She smiled wickedly, “To get some water.”
I sat up, “Fine, I’m up. Get out so I can put some damned clothes on!” She left promptly and I did indeed rise, though I wasn’t about to ‘shine’ so early in the day. I had stayed up late the night before trying to understand the ‘stasis field’ enchanting schemata. It was either that or go burn down the royal palace, but Penny’s note had been very explicit that I should save the king for later. That was alright, I knew where his majesty lived and it wasn’t as if he’d be moving soon.
The enchantment still frustrated me, which was a large part of the reason I hadn’t gone to bed early. I had trouble letting go of a problem once I had started on it. In this case I had figured out how to construct the rune structure without problem, it was intricate but the pattern was repetitive enough that I had no trouble memorizing it. I just didn’t understand what it actually ‘did’.
In the end I had constructed a working model using the stylus and small wooden box. The field was supposed to permeate the interior of the box when it was activated, that much was clear. Still, nothing seemed to happen to anything I put into the box… either before, after, or during the time it was activated. I had gone to bed puzzled and frustrated.
I found Lady Rose downstairs in the kitchen. She had brought a basket with her and was laying items out on the small breakfast table. “You look awfully domestic,” I mumbled.
She looked at me sharply, “You look thin. How many meals have you eaten since you found out?”
“None of your damned business,” I told her self-righteously as I sat down and began eating the scones she had brought. I couldn’t remember when I had eaten last.
“Those taste better if you put some of the jam on them,” she suggested.
I was in no mood, “I prefer them plain,” I said around a mouthful of scone. I doubt any of the words were intelligible. Then I picked up the tea and promptly burned my tongue.
“Take your time, the food won’t escape,” Rose said with a slight smile.
I swallowed and took another sip of the tea, this time without burning myself. “I didn’t expect you to bring breakfast.”
“Penny wouldn’t like it if you starved to death and… well you can think of it as a thank you,” she answered.
I snorted, “A thank you? For what?”
“Yesterday,” she said simply.
“That’s what family does.”
“Family?” she said, raising an eyebrow.
I raised my own eyebrow, just to show her she wasn’t the only one with witty brows. “I’ve never had a large family, so I’ve been adding my friends to it since I was very young. Congratulations, you’ve been adopted. Would you like to be my little sister, cousin, or aunt?”
“Aunt? I think sister would suit better,” she said crinkling her nose.
“Little sister it is then,” I said in a final tone.
“I am a bit older than you though,” she reminded me.
“Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone.”
She laughed a little at that. It was clear neither of us would recover our brighter spirits anytime soon, but I was determined not to give in to despair. “Do you know what else family does?” I asked.
She had just filled her mouth with tea so she merely shook her head in negation.
I narrowed my eyes, “Family gets even.”
She raised that lone eyebrow again, “Why do you think I wore red today?”
Half an hour later we were walking through the city, heading toward the temple of Doron the Iron God, if Rose was to be believed.
“Can you explain to me exactly why he thought he should be staying with the Iron Brothers?” I asked her again.
“He thought they would be easier to fool,” she replied.
That didn’t go far toward explaining the entire scheme to me, “But you said he was planning to examine the archives of Karenth the Just. Why is he here?” By here I was referring to the large brooding structure looming over the street on the right hand side. While most of Albamarl was constructed of local rose granite that hadn’t been good enough for the Iron Brothers, they had felt the need to import a lot of drab grey granite to face the walls with. It probably hadn’t been cheap to achieve the depressing look they had wanted. I was also willing to bet that underneath the surface most of the bulk of the building was built with rose granite.
“He’s taken on the identity of a visiting priest of Doron, who is interested in viewing the Karenthian archives,” she explained.
“And he thought disguising himself as a priest of Karenth would be more difficult? Doesn’t actually staying here among the Doronites increase his chances of detection?” I had a lot more questions where those came from, but I was pacing myself.
Rose sighed, “Talk to him about it when you see him.”
I grunted and then replied, “Let me see if I can find him first.” Closing my eyes I focused on my other ‘sight’ and extended my mind to a much greater extent, so that I could search the temple in front of us. It was larger than it appeared; the building actually had been built on top of an extensive underground complex. Some of it even extended underneath our feet. There were cells and storerooms, and a variety of living quarters. There were also quite a few people. At a rough count I would have guessed at least three hundred people were within the building at the moment, and they weren’t holding services currently.
“There’s a lot more Doronic clergy in there than I expected,” I said at last.
“Doronic?”
“I know they prefer ‘Iron Brotherhood’, or ‘Doronite’, but I like ‘Doronic’. It sounds a lot more like moronic.”
Rose groaned, “Did you find him?”
“Not yet, it’s more difficult when there are more people. I have to examine each one,” I closed my eyes again. Several minutes later I had found him, though his situation confused me. He was in what appeared to be one of their cells for visiting clergy, but he wasn’t alone. I had initially passed over him because I had assumed he would be by himself if he was in the living quarters. That was my mistake. “I found him.”
“What is he doing?” asked Rose.
I was torn between my desire to keep my friend’s private business, well… private, and the desire to snicker. Trust Marc to find a priestess with an ‘itch’. I looked at Rose and scratched my head, “He’s discussing matters with one of the other clergy members.”
She watched my face carefully, “He’s only been in there a few days and he’s already bedding the women?”
I was embarrassed by proxy, “That’s a long time for him, and how did you know it was that?”
She held up a finger, “One, I can tell he likes women. Two, your eyes darted off to the side right before you spoke.”
I was curious, “How can you tell he likes women?” As far as I knew he hadn’t had any lady friends that she knew about.
“You watch the eyes,” she replied. “That and posture tell me all I need to know.”
“Posture?”
“People lean toward you when they’re interested.”
I filed that information away without looking at it too closely. I didn’t want to know what Rose might have read in my eyes over the past few years. “Well you guessed correctly,” I told her, and then added, “about Marc’s activities in there.”
“So do we wait for him to emerge?”
“I’d rather not. Let’s go in and find him,” I replied.
Lady Rose shook her head, “If you weren’t a wizard I’d think you were mad. How do you plan to accomplish that, without exposing him?”
“Do you trust me?”
She looked up into my eyes, “More than anyone else still living.” Then she looked away. Even with her self-
