“I don’t really know anyone who will be there. Well, maybe Magnus and his wizards to a point, but Brenner plans to go to Windmeer again and I am not sure that I will see Vord and Ardost once we get there, since they’ll be teaching battle mage magic...”
Her voice trailed off as she realized that she was putting her own worries onto the other girl and getting off the point. “Anyway, get to know people and they will certainly love you like I do with a little time. Once you know who your friends are, then you can begin letting others know. Get settled first.
“But for now, we need to deal with Piotr.”
She waited and Cheleya stood up feeling better as the two girls had come up with a plan. They would figure out what Piotr knew whether he liked it or not, Katya decided. Until then, they had to continue the charade of why they had left. “Well, what do you want to do to your hair? It always looks perfect and you mentioned changing clothes.”
When Cheleya stepped out of her boots and dropped the short pants to the floor before rummaging in her pack for the skirt she had in mind, Katya wasn’t surprised. The dragoness had no body issues and didn’t seem to think anyone else did either.
Shrugging, she asked, “Do you want to put your hair up with one of those gold pins?”
Piotr had felt Cheleya’s eyes on him from time to time as the evening moved from dinner to dancing. Only one man on a guitar played and an older woman would sing. Compared to the previous evenings at the other inns, they were pretty bad; but those traveling tried to make the best of a bad situation.
To the boy’s surprise, Katya came to him this night and asked to dance. While he remained wary of the dragoness, who was already suspicious of the boy; the other pretty blonde had been nice to him and talked to him as she had from the first night. She would smile and Piotr couldn’t help smiling back. While he certainly liked Iris, who looked at his back with a small frown; Katya was certainly charming and pretty as well. Many boys, like his brother, would probably say that Katya was actually prettier; but many boys simply preferred girls that were shorter than them and became intimidated by a taller girl.
Iris was little taller than he was, but Niklaus was her same height. Since the twins were both likely to continue growing, even the inch she had on him now wouldn’t be an issue for long.
Catching himself in the thought as he danced with the petite girl before him, Piotr let down his defenses. While a man was supposed to lead according to Southwall dance etiquette, the boy was still new to it and found Katya driving him back towards the stairway when Cheleya suddenly touched the back of his shirt. In an instant, his arms were trapped in what felt like stone, but the cloth looked no different than before. He simply couldn’t move and felt Cheleya pull him back as Katya covered his mouth with one hand and took the other frozen arm as the two girls forced him up the stairs.
Katya had known that Piotr was unlikely to accept an invitation to her room by either girl. Even Iris was unlikely to have convinced him, though the younger girl had a feeling that he liked her more. It wasn’t a blow to her ego, but it seemed true enough when they spoke.
After unlocking the door and forcing him inside the room, the boy looked at the two girls crossing their arms before him and wondered what to say. His brother would have certainly come up with something suggesting the three were there for a reason different than what they planned. Niklaus probably wouldn’t have needed to be kidnapped either.
“Um, can I ask why you have brought me here? I don’t think the wizards would appreciate you taking a boy up to your room, do you?”
Katya’s eyes narrowed and she seemed to be concentrating as she demanded, “Ok, Piotr, tell us why you were trying to get into Cheleya’s mind with your magic. You are supposed to have nature magic, but that shouldn’t be something that you try on people.”
“I was just curious how the difference felt. It wasn’t supposed to work on Cheleya at all,” he confessed while holding onto the real truth of the matter.
Trying to summon her magic, despite Darius’ hold over her power; the girl stated, “I don’t believe you. Now confess!”
As if yelling should tap into her power, Katya was left to frown as it forsook her yet again. Other than the one try as Darius had loosened the seal on her magic, Katya hadn’t been able to tap into that power for her magic before or after. Piotr merely shook his head glad that the girl couldn’t break the wizard’s seal on her powers. He didn’t doubt that unleashed, he would have trouble saying no to Katya.
“It was just an experiment because I was bored. I can use birds or just look through their eyes, the same goes for dogs and rabbits. I’ve even helped settle cows or reached inside to make a calf switch positions in the womb to make it birth safely. Humans are different, but I just wasn’t sure how different.”
Looking at him closely, Katya glanced to Cheleya after noticing something.
“He’s lying,” she proclaimed sounding almost disbelieving that she knew that.
“How do you know?” Cheleya asked in confusion. While she had always had the feeling that the boy was withholding something from her, the dragoness couldn’t say without a doubt. Though the other girl sounded surprised to know that she knew, it wasn’t because she doubted that fact.
“His pupils changed. Even his breathing felt different from when he was trying to play off that he was trapped. When he said that he only tried his magic because it was an experiment, he was holding something back.” Groaning in exasperation, Katya complained, “If I could just have thought of a good reason to get Darius to loosen his seal on my magic, I could make him talk, I bet.”
Sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead and not just from trying to break free of the stone shirt. “This is a little tight,” the boy said trying to think of a way to escape the girls trap. “Do you think that you could loosen it up or just let me go?”
Going over what he had said, the younger girl tried to see if she could piece together what he was omitting or concealing with his answers. People could sound truthful, she thought, especially if they masked a lie in a half truth. “So you were able to tell a baby calf to turn around in the womb? How was that possible? Don’t you have to see what you control?”
“Most of the time, but I touched the mother and sent my magic through her to calm the baby. It was in breach, but my thoughts were able to touch it and make it turn,” Piotr confessed easily. This had nothing to do with what he knew about Cheleya, so he felt safe enough to speak truthfully.
“Aw,” Katya made a short sound as if she thought his actions were cute or maybe noble. He wasn’t a healer, but he could help. Well, at least he could help animals anyway. “So you’ve been helping around the farm with animals? How long have you been able to use that kind of magic?”
“I’m not positive, but I think late in the fall I began to really feel that I could do more than I should. A rabbit that kept trying to get into our garden was always bold enough to try even when someone was sitting there.
“When it looked my way, I found that I could look through its eyes and even make it turn around.”
Katya nodded with a slight smile on her lips as if she was charmed with his abilities or perhaps the girl was still thinking of how he had saved the calf and Cheese her mother. He hadn’t even told her the cow’s dumb name given by his little sister.
“You can see through its eyes and direct it. Can you hear too? I can imagine a rabbit’s ears are way more sensitive than ours,” she said looking as if she were lost in thought.
Nodding, he replied, “Yeah, wind hitting the grass or even the rabbit’s footfalls sound much louder than we would hear.”
“So when you’re traveling with the animal with your mind, you can make it go where you want so you could use it like a spy? I bet that kind of magic would be useful for the wizards. I know air wizards use their minds separated on the winds to search.
“My brother took me on the winds once. I loved it. Do you fly with the birds then?”
“Occasiona
lly,” he admitted freely and wondered what the girl could be thinking by asking such questions.
Thinking hard about the time Cheleya told her about being a dragoness, Katya’s memory told her several things and the girl began to piece something together.
“Can you use something as small as a sparfinch or would it have to be larger like a sparon or owl?”
Sweat began to bead on his forehead again. This line of questioning was getting remarkably close to the truth all of a sudden, the boy worried. “I suppose either could be used.”
“Have you ever tried to use a sparfinch? I would think that they would have remarkably small brains, though I guess a wizard’s brain isn’t literally inside of its head.”
“Once,” Piotr stated, but refused to say when.
Moving to pull Cheleya away enough to whisper in her ear, Cheleya whispered back in confusion shaking her head. Katya nodded as she said something again and the boy quickly wished that the noise from downstairs didn’t make it so hard to hear what the girls were saying.
Cheleya kicked off a pair of slipper like shoes. She had been talked into them by the younger girl. She always seemed to wear short leather boots, but Katya had thought she might enjoy trying the lighter foot wear while dancing.
“Did you notice the sparfinches resting above the porch at the Calamira Inn?” the girl asked as Cheleya slid her skirt off onto the ground. Her top was short enough that her silk bottoms were revealed while her blouse remained, but her arms crossed beneath her small breasts as if waiting to see what he would say.
“Um,” he tried to stall as the first drops of sweat began to get into his eyes. It would be hard to pretend that the little amount of dancing they had done could produce the moisture, though as he tried to force the shirt to move from time to time, maybe that would be just as likely an excuse. “Can you just remove the spell from my shirt, please? I am feeling really uncomfortable now.”
Katya moved to his side forcing his body to face the dragoness and nodded, “Did you know that Cheleya isn’t uncomfortable in her skin and do you know why?”
At the cue, Cheleya took off the blouse tossing it on the bed.
“Why are you blushing? I think that you have seen them, haven’t you?” Katya demanded angrily inferring the other girl’s petite breasts.
“Ok, Niklaus convinced me to use a sparfinch to fly up by the window. You weren’t supposed to be undressing when I did it, but they wanted to see if I could link them into a vision from a bird,” he confessed realizing that the younger girl had figured out at least part of what happened in Calamira.
Gasping in anger, Katya gave the boy a push and scolded him, “You took those boys in your vision too? Did they see everything and hear everything as well?”
“They couldn’t hear anything, but they saw,” the boy said with a wince. He had banged into the wall, but being forced to admit his little sin was probably worse than the pain, he thought.
Katya started to cover her chest as she thought back to that afternoon and sighed in relief saying, “Well, at least I kept my bra on, so you didn’t see everything!”
He nodded, but couldn’t help blushing even so.
Katya covered herself again and asked, “Did you do it again? Have you been looking at us in our room every day?”
He shook his head and said, “Only that first day, I’ve been telling the guys that I can’t find a bird to do it since then.”
Before they could establish anything else, the door opened. So caught in their interrogation were they that none of the three had heard the sound of a key turning in the lock or the jostling of the handle.
A startled gasp as Iris stood in the doorway in shock surprised them all.
Chapter 9- Under the Red Moon
Iris stood in shock looking at Cheleya naked save for her silk panties, while Piotr stood beyond the girl, but standing beside Katya luckily still fully dressed.
“What do you think you three are doing!?” the apprentice exclaimed unable to process what she was seeing.
Katya ordered quickly, “Close the door and get in here already!”
Responding immediately to the command without even thinking it through in her astonishment, the apprentice did as she was told. She couldn’t even recover as Katya asked Cheleya, “Do you think we should trust her?”
“Trust me with what?” Iris remained stunned and was just trying to catch up to the scene she had stepped into. She was having trouble seeing, as well as she blinked away tears from her eyes, feeling the wet drops streaking her cheeks.
Cheleya looked unsure of herself and Katya clarified for the dragoness saying, “Well, the peeping Tom must already know, so as long as he can keep his secret better than he did with me interrogating him, you should be all right. It’s up to you if you want to tell her the whole truth though.”
Iris looked at Katya and realized this untrained girl was ordering her around. An unofficial novice shouldn’t be able to tell her what to do and she was older than her by four years as well. Anger started making the apprentice want to snap at the girls. Stripping in front of the boy, what were they trying to do?
“You had better tell me the truth or... or... I don’t know exactly, but you will wish that you had!”
Moving to take Iris’s hands, Cheleya breathed out a sigh and said, “Katya was keeping my secret, but apparently Piotr discovered it when he sent a bird to snoop through our window.” Glancing to the boy, the little blonde seemed to need to clarify and added, “Twice.”
Mortified, Iris looked at the boy aghast. What had he seen?
Groaning at Cheleya’s sloppy divulging of the truth, Katya stepped in and said, “When we were in Calamira, apparently the boys convinced Piotr to use his magic to let them see through a bird’s eyes. And what do young, stupid boys want to see most?”
“Girls?” Iris said going white as a sheet.
Katya nodded and continued. “Aside from that, young Piotr,” she began to gesture as if she were telling some bedtime story to the room as the younger girl called the older boy young, “also listened in to an important conversation between Cheleya and myself. Do you wish to tell it or shall I?”
Cheleya grinned at the younger girl’s strange sense of drama playing out, even as Piotr seemed to want to cringe further into the corner, though escape would have been preferential.
Katya continued her dialogue. “Cheleya is from Mar’kal and was apparently learning to become a dragon mage, whatever that is, when her human teacher tried to steal from the Academy. She walked in on him by mistake and he broke her amulet which lets her change into a che’ther.”
“It turned me human,” Cheleya clarified quickly making Iris frown in further confusion.
Clearing her throat, as Katya was using a deeper voice than normal to sound like a narrator speaking, she continued, “To turn her human,... why exactly?” she asked coming out of character a moment.
“To use dragon mage magic, it is easier to be human size so that I can fly,” Cheleya stated freely now that her secrets were pretty much on the table with the three young people around her. A weight seemed to have lifted as she found more confidantes to confide in as well.
“Ooh kay,” Katya replied confused, but filed that away for later. “The mean ol’ teacher broke her amulet trapping her as a human before throwing her from a tall tower to her certain death. Only a last remaining drop of her magic remained to save our sweet Cheleya from death, but the wizard wasn’t through and chased her all the way to Hala trying to kill her several times, until he was defeated.
“Unfortunately for our heroine, she remains trapped hoping to find a wizard that might one day save her!”
Finishing with a little bow, the younger asked the girl of the story, “Does that about cover it?”
“Close enough,” Cheleya nodded and asked Iris, “Have you ever smelled something sweet in the air around me?”
The apprentice nodded still too much in shock to say anything.
Lifting her blonde ha
ir near the girl’s face to breathe it in, the dragoness said, “It is part of the magic of the charm. Kel’lor is a warrior type and gives off a warning scent that makes him scarier than he really is, while I like people and apparently make them want to protect me from my scent.”
“And why are you naked?”
Katya laughed and shook her head saying, “Sorry, I was trying to interrogate him and it worked. I forced the confession out of him and without even having magic to do it. Since I remembered seeing a finch on the window sill when we were talking that day, and had seen them on the porch of the Calamira Inn; I deduced that Piotr had used the bird to spy on us.
“He could hear us too and discovered Cheleya’s secret when she told me in our room.”
Turning on him, she continued, “But what I don’t know is what he saw the second time.”
“Second time?” Iris asked with a frown glaring at the boy.
“You were asking why she’s naked,” Piotr said trying to get her off of that question back to Cheleya.
“Well, Cheleya showed me that she has no hair to try and convince me that she is actually a dragon, and we recreated that act to force you to confess once. Now you, mister, are trying to dodge the question,” Katya countered slapping his cheek lightly as if to punish him.
“I found an owl before bed that night hoping to hear whether Cheleya would tell Iris and Briahnna her secret in case I accidentally said something then it wouldn’t be as bad, if other people knew it. Cheleya wouldn’t blame Katya, since she would have been the only one to know otherwise.”
“Aw,” Katya said putting her fingers on his chin moving his head back and forth lightly as if he were something cute like a baby. Then her fingers squeezed very hard and he could feel her nails digging in as she demanded, “And then what did you perverts see, because I can tell all three of you did it together again.”
Closing his eyes against the pain and expecting worse, he confessed, “Everything when you got ready for bed.”
White Hall (The High King: A Tale of Alus Book 10) Page 13
