The Sorcerer’s Guardian

by Antonia Aquilante

  He told Loriot so during one of their dinners together. They met for dinner a few times the first week they were back, meals during which they enjoyed conversation the way they’d come to while they traveled. He marveled at it. They had little in common—from their family origins to their interests to their occupations—but they always had stimulating, entertaining conversations.

  Of course Loriot couldn’t make many suggestions when Savarin began speaking of the spells or his research. But he was surprisingly willing to listen and to help him apply logic to his task, something Gemella had done for Savarin in the past, but Loriot had a fresher perspective, one unconstrained by the rules of how magic worked. And he was just as happy—happier—to distract Savarin. They always ended up at Savarin’s house after dinner, if they hadn’t eaten there to begin with.

  Loriot hadn’t stayed the night again, not since they’d arrived back in the city. He’d pleaded his duties, saying he had to be available to the palace at night and it was easier for him to be home should the princes have need of him. It made sense, but surely Loriot had a free night sometime? Or was it because he’d been away so long? Savarin had already seen Loriot’s attention to his duty—including his reluctance to leave the city back at the beginning of their journey, which seemed so long ago.

  It wasn’t really. Perhaps it was that so much had changed since then.

  But his inability to spend an entire night with Loriot was something he only thought about when he was with the man. Otherwise his thoughts were far too occupied with the problem of the protection spells. After a week of finding nothing specific about them, he switched his focus for an afternoon and tried to think of what could anchor a spell—especially such a large, complex spell—to make it last so long in its original, intact form. For some reason, his mind kept circling back to the conversation he and Loriot had their last day of travel and the spell keeping all but certain members of the royal family out of the royal archive. Loriot knew little about it. Perhaps Savarin needed to ask the princes if he could examine that spell. If it was as old as the palace, as Loriot had claimed, it might give him some insight.

  He mulled the idea over as he rode home from a visit to his mother. It was the first he’d seen his family since he’d returned to Jumelle, and he’d put off the visit for long enough—too long really—while burying himself in his work. His mother had been glad to see him, had fussed over him, as she always did, and he left gifts for his nieces and nephews as he always did, but he hadn’t timed his visit properly to see them.

  Bells chimed the hour, and he realized he still had time before he was to meet Loriot for a drink and dinner. But Loriot had said he would go home before meeting Savarin, and Loriot’s house was closer than his own. It was an easy decision to make. He’d never been to Loriot’s house, but he knew where it was. The street was narrow and quiet, the houses far smaller than his own. He found Loriot’s easily. The stone front was well-kept, the blue shutters and flower boxes at the windows cheerful. He was surprised by some of the colorful touches, but then he’d been surprised too to find that Loriot didn’t live in the royal guard complex. The captain was entitled to rooms in the barracks but wasn’t required to live there, and he could think of any number of reasons not to, beginning with privacy. Though he might have thought Loriot too immersed in his duty to move so far away.

  The knocker on the blue door was shaped like a fish. He used it to rap sharply and didn’t have to wait long. Loriot pulled the door open himself and looked even more surprised to see Savarin than Savarin was to find him on the other side of the door when he’d expected a maid.

  “Savarin.” Loriot glanced behind him. “I was expecting a messenger with some papers for me. What are you doing here?”

  “I finished early and thought I’d meet you here since it was on my way to the eating house. Unless I could persuade you to stay in, of course.”

  Loriot’s brow furrowed. “On the way? Weren’t you at the university?”

  Before he could answer, a shriek came from inside the house and then the sound of running feet. Savarin took a step forward but pulled up short when a small child burst into the entrance hall and flung himself at Loriot. “Papa!”

  Loriot caught the child with ease, his movements speaking of long practice, and swung him up to his hip. “What’s this about? What happened?”

  The child started to babble out an explanation, but movement in the corner of his eye pulled Savarin’s attention away, drawing it to a woman who was hurrying down the corridor toward them, calling for Loriot. She nearly skidded to a halt in the shadows of the corridor when she saw Savarin.

  The boy was obviously Loriot’s son. If his calling Loriot papa hadn’t been enough, he also had Loriot’s bright green eyes. Was this woman Loriot’s wife? Did Loriot have a wife? White-hot rage flashed through Savarin. Was she the reason Loriot had assumed their affair would end with their journey? Was she why he never stayed the night? He hated the very idea that he might have been taken in by a liar, but the hurt that throbbed beneath the anger was a surprise. Perhaps he was just disappointed that someone he’d seen as honorable and honest had proven to be the opposite.

  The little boy grabbed his attention again. “Papa, tell Aunt Joceline not to go!”

  Savarin wondered idly if the child ever spoke in less than a yell. Then his mind caught up with his ears. Aunt?

  “Alain, hush. I can’t understand what you’re telling me, and we have company,” Loriot said. Savarin forced his attention back to Loriot, who looked stunned and out of his depth, unusual for him, but was still nudging Alain to look at Savarin. “This is Master Savarin. What do we say?”

  “Pleased to meet you, Master Savarin,” Alain said in a much quieter, if no less piping, tone.

  “Savarin, as you may have guessed this is my son, Alain. And my sister, Lady Joceline.” Loriot gestured for the woman to come forward, which she did with hesitant steps.

  “A pleasure to meet you both,” he said with a slight bow.

  “I’m sorry, Savarin. If you could just wait one moment while I figure out what’s going on here?”

  “Of course. I’m the one who’s intruding,” Savarin said in the voice he used at court, polite, a bit distant. He needed the distance, even if Loriot didn’t seem to notice.

  “You’re not intruding.” Loriot favored him with a smile before he showed him into a parlor. “I’ll only be a moment.”

  “Take all the time you need.” And Savarin would take some himself to realign what he thought he knew of the world.

  He paced the small parlor. Loriot had a son? And the woman in the hall was his sister, but was there a wife? Was Loriot married? If not, who was the child’s mother? Questions flitted through his mind too quickly for him to grasp hold of any one. He stopped at the window and stared out at the street without really seeing it.

  What did he actually know about Loriot? That question quieted the turmoil. He knew plenty of the man’s personality and his work, even knew his parents and brother. He thought they’d mentioned a sister once or twice, but he didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone mention Loriot having a child, or a wife. Loriot seldom talked about family or friends. And why was that?

  He had no idea what this thing was between them, but the sickening betrayal he felt told him it was far more than he’d meant it to be.

  A soft creak behind him had him turning. A door opened, not the one he’d come through but one at the back of the room. At first he just saw an empty doorway, a glimpse of a shadowy room beyond, and then his gaze tracked down and down until it came to rest on Loriot’s son.

  The little boy stared at him as he closed the door and walked farther into the room. He clutched what looked to be toy animals to his chest. After a moment of silent staring, he asked with a slight lisp, “Are you really a sorcerer, Master Savarin?”

  “I am. Did your father tell you?” He couldn’t imagine that the child had heard of him. Even he was not so arrogant as that.

  Alain shook
his head. “I heard Aunt Joceline say so to Papa. So you can do magic?”

  “Yes, I can.” He watched Alain walk through the room, steps winding around the furniture until he came to a table. He reached up and dumped the toys on the table and then climbed onto a chair.

  Alain nodded very seriously and then smiled at him. “Do you want to see my horses? We could play with them.”

  “Oh, I….” Even his nieces and nephews didn’t ask him to play with them. He wasn’t sure he remembered how to play with children’s toys.

  “Look! This one’s my favorite.” Alain held up a chestnut-colored horse figurine.

  Savarin found himself taking a seat beside Alain before he really thought about it and accepting the horse that Alain handed him. The little horse was intricately carved, something he would have thought too mature for a little boy of about five, perhaps, but the horse was also obviously well loved, its surface just a bit worn. Alain began to chatter, telling Savarin about each of the horses and giving him their names. Showing Savarin how Alain made them run and make horse noises.

  He was a bit helpless in the face of it, but Alain’s enthusiasm was endearing, as were his eyes, exactly like Loriot’s. Perhaps that was what made Savarin do it. “Would you really like to see the horse run?”

  The little face looked up at him, equal parts curiosity and suspicion. “How?”

  “Magic.” He took the little horse that seemed to be Alain’s favorite and set it in the middle of the table. It didn’t take much power, but it did take a delicate touch to feed the magic into the little figurine, shape it to do as he wanted. In the end it was the work of a moment.

  The little horse reared up and then began to trot around the table, prancing and jumping over the scatter of toys. Alain laughed and clapped his hands. He never took his eyes off the little horse, but he did lean in to Savarin’s side, startling him maybe more than anything else that had happened that day.

  Chapter 18

  “MASTER SAVARIN the sorcerer is in our house?” Joceline said as soon as Loriot closed the parlor door behind Savarin.

  He couldn’t tell if she was scared or excited from the way she practically vibrated. Perhaps a bit of both. “Yes, he is.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “He came to see me. We’re to have dinner tonight.”

  Joceline’s eyes popped almost comically wide. “You’re having dinner with him? Has this happened before? I didn’t think you’d seen him since you got back.”

  “A few times.” More than a few, but he didn’t need his sister’s curiosity piqued more than it already had been. “We’re friends.”

  “Friends?” Joceline stared at him hard. “I wouldn’t think you’d have much to base a friendship on. He’s the most powerful sorcerer in Tournai.”

  “So? And we had plenty of time to get to know each other on the journey. Otherwise it would have been a long, silent trip.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and he tried to look innocent. She could generally see through even the mask he put up as guard captain. Growing up together could do that. But he wasn’t ready for her to know about him and Savarin, not when he wasn’t sure what it was exactly himself.

  “What was Alain upset about?” he asked, hoping to deflect any further questions.

  She let out a huff. “He didn’t like that Oriana and I are dining with friends and going to the theater tonight. He wants us to spend the evening with him, I guess, and for Oriana to give him another music lesson. I might have been a bit sharp with him when he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  He sighed. Alain had been clingier and more demanding than usual lately, and none of them knew why. He was hoping Alain would grow out of it sooner rather than later, but he couldn’t let him have everything he demanded in the meantime. “Don’t change your plans. You and Oriana go. I’ll talk to him.”

  “What about your plans?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  She gave him an arch look but said nothing more. Once she began walking up the stairs, he turned back to the parlor. He’d opened the front door expecting a guardsman with a package of army reports he’d been waiting for about the hunt for the bandits. He’d become more involved in the matter than was technically his place, but he couldn’t let it go after the attack in the woods, after Savarin had been injured. Savarin could have been killed. Loriot pushed the thought away quickly. He wouldn’t think of it, but he wouldn’t put aside his interest in the search either.

  The army had turned up little as far as he knew. It could be that they were simply bandits intent on pillaging as much as possible and who were smart enough to dart back and forth across the border to confuse pursuit and avoid capture. It was also possible they were something more sinister, possibly agents of an enemy like Ardunn. Or perhaps an enemy who knew what Savarin was trying to do at the border—and how they might have known was a separate question—had used the presence of bandits in the area as a cover for their own attack. There was no way of knowing until the bandits were captured and questioned. His first suggestion was likely to be more coordination with Amaranta’s forces. If they could put an end to the advantage the bandits gained by crossing the border frequently, they had a better chance of capturing them. But that was something he would think about when he read the reports. He had more personal matters to deal with at the moment.

  Seeing Savarin at the door had been a shock, but probably not as much of a shock as Savarin had when he saw Alain. He’d thought for a brief moment of trying to lie, but what lie could he tell? And anyway he couldn’t lie to Savarin, not about this. There were things he couldn’t tell Savarin, secrets he had to keep, but none of those were his own. He found himself suddenly uncomfortable with the idea of keeping portions of his own life from Savarin.

  He opened the parlor door… and stared. He blinked, wondering if he was imagining things. Savarin sat at a table with Alain huddled against his side and toys strewn across the tabletop. And one of them running around the table on its own.

  “Is that horse moving?” he asked stupidly.

  Both Savarin and Alain looked up at him. Alain’s eyes were shining. “Papa, look what Master Savarin did for me! He made the horse move!”

  Savarin looked more and more uncertain by the moment. Loriot hoped his smile reassured him. “I can see, Alain. Did you thank Master Savarin?”

  Alain turned to Savarin immediately. “Thank you, Master Savarin!”

  “You’re welcome, Alain.”

  “Now, it’s time for you to go wash up and have your dinner,” Loriot said.

  “But I want to keep playing with the horse.” The little pout was adorable, but it wasn’t going to get Alain his way.

  “It’s dinnertime now. You can play with your toys later.” While Loriot spoke, the little horse slowed and stopped, returning to its inanimate state. Alain didn’t look happy about that one bit. “Thank Master Savarin for playing with you, and go have your dinner. Maybe if you’re good Master Savarin will use his magic on the horse again sometime.”

  “Will he read me a story too?”

  “Maybe, if you’re good. Go on. Wash up. Dinner.”

  “Yes, Papa.” Alain gathered up his toys and climbed down from his chair. “Thank you, Master Savarin!”

  Loriot ruffled Alain’s hair as he scampered past and smiled to see Alain’s delighted grin. Once Alain was trotting up the stairs, Loriot stepped into the parlor and closed the door. “Sorry about using you as a reward. I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you about it.”

  Savarin stood. “It’s all right. He’s a bright boy.”

  He was sure the pride was shining from his eyes, but he couldn’t help it. “He is. I didn’t realize he was in here with you. I wouldn’t want him to bother you.”

  “I didn’t realize you even had a son.”

  “It isn’t something I tell people. With my position as guard captain, my family could be put in danger easily. If I can keep people from knowing about him, he’ll be safer.”

&nbs
p; “Am I just ‘people’ to you? I thought I was something more.”

  “You are something more. I would have told you.” Though he hadn’t told the few lovers he’d had since Alain’s birth of his existence. Why bother when there was nothing more than casual pleasure to the relationships? Something like shame made Loriot flush, not for his less-than-forthcoming attitude toward those former lovers but for not telling Savarin. Keeping his family separate from both his work and his casual affairs had become a habit, and a protection for all of them, but still he felt wrong having kept the fact that he had a son from Savarin.

  “Would you have really?” Savarin’s gaze had gone cold and inscrutable. “It’s been weeks and weeks. And we were with your family. When were you planning to share this important piece of information? Because it’s important. You love that boy.”

  “Of course I do.” He forced himself to keep his voice down. He didn’t need Alain or his nursemaid hearing him and wondering what was happening.

  “Obviously. And he’s a large and important part of your life. So when were you planning on telling me?”

  Anger burned away shame, but he still kept a tight rein on his voice. Even if Savarin’s demands were infuriating. “And you? I know nothing about you and your family. Where you came from, if you’ve ever been married or had children, or have family at all. Were you ever planning on telling me anything? Or were you just going to demand information from me?”

  Savarin reared back, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Loriot refused to break first. Yes, Savarin might think that Loriot should have told him about Alain, and yes, if whatever was between them was to turn into something lasting, he would have had to, but Savarin didn’t get to demand, to order. And especially didn’t get to demand everything and give nothing in return.

  To his surprise, after a few tense moments, it was Savarin who spoke, his voice quiet but strong. “My parents are alive. I have siblings and nieces and nephews. They all live here in Jumelle.”