Taken

of her coat. “It would be possible to . . . delay that approval.”

“And what were you thinking of in exchange?”

“I would rather the two of you didn’t use my house as a battlefield,” Crystal said. “You and Onyx seem to get on poorly. It seems to me the best resolution would be for you to leave.”

“Sorry. Don’t want to miss the tournament.”

“There are other tournaments.” Crystal studied me. “I would suggest you think it over carefully. Fountain Reach can be . . . inhospitable to those not welcome here.”

I returned Crystal’s gaze, keeping my mind and expression blank. Crystal turned and walked away without looking back. I watched her go, not relaxing. Only when she was out of sight did I step back into my room and close the door behind me. I leant against the door and folded my arms, staring down at the floor with a frown.

“Alex?” Luna asked. “What’s up?”

“Change of plan,” I said. “Luna, Anne, I want you to go find out everything you can about Fountain Reach. Who lives here, its past history, what Crystal does here. Try to avoid drawing attention to yourselves if you can but you’re apprentices; you can ask a lot of questions before anyone gets really suspicious.”

“What about all this?” Luna asked, gesturing to the papers.

“I’ll look through them.”

“Aren’t we going to look for Yasmin?” Anne asked.

“I’m going to be honest,” I said. “I don’t have any idea how to find Yasmin, not directly. We could go where she was last seen and help Sonder and the mages there try and find her. But I don’t think we’d help much. Sonder’s better at that kind of thing than I am. Also . . .” I frowned. “Maybe it’s just me but I’ve got the feeling that’s exactly what whoever took these apprentices is expecting us to do and that’s exactly what they’re prepared for. And so far they’ve done a really thorough job of cleaning up the evidence. But in the meantime a hell of a lot of people have been pointing us towards Fountain Reach and now Crystal’s just shown that she wants me out of here. I’m going to start taking them seriously.”

Luna and Anne shared a look. “All right,” Luna said. “I think I’m supposed to have my first match this evening.”

“I’ll be there. Go ahead and practice but make sure neither of you goes off alone.”

*  *  *

Once Luna and Anne were gone, I turned my attention to the papers. I’ve never gone in for magical research, but I’ve been around mages who have. As Anne had said it was longevity research, which actually made it easier for me to follow—it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.

Life extension tends to be popular amongst mages. Like all people with power, they want to stick around so they can continue using it. At the lower levels, it’s not difficult, either—between modern health care and life magic, mages can expect a natural life span well into their nineties. Of course, the actual practical life expectancy of mages is a hell of a lot lower than that, due to other mages taking proactive measures to bring down the average, but that’s the theory.

Once you get beyond a certain age though, longevity starts getting harder to pull off. The problem is that at a fundamental level humans just aren’t designed to live forever. As you get older it becomes more and more difficult to keep a body and mind in working order, until every part is breaking down faster than you can repair it. But this doesn’t stop mages from trying, and over the centuries they’ve tried a lot of ways.

From the notes it looked like the author had tried most of them. Some of the avenues were described in detail, others referred to only obliquely, but reading them I got the definite impression that they hadn’t been a success. Most longevity spells are based on life magic and it didn’t seem as though the mage who’d conducted the research had been able to use life magic at all. Instead he’d tried workarounds that had nearly all turned out to be failures. The more I read, the more I also got the impression that the notes were incomplete. There were references to experiments that didn’t seem to have been recorded . . . maybe because they were the kind you don’t want written down.

I finished the last stack of papers, thought a bit, then pulled out my phone and called Talisid. He answered after only a few rings. “Verus.”

“Hey, Talisid. Who used to live in Fountain Reach before Crystal? Say about sixty years ago?”

“Sixty years?” I could picture Talisid frowning in thought. “The Aubuchons, I would have thought.”

“Who were the Aubuchons?”

“An old mage dynasty. Fountain Reach was their family home. Although as I understand it, they tore it down and rebuilt it practically from the ground up.”

“When did they move out?”

“Died out, not moved out. The last living member of the family disappeared back in the eighties.”

“Huh.” I thought for a second. “How did Crystal get it?”

“Oh, that was a couple of years ago. She claimed to be the closest surviving descendant of the Aubuchon family, not that anyone really cared. The place was on the market at the time and she just bought it and moved in.”

“How did the White Stone end up being held here this year?”

“Crystal pushed for it. What are you getting at?”

“I’d just like to know a bit more about the place.”

“There’s absolutely no evidence that Fountain Reach is connected to the disappearances.” Talisid’s voice was firm. “I know you’re not fond of the Council but we’re not idiots. You think we’d agree to let Crystal house more than fifty apprentices in a place we weren’t confident in?”

“You’ve checked it?”