The Scofflaw Magician (The Artifactor Book 3)

by Honor Raconteur

  Wands were first, lined up in a precise row, then crystals below that, and then potions and journals along the far right side. She always set up her table in the same way so that she knew where everything was and could reach for it without looking.

  To Sevana’s knowledge, there were fourteen varieties of locating spells. Two of them she had invented herself. She did not for one second believe that they would actually work, or that the court magicians here hadn’t already tried most of them, but she didn’t trust people to do their jobs correctly. Especially with a king breathing down their necks, they would likely have made a hash of even mundane spells. Besides, sometimes she was pleasantly surprised and those mundane spells worked. It only took a whole five minutes to try the lot of them, so she had little to lose.

  Picking up her favorite wand, she flicked through all of the locating spells, one after the other in quick succession. Nothing. Color her surprised.

  Alright, next. Sevana had learned in the first year of her training that when locating spells didn’t work, sometimes summoning spells did. Of course, you had to be rather vague on what you were summoning, to broaden the search area. And sometimes that meant you summoned very interesting things indeed, things you didn’t want, and there was no such thing as an unsummoning spell. Unfortunately. This time she wouldn’t run into that sort of hazard. Hopefully. There were only so many princesses in the world, and as long as she excluded them in the spell, it should turn out alright.

  These took a little longer as she had to add in the exceptions, but Sevana still ran through all of them within an hour and didn’t have any results to show for it. Well, again, she wasn’t too surprised.

  Now that they were out of the way, the work really began.

  Firuz had commanded his court magicians to give her a precise outline of what magical protections Princess Amas had on her. They were charted out in minute detail, left on her table, waiting for her attention. Sevana picked it up and settled into a window seat, studying it for chinks in the armor. After what had happened with Bel and Aren, using either a de-aging spell or a magnifying spell of any sort was blocked. She was gratified that everyone had taken her warnings seriously and the spells were being actively counteracted. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any other weaknesses.

  Sometimes the wards would prevent other things from happening, things that were convenient. Like transportation spells. And healing spells. Those of course were added in as exceptions, magic that was allowed. Sevana looked for an exception for the locating spells and found it. She frowned thoughtfully. If the wards allowed locating magic to work, then it must be something of the curse that blocked it. Or it was a side effect of the curse. One of the two.

  Making a mental note, she went through the rest of the chart. Transforming spells were allowed, potions were allowed as long as they weren’t poisonous or harmful in dosage, and things that were of an ‘entertainment’ class were allowed. Anything that dealt with fireworks, music, art, or something of that ilk wouldn’t set off her wards. Sevana had expected that. If that weren’t the case, no royal family member would be able to stand the magic that their entertainers did in court without their wards reacting, which was hardly a fun way to spend the evening.

  There wasn’t one part of this ward design that was outside of her expectations except the locating spells. And that was probably because she was so young—if ever she was somehow kidnapped or lost, they had to have a way of easily finding her. So what spell or curse could get through these layers of protections?

  Sevana tried to think like an evil magician. Nothing brilliant came to mind. Alright, work with the spells that she knew were allowed and try to find a way to spirit away a girl through them. It was the dogged approach, but she didn’t want to sit around waiting for a flash of genius.

  Getting up, she started on the transportation spells, and worked her way from there.

  Two days she spent going through each category of spells, looking for ways to duplicate the results of what happened, without gaining anything. Sevana actually started keeping a log of things she tried—it became that insane—as she found herself repeating things for lack of a new idea. It strangely reminded her of the time she’d been put in charge of breaking the Sleeping Princess curse on Morgan. The situations were totally different from each other, but her level of frustration in trying to crack the puzzle was the same. It didn’t help that she had to report daily to the royal parents. Saying I don’t know on repeat was wearing her last nerve dangerously thin.

  Day three dawned and she sat on her worktable, staring at the diagram of the magical wards pinned to the opposite wall. Any spell, used the way it was intended to, didn’t get past the wards. She made a mockup of them, surrounding a chair, and it hadn’t done what she wanted to. Perhaps it wasn’t one spell, but a combination of two? Turning sideways, with only one leg dangling, she bent forward and reached for a blank page to sketch out the idea. It wasn’t exactly stable, but the numbers looked alright. Evil magicians wouldn’t care about stability anyway, just results.

  Well, if she was wrong, it would be a chair that died. No real loss there. Focusing, she combined a locating spell with a transportation spell. For a split second, it looked like it would work. Then the chair started rattling.

  Sevana swore and dove to the floor, arms over her head, an anticipatory wince on her face as she just knew what was going to happen next.

  “Sevana, how are things—” Firuz had the door half open, head coming into the room.

  “DOWN!” she screamed at him.

  The king had better reflexes than most men. He dropped to all fours instantly, and just in time, as the chair ripped itself apart at that moment, legs and wood splinters flying all directions. All that was left was kindling and wisps of smoke where the spell had failed.

  Sevana peeked out from behind her arms, found it safe, and rolled up to her knees. “Firuz. Get up, it’s safe enough now.”

  The king did not look sold on this idea and was slow to get to his feet. “I do not think I should enter this room, where gods would fear to tread.”

  Snorting in amusement, she encouraged him inside. “I was experimenting with spells. I’ve discovered that a single spell cannot spirit anything away, so the only answer is that it’s a combination of spells that managed it. I’ve narrowed it down to what categories of spells are possible to get through the protections, it’s just finding which spells and how they’re combined. Once I know that, I can unravel what happened and track her down.” Hopefully.

  “Then…that…” he had a disturbed, pinched look to his face as he stared at the remains of the chair.

  “That combination is not what was used,” she said firmly, before he got a gruesome picture stuck in his head. “Whatever was used got your daughter out of this palace quickly and cleanly, without a trace. So this obviously isn’t it.”

  “Oh.” His shoulders slumped in relief. “I wanted to see where you stood on things.”

  “I’ve narrowed the list of possibilities. That’s all I can report at the moment.”

  Firuz, being a good king, knew that hovering around the room as she tried to work would be counterproductive. So he took himself off again, closing the door behind him. Sevana cleaned up the remains of the chair with a swish and flick of the wand, summoning another one from the far wall and resetting the wards.

  Hmm, alright, that hadn’t worked. What combination would? And wouldn’t be volatile in the process?

  ~ ~ ~

  After nearly having his head taken off, Firuz had learned not to bother her but instead hover outside the door and wait for her to come out before pestering her with questions. Sevana said far too many “I don’t knows” in those days and it turned her already bad mood into a bitterly sour one. I don’t know was for incompetent morons or hacks at the magical trade. They were not for her.

  Finally, she had exhausted the usual, the unusual, and the probable. It came down to the improbable and theoretically impossible, and while that
was fun to figure out, it was also highly dangerous. Sevana’s hopes of getting a missing princess back dwindled quickly.

  Unhappy with her own failures and lack of results, she nevertheless resigned herself to imparting the bad news. She’d have to, in order to prepare for the next step. Leaving her wands and tools behind, she went looking for the king. Instead of just him, she found both queen and king, along with Farah and her quiet bodyguard. They were ensconced in the room at the other end of the hallway, which Sevana was given to understand was a study of sorts for the royal family. It didn’t resemble any study she’d ever seen—more like a morning room. It only had tables and pillows inside, the tall windows on either side fully open to let a breeze in. Guards were stationed on either side of the windows, another just inside the door, but they were still enough to be mistaken for statuary at first glance.

  Queen Malia looked up as she strode through, then scrambled to her feet. Her white robes were immaculate, dark hair braided in an elaborate style around her head, so that she had the outward appearance of being in control. But her dark eyes were filled with worry and she didn’t look like she’d been getting any sleep at all, like her husband.

  “Artifactor.”

  “There’s three possibilities,” Sevana started without even trying to ease them into it. She pulled up an oversized cushion and plopped onto it, beyond tired of being on her feet. “And you’re not going to like any of them.”

  The family leaned in, over the table, eyes glued to her. Heaving a weary sigh, she started ticking options off on her fingers. “First, she’s been transformed into something that is so different from her normal form the spells don’t recognize it as being her still.”

  “Like what?” Farah objected.

  “Anything. At this point, anything is possible. It can range from an animal to an object, like a figurine statue or something. When we search for the princess, we have an image in our heads of a human girl, but that’s exactly what the spell’s not finding. We can’t search for her in any of the normal ways because she’s been changed into something so different the spell can’t recognize it as her.”

  Malia raised both hands to her mouth, eyes wide and bright with unshed tears. “Is she still…alive like that?”

  “The one sliver of hope I have is that the magical protections she was under prevented any spell that would have harmed her. Transformed her, yes, but not killed her. So whatever she’s turned into, my educated guess is she’s still alive.”

  The parents looked disturbed by this, but relieved.

  Sevana lifted a second finger. “Option two is, she hasn’t been transformed, but is instead between. She’s trapped in a magical dimension separate from this one, in an entirely different plane. If that’s the case, she’s perfectly fine for a long while, but our searching spells won’t be able to detect her. Our spells work on this plane, and this plane only, it can’t search beyond that. This, I think, is the more likely option. It would neatly navigate past all of her protections without any trouble.”

  “It can?” Farah objected. “But how...?”

  “You yourself did that when you stepped through my clock portal,” Sevana explained, straining to keep hold of her patience. After five days of racking her brains, she didn’t have much of it left. “That was passing through another dimension as well.”

  Farah’s mouth formed a silent ah of understanding and thankfully didn’t ask any other questions.

  “The third option,” Sevana continued while lifting another finger, “is that it’s both. They’ve somehow transformed her into an object that taps into another plane. If they’ve done this, I have no idea how we’ll find her. Nothing magical will be able to detect her unless we just luckily stumble across her.”

  Firuz dared to ask the question everyone was thinking. “What do we do now?”

  “I’m fresh out of ideas,” Sevana admitted sourly. She braced her forearms against the table’s surface and let her head hang in between her shoulders. If she could have about twenty hours of sleep, she’d probably be able to think of something brilliant, but at the moment she had nothing to offer.

  Xald cleared his throat. “My King, permission to speak?”

  Firuz waved him on.

  “Perhaps an old fashioned way, a nonmagical way, would be helpful?” Xald said this as if he knew exactly what to do. “Artifactor Warran is stuck on why and how this happened. But we know when, and I think if we know who, it would give us more to work with.”

  Sevana’s head came up as this possibility registered. Grydon hadn’t been able to find her, he’d just run in circles, picking up her scent in all of the usual places. Sevana had discounted ‘who’ after that, but Xald was right. If they could figure out who, she’d have a better grasp of how and that would be immensely helpful at this stage. “You think you can do that?”

  “Before being a bodyguard, I was a thief catcher,” Xald explained. “Princess Amas had limited access to people. I made note of anyone that was new. If we go through these people, one by one, couldn’t you tell if they were the ones responsible?”

  “Yes,” Sevana answered, not even having to think about it. “It would take a very strong magician to pull this off. You can’t tell with normal eyes, but I certainly can. Firuz, I need Xald.”

  “You have him,” the king granted instantly. “You have anything you need. Xald, aid her in all respects.”

  “Yes, my King. Artifactor, we should start with a list of who was around her,” Xald suggested. “We are less likely to overlook anyone that way. I think we should consult the guards as well, as I was not always with the princess.”

  Good thinking. Finding new energy, Sevana pushed to her feet. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  Xald cleared his throat in that deferential way again. “Before we leave, we must make some, ah, adjustments to your appearance.”

  Adjustments? What in sweet mercy was he blathering about—oh. It abruptly hit her that an unmarried woman walking around with a bare head was a huge taboo in Sa Kaon culture. The only reason Sevana had been allowed to wander around as she had so far was that she was an obviously foreign guest and she hadn’t left the palace. But Xald was right, if she left the palace like this, no one would talk to her outside. They’d either shy away, embarrassed for her sake of being so ‘naked’ or the more zealous would pick up the nearest stone and throw it at her.

  Grumbling, she forced herself to slow down and think. Those full wrap turbans with the veil around her throat would be hot and suffocating. “Will a hat suffice?”

  Xald seemed relieved he wouldn’t have to cajole her into this. “Yes, Artifactor, that would be perfectly acceptable.”

  Double checking, she turned to Firuz. “I don’t need to switch into a skirt?”

  “If this was a social event, you would. However, I have made changes to custom over the past decade so that a woman working is allowed to wear pants.”

  Thank all mercy for small favors. Sevana hadn’t brought any skirts, having not thought about her wardrobe before climbing through the clock, and didn’t want to go back to Big just for a change of clothes. “Give me a moment.” She used the table’s edge to push herself to her feet—that cushion had almost swallowed her whole—and retreated back to her temporary workroom. Once there, she dug around in one of her magical pouches, looking for her favorite working hat.

  Sevana had put more renewing spells on the black top hat than she had on any other possession. It was the perfect size—a difficult find for her small head—and it had a wonderful brim that let her balance things on it. While working, she could put wands, pencils, small tools, and things of that nature up there. It helped her keep track of things as she had discovered that putting anything on the ground quickly led to lost tools.

  Putting it on, she took a moment to grab a few more things she thought might come in handy with this investigation before stepping back out into the hallway. Xald was waiting for her there, and when he saw the hat, he nodded in approval. “Different from
what women here wear, but it properly covers your head. It will do.”

  “Good, because I don’t have anything else, and I’d rather not go back to Big again today. Alright, Xald, where do we start?”

  He gestured for her to fall into step with him, which she did, and answered as they made their way down to the main level. “The staff of the palace are thoroughly checked every three months as a matter of routine security measures. I think we can safely skip them…?” he trailed off, waiting for her nod of agreement, before continuing. “The guards as well. In that case, I think we should start with any visiting guests. The guard captain will have a complete list for us.”

  “How long is this list likely to be?”

  “How far back do you wish to go?” Xald countered.

  Sevana stopped and thought about it. A spell that was complex enough, and sneaky enough, to get through all of the magical protections of a princess was not something that could be cast on the fly. It would take time to execute. Even Bel’s attacker had needed several days to study his protections and hours to craft the spell before releasing it. “A week before she disappeared. To be on the safe side.”

  “Then the list will be quite long.” Xald’s nose scrunched up in a frustrated way. “Is there any aspects of this magician that will help us narrow it down?”

  That’s what Sevana would like to know. “If you’re talking about age, or occupation, or anything like that? Then no. We’re looking for a person that no one would suspect. The kind of person that no one would take notice of. It would take that level of skill in order to get in, get out, and leave no one the wiser that it was them that did the deed.” Reconsidering this, she added, “I think we’re looking for the person that isn’t here. After doing this, he would hardly stick around. I think he’d leave as soon as possible.”

  Xald brightened slightly. “A good point. That will help to narrow the list significantly.”

  Sevana certainly hoped so.

  Showing a complete ease with the palace, Xald went confidently down multiple stairs and hallways until he came into the back section of the palace. Here there were fewer gilded doorways and pretty fountains; instead, it was sparsely decorated. The place screamed function over prestige and Sevana relaxed as they left all the bling behind. This was much easier on her eyes.