Magic Below Paris Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 8): Trading Into Shadow, Trading Into Darkness, Trading Close to Light, Trading By Firelight, Trading by Shroomlight, plus 3 more

by C. M. Simpson

  The answer came when the woman brought Aisha her chocolate and set a cup of warm milk down in front of Scruffknuckle.

  “Looks like he’s in the same boat as these two,” she offered as she straightened up. “They’ll be fine together.”

  Marsh caught her unspoken question.

  “I’m hoping to find someone to care for them until some relatives can be found. Do you know if anyone made it back from the last caravan to leave for Kerrenin’s Ledge?”

  The woman’s lips tightened, and she looked down at the bowl she was using to mix the pancake batter. Marsh caught the brief shake of her head and felt her heart sink. Glancing down, she saw Aisha had frozen mid-sip of her chocolate. A look at where Tams had stopped, his cup halfway to his mouth, warned her that she might have made a mistake.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman murmured and carried the batter over to where the skillet was heating on the stovetop. Roeglin waved her apology away and turned toward the table, looking down at Aisha as he did so.

  “Drink your chocolate,” he said as though he was immune to the tears shimmering in her eyes.

  “Drink,” he repeated sternly when Aisha’s bottom lip trembled, and he watched her as the child lifted the cup to her mouth.

  Roeglin didn’t give Marsh time to wonder why he was being so hard. He turned to Tamlin and got straight down to business.

  “Your parents wanted you to meet me?”

  Tamlin lifted his cup and took a large sip of the kaffee. Marsh caught the glint of tears in the boy’s eyes and knew he was using the move as a delaying tactic to get his emotions under control. It was pretty effective. Roeglin eyed him while he waited, and after Tamlin had swallowed his mouthful, raised an eyebrow. The boy clutched the cup to his chest as though it would ward off what Roeglin’s questions would bring.

  “Well?” Again Roeglin’s voice held a hard quality that demanded obedience—and an answer.

  “Yessir.”

  “Why?”

  “They said my magic… They said I would need guidance.”

  Roeglin made a show of looking the boy over.

  “At ten?” he asked, and Tamlin lifted his chin in defiance.

  “Ten and a half,” he said, his voice firm and his eyes daring dispute.

  Marsh was glad when Roeglin let it pass, but she almost choked on her chocolate when she heard Aisha’s stubborn whisper drift up from near Roeglin’s feet.

  “Seven.”

  The mage sputtered and looked at Tamlin.

  “Five,” the boy mouthed, holding up a hand to show five digits and not making a sound.

  He was very careful to keep his hand where Aisha couldn’t see it. Marsh had no doubt that if the child caught sight of it, the resulting argument would carry out into the eatery proper. Aisha would have started a fight for sure if she’d worked out that her brother had given her secret away.

  “Did your parents know your sister could talk to rocks?”

  Tams shook his head, and Aisha confirmed it.

  “Nope. It was a secret.”

  “A secret, huh?” Roeglin repeated, and Marsh looked around him in time to see Aisha’s head nodding enthusiastically. It was a relief to see the small smile on her face too, even if there was no telling how long it would last.

  “And you need help in harnessing your power,” Roeglin added, turning to Marsh.

  It was not a question.

  She shrugged.

  “If you say so.”

  She watched his eyebrows rise in surprise and cocked one of her own. It might have been the after-effect of the attack on the caravan, the discovery that she had magic, or the unprovoked attack in the eatery, but she was in no mood to be pushed around, no matter how much she needed the person doing the pushing…or how cute he was.

  Because he was cute, she decided, and blushed.

  Before he could ask what she was thinking or try to convince her she needed training, Marsh lifted her cup and drank, closing her eyes to savor the chocolate and trying to ignore the growing stiffness in her middle and down her biceps. She was going to bruise like a wagonload of purple toads, not to mention feel like someone had slipped one in her supper.

  She wondered if it would make the shadows go away.

  13

  Roeglin Intervenes

  The shadows drifted at the edge of Marsh’s vision. They had grown slowly thicker in the corners of the kitchen and Marsh didn’t know why.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Roeglin’s voice caught her attention.

  “Oui. Why?”

  He gestured toward the shadows.

  “They seem to think you need company.”

  Did they?

  Marsh forced herself to look at the shadows. They’d grown so dense that she could no longer see the wall. If that was her, she had no idea how she was doing it. She glanced toward the shadow mage.

  “I’m doing that?”

  Roeglin nodded, but before Marsh could ask him any more, the cook slammed a plate of pancakes down in the center of the table.

  “I want that rubbish off my wall by the time you’re done eating, or you’ll be scrubbing pots until it’s gone.”

  Marsh stared at her, startled by the crash of the plate but more so by the threat. She couldn’t do that, could she? But the cook didn’t answer. She just turned away and bustled back to the kitchen.

  Roeglin laid a hand on her shoulder as though willing her not to speak. Marsh thought he might say something, but he didn’t, not until the cook had come back and dumped a pile of plates and cutlery next to the pancakes and bustled out into the eatery.

  “Yes, she can. The town’s very firm about damage to personal property and the eatery is popular. She’d have a lot of help enforcing it.”

  Marsh caught the cut of his eyes toward the connecting door and remembered just how many caravan guards had been inside when she’d brought the kids in for breakfast. Roeglin wasn’t finished.

  “You need to let the shadows know you don’t need their protection.”

  He leaned forward, hooked two pancakes off the top of the stack and onto a plate, and passed the plate to Tamlin. Aisha appeared on the seat beside him as if by magic, and Roeglin served her a pancake as well.

  “Eat that, and I’ll give you another,” he told the little girl before she could complain, and Marsh stifled a smile at the glare he received in reply.

  Where had he learned how to handle children?

  “Lots of siblings,” he replied.

  Again, it was like he was reading her mind. He glanced at her, and she realized his eyes were an odd hazel color—almost green, not quite gold, mostly light brown. They were the most fascinating eyes she’d ever seen—and then they flashed white.

  “You should see them in sunlight.”

  Marsh sat still. She was still staring, not certain she’d seen the white, when the cook bustled back into the kitchen. She glanced at their table.

  “You need to eat those before they get cold.”

  She didn’t stop, though; didn’t come over to the table, just put a piece of parchment on the counter beside her and began gathering ingredients and pulling pans and utensils from the kitchen’s cupboards and drawers. Roeglin didn’t bother answering her. He handed Marsh a plate and a fork and gestured toward the pancakes. When she had served herself, he filled his own plate and then picked up the plate that was left.

  “For the pup,” the cook told him, and Roeglin shrugged and set a pancake down in front of Scruffknuckle.

  Marsh watched as the woman worked. She’d only just caught the quick glance in their direction as Roeglin had served the pancakes and seen the slight smile as the mage gave the pup his breakfast. The woman was definitely the queen of her kitchen and a lot more alert than she appeared, even in the middle of preparing half a dozen different dishes.

  Marsh started eating. They’d been brought butter and some honey, which had a soft smoky flavor suggesting it had come from the cave hives of Dimanche, although she co
uldn’t be sure. She’d always thought of Dimanche as a center for gemstones and wool. Marsh shrugged the thought away, enjoying the taste of honey and butter on pancakes

  Everyone focused on their food, the children hungrier than Marsh had realized. Their simple meal on the farm seemed too long ago. When Aisha cleared her plate and looked around for more, Roeglin was quick to give her another. Too much more of that, Marsh thought, and the little girl would look like a barrel.

  Marsh let her mind drift as she ate, thinking over the last few days. So much had happened that she was having trouble coming to grips with it. The magic… Marsh wasn’t comfortable that she could do the same kind of magic the shadow mages did. That wasn’t her. She was no mage. She was just a seeker of ancient treasures, a finder, and a retriever of lost secrets.

  Magic didn’t come into it.

  And yet, she had asked the shadows to show her where the raiders had gone, and they’d done so—and then she’d used them to fish for what or who might be coming across Leon’s Deep toward the waystation. She’d encased Lennie’s hand in a shield of shadow…or had that been a net?

  Marsh lifted her eyes to the patch of shadows on the wall. It was still there, and slightly wider than before.

  “Just tell them you’re all right,” Roeglin told her. “They’ll return to their corners and wait until you need them again. Now that you have found them, they will always be there. Have no fear of that.”

  Have no fear? The man must be slightly out of his mind. She was no mage that the shadows should come at her beck and call!

  “And yet they do.” Roeglin’s voice was calm. “And they always will.”

  Marsh speared another piece of pancake and concentrated on chewing it, focusing on the flavor and wishing Roeglin was right. If she told the shadows to stand down, would they really be there for her to summon again?

  “Always,” Roeglin whispered, and Marsh knew she would see white if she could see his eyes.

  “But I’m not a mage.”

  “No?” For a moment Marsh thought he would argue with her, but Roeglin surprised her by continuing, “Then perhaps you are a shadow-caller or a speaker of shades. Come to think of it, though, you might be a wielder instead.”

  “A wielder?” Marsh swallowed a laugh and very nearly choked on her breakfast. “Like in the legends? Like that girl they talk about from the West, Rhona?”

  “She was not the first.”

  “She’s the one all the stories are about.”

  “Not all.” Roeglin softened his denial with a slight smile. “Just most of the ones told by the wanderers.”

  “You’ve seen the wanderers?” Tamlin’s voice was breathless as he interrupted.

  “Once.”

  “It was a very long time ago, and more than enough trouble for a lifetime,” the cook interrupted, setting another round of hot drinks in front of them and clearing their empty pancake plates away. She turned to Roeglin. “You’re going to have to talk to them.”

  This last was accompanied by a slight jerk of the head toward the eatery proper, followed by a turn in Marsh’s direction.

  “They’re saying she only survived because she was part of the attack.”

  “What?” Marsh pushed her chair back. “I’ll go straighten them out.”

  Roeglin snapped out his hand and wrapped his fingers around her wrist.

  “We’ll both go,” he told her, “but you need to let me lead, or they’ll take you apart.”

  “Lennie?”

  His expression turned grim.

  “She lost her husband. Their child will grow up without a father.”

  Marsh felt her cheeks go cold as her face went pale. The caravan guard was pregnant?

  “But I could have hurt her! She might have—”

  The words jerked to a halt as Roeglin stood, pulling her toward him and laying his other hand over her mouth.

  “You didn’t, and the child will be fine, but she needs a place of refuge and calm, and I haven’t yet convinced her to come to the monastery. With you, I might stand a chance.” He paused, and his face turned pleading. “Will you follow my lead?”

  Swallowing her instinctive retort that she could handle it, Marsh nodded, and Roeglin took his hand away from her mouth. He turned toward Tamlin, but the boy spoke before Roeglin could take more than a breath.

  “We’re coming too. We were part of the caravan, and we survived. It wasn’t just Marsh.”

  “Marsh saved us,” Aisha added, her little voice solemn as she slipped out of her chair. Her hand went to Scruffknuckle’s head as the pup got to his feet.

  Roeglin looked like he might argue, but Marsh shook her head.

  “This time the kids have a point,” she told him and began moving toward the door. “You coming or not?”

  Just as she reached it, a man raised his voice.

  “And I told you, you can’t go back there.”

  “Step aside, Marc. It’s not you we want to speak to.”

  Before Marc could answer, Marsh stepped out of the kitchen.

  “No,” she snapped. “You all want a piece of me.”

  “You—”

  Marsh stopped Marc’s protest with an upraised hand, but she didn’t take her eyes off the crowd gathered in front of his counter. At sight of her, there was a moment’s silence, then Lennie stepped forward, but Marsh didn’t let her get a word out.

  “You think I was part of the attack?” she challenged as Roeglin gently shouldered her aside.

  “Well, do you?” he demanded, looking out at the gathering.

  Lennie took another step, her movement mirrored by another guard. If Marsh hadn’t known better, she would have said the big guy was trying to protect Lennie, and that he wasn’t about to risk putting his arm around the female guard’s shoulders. It was hard to imagine Lennie accepting any kind of comfort, but it wasn’t something that made Marsh want to smile. She couldn’t imagine loving someone enough to start a family with them and then losing them before their journey together had really begun. That was far from fair.

  “You know we do,” Lennie said. “No one else was found, and here she waltzes through town with a line of mules that don’t belong to her days later?”

  Marsh drew breath to explain, but Roeglin laid a hand on her arm.

  “And the children?”

  It was clear from Lennie’s face that the kids didn’t fit with her theory of Marsh as a villain.

  “They got lucky.”

  “Lucky?” Tamlin had made no promises about letting Roeglin lead the conversation, and the boy’s tone trembled with grief and fury. He didn’t give anyone time to reply either, sliding in front of Marsh and Roeglin and out from behind the counter before either of them could stop him. Aisha and Scruffknuckle ducked past them as they tried to catch her brother.

  At first, Marsh thought the boy would back up against the partition to stop her and the shadow mage from following, but he didn’t. He marched right up to Lennie and looked up into her face.

  “My parents are gone!” he shouted. “My brothers are gone! My sisters…” His voice broke and he swallowed hard, his fists clenched at his side. “My whole family is gone, and she…” He pointed back at Marsh with one hand. “She is the only reason Aysh and I got out of there. She came back and grabbed us and dumped us on her mule, and then she ran for the glows…” a sob broke through the words, “and they went out and a shadow monster took the mule out from under us, but she didn’t leave us. She grabbed us out from under its claws and got us out of there.”

  Marsh shook off Roeglin’s hand and stepped out from behind the counter. She laid her hands on Tamlin’s shoulders and tried to move him behind her.

  “It’s okay, Tams. I’ve got this.”

  But Tamlin was having none of it. He shook himself free of her grip and glared up at Lennie.

  “She’s the only reason I have any family left.”

  Aisha came and stood alongside her brother, her little face matching his glare for glare, her ey
es bluer than Marsh had ever seen them. Tamlin laid his arm across her shoulders as the little girl curled her hand in the ruff of fur at Scruffknuckle’s neck. He gestured at Marsh.

  “If she was part of the attack, we’d be gone too.”

  Lennie looked from the boy’s angry face to Marsh.

  “Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Grab the kids when the monsters attacked?”

  Marsh rolled her shoulders.

  “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “Why didn’t you grab the rest?”

  “I thought their parents had them, and I had no more space on the mule.”

  That much was true, but whether Lennie would buy it was another matter. Marsh watched as the warrior’s face became thoughtful and waited until it cleared.

  “Yeah. You were pretty heavily loaded.” She still didn’t look convinced, though, and turned to Roeglin. “What do you see, Roe? Is she telling the truth?”

  “You want to see?”

  Lennie nodded, her gesture echoed by several of the guards behind her, and Roeglin stepped up beside Marsh, his next question directed to the guards.

  “Which one first?”

  To Marsh’s surprise, Lennie pointed at Aisha. The woman caught her look.

  “Kids don’t lie,” she said and amended her meaning just as Marsh was thinking she was in for a surprise when her own came along. “They don’t know how to hide things from Ro.”

  Ro, huh?

  He cast her an anxious look and knelt beside Aisha.

  “Aisha,” he said, “if I look inside your head, can you remember what you saw when the shadow monsters attacked?”

  Aisha frowned.

  “Don’t want to.”

  “If you don’t, Lennie will hit Marsh again.”

  Aisha gasped. To give her credit, Lennie looked horrified at the thought, but Aisha wasn’t daunted. She looked up at the guard.

  “No hit.”

  Marsh saw when the guard decided to take the chance of finding out the truth and run with it. Lennie looked at Aisha with a face that said she meant every word.