“So the monkeys were held wherever Toh’sellor was,” Maksohm said in a slow, thoughtful manner. “And the energy barrier was created from Toh’sellor’s energy to craft a means to keep the monkeys active even after being separated. Rena, how long would that energy barrier have lasted on its own?”
“Before just running down? Best guestimate puts it at about a week.”
“You’re absolutely positive that the monkeys were independent of Toh’sellor? Nothing connecting them?” Vee pressed.
“That’s what I spent an hour on,” I admitted to her, grimacing. I really wished I had a different answer. Our lives would be so much easier that way. “No. The energy was only in the barrier, only in the monkey itself; there was no tether back to Toh’sellor. I kept hoping for the opposite, that I could find something to trace back….” I trailed off with a sigh. Sometimes my eyes were particularly useless. I could see the obvious but not what I needed to see.
Maksohm patted my arm consolingly. “You can’t see what isn’t there.”
“Yeah, not your fault someone’s crazy enough to figure out a way to create Toh’sellor minions and then turn them loose on the world.” Vee slouched further into the couch, glaring at the garden as if it had personally offended her mother. “Poor Chi’s now so alarmed that there’s Minion Monkeys that he refuses to be in the baths without either Bannen or Maksohm. Not that I blame him.”
“Any connection to the corpses from earlier? Aside from them each having been around Toh’sellor recently, I mean.”
“Yes and no. The signature of the barrier’s construct was similar, I think it had the same designer. But the function of it was totally different. I don’t think they were intended to do the same thing.”
Our team leader flopped back into the chair. The relaxed air he had about him was gone now, leaving a tired and worried man in its wake. “What exactly are they hoping to gain from this, anyway? Are they just experimenting right now, testing their limits?”
“If they’re capable of creating an energy barrier that works without a mage holding it, you’d think they could put those brains to some other project,” Vee groused.
While part of me was inclined to agree with her.... “I think it actually takes Toh’sellor’s energy to make it work. The energy barrier, I mean. Traditional magic has proven it isn’t up to the task. Chaos energy is unstable, I grant you, but extremely powerful in small doses.”
“The change of energy source made the working theory viable.” Maksohm rubbed at his forehead wearily. “You’re just full of cheerful thoughts today, aren’t you?”
A little apologetically, I shrugged and gave him a game smile. “Sorry. You did ask.”
“I regret asking you things sometimes. Don’t think I don’t.” Sighing, he let it go with a flick of the fingers. “That’s theory. We now have it established this was the same group that stole the familiars, which means they’ll likely try this again with those familiars, turn them loose with Toh’sellor’s madness in them, and that…I hate that thought. Those poor familiars and kids.”
I hated it too. I hated it with a passion. If there was a way to prevent it from happening, I’d have done it in a heartbeat, but I couldn’t think of a way. “Please help me keep an eye on Bannen. He won’t say it, but the idea of being kidnapped like the other familiars scares him. He’d fight them off, we all know he would, but if he’s exposed to Toh’sellor’s energy—” I stopped abruptly, as I couldn’t complete the sentence out loud.
“Sarding son of a Bauchi,” Vee swore, tone guttural and vicious. “They’d better not try it with him.”
“I do understand why you’re worried.” Maksohm turned in his chair, hand catching mine in a reassuring grip of warm skin. His dark eyes met mine levelly. “He’s a very unique familiar, one of two in the world—of course he’s famous enough to be known. But unlike those other familiars, he’s constantly on the move. He’d be very hard to target.”
That did reassure me. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but even we had little forewarning to our next destination. It would be hard for someone else to track him.
“And of course I’ll help safeguard him,” Maksohm swore. “For your sake as well as his. In fact, let’s put our heads together and think of a way to create a barrier spell for him, something he can activate if he needs to.”
“Something on a necklace?” Vee offered, wheels already spinning in her mind.
I slowly straightened, captivated by this thought. It wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, of course, not without another mage powering it. But those few minutes might be all Bannen needed to fight his way free and get enough distance from Toh’sellor that he couldn’t be corrupted into a minion. “I’ll fetch some paper and a pencil.”
Setting my cool tea down quickly, I left my chair in a flash, bounding for the gift shop in the lobby.
“If you’re headed for the gift shop, see if they have any necklaces we can use!” Vee called after me. “You know what to get!”
I did indeed.
We were barely in the private dining room two seconds when the three mages sprung their surprise. I don’t know who was more astonished by the gift, me or Chi. I stared at the necklace in my wife’s hands, an inconspicuous thing that looked like a cherry blossom. “Wait. Wait a minute, this is a portable barrier spell?”
Vee gave Chi no time to question, just put his on, her hands reaching around his neck to fasten the clasp. “It won’t give you more than five minutes, unfortunately; that’s as far as we could push it. We had the thought earlier that if this crazy group of rogue mages are kidnapping familiars and experimenting on them, they might go after you.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to make sure it won’t happen,” Maksohm promised me, voice firm as a mountain. “And I give it low odds of succeeding in the first place, with how much we move around. You’re hard to get a lock on. But still, just in case, if it does, and you’re near Toh’sellor, this will automatically activate. It should give you five minutes to fight your way free and make tracks. Anything more than thirty feet from Toh’sellor, you should have a fighting chance of staying yourself.”
“And me?” Chi asked quietly. He looked flummoxed by the necklace, staring at it hard.
“You’re always with him,” Vee answered softly. “And I know that you won’t let someone kidnap him without a fight. So just in case.”
Chi grabbed her by the head and drew her abruptly down into a very thorough kiss.
I figured he had the right idea and hauled both Rena and Maksohm in for a hug, squeezing the stuffing out of them. Both of them hugged me back just as fiercely and I felt tears prick my eyes.
Fighting off kidnappers was a piece of cake. Fighting off Toh’sellor’s energy was beyond my power. If I was taken, if I was exposed, I’d be forever corrupted and doomed because there’s nothing that can be done at that point. They’d be forced to kill me, to put me down like a raving beast. The possibility was terrifying. For my own sake, of course, but also for Rena’s. If I died, she was doomed to shortly follow after me, and that thought was heart-wrenching. My thoughts had gone that way a few times only to have them scream and shy away at the last minute like a cat about to be eviscerated.
One of these three had realized it. They’d put their heads together to give me a way to overcome my mortal weakness, and this was their solution. Not absolute protection—I wouldn’t have been able to handle being stuck in some glass cage—but instead, the ability to protect myself. To rescue myself. I loved them so fiercely in that moment my heart hurt with it.
“Wow,” Rena said quietly against my shoulder, “I think he’s speechless. Good job, us.”
There’s my snarky wife. “You knew I was worried about this.”
“I did,” she admitted, not even trying to draw back. “Can’t take credit for the idea, though, that’s Dah’lil’s.”
“You’re all geniuses.” I could’ve stayed there a few more hours hugging the s
tuffing out of them, but I needed to hug Vee too. I drew back and saw her and Chi still going at it, but it didn’t bother me any. I shifted to her back instead and gave her a back hug.
Vee broke the kiss, laughing. “What are you, a koala bear?”
“Thank you, sister of my heart,” I told her gravely. “I didn’t actually want any more sisters, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”
“Love you too,” she drawled back, reaching around to pat the one section of me she could, which happened to be my right hip. “Now maybe you’ll stop worrying so much?”
“You gave me the means to fight back,” I answered with a shark-like smile. “Trust me, I can handle the rest.”
We split up the next morning, Vee and Chi going one direction, Rena, Maksohm, and I the other, taking a closer look at the portals but also trying to locate any eyewitnesses. Portals that brought through that many monkeys were the same in-and-out constructs as the others we’d seen. And Rena was convinced that no one would go through this much effort to change the monkeys without staying nearby and studying the effects when their experiments were loosed again. I agreed with her, but finding evidence of that, that would be the trick.
We trudged along the city streets, trying to stay warm. With the monkeys gone, people were putting the damage back to rights. Things that had been knocked over the day before were either thrown out if too damaged to be repaired, or taken up if they could be salvaged.
Maksohm gave a ‘huh’ and went for one of the vendor carts that still lay on its side. An older man, somewhere in his late sixties, had a bar under it and was trying to use the leverage of a bucket and the pole to get the cart back upright. I didn’t see it happening and stepped up as well, Maksohm taking one side, me the other. To the man, I said respectfully, “Wait, Elder, we can get this up for you.”
“Bless you both,” he responded, voice creaking with age. He pushed himself up, hands on knees, then stayed a little stooped over, his back no longer straight in his older years. “My grandson said he’d come by after he got his cart up, help me with it, but the city was pushing us to get the streets cleared by noon. I thought I should at least try.”
The cart was not light, being solidly constructed of oak wood, but Maksohm and I managed it alright. I noticed as I moved it that one of the wheels was cracked, and frowned down at it; that could grow worse very quickly in this cold. “Maksohm, how are your woodworking skills?”
“Decent carpenter level, why?” He came around to see where I pointed and went, “Ah. Yes, that I can fix.”
“Oh, no, sirs,” the elder vendor protested, hands raising in a staying motion. “You’ve helped me a gracious plenty. I can’t ask that from you.”
“Perhaps you can repay us in information,” Rena suggested with a charming smile and that look in her eye that she gets when she’s about to go into a market place. “We’re trying to figure out what exactly happened yesterday. The monkeys were portaled in not far from here. Did you see any of that?”
“I sure did,” the man grumbled to her, his thick brows slamming together in outrage, his gnarled hand rising to point unerringly to the portal sight. “Wish I hadn’t, it nearly gave me heart failure. A wide portal, about four feet across, it opened up right there near the corner. Monkeys came barreling out, screeching like demons, and they flooded me quickly. The cart went down in minutes, me ducking behind it, as I didn’t know what else to do. They leapt over me that way. I suppose the cart going down was a blessing in disguise.”
Finally, an eyewitness. Very interested in what else he had to say, I encouraged, “Anything other than monkeys that came through?”
“No, can’t say there was.” He pondered a moment, then shook his head. “Didn’t see any mages, just monkeys.”
“What about the portal?” Rena pressed, eyes alight. “Did you see through the portal itself and where the monkeys were coming from?”
The elder shrugged, hands splaying to the side. “Can’t say that’s all that helpful. I did see it, but it was nothing but stone beyond them. It looked like a cave to me. Not sure what you’d make of that.”
A cave? He was right, that wasn’t particularly helpful, but it was the first clue that we’d gotten about a location in days. I shared a glance with Maksohm and he looked just as intrigued by the information.
We thanked him, the wheel repaired, and kept walking. We stumbled across a few other people on the same street who had also seen the portal opening, mostly shop owners. They all repeated the same information, that a portal had just suddenly opened, monkeys pouring through. Some of them had noticed the cave in the background, some of them had been too busy running from the monkeys to see anything. One lady castigated us for not getting there sooner, as she’d lost half of her wares, and Maksohm had to talk her down before she went and filed a report against us. Not that we expected that to do anything, really, but apparently we were encouraged to leave people on good terms when possible.
Somewhere around lunch, we met up again at the inn. After five hours of tramping about outside, I was more than ready to be inside. Warmth. Warmth was a thing lacking with all of this investigative work. We went into the dining room with its low tables and open buffet, thinking it easiest to just eat there, not to mention cheaper. All three meals came with our rooms; we might as well take advantage of that.
At this point of the day, many hotel guests still relaxed and took it easy after yesterday’s craziness, so half of the guests were still robed in the slate grey yukatas the inn offered as they knelt at the low tables and ate. It was easy to spot Vee and Chi seated at the table, Vee’s height alone standing out even while sitting, but they were the only uniformed people in the whole room. Their skin looked bright red from the cold, and they still had on their uniform jackets, although the gloves and mufflers were discarded from the side, so they hadn’t been here that long.
I went to the table long enough to discard muffler, hat, and gloves, dropping Rena’s there too. As I did so, Vee informed me, “I have a pot of hot tea coming.”
“Good. We need it.” Then I went directly for the buffet and loaded up on soup, rice, and dumplings. Something about being cold just made me feel like a starving pregnant bear straight out of hibernation.
Coming back to the table, I saw that Chi had worked his way through three bowls of soup, and that didn’t surprise me in the least, as his appetite was legendary. I dipped into my noodles as well, appreciating the rich taste of the broth and slurped them up.
Maksohm and Rena joined us shortly, Vee pausing long enough to pour us all tea, and we didn’t try to talk much until we were about halfway through our plates. Only then did Maksohm ask, “What did you find? Anything?”
“Not much,” Vee admitted, lifting one shoulder up in a shrug. “We started with the second portal site and the shop owners reported seeing it open, or at least some of them did. A few people mentioned they thought there was a cave in the background.”
“We heard the same thing,” Rena offered before taking a bite out of her dumplings. Scratch that, my dumplings. She wasn’t even apologetic about snitching, the rat. “Portal with no mage in sight, lots of monkeys, a cave in the background. I wish we had more clues to a location than just ‘cave,’ as there’s too many of those in the world.”
“Tell me about it,” Chi sighed, then groaned as he patted his stomach. “Good food here.”
“Are you finally full?” his wife drawled to him, a brow arched knowingly.
“No, but I can pretend to be full, and that’s practically the same thing.” He shot her a wink, pleased when she chuckled. Turning more serious for a moment, he added, “There was one thing that bothered us, though. Two different people reported a man in a black robe with his hood up who stood at the top of one of the staircases and watched. Just watched. They said it seemed odd at the time, as everyone was either running, screaming, or both. But he seemed very removed from the problem.”
“They lost track of him during all
of the confusion,” Vee tacked on, her hashi idly swirling to lift up another mouthful. “And we didn’t find anyone else that had seen him. Still, that did seem strange.”
“No description other than that?” Maksohm asked as if he already knew the answer. When they just shrugged, he sighed and lifted his eyes to the ceiling as if in a prayer. “That figures. Still, I can see why they thought it odd. That might well have been one of the rogue mages behind all of this, watching to see how the monkeys fared.”
I wouldn’t be surprised by that. We’d figured that the rogue mages would stick around and observe, even if from a distance, to see how their experiments went. This was just the first time that someone had spotted them. “I suppose after lunch we should focus to see if anyone else has spied this man?”
“If we can,” Maksohm agreed, his voice full of doubt on whether that was possible or not. “I did report in this morning, and I’ll report in again before we leave, as our bosses are very interested to hear anything we discover. I don’t think we’ll spend more than another day up here. We don’t have the luggage for it, to start with, but also people are still very anxious to have Rena at that meeting in Heaberlin. If push comes to shove, they might portal our luggage up to us so we can leave for the meeting from here.”
Resigned to being outside in the cold again for the rest of the day, I focused on putting as much warm food in my stomach as possible.
We did end up staying in Njorage another day, half expecting the other shoe to drop, but nothing else happened. I would have been happy to stay in the onsens for another three days, no matter what my husband thought of me turning into a giant prune, but we didn’t have that luxury of time. Eventually, we made the decision to return south so I could attend the meeting in Heaberlin.
Technically, the easiest way to travel to Heaberlin from here was to take the ferry down to Estok, then a ship down to Heaberlin. Maksohm called down to the bed and breakfast in Foxboro and arranged for our luggage to be shipped to Heaberlin. It meant buying a few necessities up here to tide us over, but we could manage the two days or so it would take to travel over there.
Remnants Page 10
