Beauty and the Werewolf

by Mercedes Lackey

  She hurried down to dinner, to find that Eric was back, and deep in conversation with Sebastian. Disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to tell Sebastian her news right away, but not wanting to interrupt what looked and sounded important, she just gestured to the Spirit Elemental waiting at her place to serve her. She didn’t even notice what she was eating, she was waiting so impatiently for the two of them to end whatever their discussion was about.

  “…does seem like a delicate situation,” Sebastian was saying with a frown.

  Eric shrugged. “That’s what the Factor says. I’m not sure that delicate is the word I would use. The King and his Council are all sitting on the fence. The problem with being on the fence is that if you aren’t careful, you’ll get knocked off and trampled on.”

  “And the Prince?” Sebastian asked. “I don’t remember him as being indecisive.”

  “Wants to take the army to the border and present a united front against Waldenstein. Won’t move until his father says to, though. The King thinks sending some sort of diplomatic party to take the lay of the land is the better idea, and he’s not all that enthused about supporting Lorraine.” Eric’s lip twisted a little, but Bella couldn’t make out whether it was contempt for diplomacy or contempt for Lorraine. Maybe both.

  “But Lorraine is our ally!” Sebastian objected, waving his fork wildly in the air. It was a good thing it was empty.

  “So is Waldenstein,” Eric reminded him. “And Waldenstein has a bigger army.”

  Sebastian rubbed his temples. “This is not good. Is the Godmother involved?”

  “How would I know that? You tell me, you’re the magician,” Eric retorted. Then added, “I’d be surprised if she wasn’t, though.”

  Sebastian muttered under his breath; Bella couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then he spoke louder. “What we need is a nice thaw along the border to make things mushy,” he said. “That would buy us time. Waldenstein has a lot of heavy cavalry, and they can’t move in the mush.”

  “Why don’t you arrange that?” Eric’s tone made it clear he was joking, but Sebastian answered seriously.

  “I just might be able to. I’m already the most powerful magician in this part of the country, and with Bella to help, it would be easier. Not easy, magic never is, but easier.”

  Eric looked astonished. Probably as astonished as Bella felt. Sebastian was more or less assuming she would help with a major Work! That was incredible! She could scarcely believe he was trusting her with any part of something this big so early in her studies. Anytime you mucked about with weather, it was major. So many things to go wrong…so many things you could unbalance…

  “I’ll have to consult with the Godmother first, of course. But if it’s a good idea, she will probably get others to join the effort…” Sebastian pushed away from the table, and Bella caught a flicker of satisfaction on Eric’s face.

  It surprised her. Why would Eric be satisfied that Sebastian was going to undertake some major magic? This sort of thing needed days, weeks to set up in advance, and if you added more magicians to the mix, it would get even more complicated and add more time.

  And he wouldn’t have any time to do anything else. This was, after all, a priority.

  This might be another reason why Father has been looking so worried, and not just about me. War is never good for trade.

  “Maybe you had better go back to the city and keep me informed,” Sebastian continued. “You’ve got my note making you my representative—that will get you access to the Court, or at least, the King’s officials. Take a lot more pigeons with you.”

  Eric nodded. “I can do that. I’ve got ears everywhere.” He grinned. “Lots of them are attached to pretty little heads, too. There is nothing like a chambermaid for hearing what’s really going on.”

  “You’ll need money for bribes and tips.” Sebastian pulled a small square of paper out of one of the capacious pockets of his over-robe, and took out one of his enchanted pens that made their own ink from a special holder on the left side of his chest. He wrote out something in tiny, meticulous letters, then waved the paper in the air to dry it. “Here. I’m authorizing the Factor to release as much as you need from the surplus.”

  Eric folded it and put the paper into his pocket. “That will help. Palace servants aren’t cheap, only negotiable.”

  “And accurate information is worth whatever you have to pay for it.” Sebastian stood up. “I need to go talk to the Godmother.”

  “I’ll go pack for a longer trip.” Eric glanced over at Bella, and grinned. “And Abel will be the new Gamekeeper for a while, eh?”

  Something about the way he said that, gave her an odd feeling. She couldn’t quite place what it was. A vague unease, but why?

  “Don’t see why not,” she replied. “Have you spotted my collection of snares? I left them hanging in the barn on their own pegs so you would see them.”

  He grinned. “I have. Keep up the good work.”

  And with that, he pushed away from the table, leaving Bella to finish her dinner alone.

  When she had, she went straight up to the workroom. She found Sebastian sitting in front of a mirror just about big enough to allow someone to walk through it if they stooped. Until they had consulted the Servant together the other day, it had been covered by a drape. At the moment, it was black.

  He looked up at the sound of her footstep. “It seems the Godmother is already in the capitol consulting with the King. The Mirror Servant said that he would give her my message about using a thaw to make it difficult for Waldenstein to move its army on the border.” Then he frowned. “It’s odd. The Servant didn’t act as if the situation was as urgent as Eric thought.”

  “Maybe the Godmother already has a solution in place,” she suggested. “Eric couldn’t possibly have known that, if he left the city this morning.”

  “I suppose that’s possible—” Sebastian brooded for a moment. “Perhaps the Mirror Servant just doesn’t think the possibility of warfare is imminent. But Eric did seem impatient to get back and find out what was going on.”

  Or maybe Eric just wants to get back to the city and have a good time spending all that money you gave him access to. She thought that, but she didn’t say it. In the first place, it was none of her business, and in the second, he had been confined here just as long as Sebastian had.

  That letter making him Sebastian’s representative… He would get what he had wanted for a very long time now. The respect of the nobles. And if he somehow made himself useful to the King—

  Having a wizard you can call on as fast as the pigeon flies might do that—

  Then the King could do what no one else could. He could ennoble Eric himself. Grant him a title of his own. “Knight” might be too much to hope for, but he could certainly get “Esquire.”

  Of course, if the country went to war, “Knight” was not out of the question, either, provided you were useful enough. Much higher titles than that had been granted to bastards and even commoners who proved their worth to the King in war.

  “Well, this gives me a chance to tell you what the Servant told me,” she said, feeling the excitement all over again, as she carefully laid out what she’d been advised.

  He listened intently, his gaze brightening.

  “This…this is brilliant reasoning,” he said, finally. “It makes perfect sense. And I really won’t care if I’m a wolf three days out of the month, as long as I’m still under control of myself. Mind? It’ll be useful! Witches take years to learn to transform themselves and I already have this form! Oh, granted, all I have is a single form, but it’s a powerful one. One that can attack and defend itself, travel for miles without having to stop for a rest, hide just about anywhere—”

  “First, you have to make this whole altering-curse thing work, and you are the only one who can,” she cautioned. “The Servant said it wouldn’t be easy, and it probably won’t happen the first time you try.”

  His chin firmed. “I’m not giving up
, no matter how many times it fails. It will only take one success to turn this werewolf curse into a blessing! And then—I’ll be able to go anywhere!”

  “You’re going to alter your curse?” Eric said from the doorway, his brows furrowing. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before.”

  “Just because no one has, that doesn’t mean that no one can,” Sebastian replied. “This has the sanction of the Godmother herself. She thinks I can alter it so that even though I make the change, my own mind remains, instead of reverting to the beast.”

  “Oh, really.” Eric’s brows furrowed more. “I see what you mean by being able to go anywhere, then. You’d be just another magician who can transform himself.”

  “Only three nights a month,” Sebastian reminded him.

  Eric laughed. It sounded a little forced. “Three nights when you can be the nastiest thing in the forest—and almost the nastiest out of it,” he replied. “You’ll scarcely need me, then.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, I’ll always need you,” Sebastian told him, as he rummaged through a drawer for one of the sticks of graphite and a sheet of paper. “Meanwhile, I take it you came to say goodbye?”

  Eric nodded brusquely. “I’m spending the night, but I’ll be gone before you’re awake, and I know you—you are going to be working on that business of changing the weather past supper. I want to get to the city in good time to establish myself. If I am going to be representing you, I need to update my wardrobe and hire a few more servants for the town house. I can’t bring important folk to talk and not have enough servants.”

  Sebastian nodded absently, his mind clearly already on other things. “Do whatever you need to. We’ll be using the place, anyway, once I alter this curse, and the more you do now, the less you’ll have to do later.” Then he turned away from the diagram he was sketching out, to give Eric a warm smile. “I don’t know what I would have done without you all this time, you know.”

  Eric nodded somberly. “All right, then, I’m for an early bed and an early rise. Luck.”

  He left before either of them could say anything.

  For a moment, just a moment, Bella stared after him, a fleeting thought passing through her mind. Had Eric seemed less than pleased with their plans?

  But no, that was ridiculous. Sebastian had trusted Eric all his life—and with his life. Eric could have been rid of Sebastian a dozen times in the past five years, and no one would have faulted him for it.

  He’s probably just worried what will happen if Sebastian fails—he must have seen Sebastian’s hopes crushed a hundred times, and he doesn’t want Sebastian hurt anymore. Eric did seem to be the pessimistic sort—certainly the cynical sort.

  Well, we will just have to keep at it until we do actually alter the curse. We both know it won’t be easy. But we both know it will be worth it. Eventually Eric will see that, too.

  18

  THEY HAD WORKED OVER THE CALCULATIONS AND diagrams for the weather-altering plan until supper and beyond. Eric had been right; the two of them worked feverishly until their stomachs began growling, but they didn’t have to send anyone for food—Sapphire and Azure, the Spirit Elemental who generally attended Sebastian in the workroom, turned up shortly after that with another tray full of little bits of savory things they could just pick up and eat with one hand. This was complicated stuff, and Bella was, quite frankly, thrilled and more than a little frightened that Sebastian had decided that she should help work on it.

  He had brought out maps, consulted the Mirror Servant about the usual weather patterns at this time of year, asked him to figure out what, if any, problems a rise in temperature would cause the local inhabitants, then began drawing out the lines of power that ran from the Manor to that part of the Kingdom. And from there, he began making his calculations, with Bella double-checking them. He had to figure out how much change there would be, how fast, for every little rise in the temperature—of course, there was no way to measure the temperature rising, but he didn’t need to be able to do that. What he was using was a day. “If I make the land and air feel like the start of March—the second week of March—the end of March—the beginning of April—”

  Finally, he found the ideal day, the 17th of April. If he caused the entire border on the Waldenstein side to think it was that date, the deep snow that was there now would quickly become mush. The longer he held the spell in place, the more snow would melt, and the deeper the mud would become. Soon it would become impossible for wagons and heavy horses to pass—and if they could not, then so much for the passage of the Waldenstein army.

  That took care of the date they needed to match.

  Then came a much more mundane calculation—how deeply into Waldenstein lands should he go to make a proper barrier that would serve as a deterrent? He wanted to cover enough territory that it really became a slog, but he didn’t want to affect more than that, because this was going to throw off the whole growing season within that area for at least a year.

  Then, because of course, as soon as this started to happen—although it was a very novel technique—Waldenstein magicians would know what he was doing, and try to counter it, he began computing the countermeasures to their countermeasures.

  And when all of that was done, the magical parameters had to be calculated all over again, adding the powers and abilities of more magicians.

  Eventually, though, they had to stop. “Enough,” he said. “We have enough for the Godmother. There is no point in spending too much time on something she will either approve as it stands, modify or throw out altogether. It is weather magic… It is nothing you trifle with, and for all I know, she’ll decide that instead of being subtle, this situation warrants calling in a flight of dragons—or, more likely, calling a half dozen more Godmothers and setting up a Winter Carnival on the spot.”

  “A— You’re joking.” She looked at him askance.

  He shook his head. “Not a bit of it. She’s done it before. And who would dare bring an army across a spot full of Godmothers?”

  “No one in his right mind,” she agreed, and found herself yawning. “My head is full, and my eyes are starting to close by themselves.”

  “Mine, too.” He looked at her across the little table they were working at, and then, unexpectedly, leaned over it and kissed her.

  At first, her reaction was surprise. This was not the first time that a man had kissed her—although she had no serious suitors now, she had had three before the twins came of age. Well—they were serious, even if she hadn’t been. One had been a tentative kisser, one a demanding kisser and one had kissed her as if it was a duty.

  Sebastian was nothing like any of them. He was confident without being demanding, and although she sensed he would withdraw immediately if she reacted poorly, she could tell he was enjoying this.

  So was she….

  A wonderful wave of warmth enveloped her.

  Quite a lot…

  She closed her eyes and leaned toward him, just allowing herself to feel instead of think.

  It was very, very nice. It was more than nice. Her lips parted a little, and he licked and nibbled at them, sending all manner of pleasantly thrilling sensations up and down her body and—

  Slowly, regretfully, he drew back. “I think I had better—we had better—stop now,” he said. “Before things get quite enjoyable, extremely messy and potentially damaging to glassware and papers.”

  Feeling a little dizzy, she realized that she hadn’t taken a breath in quite a while. She did so, and stood up straighter. “Oh, my,” she said. “Ah—yes.”

  He blinked at her. “Erm…yes, what?”

  “Your question. The one you asked me about. The answer is yes.” She took another deep breath. “I realize that just having been kissed…like that…I am probably not in my right mind to be answering it. But having just been kissed like that more or less is the answer and I—” It was her turn to blink. “Bother. Too much talk, more kissing.”

  And she leaned across the tabl
e and kissed him.

  The result was not damaging to glassware or papers, although it did take a little careful maneuvering to a spot beside the hearth, a huge, ancient bearskin where they could sit and continue the experience without wreaking havoc. It didn’t—a little to her regret—get to the point where there was clothing flying about, but it did get to the point where buttons were unbuttoned, some laces were undone, and there was a certain amount of damage to hair and quite a bit of skin exposed. There was not enough goings-on to have caused a torch-bearing mob to descend in fear of werewolf cubs appearing in a few months, but there was enough to make her quite, quite certain that the first kiss had not only not been a fluke, it was the harbinger of better things to come.

  She let Sapphire help her the rest of the way out of her clothing and into a nightdress and robe in a bemused and preoccupied state of mind. Was it too early to hint about this to her father? Probably not. He could very well get annoyed with her if she didn’t give him some warning, and her letters of late had been more full of the patrols with and without Eric than they were of Sebastian.

  That might have been giving entirely the wrong impression.

  Sebastian’s a Duke. So far as Genevieve is concerned, he could be a hairy ape every day of the year as long as he has a title, and she would be over-joyed with the marriage. With her on my side, I don’t think Father can stand against us.

  Honestly, as long as she was happy, he probably wouldn’t even put up a token objection.

  But there was something else she hadn’t been telling him. While she’d talked about Sebastian working magic, and her own work in the stillroom, she hadn’t exactly told him, “And by the way, Father, it seems I’m a sorceress.”

  She settled down with pen and paper to detail what she and Sebastian had been doing all this time. I hadn’t quite made up my mind until now, because I really wasn’t sure that it meant anything, but now that I have, tonight, helped with something very difficult and important, I suppose it is time I confessed to you that I seem to be a magician…. There, get that shock over with first. Anything that came afterward would seem mild by comparison.