gourmet cheese, one of my (many) weaknesses. If our shoestring budget had to stretch for six months or more, this might well be the end of such culinary decadence.
I took another slug of wine. Yeah, good pinots were going to be in short supply, too. A six-month delay in insurance payout would certainly make things more…interesting than I wanted to admit.
All the more reason to celebrate Yule, with its traditional symbolism of the sun’s rebirth, of new things starting, of new growth. All the more reason to get the qilin ink, as one last gift for David before we gave up frivolity altogether.
I consciously turned our conversation to lighter topics. We talked about easy things, inconsequential things—the weather and a romping husky I’d seen in the nearby dog park and a hideous new version of Jingle Bells David had heard, performed entirely with snippets of dialog from animated pink and purple cartoon princesses. Our casual banter had the desired effect—David relaxed, and the worry lines grew more shallow beside his mouth.
I was stacking our plates by the sink when I said, “I think I’m going to head over to Melissa’s tonight, if you don’t mind.”
“In this storm?”
I made a face. “Rob’s on the road, and she’s still tying herself in knots over what she’s going to wear to the firm’s New Year’s party.” Well, both of those things were true. Technically. They just didn’t have anything to do with where I intended to go after I left Blanton.
“Let me take you there,” he said, standing up and holding out a hand to pull me close for transport by warder’s magic.
I danced out of reach. “Not after the day you’ve had. Besides, there are always people around Melissa’s new condo. I know they’re not supposed to notice anomalies, but…”
It was a sign of David’s exhaustion that he gave up the argument almost immediately. “Call if you want me to come get you.”
I rewarded him with a quick kiss. “I’ll spend the night there. Help her open the bakery in the morning, and then come home.”
“Does that mean you’ll bring breakfast?”
“Of course,” I said with a laugh. But I cursed inside, because that promise meant I’d have to make another stop after my true errand was run.
Another kiss or seven, and I was finally out the door. The storm was worse than it had been during the afternoon. Snow had begun to fall on top of the earlier sleet. Every time my boots punched through the fluffy top layer, I slipped forward an inch or two on the ice beneath.
I slid-walked to the end of the block before I took out my phone and texted a quick message to Melissa: “Yule emergency. If David calls, I’m with you for the night.” She’d read stranger messages from me before.
I flagged my second cab of the day and gave instructions to the driver. If he thought it was strange that someone wanted to go to the District of Columbia courthouse in the middle of a snowstorm, he gave no sign. Instead, he cranked up the ranting on talk radio, entered the snow emergency bonus fare on his meter, and made his way through the slippery streets to my destination.
At least security was a breeze at the courthouse; no one else was waiting to pass through the metal detectors. And the clerk’s office was empty as well. I rang a bell for service. The woman who appeared from the back room looked calm and competent in her perfectly tailored navy suit. Her makeup was expertly applied, as if she’d just stepped away from a mirror, and every strand of her auburn hair was in its proper place. She wore a hematite bracelet on her left wrist and a coral ring on the middle finger of her right hand.
“Jane!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing out on a night like this?”
Sarah Anderson was the night clerk for the DC court; she was responsible for accepting documents and handing out forms to people doing legal business after regular office hours. But her real job was a lot more complex—she was the Clerk of Court for the Night Court of the Eastern Empire, serving a vast variety of supernatural creatures. I’d met her by chance in Cake Walk over a year ago, and she’d become the first—and only—client of my now-abandoned library consulting business. She’d also been key in mopping up the aftermath of a magical duel not two weeks before. I knew I could count on her discretion now.
After a few minutes of small talk, I told her I was looking for a qilin.
Sarah scarcely blinked. She turned to her computer and skated her fingers over the keys. She wasn’t pleased with the first document she pulled up or the second or third but then a broad smile lit her face. She tapped a sequence that made the printer spring to life on the counter, and she shuffled the pages into perfect order before handing over the bounty of her search.
“We don’t require citizens of the Eastern Empire to register with us,” she said. “But we do keep a list of people willing to serve as translators. An Zheng is a qilin, living in her human form for now.”
I must have looked confused, because Sarah waved toward the door, toward the courtroom down the hall where Eastern Empire legal business was transacted. “Most of us have human forms when we want to.”
Us.
Of course. A human qilin was no more odd than Sarah, with her sphinx powers. Or, truth be told, than I was as a witch. I wondered if holding onto a human body made it more or less likely that An Zheng would point me toward antler ink.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Sarah said, “why do you need An?”
I told her about the ink, about my idea for a Yuletide present.
It was Sarah’s turn to wince. “That’ll cost you a pretty penny. We handled a case last year, a fire salamander prosecuted for stealing qilin ink. He took less than a gill, but he was charged with first degree grand larceny. The ink was worth more than a million dollars.”
I crumpled a little inside. If I was about to ration cheese and crackers, there was no way I could afford ink that costly. And it seemed like a really bad idea to take up a life of crime just to procure David’s Yule present.
But I’d come this far. I might as well get the bad news from a qilin in person. “Thanks,” I said to Sarah. “I owe you one.”
She arched a smile that reminded me a little of Neko at his most calculating. “Don’t be so free with that promise. You never know when I might cash in.” The phone rang then, and I waved Sarah back to her job, with plenty of additional thanks.
I wanted to get the ball rolling with the qilin before I ventured back into the storm. I might have already left things for too late, with
only two days remaining before Yule. Standing in a corner of the quiet hallway, I took out my cell phone and typed a message.
Dear Ms. Zheng—
I received your name from the Night Court; I am also a citizen of the Eastern Empire. I need ink made from qilin antlers, and I hope you can point me toward a source. Time is, unfortunately, of the essence. I look forward to speaking with you as soon as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Jane Madison, Witch
I added my phone number and read over the message three times. I wanted to sound brisk and professional, but I didn’t want to be rude.
Who did I think I was fooling? I didn’t have the first idea about appropriate behavior between denizens of the Eastern Empire.
No time like the present to learn. I tapped Send.
I hadn’t made it to the courthouse door when my phone rang. I only recognized the 202 number because I’d seen it on the printout from Sarah just a few moments before. “Miss Madison?” said a woman when I answered. Her voice was soft and soothing, as if she calmed patients for a living.
“Ms. Zheng,” I said. “Thank you for calling so quickly.”
“You did say time was of the essence.” Her words were tinged with a slight accent, a rolling of the consonants that softened her words, rubbing away all the edges. Her tone made me think of wind chimes tinkling in the breeze.
“It is indeed.”
“Then I would be happy to see you tonight, if that meets your needs. The court provided you with my address?”
“Um, yes.” I don’t know what I’d been expecting. But instant assistance apparently wasn’t it.
“Be safe, then. Take care, in the storm.”
The qilin’s voice was quiet and reassuring. Despite Sarah’s warning about the unearthly cost of qilin ink, I began to believe I might be able to secure my present for David. But first, I needed to snag yet another cab on this stormy night.