by H. L. Burke
Jericho slipped his stylus from his vest pocket, staring down at the reddish wood grain. It was the first real change he’d made to the shop since Hedward’s retirement: choosing to order mainly cedar quires rather than Hedward’s preferred alder wood ones. He knew the reasons. His training in his uncle’s carpentry shop told him cedar wood was softer and therefore easier to manipulate, had a natural resistance to rot, and he also preferred the odor. Still, with Hedward gone, the change seemed a betrayal. Jericho was putting his own mark on Spellsmith Manor, and he wasn’t even a Spellsmith. Perhaps he should order alder wood, just out of respect for Hedward’s memory.
Shaking his head to clear the melancholy, he wrote out the first symbol in the weather spell.
Auric sighed, drawing Jericho’s attention. The young magician had paused halfway through a pest ward and was staring at a silver owl. The metal bird had been sitting on the table since Lotta had left the week before. Jericho had considered asking about it, but decided Auric would open up in his own time. Now Auric twirled his stylus aimlessly between his fingers.
Jericho cleared his throat. “Commencement symbol, proximity symbol, barrier symbol, detection symbol—”
“I know how to do a pest ward.” Auric scowled. He started writing again.
“Was just wondering if you’d forgotten. Your brain’s been elsewhere lately.”
“No, it hasn’t.” Auric angled away.
Jericho swallowed a chuckle and concentrated on his own work.
Light flashed followed by a whiff of lavender and a cry from Auric. Jericho dropped his quire and stared. Auric sat, balanced precariously on top of the stool, his knees up to his chin, his head pressed against his knees. Jericho reached out and tapped the air around his friend. His knuckles clinked against an invisible barrier that hummed with Fey energy.
Jericho smirked. “So you know how to do a pest ward? You wouldn’t forget to specify the detection symbol to ignore humans crossing the barrier, for instance yourself?”
“Shut up and get me out of here,” Auric groaned, his voice tight probably because of the way his legs were pressing against his rib cage.
“I’m not sure I want to. You’re less of a danger to yourself and others if I leave you in there.”
“Jericho, I swear, let me out or I’ll … or I’ll …” Auric’s face reddened then his eyes took on a tinge of desperation. “Just please.”
Jericho’s smile faded, and he dashed out a line of symbols. Auric collapsed onto the table, gasping for air. He stayed down, hands over his eyes, his shoulders shaking in unsteady breaths.
Jericho swallowed. “You all right?”
Auric shook his head.
“Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have needled you like that.” Jericho squeezed his shoulder. “You’ve obviously been through a lot lately, and I should know better than to make it worse.”
Auric unfolded and stared forward. He took up the silver owl and stretched out its wings, then fiddled with its rotating head.
Jericho rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t want to pressure you, but if you need to talk, Rill and I—”
“I asked Lotta to marry me!” Auric burst out.
Jericho raised his eyebrows. “Really? Did she say yes?”
Auric shook his head. “No, but she didn’t say no. She asked me for time.”
“Makes sense.” Jericho sat on the edge of the worktable. “Not something you want to rush into.”
“I guess. It’s been over a week, though. I’d hoped she’d know what she wanted by now.”
“You said yourself, it’s complicated.” Jericho shrugged.
“Yeah, but I know what I want, and it’s her.” Auric sighed, stroking the silver owl as if it were alive. “She’s right, though. I can’t expect her to leave everything she’s worked for in the city to be with me. I’m not that much of a catch.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.” Jericho eyed Auric. “You could go live with her. It would be a lot easier for you to find employment in the Capital as a magician than it would be for her to get work in Mountain’s Foot as an engineer.”
Auric’s eyes widened. “Yeah, but there’s the shop, and Rill and Mother.”
“I can handle the shop, and Rill’s a grown woman. Also, if you don’t mind me saying so, she’s more emotionally stable than you by a mile. I mean, she’ll miss you, but the trains go both ways. It’s only a half-day’s trip.” Jericho stood up.
Auric’s voice dropped to a mumble. “We wouldn’t be able to work together anymore though.”
“Yeah.” Jericho resisted the urge to clear his throat again. He remembered not that long before when he’d first heard that Master Spellsmith’s son was returning from the Academy. Jericho had loathed the very idea. The then apprentice had feared Auric would take everything Jericho had worked for, and longed for the young man to give up and flee to the Capital again. Now, the thought of not having him there on a day-to-day basis stirred an uncomfortable ache in Jericho’s chest. It wasn’t a feeling he knew what to do with, so he pushed it aside. “What do you want, though?”
“Besides Lotta? I’m not sure.” Auric scratched at his beard. “It used to be to prove to Father that I could be a capable magician in my own right.”
“I’m pretty sure you accomplished that.” Jericho smiled.
“Jericho!” Rill’s voice traveled up the stairs. “Come here!”
“Sorry, wife needs me.” He clapped Auric on the shoulder. “You’ll know what that’s like eventually.”
Auric smiled weakly. “I’ll get some of this done while you’re gone.”
Jericho hurried down the stairs and found Rill waiting in the foyer, smiling broadly. At her side stood a middle-aged woman with gray streaked black curls and deep crow’s feet around her gray eyes.
“Jericho, this is Miss Nancy, and she’s here in response to the advertisement you sent out.” Rill’s entire being seemed lighter, as if she were holding herself back from bouncing on her toes. A warmth crept through him, and he grinned.
“Excellent.” He focused on the woman. “Are you comfortable with the wages we suggested? Room and board is included, of course.”
The woman gazed at him, but in an oddly unfocused way, her head angled more towards his chest than his eyes. “I find the terms more than satisfactory. One thing the advertisement was vague on was the age of the charges. It said ‘two young children.’” She tilted her head. “How young, exactly?”
“Four months next week.” Rill probably knew their age down to the minute. She drew herself up proudly. “They’re twins, good babies, but two at a time is rather a handful.”
The woman frowned. “Infants? That is not ideal.”
Rill’s smile faded. “Oh, do you not have experience with infants?”
“It’s more an issue of preference.” The woman shrugged. “That said, two children is no difficulty for me. I would like to meet them.”
“They’re napping now, and I’d rather not disturb them. My pet, Jaspyr, is sleeping near them. He’ll bark if they wake up.” Rill’s hands tightened on her skirt. Doubt lingered about her expression. Jericho didn’t blame her. There was a coldness to this woman he didn’t like, and she seemed an unlikely candidate for caring for their children.
“We wouldn’t have you take the position if you feel your skills would be better used elsewhere.” He stepped towards the door. “I’m sure there will be other applicants.”
Nancy eased towards Rill. “You’re a young mother. Not yet twenty, I’d wager?”
Rill flushed. “I’ll be nineteen this winter. Is that relevant to your decision?”
“You’ve a pretty face, such blue eyes, almost otherworldly in their clarity. If your daughter inherits those, she will be favored indeed. What must it be like to see the world through such pure eyes …”
Something scratched at the back of Jericho’s thoughts like cold fingers. He eyed Rill, who seemed captivated by the woman.
“Thank you,” she whispered,
a nervous catch in her voice. “That is very kind of you to say.”
“If you don’t mind, I would like to wait for the children to wake up. You are right to let them sleep. Precious creatures need rest to grow.” Nancy looked around the foyer. “Do you perhaps have a place I can sit for a spell? I walked from town, and my feet ache.”
“Yes, right in here.” Rill opened the door to their parlor. “If you give me a moment, I’ll have the cook prepare you some tea.”
“What a dear you are. Thank you.” Nancy entered the room, and Rill shut the door behind her.
“Something off about that one,” Jericho mumbled.
“Yes, my instinct is we can afford to wait.” Rill tucked a stray wisp of pale hair behind her ear. “It has only been a few days since we published the advertisement, and there are bound to be other applicants. Doesn’t mean we can’t be kind to her and offer her something to eat and drink after she’s come all this way.”
“Do you want me to deliver the bad news?” Jericho nodded towards the closed door.
“No, I can handle it. Let me get her the tea first. You can go back to work.” She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him.
“I’ll be right upstairs if you need me.” He touched his lips first against hers, then to the tip of her upturned nose, then her forehead. “We’ll find someone, Rill, I promise.”
Returning to the workshop, he found Auric reading from one of his father’s magical theory books. The silver owl sat on the table before him, next to a paper quire with a long string of spell symbols on it.
“You going to animate it?”
Auric looked up. “That’s the idea. I told Lotta I would, but I forgot how complicated the spell was. Might have to wait for a natural rift to form to give me enough power.”
“Can’t help you much. I’ve never bothered looking into it. Figured Jaspyr was enough for one household so we’d never have a need.” Jericho took up a quire to start his work again. “Though a familiar would make a nice engagement present.”
A shriek echoed in the distance. Jericho stiffened.
“That’s Rill!” Auric leaped from his chair.
Jericho darted down the stairs three steps at a time. The door to the parlor was now open. A tray of tea things lay upended and scattered across the floor, Rill standing above it, her hands clasped to her mouth. Before her lay Nancy, eyes open, staring at the ceiling.
“She’s dead!” Rill whimpered.
Chapter Nine
Jericho drew Rill into his arms. “What happened?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. She’d collapsed already when I entered the room.”
Auric knelt over the body. “I’ll call the doctor for an examination, but it could be any number of things at her age. She has to be at least eighty.”
Releasing Rill, Jericho frowned. “Really? I would’ve said more like fifty.”
“Maybe double that.” Auric snorted, motioning towards the woman’s face.
And he was right. Wrinkles covered every bit of visible skin, and her hair looked like twisted silver wire.
Jericho blinked. “I would’ve sworn she … that’s odd.” Admittedly, he’d only got a quick glance. His stomach tightened into a knot. Something was off about this whole situation. He turned his attention back to Rill. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Shocked is all. Not every day someone drops dead at my feet.” Rill shrugged. “I want to go lie down.”
“The doctor may want you to make a statement.”
Rill crossed her arms. “I don’t see why. I didn’t see anything. She’s obviously simply dead of old age, which is none of our concern.”
Jericho raised his eyebrows at her brisk tone. “Are you sure you’re sure you’re all right?”
“I’m not a child.” She sniffed. “Can you take care of this?”
“Yeah, I guess. You can go rest if you feel you need to.”
Rill slipped her hand into her apron pocket, a faint smile crossing her lips, then she whisked out of the room. A chill cut through Jericho, though he wasn’t sure why.
The clink of glass made him turn around. Auric knelt on the floor, gathering the scattered cups and saucers. He held up a shard of green glass. “Something must’ve broke when she dropped the tray. A lot of little pieces, so watch your step.”
“Huh, that doesn’t look like our china.” Jericho gently lifted the old woman’s body and laid it upon the couch. He covered her with a knit throw that had been folded on the chair. “I don’t think she even gave her last name. How will we get in contact with her next of kin?”
“I don’t know.” Auric took out his wax tablet and wrote a suction spell. The broken glass rose from the carpet, allowing him to slip the tray beneath the shards before the spell ended and they fell onto it.
Jericho couldn’t help but be impressed by the ingenuity of that. Suction spells were usually only used on liquids, not solid objects. While Auric commonly bungled mundane spells due to carelessness, he had a knack for using magic in unconventional and creative ways. Jericho had learned a lot from working with him.
Standing, Auric returned his tablet to his breast pocket. “She’s not familiar, so probably not local. Did she mention where she came from? Mill River? High Junction?”
“No, unfortunately she didn’t.” Jericho rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe someone in town saw her ride in and got some gossip out of her. I’ll ask Rill if she knows any more when she feels better.”
***
Still, blinking away his morning haze, Auric picked through the mail Will had brought from the village. His heart constricted when he noted Lotta’s small, neat penmanship on the top letter. He turned it over a few times before tucking it in his breast pocket next to his tablet. He’d read it while sitting down, just in case.
The other two envelopes proved mundane—a letter of condolence from an elderly relative who hadn’t been able to make the funeral and a request for a charitable donation from the local parson.
Nothing from Mother.
He paused, his throat tightening. Iris had been reliably sending updates from her search every few days. The sudden silence worried him, but he supposed she could be chasing a lead that kept her from the post. A lot of the smaller farming towns and lumber settlements didn’t have regular mail service. When was her last letter? Two days before the odd death of the elderly visitor, so four days ago. Yes, he’d give it at least a week before he panicked.
Setting the two open letters on the foyer table to be dealt with later, he entered the breakfast nook. Three places had been set, but none were occupied. Hopefully Rill and Jericho would be down shortly. He didn’t feel like eating alone.
After sitting, he pulled out the letter from Lotta. His mind raced with what she might possibly say. Had her time away cooled her heart and cleared her head to where she realized what a foolish idea marrying him was? With a butter knife, he broke the letter’s seal.
To Auric Spellsmith at Spellsmith Manor, Mountain’s Foot, Republic of Feshore.
He allowed himself a chuckle at the formal address, trying to assure himself it wasn’t a bad sign.
I’ve missed you. I keep thinking of you. It makes it hard to focus, and I worry people will think I’m daft. Uncle Ezra says it’s natural, but it feels very strange, and I don’t like it.
Relief coursed through him. So far so good.
Somehow my brain has grown to rely on your presence to work right, which is very inconvenient. It’s like my mind is ungreased clockwork and just grinds rather than spins anymore. You probably won’t understand that because you aren’t an engineer, but I can’t explain it any better.
He rolled his eyes. Engineering wasn’t the great, almighty mystery Lotta seemed to consider it. Well, not the basics anyway. He still had no idea how her generators and wind-up shoe-shine machines actually worked, but he knew about grease and clockwork.
I miss you, Auric. I guess I already said that, but I don’t want to scratch it out even if it is repetiti
ve, because if I do the letter will look messy. I still don’t know what to do about my business or where we will live, which is bothersome. However, I cannot keep not being able to think right.
Uncle Ezra says it is bad taste to accept a proposal via post, so I will return to Mountain’s Foot at my earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Lotta Tyckner
463 Industry Way
Capital City
Republic of Feshore.
Auric blinked at the letter, his heart racing. He set it down, drew a deep breath, then leaped from his chair, punching at the ceiling and whooping.
“What’s got into you?” Jericho entered.
Auric’s cheeks warmed. “Uh … letter from Lotta.”
“Good news, I take it.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” He tucked the letter protectively into his pocket.
Jericho glanced around the breakfast nook, his heavy, dark brows drawn together. “Have you seen Rill?”
“Not this morning, no. Why?” Auric poured himself a cup of tea and reached for a muffin even though he was too excited to eat.
“She was gone when I woke up. I’m not sure how she slipped away without waking me.”
“Took Jaspyr for a walk in the garden, maybe?” Auric suggested.
“That’s another odd thing. She shut Jaspyr in the parlor last night instead of letting him sleep in our room.” Jericho sat down and fiddled with an empty tea cup. “I let him out, and he bounded up the stairs, barking—almost woke the twins—instead of leading me to her like I hoped he would.”
“Maybe that’s why she wants him out of the room.” Auric shrugged. “He can be boisterous, and she’s been desperate for those babies to sleep more.”
“I guess.” Jericho poured some tea and held it under his nose, inhaling the steam but not drinking.