The Scofflaw Magician (The Artifactor Book 3)

by Honor Raconteur

  Sevana’s guess about Petran turned out to be dead on. He was a minor nobleman, so minor in fact that he actually worked as a merchant in order to support six children, a wife, and his aging parents. He was very anxious as he showed them into his home where his family was gathered, waiting on them.

  She took in the situation at a glance. The building was heavy in stucco, everything gleaming white from fresh paint; flower boxes and miniature fountains along the walls; a small inner courtyard leading into a four story house that screamed age. It was in good repair, but this was obviously an ancestral home that had been in the family for many generations.

  The family was crowded into the courtyard, hovering near the doors, their eyes anxious. The youngest child, who must have been four, was gripping his mother’s leg, her hands on his shoulders. The rest of the children were either holding onto their grandparents or each other, their ages anywhere between six to fourteen, at a guess. So it was the oldest son that had disappeared?

  “Artifactor, this is my family. My wife, Matika, and my parents, Samid and Sariah.”

  Sevana offered them a bow, her hands tucked in at the waist, as customary. “Artifactor Sevana Warran.”

  Matika stepped forward, maneuvering her way around her youngest child without actually letting go of him. “Artifactor, you are welcome into our home.”

  “I thank you for the welcome.” Niceties out of the way, she went straight to the point. “Show me precisely where the musician and the painter were in your house.”

  Petran led the way and she followed, eyes taking everything in with quick glances. Yes, the man did well in making a living for his family. There were several vases and paintings that would cost a minor fortune. Even if some of them were inherited, this was a place of wealth and comfort. No wonder they were able to afford entertainment on a regular basis.

  Her guide went into a family room and stopped dead, gesturing around him. “They were only ever here, in this room.”

  Sevana looked around her, eyes peeled, alert to the faintest hint of magic. Something about this room was making the fine hairs on the back of her neck tingle. Nothing looked strange, not at first, as it was just a collection of large pillows, one wingback chair, several low tables that had abandoned toys on them, and glass doors that opened out into another miniature courtyard.

  Xald knew her well enough after the past few days to read her face. “You sense something here.”

  “Something is making my instincts scream, yes. But I’m not seeing—” as she turned to speak to him directly, she caught sight of it out of her peripheral vision. Sevana’s neck cracked, her head snapped around so quickly. There, hanging innocently on the wall, was a simple ink portrait of a young man in his teen years. It was no doubt a picture of the missing son, but that wasn’t what caught her attention.

  It practically glowed with magical power.

  Sevana hissed in a breath. “What. Is. THAT.”

  “The portrait?” Petran asked, confused. His head swiveled back and forth between her and the picture.

  “Yes. THAT,” she emphasized, pointing a shaking finger at it, “should not exist. I would have sworn that a picture like that couldn’t possibly be done. Was this commissioned?”

  “By the painter,” Petran answered hoarsely. “Is it…evil?”

  Sevana rubbed at her eyes. Evil. The man’s first thought was that it was evil? Just how superstitious was this culture? “Not evil.” She opened her mouth, trying to think of the words, then clenched her fists in frustration when the words wouldn’t come to her.

  “Magical?” Xald prompted, trying to be helpful.

  “Blargh.” Sevana decided, for her own sanity, to ignore her watchers for a moment and strode to it. Taking a closer look, she pulled out her box lens again and gave it a thorough scrutiny. After the events with the water fountain, she’d developed the box lens to help dissect magical artifacts and spells, giving her a precise outline of what she was looking at. The first lens protruding out from the box read everything, the second one in the box would translate it so that when she held up the main lens, all of the information she needed to know was proscribed in neat letters for her to read. It was a simplistic approach that had already saved her hours of time.

  But never before had she appreciated her new invention as much as she did in this moment. It was so much easier to just put the lens to her eye instead of having to juggle an empty journal in one hand and a wand in the other.

  When the numbers scrawled out on the lens, she was so shocked that she dropped it.

  Xald, hovering nearby, possessed excellent reflexes and caught it in midair. “Sevana?!”

  “This really isn’t possible,” she breathed, eyes fixated on the portrait.

  “Please, explain,” Petran pleaded.

  Her mind whirled at high speeds even as her mouth moved, saying things without really thinking about them. “One of the most valuable spell elements in the world is a word from the Book of Truth. Very few things can rival it in terms of sheer power. But this portrait has the same power level as a word would have, which simply isn’t possible, or shouldn’t be. How…how is this….” She trailed off as her brain cramped.

  Xald, being a more practical man, asked the necessary questions as her brain shut down. “You said the painter did this?”

  Petran had lost his voice and instead nodded vigorously.

  “Sevana, is this portrait linked to their son’s disappearance?”

  “It must be,” she responded instantly, not even thinking the question through. “Why else would he craft something that emanates this much power? It would be akin to crafting a king’s sword and then burying it in the ground without ever using it. He must have used this portrait, somehow, to spirit away the boy.” She finally looked at Xald and found the man’s face draining of all color. Instinct told her why but she still found herself asking in a disturbed voice, “Was Princess Amas painted like this?”

  Xald’s eyes filled with tears that never fell. He nodded once, hard.

  Sevana rubbed her hands over her face, twice, before forcing the words out. “The painting of her?”

  “We don’t have it.”

  She uttered the vilest curse she could think of, heaving out a shaky breath. “Wrong answer, Xald.”

  “We’ll find it immediately,” he swore, as much as himself as to her.

  “You bet we will. Now that I know what to look for.” Spinning on her heels, she faced Petran and his hovering wife. “I don’t know how your son is linked to this portrait, not exactly, but I’ll bet both eyes he is. I need to take this.”

  “Of course,” Matika agreed immediately. “I’ll get a tube for you to carry it in.”

  “Excellent, do so.” Protecting the portrait from all possible damage was a vital necessity until Sevana could figure out what in mercy’s name was going on. “Petran, if you love your son, you will not breathe a word of what I discovered today. I do not want to tip off the magician that did this that I have figured out part of his technique. The safety of your boy, and the princess, depends upon your silence.”

  “You have it, me and my house,” he vowed without a second of hesitation. “Artifactor, you believe that you can unravel what he has done?”

  “I have gained two vital clues and something solid to work on. If I can’t unravel this, I should stop being an Artifactor altogether.” Sevana fully planned on calling up Master as soon as she was back in the palace and asking him questions first. He knew more about the Book of Truth than she did, and right now she needed his brain desperately.

  Matika came back into the room at a half-run, a leather tube with a strap firmly gripped in both hands. Sevana took it from her, only to hand it to Xald so that she herself could take the portrait carefully off the wall and even more gently roll it up. As she did so, she kept an eye trained on the ink, terrified of it cracking, but the portrait acted as if it had been properly aged and preserved for months. She had a feeling that even if she put it over an open fla
me, the sheer power imbued in the paper would keep anything from happening to it. But that wasn’t something she was willing to gamble on, not when a life hung in the balance. For now, caution was called for, and she exercised it fully as she slid the portrait into the tube and capped it.

  Only then did she breathe a little easier. “Petran, Matika, I will keep you both informed as I can, but know that this will take me weeks to unravel.”

  Neither parent looked happy about this and gripped each other’s hands. Still, they nodded understanding.

  “Your son is well, not dead or hurt because of this,” Xald added, voice kind. “He is simply suspended, in a place between heaven and earth.”

  That was likely the best explanation that could be offered in this culture, even if it was only partially accurate. Sevana decided not to clarify. She was itching to get to work, now that she had a solid lead in her hands. “We’ll leave now. Remember, not a word to anyone.”

  The whole family spoke in different ways, agreeing, which satisfied her. Tube cradled against her chest and the strap across her back, Sevana made her way for the door. “Xald, I want a search out for any portraits like this immediately. If the painter tried this technique before he got to the princess, he might have done it with others besides this poor boy.”

  “You think so?”

  “The technique he used to apply ink to paper, setting the spell in place, was perfectly done. Flawless, actually. It suggests a lot of practice to me. Find the others, if there are others.”

  Xald did not like this idea one bit—in fact it made him look sick to his stomach—but he gave her a professional nod. “I will. You will be working on this?”

  “Yes.” After she called Master. No, better, she’d talk to Master while working on this. She wanted to bounce possibilities and theories off him as she worked. It’d save time that way. “You inform Firuz. But make sure he understands not to disrupt me. This thing is highly dangerous even in a dormant state.”

  He lengthened his stride, struggling to keep up with her as Sevana half-jogged through the city streets, anxious to get back. “It’s that powerful?”

  “Like you would not believe.”

  ~ ~ ~

  A part of Sevana wanted to retreat directly back to her workroom in Big as she would have everything on hand there. Only one thought stopped her—it would take a clock portal to get her back. Easily back, at least. And she honestly didn’t know what that would do to the boy in the portrait.

  The boy was transformed into an ink drawing, making him something that wasn’t living or dead, but still possessing life and a soul. Taking him through a portal of any sort would mean bringing him through an in-between place that was neither here nor there. To a human being, an animal, an object, this process was harmless. But what would it do to something that was neither human, nor object, and with powerful magic maintaining its present form? She didn’t know, but Sevana’s guess was nothing good.

  So, for better or worse, she had to work from here in the palace.

  She put a strong spell on the portrait tube as soon as she gained her temporary workroom, setting it so that if anyone even put a hand on it, they’d get a strong shock for trying. No one should be messing with it or even looking at it without her there to supervise. Only then did she dart through the clock and back into Big. It took bare minutes for her to hastily pack what she would need and give a pat of hello/goodbye to her mountain before she was back through the clock and ready to tackle the portrait.

  Setting a Caller on the table, she activated it before commanding, “Call Master.”

  Paying no heed once that command was given, she deactivated the spell on the tube and drew out the portrait. Carefully unrolling it, she set it to a thin, wooden art board, securing the top and bottom in place with leather straps.

  “Sevana?” Master’s creaking voice called. “Did you call me and then forget you had?”

  “No, I’m just trying to do three things at once.” Turning back, she braced her hands against the top of the table, leaning in at the waist to put her head at eye level with the small sculpture. “Master. You’re not going to believe me, I barely believe me, but I just found a portrait that bears all of the traits and power that a word from the Book of Truth would have.”

  Master’s mouth dropped open. “WHAT!?”

  “That’s exactly how I feel about it.”

  “Let me see,” he demanded.

  Picking up the figurine, she turned it around so that he could see the portrait, now leaning against the wall.

  Master took one look and started doing some very creative swearing. “How is that possible? How is that POSSIBLE? Is it the paper or the ink that’s reading out levels like this?”

  “I’m not sure at the moment,” Sevana admitted. “I was using my box lens when I first took the readings, and it can’t clarify things on quite that level yet.”

  “Well, sweetling, what’s stopping you now? Run those scans!”

  “Bossy thing, aren’t you?” Sevana was already setting the Caller back on the table before he could get the words out. He was impatient, as she was, to know what was going on, but the banter between them was so easy and familiar that it gave her a much needed grounding. Seeing that portrait had sent her world spiraling. Sevana needed a dose of the known to help steady her.

  She picked up her most sensitive diagnostic wand and an empty leather-bound journal, and started examining the portrait in fine detail. As the spell ran, she asked him, “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “No, I certainly haven’t. How did you run across this anyway?”

  “The youngest princess of Sa Kao went missing a few weeks ago. They assumed she was spirited away. I volunteered to help—”

  “Wait now, you volunteered? That’s rare of you.”

  “It was either that or watch them start a war with the Fae.”

  Master paused, eyeing her suspiciously. “I have a sense you’re leaving out a lot of details, sweetling.”

  “I am,” she admitted frankly. “I’ll tell you the full story some other time. The main point is, I haven’t been able to locate the princess, and while I was searching for her, I ran across a case of another young man that disappeared the same way. This portrait is of him and was hanging in his home. I’m told that the man that painted him also painted the princess in the same way.”

  Master grimaced, face screwing up. “Seems too much to be a coincidence.”

  “I agree. I’m having them search for her portrait now.” Her diagnostic wand went still, the spell fading as the analysis completed, and she lifted the journal and flipped it back to the beginning. “Spell’s a level twelve in power. It’s made of rainbow mist, piece of a fallen star, and…” her tongue tripped over itself and her eyes crossed. Sevana had to blink to focus, sure she wasn’t reading this right. “A word from the Book of Truth? But there are no words on here, except the boy’s name!”

  “Sevana, this is important,” Master’s voice was serious, and hoarse with some emotion she didn’t want to put a name to. “Tell me about the paper. Is it the paper that’s part of the spell?”

  Sevana had to flip the page and scan to find that answer. “No. The paper seems to be normal. It’s made of wood pulp, water plant, and fiber. Only the ink has any power to it. But Master, I swear to you, the only words on here are the boy’s name—although that’s spelled backwards for some strange reason—and there’s nothing camouflaged here. There are no hidden words I can detect.”

  Master put both hands over his face as if he wanted to cry, or perhaps scream, his whole posture sinking into himself. “Sweetling. It’s not that there’s a word from the Book of Truth on there. It’s just that your wand is only set to detect it in that form. The ink is the same as what was used to write the Book of Truth.”

  She felt an icy chillness rush through her veins as her brain cottoned onto his meaning. “You told me once that the Book of Truth was a normal book until someone wrote into it. You mean it was
the ink itself that gave it all of its power?”

  “Yes, precisely.”

  Spluttering, she objected, “But no one is able to create an element all by itself that has a power level of seven! It’s beyond human ability.”

  Master lowered his hands, smile crooked. “It’s the Fae that crafted the ink, sweetling.”

  Her knees gave out, sending her straight to the floor. Sevana sat there, legs sprawling out in odd directions, gaping at him. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “It’s not a well-known fact, but I’m old enough to remember it happening. It was a gesture of good will from the Fae, that they gave us the ink so we could write the Book of Truth.”

  Sevana remembered the history well enough. Four of the great kings, the ones that had drafted the first lasting peace treaty in the world, gathered together in a council and wanted to write down the truths they had learned on how to be a good ruler. The whole world thought it a splendid idea at the time, as it was the only peace they had known in their lifetimes, and there was much support for the project. The kings spent nearly a decade creating drafts, sending versions of it back and forth between each other, before they finally settled on a version. They then set a scribe to write it, which he did for the next year, each word being more drawn than written. Once it was finished, it glowed with such intense magical power that it had become an elemental source for magicians.

  “The Fae gave us the ink?!”

  “Part of the treaty the Four Kings established gave them peace in their own lands, with set boundaries that humans were not allowed to enter. It gave the Fae peace of mind. They repaid it by helping to craft the Book of Truth,” Master explained. “Mind, I was only a youngster myself while the book was being written, so I don’t have the facts straight on how it all came to be. I just remember hearing about it from my own Master.”