Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars Book 2)

by Daniel Potter

  The carpet grew thick and spongy beneath my paws, moisture soaking into my fur. The bell rang. Students and teacher surged into the hallways then slowed. Richard and I stopped as the students murmured in puzzlement when their feet refused to lift from the ground. The teacher, a young man with short cropped hair, made an odd squawking sound and attempted to shoo the children onward even as his face pushed out into a beak and his ears began to flap. The children made little noises of surprise and pain as their bodies continued to betray them, their flesh transmuting into wood, clothing into multicolor bark. The teacher's head took off from his shoulders and circled above his garden brood, their hair blossoming into green and the hair adornments of the little girls opened into a bewildering array of colorful flowers.

  The ceiling opened and streams of bright sunlight fell onto the students, who made cooing noises as they shifted, widening their stances to soak up the light.

  Richard and I had both taken several steps back from the spectacle. The teacher's body grew into a nursery tree, his roots tangled with the feet of his students as his head developed further into a roundish bird with facial features on the torso, like a peacock potato head.

  "Well chop chop. Let gets the tass," Richard suggested, squaring his shoulders and sucking in a breath between his teeth. His unease mirrored my own.

  Do it for O'Meara, I thought to myself and fervently hoped that the teacher's head found its way back to his body. Letting my eyes un-focus, the tiny points of light twinkled into existence. I breathed a sigh of relief as they gathered in the rapidly swelling fruits in the girls' hair and on the branches of their teacher tree. Richard readied a tass bag and hurried into the child garden to pluck the tass fruits and flowers. Nothing objected and we moved down the hallway to the next group and then another.

  I did my best to ignore the children as we moved among them. Their blank wooden eyes with irises of green moss would only move when my back was turned on them.

  The purple tint of the place began to fade after Richard's bag had become so laden with the tass fruits that he tied it to my harness and took out another one.

  I was focused on the tass so closely that I never even saw the starburst of Dorothy's channeling until a gale of wind punched me into the air and tossed me down a hallway. I sailed through a door and crashed into several bush-like students. They made an odd whistling sound that could have been pain or laughter.

  Dorothy stood in the doorway, her braided hair whipping around as her head had its own personal whirlwind. I attempted to disentangle myself, but the students seemed be quite intent on petting me with their twig-like fingers. I feared if I moved too fast I'd break them. "That tass you have belongs to House Morganna, cat. Hand it over."

  I regarded her coolly as I carefully extricated myself from the children, while a chorus of birds squawked overhead. "Heh, no. This is fairly gathered and spoken for. If you hurry, you might be able to pick a few scraps up."

  Thomas, where'd you go? Richard's thought had a frantic edge to it.

  Windbag blew me down a hallway. She's got me cornered in a classroom, I responded, giving him the full view of her.

  Which classroom?

  Any possible room numbers were covered with the thick vines that had grown over the walls. One with kids in it.

  The technomagi swore in frustration as he turned to retrace our steps. While we'd talked Fee had appeared, pushing around Dorothy's legs and showing me her white teeth.

  "You should reconsider that!" Fee growled low and dangerous.

  "Oh you're resorting to muggings now? How very high class!" I said. "We won. You lost this one. Now why don't you both step out of my way before my magus blasts you both in the back with a force wand?"

  The pair startled and both flinched their heads to the left to glance behind them.

  I leapt, striking Fee in the shoulder with a paw and slammed my body into Dorothy's midsection. "Oof!" she exhaled as she sailed into the foliage-covered wall.

  As I sprinted down the hallway, Fee let loose a torrent of barks and scrabbled after me. The scent of blood filled my mouth as I bounded over a trio of de-woodifing third graders. They let out cries of surprise as Fee plowed into them like a jet-black bowling ball. Idiots! Couldn't these two decide to pick a fight in some transition that wasn't populated with children? I hoped they hadn’t hurt any kids with that windblast. I crossed the intersection where I'd be ambushed.

  There! I see you. Richard's mind sagged with relief.

  "Come back here!" Dorothy shouted from somewhere behind me. A whirl of yellow energy flickered to life ahead of me. I dropped out of my run, twisted my front paws and dug them into the still-moss-like floor. My momentum forced my entire body to pivot around to face Fee. I didn't have time to growl a warning. I lashed out with a paw and smacked her in the side of the head with the full force of my 200-pound frame. The much smaller dog pitched sideways and I caught her with a second paw, smacking her legs out from under her. A rush of violent air exploded behind me, interrupting my pounce and knocking me to all fours.

  Fee rolled back to her feet and staggered as the wind tore at my fur while the lab's black coat was undisturbed. A focus on her leather collar shielded her from the storm. Beneath me the flooring rejected my claws as our reality emerged as the victor once again. I hunkered down as the battered dog backed up three steps before retreating to Dorothy's side.

  Richard skidded into the intersection, his shoes squeaking on the tile. "Cease assaulting my familiar!" The dull yellow aura of the anti-wind shell pulsed around him.

  "Liar! He’s not yours! I don't know why you’re trying to hide your connection to the Inquisition, but it stops now!" The wind behind me ceased, but Dorothy pulsed with so much energy that it drowned out Richard's aura almost entirely. If she unleashed it, that would be like loosing a tornado inside the school.

  The entire trio was paying attention now. "Thomas is my familiar," Richard said, trying to project calm into his voice while the three of them ran probabilities on whether or not the anti-wind shell could take that much of a blow. "And he has shown restraint so far in defending himself." I approached Richard and pushed up against the man's hip.

  Fee spoke, "I smell only the barest whiff of a bond between you. It must be faked."

  "It’s a newer one," I said.

  "No! Sniffed your true bond, cat! For a brief moment at the duel! You're cloaking spell on it failed. You're still bonded to her!"

  A burble of confusion came from the trio. Is that how it works?

  "If that’s the real issue, you probably should have led with that instead of throwing me down a hallway." I chuckled. "You wanted my lunch money." The burbling of children drifted through the hallways, and I felt the cold prickle the Veil on my neck. The hall monitor had returned. "Feel that? The Veil's back. You release all that wind you're holding onto and it might take some drastic measures. It’s been having to work real hard with all these transitions, and I'm sure it’s looking for excuse to flatten a magus or two."

  Dorothy narrowed her eyes, but her channeling ceased. "We don't know what O'Meara is trying to pull here! But I'm going to find out what she did to my aunt."

  "Again, you won't get very far with me if you lead with a punch. You attack me again like that and I'll use my claws. I don't like bullies, Magus Dorothy, and I didn't like your aunt for the same reason."

  Ever so slightly Dorothy flinched when compared to the elder magus.

  Richard thought, We believe she was attempting to get you to channel through O'Meara and reveal your nonexistent bond with her.

  Dorothy glowered. "You cannot break a bond like Fee scented between you and O'Meara! You'd both be dead!"

  I shook my head. “And yet we breathe alone. Anything is possible with enough tass, time and knowledge. The Archmagus had plenty of all three. Because of him, my bonds work differently. That's all there is.”

  "That’s not fair," she whispered more to herself than me.

  "Let’s go, Thomas," Richard sa
id.

  "Ask those three kids you and Fee bowled over trying to get at me what's fair, Dorothy," I growled as I started to back away.

  Richard and I had made it around corner when she called out at us. "This isn't over!"

  Damn right it wasn't.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Richard and I both expected to find a respite and a bit of decompression back at the workshop, but no sooner had we laid out my broken wind blocker in front of a clucking Tom and Harry did a pint-sized ball of shine and fury explode through the door.

  "Who did it? Tell me now!" Ixey shouted.

  "You know, Jules, since this is a House chamber now maybe it’s time you start locking that door," Sandra said, not looking up from her workbench where she had several pieces of the clank laid out on the table.

  Ixey focused the full force of her fury on the woman, crossing her arms and glaring. It was much more intimidating when O'Meara did it. Ixey lacked the bulk to suggest she could toss you through a window, magic or no magic. When Sandra refused to meet her eyes, she turned them on Jules, who blanched.

  "Ixey—" Jules started.

  "Inquisitor Ixey," she corrected him, jabbing a thumb toward the hilt of the sword slung over her back. Her clothing was unchanged from when we'd last seen her at the duel and looked it. The scent of days and paper lay over her like a thick musk and the circles under her eyes hinted that the shaman hadn't slept much if at all since the duel.

  "Inquisitor, my mistake." Jules grimaced. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us what you're going on about?"

  "You should know," Garn said in the loudest voice I'd ever heard from the lizard, "It is technomagic!"

  "What is?" Jules insisted.

  "If you don't know, then someone in this room does." She scanned the room and scowled, her eyes lingering on Sandra. "If it wasn't you, then the duel is doubly invalidated. Not only did someone cheat, but that person was outside the duel itself."

  "WHAT!" Jowls finally looked up from his feigned nap on the corner of the workbench. "Madam! I assure you we conducted ourselves in the highest of honorable fashions. It was win-win for us, even if we lost."

  "That's what I thought, which is why I allowed that barely held together aegis in the first place. But then I found this buried under my arena circle." Ixey pulled a plastic baggie from her pocket that contained something small and battery-powered. One of those computers on a tiny board. I crept forward to try to get a better look only to find it shoved in my face. "Recognize it, Thomas? See any of your new friends here working on it before the duel?"

  The device had two layers, a printed circuit board studded with fairly large chips and a breadboard with a host of fried electronics centered round a broken silver ring. The plastic in the circle appeared to be worn, having a powdery coating.

  I shook my head. "We were focused on building the aegis. Nobody worked on a side project as far as I can remember."

  "And how much can you remember?"

  None of us did it, the trio thought at me. But any of us could have.

  "I can vouch for Richard," I said.

  "As a good familiar would," Ixey said.

  "Ixey, that’s a very basic remotely detonated spell," Jules said.

  She whirled back to Jules. "Nothing basic about it. The spell that went off consisted of energy almost from Veronica's anchor. That’s why I missed it." She held up a finger. "But specifically tuned to degrade spell weaving. Not so strong that it would hurt a good spell, mind you, but a cobbled together thing like that aegis? Worked well."

  "Ixey! Please! Stop pretending you're O'Meara and jumping to conclusions!” Jules protested. "Anyone with a basic understanding of spellcraft and technomagic could have rigged that circuit."

  Ixey drew herself up and regarded Jules with cold eyes. "If O'Meara was well then there wouldn't be a question of who had done it. But! I'm far more likely to delegate." She shook her wrist, which contained the gems that housed her spirits. I caught a flitter between them.

  Jules regarded them. "Spirits generally can't see real magic any more than a human."

  "Untrue," Ixey said. "But I'm not delegating the task to my friends. I'm delegating it to you, Jules."

  "What?" Jules nearly squeaked. "You can't ask me to do that! I won't!"

  "Why not? You clearly know more than I about the spell. It’s perfectly understandable for a young Inquisitor to recruit local experts, and I know you have a shred of honesty when you're not bilking the local werewolves. You're the only technomagus I trust." Ixey's eyes shimmered like one of the sequins on her jacket.

  "And if I... refuse?" Jules looked pained.

  Ixey shrugged. "Then I'm clearly out of my depth. I'll be forced to call for a full Inquisition in the matter."

  Sandra froze, along with everyone in the room. "That is a very, very wide hammer you are wielding, Miss Inquisitor."

  "One that will hit all of us in many ways, I suspect, but if I can't trust my friends, then it be will worth the hit." She included me as she scanned the room.

  Sandra spoke, "The Inquisitors will never bother coming. Grantsville is too small."

  "Small places with a transition every three days? They'll be here faster than I can pop the popcorn." Her head snapped to Jules. "I want a signed confession within twenty-four hours."

  Without waiting for an answer, she and Garn strode out the door, the customer alarm binging once before the door eased closed, the piston at the top emitting a soft hiss. Jules stood, stalked to the door and locked it with the twist of his wrist. He paused, and I heard the soft thud of his forehead falling against the glass.

  He rammed his head one more time against the door before he turned and faced us, the expression on his face grim. "I don't know who did this, but if they are in this room, then I suggest you never let me find out. The weaver weaves as she wills and all of our threads may have shortened today."

  "I didn't expect you to have a melodramatic streak, Jules," I quipped, trying to break the tension.

  I felt Richard reaching into my mind, searching for something. I pushed him away and gave him a stern look.

  "You have no idea what a formal Inquisition means," the trio said, their voices synching together.

  "If Ixey's right, then Neelius' death was no accident, and that person has something to answer for." My tail gave a slow, dangerous lash as my muscles tensed. "Almost worse, it would mean Dorothy was right."

  "You and your justice, Thomas!" Rudy's laugh bounced around the small room. "Forgive him, guys. Thomas watched a lot of Law and Order when he was a mund."

  The joke hit the magi with an almost audible thud. Jowls chuckled a little as he lifted his head from his tightly curled body. "Are you showing your kitten teeth again, Thomas?"

  Everyone else laughed then, high and nervous.

  "We need to figure out House Technomagi's response," Sandra said. The other magi nodded.

  "I agree, but it's best we do that without the hired help." Jules looked at me.

  Rudy bounced from the tables and onto his usual perch behind my neck. "Come on, Thomas, let’s go menace a noodle dog or something!"

  "Alright. Mind unlocking the door then?" I waved one large paw in Jules' direction, hopefully illustrating that deadbolts were beyond my ken. While I could do it with my teeth, the process was quite undignified.

  Jules looked over to Richard, and the trio shifted nervously. "Unless you're willing to pledge yourself to House Technomagi's service for life, I'm going to ask you break your bond with Richard. Perhaps 'withdraw' would be a better term?"

  I looked back to the other magi and found Jowls staring at me with particular intensity. Scrying no doubt to see how I did it.

  "You can re-bond me as soon as we're done," Richard assured me.

  "Well, maybe I want a turn," Tom added.

  I pondered making an effort of pledging client confidentially but decided I really didn't want to go down that rabbit hole. "That is no problem at all." I nodded, mentally nudging Mr. Bitey's mind to wakefulnes
s. The snake read my intentions and snapped the link. The trio shivered and it was done. The fur around my neck stirred as Mr. Bitey's body slipped through it.

  Jules blinked and opened the door for Rudy and me. I trotted into the parking lot. "Give us about six hours to discuss our options please. We'll text the squirrel when we finish."

  "Great, I guess I'll just walk myself. You guys should think about getting a bigger pad," I said.

  "Working on that," Jules said as he closed the door behind me. The click of the lock seemed to echo through the parking lot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "Hey Thomas, you want to see a magic trick?" Rudy chittered from the branches above me.

  Lacking a better idea, Rudy and I had retreated back to his abode. He lived in a huge misshapen tree with oak leaves that didn't smell right. The leaves had also completely refused to shed, making it the only tree outside of a granny's greenhouse that sported bright green leaves. Also rather suspicious was the tree-sized hole in the house that occupied the nearest lot. The squirrel had steadfastly refused to talk about it, and I decided that unless I caught the thing moving I really didn't need to know.

  However, the "tree" was an ideal spot for Rudy. He had built a nest nearly four times the size of a basketball nestled between the two branches that reminded me of arms, with the nest itself being the tree's head.

  I eyed the squirrel. "How about you tell me why the hell Jules doesn't want to find out who killed Neelius? Because I don't think he did. If he finds the perpetrator, he avoids this Inquisition."

  Rudy made a disgusted sound. "Cause you wedged this whole House idea into his head, and a House never ever gives the Inquisition a member unless ordered directly by the Council. He gives somebody up, and he invalidates his House before it’s recognized."

  It clicked. "And Ixey's pissed that somebody rained on her parade as an Inquisitor. That bomb was something a more experienced person might have caught."

  "As punishment for screwing her, she's going to strangle House Technomagi in the crib with an Inquisition."