Page 36 of Rogue Familiar

He covered Seliah with a blanket. Reluctant to leave her, he feathered fingers over her face and kissed her softly, showing her far more gentle affection than he’d ever dared while she was awake, so ready to misinterpret the least gesture from him.

And look where it had gotten her.

Deliberately turning his back, he strode out to rummage through the packs. To his surprise, he found his own supplies, including Mr. Machete. Somehow Seliah had retrieved the stuff the Hanneil wizards had taken from him—which didn’t bode well for that group—including, very interestingly, the bag of relics once implanted in his body. He’d saved them, carried them with him, largely because his dear maman had invested time and energy in them. She might be a megalomaniacal sadist who kidded herself that her love of torture came from a sincere interest in experimentation, but she was also insanely intelligent and didn’t waste time on random efforts. When she’d cut him loose to be a spy in House Phel, she’d spent that time preparing for when she’d have her favorite experimental subject back in her greedy paws.

And when she could again attempt to implant these widgets for whatever nefarious goal she had in mind. Emptying out the bag onto the primitive wooden table, he spread them out with trembling fingers. None of the metal, mechanical things made any more sense to him than they ever had. His mother believed in the purity of scientific effort, which meant that her test subject shouldn’t know the purpose of the experiment, lest that skew the results. Never mind the additional barrier of his lack of education. Very likely any junior wizard in House El-Adrel would know the purpose of these gadgets—or could use their mechanical magic senses to discover it.

Jadren could use his inherent El-Adrel wizardry to make minor gadgets. He could do basic warding and a few other standard wizard’s tricks, but no one—least of all his dear maman—had ever expected or wanted him to become a full El-Adrel wizard. Not like his siblings. No, his mother had seized on him in his youth to mold him into something else. She’d recognized his great potential, not to ever head House El-Adrel after her, but to accomplish what she never had: employ their shared resistance to death to some purpose other than saving their own skins.

One of these inscrutable mechanisms—maybe all of them—were designed to allow him to use that unconscious healing magic deliberately. He’d never before been so replete with magic, thanks to Seliah’s foolish martyring of herself, so the least he could do was attempt to use one of these to save her.

But which one? All? And how? He couldn’t very well implant them in himself as his mother tried to do. Besides, that had never worked, his body always extruding them again, no matter how deeply and firmly his maman tried to affix them.

Still, she’d never had his true cooperation. No matter what kind of extortion she’d used, regardless of what techniques she’d employed to attempt to bend him to her will, she’d never quite broken him. Even when he’d promised cooperation in order to spare Seliah a terrible fate in House El-Adrel, he’d retained a shred of stubborn will. Oh, he’d stilled his struggles and hadn’t overtly resisted, obeying his maman’s every instruction, but he’d never truly submitted to her.

And he knew that must matter because she kept trying so very hard to get him to do it.

And none of this was saving Seliah’s life. Gathering up the array of widgets, he carried them into the bedroom and dumped them on the quilt covering Seliah. It was a colorful thing, made of many small pieces of cloth stitched together in circles of rings. Some kind of marriage deal, he guessed, the room speaking of a couple who shared the bed, each with various belongings on the little tables on either side. Stacks of novels and a pair of reading glasses on one, a collection of manuals and packets of herbs on the other. Not a life he or Seliah had ever had, or would have, even if he managed to save her.

But he’d figure out their future later, once he was sure they’d have one.

Since he had no knowledge of the gadgets to go on, no basis to logically choose, he nearly despaired. There was no time to try each one, even if he had the vaguest clue of what he was trying to do.

He’d overheard Nic harping on Gabriel about using his “wizard’s intuition” enough times, and there was no denying Phel was an impressively powerful wizard who performed feats no one should be able to pull off. Jadren had always thought that talk of intuition and instinct was a fancy way of saying someone was simply guessing, but what else did he have?

It wasn’t as if magic made logical sense at the best of times anyway. Closing his eyes, trying to screen out the worry that he hadn’t heard Seliah’s heart beat in far too long—you wouldn’t be able to hear it from here anyway, idiot—he let his fingers drift over the gadgets. Waiting for one to speak to him. As if a metal doohickey could speak.

You’re wasting time, his inner voice observed. Wasting what little life Seliah has left.

I’m not. She wouldn’t survive a trip to find a healer. She might not survive the next few minutes.

At least finding a healer has a chance of working.

An infinitesimally small chance.

Still a non-zero chance, whereas this… What are you even thinking? You might as well dance around the bed beseeching the spirits of our ancestors to intervene.

He paused. Is that something people do?

You’re asking me? I am you. I don’t know anything more than you do.

I’m not asking you. I’m wanting you to shut up.

Then shut up.

You shut up! Cursing in frustration, Jadren took his own advice and attempted to quiet his mind. If this had any chance of working—It doesn’t. Shh.—then he needed to give it his all. Quiet mind. Trust his wizard’s intuition. Seliah deserved his best effort.

Something snagged his memory. He closed his hand over the brass widget still hanging from the chain around his neck. It had a feel of Seliah’s magic, from lying against her skin. It also had a bit of buzz, that zing of his mother’s magic, deeply embedded in the device. Turning it over in his fingers, eyes still closed, he found he had a clear image of the thing in his mind. It had rattled around in his lungs for some time as he and Seliah crawled through that tunnel to the catacombs below House El-Adrel. He’d told her to keep that one, since it scintillated with his mother’s magic. At the time he’d thought he had an idea of what it was or did. He clearly recalled having that thought, but not the understanding behind it. Why had he thought he knew? What had he thought he knew? Surely not some blasted wizard’s intuition thing.

Was it?

Opening his eyes, he studied it. A kind of brass, mini-telescope, inset with crystal lenses. His maman’s magic coiled through every bit of it, inlaid in every pore of metal and crystal. It had come out through his ribs, after a painful journey through his lungs, but where had it started? That intensely long and agonizing session with her trying various devices, forcing him to use Seliah’s magic in an effort to heal and seal those things into a permanent position in his body came back like a fever dream. He couldn’t remember much detail of that blur of blood, pain, and despair. But that memory had to be in his head somewhere.

Jadren wasn’t big on remembering those sessions with his dear maman, but that was mere selfishness. And this was for Seliah, who’d knowingly sacrificed her life for him. Staring fiercely at her lovely profile, he set aside his squeamishness and forced himself to delve through those memories. This device in his mother’s hands. The glitter of anticipation in her wizard-black eyes. The slice of the scalpel over his chest as he attempted to hold still, the bite between his ribs, the excruciating widening as she inserted the device… next to his heart.

How romantic, his snide inner voice observed.

He ignored it and placed the brass device over his heart—and over his skin, thank you very much. If he had to resort to self-surgery he would do it, but not yet. He needed all of his magic for Seliah. It didn’t feel right, but it felt like… something. It tickled his mechanically attuned magic, not exactly speaking to him, but still communicating in some way.

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