The Child Prince (The Artifactor)

by Honor Raconteur

  Most of the time Sevana just sailed through life, going along at her own pace, and didn’t let other people’s anxieties affect her. But he had seen her at her wit’s end a few times, mostly when some project hadn’t gone as expected, or when she pulled an all-nighter to finish something. This looked to be a combination of all three. Even with her feet up on the table, she hunched in her chair, as if keeping proper posture would simply be too tiring. Her head rested in one hand, masking her eyes, hair escaping the messy knot she had at the nape of her neck. Instead of looking eighteen or so, she looked twenty-eight.

  Aren, proving to be wise beyond his years, simply offered her a tray of different sweets. She took two without a word and popped both of them in her mouth. Bellomi, knowing how she preferred her tea, fixed a cup of it from the pot sitting in the center of the table and silently handed her that as well. She drained it in one long pull before handing it back for a refill, which he obliged by doing. Only after she had taken a long sip from the second cup did she finally speak.

  “Congratulations, Bel. Since I first received my Artifactor’s license and escaped Master, yours has been the most complex problem I’ve ever had to solve.”

  He mentally went through about three responses before settling on the safest one. “I’m sorry?”

  “Not your fault,” she sighed, finally looking up to meet his eyes. Her mouth still formed a grumpy pout which clearly said that even though she didn’t blame him, that didn’t mean she didn’t harbor ill will for somebody. “The curse you’re under is complex enough, but it’s compounded because of the stasis spell as well. Pierpoint’s alterations gave me a loophole of sorts to work through but that doesn’t mean he made it easy.”

  Pierpoint had gone off last night to do a thorough examination of the magical protective guards and wards that were on the palace, all for the purpose of exploiting their weakness if the need arose. Bellomi felt a fleeting sense of relief that the Wizard wasn’t within arm’s reach of Sevana just then. She’d have likely strangled him if he had been.

  Aren cleared his throat slightly. “Dare I ask if you found a solution?”

  “I did, yes.” She drained the cup again before setting it down in the saucer, finally taking her feet off the table so she could sit forward and lean against the table’s surface instead. “I’ll double check my math tomorrow. In fact, I might have Sarsen double check it for me. I’m sick of looking at it at this point.”

  Gauging her expression and tone, Bellomi thought it might be safe enough to ask. “So what was the solution?”

  “I couldn’t use anything with fire to it, not without risking strengthening the stasis spell on you, so I ended up with…” she stopped abruptly and eyed the other two unabashedly listening in. “I think Bel will follow this, after all the things I’ve taught him, but you two won’t.”

  “Explain it in simple terms,” Hana requested with a winsome smile.

  Sevana let out a growl, slumping back in her chair. “Don’t wanna.”

  “I’ll cook tonight in exchange,” Hana riposted, smile not slipping.

  The Artifactor paused and looked at the other woman with weighing eyes, judging which would be more hassle, slaving over a stove or having to explain something to two different magical ignoramuses. Cooking lost because she shrugged in surrender. “Fine. Do you two even understand the basics of magical power?”

  “Elements of the world, mystical power, and contrived power,” Aren rattled off as if borrowing an answer from a textbook.

  “Very good.” For once, Sevana didn’t sound sarcastic, just relieved she didn’t have to explain that too. “And you also understand that some elements combine very well with each other and others don’t combine at all? Excellent. Alright, this won’t be as difficult to explain, then. Of the possible elements that I could use to form an incantation, I am severely limited by not only Bel’s curse but his stasis spell. I can’t use anything that has the same elements as the strongest base of either spell. So I can’t use anything that uses wind, because of the curse spell, and I can’t use anything that uses fire because of the stasis spell. Those two elements, unfortunately, are the ones that would combine the easiest with water.”

  “Because they’re both fluid in nature,” Bellomi offered. “Like water is.”

  Sevana waved a hand in his direction, indicating that he had made a valid point, and continued. “Unfortunately, the other elements that I know would have the best reaction against both spells don’t blend well with this sort of incantation. This is a written incantation, something inscribed into the air, and so I can’t use any element that has a physical form to it.”

  An air-inscribed incantation? Oh, like the one she’d used to break his father’s curse. Right. She had simply used a wand to draw the symbols and words of the spell into the air, and it glowed and stayed rigid until she had released it. Truly, he couldn’t imagine how she would use wood or earth in that sort of incantation.

  “I’m also limited to the elements that I have on hand or can easily gain access to. Some elements are impossible to attain. Even an Artifactor might lay hands on it once in a lifetime. That doesn’t even bring into consideration the individual power levels of each element and how well it will combine with each other. With everything taken into account, I was left with exactly these elements to work with: rainbow mist, untouched snowflake, moonlit water, fairy’s kiss, stillness of a moonless night, moonlight and captured sunlight.”

  Bellomi followed this closely, frowning as she ticked off elements on her fingers. “I thought you said that spells are stronger when you combine different elements. Wouldn’t adding other types of water weaken the overall strength of the incantation?”

  “If only you had some level of magical ability,” Sevana sighed with true regret. “You have a wonderful mind for being an Artifactor. Yes, Bel, you’re perfectly correct. In reality, I only have fairy’s kiss, stillness of a moonless night, moonlight and captured sunlight that I can use. And I hesitate to use sunlight because it leans towards the properties of fire. Fairy’s kiss, of course, is too strong. It would overpower the dragon’s spout and completely mess up the overall power balance we’ve worked so hard for. In the end, I will use stillness of a moonless night and moonlight to inscribe the incantation.”

  Bellomi understood the basic mechanics of spells but he certainly didn’t know enough to rattle off the power levels of each individual element. “Err…so combined with the dragon’s water spout, how powerful is the spell?”

  “It will have a strength of twelve,” she responded, finally looking satisfied, although her smug grin had an overall feeling of fatigue to it. “Because the base element is water, which works against wind, it will act even more effectively. More than strong enough to break the spell you’re under. Pierpoint can just remove the stasis spell later.”

  Aren rubbed at his chin, studying her from the corner of his eye. “Didn’t you have all of this figured out before you went to bargain with the dragon?”

  “Only about half of it,” she denied wearily. “I didn’t bother to try and do the other half. What would be the point? If we couldn’t get the dragon to deal with us, then I would have to use entirely different elements. If we did get him to deal with us, that limited me to another, radically new set of elements. I’m not going to do multiple equations on a what-if basis, thank you very much. Just doing one set gives me a bruiser of a headache.”

  She made a very valid point. Bellomi thanked any god listening that she was skilled enough to figure all of this out, too. He knew very well where his life would be if Sevana hadn’t charitably taken him on as a client. “Want me to grab a pain potion for you?”

  Sevana shook her head and stood up. “I think I’ll take a nap. Hana, dinner’s all yours. Just make sure you save me a plate, eh?”

  “I will,” Hana promised.

  A miracle straight from the heavens occurred and no one interrupted Sevana’s nap. Because of that, she actually slept a good hour longer than she intend
ed to and woke up shortly after everyone else had eaten dinner. Hana, being good to her word, had set aside a plate with generous portions which Sevana happily consumed. She’d always held the opinion that food someone else made tasted at least fifty percent better than what she cooked—for the simple fact that she didn’t have to prepare it or clean up after.

  As she sat at the kitchen table, debating whether or not she wanted something to satisfy her sweet tooth, Sarsen came in and plopped into a chair next to hers, a parchment sheet in his hand. He handed it over even as his free hand reached out and snagged a roll from the bread basket at the center of the table. “Your math’s fine,” he said without preamble. “Your handwriting is atrocious as always.”

  She absently kicked him under the table for the insult even as she smoothed out the sheet. The older man gave a small gasp of pain and grumbled at the abuse. “You didn’t see any way to improve on this, did you?”

  He had to swallow the bite in his mouth before he could respond. “No. But it doesn’t need to be improved on, does it?”

  “Not really.” She had just been hoping for a shorter incantation. This one would take a good half hour to write out. And since the dragon hadn’t set a time on when he would arrive, just a day, that meant she would have to get up early, write the whole incantation out, and then hold it until the dragon showed up. That could be an hour or two or the full day. The only part of this that made Sevana feel better was that Bel would have to be up topside waiting with her. Misery and company and all of that.

  Just the thought of that long wait decided her. She needed sugar after all. Getting up, she headed for the secret tin stashed in the back of the cupboard. The men in this mountain—a certain king, especially—adored sweets in all forms, so Sevana had resorted to hiding her stash. But when she lifted the tin down from its hiding place, it felt suspiciously empty. Yanking off the lid, she peered inside the square canister, only to have her suspicions confirmed.

  “That king of ours has the nose of a bloodhound, I swear.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Sarsen denied with an earthy chuckle. “He sends Bel to get them.”

  And Bel had been trained by a sneaky, devious cat. Right. The more time went along, the more she wished she’d stopped those particular lessons.

  Hana came in with an exasperated look on her face and a black bag of middling size in the crook of one arm. “Oh good, you’ve had dinner. I warned everyone—”

  “Threatened, actually,” Sarsen corrected dryly.

  “—not to touch your plate,” Hana finished with a pointed look at the other Artifactor. With good reason, too. Sarsen could eat a person out of house and home and still find room for desert.

  “I wish you’d told them to stay away from my cookies, too,” Sevana grumbled, slamming the lid back on her tin. She’d never put a curse on an object before, but if that’s what it took to keep people away from her snacks…. “What’s with the bag, Hana?”

  “Oh, this.” Looking exasperated all over again, she set it on the table with a thump. “I asked my father to pack a few things for me so I wouldn’t have to keep borrowing from you. You wouldn’t believe what he packed.”

  Oh, she might. But curious, Sevana rounded to the other side of the table so that she could open the bag and take a look. Setting the tin aside, she pried open the buckle on the bag and pulled the sides apart. Inside, neatly stacked, were three different books, Hana’s librarian uniform (why?) and a pair of knitted slippers that had seen better days. “That’s it?”

  “Nothing practical,” Hana grumbled before adding, “except perhaps my slippers because the stone floors here do get quite cold. But if someone asked you to pack a bag for them, wouldn’t you include the essentials? Underwear, stockings, shoes, clothes, hairbrush…things along those lines?”

  Sevana let the bag fall shut again, starting to see the humor in all of this. “You should have written a list. The fault lies with you.”

  “The man has four children that he raised on his own for the past fifteen years,” Hana growled, rolling her eyes to the heavens in a clear bid for patience. “You’d think he’d know how to pack a bag!”

  “He’s also the most notoriously absent-minded man in the village,” Sevana pointed out, finding this situation increasingly amusing. “We were all taking bets, you know, on how long it would take before he either lost a child or set the house on fire.”

  Hana nodded in rueful acknowledgement. “If not for my oldest sister, he’d probably have done both. Several times. At any rate, I came to you to ask a favor. Can you disguise me so that I can go down and pack my own bag?”

  “Certainly,” Sevana agreed easily.

  “I’ll escort you down,” Sarsen offered. “There’s a few things I want to pick up in the village.”

  “Thank you both.” She let out a huff. “Now, that leads into my next question. Just how much should I pack? Bellomi keeps saying that he doesn’t think I should return home until after his father has re-seized the throne. But he’s not giving me a firm timeline on how long that’s going to take, either.”

  “That’s because we don’t know how long,” Sarsen sighed, slumping back into his chair and nibbling forlornly on his roll.

  Hana’s eyes darted between them, looking more than a little confused as she scanned their expressions. “I thought the plans for breaking Bellomi’s curse and Aren’s plans for re-taking the country were progressing well?”

  “They are. But neither of those are the main problem.” Sevana turned to set her back against the table’s edge and lean against it. “We have no idea, you see, on who cast the two curses against the royal family to begin with.”

  Hana’s eyebrows drew down into a bewildered frown. “There’s no way to magically trace…from the way you’re shaking your head, I guess not.”

  “The caster of this spell very sneakily crafted it so that it would not connect back to him.” Sevana’s aggravation at the unknown magician rekindled as she explained. “The manky mingebag.”

  “Part of the reason Bel’s been helping you,” Sarsen picked up the explanation smoothly, “is that he’s trying to see if there’s a record somewhere of an underhanded dealing during the right time frame. If there is, it’ll give us some place to start investigating.”

  “Which is going to be difficult considering it’s a ten year old trail you’re trying to follow,” Hana finished in dark understanding. “I think I see the full scope of the picture now. No wonder he can’t give me a sure answer. It’s beyond dangerous to reclaim a Council that still harbors an enemy within it.”

  “It might be rather fun, though.” Sarsen’s ill sense of humor chose that moment to perk up. “He’d hire someone to cast a curse one day, Sev or I would break it the next. Curse day, free day, curse day, free day, and so on. It’d be a never-ending loop.”

  Sevana gave him a weary look before pointing out wryly, “I think the man would eventually give up on the more subtle and creative attacks and just send an assassin with a sharp dagger after them at some point.”

  Hana winced. “Sevana, I know you’re half-joking, but please don’t say that. I get chills up my spine when you do.”

  She raised a hand in apology. Sevana didn’t necessarily want to rile Hana up. The girl might be unwilling to help with cooking if she was mad at Sevana, after all. “Then, to a different topic, while I have you out of Bel’s watch. Have sparks flown between you and the king while I wasn’t around?” Hana’s appearance in Big had been remarkably well accepted, which made Sevana suspect that the little prince had Done Something.

  “No,” Hana denied with a thoughtful hand on her mouth. “I’m still quite surprised by that. I mean, Bellomi has made no secret of our relationship and yet King Aren is not only pleasant to me, but quite…I’m not sure how to say it. Friendly? It’s perplexing to me but all Bellomi will say is that he and his father have an understanding in regards to me and that I don’t need to worry about it.”

  Sevana and Sarsen exchanged looks. Odd, B
ellomi had said more to her than to Hana about his intentions. From the understanding on Sarsen’s face, he also knew more about the situation—possibly from Aren, considering how much time he had been spending around the man. Sevana made a mental note to talk to him about it later, out of Hana’s hearing. But why did Bellomi not say anything directly to Hana? Deciding to test the waters a little, Sevana asked casually, “So the two of you haven’t made any plans for the future?”

  “It would be a little foolish to do so, don’t you think?” Hana responded with a careful neutrality that masked some stronger emotion. “I don’t think it’s wise to plan anything between the two of us until he’s regained his birthright.”

  Ahhh. This was the wall that Bellomi had smacked into and the reason why he hadn’t said anything more to Hana. Sevana didn’t need the other girl to spell it out. Hana feared that in the future Bellomi’s position on the throne wouldn’t be secure and he would have to do some sort of political marriage in order to retain his authority. If he found himself in that position, Hana didn’t want any promises he made to her to make him falter. Such a sensible, practical approach. Sevana hadn’t expected anything else from Hana. And yet, it was such a foolish thing to do.

  Sarsen stirred, turning in his chair so that he could face Hana square on. “You should trust him, dearling,” he advised in soft tones. “Every plan he makes, every effort he enacts, he does for your sake. The one thing he will not sacrifice is you.”

  Hana stood frozen, her eyes wide in her face. She stared at Sarsen with a stunned expression, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “But if it’s a choice between me and Windamere, surely—”