Chapter 284 - Trustworthiness

Siobhan 

Month 9, Day 26, Sunday 5:15 p.m.

Siobhan looked down at her shadow, which stretched out from her seated form like taffy in the light of the afternoon sun. It lay there, completely mundane. She was tempted to grasp for control of it again, but stopped herself. 

‘I’m still too mentally exhausted to risk trying to free-cast for only the second time in my life,’ she reminded herself. 

She rocked back and then shifted forward until she was on her knees, too excited to sit still. It felt like she had filled her chest with helium and wind chimes, and the glee threatened to burst out of her. She threw her head back and laughed out loud. 

Oliver, who had gone to the kitchen, returned with a mug of tea in his hand and leaned against the closet door that separated this area from the kitchen in Liza’s first apartment. He sipped the steaming liquid with an indulgent smile, staring at her. 

Siobhan grinned at him. 

“What has made you so happy?” he asked. 

“Secret,” she replied, pressing her lips together as another laugh threatened to bubble up and out. Oliver didn’t pry, and after a moment, she calmed enough that she could at least sit still, though her heart was still racing and her cheeks were beginning to hurt from smiling so hard. ‘I never imagined I would manage to free-cast something so soon! I’m only twenty years old!’ 

Of course, Siobhan knew that while it was impressive to free-cast even a single spell at her level, she couldn’t really consider herself a free-caster. There were plenty of people who, once they reached a certain age and level of familiarity with one or two favorite spells, could free-cast them. Liza could reheat her tea with only the Circle of the cup, and several professors at the University could do small tricks. People said Fekten could free-cast a personal shield spell, and would do so instinctively when startled by certain types of loud noises. It was said that several years ago, a group of troublemaking students had dared each other to make him cast it, until he punished them so severely that it became legend. 

In Siobhan’s opinion, one shouldn’t call themself a free-caster unless they could do so with at least a dozen spells. She didn’t dare to try anything but her shadow-familiar. It would be a great shame to kill herself out of hubris and greed—worthy of inclusion into 100 Clever Ways Thaumaturges Have Committed Suicide. Professor Lacer would be so disappointed in her. 

She froze, at least half of her happiness dying a small, sad death inside her, then pushed away the thought of him. When she pressed her hand to her chest to try to rub away the somehow physical pain there, she touched her medallion through her thin night-dress.

‘You saved my life more than once, Grandfather.’ Even though he had not given it to her on her thirteenth birthday and likely never finished whatever plans he’d had for the artifact, it was still a work of art and a labor of love. A morbid question rose in her mind. ‘At the end back then, if not for me, would he have killed himself? Or would he have chosen to become an Aberrant?’ She pushed that thought away, too. She had plenty of practice avoiding things she didn’t want to think about. 

‘I will never cast through my own flesh,’ she swore, both to him and to herself. And, perhaps, just a little bit to her mom. 

Reliving her sealed memories had taught her something new. Really, many things, but a few of them stood out as immediately relevant. An Aberrant could retain some part of themselves even after breaking. When one died—which likely required an extreme amount of physical or magical damage—they turned into an iridescent black sludge, like an oil spill or a raven’s feathers. And their corpses could be found in the spirit world. 

She wondered what, exactly, from her mom was now part of Legion. A small piece of liquid mirror had slipped around Siobhan’s eye socket and into her head. That had some significance, but just because Legion contained some of her mom’s memories, did that mean that perhaps her mom’s Aberrant form was still out there somewhere? Still trapped in an endless moment of existential torture? 

‘I can’t jump to conclusions,’ she thought, shaking her head. She stood up again and returned to light-refinement, more for the uplifting feeling that absorbing the light brought her than for the more concrete benefits. The joy of free-casting wasn’t enough to sustain her through this kind of speculation. 

Claudio, or the Aberrant that called itself Claudio, had been truly destroyed by Grandfather. Yet, that being had still left a shadow of itself behind in her. The situation with her mother’s Aberrant could be similar. 

However, one thing was clear. Newton’s Aberrant was still out there somewhere, though she wasn’t sure whether anything of his original self remained at all, or if it did, if there was enough of him to consider the being of vibrating strings “alive.” But the Red Guard had not destroyed that Aberrant, which meant they had a use for it. Perhaps that was research, but more likely, they thought that pieces of such an Aberrant would be useful as a spell component. 

Siobhan clenched and unclenched her teeth several times, then put all of her focus into light-refinement for a few minutes until the bone-deep itch of this knowledge receded a bit. 

Oliver returned from the kitchen again, this time holding a bowl of dumpling soup. 

She completed her current set of movements, then stopped casting and turned to him. “Did you just buy that? I didn’t even hear you leave.” 

“I cooked it. Do you want some?” 

She looked from him to the bowl, and then back to him. “You cooked that? How?”

He stared at her for a few seconds. “With flour, a few vegetables, and what I believe is chicken, but might also be snake meat.” 

“No, I mean…how did you cook it? Liza doesn’t have any food in the house except for a few condiments, some pickles, and a wide variety of tea. She goes out for all of her meals.” 

“She had some dehydrated meat and a dusty bag of flour in the back of the cupboard, and I actually found the vegetables in the cold box meant for the animals. They were a bit wilted. But the soup still tastes good, I promise.” 

Siobhan eyed the bowl dubiously. “You don’t even know what type of meat it was?” 

“A lot of things taste like chicken,” he said seriously. “Once you turn it into chicken jerky, it’s even more indistinguishable. So, are you going to have some?” 

She wanted to cast some sort of spell to determine if it was safe to eat, but the only one she knew was meant for raw ingredients and wouldn’t work on food that had just been cooked to kill all the bacteria. She considered refusing, but even though she’d eaten before coming up, her stomach growled eagerly at the smell wafting from Oliver’s bowl. “Liza probably has potions to deal with food poisoning,” she muttered. 

“What was that?” Oliver asked, tilting his head to the side. 

“Nothing. I’ll have some.” She followed him to the kitchen and peered into her bowl as Oliver ladled soup into it. Her eyes widened at the first spoonful. “How?” she asked. 

Oliver grinned smugly. “How did I make it so delicious?” 

She scowled at him, deeply reluctant to admit that correctly guessed her question. 

“I’m a culinary genius.” He plucked at his shirt collar arrogantly. In a more normal tone, he added, “I also have a lot of practice making soup out of random ingredients. I didn’t always live in a manor with half a dozen servants.” 

Siobhan ignored him in favor of the food, but the food wasn’t enough of a distraction. 

Thinking about what had happened to Newton and his family made her miserable. Analyst Hite made her skin crawl with disgust and anxiety. And the fact that the Red Guard was keeping some kind of horrible, deadly secret about the increasing number of Aberrants filled her with a cold, dark dread. 

She understood that an organization would inevitably be made up of good and bad people, no matter what kind of vows they required. She also could accept that when achieving extremely important goals, sacrifices would be inevitable.

Even so, she distrusted the Red Guard with the kind of deep suspicion that they could likely never allay. And if she couldn’t trust the Red Guard, that meant that she also couldn’t rely on them to do their job. Since they were in charge of something so vital to the survival of the world, this realization left her unsettled, like a cork bobbing on the surface of the ocean with no shore in sight.

No matter how strong Siobhan became, she had to live in this world too. If it was heading toward inevitable destruction, that would affect her, too. Especially so because she planned to live for several hundred years—just as soon as she figured out how Myrddin had done it.

She had told Damien to destroy all of their research on Aberrants. That was necessary for his safety, but the problem Damien had discovered still needed to be addressed by someone. She could hope that the Red Guard was dealing with it, but she was no longer able to blindly believe in them.

Of course, that didn’t mean that she could do anything about it, either.

After finishing the meal, a wave of fatigue hit her, and she stumbled back down to the small bed below. Halfway through casting her dreamless sleep spell, she hesitated, realizing suddenly that perhaps she did not need to do so anymore. She finished casting it anyway. While Legion might not be trying to escape through her dreams anymore, she had just re-experienced what was perhaps the most traumatizing time in her life, something so bad that it had left scars on her psyche even when she couldn’t remember it. Without the dreamless sleep, she might have totally mundane nightmares. And Siobhan needed quality rest to face what was to come.

She slept until the sun was high in the sky and woke still stiff and somewhat groggy. After tending to Liza’s plants and animals, she left, went through the ordeal of safely changing back into her male form, and returned to her attic apartment.

There was a letter waiting for her on the doorstep. Sebastien stared at it. ‘I never get mail.’ The paper looked suspiciously nice, and she took a few minutes to cast some detection spells before finally picking it up and opening it.

It was from Professor Lacer. The message was simple. He wanted to see her and expected her to come visit him at the University soon.

She looked around warily, then stepped inside. Clenching her jaw so hard it was painful, she crumpled up the letter viciously and hurled it across the room. She glared at it with enough ire that if she were a true free-caster, she might have set it alight, breathing hard. Then, she picked it up, read it again, and actually did set it on fire with a spark-shooting spell.

Spite and satisfaction filled her as she watched it turn to ash, but she soon felt empty again. After a long while sitting on her bed while she stared at the wall, she got up and moved to her secret stash, which she used to replenish her hidden leather holster with a new Conduit and beast core. The Conduit was a much less comfortable shape than the black sapphire had been, and required her to adjust the leather with some spellwork. When summer came, it wouldn’t be as undetectable under a thin shirt; she would need to find a better replacement before then.

But at least this was celerium, and unlikely to break under the amount of strain she was able to put it under.

Sebastien checked the coin purse in her satchel, stopped by the bank to top up her gold, and then went to Waterside Market searching for some semi-rare components. To her surprise, a handful of people seemed to recognize her, and one of the shopkeepers even insisted on giving her a discount, calling it a “right hook coupon” with a wink.

She toted the supplies she’d purchased to Dryden Manor and up to the brewing station in his office. It seemed like a long time since she had last done any intensive alchemy, but there were a few things she needed to stock up on that she didn’t want to delegate to anyone else.

Oliver stood up as soon as she entered, brightening with excitement as she moved to the alchemy station. “You haven’t done any brewing for the Verdant Stag in a while. Can you make me more group proprioception potions?”

Sebastien hesitated. “I’ll make you some of that if I have extra time and energy sometime soon.” She tackled a batch of her self-modified philtre of shadow-perception first, warming up her Will for the more difficult project.

Oliver had to leave while she was working, but encouraged her to stay for dinner with Sharon and the other servants.

The next concoction was something she had never brewed before. She had found the instructions for a star-viewing potion in the University library sometime back, and vaguely recognized it as the astronomy potion she had once given Damien when inducting him into their fake, unnamed order of the thirteen-pointed star.

She could have bought more astronomy potions at the market, but she hoped that by brewing them herself, she could make some minor modifications to the effect.

Sebastien steadied herself, took a deep breath, and hummed gently on the exhale, as Grandfather used to do when casting rituals or doing alchemy. She carved a Circle into the surface of the table with a disintegrating spell, then filled it with large, crystalline grains of salt—this was safer than just pouring the salt onto the table, as the Circle was less likely to break.

Within that Circle, she prepared the components, each movement deliberate and graceful, each moment filled with the force of her Will. She used a handheld, ratcheting press to crush some of the fragments of her old black star sapphire Conduit into a powder. It was these that had given her the idea to attempt the potion in the first place. Then, she did the same to a stone from one of the Starpeak Mountains’ many summits. She burnt the time-frozen flower of a night-blooming cereus to ash, then portioned out a tiny scoop the size of a grain of rice for the potion.

To the cauldron, she added blackstrap molasses, allowing it to slowly heat to a bubble. To the molasses, she added the prepared ingredients, as well as a sphere of polished ebony, and petals plucked one-by-one from a grass lily. As if she were sowing wheat in the field, she tossed a handful of shards of multicolored sugar, not bothering with the ones that landed outside the cauldron. Between each step, she stirred in specific patterns for a set number of repetitions. It was tedious, but she didn’t lose focus or forget her count. Finally, she tipped in three drops of juice extracted from the belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade.

After another half-hour of careful, focused stirring, the potion was complete and had melted down into a surprisingly thin liquid that was nothing like the molasses she had started with, except its color. Potions were more than the sum of their parts. After all, if she were to directly eat the ingredients she had added, she would likely poison herself to death, while the potion would only increase her visual sensitivity to the stars and induce a sense of overpowering awe.

She’d only made three doses with that batch, hoping to make each as magically potent as possible, so she repeated the process from the beginning.

‘That should be enough,’ she thought, sealing the final vial and placing them into her satchel. She had finished cleaning up the alchemy station and gone down to the first floor when a confident, loud knock sounded at the door.

Sebastien flinched, and as the servant Thomas hurried to open the door, briefly contemplated running. It was only when she saw Damien on the other side that she realized she had instinctively expected it to be Professor Lacer on the other side.

Damien smiled brightly when he saw her. “So you were here!” He stepped forward, and was immediately followed by Ana, then Nat, Alec, Waverly, and Brinn.

Sebastien stared at the group.

Damien cleared his throat self-consciously. “Surprise?”

Brinn waved, smiling awkwardly. “I hope we’re not imposing. This was not planned.”

“I wanted to come,” Damien explained, “and Ana refused to be left behind. So then Nat came too. As for the rest of them, I only noticed their carriage following me when I was halfway here.”

“We were trying to catch aurora shrimp,” Waverly said, as if that explained everything. She crossed her arms, looking around through her glasses with a scrutinizing air as Thomas hurried to divest everyone of their coats. “I want to breed them in one of the fish ponds at home.”

Brinn rubbed his slender hands together. “Unfortunately, we failed to catch any shrimp, and almost accidentally netted some much more dangerous prey, but as we were leaving, Alec noticed Damien’s carriage, with Nat peeking her head out, and he wanted to follow. And so…here we are.”

“Do I smell food?” Alec asked loudly.

Sharon was at the kitchen entrance, and as if this were a siren’s call, responded immediately. “Are you hungry, young man?”

Alec’s face crumpled pitifully. “I’m starving. I feel weak and dizzy, like I might pass out from hunger.”

“His family doesn’t feed him,” Waverly lied emotionlessly.

Sharon’s mouth fell open. “You must stay for dinner!”

Damien met Sebastien’s eyes and mouthed, “Sorry.”

Sebastien shrugged. “It’s actually good that you’re here. Ana, can you come with me? I have something for you.”

Nat immediately tried to follow, but Ana stopped her with a single look, and after they shared a silent conversation that Sebastien couldn’t follow at all, Nat deflated and trudged toward the kitchen.

In the privacy of a nearby room, Sebastien pulled out a cheque for two thousand gold and tried to hand it to Ana. “I heard you paid for my treatment. Thank you.”

Ana took the cheque and stared at it suspiciously. “Where did you get this much gold?”

Sebastien hesitated, her mind tripping at the unexpected question. “From my collaboration with Lord Dryden. Who has that textile sub-commission from you.”

Ana tilted her head to the side, raising one eyebrow as she looked up at Sebastien. “Did you forget that I’ve been getting involved in the Family business and also collaborating with Lord Dryden on several ventures? I have some idea of how much income he’s making off of that sub-commission. Just how large a stake do you have in his business?”

All possible answers seemed like they might contain a mine, so Sebastien decided to avoid stepping on any of them. She tried to give Ana a significant look, just like Ana had done to Nat. Hopefully Ana—like Damien was so prone to doing—would come up with her own explanation for this mystery.

Ana nodded as if she understood. But just as Sebastien was feeling tentatively relieved, Ana tore up the cheque and handed her back the scraps of paper. “You do owe me,” Ana said, “but it’s much too utilitarian to repay a friend in gold.”

Sebastien stared at the paper in her hand, stupefied. If she’d lent someone two thousand gold, she would definitely want it to be repaid in kind. Even two gold, she would struggle to let go of.  A tight, ominous feeling swelled in her chest.

“I may have saved your life with that mind-stabilizing potion,” Ana pointed out.

The ominous feeling grew stronger.

“So don’t you think you should bring your life-saver in on your little secret venture? The one that Damien is already involved in?” Ana smiled sweetly, in a way that Sebastien knew was actually a threat.

Sebastien opened her mouth, but Ana thrust her palm forward as if to physically stop her from speaking.

Ana’s smile grew larger and more saccharine. “I won’t change my mind. Or is it that you think I can’t be useful? Can’t keep a secret?”

Sebastien paused, grabbing Ana’s hand to lower it. “You…can keep a secret,” Sebastien said. And she knew that Ana could be useful, too.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, and Ana’s smile morphed into something more crooked and genuine. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, smirked, and turned away. “I’ll be waiting for your invitation.”

Author Note:

I will be taking next week off posting to deal with some real-life issues, so the next Thursday chapter will be coming out on the 12th. 

Weekly discussion thread on the Alcove: https://alcove.azaleaellis.com/t/chapter-284-weekly-discussion-trustworthiness/905