The Archmage: Chapter Ten

After managing to kill a near-archmage who’d been keeping me prisoner, ascending to become an archmage myself, and discovering a star that even the Ligature said they only thought might – might – have a similar variation in the far southern parts of the continent in Coya, I thought I might have had to dive into another harrowing encounter that would force me to fight for my life. 

Instead… Osheen and I were able to spend the rest of the summer with Aldvarri. 

The killing of Edward Elide made the news as a random terrorist attack, but nothing more, and most of the papers seemed to be trying to drum up sympathy for the Elide family, who’d been the victim of two tragedies. Though it wasn’t really funny, it did almost make me laugh.

All the work I’d put into convincing Edward that I was a contractor for House Byron, and it hadn’t even managed to make the news. 

But it had managed to worm its way through noble circles. According to some of the letters we got from Draven, archmage Byron was now under a considerable amount of pressure. Much like Castor, she denied having anything to do with the attack, but there were records from the late Edward speaking to the crippled archmage. 

The good part of this was that it further fractured the archmage council. Byron and Castor were on the back foot, and were viscously defending themselves and trying to reclaim favor – Byron with the council, and Castor in the court of public opinion. 

The Hastings, Elides, and Heenlings were all on edge. The Roark family hadn’t produced a new archmage yet, since it had been Frank’s intent to raise Osheen to take his place, and with House Elide down its candidate, the old power bloc was the weakest it had been in over three centuries. 

House Chantal and Draven then made up the swing votes, since both of them were – publicly at least – neutral. Draven actually had to be careful to not tip his hand too much, but both of them managed to stay almost entirely out of the public eye. 

The final political bloc consisted of Eira and Zachary Dormer, who used this instability to push for reforms. Since Paerús’ political system was essentially just a puppet for the council, over the summer I got to see multiple new laws get passed, allowing same-sex couples to adopt, allowing for those who were born the wrong sex like Liam to legally change their name and registered gender on identification papers – though they had to jump through an utterly unreasonable number of hoops to as such – and some loosening of our border control, allowing importation of a few new goods like coffee en masse. 

It was an odd feeling, watching the laws pass. The beginnings of a historical, sweeping change were coming across Paerús, and my plans would eventually further these changes.

Alvarro, as it turned out, was quite a fan of coffee, and it became a rather common sight for him to piddle around the house with a cup of coffee in one hand as he fixed his spectacles with the other.

“Osheen,” I asked one evening, after Aldvarri had turned in for bed and the two of us were sitting by the fire. “Would you like to learn to sew? I think it’s an important skill.” 

“I don’t have any plans to become a tailor,” he said, tilting his head. “Why is it important?” 

“Well, you don’t need to reach that level,” I said. “But if a button on your jacket falls off, it would let you mend it. Or if a small tear happens in your pants. Or anything like that.” 

“Sure,” Osheen said. 

I got up and wandered around to grab some supplies – a shirt that Aldvarri hadn’t finished putting the buttons on, some thread, a needle, and some fabric scissors. 

“First, you eyeball how much thread you need,” I told him once I took a seat back down, passing him the red thread, to match the red of the shirt. 

“Alright,” he said. “Well there are four holes in the button, so…” 

He drew out a bit of thread, and I shook my head, then had him keep spooling out more. 

“Your guess wasn’t bad, but with thread this thin, you’ll want to double it up. Most thread for buttons you will. And you did eyeball a bit too low, but that’s just experience. Now, cut it.” 

“Cut it?” he said. “But in pictures and stuff when someone’s making clothes, they spin the wheel until they’re done.” 

I had to resist myself from smiling. Osheen had adapted away from his born position of privilege quite well, but it did sometimes shine through. 

“That’s a sewing machine, or maybe a spinning wheel,” I told him. “For hand sewing, you don’t do that.” 

“The more you know,” Osheen said, snipping it off. “Do I burn it or something?” 

“Uh, no,” I said. “That’s only for really cheap, waxy fabrics, and I think carpets? But I don’t know enough about carpets to say. No, what you need to do now is double it, like we talked about, and then thread it through the eye of the needle.”

Osheen doubled the thread, then tried to feed it through the end. 

“Try licking it,” I said. “The thread, not the needle.”

Osheen gave me a look, like he wasn’t sure if I was serious or joking. 

“I’m serious!” I said. “It helps the threads stick together, and then you’ll have an easier time getting it through the eye of the needle.” 

Tentatively, Osheen licked it, and I bumped his shoulder slightly. He grinned and rolled his eyes, then tried to thread the eye of the needle. 

It took him several long tries, but he eventually managed it.

“Good!” I said. “Now tie the other end in a knot. You may have to double knot it, if you make the knot too small.” 

“What kind of knot?” Osheen asked. 

“A… knot?” I said. “Just a normal one will do fine for our purposes.”

“Alright,” he agreed, tying it off. 

After that, I showed him to push in the straight pin, as well as the simple pattern to keep the button balanced. 

“We’ve got a lot of thread left, but the button is stuck pretty well on there,” Osheen observed, and I nodded. 

“Not to worry, that was on purpose. Take out the straight pin, then wrap the thread around the in between of the button and the shirt a few times, then do one more pattern.” 

Osheen did as I said, then tilted his head. 

“There’s still more thread.” 

“Yep,” I said. “I’ll show you the first one and you can do the other, but I typically make about two stitches, more if it’s a bigger button.” 

I picked up the shirt and worked as slowly as I could, to make it sure that Osheen was able to pick up on the details the best he could, then passed it over to him. 

“Your turn.” 

His stitch was a bit too large and weak, so I pulled it out and had him repeat it. This time, he did it, and I nodded. 

“Just tie it off now,” I told Osheen, and then I snipped off the last little bit of thread. 

“Congratulations,” I told him. “You’ve learned a spell.” 

“I don’t think that was a spell,” he said with a smile. 

“Nonsense. It’s magic that’s every bit as important as cooking.” 

“I don’t think cooking is magic either.” 

I shushed him and we laid next to the fire for a while longer before finally turning in. 

One morning, I broached a topic with Aldvarri. 

“Would you consider moving to Zheren?” I asked him. 

My elderly elven dad pushed his spectacles up his nose and looked at me. 

“Now that’s quite a question,” he said. “Why do you ask?” 

“The unrest is a lot worse than it seems,” I said. “It’s also going to get worse before it gets better.” 

Aldvarri considered me for a long time, then shook his head. 

“No son, I don’t think that I should. I was pretty young when the wars with Bradlewyr started, but I lived through them. I lived through the war-reform unrest two centuries ago. The death of my wife. This is my home, and I’m not going to leave it for something like this.”

“But…” I said before trailing off. I didn’t know what to say. It was his right to live here, even if I disagreed. I wasn’t going to kidnap him to keep him safe. 

“Just let me put up some more protections for you,” I finally said. I’d put up the ones with Osheen’s help not so long ago, but I didn’t have any illusions about their quality, not after seeing the power that a true noble house was able to put into their defenses. 

“I don’t need them,” he said. “This is just a tailor’s shop, Evander. Nobody’s going to be trying to loot it, or try to kill me.” 

“I’m not so sure I agree with that,” I said. “I care about that, and that alone puts you in some danger from the other archmages.” 

“I see,” he said. “Well, I suppose you can put some defenses up.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking his hand and squeezing it. He smiled at me, even though he wasn’t very physically affectionate, and I left to think.

I wasn’t a wardcrafter, and I didn’t have the skill to do anything else than touch up the threshold-enforcing wards that I’d put up not so long ago. 

I was an enchanter, first and foremost, so I took down the curtains I’d made for Aldvarri some time ago, and set about making some new ones. While force enhancement and force armor were fine spells, they weren’t exactly up to my usual work.

In the defense of my old self, I’d done it on the train ride here, and hadn’t exactly had a ton of time, or the knowledge and skill I had now. 

But now I wasn’t limited by such a thing. 

The divination section to detect attacks was decent enough, but all of my work with memory storage banks in abjuration had given me a lot more experience. I didn’t need to completely redo it, but I could expand it for sure. 

With that done, I added in the ghost plate spell, in addition to the physical armor. That should protect him from charm effects, which was quite important to me. I didn’t think that Chris Heenling had any skill with charms, but I’d rather have it than not, and who knew what sort of resources the archmages could draw on?

I also added on some spell breaking and shaping disruption spell forms, and a general planar lock. 

With that all done, I grabbed Osheen, and we went out to the market. 

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at that fact. There had been a time, when I’d left home, that something as simple as popping over to the market would have stressed me out a great deal. 

We picked up some roofing tar, then with the help of Oracle, Osheen, and Bridgette, we redid the roof. 

Of course, that was only one of the elements of it. We burnt runes and spell lines onto the bottom side of the shingles, as well as onto the roof. 

It took us a couple hours each day for the rest of the summer, but we gave Aldvarri a new roof. 

A roof with a three-dimensional spell laid into it, one that would, when his curtains activated, grab the attention of Osheen or me, flood his personal defenses with power in an overcharged manner, break down any spells that weren’t laid down by me or Osheen, and several other things besides. 

The biggest one was that I finally got a chance to use the aura-slowing-goop spell that I’d found during my very first year at Yesgol. It was designed as a burner spell, to simply make an aura filled with force magic and stick to something like a goo, slowing and stopping them. 

I’d ignored it for a long time, since it was less efficient than a basic force binding. But in this instance? I didn’t need efficiency, I needed to flood the entire house. 

But with the end of our project, the end of summer wasn’t long behind. 

We said our goodbyes to Aldvarri and boarded the train back to Yesgol.