4.59: Family Matters

“Um,” I said.

Kylie and Talbot both jumped and stopped what they were doing, blushing deeply. Silence stretched for several long, awkward seconds.

“I thought you had an appointment,” Kylie said finally.

“I cancelled it,” I said.

More silence.

“I should go,” Talbot said, scooping up his cane. He made for the door; I got out of his way.

“So,” I said when Kylie and I were alone. “Talbot?”

“What about it?”

“How long has that been going on?”

“A while. You have something to say about it?”

“He’s too old for you.”

Kylie crossed her arms. “Firstly, you’re not my dad. You don’t get to scrutinise my romantic choices. You don’t see me criticising your taste in weird rich politicians.”

“That’s not – ”

“Secondly, he isn’t too old for me. He’s a year older than we are.”

“That can’t possibly be right.” I ran the numbers, remembering that Talbot started at Refujeyo when he was thirteen. “Huh. I always thought he was older than that.”

“Everyone probably seems older to you because you behave like you’re seven.”

I went to respond with a joke about Kylie’s relationship, and came up empty. Wow, my mind must really be all over the place if I couldn’t even find a way to tease her right now. A real low moment.

I was saved from having to admit my embarrassing lack of wit by my tablet, which chimed that it had received a message. I skimmed it. “Huh. The Fiore wants to see me in three hours. I hope it’s nothing bad.”

“At seven?” Kylie asked, frowning.

“Yeah. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Alania’s meeting with me at the exact same time.”

“Oh. That’s...” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s coincidence?”

“You know better than that,” she sighed. “Something new and probably bad has happened. Something that involves us both.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.”

So I was somewhat surprised when I went to see Fiore and he invited me in and made tea. I’d expected that we’d go and meet up with Kylie and Alania somewhere. Best case, they had some kind of news about Fionnrath to break to us. Worst case… I dunno, probably going off to see the High Council again, so they could tell us something else to ruin our lives, and I’d probably say something stupid and get slapped with another geas.

Instead, he set a cup of tea in front of me (which I didn’t drink), took a sip of his own, and regarded me seriously.

“How are you holding up?” he asked. “The loss of a loved one – ”

“I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That is of course your choice, but if you do need someone to talk to – ”

“Is that all you wanted to see me about? Because I have other things to – ”

“No. No, I have news.”

“News?”

“I have a message for you,” he said. “From Alexei Smythe Acanthos and Portia Simpson Acanthos.”

“Okay.” I didn’t recognise the names. Except for the Acanthos part, obviously.

Fiore slid a letter across the desk to me. “They want to adopt you.”

I stared. Then I skimmed the letter in the hopes that it would reveal something that made more sense than that statement. Then I stared at Fiore again.

“What?” I asked.

He shrugged. “That’s the offer. There are money and political entitlements and soforth for you wraped up in it, but essentially – ”

“I don’t know them,” I pointed out. “They don’t know me.”

“In some families, that matters surprisingly little.”

“They know I already have loving parents, right?”

‘That also matters surprisingly little. Under Refujeyo law, you’re old enough to make these decisions yourself. Australia wouldn’t recognise the adoption without your parents doing their art, but I don’t think the Acanthos family cares who Australia considers your family to be.”

“Well, the Acanthos family can go fuck themselves on the biggest cactus they can find,” I said, sliding the letter back to him. “I can’t believe – they don’t even know us, and, and Max is barely in the ground – what the fuck?”

Fiore nodded, looking relieved. “Yes, I thought that would be your response. I’m sorry to bring this to you at all, but it’s my duty to do so. If you’d like to draft a refusal – ”

“You should draft it. Anything I say to them right now would be… really, really undiplomatic.”

“Understandable. I shall do so. But, first… well, I support your decision, but as your surveyanto it would be lax of me to not at least point out the advantages that this kind of alliance could bring you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want pocket money and political expectations from a bunch of callous – ”

“I meant that it would resolve your Fionnrath problem.”

“… How?”

“You understand why they are making this offer, yes?”

“Well, yeah. I’m not an idiot. Kylie’s talking to Alania right now; I assume you guys wanted to break this news to both of us at the same time and that she got the same offer. They put us in the family row in the funeral because they wanted to show off this.” I shook my sleeve back and tapped my familiarity mark. “This is more of the same bullshit. Their heir having achieved human familiarity was a massive boost to their reputation, and that’s still cool to have,  but it’s a lot less powerful with Max gone. Makes it history, a dead achievement. But if they can have the mage and her familiar in the family, that’s not as good as having the one who did it, but it’s still pretty good. A living, present reminder; stops the whole thing from being history for awhile. Right?”

“Essentially, yes. But that only works if the two of you are part of Refujeyo society. If you go to Fionnrath, they lose any social advantages that having you two brings them.”

I nodded. The Acanthos clan would gladly have let us be sacrificed to protect Max, but Max was beynd the need for protection now. If we were Acanthos’, they’d fight to keep us in Refujeyo, and with Max gone the Council didn’t have such a desperate need to convince Fionnrath to forget the whole thing… we already had some pretty high-ranking people on our side, Alania and Malas, and Fiore had some limited influence of his own; throw in the Acanthos family and their money and desperation to hold onto the biggest reputation boost that Max had given them… I didn’t know enough about politics to really assess how things would turn out, but Fiore did.  An he seemed to think it would be enough.

Wasn’t worth it, though. “I already have a family,” I pointed out. “And even if I did get adopted, that wouldn’t solve anything. The Council aren’t kicking me out and giving me to Fionnrath, they’re doing it to Kylie. I’m only involved because I have to stay physically close to her. And there’s absolutely no way that Kyie would ever agree to an adoption. The whole reason she refused to do to Fionnrath until they forced her was that she refuses to leave her family. If she’s not going to replace her family with the Fionns, she sure isn’t going to replace them with the Acanthos’. If I did go through with it, it wouldn’t actually help. And if it did actually help, I still wouldn’t go through with it.”

“I thought as much. It would have been negligent not to mention it, though.”

“Right.”

“Rest assured that we have a reasonable chance of reversing the Council’s decision, regardless. Refujeyo is in the same boat as the Acanthos family on this issue – they put a lot of faith in Max and his extremely promising success in magic. Without him, your bond is not reproducible, so – ”

“So without the good prize, they might be motivated to actually hold onto the consolation prize.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Yes, it is. It’s always like that. It’s been like that since Cooper showed up at my house offering me a scholarship.”

Fiore rubbed his temples. “Kayden, I know that the world seems a little unfairly practical sometimes, but there are always – ”

“Like you’re one to talk,” I snapped. “My friend died and everyone, even his own family, are treating him and his life like – ” I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. “We both know that you’re only interested in me because of your little rivalry with Alania Miratova. Which still makes no sense to me, by the way – she’s one of the actual leaders of Skolala Refujeyo, so I don’t see how – ”

“Competely different sort of power,” Fiore said, waving a hand dismissively. “Our disagreements are in science and education. Being part of the High Council is unrelated. But need I remind you, Kayden, that your original surveyanto was Taine Cooper. You chose Alania. And then you chose me. You always say that you don’t want to be involved in politics, but you keep getting involved. The two friendship groups I hear to talk the most about are a group of legacy mage friends who politick for fun, and a curse support group with whom you spearheaded an attempted information campaign to threaten the Council with and got yourself put under geas. You keep ending up in highly suspicious places, you chose to become a mage’s familiar – the familiar of the Bearer of Fionnrath’s Destiny, which is far too much of a coincidence for me to believe you didn’t know about it in advance – and you chose… well, obviously the unfortunate incident in the Pit with Miss Surya had nothing to do with you, but you did choose to date her, and I have to assume she told you who she was first. You say you’re tired of being expected to be a politician or treated like a political tool, but you keep involving yourself. When you wanted to break ties with Miratova, you could’ve chosen any teacher in the school as your surveyanto; anybody would have been glad to have you. You came to me. If you’re uncomfortable with my interest in your involvement in Miratova’s schemes, then honestly? That’s on you.”

That was fair, I supposed. I’d come to Fiore with the specific intent of using his suspicions about Alania to garner support for myself. I couldn’t blame him for reacting how I’d planned for him to react.

But I was in a shitty mood. Could you blame me?

“Well,” I said sarcastically, “since I’m here anyway, any burning questions about Miratova’s sinister plans you wanna run by me? I’m sure whatever creepy world domination plan you think she has has already been undone by losing the Nonus Acanthos, so if there’s any time that I should do a Villainous Exposition Dump – ” I stopped, because Fiore didn’t look annoyed or patiently tolerant at my outburst. He looked interested. “Holy shit. You actually do have questions. I’ve told you; the familiarity mark was an impulse decision to save Kylie’s life and I have no idea how it wor – ”

“How did you find the Lake of Inquisition?” Fiore asked.

“What? The… the lake with the tentacle monster thing in it?”

“Yes. How did you find it?”

I shrugged. “I ran into it by accident a couple of times and then just remembered where it was. It’s really easy to find, actually. I think there are a whole bunch of paths that lead there, because even if you take a wrong turn or two it’s pretty easy to wander around until you get back on track. Why, do you need me to show you where it is again? Draw you a map?”

“And you’d never met Alania Miratova until after you found it?”

“Yeah, I got lost looking for the shop on my first day. Alania showed up to rescue us. Most awkward meet cute ever. She wanted to write a letter to my mum about it.”

“And that’s when she first took an interest in you?”

“N-no, she had an interest in Max, but Kylie and I came to her with… um, to learn magical control and stuff… much later. I guess we became friends over time but most of my interactions with her were about duty.”

“And how many months was it before she proposed that you – ”

“Look,” I said. “This is getting weird. Miratova collects weird mad science students, including Max, because she’s a weird mad scientist who burgeoning weird mad scientists look up to. She collects students with weird spells because she teaches basic magical theory to initiates, so she ends up training witches, and some of the weirdest spells are – ” my throat locked up. I stopped trying to finish the sentence and took a couple of deep breaths. “Dammit! I’m gonna track down the Voice and punch him in the face! You get what I was getting at, though, right? There are reasons why some mages collect weird and suspicious-looking groups of students. That doesn’t mean there’s anything going on.”

“So the strange things that you keep ending up involved in aren’t your choice, or you wouldn’t complain about them so much, and they aren’t Miratova’s design, so they’re… coincidence? Is that really what you’re going with?”

I shrugged. “Sure.” More ‘tangential threads of a world-saving plot that I didn’t ask to be a part of’, but sure, coincidence was fine.

“Fine. How do you ‘coincidentally’, with or without Miratova’s coincidental help, find the Lake of Inquisition?”

“With a memory. And a sense of direction. It’s not hard. Am I missing something here?”

Fiore frowned at me thoughtfully. “Hmm. I think you might be. You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“That the location of the Lake of Inquisition is magically protected.”

“It… what?”

“People who join our society are expected to abide by a particular magically enforced contract. You know this, of course; your threats to the High Council depended on this knowledge. Included in that contract are protections for certain vulnerable areas of Refujeyo. Including the Lake of Inquisition. Only the leaders of Refujeyo – the members of the Council, the Circle, and the Inquisition – undergo a ritual to release them from this, and can find the place again. Everyone else gets lost and turned around, no matter how detailed their map or instructions. You can only find the Lake of Inquisition by being one of Refujeyo’s leaders, by being physically guided there by one of Refujeyo’s leaders, or by running into it by accident.”

He leaned forward and fixed me with a penetrating stare. “Except for you. So let me ask you again, Kayden: how are you able to find the Lake of Inquisition?”