The Human Familiar (Familiar and the Mage Book 1)

by Honor Raconteur

  “Explain.”

  I looked to Bannen who still resonated along our bond and took a moment to reassure him. I captured his wrist, sliding down until my fingers wove in with his. He relaxed as I did so, studying my expression and finding an answer there. The bond settled again, humming to itself.

  With him settled, I waved Trammel into a chair, as I had been on my feet all morning on a job, and wasn’t in the mood to stand for the next several hours that I’d likely be at this conversation. Bannen silently moved to sit next to me and I could tell from the tension in him that he didn’t like this man but didn’t have a reason to boot him out. Not yet.

  As Trammel settled into a chair opposite of me, I gave him a general breakdown of how my magic worked, similar to the one that I had given Bannen nearly a month ago.

  Trammel listened, pulled out a book from a different pocket, made a few notations and then demanded, “In more depth, girl, I’m not a novice. What are you doing exactly with those incantations?”

  Right, this man was an expert. I blew out a breath and tried again. “Specifically, I can see the design of everything. I call it a schematic. I can see exactly how it’s physically structured, including the elements involved, the weight and measurement and inherent energy of each piece, and how it ties together to form the whole. What I am doing is instructing my magic which parts of that structure I want to disappear. If I want to disintegrate more than one piece, then of course I have to list every element I want gone. I have to list as well the weight of the element, the order in which it’s to go in, and then finish the spell with an execution phrase.”

  Bannen, proving that he was paying attention, asked, “Is that why the incantations are sometimes longer?”

  “That’s why,” I confirmed absently, eyes still on Trammel. Was that going to satisfy him?

  Trammel wrote notes out at wicked speed, paused, then pondered it with a low hum. “What about constructive, normal magic?”

  “Difficult for me. Insanely so. My eyes can see what to do, I understand the concepts intellectually, but my magic isn’t inclined to do it. If it’s simple, like a summoning spell or a communication spell, I can manage it, but it takes a great deal of preparation on my part.”

  “Strange,” Trammel proclaimed although he sounded more intrigued than anything. “Show me the differences.”

  Was I a dog and pony show? Seriously. Tired, not willing to fight about it, I gestured him to follow me into Master’s workroom. It was the closest safe place to work my magic without accidentally being knocked into by one of the guildmembers. They understood that my magic was dangerous but they had never quite gotten that they couldn’t distract me.

  Perhaps he understood the change in location, as Trammel followed me readily enough toward the back room. Master was, thankfully, inside. I hadn’t been sure if he was in or not. Shunith took note of the new man and gave him a sniff and then her nose wrinkled a little. She didn’t growl, though, so I had to assume he wasn’t a bad man or a threat. She would have told us if he was.

  Master took one look at the man and then to me, silently asking who this was.

  “Magus Mark Trammel,” I introduced. “My master, Jon Tarkington.”

  Nearly falling over his own feet, Master hustled around the table with an arm outstretched. “Magus Trammel, I wasn’t expecting you quite this early—”

  Trammel took the hand and clasped it but was quick to let go. “I wasn’t sure how soon I’d arrive. I want to study your apprentice.”

  “She’s actually a mage in her own right, now,” Tarkington informed him with a proud smile at me. “She and Bannen passed the last Test two days ago.”

  Briefly sidetracked by this, Trammel turned to stare at us. “What was your practical exam?”

  “Combat,” Bannen supplied briefly.

  “Ahhh. How’d you win? Who was your Tester?”

  “Magus Taggart,” I answered steadily, “and I won by destroying his grimoire.”

  He stared at me with such a blank expression that I couldn’t read him at all. Did he not believe me? Turning, he grabbed a wooden block that was lying on the table, threw a very strong protective shield over it, then slapped it down in front of me. “Destroy this.”

  What was he after? Did he want to prove that I could work through barriers? Sighing, I focused on the block and was rather grateful it was something simple, only comprised of two elements, as that made the incantation simpler and faster. It poofed out into nothing, as I intended, and without the anchor of the wood in place, his barrier spell collapsed as well.

  Trammel jumped, squeaking on a wordless exclamation. Finally! A normal reaction from the man. “Do that again,” he demanded hoarsely, only to fling up two hands in a staying motion. “No, no, wait, let me get recording spells up first, I have to record this and examine exactly what you’re doing.”

  As he worked, Bannen leaned into my side and whispered against my ear, “He seems excited?”

  He did, strangely so. “I’m something he hasn’t seen before, I guess he would be.”

  I wanted to burrow into Bannen’s side because something about Trammel threw me off my stride and I didn’t care for the feeling. Contact with Bannen always made me feel better, but I just didn’t feel comfortable enough initiating the type of contact that I wanted in front of Trammel. Hand holding was one thing, demanding a bear hug another.

  Trammel ruthlessly shoved Master’s half-completed projects aside, giving himself enough room to set up two journals for recording and another glass mirror to do a live recording of events. With those in place, he grabbed for another random object on the table, which Master quickly rescued before it could be destroyed as well. He offered another block of wood as a replacement, which Trammel snatched and threw a different, stronger barrier spell on before setting it once again in front of me. “Again.”

  I patiently did it again, with the same results. Trammel slammed a hand against the table, eyes wide in his face. “I don’t believe what I’m seeing. There’s a rumor, almost a legend, about a woman from Turransky that could work magic like this. I stumbled across it in my travels, and when I heard the description of what you did, that was the first thing that came to mind. I didn’t actually believe it, though. I thought it too farfetched.”

  “This is the first I heard of someone else that had magic like Rena’s,” Master ventured uncertainly.

  “The story was recorded in a history book that’s nearly a hundred years old,” Trammel said absently, bending over his journals. “You know how spotty our interaction with Turransky is, I wasn’t sure how accurate the history was.”

  Indeed, Turransky and Corcoran hadn’t been on good terms in generations. Being a lazy student in history, I remember being told why, but I hadn’t retained it. This was interesting, however, that he had actually heard of someone else with magic like mine. I wasn’t the first? I didn’t quite know how to feel about that.

  “Now,” Trammel instructed, “do a creation spell.”

  Since a communicating spell is the easiest for me—all it took was listing the person you wished to speak to and the approximate location—I went with that and connected with Master. “Will this do?”

  “Maintain it for one minute,” Trammel instructed, eyes rapidly scanning the data that recorded on the blank pages. “Yes, yes, I do see, it puts quite the strain on your core. You’re nearly shaking trying to maintain this. How interesting, it’s so completely different from every other mage’s ability, a polar opposite of it in fact. Girl, how do you even function?”

  “Quite well, thank you,” Bannen snapped back tartly, bond prickling.

  Far from taking offense, Trammel laughed. “Touchy, aren’t you? But a good familiar would be insulted by that. Wasn’t trying to start a fight, young man, smooth your feathers back down.”

  Bannen was of a mind to take the man by the collar and throw him back outside. Even without the bond reacting, I would know, as I could see it written all over his face. I liked the mental
picture of him doing so and had to be careful to hide a smile because with the mood these men were in, it would surely be taken the wrong way. “Is that enough, sir?”

  “Yes, yes, you can release it.” He stayed staring at his journals another moment. “This isn’t going to take a day like I assumed. Tarkington, are there rooms available here?”

  “Ah, yes, we do have a few guest—”

  “Find me one, I’m staying until I have this figured out.” Trammel jabbed a finger at both of us. “Don’t go on any jobs without me for the next few days. I’m not going anywhere until I have this mystery solved.”

  I settled in front of a mirror linked to my parents’ house, preparing for my once a month call with family. As it strained me to communicate this way for more than five minutes, my mother always called me instead, at a set time on the last day of the month. I sat comfortably, a tall glass of water nearby, as I knew this was going to take a while. A lot had happened in a month.

  The mirror lit up like it always did, both of my parents on the other side smiling at me. “Hi, honey,” Mom greeted. “You look so much better than you did last month. Are you feeling alright?”

  “I’m doing amazingly better,” I informed her happily. “I have no idea what’s going on, honestly, but my hair has stopped falling out and it’s starting to grow back at the temples. I have energy again, it’s amazing, and I’ve only had to use my medication once in almost three weeks.”

  “That is amazing,” Papa said with a broad smile. “Maybe your body has finally figured out how to kick this illness of yours to the curb.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed, as I certainly didn’t have any other explanation for it. “You won’t believe all that’s happened in the past month, though. Good news first—” I pulled my official mage seal from my pocket and displayed it proudly.

  My mother actually squealed with delight and Papa clapped, laughing. “Good for you!” he congratulated.

  “Honey, that’s amazing, and you did it on the first try? That’s my girl! Your grandmother was right, Tarkington was indeed a good choice for a master. I’m so relieved, honestly.” She peered around me anxiously, excited. “But where’s your familiar? I want to see him. Her?”

  “Him.” I put the seal down and grinned, as this, this was going to be good. Gold, in fact. “About that. I summoned something very remarkable.”

  Papa drawled, a knowing look on his face, “Should I be holding onto my chair?”

  “Yes.” Perhaps I should have had Master put a recording spell up first. Ah well. “I summoned a boy.”

  They gave me a blank look. “Boy what?” Mama asked, puzzled.

  “Human. A human boy.”

  I think for a moment they didn’t understand me, the concept too radical for their minds to accept. Then they thought I was pulling their leg and waited for the punchline. Then Papa realized I wasn’t doing either and demanded, “You summoned another human?!”

  “Yup,” I confirmed gleefully.

  Mama’s head shook back and forth, not in denial, but in confusion. “No, wait, how can the spell actually summon a person?”

  Since she was a mage herself, I could talk mechanics with her. “You know it can’t, and we actually modified it at one point to include a non-human clause in the third song, but it didn’t do a lick of good.” Seeing that they weren’t truly following me, I backed up and told the story from the very beginning, ending with, “And now the Council has a headache because of the two of us, but they can’t deny that he’s truly my familiar, so they’re more or less leaving us be.”

  Papa stared right at me, an expression of growing consternation on his face. “You’re telling me that my barely adult daughter has a man that is living in her pocket?”

  I probably shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help tweaking his nose. “He’s handsome, too.”

  “Is he?” Mama asked, interested despite her headache over the whole situation. “Can we meet him?”

  “Of course. He’s probably downstairs in the kitchen, let me fetch him.”

  “Wait,” Mama demanded enviously, “he cooks?”

  “He’s good at it, too,” I responded with a grin. “Hold on.” Popping up to my feet, I opened the door and called out, “Bannen!”

  From downstairs, his head popped around the kitchen doorway. “Now?”

  “Yup.”

  “Give me a second.”

  Satisfied, I returned to my seat. “He’s coming.”

  My parents really didn’t know what to make of this, I could tell. Mama was the only one that seemed to be mentally flexible to take this more or less in stride and ask questions. “You said he was from Z’gher, but his name is Bannen?”

  “Well, actually, his name is Hach Xian Liang but he knows that his name is difficult for most people to pronounce,” I explained, for some reason feeling like I was bragging about him. I might’ve been, as the bond rang happier right now than usual. “So years ago he picked up another name, more friendly for the western tongue, and that’s what he likes to go by.”

  “How do his parents feel about this?” Papa asked, not sure whether to be worried about this or not. “Does he have family?”

  “He does, larger than ours, actually. His parents are a little unhappy about this as they wanted him to basically stay at home. Bannen, on the other hand, is ecstatic as all he wanted to do was see more of the world. So we’ve set it up that he’ll talk to his parents on a regular basis, like I do with you, and we’ll portal up there once a year for a long vacation. It was the best compromise that we could reach.”

  “I do feel for them,” Mama commented, mouth tight. “It’s hard enough being this far from you, and I can actually visit you without too much trouble. They’d be hard pressed to manage it without a portal, and a portal over that kind of distance would be quite costly.”

  Indeed it would be.

  Bannen came in, settling a plate of something he called dango near my elbow. I’d tried it once, loved it, and was quite happy to see he’d made extra for me. Hands braced on the back of my chair, he draped himself semi-over my shoulder, hand curling over the top of my arm, so that he would fit in the mirror’s frame. The bond hummed happily. “Hello,” he greeted my parents pleasantly.

  “Hello,” Mama returned, lighting up. I knew why—Mama had a weakness for handsome men. “I’m so pleased to meet you. I’m Alice Rocci. This is my husband, Ricardo.”

  “Bannen Hach,” he returned, ducking his head into a semi-bow. “I am in your care.”

  “Pull up a chair,” Papa invited, that strange look still on his face. “I think we have a great deal to talk about.”

  For three days, Trammel shadowed us like a creepy, talkative stalker. I turned beyond twitchy and the bond, if it could talk, wanted to eliminate Trammel with extreme prejudice. But then, the bond didn’t like unknowns around Rena and tended to gravitate toward overprotective. It meant I oscillated between idle daydreams of dumping him into the sea and being a little too clingy with Rena.

  Trammel, thankfully, didn’t do anything remotely threatening. Because of that, I put up with him for Rena’s sake. She looked just as uncomfortable about the situation as I felt, but the difference was she had no choice because of his position with the Council. As a brand new mage she could hardly look at the man and say shoo.

  He took readings, poked and prodded at us, and muttered to himself in magical lingo that went straight over my head. It got to the point by the second day that I found my hands idly creating garrotes and daydreaming about jumping him from behind.

  As we were on dish duty, Rena and I scrubbed away at the dishes and tried to ignore the strange little man that had been breathing down our necks. He thankfully abstained from the kitchen, likely bending over his numbers and charts and muttering to himself. I hoped that the bond would settle some with him out of the room, but strangely the anticipation of him showing up again at any second made the bond even more twisty.

  “Rena. I tell you, if I have to put up with that man
one more day—”

  “I know, I know,” she soothed. “I feel the same way. We’ll run for it in the dead of night if he’s still here tomorrow.”

  “That sounds positively charming. Is there a reason why we’re putting that off for tomorrow instead of going, I don’t know, tonight? Tonight sounds good.”

  Grinning, she passed me a wet plate to dry. “I think he’s almost done and we have a job lined up for tomorrow. I’d rather not miss that nice paycheck.”

  Alright, fair enough. “There is something bothering me, though. We haven’t seen a peep out of any assassins since he arrived.”

  “The man has an amazing reputation,” Rena mused. “Maybe they were too scared to cross him?”

  Possibly. “But then that means if he leaves, we’ll be back to dealing with them.”

  “Err…I don’t like that thought.”

  “It doesn’t exactly fill me with sunshine and joy either.” Not that I wouldn’t mind the workout—assassins got the blood pumping—but I didn’t like the idea of them ambushing Rena.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trammel enter the kitchen and for once he didn’t have anything in his hands. What was this? I turned to face him, letting the towel rest against the counter top. There was an expression on his face that spoke of smug satisfaction and triumph.

  “I have the answer,” he announced, practically bouncing in place.

  Answer? Were we expecting an answer from him about something? I’d just been waiting for him to go away.

  “An answer, Magus Trammel?” Rena asked politely because she was nicer than I was and didn’t say ‘good, then go away,’ like she was really thinking.

  “Yes, yes, an answer,” he snapped, apparently not liking our response to his announcement. “An answer as to why you called a human familiar.”

  My wandering attention snapped to him. What had he just said?!