The Canard Case (The Artifactor Series Book 4)

by Honor Raconteur

  And no matter what these three thought, this was most definitely a job for the Fae. They were the ones that could sweet talk rocks into doing whatever they wanted.

  Sevana dropped to her knees, slinging her pack around to the front, and frantically dug through it. But even though she searched three times, she could not find her Caller. Releasing it, she twisted around to demand of Cheng-Huang, “I need my Caller. It’s a small statue that looks like a human. It should be on my flying device.”

  “I do not need to know where it is,” he assured her. With a wave of the hand, it appeared, hovering just in front of her.

  Sevana grabbed it and placed it on a flat palm. Now, calm down. Her magic would only let her sustain for about five seconds, which meant she only had that much time to give Master the information he needed to know. Last time, she had been in too much of a rush and her magic power had gotten all excited, accidentally overloading the Caller and burning it to a crisp. She could not afford to lose this one; it was the last one she had that was still intact. Taking a deep, calming breath, she tried to settle herself. When that didn’t work, she tried another. Right, that was better. Forming what she needed to say in her head, she commanded, “Call Master.”

  There was a long pause and then the Caller adopted the features of her Master, raising his head, the outlines of his favorite tattered robe hanging off one shoulder. “Sweetling! Now—”

  She didn’t have time to let him talk, so cut in. “Master, I’ve been called by three deities about an active volcano. I could use some help, we don’t have a lot of time. I’m in—” at that moment her unpredictable magic flared and sparked, arcing out over her hand. It shot through the Caller and melted it to the point that the ceramic crumbled into fine dust, trailing to the ground in waves. Sevana sank, head hanging between her shoulders, and screamed in the back of her throat.

  So much for her five second rule.

  “Why is your magic so unstable?” Da-Yu demanded of her. “You are like a novice.”

  Sevana shot to her feet, a snarl on her lips. “You try being infused with Fae magic without going through the proper rituals and see what happens!” Throwing what was left of the Caller to the ground, she snatched up her bag. “Do deities pray?”

  “Why?” Chi-Lin asked, prancing in agitation, likely because of her attitude.

  “Because if you do, you should start now. If Master doesn’t figure out where I am, and then contact the Fae nation, you’re going to get some very angry guests soon. And believe me, you don’t want them upset with you.”

  Da-Yu at least didn’t like this idea one bit. “You’re not going to send them a message?”

  “The only thing I have that will communicate with them is in a pile of burnt sand right now,” she growled at him. “So no, I’m not. I’ll work on the problem while I wait for Aran.”

  “He is Fae? How do you expect this Aran to know where you are?”

  “Aran will find me.” Just hopefully not with an army at his back.

  Arandur tapped a quick hello on Big’s walls as he entered. “Big. Where is our Sevana?”

  The mountain shifted in agitation. “She was called away early yesterday morning. There was a dam near Stillwater that was being torn apart. They wanted her help patching it before it could fail.”

  That stopped him in his tracks. He had been unexpectedly delayed on his way here by a lost Fae child that had wandered into an area he was not supposed to. It had taken Arandur the better part of the day to find him, negotiate his release, and take him back to two very distraught parents. By that point, he’d tried calling Sevana several times, but the Caller would never connect. He’d thought she’d accidentally broken her last one and so came this morning to talk to her in person.

  “You’ve had no word from her since she left?”

  “No,” the mountain responded, rocks shifting in an open fidget. “But Master spoke to Milly, asking her to look for Sevana. She’s had no luck so far.”

  Master had Milly searching for her? That didn’t sound good at all. Aran did an about face and went for the reading room and the standing mirror that Sevana kept there. Leaning against the frame, he called, “Milly?”

  It took several moments before the middle-aged spirit appeared in the mirror. She clasped a hand to her heart in open relief. “Arandur, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been trying to find you. Sevana has gone missing.”

  His heart twisted and dropped. “How? When?”

  “I’m not sure exactly when, but she was able to contact Master Tashjian briefly this morning. He expressly had me search for you, as he wants you to help him track her down. He said to relay her message to you: she’s been kidnapped by three deities to help them with an active volcano. She doesn’t have a lot of time. I’m afraid that’s all we know; the call ended before she could tell him where she was.”

  If she was well enough, and in control enough, to be able to make even that brief call, then she couldn’t be in serious danger. Or so he hoped. Arandur managed a smile, or perhaps a grimace, for the woman. “My thanks, Milly. Was she taken from Stillwater Dam?”

  “I believe so, yes. Master said she looked like she’d been yanked out of bed.”

  That gave him a place to start. “Are you still in contact with him? Good, then tell him you’ve reached me. Tell him too that I’ll go immediately to Stillwater Dam and see if I can pick up her trail there. His Caller is working?”

  “I believe so. I can double check with him.”

  “Do that. It’s vital we stay in communication while we search for her.”

  “You’ll tell me when you find her, too?”

  “Of course,” he assured her gently. It might have seemed strange from the outside, but Milly and Sevana had grown to be rather good friends over the past three months. “I’m off—try to catch Tashjian before he leaves.”

  She gave him a firm, determined nod, then whisked away in an instant like only a spirit could.

  Arandur sprinted out of the mountain as well, calling to Big as he moved, “I’ll pass along news through Milly when I find her!”

  “Baby and Grydon should go with you,” Big encouraged.

  Shaking his head, Arandur leapt into his chellomi’s saddle. “They won’t be able to keep up. Guard the place, Big.” With that, he set his heels and headed his chellomi toward the north. A chellomi was the wind itself when he moved at full speed. They did not tire, either, not like a normal horse would. If this was a normal trip, Arandur would take two days to get to Stillwater.

  But this wasn’t a normal trip, and he wasn’t stopping until he had arrived.

  As he rode, his mind turned in a whirl of confusion. Deities? Volcanoes? There was more than one place that could fit those two qualifications. Nanashi Isle, Kitra Isle, Lansky Isle, and Kesly Isles all had volcanoes, but he believed that Lansky didn’t have any that were active. Still, he was hardly up to date on those areas of the world. If it involved the sea, Arandur didn’t have much to do with it, and his information from there was sometimes years out of date. All of those locations had a variety of minor deities or mythical races posing as deities, so he wasn’t sure which one was responsible for Sevana’s disappearance. Worse, the isles were scattered in all four directions of Mander. It hardly gave him an idea of where to start.

  When a chellomi moved at this pace, it was raucously loud, like rolling thunder. Arandur had a hard time thinking, never mind hearing something else as he rode. The noise became deafening after a few hours and it numbed his head to the point that he wanted to shut out all sound completely.

  Not until he was within sight of the dam early the next morning did the question dawn on him: had she even had a chance to fix the dam before being kidnapped? One good look at the place in the dawn light sufficed in answer. Yes, she had. Or at least, it was patched enough that the dam had not failed. This was a relief by itself. Trying to track her through a flooded disaster would make things much worse.

  Hopping free, he took three seconds to st
retch out his legs, then he loosened the girth on his saddle and let his poor chellomi breathe better. “Apologies, Winnaur. I have ridden you hard this night.”

  The chellomi arched his head and gave him a soft wuff of understanding. “She is precious to you. I will help you find her.”

  “You are a good friend.” Patting him on the neck, he asked, “Grain or grass?”

  “Grain. But drop it here, I can fend for myself. You are nearly vibrating in place, you are so impatient.”

  He was at that, but he wasn’t going to make his friend suffer when it would take two minutes to feed him breakfast. So he forced himself to slow down, be patient, to take a sack of grain from his saddlebags and open it up so Winnaur could eat. The saddle he left in place, as he wasn’t sure if they would need to take off again immediately or not.

  With Winnaur settled, only then did he turn for the town built around the top of the hill, near the dam, and stop the first person he saw. “Pardon, Master, but I’m looking for Artifactor Sevana Warren.”

  “We’ve been looking for her ourselves,” the man responded, shifting the bag of carded wool on his shoulder. “Here, come with me, I’ll take you the work shed. Everyone’s gathered there, they can tell you more about her.”

  “My thanks, Master.” He got many a curious glance as they went down the street and wound up to the top of the hill. Arandur was used to such. At first glance, he didn’t look all that different from a human being. Then someone would take note of his pointed ears, and see that his clothes were not made by human hands, and then they would start wondering. Only the truly knowledgeable were able to recognize him as Fae, though. The rest just wondered and cast about odd theories.

  The door to the work shed stood wide open, no doubt to accommodate the summer heat, and there were three people that stood inside, clustered around a table. His guide knocked on the door frame. “I’ve got a man here looking for the Artifactor.”

  The three stopped and looked up. Two men and a woman, they all had pencils in their hands or tucked behind an ear, and exhaustion tugged at them, suggesting they had not been resting well for days now. Then again, a dam threatening to break was not conducive to sleep.

  “Thank you, Grahms,” the oldest man said and stepped forward. “I’m Booker, head engineer of the dam. You are?”

  “My name is Arandur.”

  A light went off in the man’s eyes. “Aran. You’re Aran.”

  Hearing him addressed so brought a smile to his face. “Yes. Sevana is my friend. I’m looking for her.”

  “We all are, sir. She disappeared sometime in the night. We thought she’d be back, as her flying device is still here, but we’ve not seen hide nor hair of her yet.”

  “Nor will you,” Aran denied with a grim shake of the head. “We received word from her, briefly, that she had been kidnapped.”

  All three swore, in surprise and dismay. The woman stepped around Booker, a hand extended that didn’t quite touch his arm. “She’s alright? She wasn’t able to tell you where she is?”

  “No, something happened to disconnect her call a short way in. We know that she’s near a volcano that is on the verge of exploding, that it was the deities of that region that took her, but nothing else. I hope to pick up her trail here, see if I can’t follow it.”

  “Come with me,” she urged. “I’ll show you to the house she slept in. That should be a good starting place for you.”

  “My thanks, Mistress.” He took no thought for the others as he followed her. Fortunately, she was a quick walker and he didn’t have to shorten his stride in order to stay with her.

  The house was empty, the occupants undoubtedly out on their own business, but his guide pushed through the main door and to the back as comfortably as if this was her own home. Perhaps they were relatives of hers? Arandur didn’t ask, as it wasn’t important, instead trying to pick up some clue from the air itself.

  She stepped into what was apparently a guest bedroom, then stayed just inside the doorway, giving him room to enter. Arandur took it in from top to bottom, trying to notice every detail. A single bed shoved into a corner, with a chair next to it that had Sevana’s clothes draped across it. The bed was unmade, obviously slept in, but there was nothing else of Sevana’s within sight. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a wardrobe that had not been used. He didn’t sense anything of her on the right side of the room. She’d spent all of her time on the left, where the bed was.

  Squatting down onto his haunches, he stared hard at the area around the bed. “She slept here. There was something of hers that rested near the foot of the bed. It had a spell on it that activated.”

  “She had a bag with her, when I showed her here the other night,” the woman offered.

  Arandur looked over his shoulder to regard her. “Dark brown, bulky and square in shape, with only one strap?”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “Ahh. Mystery solved, then. It was her traveling pack. She has an anti-theft charm on it, so that it can’t get far from her without returning. It must have activated and gone with her when she was taken.” This relieved him, as that meant she had at least some tools and things on hand. He moved onto the next spot that was near where the pack had been. That area was most definitely not Sevana’s magic.

  After being with her so many months, Arandur had learned how to read Sevana’s magic. It wasn’t just hers, it was tangled up with whatever elements she used to create the spell, but there was always a part of her mixed in. It glowed red to his eyes, a color entirely different from everything else he’d seen in the world. But this magic was different in color, purely one thing, and not a mix of things.

  It wasn’t like human magic, or Fae, or anything else he’d really seen. It was a green jade in color, strong even in its afterimage, with a peculiar scent to it that he could not put a name to. “Something else sat next to the bag. Something that was taken separately from Sevana herself and brought along.”

  “Perhaps her boots?” the woman offered tentatively.

  Feeling like an idiot, Arandur huffed out a snort. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? So they took her, the pack automatically came with her, but then for whatever reason they reached out again to take her boots.” Knowing Sevana, she had demanded her boots before doing anything. “The magic here for the boots is more recent than the magic on the bed. She was taken first.”

  Standing, he fetched the clothes from the chair, draping them over an arm. “I’ll return these to her. Where is Jumping Clouds?” When he got a blank look in response, he clarified, “Her flying device.”

  “Oh, that! Come this way.” As she led him back out of the house, she said, “Sevana mentioned you a few times to us. Mostly how she wished you were here to help her fix the dam, as your magic would be suited to this sort of thing.”

  That brought a pang to his heart. How dearly he wished that he had been here. Maybe she wouldn’t have been kidnapped if he had been. “Is that how you know of me?”

  “Yes.” She gave him a quick smile, there and gone again in a flash. “She said once that you are a Tracker?”

  “I am.” Arandur had never blessed his calling before as he did now.

  “Then you can find her.” The woman was not questioning his ability. It was a statement of fact to her mind. “When you do, tell her the solution she thought up worked. The dam’s fine. We’ll be able to fix the rest of it and she’s not to worry about it.”

  This absolute faith in his abilities from a total stranger was somewhat flattering. “I will tell her.”

  They came around the bend in the road and there sat Jumping Clouds, still damp from the recent storms, but undamaged. It was a slimmer version of Bouncing on Clouds, her other device. That one was meant to hold a cargo of things or many passengers. Jumping Clouds was like its child, about the size of a large wagon. It could hold two passengers and a horse at a squeeze, but little more. Sevana used it when she felt like she would be traveling through weather and she only
needed to transport herself. As Arandur stepped on board, he found another trace of that alien magic, in exactly one spot near the front dashboard. Something had been here, something that Sevana had needed, and her kidnappers had fetched it for her.

  It was the most recent trail he had, and from it, he could see a faint glow in the air. It gave him a direction and he seized upon it. “Mistress…forgive me, I never got your name.”

  “Kira.”

  “Mistress Kira. I need to take this device. If anyone comes asking, inform them I have it. Did Sevana leave anything else behind?”

  “Some of her climbing equipment. She had us use it to make repairs to the dam.”

  “Gather all of that up and bring it here. I will take it all with me.”

  Giving him a serious nod, she spun on her heels and took off at a fast jog. Arandur also started running at a much faster pace, going to where he had left Winnaur. The chellomi paused in eating and looked up, ears flickering back and forth.

  “You found her?”

  Arandur shook his head. “No, but I have a trail. It goes through the air. I won’t be able to track it on the ground. Fortunately Sevana’s flying device is still here. I’ll use that to go to her.”

  Winnaur gave him a look of undisguised horror. “I’m not getting on that thing.”

  “It might be best you don’t go with me,” Arandur admitted. “I’m heading toward an island, I think. Due north. Can you return and report to Aranhil what I have learned? My Caller is becoming low on magic, I don’t want to drain it in case I need it later.”

  Pawing at the ground, Winnaur ducked his head in agreement. “I’ll go. Unsaddle me first.”

  Arandur promptly did so, removing all of the tack, although he left the bag of grain behind as he doubted Winnaur was finished with it yet. As he worked, he told his friend everything that Aranhil needed to know. Winnaur repeated it back to make sure he had it all straight.