Author's Note: If you have not read Chapter 18 (set in Joel's sort of office) posted on Thursday, January 4, please read it first. If you received the notification on Thursday, great! I had a heck of a time posting and received no notifications for anything until around 3 am Saturday.
Joel stepped inside my study and froze. I spotted my short stays and chemise soaking in the laundry sink beside the entrance and grimaced. Placing the laundry adjacent to the entrance was my brilliant idea.
Strip off my filthy training clothes, toss them in the laundry sink to soak, then proceed directly to the heated waterfall and a bar of soap. If I had time, I'd fill the copper tub to the brim and soak away the aches.
The setup kept me from tracking blood and dirt into the living and study areas—an absolute necessity given my ongoing seal experiments. Contaminating my workspace guaranteed an explosion, which was always a possibility with experimental seals.
My study began life as a tiny bedroom with a mattress shoved against the wall, a trunk of clothes, and a chamber pot. It was so tight that my feet touched the mattress when I peed. As I refined the seals, the space grew into a rectangular cavern with actual furniture, bathing facilities, and other creature comforts. Most importantly, it was invisible and inaccessible to everyone unless I personally keyed them into the wards. I built it as a private retreat and it showed.
There were no walls. A few paper screens and opaque wards around the bathing area provided a little privacy. If the clans ever came for Grandfather or he needed better care than Xhian and his magical bag of tricks could provide, I could use it to move Grandfather through the gates without exposing him to their magics in theory.
Uncle Manfred wouldn't let Endellion take him through a gate. Endellion wouldn't volunteer herself as a test subject. I wasn't allowed.
None of the furniture matched and most pieces had seen better days. I owned four mugs, three plates, a bent assortment of eating utensils, a few worn chairs, and a stool. Everything else was bookshelves, banged up tables, plants growing in makeshift containers, and experiments in various stages. Blueprints of my transformation seal hung from clothespins. The three flat files I purchased from an estate sale contained finished spare seals and photographs of ongoing experiments. The glass negatives I stored in another subplane, well away from anything dangerous.
A treadle sewing machine was pushed against the wall to the right of the entrance. Beyond that, two wardrobes standing end to end formed a makeshift wall. They combined with one of the screens separated my bed from everything else. I learned early on that if I could see it, I would think about it. Laying in bed while staring at a half-finished project guaranteed I wouldn't sleep.
My study was my pride and joy. At the moment, it was also my greatest embarrassment.
"When you said study, I expected a trunk filled with books and a travel desk stashed in that bracelet of yours, not this. It's surprisingly nice for a cave. You'll have to show me how you built it."
"I thought Marstow hate caves," I said. Well, Uncle Manfred hated caves. After five minutes inside my study, his body shook like autumn leaves caught in a gale and his magic lashed the walls, searching for a way out.
Joel trailed his hand over the walls, magic swirling off his fingertips as he examined every seal from the subplane seals to the wards to the lights. Most weren't anything special, just the same everyday seals the clans and Border Guard employed to make their homes livable. I found them in a book in Grandfather's library, swapped the power arrays out with keyed ambients because I didn't want to bother with maintaining them, and slapped them on the walls and ceiling.
"Most Marstow do," he said with a shrug. "I was born in a cave. My mother and I lived in that cave until I was ten. After the First Sacking, the Marstow rebuilt as best they could. They entombed the dead, pieced their lives back together, and pretended that the Marstow Gate wasn't slowly sinking into madness and that Saar's armies wouldn't return. My mother remembered huts, cabins, and a few stone buildings. Then the Second came. I was born eight months after the Second Sacking. Caves were all we had left."
I didn't ask what happened when he was ten. I didn't need to. Uncle Manfred ensured I knew my history. Eleven years to the day after the Second Sacking, the Dracon invaded for the third and final time. The Border Guard evacuated the survivors, including a ten-year-old unknown dae Hadyn claimed as his apprentice.
He stared at the still silent waterfall and the shoulder deep copper bathtub beside it in silence. "Do you have any idea how amazing this is?"
"Endellion hates it."
"I imagine Endellion prefers you where she can see you. When I look at this, I see permanent, lethal wards that I would need a week to brute force my way past. The sort you spend a month planning and another month casting. You can't place those types of protections around a temporary camp. Even if you load the ward stones into a wagon and carry them with you, it's not feasible. I see a safe water supply, bathing facilities, an actual cooking stove, year-round warmth, and a dry roof, I'm sorely tempted to swap apprentices with Terry. A warm bath every night, even when we're in the desert," he trailed off with a loopy smile on his face. Then he sobered and gestured to the clock hanging beside the entrance. "Terry's meeting's about to start."
"Do you want to hear it or read about it?" I asked as I walked to the library/office area. My neck prickled when I passed through the wards. They were designed to keep explosions in, not people out. I passed my two worktables, knelt on the floor, and peeled the braided rug back, revealing a carved seal a little wider than my shoulders.
Magic flowed from fingertips into the seal. It lit up. Red flames spiraled around the edge, connected. A mist rose from the seal and coalesced into a large trunk. I raised the lid and looked back at Joel. "Well?"
"You can do both?"
"If I gave him the correct seals, I can. I did hand him two buttons, right?"
"Coins actually."
I shrugged. "I started off using buttons. They tend to burn or melt, so I swapped to senteris."
"Expensive."
"But permanent. It's cost prohibitive for experiments." Inside the trunk, a book levitated itself onto an array and opened to the first page. A dip pen leaped to life. A second later, the loops and swirls of guardian script spread across the page as it recorded the discussion. Damn, too late to change out the book for a ream of paper. A shadow fell across the book. I turned my head as Joel crouched down beside me and peered inside the trunk. His eyes widened when he noticed the pen.
"An automated transcript? I must have tried a dozen times and could never get the seal to transcribe more than simple sentences."
"Guardian script is phonetic. The symbols represent sounds, not words. Your seal worked. All I did was change the alphabet system so it didn't have to swallow a dictionary and swap out the power array. Keyed ambients are more efficient, making them easier to hide. If I wanted someone to know I was spying on them, I'd send out a memo."
"Indeed. You say I can listen as well. Does it mean covering a seal with a drinking glass? If so, I'll pass."
Laughing, I reached inside the trunk and wrapped my fingers around the base of an oak box. Being careful to not disturb the transcription seal, I lifted the box out of the trunk and set it on the floor. A wave of my hand moved it to the empty worktable. I shut the trunk lid and returned it to its storage area.
Several years ago, I lost all my notes, transcribed conversations, books, bedding, everything when a seal I was working on exploded. I counted myself lucky I didn't lose a limb. Luckily Uncle Manfred had copied my experiment notes and commonplace books for Grandfather's library so I recovered nearly everything. Then I established several stringent protocols to prevent a recurrence of that debacle, including creating another subplane solely for testing experimental seals, warding the study area, and keeping automated copies of all documents locked away inside several storage areas. It was a pain and required carving seals on the underside of my worktables, but the peace of mind was worth it.
I dusted myself off and waved Joel over to the table. Then I opened the portable gramophone's lid. A wood tray lay on the turntable with twelve senteris coins nestled in red velvet. I brushed my fingertips over the coins. Two mental pings, indicating active magic. The left was Grandfather's. Right must be the one I gave Terry. I wasn't spying on anyone else at the moment. Although I did contemplate hiding one in the busk of Endellion's stays. I didn't because if she caught me...I shuddered.
I nudged the tray aside, picked up Terry's, and set it in the middle of the turntable. Then I lowered the arm from the sound bowl in the lid and placed the needle in the middle of the seal. Voices flooded the room.