“You can reassure your lady mother that Veronica… Phel has returned to her house and wizard master.” Igino gritted out the words, falling short of clawing at the armrests of his (black) chair, but not by much. “Or so I assume. She has quite vanished from her chambers here. Imagine my distress at returning home to discover the entire top of a tower missing and a guest along with it.”
“You’re not concerned?” Jadren asked, making a show of frowning. “It could be that a rogue wizard breached your defenses to unlawfully take possession of Lady Phel, just as you feared, and hoped to prevent.”
Sammael nearly crawled out of his skin at the suggestion that a simple rogue wizard could perform such a feat. “I have it on authority that Lord Phel himself retrieved his property and worked an unusual spell to do so. Apparently he was operating under the misguided notion that his familiar was being held against her will. He understands nothing of Convocation ways.” Igino sniffed, giving every appearance of looking offended. “If he’d simply requested an audience and asked politely, we would have naturally discussed the issue with him. There was no need for violence. So vulgar. So unnecessary.”
“Guess Gabriel Phel wasn’t as dead as rumor made out, eh?” Jadren winked conspiratorially. “The wizard is certainly an unpredictable element, rather fanatical about his property. Just imagine what he’d do if he felt compelled to return.” He let the warning linger in the air. If Igino had captured Seliah, he had to be thinking about the possible consequences from Lord Phel. The hunters might have been acting on previous orders—or had simply been instructed to capture any wandering familiars, which was likely, as they weren’t all that bright—and had taken Seliah prisoner through sheer bad luck. If Jadren played this right, he could position himself as helping Igino out of a bind. “Perhaps I can be of assistance?” he wondered blandly.
“Yesss.” Igino drew out the word, regarding Jadren thoughtfully. “Katica was canny in her foresight, as usual, in placing you in that household. Tell me, how did she manage it?”
Jadren waggled a finger at him. This was going even better than he’d hoped. “Ah-ah-ah. That would be telling. I’m curious—have you heard from Sergio and Sabrina? Because if they’ve gone off to a certain house, perhaps believing the lord to be dead…” He shrugged fatalistically, watching Igino’s pale mask of a face with keen attention.
Lord Sammael showed no emotion, flicking his fingers. “Natural selection operates well in these scenarios. Any potential heir too stupid to survive is one I can eliminate from a very long list. I have many other children.”
“Eminently logical,” Jadren replied. “Gabriel Phel has none—and only one sister.”
Igino tapped long fingers on the arm of his chair. “In light of the long and cherished alliance between House Sammael and House El-Adrel, perhaps we would benefit from a bit of information exchange and mutual aid,” Igino offered at last. “Let me ring for refreshments, perhaps a grooming imp, as well? Along with a fresh suit of clothing. And, of course, I’d be delighted to loan the services of our in-house Refoel healer. I know El-Adrel is good for it. And you and I can talk further.”
“Sounds fantastic,” Jadren agreed, delighted with the bribe, at last plopping himself on one of the (black) sofas. Now that he had Sammael where Jadren wanted him, he wasn’t above wiping his grimy hands on the upholstery, enjoying Igino’s wince. That’s what he got for taking so fucking long to offer basic hospitality. Now to walk the line between giving Sammael apparently useful information that Jadren’s maman wouldn’t mind being leaked and without harming House Phel at the same time.
Hopefully the delay wouldn’t worsen Seliah’s situation, especially if Jadren lost this particular gamble and she hadn’t been brought here after all. A dangerous game. Good thing he excelled at this sort of thing.
The stakes for him were the highest they’d ever been.
~ 8 ~
It was all her fault, Selly reminded herself yet again. If she hadn’t been so weak-minded that she’d panicked at the prospect of getting in Jadren’s box, then she wouldn’t be wearing this iron collar, trapped in this dank and horrible cell, facing an even worse future.
And Jadren wouldn’t be dead.
That was the worst part—and she might as well have his blood on her hands, as her actions had led directly to his death. She hadn’t even fought adequately, hadn’t even loosed an arrow before those hunters had her pinned. Then she’d seen Jadren cut down, his cleaved-open body limp and lifeless on the leaf litter, and she hadn’t been able to help him. The hunters had bodily dragged her away, unmoved by her tears and raging, finally gagging her and binding her hands and feet, sadly reproaching her for being a recalcitrant familiar.
To think that being afraid of a stupid box had brought her to this. Probably there was a life lesson in there somewhere, but she had a hard time caring at this point. She was a captive in House Sammael, Jadren was dead because of her, and who knew what had happened at House Phel? They all might be dead, too. Even if they were alive, they’d assume she was somewhere in the Meresin or Sammael wilds with Jadren. When they never returned, eventually her family would have to face the most likely scenario: that she and Jadren had perished.
Half true, anyway.
Regardless, no one would be coming to dramatically rip off roofs and rescue her. She hadn’t missed the significance of being dumped in a windowless cell clearly deep in the bowels of the mountain beneath House Sammael. They weren’t running the risk of Gabriel being able to reach her as he had with Nic. Never mind that he had no bond to Selly’s magic and couldn’t perform the same long-distance trick, Sammael was clearly taking no chances.
She had yet to meet anyone from the Sammael family, which concerned her. So far only hunters, human guards, and lower-level wizards had dealt with her. She knew the wizards by their eyes, the buzz of their magic, and by the familiars so grotesquely tethered to them. One wizard had caught her aghast expression and grinned, turning so Selly could have a good, long look at the familiar chained to her. The middle-aged man with his hand cuffed against the woman’s back had never looked up or even seemed to register anything outside himself.
The wizard had stroked a hand down Selly’s bare arm. “Your magic smells delicious. What is that, water? It’s sweet. Give me a taste,” she suggested, “and I’ll arrange for you to have special treatment.”
“I’ll pass,” Selly bit out.
“See my friend here?” The wizard hooked a thumb at the man behind her, who still gave no sign of sentience. “Could be you, pretty one. Keep making trouble and it will be.” Fortunately, the woman left it at that, locking Selly into the pit alone.
Was that truly to be her fate? She couldn’t bear the thought. It had also occurred to her, however, that she might be given a choice. The others had talked on the journey and before they left to rescue Nic, speculating as to Sergio Sammael’s purpose. He needed a familiar and potential bride for when he took over House Sammael. And Selly recalled Jadren’s taunting—in her grief over his death, she was actually nostalgic for his barbed comments—about her value as Gabriel’s sister. She might not understand all the nuances of Convocation politics, but it seemed she’d be an inevitable second choice to be bride of Sammael.
If they offered her that, with the alternative being one of these tethered familiars, would she have the fortitude to refuse? Probably not. As she paced the small cell, trying to at least keep her muscles limber, she wished she could consult with Nic. Her new sister-in-law had faced a similar situation—at least so far as in being a familiar from a high house and having to accept her inevitable fate of being bonded to a wizard. Nic had employed a strategy of some sort. Yes, it had fallen apart because of Gabriel, but no one could predict the element of chaos her brother brought to everything. Still, Nic had spine and hadn’t been about to resign herself to a life where she had no power. Selly needed to figure out a way to follow that example. She needed to get much smarter, fast.
So, when the female wizard who’d threatened her returned, Selly drew herself up in that regal pose she’d seen Nic use. “I protest this treatment and demand to see Lord Sammael,” she declared. Dialogue from a novel she’d read long ago, but the best she could do.
The wizard regarded her with dry amusement. “Familiars demand nothing of their betters, pretty thing, but it so happens I’m to bring you to Lord Sammael, so you get your wish.” She chuckled drily. “Though you should be more careful what you wish for. Turn around, wrists behind your back.”
Much as Selly didn’t want to comply, she did. Talking to Lord Sammael, however awful he might turn out to be, was better than rotting away in this cell. She even managed to contain the shudder of revulsion as the wizard clamped heavy manacle on her wrists, binding them together. The woman turned Selly around by the simple expedient of twisting her shoulders, then clipped a leash to the collar. Striding out of the cell, she pulled Selly along without paying further attention to her, and Selly found herself walking behind the wizard next to the tethered man, who shuffled along with practiced alacrity, still seeming unaware of his circumstances.
“Hi, I’m Seliah,” she said to the man.
“Don’t speak to it,” the wizard said without particular bite. “It’s unseemly, even for another familiar.”
