“Not at all,” I said. “I’m just glad you decided you want a tattoo. Whether you journey further with us on our quest or not, it has been an honor to fight alongside you, and I’m happy to do this for you.”
“But I do want to join you on your quest, William,” Veronica said. “I have fought alone for too long.”
Hearing those words warmed my heart. I hadn’t known Veronica for long, but we’d shared a life-threatening battle, and that kind of thing bonded one person to another. There was also the matter of potentially gaining a new affinity should I sleep with Veronica. When Amelia and I had slept together, I had gained a Cold affinity, and I now suspected that I had gained my Fire affinity from my girlfriend Katlyn, who I’d left in Aranor. I wasn’t completely certain that my Ink Mage powers would always work this way but having sex with Veronica would be an excellent way of testing the theory. However, I didn’t want to use her sexually for my own gain. If we ever did make love, it wouldn’t be under false pretenses or because I just wanted to test my magic. It would be our choice, and there would be a deeper basis than just my personal gain.
I smiled at Veronica. “Well, let’s not waste any more time, then. Let’s have a look at this rune.”
We all moved back over to the big table, and I laid the design out flat on it as Jacques grabbed the biggest of the candelabra and brought it closer. As I put my hands flat on the table and leaned over the parchment to look at it, the others all gathered around me.
It was beautiful, and certainly much more complex than anything I’d attempted before. In the center of the page was a blazing ball of amethyst. Bright lines splayed out from the orb, zigzagging out from the center to fill the page. The lines were fine, like thread, dozens of them shooting across the parchment. The page almost seemed to light up, so bright was the color, and so intense the activity of the lightning bolts.
“That is a very intricate design,” I said. “I can see what you meant about the runes being more expensive, Amelia. It’s going to take a lot of ink to complete this tattoo.”
“What book did you get this from, Jacques?” Amelia asked, stepping away from the table. “I can’t believe you destroyed it page by page.”
I turned to watch the two of them. I was also keen to hear the answer.
“Oh, I can scarcely recall,” Jacques said, off-handedly, then leaped back as Amelia leaped forward and stomped on his foot. “Ow! What was that for?” he exclaimed.
“Sorry, just seeing if that helped to jog your memory.” She smiled mischievously.
He had the grace to look a little downcast. “Sorry,” he said stiffly, “I don’t remember much. It had a Lightning Rune on the cover, and the author was someone called… Selwick, I think.”
“You sure you don’t remember the name?” she asked. I looked around at some of the apparatus hanging from the walls of the Mistress’s cellar. I wouldn’t like to see what would happen if Amelia got a taste for interrogation.
Jacques seemed to be thinking along the same lines. After a moment, he said stiffly, “I believe the name of the book, carved on a leather cover that I gambled away some time ago, was something like ’Beasts, Spells, and Items for Intermediate Mages,’ by Arcanist Selwick.”
Amelia gritted her teeth and waved her heavy spellbook at him. “That’s the volume after this book. I always wondered why I couldn’t find a copy in the library.” She menaced him with her book, and he stepped back.
She stared levelly at him for a moment. “Well, I hope you got a good price for the pages?” she asked, and there was a glint in her eyes.
“A fair price, nothing special,” he said. Then, catching the look in her eye, he asked sharply, “What do you mean?”
She leaned closer to him, enunciating her words very carefully. “It… was… priceless. If you’d known what you were doing, you could have walked up to the front gate and sold it right back to the library. They would never have known it was their own copy, and before they realized what they had done, they’d have bought it from you for enough coin that you would never have had to work again.”
There was a moment of silence, then everyone in the room burst into laughter at Jacques’ look of utter horror.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, don’t worry too much, Jacques,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for your choices, you’d never have been able to help us out now! You’re doing a great deed, and once we’re done with the page, you can have it back and sell it on for beer money, just like you planned. Looks like Loku was smiling on us this time.”
Jacques grumbled incoherently and stomped about with his hands in his pockets.
Amelia was glaring at him.
After a moment, he looked resentfully at Amelia. “My apologies,” he said. The look on his face told me that the apology had not come easily to his lips.
“Well, it’s too late now.” Amelia sighed.
“It certainly is,” he said regretfully, and I guessed he was thinking about his missed fortune more than the intrinsic value of the spellbook. Well, that was certainly a punishment that would go to his heart.
“Enough of this,” said Mistress Blossom. “Will you be able to draw this tattoo for Veronica?”
While I had been watching Amelia and Jacques, Mistress Blossom had been leaning over the design with Veronica. Now, I turned back and looked at the parchment with them, and Amelia joined me. Jacques wandered off to the other end of the
