by Jean Johnson
“So . . . what’s your third favorite number?” she clarified, arching one of her brows.
Her husband laughed, delighted by her query, until she lifted her head from the bedding and claimed his parted lips for a kiss.
“SO . . . we’re supposed to say ‘Marquis of Calabas’ . . . while looking at this Baron Odious . . . and it’s not going to be a lie?” Errick, the manor’s farrier, asked dubiously.
Siona—or rather, Boots, since she was in her cat form—nodded. Marc had remembered to charge her translation amulet earlier that morning, after she had hissed at him and pawed at her throat. But it was working, and it was very handy. Having introduced herself as an “agent of the new marquis” to explain her authority, she was using Errick as a test subject. The farrier was phlegmatic enough to accept a talking cat, but smart and skeptical enough to poke holes in her logic. “Yes. Just think of the real marquis and answer as if you are addressing him, even though you’re not actually looking at him.”
The farrier rubbed at his chin, though he didn’t tug on his ear like her husband did. “I don’t know if I can . . . Maybe if the real one was right there? Or at least in hearing range?”
Cats could sigh, even if they couldn’t shrug. She nodded patiently and mewed, letting her necklace translate her words. “I’ll see what I can do. But I am asking you to indulge the baron in his little whims to spare yourselves further harm. You’ll have to decide on your own what that requires doing. Spread word to the others when you can, but do it discreetly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to run down to the miller’s house and tell Marla about all of this. She’ll spread the news of this across the west half of the marque.”
“How do you, a mere cat, know so much about Marla and her gossiping habits?” Errick asked
“Magic,” she mrraued, flicking her tail. He laughed as she scampered away, heading for the edge of the manor grounds. Pausing briefly to look back at the house, Siona fancied she could see Marc through one of the upper windows, but knew it was unlikely. He was stuck inside for the next few days, going through all the estate records.
At least his diligence would have a twofold effect. One, it would allow her to spread the word about appearing to call Baron Oger by the title of marquis, even if they might only be able to do it when Marc was alongside the odious, overgrown man. And two, it would be good to have a proper mathemagical analysis of the Calabas accounts and properties. Her family had always done well enough with basic accounting practices, the sort that didn’t require a mage to compute, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the books gone over by an expert.
An expert who had taught her a deeper appreciation for mere numbers just last night . . .
“WHAT are you doing in there?” Marc hissed two days later. Scooping her off the threshold of the partially open door, he hurried both of them down the length of the balcony to his suite of rooms. Siona barely had time to paw the air, closing the doorway where he had found her. Shutting the door to his own rooms, he cradled her in one arm while he fished out a scrap of chalk. Marking the panel with a quickly scribbled silencing ward, he glared at the black cat in his arms. “Do you know what he would have done to you if he’d found you snooping around in his bedchambers? Or one of his guards?”
Siona flattened her ears and hissed back. The wire and crystal necklace translated her intent. “They aren’t his quarters! They’re my parents’ quarters! And he’s gutted their things! Most of their clothes have been tossed into sacks like they were rags, and I have no clue where my mother’s jewelry casket went! That thief is ruining everything he touches!”
He shook her. Gently, but he shook her. “This is not a game! He’s pressuring me to find some way to increase the rents off the tenants and hide the extra income in the record books.”
She growled wordlessly for a moment, then mrraowled in a way that the translator spell could actually use. “I know it isn’t a game. I also know he went down to the solar to have a few drinks before dinner, so I thought I had plenty of time! Why aren’t you down there with him?”
“I had to use the refreshing room. Don’t go doing things like that while he’s actually in the manor house,” Marc admonished her. “The risk of being caught is too great!”
“I can’t do it when he leaves the manor because he spell-locks his quarters!” she shot back, tail flicking rapidly. “Besides, I think I’ve found evidence against him.”
“You have?” he asked. “What? How?”
“He brought a writing desk with him. One of the legs smelled rather strongly of sweat and body oil at about the midpoint, indicating it had been touched a lot more than normal. Handled a lot more than normal. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to sniff out a couple of other spots along the underside which he’s also touched a lot more than would normally be touched. I think there’s a hidden compartment in his desk.” Seeing he was paying attention to her, she calmed the thrashing of her tail and flicked her ears. “I intend to find out.
“My plan is to craft a couple of recording crystals tonight and position them around the room, very small and subtle ones which individually won’t record very much, and which won’t give off enough of an aura to be detected since they’ll be scattered separately. But once they’re gathered back up and assembled into an illusion projector, we should be able to re-create how he gets into the desk, without risking an ignorant—and thus potentially dangerous—attempt ourselves.”
He considered her suggestion. “All right. But if we’re going to do this, it’ll have to be carefully timed. And I’ll want to do a test run of these recording Artifacts, to see if they are indeed as subtle as you claim—you do realize that if you’re going to work on crafting them tonight, we’re not going to be able to make love?”
His reminder lowered her ears. In just three short nights, she had grown rather fond of his inventive lovemaking. Sighing, Siona flicked her tail. “I guess it’s a sacrifice we’ll just have to make. At least the artificing can be done in a single night, though I’ll have to stay here to catch up on my sleep in the morning.”
Marc groaned. “Ugh. I was hoping to have you along. I’m supposed to be taking a tour of the exact extent of the Calabas estate boundaries with His Excellency on the morrow. Several hours of being stuck in a carriage with Baron Odious isn’t exactly my idea of fun.”
“As you yourself said,” Siona mrrewled, “this isn’t a game. We both have to take some risks and make some sacrifices. At least with you along, he shouldn’t have any excuse to flog the oath-bound peasants he runs across.”
“Yes, whatever you said to the stable hands, the way they addressed me while looking at him cheered him up when we were outside earlier,” Marc agreed. Moving away from the door, he set her on the bed, pausing just long enough to stroke her spine a couple of times before heading for the refreshing room. “We’ll have to figure out how to get you into that other suite without getting caught. Maybe when the servants clean it?”
“How about when you go in there to make an inventory of the previous owners’ wealth?” she mraowled after his retreating form, glad he had restored the sound-dampening ward. So long as the door wasn’t opened, she could talk to him openly like this. Leaping down to the floor, she trotted over to the refreshing room door, not wanting to meow too loudly, since that would stress her shape-shifted throat. “His attention will be on you, not on me. He’ll be watching your aura to see what magics you cast, if any. If you do nothing but Arithmancy in his presence, but do enough of it, that could mask me placing the crystals.”
“Perhaps, but if you do it while the maids are in there,” Marc countered through the door, “he won’t be watching for magic, because he’ll be elsewhere.”
“But what if he’s paranoid enough to do a thorough scrying sweep after each cleaning?” she retorted. “If you’re there and he doesn’t see you casting any untoward spells, then he’ll probably not feel the need to recast any detection spells immediately after. I am a mere cat, after all, and thus hardly noticeable.”
“To everyone but me. I’d notice you anywhere.” Having washed his hands, Marc emerged after a few more moments, brow pinched in thought. “That might work, but we’d have to give him a reason to access his secret compartment before the next thorough cleaning. I suppose I could draw up a contract that, if I come up with a way to hide the extra income he wants to squeeze out of the Calabas tenants so that it can’t be assessed and taxed by the government, I can’t be held liable for his illegalities should they be uncovered. A magically binding paper of a nature he’d want to keep hidden from all other prying eyes.”
Siona purred. The translator necklace surprised her, for it spoke up in its approximation of her natural voice. “I knew you were brilliant . . .”
Smiling, he scooped her off the floor and nuzzled her with his bearded face. “Thank you, my dear, for the lovely compliment.”
She squirmed a little in feline instinct, then licked his cheek.
“HURRY!” Siona hissed as Marc worked his fingers into the hole at the back of the drawer slot, trying to find and activate the last puzzle tumbler. “I don’t know how much longer the manor servants can keep him occupied with one fiddly little crisis after the next.”
“I’ve got it, I’ve got . . . there!” Bending his arm sideways in the drawer slot, he pulled out a book, two scrolls, and several papers. He set the papers on the floor for her to read, quickly unbound the scrolls and laid those next to the papers, then pulled out the larger blank book, pen, and jar of ink he had prepared for this moment.
Siona pounced on the scrolls, unrolling them and scanning their contents. She hissed at the contents of the second one. “Here! This one is a missive granting Oger the rights to the Marque of Calabas . . . and it’s dated two weeks before we were attacked. Is this evidence enough for you?”
“I have even more evidence right here,” Marc murmured, flipping page by page through the blank book and the book he had pulled from the niche in the writing desk. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and drew a straight line across the next blank page, his gaze on the text of the Baron’s book, then let the copying spell spill that line of ink into a duplicate of the pages he was speed-reading. “Calabas isn’t the first crime he’s committed, though it’s the biggest. This is his . . . his brag book, for lack of a better word. Everything from drowning the prized puppies of a rival cousin back near the beginning of this thing,” he flipped over the next pair of pages, “to blackmailing a certain marquess into having an affair with him . . . He’s a real piece of work.”
“Master-crafted in a Netherhell,” she agreed. “Make sure you get a copy of this scroll. Once we take down Oger, I want to keep it as evidence to blackmail His Majesty into dropping all further pursuit toward taking over our lands.”
Marc smiled, though he didn’t stop his rapid spellcopying. “Our lands. I like the sound of that. We work rather well together, don’t we?”
Sitting on her haunches, Siona curled her tail around her paws. “Yes, we do. Getting married as quickly as we did was indeed a bit hasty, I’ll admit, but I wouldn’t say it was a mistake. At least so far.” That earned her a sharp look. Siona smirked and added, “I’ll have to give it another twenty years before I can be absolutely sure. So . . . what would you think of sticking around for a while, of trying this marriage thing for real, if and when we take out the Odious Oger?”
His smile broadened. “I’m game if you are—why, Boots, are you purring at me?”
She flicked her ears. “No, I’m playing the harp. Of course I’m purring!”
“Shh,” he admonished. “Unless you can jump up here and wield this pen for me, I’ll need to concentrate. As you said, we don’t have much time, and you can’t do this for me.”
Not for the first time in her life, Siona wondered why her ancestress had to have been granted the shape of a four-toed cat, rather than the six- or seven-toed kind that had a sort of awkward opposable thumb. Instead of bothering Marc with more comments, she contemplated a much more important question: How to kill a mage more powerful and dangerous than both of them combined.
By the time he shooed her off of the second scroll so that he could copy it, she was reduced to thinking up wilder and wilder ideas. Most of the plausible ones weren’t all that feasible, given the disparity in their power levels. Even combined, Marc and I could barely take him on in a straightfoward fight. But we can’t neutralize his magic with, either; his aura reeks of self-protective spells against all manner of outside forces.
The only way it would work is if he limited his powers, and then we ambushed him. But even without his magic, he’s still physically powerful—one of those mages who doesn’t believe in letting his magic do all of his fighting for him. And I can see why. Magically or physically, he’s a tough opponent.
Outside, she could hear birds twittering; their high-pitched chirps were annoying. Not just for the way they made her sensitive, pointed ears twitch, but because they plucked at her feline instincts. Part of her wanted to go outside and stalk those birds, but she couldn’t do that just . . . yet.
Oh! “Marc? Can you shift your shape?”
“Not naturally. No grateful gods in my family history.” His attention was more on his copying efforts still, but he did give her question consideration. “If you mean via a spell . . . I did take the basic course in Anthromancy and I passed it with a reasonable grade. But I didn’t pursue it as an elective. I didn’t have the aptitude.”
“Could you . . . you know . . . steer him into a discussion of shape-shifting magics?” she asked.
“There, done,” he murmured, quickly rolling up the scroll and retying it. He cast a delayed cleaning spell on the scroll and stooped, tucking it into the niche with the other scroll, the letters—which included his contract of non-liability—and the bragging diary. Having carefully replaced the puzzle locks, he fitted the drawer back into place and packed away his copying materials. “So . . . you want me to engage him in a discourse of applied metamorphism. Why?”
“Because I’m wondering if you could not only get into a discussion of it, but, say, challenge him to a demonstration? Flatter his power and abilities, encourage him to try large shapes, that sort of thing?” Siona asked.
She let him scoop her up after he cast another cleaning charm on the floor and the door so that he could carry her back out of her parents’ former quarters. Falling silent, she waited with bated breath while he checked to make sure no one could see them entering the upper balcony, and stayed silent until they were back in the guest quarters with a freshly applied silencing rune.
“More to the point, Marc, after challenging him to take on a large form, since that’s easy enough for a large man to do . . . could you trick him into taking on a small form?” she asked, looking up into his green eyes. “A very small form?”
Catching on to her idea, he nodded slowly. “Yes . . . yes, I could. But that would place the burden on you. He’d expect an attack from me, just as he would be checking for untoward magic from me. Could you . . . well . . . ? Fast enough that he couldn’t . . . ?”
She nodded solemnly. “I’ll do my best. I have done it before, though only with actual rodents. It is the God-wrought duty of the women in my family to learn how to kill rats, after all. We certainly can’t take this to the king. Not when that scroll implicates him, too. All we can do is use it to blackmail him to stay off of Calabas lands. We can’t do that to the baron, too, now that he’s been formally declared the new marquis. He’s too firmly ensconced. But that means . . .”
He sighed and rubbed behind her ears. “Yes. Morally repugnant, but I guess there really is only one thing left for us to do.”
IT wasn’t quite as simple as engaging the odious baron in a conversation about magic. Though her husband did manage to confirm Baron Oger knew several shape-shifting spells, he couldn’t get the man to actually display any of them. So, as Siona watched from her “pampered pet” position on a chair cushion, Marc decided to get the two of them drunk.
Norm
ally, mages didn’t overindulge. Alcohol lowered inhibitions and weakened willpower, which could make a mage lose common sense and self-control—untrained mages were forbidden to drink until they had passed a certain level of control and competency at the very least. But by using the same distract-and-conquer tactics, and by playing the part of an increasingly tiddly court gossipper, Marc egged Oger onward, both in increasingly salacious conversation and in refilling each other’s drinks. He was witty, charming, wicked, and over the top.
Listening to the two men getting into a belching contest, Siona flattened her ears against her skull and lowered her chin to her paws. Men . . . No refinement, no sensibility . . . Wow, that’s an impressive burp . . . but . . . ewwww! Oger has now completely earned the title “Odious.” I didn’t even know it was possible to pass gas simultaneously from both ends, on command! Disgusting!
Evidently her husband agreed. Marc flapped his hand in front of his bearded face. “Gods . . . I can’t even top that . . . S’ppose I’ll hafta challenge you to shape-shifting, now.”
“You still on ’bout that?” Oger asked. He tipped his glass up to his lips. Marc leaned over and poured more rum into it. “Thanks . . . What is it wi’ you an’ shpellshifting?”
“I think I’ve found somthi-hic-ink I can beat you at, magicamally. You’re all talk,” Marc added, waving the decanter around before topping off his own glass, “but no acshun. I don’ think you can . . . you know. Shift-spell . . . shift.”
“Course, I can!” He belched and scratched his ribs. “I can shift sheveral . . . several animal forms.”
“Okay . . . what is your largest spellshape?” Marc asked.
Oger tapped his lips with his finger. “Dromid.”
“A what-id?”
“Dromid! Dromid! Aren’t you educated?” the baron snapped, picking up his glass for another sip. He waved the small goblet around as he gestured, not quite slopping the drink. “One of those . . . desert-y things. Sundaran animal. Looks like a . . . a shaggy overgrown sheep with a really long neck an’ a really bad back.”