The Conjuring Man, page 32
“Charming,” Arnold said. “Not that I disagree, of course.”
He smiled, leaning back on his stool as if they were two friends having chat. “I didn’t lie to you, when I told you I thought you had wonderful potential,” he said. “You need a master who could unlock your real power, and unleash your true greatness, rather than someone barely more than a simple brewer. I could do that for you. Why did you decline?”
Lilith gritted her teeth. She hated to admit it – and yet, she’d have to – but she’d been tempted. Very tempted. She knew she was good. She knew she hadn’t reached her limits. Not yet. If she’d met Arnold before all hell broke loose, she might even have taken him up on his offer. But things were different now.
“I didn’t trust you,” she said, finally. Admitting she really had been tempted would be a very bad idea, but she suspected he already knew it. It was a rare sorcerer who didn’t set out to be all he could be, as long as he knew he wasn’t already pressing against his limits. “And you betrayed Adam and Taffy.”
“Ah, Taffy,” Arnold said. “She was a tool, in all senses of the word.”
“She gave herself to you,” Lilith said. It had shocked her before and now, after she’d given up her own virginity, it was even worse. “And you ... you used her.”
“Please, spare me any claim to superior morality,” Arnold said, sardonically. “You were horrible to Adam at first, weren’t you? It wasn’t until he knocked you off your high horse that you started to warm up to him. You saw him as just another mundane who could be used or abused as you saw fit. Didn’t you?”
Lilith flushed. “Yes,” she said. “But I learnt better.”
“Did you?” Arnold met her eyes. “How long did it take for you to realise you liked him?”
“Too long,” Lilith said. She wasn’t sure she could pinpoint a moment she’d realised he’d wormed his way into her heart. “I learnt better. Did you?”
“The mission must be completed,” Arnold said. “Will you join me, willingly? I can ensure you have Adam, for the rest of his life. And I’ll even throw in Taffy! Serve me willingly and the rewards will be beyond your wildest dreams.”
Lilith looked back at him. “No.”
“No?” Arnold cocked his head. “Why not?”
“I told you,” Lilith said. “I don’t trust you. And even if I did, being a captive – your captive – for the rest of your life isn’t what Adam wants. I don’t even know if he’s still alive!”
She caught herself a second later. That had slipped out, against her will. The collar was still working its dark magic, still influencing her ... she would almost have preferred an overpowered compulsion spell. It might have battered her shields down through naked force, but at least she would have known what she was being made to do. The subtle spells were far nastier. She had to think through everything she said before she opened her mouth, and she barely had any time to do it.
“Interesting,” Arnold said. “How so?”
Lilith felt her lips start to move. She tried to pick her words carefully. “I threw him out of the airship,” she said. “I don’t know if he survived the landing.”
Arnold snorted. “Details?”
He kept asking the same questions over and over again, varying the wording slightly every time. Lilith felt her head start to ache from the strain of keeping up with him. She couldn’t lie and yet, every time she answered the same question with a carefully worded answer, she feared she’d let something slip. Arnold knew too much, she recalled, as he shifted the subject to explore the airship’s defences. He might just deduce how far Adam’s work had gone and then ...
“Clever,” Arnold said. “Freezing him in a dozen spells and tossing him out of an airship, in hopes he makes it down ...”
He laughed, a full-throated sound that would have been attractive if it had come from almost anyone else. “Most lovers don’t throw their paramours to almost certain death, do they?”
“I don’t know,” Lilith said. She’d heard all the romantic stories in the dorms, about couples dying together, but she’d always thought they were silly. She would have preferred to live together. “I have never been in love before.”
Arnold smirked. “You never had a crush on one of your classmates?”
“No,” Lilith said, stiffly. “The stories about Laughter are exaggerated, where they weren’t made up by stupid little boys who let their small head do all the thinking.”
“Gosh,” Arnold said, with mock amazement. The overacting would have been amusing under other circumstances. “It must be true.”
Lilith almost smiled. “It is. Or don’t you trust your own collar?”
Arnold stood, looming over her. “You are to remain in this suite until I, and I alone, order otherwise. You can use the toilet or bed or anything else inside the suite as long as you don’t try to use it to get outside. No jumping out the window or trying to summon help. After everything is done, I’ll decide your final fate.”
“Great,” Lilith said, sarcastically. “Does the king not care about me?”
“The king’s opinions are no longer of any great concern,” Arnold said. “You are my prisoner. And you’ll remain in my thrall until the collar is removed.”
He turned and left, closing the door behind him. Lilith didn’t hear a lock, or a guard outside, but it didn’t matter. The collar would keep her prisoner more effectively than locks or chains. She didn’t need to test the theory to know her body wouldn’t be able to open the door ... she stood and scowled, looking at herself in the mirror. Time wasn’t on her side. The longer she wore the collar, the harder it would be to escape. If the horror stories she’d been told were true, it would eventually convince her she truly was a slave and then escape would be unthinkable. And that would be the end ...
The collar won’t let me kill myself either, she thought. She’d be surprised if he hadn’t taken the time to implant a few more orders, preventing her from doing anything to the castle’s servants. And he used Adam’s tricks to make it work.
She felt her anger rise again, and yet ... she’d been practicing with small magics. Her masters had made her go through everything, time and time again, until she could work on a finer level than she’d thought possible. The collar was good – it kept her from casting any major spells – but if she concentrated, she might just be able to undermine its control. It would require time and effort, yet ... what else could she do?
It wasn’t easy to force herself to stand and search the rest of the suite. Arnold hadn’t been foolish enough to leave anything useful within reach. Of course not. A bedroom, a primitive washroom – the privy was disgusting, to the point she didn’t want to even look at it – and a simple sitting room. The bedroom window wasn’t large enough to let anyone bigger than a toddler clamber through ... and her collar wouldn’t let her turn herself into a bird and make a bid for freedom. She scowled as she surveyed the rest of the suite. The cupboards were empty. There wasn't even anything to eat or drink. She wondered if Arnold was going to feed her or let her starve to death, then decided he could have killed her by now if he didn’t think he needed her. And yet, what did he need her for? She didn’t think she wanted to know.
He has the airship now, she thought. It was sheer luck he hadn’t captured or killed Adam as well as her. The prisoners would be helpless against him. If they weren’t already enslaved, they’d be collared soon enough. What can he do with it?
Closing her eyes, she concentrated and started to work.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Adam stared, ice congealing in his stomach.
He’d never seen anyone so angry. His mother had been stern, and both his masters quick to punish if they felt he’d stepped out of line, but this ... he had no sensitivity to magic, no ability to feel magic unless it was aimed directly at him, yet he could feel the storm brewing in the chamber. Gusts of wind pressed against him, a whirlwind of raw magic that threatened to pick up the papers on the desk and throw them across the room. He felt the floor vibrating under his feet, as if the entire university were shaking. Master Dagon was on the verge of losing control. Adam could feel it. He’d known Lilith’s father was a Master Magician, with all that that entailed, but he’d never really believed it. Not until now.
“Where is she?” Master Dagon looked as if he were on the verge of exploding with rage, his fists clenching and unclenching so savagely Adam half-expected him to throw a punch. It was rare for magicians to brawl openly, but if anyone ever had good reason ... “Where is my daughter?”
Adam stood his ground, somehow. It wasn’t easy. Back home, society would stand behind an outraged father if he claimed a young man had defiled his daughter ... and here, Master Dagon had enough magic to do almost anything. Guilt and shame washed through him as he braced himself, not for sleeping with Lilith but for taking her into danger. Lilith had saved him from captivity at the cost of being captured herself ... he hoped. He dared not think she might be dead. It would make it impossible to go on.
“Answer me,” Master Dagon thundered. “Where is she?”
“The airship was attacked,” Adam managed. He could feel the older man’s magic pressing against him, demanding answers. It was hard not to cower in front of him. The man’s sheer power was terrifying, and the fact Adam was defenceless, without even a single clever trick to his name, only made it worse. There was nothing he could do if Master Dagon decided to crush him. “She was captured.”
“And how did you escape?” Master Dagon’s eyes bored into Adam’s. “How did you escape, when my daughter was captured?”
He loves her, Adam realised dully. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, not really, but it was. Master Dagon might not understand his daughter or know how to treat her like a grown woman rather than a little girl, yet ... he loved her. Adam had no children – he tried not to consider the possibility he might have impregnated Lilith – but his mother had sacrificed everything to raise her children right. He really does want the best for her. He just doesn’t know what that is.
“She saved my life,” he said. It wasn’t the first time. Lilith had saved him when he’d been captured before, and he owed it to her, even if he hadn’t loved her, to save her in return. “And I’m going to get her back.”
“She saved your worthless life, at the cost of her own,” Master Dagon snarled. “Do you know what they’ll do to her?”
Adam gritted his teeth. He’d been trying not to think about it. And about the fact he’d be a laughingstock, back home, if anyone ever found out a girl had saved him. Lilith was hardly a weak and feeble creature – she had enough power to give even a full-fledged sorcerer a hard time – but no one would care a feather for those details, when weighed against the stone of a chance to mock someone so thoroughly they’d never recover. And ... he cursed under his breath. The older man had a point, as little as he cared to admit it. What was his life, when compared to that of the girl he loved?
He lifted his chin, meeting the older man’s eyes. They burned with power – and fear, fear for his daughter. Adam felt his heart twist. Back home, it was hard to protect one’s daughters as they grew older, no matter how overbearing their parents tried to be. They might get into trouble with a boy, or an older man, or ... you could arrange their marriage, and twist the girl’s arm to ensure she agreed to it, only to discover – too late – that the prospective husband was a monster in disguise. Here ... Lilith was, at least in theory, capable of protecting herself. She could swat a dozen Jaspers without effort. But it only made it worse when she ran into something she couldn’t handle.
I tested my gas on her, months ago, Adam thought. The look on her face when she’d been rendered effectively powerless had lingered in his mind for a long – long – time. Do you hate me for showing her she wasn’t as invincible as she thought?
“Why ...?” He swallowed and started again. “Why do you hate me?”
Master Dagon scowled, as if the answer to the question was so obvious he had problems putting it into words. “Do you know how many happy matches there are between magicians and mundanes?”
Adam hesitated. “Master Caleb’s parents were mixed,” he said, finally. He’d heard of General Pollack and his sorcerous wife a long time before he’d ever met their son. “They’re happy, aren’t they?”
“They might be the only one,” Master Dagon said. “Such matches are always unbalanced, because one party has far more power than the other. If your wife is being a shrew, turn her into one. If your husband refuses to come shop with you, compel him to come. Do you have any idea how many stresses and strains there are on such relationships, how unhappy they eventually become? How hard it can be to deal with magical relatives on one side and mundanes on the other? Do you think you could make her happy?”
Adam ruthlessly suppressed the hot flash of anger at the question. “I know wives, back home, who are beaten every time they step out of line,” he said. “I know husbands who are henpecked so badly they are unable to do anything without their wife’s approval. They don’t have magic, but that doesn’t stop them being completely horrible to each other.”
Master Dagon glared. “And no one tries to stop them?”
“No.” Adam scowled. It was rare, almost unknown, for outsiders – even close relatives – to interfere in domestic disputes. The closest anyone came was pointing out how badly things were going, and even that was often a step too far, maddening one partner without making things any better. “They never try.”
“No,” Master Dagon agreed. “And that is a mark of your poor breeding.”
His expression darkened. “You are a fisherman’s son from a fishing family. Your prospects are very limited, and your mindset limited too. You have very little to bring to the match, not even the kind of strong magic that would cause families to overlook your origins. I cannot approve of the match.”
Adam felt his fists clench. He forced himself to unclench them. “You seemed to approve, at first.”
“A short-term relationship is of little concern,” Master Dagon snapped. “I did not realise how deeply she felt for you until it was too late.”
“I ...” Adam felt himself flush. He’d never seen it quite that way, but it made a certain kind of sense. Lilith had grown up in a society where she could have fun without compromising herself, rendering herself unmarriageable ... her father might not care if she had a short fling with someone, no matter how much he despised the boy, but actual love was something else. “I love her.”
“So you say,” Master Dagon said. “How long will that last, I wonder, when the glow has faded and you are coping with the stresses and strains of marriage?”
Adam controlled himself with an effort. Master Dagon had clearly looked into his background at some point ... he wondered, suddenly, when the older man had realised his daughter was interested in more than a little fling. Or had he made his inquiries when Master Landis had taken Adam as an apprentice, well before Lilith and he had been anything other than rivals? Or ...
Master Dagon was still talking. “You have no magic,” he said, flatly. “What’ll that do to your children? Will they have magic?”
“Master Caleb is a strong magician, and his father was a mundane,” Adam pointed out, stiffly. Lady Emily herself counted Master Caleb as a strong magician, and she was the strongest, certainly the most capable, magician of her generation. “If we have children, they’ll have magic ...”
“Master Caleb and his siblings do not come close to their mother in raw power and skill,” Master Dagon said. “Lady Sienna is – was – a formidable combat sorceress. Her children aren’t anything like as capable.”
“Yet,” Adam said. “They’re children.”
Master Dagon snorted. “Caleb is a grown man,” he said. “The youngest of her brood is eighteen, I believe. And none of them show the raw potential of their mother, when she was a young girl, or Lilith herself.”
He took a breath. “You are a powerless young man and a fool who plunges ahead without thinking of the possible consequences. You changed the world. You put magic in the hands of those unworthy to have it. And now, my daughter is a prisoner, and you are unworthy to marry her!”
Adam winced. The barb had hurt. He knew boys – and a handful of girls – who’d gotten into relationships with people higher up the social ladder, relationships that had rarely ended well. People talked, and ... he scowled. There were semi-aristo families in the city who’d allowed their daughters, and sometimes their sons to marry beneath themselves for money, trading an ancient name for cash, and most of those relationships – if gossip was to be believed – had gone very sour. The idea that his lack of magic would mean his relationship would turn into a disaster ...
“You’re no good for her,” Master Dagon said. The hell of it was that he sounded sincere. He actually believed what he was saying. “And you should have the understanding to walk away and leave her alone.”
“No.” Adam hadn’t realised he was speaking until the word echoed in the air. “You’re wrong.”
Anger burned through him, tightly controlled. He knew people looked down on him for his birth – he knew they looked down on everyone, even when the lowborn man proved himself in a way they could never match – and it was maddening. Why should a man be elevated above his peers, particularly when they were far more able than himself, because of an accident of birth? He knew men who’d been born into poverty and worked their way into wealth and power, even though they lacked ancient names. People might sneer, but they couldn’t ignore. And him ...?
Taffy doesn’t have a penis, he thought. But why should she be excluded from craftsmanship because of that lack?
He took a breath, feeling his anger threatening to burst loose. “You’re wrong,” he repeated. “I have no magic. So what? I made my own magic! I had the insight to figure out how to take magic runes and use them to turn background magic into a power source and make potions, even though I didn’t have a drop of magic in my blood! I figured out how to make windmills to charge wands, then build spell structures to ensure wands could be programmed without magicians to do the work. I was the one who devised newer and better ways to focus magic, to cast spells without a born magician ...”
