by HDA Roberts
"Cassie, I'm trying to sleep," I complained.
"I want to know, too," she said, dropping onto the bed next to me, dislodging me enough to wake me all the way up.
"Alright," I said with a yawn, dragging myself up against the headboard, "Tethys has agreed to handle my financial business, as well as my... intelligence activities. To do that, she needs a workspace, and I just so happen to have a whole pile of free rooms."
"So, a while?" she said with a glare.
"Permanently, in fact."
"And you didn't think to ask me, first?"
"Of course I did," I replied, "But here's the thing, you're smarter than I am, and a far better strategist. If I'd given you even the tiniest bit of warning, you'd have either talked me out of it or blocked me completely, somehow."
She preened a little at that, smiling at the compliment.
"I wanted to get her in and make you think. To help you see what she brings to the table. I know you don't like her much; I'm not expecting you two to be friends. But I trust her, and I've made it clear to her that when it comes to security, or the safety of anyone under your care, including me and her, your word is law."
"And she bought that?" Cassandra asked.
"She did. She knows that in your field, you are unmatched, and that you have my best interests at heart. Just like she does."
She grunted, twitching her pretty nose.
"Alright, fine," she said with a sigh, "I can hardly refuse now that she's agreed to be so reasonable. But don't think this means I'm not mad at you."
I hopped out of the bed and pulled a wrapped box out of a drawer, handing it to her.
"In anticipation of your wrath, I took the liberty of arranging a little peace offering," I said.
She gave me another evil look as she pulled the paper away and opened the box.
"Oh, Matty, is this what I think it is?" she asked in a reverent whisper, pulling a silver revolver from the package.
"It is. Prewitt and Kass, special issue, fitted for dispel," I explained.
Prewitt and Kass made magical items. Generally staves, rods, wands, armour, that sort of things. I had to pay them an astronomical amount of money to make a firearm, much less a pistol. Only her status as a head-of-state's private bodyguard allowed Cassandra to carry one in public. The gun was a special order. Like a staff or a wand, she could channel energy into the gun's enchantments, which then transferred a specific spell to the bullets as they passed through the barrel. In this case, a dispel. That gun would tear Mage Shields to shreds.
She smiled, pulling the custom holster from within the box.
"That's the nicest gift anyone's ever given me," she said, "This must have taken ages to make. How long have you been planning to bring Tethys in?"
She glared again, the effect ruined by the almost child-like grin on her face.
"I knew I'd do something to piss you off eventually, I figured I'd need something around," I said with a smile, sitting down again.
"And you decided to give me something I could use to shoot you as a way of dealing with me in a bad mood? Didn't really think that one through, did you?" she said, smiling broadly as she pulled off her jacket and strapped the shoulder holster under her right arm, her left already had an automatic pistol under it. She loaded the gun with quick, professional movements, pulling bullets from the case faster than I could really follow, before holstering it.
She pulled her jacket back on, yanked me into a hug and kissed my cheek, "Alright, she can stay," she said, "but you owe me."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Now get dressed. I'm hungry and they're waiting to feed you."
"Can't I just go back to sleep for a few more minutes?" I asked, rubbing my eyes.
"It's seven-thirty, you've had quite enough sleep; you're making a pig of yourself!"
"Seven th-?!" I asked, aghast, dropping back into bed and pulling the covers over myself, "What kind of monster are you?"
"Matty, your butler won't tell me where anything is, and her security won't let my tech people into the study," Tethys said, appearing out of nowhere and startling Cassandra.
"Cassie, please play nicely with Tethys, and would you mind awfully smoothing things over with Mister Webb while I get dressed?" I asked.
I'd left a note with the valet on duty last night to make sure that precisely this didn't happen...
"Fine," Cassandra said, hopping up, "Come on, I'll introduce you properly to the staff. And I suppose I can let your people in."
"No, stop, I can't take the gushing acceptance," Tethys said, deadpan, flashing me a wink as she followed Cassandra out the door.
Suckers. No way I was getting up before nine in a school holiday. I made exceptions when Cathy was within groping distance, but that's it, thank you. I flopped back down and closed my eyes, drifting back to sleep.
You see where this is going?
Kandi next.
She was a vivacious little redhead, smart and beautiful with an adorable spread of freckles over her nose. She was the best chess player I knew; even able to beat Cathy with almost contemptible ease, and my girlfriend was no slouch. I could beat her from time to time, but I wasn't certain she didn't let me win (strip chess; don't ask, I'm not going to tell you).
It took me longer than I'm comfortable admitting to realise that the arms and leg snaking themselves around me were Kandi's. I was not a force to be reckoned with first thing in the morning...
"Mm, warm in here," she whispered into my ear, burrowing her nose into the back of my neck.
"Morning Kandi," I said groggily.
"You are in so much trouble. Captain Vaillancourt thinks you've drowned in the loo or something, you said you were getting dressed an hour ago."
"Can't talk, need my beauty sleep."
"Tethys told me that if you don't get up on your own, then I should start doing things to you until you cooperate," she said into my ear, raising all sorts of goosebumps.
"Or, you could stay right there and enjoy a little nap," I said, "It is all warm in here, and these are clean sheets."
"Tethys will bend me over her knee if I do that," she said, but she was already snuggling in tighter and I could feel her relaxing behind me.
"Then it's good that you enjoy that sort of thing, isn't it?"
"If you want me to nap, then don't get me all riled up," she replied.
She yawned and I heard her breathing slow.
Hee hee! Tethys may have the monopoly on inducing lust, but she doesn't hold a candle to my powers over sloth.
"Oh! For heaven's sake!" Cassandra said loudly, startling me and Kandi out of sleep yet again.
"Wha?" I said, again articulate.
"I sent you to empty the bed, not add to its occupants," Cassandra said to Kandi, who sniggered.
"Yeah, never send Kandi to get Mathew to do something," Tethys said, "He snaps his fingers in just the right way and she'll do things to him that would make me blush."
"She's not kidding, Matty," Kandi whispered, "That's all it would take."
"What could you people possibly want right now?" I asked in a put-upon tone.
"There's someone here to see you," Tethys said.
"Tell them I'm dead."
"It's Lady Kron," Cassandra said.
"Definitely tell her I'm dead," I replied.
"Graves!" Kron barked, making me bolt upright, dislodge Kandi, who squeaked, at which point I fell out of bed and banged my knee on the floor.
"Can you come by every morning?" Cassandra said to my sister Archon, "Getting him up is a nightmare, and you seem to have the knack."
I pulled myself up on the edge of the bed and looked at Kron, who was standing in the doorway, dressed in a dark and perfectly tailored suit, the gold signet with the hourglass sigil on her finger rather prominent. All the signets were different in colour and style, mine was black (surprise) and simple; hers was big and ornate.
"What can I do for you today?" I asked politely after I'd come to.
"You can
get dressed for starters, I'm not having this conversation with someone in their pyjamas," she said before turning on her heel and stomping out.
"All I can say is thank God I wasn't wearing my Star Wars set today," I said, which made Kandi burst out laughing.
After one of the quickest changes of my life, I darted into the drawing room, where I found Kron sipping coffee from a china cup. It was a large, not especially comfortable room with hard furnishings and a wide fireplace. It really needed to be redone; I imagined it was already on Tethys' to-do list...
I sat down in an armchair, and Kron ignored me.
I let her. She may well have invented awkward silences, but I perfected them. I sat back and relaxed while she took her immense time finishing her coffee and eating one of the biscuits she had on her saucer.
"I am now ready to hear your apology," she said once she was done with her little performance piece.
"Alright, I'm sorry," I said.
She blinked. I could almost see the conversational and argumentative web she'd prepared dissolve behind her eyes. It made me happy.
"What?" she said, still on the back foot.
"I said I'm sorry. Completely in the wrong. My fault, no doubt," I lied.
I heard a very distinctive (and very Tethys) snigger from around the corner. I think Kron was too surprised by my sudden cooperation to notice.
"You'll say that to Lady Sutton?" she asked.
"Not in a million years. She terrifies me, I'm not going anywhere near her," I said firmly.
"Hopkins mentioned that, what do you mean, 'she terrifies you'?" she asked, her eyes narrowing, but in concentration rather than fury.
"I don't know how to explain it. The second I saw her, I just felt a deep, awful dread; like I was suddenly staring at my murderer. It was that strong."
Kron leant back, tapping her jaw with an index finger as she thought about it.
"That could mean any number of things," she said finally, suddenly seeming very uncomfortable.
"What's it most likely to mean?" I asked, deliberately meeting her eyes.
"It's not that. That's impossible."
"Alright. If a stranger came to you and described what I just had about another stranger, what would you tell them it meant?"
She sighed, rubbing her eyes, "Commonly, that reaction would tend to indicate an action so traumatic, so horrific, to you that it resonated through your soul from the point of cause, back and forward in time. It's rare, and only applies in cases where the action was... truly monstrous, soul-rendingly bad. In Shadowborn, this reaction can be associated with the person who causes them to... to use the Black."
My heart rate tripled at that, and I felt sick to my stomach. No wonder I'd had such a reaction.
"Or it could be that she's to become very close to you, and her death is what causes the trauma, or any number of potential things. There's just no way to know for sure."
That didn't help. Kron was supposed to be quite good at this whole predictive, Time Magic thing.
"Well, if it's all the same to you, I'm going to keep away from her," I said, "Good or bad cause, trauma isn't fun."
I said that to make her feel better. I knew in my bones that the reason wasn't good. I'd seen the look in Sutton's eyes. There was real evil there, I knew it like I knew how to breathe. Whatever future event inspired my terror, it wasn't because I was fond of the animal.
"That... might be for the best," she replied, "She hasn't had the best luck with men, and I don't want your obvious dislike to hurt her."
I bristled a little at that, but let it go, I didn't want to start another fight with Kron, and she might be willing to tell me something useful, if I was nice.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
She cleared her throat, wringing her hands.
"She was born to a very poor family, back in the fourteenth century. She was sold to a Magician when her powers came out, at which point she was forbidden to as much as look at a man. Back then, in that part of the world, it was believed that a Sorceress' powers would be diminished if she were to ever... 'take a husband'. Drivel, of course, but it was the Stupid Ages.
"So, the man who bought her kept her among other female practitioners, each of whom impressed upon her, sometimes violently, the evils that other men represented. She was able to sneak away from time to time, women with that much power can't be contained forever, after all, and after some time and a few missteps, she found a man. She fell in love, but promptly lost him when her master discovered their affair.
"She was punished, very thoroughly. And when this was finished, he exposed her to the very worst of mankind, made her watch as more than fifty particularly vile criminals were forced to confess and describe their crimes in detail before she was then in turn forced to slay them. When Bjorn was done, Namia couldn't even look at a man without hating him intensely, seeing every one of you as a representation both of the man who'd taken her capacity for love, and the monsters she'd been exposed to.
"I met her when she was presented to the Italian Conclave in fourteen-ten. She was a scared, cowering, little thing, afraid of her own shadow and practically radiating hatred for every man she met or who tried to talk to her."
She paused for a moment and I poured her another cup of coffee, which she accepted with a nod.
"I talked to her, and she told me her story. I challenged Bjorn to a duel on the spot and beat him like a mule. I took Namia with me and made her my apprentice. It took me a century to begin to undo the damage Bjorn had done. And almost another fifty years after that before she began looking at men and not seeing monsters. Even so, she never found someone to love again. Her Legion of Peace is eight-tenths female, you know. But for all that, she is the kindest, most decent, sweetest girl I ever met. I hated you for making her cry. I almost hit you back there, because I know Namia Sutton. She'd never hurt you. Not for anything. She's like you, in many ways, she doesn't believe that magic should be used to harm people."
I leant back in my chair, thinking over what she'd said. She watched me carefully.
"I will keep an open mind," I finally said, "But she's a Sorceress with a Light Affinity. Essentially, to me, she's the most dangerous person on the face of the earth who isn't an Archon."
"Granted," she agreed stonily.
"I'll keep away from her, and pray to God that I'm simply allowing my cowardly nature to get the better of me. But I can't pretend that your response yesterday didn't hurt me. It did. I know that I'm... new, but I shouldn't have to feel like an outsider, not with you."
She had the good grace to look chagrined and avert her eyes.
"Palmyra told me how you felt. I didn't listen. I was too angry, too protective of Namia. She's like one of my daughters, Mathew, I hope you understand. You of all people know what it's like to be protective of family."
"I do," I said, "How many daughters do you have?"
"Twelve," she said with a smile, her face lighting up in a way I hadn't seen before, (we didn't really talk much, I was much closer to Palmyra and Hopkins than Killian and Kron), "and nine sons, thirty-six grandchildren, three times that many great-grandchildren and a more than a thousand in succeeding generations from two wonderful husbands."
I smiled, she was over a thousand years old (well over), and damn if she hadn't used that time productively...
"That's... wonderful," I said. If I had to pick a fate for myself, that's the one I'd choose. A vast swathe of children and grandchildren, a family I could never lose.
"My family, both by blood and by bond, has always been the most precious thing in my life," she said, "They bring me more joy than I can easily describe."
"I'm sorry I acted like I did," I said, actually meaning it for a change, "If I'd known ahead of time who she was to you... I'd have handled it differently."
"No. You are my brother as much as Namia is my daughter. More, even. That you had something to say should have been enough. And it will be from now on, alright? Goodness knows you've done enough to ea
rn you the benefit of the doubt. I won't forget that again."
I smiled and nodded, "Thank you."
"Alright. Now that girly bollocks is out the way, there is an item of business that needs discussion," she said, her tone all business again.
Oh, what fresh hell is this?
"Okay," I replied carefully.
"After you had your little hissy fit and stormed out of Conclave," I remembered it slightly differently, but I wasn't going to start another fight... yet, "We were approached by a representative of the Seelie Queen."
"Elora?" I asked, "What does she want?"
"A conference. With us and the Conclave, to discuss the resumption of proper diplomatic exchanges. As you know, ever since we had our little hiatus, things became somewhat strained between the Newtonian World and the Fae. It would appear as if Elora wants to normalise things; presumably to ensure that something like the Crooked House doesn't happen again."
The Newtonian World referred to the human world, and our Magic, which was surprisingly scientific, hence Newtonian. Fae Magic worked differently, it was all emotion and intention and purity of purpose; confusing and messy. I never touched the stuff myself, not that I could, even if I wanted to. Crooked House was what the Seelie (the nice Fairies) called an abomination of a laboratory where a particularly monstrous Magician was harvesting Fairy creatures to make Black Magic. I was informed from time to time about how his 'correction' was progressing.
He screamed a lot, apparently. Still does to this day as far as I know, the Unseelie (Evil-ish Fairies) were feared for a reason. I must say that I found that knowledge quite satisfying. If you'd seen what he did, you would too.
"Sounds like a good idea," I said.
"Yes. Here's the thing..." Kron said, looking away.
"Yes?"
"She wants to use your colony as the meeting site."
My eyebrows raised and I sat back in my seat.
"It's not mine. I can't make that sort of decision."
"That place is under the protection provided by your Place of Power and your offer of Sanctuary. If anything in this world is yours, that Grotto is it," she replied a little testily.
I sighed, "Elora's harmless enough, I suppose. I'll head home today and ask them. I owe them a conversation at the very least; it's their home, after all. When do you want this thing to happen?"
