Deceived by Magic (The Baine Chronicles Book 6) Page 4

  Elania huffed a little at that. “I did get on quite well before I met you, you know,” she said, though her dark eyes sparkled with amusement rather than annoyance.

  “Even so, please let us know if you do need anything,” I told her. “Rylan and I are happy to come and help out with whatever you need.”

  “Thank you.” Elania smiled warmly at me, looking much more like her usual self. “I’ve hired a new employee to help me run Comenius’s shop, so I shouldn’t need assistance. And you ought not to trouble yourself further, Comenius,” she added, turning back to him. “You’d be better served focusing on yourself, and your daughter.”

  “Have you heard any news from Noria?” I asked, mostly to distract Comenius from his worries.

  “No.” His eyes turned dull. “I assume she’ll be in the mines by now. I sent a letter there, but I haven’t received a response. I’m not sure if she is ignoring me, or if she hasn’t received it.”

  There was a long moment of depressed silence, and I bit my lip. Maybe Noria wasn’t the best choice of subject… but I felt like it was wrong to go on as if she’d ceased to exist. At least not so soon after she’d been sentenced.

  “I have not heard or seen anything of Annia, either,” Com finally said. “I was going to check on her, but now, with this new problem, there is no time.”

  “I can do that,” I said. Guilt squeezed my chest—I shouldn’t have needed Comenius to prompt me to look in on my best friend. “I’ll go right now.” If it had been tough for me to watch Noria be sent off to the mines, it had to be ten times worse for Annia. If anyone needed a shoulder right now, it was she.

  “Your friend Annia seems to be pretty well-off,” Rylan commented as I parked my bike on the curb outside a large, two-story granite brick home. The manicured front lawn boasted an impressive flower garden, and the scents of marigolds and dahlias leant a pleasant fragrance to the warm summer evening. The property was situated on the side of one of the many hills in Solantha, and it offered a great view of the sun setting over the western sea.

  “The house belongs to her mother,” I told him as we disembarked. “Annia lives in the guest suite out back.”

  I intended to head around to the back of the house, when the sound of Annia and her mother shouting gave me pause. I stood on the front path, debating whether or not to risk interrupting the argument by knocking on the front door. But the decision was made for me when the birch door flew open, and Annia stormed out.

  “Fine, blame me if you think that will help anything!” she snapped over her shoulder, auburn hair flying out behind her. She wore a pair of jeans, brown leather boots, and a button-down green shirt instead of her usual mercenary leathers, which was strange because she should have just recently gotten off her shift. “But don’t expect me to stick around if this is how you’re going to be all the time!”

  She froze on the top step of the porch at the sight of us, her hand on the railing. “Naya? What are you doing here?”

  “I certainly don’t expect you to stick around!” Mrs. Melcott declared, striding out onto the porch before I could reply. She was a striking woman in her forties, with fine-boned features and a willowy figure. Her chestnut-colored hair was done up in an elegant braid that wrapped around her head, and she wore a black and white knee-length dress and matching shoes. Her dark eyes, identical to her daughter’s, narrowed as she caught sight of me, and her pale cheeks colored.

  “How dare you show up on my property,” she railed, pointing an accusing finger at me. “After all you’ve done!”

  “Mother,” Annia said tightly, turning back to face Mrs. Melcott. “Sunaya has nothing to do with this.”

  “She has everything to do with it,” Mrs. Melcott insisted, her voice trembling. Her eyes filled with angry tears as they focused in on me. “My Noria looked up to you and Annia, and it was you who filled her head with foolish, rebellious thoughts! She should be at the academy now, taking her engineering classes and inventing things, not toiling away in the salt mines where you sent her!”

  A pang of guilt hit me hard in the gut. “Mrs. Melcott, I didn’t—”

  “Don’t bother,” Annia snarled, striding toward me. She grabbed me by the arm, a little harder than necessary. “My mother isn’t interested in listening to reason. She just wants someone to blame, and she’s become very good at finding targets.” Annia’s voice rose as she shot a furious glare at her mother and pulled me along. “I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”

  “Annia—” Mrs. Melcott called, a desperate edge in her voice now, but Annia ignored her. I had to lengthen my stride to keep up with her as she dragged me to the back of the house—Annia was a little taller than me, and her legs were longer. I kept my mouth shut until she’d ushered us into the one-bedroom guesthouse she’d used as an apartment for as long as I’d known her, then wisely decided to hold my tongue when she slammed the door shut, snatched a vase off a side table next to the leather couch, and smashed it into the wall.

  “The Ur-God take it!” she snarled, then seemed to remember she was not alone. Her shoulders slumped a little, and she leaned her arm against the low wall separating the living room from the entry way and looked at us. “I’m sorry you had to see all that, but I wasn’t really expecting you. Who is this?” She gestured to Rylan.

  “You don’t have to apologize. And this is Rylan.” I glanced toward him, and he tapped the pin on his chest, undoing the illusion spell. “Iannis and I thought it would be best to keep him disguised until things have calmed down.”

  “It’s harder to impress the ladies smelling like a tiger, but I have to make do in these troubled times,” Rylan said, giving Annia a lopsided grin. “I’m posing as Sunaya’s bodyguard, Lanyr.”

  Annia’s lips twitched, but the bleak look in her eyes didn’t change. “That’s smart,” she said, heading into the kitchen so she could grab a bottle of wine from a cupboard. There was a loud pop as she opened it using a corkscrew, and I arched a brow as she took a swig directly from the bottle. “Considering that people tend to play the blame game whenever shit doesn’t go their way, I had a feeling you’d be a target.” I knew she wasn’t just talking about me with that statement.

  “Pretty much.” I decided not to mention that we’d been attacked earlier today—there was no point in distressing her further. “So what was that all about? Are you really moving out?”

  “I don’t see that I have a choice.” Annia brought her bottle of wine into the living room, and we made ourselves comfortable on the couches. Black, cream, and burgundy were the dominating colors in her décor scheme, and her family wealth showed in the expensive furnishings. The sword hanging over the mantle, and the sheathed, ornate-looking knives adorning the walls, leant an edge to the elegance that I’d always admired.

  “Your mother isn’t kicking you out, is she?” I asked. Another stab of guilt pierced my gut at the idea that I had contributed to this. “I know how much you like living here.”

  “Those days are over,” Annia said, her eyes softening as they filled with sadness. “Noria was Mother’s pride and joy, and she’s inconsolable now that she’s gone. It’ll be a long time before Mother can accept that what happened to my sister was no one’s fault but her own. It doesn’t help that the so-called friends she played cards with four times a week have snubbed her since they found out Noria was sentenced to hard labor in the mines. She has no one to take her frustrations out on but me now, and I can’t put up with it anymore.”

  “I know how that is,” I said softly. I’d often felt Mafiela had been taking out her grief and anger over my mother’s death on me. Once I’d found shelter with Roanas, it had been a relief to escape all that. “Do you want to come and stay at the Palace while you find a new place?”

  “It would be nice to have another friendly face around,” Rylan added. “It’s hard to make friends when no one is allowed to know who you really are.”

  Annia shook her head. “That would only anger Mother more. Besides, I need to b
ury myself in work, or I’ll get depressed. Mother doesn’t realize it, but she’s not the only one grieving over Noria right now.” Her voice broke a little, and she took another swig from the bottle.

  “Oh, Annia.” I shifted over to the other couch and wrapped an arm around her. “I feel like such a horrible friend for leaving you alone at a time like this.”

  “Don’t,” Annia said, leaning into me. “You have your own troubles, and I’ve been busy at the Guild anyway. We all have, what with the city trying to adjust. It’s just that Noria, Mother, and I used to have breakfast up in the main house every morning, and we used to hang out in the back garden for an hour before bed most nights. We spent less time together as she got busy with her academy classes, but we were still close up until a few months ago. I didn’t realize just how important those little rituals we had were, and how much our family needed them, until she was gone.”

  Her voice choked with tears then, and the room fell silent. Rylan averted his gaze, and I said nothing, just holding her tight as Annia struggled for composure. Eventually, she let out a breath, then eased herself from my arms.

  “How rude of me,” she said as her fingers curled around the neck of the wine bottle. “I’ve been sitting here guzzling wine like a lush, and I haven’t offered you anything. Are you two hungry? I can probably throw something together.”

  “No, that’s fine,” I said, standing up. Rylan and Annia got to their feet as well. “I have to meet Iannis for dinner. Do you want to come back to the Palace with us for tonight at least?”

  “No, I need to pack. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Not permanently,” Annia said hastily as she noticed my eyes nearly pop out of my head. “Just for a few months. I’ve accepted a guard position for some sensitive equipment being transported to Southia, and once I’m there, I plan to take on some local gigs. Like I said, I need to bury myself in work. A change of environment and routine is for the best, at least right now.”

  “Well, I’ll miss the hell out of you.” My throat tightened, and I threw my arms around Annia and squeezed her tight. “Don’t be gone too long, okay? I am getting married at some point, you know.”

  Annia laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve spent way too much time saving both yours and Lord Iannis’s asses to miss the wedding. I’ll make sure to send you my address down there, so you can contact me if you need anything.”

  It was clear from the look in Annia’s eyes, and the set of her shoulders, that there was no use in convincing her to stay. So Rylan and I said our goodbyes, then went back to the front of the house, where my bike was parked. My shoulders tightened as I felt Mrs. Melcott’s accusing gaze from the window, but I didn’t turn to look. There was no point in getting into another confrontation with her. Best to just let her be.

  “I understand how Annia feels,” Rylan commented as we sped back to the Palace. “I remember how relieved I felt when I moved further north with the Resistance, away from Mother and the clan.”

  “Yeah, I just hope she doesn’t end up staying down there permanently. I’ve heard that Southia’s laws are a lot looser, and there’s more crime.” Then again, that meant plenty of work for an enforcer. Maybe she would be down there for a while.

  “True, but Annia’s a rolling stone. She’ll bulldoze through any opposition in her way, and she seems smart enough not to land herself into anything she can’t get out of. The Resistance compound notwithstanding,” he added hastily. “But I think that was because Noria clouded her judgment. She’s strong, and she’ll eventually get past this and want to come home.” The admiration in Rylan’s voice was clear, and I wondered if he had a crush on Annia.

  “I really hope so,” I said, trying my best to share his enthusiasm. But it was hard—there were too many changes happening, too fast, and it seemed like for every new friend I gained, I lost another. Hopefully this wouldn’t become a regular pattern, because at the rate I was going, my life would be completely unrecognizable before long. And even though I was becoming a mage, I was determined to remain Sunaya Baine, no matter what.

  5

  The Palace was in an uproar when Rylan and I got back. Canter, the grizzly old receptionist, was frantically answering phone calls, and servants and Mages Guild staff were scurrying about the halls at an uncharacteristically hurried pace. Usually everything was calm and collected around here—but now nervous excitement buzzed in the air.

  “Something big must be about to go down,” Rylan said as he followed me down to the Mages Guild, located in the south wing of the Palace. My serapha charm told me Iannis was down there, and I wanted answers from him. “Any idea what?”

  “No. I wasn’t told anything out of the ordinary was happening.”

  “Miss Baine,” Dira, the Mages Guild receptionist, called from her desk as I entered the lobby. “Lord Iannis needs to speak to you right away. He asked that you come alone.” Her eyes briefly flicked to Rylan.

  I nodded. “Go have dinner,” I told him. “I’ll let you know when I need you again.”

  Rylan looked slightly put out that he was once again being excluded, but he bowed, then left without argument. He might be my bodyguard now, but he was still an ex-Resistance member, and Iannis wasn’t about to trust him with confidential information. After all, Rylan was here to serve out his sentence instead of working in the mines—he wasn’t a willing volunteer. He might not support the Resistance anymore, but he still wasn’t a fan of the mage regime. I had a feeling that if he saw an opportunity to undermine the Guild in any way, he would take it in a heartbeat.

  Once, I would have done the same. But now that I was engaged to Iannis, and learning to become a mage myself, that wasn’t an option. I needed to learn how to make the system work better, not bring it down entirely. Revolution sounded nice on paper, but I was beginning to understand that the reality was anything but. Violence, much as I loved using it on an individual basis, didn’t solve anything. It only left death and destruction in its wake, and the pieces you had to pick up and put together afterward didn’t necessarily assemble to give you what you wanted.

  “Enter,” Iannis called when I knocked on the door. I opened it to see him seated behind his desk, a grave expression on his face. Director Chen stood at his side, resplendent as usual in her silk robes, and Cirin Garidano, the Finance Secretary, sat in one of the guest chairs. Fenris was curled up in front of the fireplace in wolf form, and he rose to greet me, tail wagging.

  “Hey,” I said, bending down to briefly stroke my hand along Fenris’s coarse, dark brown fur. It occurred to me that Fenris had been spending a lot of time in human form recently, and I wondered if last night’s full moon had inspired him to go back to his usual manner of skulking around in beast form. “What’s going on?”

  “We are about to host some very unexpected guests,” Iannis said. “Take a seat, so I can explain.”

  “Unexpected guests?” I sat down next to Cirin. “From where?”

  “From Dara. Minister Graning is preparing his departure as we speak, along with several other high officials. The Mage-Emperor of Garai has died at long last, and the Minister is stopping in Solantha on his way to attend the funeral.”

  “Through here?” I frowned. “But wouldn’t it be easier to travel through the Central Continent to get to Garai from Dara?”

  “Perhaps, but the Minister wishes for me to attend the funeral as part of his entourage, so he is coming through here to collect me. The difference is only a few days in the end. He intends to stay in Solantha for three days, bringing half the government along, and then we will travel on to Garai by steamboat. Since the Garaians have to wait for the guests from all continents to assemble in their capital, there is just time enough to go that way.”

  I crinkled my nose at the thought of a corpse waiting for weeks and weeks to be buried, in the summertime, no less. I guessed they’d have to embalm him in the meantime.

  “When you say ‘we,’ who exactly are you
referring to?” Director Chen asked. “I would think that just as the Minister is taking an entourage, so would you want one yourself.”

  “Indeed.” Iannis’s lips curved as he glanced up at her. “That is why I am taking Sunaya along, and you as well.”

  “Me!” Director Chen’s almond-shaped eyes flashed with surprise, and more than a little dismay. “I am your deputy, meant to rule in your stead while you are gone. We cannot possibly leave at the same time. Who will run things in our place? You remember the fiasco that occurred when the Council seized power in your absence—that cannot be allowed to occur again.”

  “I am naming Secretary Garidano as the Director pro tempore, and I will meet with the Council before we leave to ensure that they do not attempt to undermine him in any way.” Iannis’s voice turned ominous. As Director Chen had said, they couldn’t be allowed to repeat the same mistakes they had made the last time Iannis had been gone. It was largely their fault that the Uprising had started to begin with, and the city was still recovering. Half of them had resigned in the last couple of weeks, so I didn’t think Iannis would have any trouble cowing the remainder into submission.

  Cirin started at this announcement, as surprised as Chen. “Fenris will be here to advise you, Cirin,” Iannis continued. “I will also sit down with you and go over everything you will need to know before we depart.”

  “Yes, sir.” Cirin’s deep voice was smooth, but the slight pause before his words told me Iannis had shocked the hell out of him. “Thank you for the honor, Lord Iannis.” His dark blue eyes gleamed with anticipation, and despite his shock, I knew Cirin had been waiting for an opportunity like this. He was ambitious, and I knew that he intended to take the Chief Mage position the moment Iannis vacated it. I resolved then and there to keep an eye on him—he’d proved his loyalty in the past, but that didn’t mean he would always be that way. Roanas used to say to me that the lust for power could warp even the purest heart, and Cirin was no exception.