by Jasmine Walt
“All bad things, probably,” Sunaya said with a laugh, looking toward Fenris fondly. “I’ve given Fenris more than his fair share of headaches with all the trouble I get into.”
“You are a trouble magnet, no doubt about it,” Iannis said teasingly. He shook my hand. “I am very glad that you made it here to see us,” he said to me. “When Fenris called me asking for an antidote for that poison, I must admit I worried if I’d ever get to meet you. Croialis has killed too many mages. I assume there was no lasting damage?”
“Not at all—and thank you for saving me.” I blushed a little beneath Iannis’s intense regard, but he and Sunaya seemed friendly enough, and the knot of tension in my chest loosened.
“It’s the least I could do for the woman who has captured my best friend’s heart.” Iannis winked. “I am very happy for both of you.”
“Thank you.” Fenris slipped an arm around my waist, and I smiled. “We’re planning on getting married before we leave and were hoping you two will be our witnesses.”
“Damn right we will,” Sunaya said, beaming. Then she frowned. “Though we are leaving for a honeymoon after our own wedding next week. Can you wait until we’re back?”
I exchanged a look with Fenris. “Up to you,” he said in mindspeak.
“I’d rather not wait,” I decided. “We don’t need any great fuss, and we don’t have many people to invite. I know it’s irrational, but I have a feeling that the longer we postpone our wedding, the greater the danger that something might prevent it.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s irrational at all,” Sunaya said dryly, “considering that’s exactly what happened to us. Fucking tyrants,” she muttered under her breath.
“We would be honored to be your witnesses,” Iannis added, giving Sunaya a look as if to say behave. I hid a smile when she stuck out her tongue—despite being two of the most powerful people in Solantha, they clearly had an easy dynamic between them.
“We know that you aren’t going to want a huge shindig or anything,” Sunaya said, “but since everyone else can’t go to the temple we should have some kind of celebration that includes them. Fenris did make quite a few friends while he lived here.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said to her with a smile. “My human friends Marris and Barrla will want to be included, and I would love for Comenius and Elania to be a part. And perhaps that nice Mr. Ragga, too. I think he could become a friend, if we stay around here.”
“I’m glad to see the two of you so full of energy again,” Fenris said, beaming at his friends. “You were both exhausted when I left you last night.”
Iannis shrugged. “Nothing a good night’s sleep and a restorative tonic couldn’t handle,” he said. “It feels good to be home. There were moments when I wasn’t sure we would make it back in time for the wedding. Had we known of this new Resistance plot we would have been even more desperate to return.”
“It sounds like you had your hands full,” I commented, curious what kind of adventure could imperil this formidable mage. The magazines claimed he might be the strongest in the entire Federation, and I had a feeling they might be right for once.
“Indeed we did,” Iannis agreed. “I should feel guilty about all the extra work it made for Chen, but I don’t regret missing weeks of preparations for the Convention. I never wanted it to be in Solantha and would rather have concentrated on rebuilding after the quake without these complications. There are not enough hotels for everyone, although the ones that are open make out like bandits from the scarcity of rooms.”
“Speaking of which, you did bring your luggage along?” Sunaya asked. “I’ve had a guest suite readied for the two of you.”
“I’m fine with staying in Fenris’s old room,” I said. We’d slept comfortably enough last night, and I could tell Fenris liked being surrounded by his own things.
“The bed is much too narrow,” Sunaya said with a wink. “And all those bookcases take up too much space.”
Iannis must have noticed that I felt a little flustered, for he mercifully changed the subject. “I must thank you for your efforts to neutralize the plot, Mina, and you even did it without getting thrown in prison,” he said, with a grin in Fenris’s direction. “Do you agree that all danger is over now?”
I thought about it for a moment before replying. “Since I was not present when the plot was defeated, I can only go by hearsay. It worries me that, according to our friend Marris, the workers were still being armed and told to be ready any day now.”
“It always takes a little time for the troops to hear what is going on with their generals,” Fenris said. “By this morning, hopefully they’ll have got the word and will be dispersing. Though Marris seemed to think some might start to riot in their disappointment.”
“I’ll warn the enforcers to be prepared, if they try anything,” Sunaya said.
“By the way,” I said, remembering my discovery of the previous afternoon, “while it has nothing to do with the Resistance plot, I did find out something significant with the help of Mr. Ragga’s ether owl. He said he was inspired by the bird you created,” I recalled.
“Trouble?” Sunaya asked, and a large ghostly parrot materialized on her shoulder, cawing at me. His caw sounded a lot like a laugh.
“Yes!” I laughed, leaning forward to get a better look at the parrot, delighted. He flapped his wings, then jumped to my wrist when I held out an arm. The touch of his feet on my arm sent tingles racing across my skin even though I felt no weight—it was an odd sensation.
“Elnos is a good man,” Iannis said. “His inventions are brilliant, and he has worked for me on more than one occasion.”
“About your discovery…” Fenris reminded me as I reached out to touch the parrot’s ghostly feathers. My fingers passed right through. The glowing parrot cocked his head at me, then disappeared in a flash of light.
“Right.” I cleared my throat. “My friend Barrla and I were spying on the Minister yesterday afternoon.”
“Spying on the Minister?” Iannis’s eyebrows rose. “What for?”
“Barrla had a notion that the plotters might target him, and that we could catch a trace of them if we kept the area under surveillance,” I explained, not mentioning that she had gotten the idea from one of her beloved shifter romances. “We did not identify any Resistance spies, but it was a good chance to field-test the ether owl.” I pulled the tiny metal owl out of my bag to show them. “This device links up with the ether owl and allows a person to see and hear what it observes while it remains invisible to the target. I understand it’s a magitech construct.”
“That sounds just like something Elnos would invent,” Sunaya said admiringly as she took it from me to examine. “It could be very useful to investigate suspects. Is he selling these yet?”
I shook my head. “He says it’s just a prototype, and that he may never bring them to market.”
“I hope he doesn’t,” Fenris said, scowling at the bird. “It brings up bad memories for me. Gelisia also used a bird to spy on me, but it was pure magic, not magitech like this.”
“It’s intriguing,” Iannis said as he took the owl from Sunaya, looking it over with a critical eye. “I’ll have to ask Elnos to let me borrow this when you are done with it, so I can study it further. Let’s hope the Resistance isn’t working on something like this too. A device like this would be devastating to our security measures.”
“Anyway,” Sunaya said, “what is it that you found? The Minister is such a stick in the mud, I figure if he had any vices they would have already been discovered by the paparazzi.”
“A woman named Mirrine that Fenris and I met earlier came to visit the Minister,” I said. “She told us that she was a reporter, but I think she works for the Forrane government, because she was blackmailing the Minister into lifting some sanctions that were hampering trade between Forrane and Bilam.”
“Blackmail?” Iannis asked. “What sort of blackmail?”
“She’s the Minister’s w
ife. Yes, I know the Minister already had a wife,” I said before Sunaya and Iannis could interrupt, “but apparently these two were married before that, in Forrane. It didn’t work out, and the Minister decided to leave her and go back to Northia. From the way she talks about husbands in general, she didn’t seem too sad to be rid of him. She said she pitied the second wife.”
“Damn,” Sunaya said, her eyes gleaming as she leaned back in her chair. “That’s quite a juicy secret.”
“It’s also a dangerous secret,” I said. “I didn’t tell my friend Barrla, for her own safety, and because her boyfriend still has Resistance sympathies. Only Mirrine knows the truth, and now the people in this room. She seemed to fear that the Minister would kill her, and has taken precautions.”
“This would ruin the Minister if the truth ever came out,” Iannis said, a grave expression on his face. “Everyone knows that Zavian Graning and his late wife had an unhappy marriage to begin with—she was a sickly woman, and he was rarely by her bedside, too busy climbing the political ladder. He was not even there when she died five years ago, and her powerful family is still angry about it. If her relatives found out that, on top of this, he was a bigamist, they would be furious. They would drag his name through the mud, and he would have to resign his office in disgrace.”
“We’d better not tell Marris that,” I said wryly, “or he would immediately notify all the papers. He hates the Minister.”
“Your friends Barrla and Marris sound like quite a couple,” Sunaya said. “Where are they now?”
“I think they spent the night on Com’s sofa,” I said. “They’re probably looking for a hotel room now, since they cannot stay with Comenius forever.”
“I would like to talk to Marris myself and find out exactly what these recruits were being told, and how their morale was,” Iannis said.
“Let’s call Com and offer them some of our empty guest rooms,” Sunaya suggested. “From what I’ve heard, they probably won’t get a room anywhere else in town, since the Convention is about to start. I’ll be too busy to be much of a hostess, but at least you won’t feel lonely with your friends around you. Besides, maybe your friend Marris will learn that mages aren’t so bad after all, just like I did when I first came here,” she added with a smile.
It turned out that Marris and Barrla were still at Comenius’s place. Though Marris seemed hesitant when I talked to them on the phone, Barrla assured me they would be right over in the first steamcab they could find. They arrived quickly enough, looking flushed and bright-eyed and much more relaxed than when I’d last seen them. A servant brought them to the sitting room of the suite that Sunaya had moved us to.
“You two look like you’ve sorted out your issues,” I said as they joined us in the sitting area.
“Nothing like a night of dancing to melt the stress away,” Barrla declared. She looked over at Sunaya and Iannis, who had come over to greet them despite having a thousand other things to worry over. She nearly fell over, her eyes going wide. “By the Ur-God!” she squeaked, immediately folding into a curtsy. “My Lord and Lady…thank you for inviting us.”
“No need for all that,” Sunaya said with a smile. “I’m not exactly a lady, anyway.”
“Yet,” Iannis added, kissing her brow.
“These are my good friends, Barrla Kelling and her beau, Marris Dolan,” Fenris said. “As I said earlier, Marris has been posing as one of the workers for the Resistance and updating us on new developments.”
“Is that so?” Sunaya cocked her head at Marris. “And you haven’t felt any urge to rejoin your comrades and take up their cause against mages?”
Marris stiffened, and I swallowed as the atmosphere in the room grew tense. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it,” he said, meeting Sunaya’s gaze squarely. “But in the end, Fenris convinced me that it’s not in anyone’s best interests to engage in terror attacks. I still think the mage regime needs to change, but not at the expense of innocent lives.”
Sunaya nodded. “I agree with you,” she said, and I let out a silent breath of relief. Clearly Marris was speaking what he considered the truth, or she would have called him out. “I used to hate the mage regime myself, until I found myself tangled up with it. This guy here has taught me that there are still a few good guys at the top”—she twined her fingers with Iannis’s—“and that it’s not all black and white.”
“I think your union provides hope to humans and shifters,” Barrla said. “Seeing a shifter and a mage wed proves that it’s possible for the different races to live as equals. There’s a whole series of interracial romance novels that are really popular, so I think a lot of people secretly want the barriers between us all to dissolve.”
“We are certainly heading in the right direction for that to happen,” Iannis said, “but not if the Resistance is allowed to prevail. They think they are helping their cause, but their violent acts and vitriolic speeches only widen the divide. Those who consider humans the superior race are no better than the most bigoted mages.”
Marris looked unconvinced, and I wouldn’t have minded discussing this further, but a messenger came rushing in with some urgent message for Iannis and Sunaya. They took their leave of us, promising to come back and visit again when they had a free moment.
“Wow, I never expected to actually stay in the Palace,” Barrla said, looking around the room. “After they would not even let us take a peek inside with the press credentials we flashed! Do you suppose they will mind if I take pictures of the place?”
“I’m sure Sunaya and Iannis won’t mind,” Fenris said, and that was all the encouragement Barrla needed. Taking me by the hand, she tugged me from the chair.
“You better come with us,” she told Fenris. “Someone needs to make sure we don’t get lost!’
25
Fenris
Since we had nothing better to do for the moment, I went along with the girls and gave them a tour of Solantha Palace while Barrla took dozens of photographs. Marris had begged off in favor of getting some more sleep, and while I could certainly use more shut-eye myself, I knew Mina would be disappointed if I didn’t come along.
Besides, it was a delight to watch Mina’s eyes go wide and her face light up with pleasure as I showed her the various wings and introduced her to the staff. She was particularly excited when I took her to the Palace’s vast library. Both Mina and Barrla spent a good twenty minutes discussing literature with Janta Urama, the head librarian.
“I am glad that you’ve returned,” Janta said to me, her voice quiet but pleased as we stood near a row of shelves. I could scent her sincerity. “I’ve missed your presence here in the library, Fenris.”
“I hope to visit often,” I assured her, “though not every day like I used to. Mina and I plan on moving back to Canalo after we settle our affairs, but we will be living outside the city. Mina is not fully trained yet, and access to the library will be helpful for that.”
“Well make sure you bring her with you the next time you come,” she said, smiling at Mina. “I’ve already got a few books in mind that I think both of you ladies will enjoy—I’ll have them set aside for you when you come back.”
Mina and Barrla beamed. “I would like that very much,” Mina said.
We took our leave of the library, promising Janta that we would return and inviting her to the small wedding that Sunaya and Iannis were putting together for us, whenever it would be scheduled. Famished, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Palace cafeteria, then finally parted ways with Barrla and headed out for the appointment I had been half dreading, half looking forward to.
Meeting my parents.
“You’ll be fine,” Mina said, patting my arm reassuringly as I drove the short distance through the tree-shaded streets of the Mages Quarter. “I swear, I’ve never seen you this nervous about anything, Fenris. Your parents have been searching for you—they aren’t going to spit on you when we turn up outside their hotel room.”
“I know t
hat,” I said, and really, I did. It was absurd to think that they would reject me. “It’s just…I never expected to see them again. After Iannis changed me into a shifter, and I woke up, I resigned myself to letting them believe I was dead. In fact, they still think I’m dead,” I said, and I couldn’t help sounding a little bitter about it.
“We might be able to change that,” Mina said cautiously, “depending on how this visit goes.”
I shook my head. “They’ll be angry with me regardless of whether or not I tell them the truth,” I said. “If I confess that I am Polar, they will be upset that I didn’t trust them enough to let them know I was still alive. And if I don’t, they are still bound to be angry with me for not telling them about my supposed affair with a shifter, and their ‘grandson.’ No doubt they will bring it up.”
“That doesn’t mean they will hold it against you,” Mina said gently. “They have clearly decided to accept you as a member of their family, even if you are a half shifter.”
“That is because they have no choice,” I said. “My only sister died years ago, and my parents are too old to have children now. I am their only descendant.”
Mina said nothing, simply wrapping her fingers in mine, for which I was grateful. There wasn’t really anything she could say to alleviate my dread, and in truth, I knew I was being silly for letting myself get worked up about this. Of course my parents would be looking forward to seeing me, regardless of whatever misgivings they had about a shifter in the family. But still…this subterfuge, it felt wrong.
And yet the charade had to continue. Not just for my own safety, but for Iannis’s. I didn’t know how my parents would react to the truth, even though I loved them and knew they loved me. My father had always been a stickler for the rules. If he saw how low I’d sunk, that I’d voluntarily changed myself into a shifter…he might very well refuse to have anything to do with me.
