Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4)

by Holmberg, D. K.

  “My father was a powerful man.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “It was no kind of question.”

  I smiled tightly. “Well, my father was also a powerful man. That was never a secret to me. Even while living here, I knew about his painting ability and how he had pulled magic and power that other kids’ fathers couldn’t. It was hard for me knowing that secret, knowing that I was different from other kids, that it was good that I was different, even if they never understood.”

  Jakes stood and watched, letting me unload on him.

  “When we lost my mother and went to Arcanus, I realized how little I knew of my father. Everyone there treated him like some sort of celebrity. They knew him in ways that I did not. They knew him as the Elder, as this Master of Arcanus. In the time we were in Arcanus, I got to know him better than I ever had, and I finally started to feel settled. I was still different, but not in the same way. I’m not an artist, not like painters like Taylor. You’ve seen some of the patterns she can make. Hell, you’ve seen some of her drawings. That alone tells you all that you need about her abilities. I can’t do anything quite like that. While my father was in Arcanus, I was shielded somewhat. I was the Elder’s son. When he disappeared, that stopped. The other Masters thought him dead, but never told me why. I still don’t know why they believed he’d died. I was the only one who didn’t believe it. He’d left me with a few items; the key to your father’s shed for one, so how could he have died? What I thought stopped mattering. The teaching started to change—I was only a tagger, after all, with no real prospect of ever becoming anything more. And finally, I got fed up and left and returned here where I tripped the doorway across the Threshold and the Trelking claimed me. I spent ten hellish years on that side, Jakes. Ten years seeing unimaginable things. And now you’re suggesting that my father might have planned it? What sort of sick son of a bitch does that?”

  Jakes’s face didn’t really change. “Are you finished?”

  I shrugged. It felt good to unload some of that. Devan knew most of it, but I tried not to burden her too much with my issues with my father. She had her own problems that we worked through. She’d figured out most of my stuff over the time we’d known each other, just as I started to figure out some of the crap she dealt with regarding her father the longer we knew each other.

  “Yeah, I’m finished.”

  “You missed my point,” Jakes said.

  “What was it? That I should be thankful that my father chose to send me across the Threshold and tie me to the Trelking?”

  “You survived, didn’t you?”

  “Not because of anything he did.”

  Jakes shook his head. “No. You learned on your own. He provided the background you needed—and seeing some of the painting that I have from you, I know he taught you something, and more than you admit—and then released you into the world to learn on your own, as a father should do. As my father did. You would never have learned what you needed to learn had he been there and walked you through it. You’ve said yourself that you could not have learned what you needed while in Arcanus.” He let the words hang in the air a moment. “Would you really change anything?”

  I laughed at the audacity of his comment but couldn’t really come up with an argument against it. “Maybe the Trelking’s sentence. You know I owe nine and ninety years?”

  “You’ll never live long enough to serve that sentence, anyway.”

  I stared at him in shock—painters lived longer lives than your average person, so what he said could be taken as unnecessarily mean—before realizing that Jakes had made a joke. An honest to goodness joke. The gods must be dreaming for him to loosen up like that. “That’s what I figured. And if I ever manage to face the Druist Mage as he intends, I won’t live long enough for it to matter.” Jakes nodded, all joking gone. “What is this all about? Why put this around us?” I asked, waving my hand around toward where I suspected the magical protection must be in place that sealed us inside.

  “Because of your father. You keep thinking of him as a painter, but you need to think differently. He was—maybe still is—something more than that.”

  I looked over at the Rooster. I didn’t need to attempt a pattern to know that it would fail here, stopped by the protections placed around the diner by my father, but Jakes’s magic still worked. “Clearly.”

  “No. I don’t think that you fully understand. We’ve spoken of the Protariat—”

  “You’ve spoken of it, not me. I still don’t have any clue what that is.”

  “They are the reason this world remains unharmed by the powers on the other side of the Threshold. They are the reason those without magic can sleep safely at night without fearing the onslaught of an attack they do not have the capacity to understand.”

  “You said you weren’t going to explain the Protariat to me. What changed your mind?”

  “Because you need to know what this is all about. With the Trelking’s arrival, you’re being drawn in, whether you choose to or not.”

  “Figures,” I mumbled. I get dragged into so many things I don’t want to do. “My father was part of it, wasn’t he?”

  Jakes nodded. “As was my father.”

  “Who else? You said the Trelking—”

  “The Trelking is well known to be a member of the Protariat. The others are less well known. I cannot say with certainty.”

  I frowned, looking all around me. The Rooster was isolated from other parts of Conlin, sitting near the edge of town. Tall oak trees grew around it, none with their leaves yet changed, and blocked surrounding buildings from view. There was the diner and the parking lot with the few cars around, but nothing else. We were by ourselves.

  I thought of the magical beings that might know of the Protariat, that might either be a part of it or be working against it. That the Trelking was a part of it didn’t surprise me. That was sort of what he was about. Not for altruistic reasons, but they served the same end game. If he managed to keep and control power, he would keep that power away from the Threshold. And now I understood why Jakes wouldn’t contest him, why he hadn’t been willing to risk going against the Trelking when the Nizashi were in Conlin.

  “What of the Druist Mage?” I asked.

  Jakes shook his head. “His power is relatively new. I do not know.”

  “I thought that there weren’t new powers on that side. They only go from person to person.” Which made me wonder who—or what—had lost power so that the Druist Mage could acquire it.

  Jakes nodded. “It’s not only on that side.”

  “What are you playing at here, Jakes?”

  “Your father’s absence on this side creates challenges.”

  “What kinds of challenges?” Already, I didn’t like the way this conversation was turning.

  “You have seen that this town is more than it appears.”

  “No shit.”

  Jakes shot me a hard look. “Just as the Trelking provides balance on the other side of the Threshold, the Elder provided a certain balance to this side.”

  “And the shifters? Don’t you do anything?”

  “Do not downplay the role my people play in this, Morris. You are too new to fully understand.”

  I sighed. “And why tell me this now? You think my father might be gone, but there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

  “Balance requires strength on both sides. When one side sits with greater strength, balance is unsettled.”

  “You mean the Trelking.”

  “Him. And others like him.”

  “So the compass?”

  “I don’t claim to know its purpose, but you know that everything in Conlin has some purpose. The Elder saw to that.”

  “And now that he’s gone, at least now that you think he’s completely gone, you think balance must be restored?”

  Jakes uncrossed his arms and placed his thumbs into his pockets. “You have been back in Conlin for three months?”

  “Thereabouts.”r />
  “In that time, you’ve seen the challenges Conlin faces. The city has always drawn others of similar skill to it, whether they know it or not. With the Elder’s absence, that draw remains, but there is no one able to guide it.”

  I laughed. What else could I do? It all sounded so crazy, but then it wasn’t really any crazier than anything else I’d been through in my life. Hell, I’d spent nearly a decade on the other side of the Threshold, learning my patterns from a man determined to marry his daughter off to a beast of a man I was somehow destined to kill. If that wasn’t some kind of crazy, I didn’t know what was.

  “I’m not that person, Jakes. I’m not anything like my father.”

  He stared at me for a moment, his dark eyes so unreadable. “You have proven more like your father than I think he ever expected.”

  “As if you knew what my father expected of me.”

  “I know that he would have wanted you to learn to control your gifts. He wanted you to learn to control your power. He would not have made his home in this place if it were not important to him. By making a home here, it became a home to you, as well. Even if I didn’t know anything else about the Elder, that would tell me how important this city was to him.”

  “He took me from here after my mother—”

  “Because he knew you needed to learn.”

  “And refused to teach,” I said. We had started moving closer, and I realized that I now stood almost to Jakes’s nose, staring up at the huge shifter. I took a step back. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to protect the city. I came to learn what I needed to keep my friend safe.”

  “Do not think me foolish enough to believe that she is only a friend.”

  “No. I’ve been an idiot about that, but not anymore.”

  He smiled at me. I wished I was bigger so I could punch him. I’d probably end up hurting my hand if I tried to hit him. “You have. Your feelings have been clear from the moment you stepped into Conlin.”

  I must have been the only one unable to see that. “Well then, you know that I will do anything to keep her from the fate her father intends for her. If that involves leaving Conlin again, then I’m sure as shit going to do it. We were here long enough to see if there was anything of my father’s that might help me protect her.”

  “You’ve found many things of the Elder’s still in Conlin. We have kept them intact for a reason.”

  “And that’s for me? Because you haven’t been exactly forthcoming with them.”

  “We kept them for him,” he said. “But if the Elder is gone”—I could tell from his tone that he thought he was, but there was a hint of hope mixed in—“you needed to prove yourself worthy. Had we simply given the items to you, they would not have been earned. The Elder did not simply give you the knowledge you needed to help protect the city, either.”

  I took a deep breath. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. “How could my father have been the one to provide balance? He was a painter. Damn skilled, but a painter, nothing like the Trelking.”

  “Your father was a painter,” Jakes agreed. “That was how he started. But you must have known that he became more than that, that he became skilled enough to be considered one of the magi.”

  I didn’t know much about magi. The Druist Mage sat among them. I suspected that had Nik continued to learn, he might have eventually come to sit with the magi. Now he would do nothing more than sit in the lower level of the shed. They worked in magics different from what the painters controlled, different from what the Trelking managed. It was part of the reason the Trelking feared and respected the Druist Mage. Hell, it was the reason I wanted to learn from Nik.

  “No, if he was a magus, I would have known. I would have heard about it before now.”

  “Haven’t you heard of it, Morris? The Elder manages to create sculptures of power that can trap a doorway. He manages to use patterns of power to contain other beings of power. He was powerful enough to seal this place from magical danger,” he said, motioning toward the Rooster. “Knowing that the Elder was one of the magi doesn’t change anything you knew about him.”

  “You’re wrong there, Jakes. It would change everything. I can understand painting. I can learn patterns, even the most challenging of the arcane patterns, but how the hell am I to understand him if he was a magus. And how can you expect me to help protect Conlin? That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? You think I can somehow step into my father’s shoes?”

  Jakes’s eyes hardened. “You have proven capable of learning what your father knew. You might need help at first, but I have seen how resourceful you are. I don’t doubt that you can learn even more, especially now that you’ve found help.”

  That had been the reason I wanted to thaw Nik enough that I could learn from him so that we could keep Devan safe from the Druist Mage. “What happens if there isn’t balance on this side?”

  Jakes’s face clouded. “The Protariat will not allow the balance to fail. Another will come to assume power and hold the balance.”

  “Another. The Trelking? The Druist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The way he said it sent chills up my spine.

  “Consider whether you can serve, Morris.”

  I already knew what I would say. I didn’t have the strength or the skill needed to provide balance against the Trelking. I’m shocked my father had that much strength. I knew he was powerful, but strong enough to counter the Trelking?

  That wasn’t what I wanted. My goals were pretty simple: I wanted to learn enough to keep Devan safe, maybe live out my days with her in quiet peace.

  “If I do this, will you help?”

  He smiled again. The man never smiled. It was beginning to unsettle me. “Have you ever been without help?”

  I laughed. “When you put it like that. I’ll think about it. That’s all I can commit to for now.”

  Jakes’s eyes went flat for a moment, and the protection he’d erected dropped. The cold wind battered me, the power that Jakes had been holding in place now releasing us back to the elements.

  It was the most he and I had spoken since I learned his secret. Were we friends now, not just friendly?

  “What are you going to do about the compass?” I asked him.

  “Don’t know. What will you do about your task?”

  “I don’t know.” I glanced over at my truck. It was time for me to find Devan and start figuring out what the Trelking was really up to. There was only one place to learn, but that meant being a little more aggressive with my magic. “Tell Tom I stopped by. I still want to catch up with him when everything slows down.”

  “Do you really think that happens around here, Morris?”

  I laughed. “Guess not.” I started toward my truck and stopped, turning back to Jakes. “Hey. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, if you show up at your father’s house and find it destroyed, that will be my fault. So I’m sorry.”

  Jakes laughed softly. “I think the Elder once told my father the same thing.”

  Then he turned and went back into the Rooster.

  9

  Big Red rumbled through the streets. I wasn’t paying as much attention to where I was going I should have been, so focused on what Jakes had just told me. Could my father really have been a magus? I knew he had power—hell, half of the things I’d seen since returning to Conlin took a different type of power than I could manage as a painter, but I’d always thought the magi were something different.

  I turned the truck down the road toward Jakes’s house. I probably should wait for Devan—she might be pissed that I came here alone—but I needed to learn what I could from Nik as quickly as possible. We had less than two days remaining to find the damn box, and I was no closer to locating it than I was before, and I still wanted to figure out why the compass had been stolen.

  I pulled the truck into the driveway and let it roll to a stop in front of the garage. Jakes’s house was an older rambler, probably built in the
fifties, and still had some of the stylings from when it was first built. His father had painted it a dark brown, almost chocolate. Normally, I’d not think much of the color, but in the magical world, colors mattered. For all I knew, my father had been the one to paint the house, just as he’d painted my house. Having the Elder working as a simple house painter would add power and protection to the house.

  I smiled at the thought of my father out here working with a paintbrush, imagining Jakes’s father standing there, Mr. Miyagi style, and saying “Paint the house!”

  At this time of day, I hadn’t expected anyone to be home. Jakes was at the diner, and I didn’t think anyone else lived here, but the front door popped open, and Kacey came out to greet me.

  “Oliver? Sam isn’t here.”

  She was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and small shorts that showed her long, slender legs. Kacey was cute, but petite, especially for a shifter. Compared to Jakes, she was tiny. The thought of the two of them together made me fear for her safety. Unless shifters had to get at it while in their wolf form, but even then, Kacey wasn’t much larger.

  “Yeah, I just saw him over at the Rooster. He was giving me a little fatherly advice.”

  Kacey frowned. She set her hands on her hips, exposing a little of her stomach. “I’m not sure you want to take any advice like that from Sam. He’s been through too much to really give you anything useful.”

  “I think he meant it to be helpful.”

  Kacey glanced at the truck as if noticing that Devan wasn’t there and then faced me. “Anything I can help with?”

  “Oh, you know, I’m here to play in Jakes’s shed. I told him I couldn’t promise that it would still be here when he returned.”

  Kacey laughed. “I doubt he’d mind. If it wasn’t for the fact that your father helped build the house, I think he would have stayed where he was. With his father…”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Kacey nodded. “Yeah.” She started to turn. “Let me change, and I’ll join you in case you need any help.”