Sienne handed Alaric the goblet. “It’s still an hour or two before dinner. I think I’ll go to the market and see if I can sell this spellbook we found in the Figlari keep, maybe trade for convey or cat’s eye.”
“Let me put this away, and I’ll go with you,” he said.
They walked through the streets of Fioretti toward the great market, close enough that the backs of their hands brushed occasionally. Alaric was silent in a way that stilled Sienne’s desire for conversation. Sometimes it was nice to just walk together, not needing to speak. It was funny how a month ago they’d been awkward companions, uncertain of each other, and now… well, Sienne still wasn’t sure what they were to each other, aside from more than friends. It wasn’t just the kissing; she loved talking to him about anything and everything, felt safe in his company, and looked forward to seeing him every morning. Given time, who knew what this might turn into?
“How can you find out how to use the jaunt spell?” Alaric said, breaking the silence and startling Sienne out of her reverie.
“Oh, there are books… Madalynna probably has something in her library. That should be the first place we go to research the varnwort potion, and I’ll ask her then.”
“Good. That could be a useful spell.”
“Not quite as useful to the team as ferry, but it will do.”
His hand brushed hers again. Then he curled his fingers around her hand and squeezed gently.
She twined her fingers with his, not daring to look at him for fear of breaking the spell his gesture had cast over them both. His hand was large and firm, callused from years of swordplay and clearly capable of crushing hers, which made his gentleness even more endearing.
“I was attracted to you the moment I first saw you,” Alaric said, his voice quiet enough that she had to strain to hear him over the noise of the crowd. “Even though you were a wizard.”
“I wish I could say the same, but I thought you were an ass.”
He laughed. “And now… I don’t want this to hurt our team, but I can’t bear the thought of going back to what we used to be.”
“We’re both sensible. That won’t happen.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
They walked along in silence a few paces more. “You really don’t have to worry, you know,” Sienne said.
“Worry? About what?”
“About me being interested in other men, like poor Borris. I’d rather be with you than anyone.”
Alaric smiled. “I was stupid, remember?”
“Logic-challenged. And Borris…” She looked over Alaric, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, thought about his quick wit and dry humor and everything else that made him what he was, and laughed. “Borris never had a chance.”
He squeezed her hand. “That fills me with happiness.”
They’d walked without paying attention to their surroundings, and Sienne realized they had passed the wizards’ “streets” and gone all the way to the scrapper jobs board at the center of the market. Feeling shy, she pointed at the board, where all manner of job requests were posted. “Maybe we should take a job while we’re researching. We didn’t make any money off Tonia’s job, and we may need to pay to look at some of these libraries.”
“Sienne,” Alaric said. She turned to look up at him and was startled by the intensity of his gaze. He took her other hand and gripped it lightly. “I don’t know where this is going,” he said, “but I think you should know—you’re already the person I want to see first in the morning, and the last one I want to say goodnight to. If your parents do come looking for you, I swear they’ll have to fight me to take you away. You know I’d put my life on the line for any of my companions, but that goes doubly true for you.”
Peace, and happiness, made her heart swell. “That’s exactly how I feel,” she said, and pulled him down for a kiss.
Sienne’s Spellbook
Summonings:
Summonings affect the physical world and elements. They include all transportation spells.
Castle—trade places with someone else
Fog—obscuring mist
Slick—conjure grease
* * *
Evocations:
Evocations deal with intangible elements like fire, air, and lightning.
Force—bolt of magical energy, hits with perfect accuracy
Scream—sonic attack, causes injury
* * *
Confusions:
Confusions affect what the senses perceive.
Camouflage—disguise an object’s shape, color, or texture
Cast—ventriloquism
Echo—auditory hallucinations
Imitate—change someone’s entire appearance
Mirage—visual hallucinations
Mirror—creates three identical duplicates of the caster
Shift—small alterations in appearance, such as eye or hair color
* * *
Transforms:
Transforms change an object or creature’s state, in small or large ways.
Break—shatters fragile things
Cat’s eye—true darkvision
Fit (object)—shrink or enlarge an object; permanent
Fit (person)—shrink or enlarge a person; temporary
Gills—water breathing
Sculpt—shape stone
Sharpen—improve sight or hearing
Voice—sound like someone else
* * *
The Small Magics
These can be done by any wizard without a spellbook, with virtually no limits.
Light
Spark
Mend
Create water
Breeze
Chill/warm liquid
Telekinesis (up to 6-7 pound weights)
Ghost sound
Ghostly form
Find true north
Open (used to manipulate a spellbook)
Invulnerability
About the Author
In addition to the Company of Strangers series, Melissa McShane is the author of more than twenty fantasy novels, including the novels of Tremontane, the first of which is Servant of the Crown; The Extraordinaries series, beginning with Burning Bright; and The Book of Secrets, first book in The Last Oracle series. She lives in the shelter of the mountains out West with her husband, four children and a niece, and four very needy cats. She wrote reviews and critical essays for many years before turning to fiction, which is much more fun than anyone ought to be allowed to have.
You can visit her at www.melissamcshanewrites.com for more information on other books.
For news on upcoming releases, bonus material, and other fun stuff, sign up for Melissa’s newsletter at http://eepurl.com/brannP
Sneak Peek: Mortal Rites (Company of Strangers, Book Three)
Sienne stood at the villa’s window and looked out over the Jalenus Sea at where the ocean met the sky, two shades of blue blending into one another. Waves far below crashed against the rocky cliff, their ebb and flow a soothing rush of noise that harmonized with the higher notes of the constantly blowing wind. One pane of thick, bubbly glass remained in the window; the rest were long gone. The glass transformed the vista into a dreamscape in which bulbous waves humped and bulged their way inland, tinted rosy pink. Sienne preferred the unaltered landscape. It wasn’t as pretty, but at least you knew where you were.
She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes to enjoy the scents of sun-warmed air and salt breezes tinged with the sweet smell of the tiny pink flowers that covered the short stretch of ground from the house to the cliff’s edge. They were strongly scented for something so small, and she wished she knew their name. Her father might know, dedicated gardener that he was in his spare time, but if he were standing beside her, he’d be more interested in criticizing her choices than in delivering a horticulture lecture. She scowled and turned away. And it had been such a pleasant day, too, until her past intruded on it.
“I take it you have had as little luck as I,” Pe
rrin said from across the room. The small library only had a few hundred books, but when each had to be examined closely, that was a daunting number. Perrin had made three neat stacks of books on the floor beside him, and was in the process of beginning a fourth.
“The owner loved plays,” Sienne said, returning to the bookcase she’d cleared of most of its books. “They’re easy to eliminate, but I admit to becoming bored. I didn’t know there were so many ways to retell the story of the Seven Pilgrims.”
“I have found histories. Very dull ones.” Perrin flipped open another book, skimmed its pages, and set it on the new pile. “But this collection is so disorganized it is impossible to simply ignore a shelf on the basis that one has found five histories there, and therefore the other books must be the same.”
Sienne reached the end of the final shelf. The last book was slimmer than the rest, bound in magenta-dyed leather that time and the sea air had worn to pink along the spine. “Poetry,” she said. “Sappy poetry.”
“I take it you are not a lover of verse.”
“Not modern verse. I like old long-form epics about the before times.” She set the poetry book back and stooped to gather up her piles to restore them to the bookcase. It probably wasn’t necessary, since nobody was likely to come along insisting they clean up their mess, but she’d been too well trained at school in the dukedom of Stravanus to be able to leave books on the floor.
She heard footsteps overhead, making the ceiling creak. Alaric, probably, searching the upper floor for more books. The previous owners had let their collection spill over into every room in the house, and on the ground floor they’d found, in addition to the actual library, decorative shelves in both formal sitting rooms, a pile of cookbooks in the kitchen, and a couple of loose volumes of the epic What Dreams Remain in the outhouse. Missing pages from the latter indicated it hadn’t been used for reading material, or at least not ultimately so.
Sienne began on the next bookcase. There were eight in total, all of them packed full. Exposure to the damp, salty air had caused most of the books to swell, compacting them further. She wormed her fingertips between the first and second volumes, stretching high to reach the top shelf, and pulled out a book. “Desert Plants of Omeira. That bores me just thinking about it. Honestly, I don’t know why we’re bothering. It’s unlikely Penthea Lepporo left any necromantic treatises lying around where anyone might find them.”
“How better to hide something dangerous than in plain sight?” Perrin swept his long, dark hair out of his face and began shifting his piles back onto the bookcase. “And the manner in which she left the house suggests she did not have time to hide any books that might draw the attention of the guards.”
“I think it’s sad that her family never came back after she died. It’s not as if she died here, and it’s a beautiful house. Or was, thirty years ago.” Sienne closed her book with a snap and stared out the other window, the one that overlooked the overgrown patio and concrete urns that once held tiny fruit trees. The trees had all died from neglect, but creeping vines had taken over their corpses, their white star-like flowers giving the dead trees a false impression of life. Since they were at the Lepporo estate looking for evidence of necromancy, it seemed an appropriate image.
Their quest to find a ritual that would free their companion Alaric’s people, the shape-changing race called Sassaven, had taken an unexpected turn four weeks earlier. Having acquired two ritual objects, they’d begun searching for the recipe for a potion containing the sedative herb varnwort, in hopes it might lead them to evidence of the ritual itself. Almost immediately, they’d discovered that varnwort was used in many, many rituals. All of them were necromantic.
Sienne had pointed out that so far as anyone knew, the only rituals that had survived from the wars that had all but destroyed civilization four hundred years ago were necromantic, so that was no real surprise, but it had still been disturbing. They were looking for a ritual that would invert the one binding the Sassaven to their evil creator, not one that would raise the dead. But it was their only lead.
So for the past four weeks, they’d turned their search toward finding a necromantic ritual that both used varnwort and had something to do with binding. It was delicate work; studying necromancy wasn’t illegal, only the practice of it, but the law didn’t always discriminate between the two, and people who studied necromancy didn’t advertise the fact.
They’d found Penthea Lepporo’s name in the correspondence of a known necromancer who’d died forty years ago, and Alaric had gotten permission from Penthea’s son to examine the Lepporo library at the abandoned estate. Which was why Sienne was digging through old, damaged, boring books when she could be back in Fioretti reading something exciting.
She set the book down and reached for the next. It was taller than the others on its shelf and wedged tightly in place. Cursing softly, Sienne stepped back and tried using her small magic called invisible fingers on it, tugging at it without touching it. It stayed stuck as solidly as if the shelf had been built around it.
She cast about the room for a solution. Two armchairs positioned near the window looked as if they’d break if she put even her slight weight on them, but the table between them, low and square, looked hewn from granite rather than built of solid oak. She dragged it over to the bookcase and hopped up. This put her at eye level with the shelf and the row of books. Grabbing hold of the offending tome, she wiggled it back and forth, trying to loosen it.
Something snapped, and the book came free so rapidly she nearly lost her balance. “By Averran,” Perrin exclaimed, “what did you do?”
“This book was stuck, that’s all.”
She glanced down at Perrin, who had his hand on a bookcase neither of them had examined yet. “That is not all,” he said. He took hold of the bookcase’s side and pulled, making it swing gently toward him. A gaping square hole in the base of the wall lay beyond it, dark and smelling of dust.
Sienne and Perrin stared at each other. “This is far more interesting than poetry, epic or not,” Perrin said. “Shall we investigate?”
“Are you kidding? It would be the midge hive all over again.” Sienne drew in a breath and shouted, “Alaric! Dianthe! Kalanath! We found something!”
Hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Dianthe appeared in the doorway. “Found—oh, by Kitane’s left arm,” she said, staring at the hole. “What is it?”
“There was a secret switch Sienne cleverly found,” Perrin said.
“Just so you didn’t go in there on your own. Remember the midges?”
“Is no one going to let me forget about them?” Sienne demanded.
More footsteps announced Kalanath’s arrival, followed immediately by Alaric, who had cobwebs in his short blond hair. “Attic,” he said. “But this is far more promising. Sienne, you didn’t go down there alone, did you?”
Sienne rolled her eyes. “I am teachable, you know. What should we do?”
Dianthe crouched next to the hole. “There’s a ladder going down, and it smells like a large room. Sienne, why don’t you make some lights, and I’ll see what I can see.”
Sienne concentrated, and half a dozen white lights the size of small apples popped into existence, floating around her head. She directed them into the hole. Dianthe leaned farther forward. “It’s definitely big, and the ceiling is remarkably high. Wait here.” She turned and descended the ladder, disappearing out of sight. The others gathered around the hole and peered after her. Sienne couldn’t see anything but the ladder and, far below, a black wooden floor that in the magic lights was shiny as if highly varnished. Dianthe’s boots made sharp tapping noises that quickly receded to nothing.
“What do you see?” Alaric called out.
“We have our proof that Penthea Lepporo, or someone who lived in her house, practiced necromancy,” Dianthe said. “Come on down. Whoever it was didn’t leave any nasty surprises.”
“Probably didn’t have time,” Alaric said, moving back to allow
Kalanath access to the ladder. “Penthea’s illness came on suddenly, her son said, and they all left for Fioretti with her.”
“Yes, and don’t you think that’s strange?” Sienne said. “That they never came back to retrieve all their things? I realize the Lepporos are wealthy, but even wealthy people aren’t generally wasteful.”
Alaric shrugged and offered Sienne a hand. “Their town house is far more opulent than this, remember?”
“I remember.” It had been opulent enough to make Sienne uncomfortable, despite her upbringing as a duke’s daughter. She’d feared knocking over some priceless vase or smearing mud on an antique rug. “Even so.”
“Who knows why the rich and powerful do what they do?” Alaric held her hand a few moments longer than necessary to help her onto the ladder, and she smiled at him and received a smile he reserved only for her. It still made her giddy when he looked at her that way, weeks after they’d acknowledged their mutual attraction. Giddy, and something deeper and warmer she hugged close to her heart. Falling in love with Alaric had been unexpected, and wonderful. But he never gave any indication that he cared more for her than casual affection, and she wished she knew if he was concealing some more profound feeling. She was the last person in the world who’d know love when she saw it. Her ex-lover Rance was proof of that.
She hurried down the ladder into a space several degrees cooler than the house above, which was warmed by the afternoon sun of late first summer. Dianthe was right, the ceiling was surprisingly high, at least ten feet—much higher than Sienne would have expected from a basement. The walls were painted the same black as the floorboards, providing a stark contrast to the white lines of script covering them. A wooden butcher block table stained with dark residue occupied the center of the room. Dianthe stood at the room’s far side, next to a couple of flat-topped chests fastened with leather buckles. Sienne crossed toward her as she unbuckled the first one and opened the chest.
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