First Apprentice

Chapter 27 Part 2

Fingertips itching, I tightened the chains around my magical core and prayed I wouldn't shift. I could feel my hand sliding into Amit's chest like a hot knife through butter, his heart fluttering under my claws, and the Central Keystone's magic rushing over me as it consumed him. I desired it like a trout wanted cold water in high summer.

Couldn't.

Feeding Amit to a gate opened two seats, not one. Without a child tying her to this world, his mate Diane would either follow him or become a guardian. Terry was a singularity. I could not kill him until I had two qualified replacements, preferably more. Otherwise, the clans might replace him with someone competent.

"I see," I said and opened the expanding file one last time and removed the magical contract Grandfather gave me for my eighth birthday.

"Just in case," he said, before kissing my brow and packing me off to bed.

The next morning my tutoring in family matters switched from bedtime stories to hands-on instruction, including attending business meetings where I was to be seen but not heard.

"You are aware that I joined under an heir's contract. Legally speaking, I am two separate entities occupying the same body: First Sealer Apprentice and Iver as in Iver Copper, sole miner and producer of magically inert copper pipes."

His slash marks flashed fear white. Did he look up what happened to the last thief caught breaking into an Iver property or did he simply fear Terry?

"Like the Dracon," I continued, "the Border Guard in their ignorance built around an anchor point that leaches magic into the groundwater. Without my pipes neutralizing the magic, the water is a deadly poison."

Unless Terry conned Endellion into reconstructing the Well, including the filtering seals that were destroyed during the second war.

Like most of Endellion's original seals, the filtering seals that neutralized the Well's magic were lost when Saar torched the archives. The charter and Rainer's journals survived because Edan, a history teacher turned Dracon war chief, squirreled them away. He picked the binding out and mailed them to his mate a handful at a time.

Legend has it, his great-great-grandson found them hidden inside a wall, boxed up the books painstakingly rebound by Edan's mate, and shipped them to Joel, payment required on delivery. If Endellion replaced those seals, Iver Copper lost ten percent of its current revenue.

A short-term problem. In the long run, recent experiments promised greater returns if we focused on healing instead of water pipes.

My gums tingled as my teeth shifted into fangs. "A standing order ensures the pipes are replaced before it becomes an issue. I regret to inform you that due to the blatant corruption demonstrated by the Border Guard in its handling of this matter, the standing order scheduled for delivery in three months time and all future orders are canceled."

"It's under contract!" he shouted.

And this was the man in charge investigations and intelligence? No wonder the Dracon were able to publicly torture their gate without the Seven finding out.

"The last hundred year contract the Border Guard signed had a magically enforced anti-graft clause. It is the same anti-graft clause we've used for the last four thousand years. No changes. It's in every contract we sign.

"Said clause automatically voided the contract less than three years after it was signed when your Grandmaster Tradesman offered a manager five hundred heads if he'd lose a shipment. We offered to reinstate the contract if you dismissed the grandmaster. You refused. Therefore, you do not have a contract. You have a standing order at market rate. This"—I slid the contract over to him—"is our original. Check the last page."