by Jean Johnson
“My last job . . . I quit because my employer wanted me not only to do an audit of his business to find where he could tighten up production costs and lessen the amount of magical energy expended on his creations, he wanted me to fix the numbers magically so that the records would never show how much money he was really earning in his glassmaking shop. Particularly whenever tax time rolled around.”
Siona smiled. “You’re an honest man, Marc Tresket. We didn’t have more than a handful of classes together, and we weren’t ever paired for assignments . . . but I did see that much in you. It’s why I decided to trust you.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “Honest men don’t always find honest employment. Which is ironic, because I left the last job due to an ethical conflict, yet here you’re asking me to help you in exposing . . . or even eradicating . . . a government official.”
“A murderer,” she corrected.
“How do you know Baron Oger is the murderer you seek?” Marc challenged her.
Siona gave him a sardonic look. “Because I studied Auramancy under Don Divestia . . . and because I got close enough to him as a cat to sniff the baron magically. I have a hard time casting active magics when I’m in cat form, but the passive ones still work well enough. That name spell came from his own energies. I’m so sure of it, I’m staking my life on it, because if I had any sense, I’d flee to the far side of the world. That . . . and if I weren’t oath-bound to protect the land-bound peasants of Calabas. So long as they’re in danger, I have to stick around and figure out how to save them all.”
“Ah.” He mulled that over. “So how do we get him to confess?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what his weaknesses are or where his skeletons lie.”
He rubbed at his chin and his ear, then tugged on it. “I suppose I could offer my services to him as a freelance Arithmancer, offer to go over the estate books, see if there is any sort of monetary motive behind the killings. Then we’d have an ‘inside man’ on the scene.”
Siona nodded. “That could work . . . particularly if you claimed to be working on behalf of Dowager Queen Jalta—she’s related to the family by marriage. I also happen to know something which has been kept hushed up from general knowledge. Her Majesty’s been forced to take to her bed because of a stroke and is under healer’s orders to have strict peace and quiet while she struggles to recover full speech and mobility—her primary healer sent a note to my parents just days before . . . well. The note explained why she wouldn’t be visiting us later this summer as planned.”
“That just might work . . . With her out of touch and the reason why she can’t be reached hushed up, I can drop her name to get my foot in the door. I can also bring you onto the estate as my pampered pet cat, though I’d have to give you a suitable name—hey, how about Boots?” he teased, giving her feet an unabashed grin.
With his beard framing his white teeth, he looked a little wicked and rather sexy. As a younger, beardless man, he had been kind of cute, if shy and self-effacing. With the beard and that grin, he looked rather handsome. Siona felt her face and other parts farther south warming. “I suppose that one will do, if you must give me a name.”
He scratched his chin, then his ear. “We’ll also need to ensure some way of communicating while you’re in cat form. It’s been a while since my Artificing classes, but I think I can cobble together an amulet you could wear on a collar, something which would translate your verbal intent, your yowls and such, into actual Gucheran speech. It would have to be recharged each night, though, since I don’t have the right ingredients on hand to make it long-lasting. The rather expensive ingredients. Unless you’d prefer to wait?”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I’d rather not wait for the expensive stuff. I—”
She was interrupted by the boom-boom-boom of someone thumping on a large set of drums. Royal messenger drums. Siona quickly resumed her cat shape, allowing Marc to break the chalked lines of the wardings. As soon as both of them were free, they hurried to the window. Marc scooped her up in his arms in time to hear the drumming stop and see the royal messenger unrolling his scroll.
“By royal decree!” the man mounted on the horse called out in deep tones. “His Majesty has commanded that, due to the unexpected and tragic loss of all known inheritors, Oger Havant, Baron of Shellid, shall be named successor to the Marque of Calabas. This proclamation is to be made all throughout the bounds of the Marque of Calabas and its immediate environs. Let all hear His Majesty’s decree and honor your new governor, the Marquis Oger of Calabas! ”
Siona hissed. She didn’t realize she had dug in her claws, too, until Marc himself hissed. Squirming out of his arms, she stalked over to the center of the broken wards and paced, waiting impatiently for him to return and begin inscribing the circles and runes all over again.
As soon as she safely could—many minutes later—Siona shot back to her natural form and glared at her former classmate, hands clenching in fists. “They’re both in collusion on this! It’s the only explanation why His Majesty would act so fast, when it’s barely been a week!”
“Calm down,” Marc ordered her, catching her wrists. “What you’re suggesting could be considered treason if someone else hears us mentioning it. I did put up sound-dampening wards, but they’ll only go so far. If we can’t catch him by taking your evidence to the king and demanding a truth-testing . . . then we’ll have to find evidence some other way, and . . . I can’t believe I’m even thinking this . . .” he muttered.
“And what, take justice into our own hands? I’m more than willing!” Siona asserted. He hushed her again, glancing at the door and the walls around them. Subsiding, she thought out loud in a lower, quieter tone of voice. “You’re right. We need evidence. But not just to prove it’s Oger. We need evidence to hold over His Majesty’s head. I don’t want anyone else trying to gain control of Calabas once Oger’s out of the way, and I don’t want the one man who is supposed to be protecting all Gucherans to just turn around and back another greedy murderer.”
“I’d better get to work crafting that collar—if there’s anything you can do to help, we’d better brainstorm what that is right now,” he added, releasing her hands. “It takes too long to set up these ward circles. We’ll want to be prepared and ready before we start, if you’re going to help make that collar, and help me think of ways to get the evidence we need. Here—I have a couple of miniaturized slate boards and some chalk in my pouch. You take one, I’ll take the other, and we’ll list out our objectives, requirements, and goals.”
Siona smiled wanly. She settled back on the floor, tucking the hem of her nightdress down for decency. “Were you always this organized?”
“Third best Arithmancer in my graduating year. The only thing keeping me from a higher ranking was my lesser magic. I wasn’t even a quarter as powerful as that Serina girl, the one from outkingdom,” he admitted with a shrug. “She took the top honors.”
“Serina . . . Serina . . . tall, skinny, pale blonde?” Siona asked. “Skinny, but really pretty?”
Marc wrinkled his nose. “Too tall, too skinny, and her hair was too straight.” He smoothed his expression into a smile and added a wink. “I like curly haired Gucheran girls.”
Mindful of the uncombed state of her own curls, Siona ducked her head and concentrated on writing down whatever ideas might be of use in her—their—quest.
FROM the ends of her whiskers to the tip of her tail, Siona trembled with rage. It was all she could do to keep from growling and flexing her claws, the latter of which might have caused Marc to drop her. As it was, her tail thumped repeatedly against his chest.
Baron Oger lowered the lash in his hand, giving the whimpering man at his feet a brief respite. Strolling around to the front, he grabbed the peasant’s curls and lifted his tear-streaked head. As he was a very large man and the peasant somewhat short, the Baron managed to lift his victim almost off his knees. “Now will you call me by my new, rightful title?�
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“I’m so sorry, milord! Bright Heaven, I’m sorry, but I can’t call you that!” the man begged.
“And why not?” Baron Oger all but purred. “Why can’t you call me ‘milord Marquis,’ hmm?”
“Be-because there isn’t a Marquis of Calabas!”
“I should beat you until—”
Marc cleared his throat, interrupting the older mage. As soon as he had the baron’s attention, he spoke in a dry, bored tone, “Is this going to go on much longer? My time is very valuable.”
His languid, foppish drawl made Siona blink. Where did he learn to sound like a pampered Draconan nobleman?
Baron Oger, would-be Marquis of Calabas, frowned. He dropped the farmer he had been whipping, shifting his hand to his hip. The stance only emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, making him look like a muscular wall. “Your time is valuable? Who are you, and why are you here?”
“My name is Arithmancer Marc Tresket. I was sent here as a favor of a certain high-ranking someone to offer my services in investigating any possible reason as to why the Calabas line has been slaughtered. Certain other parties insist on having an Academy-trained Arithmancer rule out financial gain as a motive. After all, Calabas is a prosperous marque, and money is always a motive.” Pausing to pet the black cat lounging in his arms, Marc shrugged and continued. “Of course, if you think you could do a better job at figuring out how money could be a motive, and the truth of the estate accounts covered or uncovered . . .
“Oh, wait, you don’t have a degree in Arithmancy. Any attempt you might make at trying to uncover embezzlement and so forth would be about as successful as any attempt you’d make to cover it all up.” Another pause, a shift of his weight, and Marc tossed his head, settling his curls back from his face. “Either way, the longer I’m delayed, the more likely my employer is to recall my services . . . and send a more formal inquest as to why they were delayed.”
“And who, pray tell, is your employer?” Oger sneered. The peasant was all but forgotten; Siona could tell the farmer was struggling to keep silent in spite of the blood-speckled welts on his back.
Marc gave a languid, graceful gesture with his free hand. “The Dowager Queen Jalta . . . but I’m here on her behalf discreetly. One of her uncles was related by marriage to the Calabas line, you know, and she is eager—out of sentiment, I’m sure—to settle the question of who inherits what, now that the family line is dead. Not to mention the death taxes need to be assessed and independently verified, for which reason I am also here. I do realize my appearance at this juncture is unannounced . . . but then that is the way these things are done these days. I am supposed to be an independent assessor of the situation, after all.
“I will require access to the entire estate, its storerooms, barns, warehouses, flocks, herds, and other accountables, plus of course all fiscal records for the last fifty years, and the original copies of any wills or other entailment documents. Personal correspondences if they can be found, in case anyone wrote any uncivilized, inflammatory letters at some point. I also require a study with a writing desk, several expandable slate boards . . . if they have any in such a backwater marque as this . . . and of course my own private suite of rooms,” Marc added, as if such an endeavor were unthinkable otherwise. “I refuse to share quarters with anyone of lesser rank and status. The staff must also be informed about the needs of my precious puss here. It wouldn’t do for my pretty little Boots to go hungry while I’m working, now would it?”
Siona affected a purr as he kneaded the nape of her neck. It wasn’t too difficult, since Baron Oger’s mouth had sagged open under the impact of Marc’s performance. Marc paused once more, sighed, and tossed his head again, bouncing his brown curls.
“Now, if you’re done punishing this criminal, or whatever he is, I’d be deeply obliged if you’d instruct the staff to prepare my rooms—unless this is some member of the staff and they’re being unruly?”
“They’re all being unruly.” Shoving the farmer away, Baron Oger gestured behind him at the steps leading up from the courtyard into the manor house. Like most Gucheran noble homes, it was arranged in a square two stories high, ringed with arched balconies and centered around a garden courtyard shaded by trees and cooled by fountains. There was enough room on the flagstones directly in front of the wrought-iron entry gate to receive guests. Or to punish someone. The baron gestured for Marc to follow. “This way.”
It didn’t take long for a servant to show Marc to a guest suite on the second floor. Once there, and once his baggage had arrived from the coach hired to bring him to the manor, Marc warded the front room against scrying. Siona, set free to sniff around while they waited, joined him on the overstuffed cushions lining the wicker couch.
“Your assessment?” he asked quietly.
She squeaked and mrraurred, and the collar they had crafted for her over the last two days translated her intentions in an approximation of her own voice. “This is bad. He’ll beat them until they call him the Marquis of Calabas, but the entailment means they literally can’t. Not the spellbound ones. The others, the freeholders, they can call him whatever they want, but the enslaved ones cannot lie.”
“What if you told them to lie?” Marc asked.
She shook her head. “They can’t. Unless there is an actual Marquis of Calabas . . . they can’t. They can only say that someone is the marquessa, which would be me. Or the marquess if I were married . . . Ohhh.”
“Oh, what?” he asked. She blinked up at him and he reached over, scratching the top of her head. Siona enjoyed it for a moment, then pulled both her head and her mind back, concentrating on the business at hand.
“Well . . . if I got married, then they could say there was a Marquis of Calabas. But . . . I still can’t order them to lie to a government official. That’s part of my own family’s spellbound covenant with them, part of the things which ensure we’ll never abuse our powers. Particularly that we will never abuse those powers and then try to conceal it from the law.”
He mulled that over. “What about . . . if you ordered them to obey me, and I told them to lie?”
“They wouldn’t have cause to obey unless you were my husband. And even then . . . I don’t know how much of the spellbinding on the Calabas line would affect a spouse’s commands.” Siona sighed and groomed her shoulder, thinking about it.
“What if I told them—or even if you told them—to seem as if they were addressing him as the Marquis of Calabas . . . so long as I was present and was your husband? You know, like the way how you can be looking directly at one person, but are actually talking to someone else?”
She paused in her grooming, tail tip twitching. “That . . . might work. Of course, it would require us to get married, but such things aren’t irreversible. We could always get an annulment afterward.”
Marc slowly shook his head. “No . . . I don’t think so.”
About to lick her paw and groom her face, Siona quirked her furry brows. “You don’t think so? I know marriage is a bit extreme, but I’d really rather my people weren’t beaten for something beyond their control.”
“No, I meant an annulment would be out of the question, not the marriage itself.” Reaching over, he scooped her up and cuddled her against his chest, putting their heads close together. His was large, brown, and curly; hers was small, black, and furry. Meeting her green gaze with his own, Marc quirked up the corner of his mouth. “You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman, Boots. I’d have to have the willpower of a god to resist the thought of making love to you if I had the chance. As it is, I’m a young, healthy man, and you’re a young, healthy woman. If we marry . . . I’m afraid we’d have to get a divorce. I insist on having a wedding night. And any other following nights.”
She opened her mouth to mrrau in protest at him, only to have his fingertip lightly bop her on the nose.
“Besides, how do we know I’ll even count as your husband, at least where the entailment spells are concerned, unless the marriage is firs
t consummated? Hmm?”
He had her there. Subsiding in his arms, Siona mulled it over. He isn’t a bad catch, as far as husbands might go. He’s not a messy roommate, and he did buy me a set of clothes to wear so I’m not stuck reshaping myself into nothing but my nightdress and boots. He’s smart, and funny, and cute . . . and he smells nice, she admitted. Plus he’s rather good at finding all the right spots to scritch while I’m in this form. Hopefully that should translate into reasonably good skill as a lover . . .
Marc lifted his brows, waiting for a reply. Making up her mind, she nodded. “All right. We should probably do it in the manor chapel, too, as soon as possible. After supper. That is, presuming Priestess Selva hasn’t been retired precipitously. She’s one of the few surviving people within the marque who know I can take on a cat form. Just caution her not to say a certain spell-targeted name, to avoid catching the attention of Oger’s wards, and we should be fine.”
“Agreed. And if she can’t do it, well, whoever is there will just have to put up with my wedding my cat,” Marc muttered, though he wrinkled his nose.
Cats, Siona discovered, could actually smirk. “I look forward to seeing you pull off that.”
THANKFULLY, the priestess was still there. She had almost turned them away, citing the need to continue preparing the bodies of other Calabas family members still in the process of being brought to the family crypt for interment, but she consented eventually. Namely after several surreptitious, thoughtful looks at Siona, and Siona’s own solemn nod upon the third viewing. Their sole witness was the young acolyte who served as Selva’s altar boy. The youth stared with wide green eyes at the amulet-translated cat while “Boots” meow-spoke her vows but otherwise didn’t comment.
Baron Oger confronted them not more than a minute after they left the chapel with the blessing of their patron god Cheren still dampening their brows in an oily blue dot. Or rather, he confronted Marc. He met them on the winding garden path leading through the back gardens to the rear entrance of the manor.