“True enough.” Lori kept staring at Pilot thoughtfully and the dog turned to regard her look for look. I had a feeling speed drills would happen tomorrow, if that exchange was anything to go by.
“Maybe you should try the same thing,” Russ teased me. “I might hit you less often.”
Everything in Bannen went taut and he stared at Russ like a predator would a mouse. “You don’t say.”
Russ stared back at him, gulping nervously. “Ah, I don’t mean actually hit, hit, I meant my spells wouldn’t touch her and I should probably stop talking now, shouldn’t I?”
I put a hand on Bannen’s shoulder, a little tentatively, as I had no idea why he was reacting so strongly to Russ. “Bannen?”
He drew in a somewhat shaky breath and closed his eyes, leaning into my touch. “Give me a minute.”
I exchanged glances with everyone else but no one seemed to realize what was going on. “Bannen?” I prompted, really not understanding this reaction. Frankly, I felt a little unnerved by it.
“Feelings are a little confused. I’m confused. All the confusion, Rena, just give me a second.”
Emily seemed to understand what was going on first. “Familiar bond pitching a fit at the thought of her in danger?” she asked softly.
“Like you would not believe.” Hand coming up to cover mine, he took in a deep breath. Then another.
Some instinct had me sidling up closer to him, resting a hand at the base of his neck, massaging gently at the nape. He let out a longer breath, slumping a little. When his eyes opened again he had the oddest expression on his face that I’d ever seen. “Well. That was disturbing and enlightening. It’s alright, Russ, I’m less inclined to detach your hands from the rest of you now.”
Russ blanched. “What did I say?!”
“Sorry, no, it’s not you, it’s me,” Bannen responded tightly, the traces of whatever emotion roiled through him clearly not having left yet. “I realize that sounds like a bad breakup line, but totally true in this case. It really is me. Rena, could you shift over a little so I can see you? Yes, perfect, thank you. I swear, this familiar bond is ridiculous some days.”
Lori, always intent on understanding things better, avidly asked, “So the familiar bond encourages you to be protective?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, frowned, and tried again. “Yes and no. Not the way you mean it, or at least, I don’t think so. It’s more that it’s a cause and effect? If that makes sense?”
“Not at all,” Steph denied patiently.
“Right. Um.” He scratched at his nose, staring hard at me in an almost uncomfortable way. “Because I am bound to her, I feel a very strong connection, more intense than you would feel with your own family. It’s not connected to emotions, per se, it’s more a matter of stability. I like being connected to her. It grounds me. Because I like that stability, I subconsciously want her best interests at heart, and want to stay next to her. Because I stay with her so much, I grow very attached to her very quickly. Because I’m so invested in her, my protective instincts are very strong. You see?”
Now that he had laid it out so concisely, it seemed perfectly obvious. “Yes, I do see,” I responded, one hand still holding his. “But is it really that strong? So strong that you will react like that just because of a comment of Russ’s?”
“Keep in mind that I’m naturally overprotective to begin with,” he reminded me. “That’s part of the reason why your magic likes me, I’m sure. So if you put another layer of protective instinct on top of what’s already there? I’m going to overreact sometimes. Besides, this shouldn’t surprise you.”
The way he said this made me feel like it should be obvious what he meant but I had no clue. With a slight shake of the head, I queried, “Wait, what? Why?”
“The bond is strong enough that you’re acting out of the norm as well, hadn’t you realized? You’re naturally shy,” Bannen explained in an overly patient tone, “and yet you have no problem cuddling in public with this fine specimen of manhood that is me. Ever think of that?”
I was pretty sure that I flushed to my root hairs when he said that but I couldn’t deny it either. I was much more hands on with him than I was with anyone else, including people that I’d known for years.
“You really hadn’t,” he said in open delight. “I’m not sure if that should be funny or insulting. I’ll go with funny. You really touch me this much without thinking about it?”
I found it impossible to look at him as my blush went physically painful.
“She’s so adorable,” Bannen observed to everyone in general, stroking a hand over my head.
Steph snorted. “You mean she’s fun to tease.”
“Of course, that’s why she’s adorable.” Chuckling, he eased down, giving me enough space that I felt I might be able to stop blushing. Maybe next year. “So that’s that. Is everyone tired? No? We can go another round, I think, before Rena and I have to be back. Russ, for safety’s sake, you better pair up with us for the rest of the afternoon.”
I wondered at the idea of continuing the practice with Bannen’s emotions in a snarl but then I realized that was precisely why Bannen wanted to continue. He didn’t like that his instincts fought with his rational mind like this, and he wanted to make sure that he had control over himself in a fight, and what better way than to train now? Get used to it? I understood his reasoning but I also well understood Russ’s panic.
Russ stared at him, eyes a trifle too wide. “I thought you were over the urge to dismember me.”
“I am,” Bannen confirmed cheerfully but the smile never quite reached his eyes. “At the moment. Let’s not tempt fate, shall we? I have unfortunate reflexes that slice people up first and send flowers later.”
“Right,” Russ agreed faintly. “Maybe we should call it quits today?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bannen scolded, already up on his feet, a hand extended to me. “I haven’t accidentally killed anyone in, well, years. You’ll be fine.”
Russ turned to me, a little frantic, looking for reassurance.
He’s joking, I mouthed to him. Or at least, I hoped he was joking.
Tarkington and Vonda had somehow magically proved Derek was indeed the culprit. That did not mean he was forced to apologize or even, as far as I could tell, be severely punished for nearly burning us all to death. Rena shrugged it off, as if this was normal and nothing to be done about it, which made me frown. Derek might have the mindset of a bully, but with magic literally at his fingertips, that made him far more dangerous. I didn’t like that Rena had to deal with him and that no one seemed concerned about her safety. She became so focused on doing an incantation that she literally shut out most of the world around her. She was blind to her surroundings. What if I hadn’t been there? What would have happened?
I awoke the next morning a little antsy from having not slept well. As I came down the stairs, I spotted Rena bent over the table, studying a large piece of paper with a very complicated looking spell drawn out on top of it. She absently nibbled on the edge of a pen while her fingers tapped an uneven rhythm against her thigh. Literally on top of her feet lay a very large wolf hybrid of some sort. She looked a little like a dog, because of the black and tan coloring, but the head, body size, and keen golden eyes that were staring at me all shouted wolf.
The first year I started working independently, I’d come across a pack of wild wolves. They were huge, literally belly high on me, and some of the fiercest fighters I’d ever come across. I assumed that this one was someone’s familiar, as wolves didn’t voluntarily live inside of a city like this. Still, I was a little cautious as I approached. And wishing I had meat. Wolves and dogs both liked people that fed them.
The wolf regarded me steadily, head raised but not shifting her position off Rena. I sank down onto my haunches, careful to keep my shoulders back, and very careful to not stare her directly in the eyes. I did not want to challenge her.
“Shunith,” Rena introduced with a half
-smile, “This is Bannen. He’s the one I summoned.”
Shunith cocked an ear back, indicating she was listening, but she wasn’t budging.
“She’s Master’s familiar,” Rena explained. “She’s been running an errand for him, hence why you didn’t meet her earlier. She’s a little overprotective of me, as you can see.”
A little? Try a lot. “Shunith. I am Bannen Hach. We meet as friends.” I hoped.
Finally, she stood, although she didn’t move from her position at Rena’s feet. Her neck stretched out and I could see her nose twitching. Growing up with dogs, I had a notion of what she was doing, so I exhaled with my mouth open.
Shunith sniffed hard at that exhaled air and only then relaxed.
Rena watched this play out with great interest. “Why did you do that? I mean, it obviously worked, as she’s relaxed now, but what made you do that?”
“Grew up with dogs,” I explained, daring to sit at the table next to Rena. “They base a lot of what they know about people on scent. Their noses can tell if a person’s sick, healthy, what they’re emotionally thinking, and probably a few other things we humans can’t begin to understand. I learned early on, you let them smell your breath, they have a world of information to work with and they feel more secure with you afterwards. They know you better.”
“I’d think you were pulling my leg, but I’ve seen Shunith decide at first sniff if someone is trustworthy or not. Funny thing is, she’s always right.” Rena gave her a good scratch around the ear and under the chin, which the wolf loved, judging by that thumping tail. “She’s been my temporary familiar a few times, when I was out alone and Master felt I needed the help. She’s a good helper.”
“I bet she is.” And I bet Derek didn’t mess with Rena when the wolf was with her either. Tapping a finger to the diagram on the table, I asked, “Studying the summoning spell?”
“No, I did that until my eyes crossed.” Rena made a face in remembrance. “I’ve given up on that. This is something else entirely. Technically there’s two parts to becoming a mage, but in reality, it’s three parts with some pre-qualifications. This is one of the parts.”
I’d known there were Tests, formalized and overseen by the Magic Council, but nothing more than that. “Like what?”
“Summoning a familiar is one the first tests,” she answered, more than a little rueful. “Which technically I completed, but, well…I’ll probably have to do that again.”
She said it with a sad resignation and I wanted to object—really, strongly object—and the bond writhed as if pitching a fit, but we both knew that was the likely outcome. So I bit that emotional response back. “Likely. What else?”
“There’s a certain amount of…” her hands rose, searching for a word, “experience? Accumulated experience that we have to have. A resume of work, if you will, that we have to show. Group projects, regular work, and things like this,” she tapped the diagram with a fingertip, “where we mentor the younger apprentices and help them. I mentioned before I can do spell design? You saw me work with one of Emily’s spells. Well, I do it for more than friends. A lot of apprentices will draw up a spell they’ve created and hand it to me for feedback.”
“What else?”
“The other test is a two-parter. I have a written exam that tests my knowledge of spellwork in general, then a practical test. The practical test can take different forms, but generally you build something, solve a problem, or fight another mage.”
I knew which one I’d prefer. “Becoming a mage is more complex than I thought.”
“Tell me about it.” Sighing, Rena turned back to the diagram and started making notations along the edges. “I’m almost done with this. I have another job lined up for tomorrow, not today, but it’s my turn to buy groceries for the guild.”
“I’ll help with the shopping.”
She paused mid-word and gave me a look that I couldn’t quite decipher. “You’re going to regret saying that.”
In front of my eyes, Rena turned into a shrewish, coin-pinching house wife.
“These are on the verge of spoiling, look how soft they are; you have to sell them today or toss them out, and you’re trying to charge me full price?” Rena shook a piece under the merchant’s nose. “You know good and well I’ll take a full bag from you, why are we even arguing about this?”
The merchant had a gleam in his eye and I knew that he enjoyed this debate with Rena. “Now, Miss Renata, they aren’t on the verge of spoiling, they’re just ripe. I can keep them another two days before worrying about spoiling.”
“I count three bad spots on the peaches just from this top row, you want to try that line on me again?”
I looked down at Shunith and asked softly, “Is she always like this?”
Shunith just sighed.
Apparently so. When Venn had given Rena the money for tonight’s groceries, he’d told her teasingly that he only had fifteen noks to work with but people wanted fruit and shrimp. Rena apparently took that as some sort of challenge, as she had already bargained two merchants down to the point they almost begged her to go away. Granted, she had a crate of chilled shrimp (that I carried), a bag of mangos, and a large sack of coconuts for four noks, which I would have sworn earlier was impossible. If I was doing the conversion right in my head, a nok was about the same as a ceban in my country, so she was literally getting the price down to almost half the market value.
It might take her twice as long to shop for dinner as everyone else in the world, but she only spent half of what they did, so it worked out.
Her shopping like this surprised me. I couldn’t imagine that she normally went by herself, not considering the stamina that shopping for fifty plus people required. Granted, she was very good at it, but surely someone went with her to do the physical carrying.
Especially since she seemed to wear some sort of target on her back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw once again a flicker of light that screamed magic, aimed directly at the back of her head. I had been on the receiving end of magical attacks often enough to know that the truly dangerous spells are noisy and obvious. These were tightly controlled, small—so it likely meant mischief more than actual harm. I deflected it with a sheathed sword anyway, pulling it free swiftly from my belt, and glared at the young mage—likely still a junior apprentice mage—that had tried it. He looked shamefaced and nervous, darting between two carts and disappearing in the crowd before I could follow.
I’d had a bad feeling about the first attack, but after the second, I realized that Rena had somehow been pulled into a malicious prank war. What was wrong with these sarding fopdoodles? Rena didn’t already have enough strain in her life, they needed to pile on more for her to worry about?
Part of me itched to track them down and give them a good beating for attacking a girl from behind, but I didn’t dare take off in pursuit right this minute. This could be a ploy to draw me away from her and leave her unprotected. I’d seen someone pull these tactics before. So instead I stayed, vigilant and fuming, at her side.
The merchant gave up the fight after another twenty minutes and gave her two bags of peaches for a nok. He didn’t seem put out about it, which made me wonder about the markup in the city. How much of a profit margin were they getting? As we walked to our next store, I mentioned, “I’m surprised to see so many foreign fruits and vegetables here. They even have bamboo shoots.”
“Some of the lower circle mages make their living traveling on merchant trains and ships,” Rena explained as she ducked in and around people. “They keep the cargo holds cold so that the produce is preserved. I understand it pays well enough but they tend to like it because that way they see a lot of the world for free.”
That would be a perk. “And because Corcoran is so magic-based, most of that fresh produce ends up here?”
“I’m not sure about ‘most’ but certainly a good portion of it does.” Pausing, she stared at me hard. “How many attacks did you deflect?”
“Three,”
I responded levelly, not surprised she’d noticed something. “Is shopping normally this dangerous?”
“Rarely.” Mouth scrunching up, a tired slump set to her shoulders. “Normally it’s a certain culprit that is behind it all.”
We both knew who she meant. “He just got reprimanded for messing with you and he’s already back at it?”
“What can I say? There’s no cure for idiocy.”
“Apparently not.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to reassure her that she wasn’t alone and she didn’t need to worry about Derek or his thrice-begotten friends, but I was only here temporarily. She couldn’t depend on me long term.
Shaking her head, Rena turned her smile back on and nearly bounced to a stop in front of store that sported vegetables of various types. Rena certainly enjoyed bargaining. This time, though, the store owner seemed to be a friend so it was less haggling and more an exchange of pleasantries.
I let the crate of shrimp rest on the edge of a table to give my hands a break from the cold for a moment. Out of the corner of my eye I caught another person hovering just out of sight, head peering around the edge of a cart, poorly acting as if he were just munching on a snack and minding his own business. This was a shorter and younger version of the other shadow that had been tailing us the past several days. I don’t know what happened to our first watcher but his replacement was remarkably even worse at this.
It had to be the Council that kept sending these goons out. Unlike the other attackers, he had kept a respectable distance and just watched. Most of the time this would peeve me, but right now I felt a little grateful for it. I’d at least have a witness when it came time to punish the idiots plaguing us today.
Dismissing him for now, I turned back to my mage. She didn’t seem to realize that we had any trouble hovering around us and I was glad for that. Rena acted livelier here than I’d ever seen her. When she worked her magic, she was so focused that it looked strange from the outside, as if she were in some other place than inside her own head. It disturbed me, the few times I’d seen it, as I wasn’t sure how to tell if something went wrong.
The Human Familiar (Familiar and the Mage Book 1) Page 11
