An Uninvited Audience with the Archmage
Though his face made it plain that he would rather not answer, I pressed him relentlessly.
"I just get the feeling."
"Since when have you had this feeling?"
"Since I was little. But hey—do you trust me?"
When I gave a firm nod, it was Cassion who looked startled.
"Why do you trust me? What makes you so sure?"
"I just do. Call it a feeling."
The truth of it was considerably less mystical: Cassion had taken a shine to a stall item I'd been planning to buy, and he knew exactly how much the magic necklace cost—so the whole thing had simply added up rationally. Not that I intended to advertise how precisely I understood magical artifacts.
Better he doesn't know. It'd only make him suspicious of me instead.
"You really are strange, you know that?"
Cassion blurted out of nowhere.
"What's strange about me?"
"Sometimes you say exactly the things I want to hear. Can you read minds or something?"
"Oh my—so my words pleased you? Which ones? I'll be sure to say them often, then. Go on, tell me."
When I reached up to pat his head, Cassion swatted my hand away with an expression of pure disgust and retreated several paces.
"Go find Dayson. If he notices we've vanished, he might throw a fit."
"I doubt he'll spare us a single thought. His eyes will be darting elsewhere entirely."
Today, Julia's private fortune would be bled dry—I could see it coming without even watching.
Dayson wasn't the type to walk past a fascinating magic artifact without stopping. And with Bella there to impress, who knew how recklessly he'd fling his money around? Even if a mage quoted him double the price, he'd pay it without a word of haggling.
All in the name of protecting his precious pride.
"Still, we need to regroup. It's almost time to head back."
Cassion glanced up at the sky, where an enormous clock hung suspended in midair. I tilted my head back to follow his gaze. Nearly eight in the evening—the hour when the elder mages would begin arriving one by one.
"Your Highness, let's stop somewhere on the way. There's a place I want to visit."
I seized Cassion's hand and set off at a brisk pace. My instincts wanted to run, but Cassion's health was too fragile for careless sprinting, and I couldn't push him that hard.
Even now, he was only holding on thanks to a handful of painkillers Rebert had brewed for him.
As we hurried along, I could sense the escort knights who were nominally attached to us growing flustered by our speed.
"Where are we going, Diana?"
"You trusted me, so now it's your turn to trust me. I can't tell you just yet—simply follow along. There might be something good in it for us. Or maybe not."
Despite my cryptic answer, Cassion came along without putting up the slightest resistance.
I turned off the street where mages were unfurling all manner of spells and headed deeper into the district. About two blocks in, the sounds of laughter and chatter faded little by little, until they vanished altogether.
I stopped and held out a single ring to Cassion.
"What's this? A proposal?"
Cassion accepted it and slipped it on, not a trace of embarrassment in his voice.
"Ha. Hardly that romantic. This, my dear, is a pass. A pass for crossing magical barriers. Put it on, take one step forward like so—"
I stepped through the faintly shimmering transparent membrane that hung before me. Then I stretched out my hand and pulled Cassion through. Ring still half-slid onto his finger, he stumbled in after me before he knew what was happening.
"Now we can roam around inside this barrier, while those people stay stuck outside."
I pointed at the escorts trailing leisurely behind us. One of them met my eyes and gave a friendly grin; I smiled back, then quickly slipped away.
"Why are we ditching the escorts?"
"I'm meeting someone in secret. You're short on time, Your Highness—mayn't I take the lead?"
The ring that rendered magical barriers useless had a time limit. An hourglass glowing within the gem's depths kept the countdown visible.
Thirty minutes remained to us. Within that window, we had to find the mage Gadrian.
Cassion was a boy who knew precisely when to keep his mouth shut. On this occasion, too, he followed without questioning my decision to act first.
Thanks to that, we reached my destination in record time.
Concealing ourselves in a corner, I fixed my gaze on the shabby building ahead. Far from the bustling main thoroughfare, this stretch of street was conspicuously sparse in magical lamplight—which perhaps explained why it felt so dark, so silent, so faintly desolate.
"Who exactly are we meeting here?"
"Wait and see. Quietly, now."
I tucked Cassion behind me. He stared at me, his eyes brimming with suspicion.
Before long, the clip-clop of hooves echoed down the lane. Magical lanterns began flickering to life one by one, starting from far off.
***
"We have uninvited guests."
"Mischievous whelps must have gotten their hands on a barrier-nullifying tool, sir. Pay them no mind, Lord Gadrian."
Gadrian clicked his tongue at the disciple running alongside him.
"Even if they bought a barrier-nullifying artifact by pure chance, how would they find their way here? There is nothing in this place."
"Then they've come with a purpose, sir?"
The disciple's demeanor turned murderous at once. Just as he reached into his pocket for his magic staff, Gadrian stopped him.
"Oh, they have a purpose all right."
"Assassins, then—come to kill you, Lord Gadrian?"
Gadrian had no shortage of enemies. He was brilliant, sour-tempered, and affiliated with no one.
"Hired killers who happen to be children of barely ten?"
Scolding his disciple's foolishness, Gadrian studied the mouth of the alley. Two small figures stood there—and both of them were anything but ordinary.
"A pair of little corpses, then."
Gadrian paused to consider what to do. Truthfully, the children had piqued his interest.
Children clever enough to purchase and wear a barrier-nullifying ring just to reach a mage—and carrying death about them like a scent.
But no such trifling detail was reason enough for the mage who had pioneered the continent's first 8th Circle magic to make time for anyone.
Gadrian walked on in silence. He and his disciple halted before a dilapidated building—thin disguise for the Mage Association—and still the children had not moved.
Not here to see me, then?
They simply stood there, staring straight at him without a word, and that capricious curiosity of his began to stir. Gadrian turned his head toward them.
"Lord Gadrian, are you not going inside?"
The Mage Association stood directly ahead, and the mages' council was not due to begin for another ten minutes.
They've never once started on schedule. At the earliest, the session will open in thirty minutes.
Mages were hopeless about time—every last one of them.
"Bring those two here."
Gadrian told his disciple.
"It's nearly time, sir, and you would ignore them? If they trouble you, I'll chase them off myself."
"No need. One look tells you they're children of wealth."
Fabric of vivid, unmistakable blue, wrapped and draped about them—no ordinary fortune could dress a child like that. Only those who held wealth and power in equal measure could flaunt so much.
Gadrian was hardly the sort to bow to power or be seduced by riches, but with a new head of Broom's magic administration soon to be appointed, he decided—out of a quiet wish that the man take his seat unburdened—to be gracious about it.
"With your leave."
In a blink, the disciple vanished from Gadrian's sight, and in the space of a heartbeat reappeared before him, dangling a child from either hand.
Startled as the two children ought to have been by the sudden teleportation, they instead hung obediently where they'd been seized, only their eyes rolling about.
"Please put us down."
The girl spoke. At Gadrian's gesture, the disciple gently set them on the ground. Tap, tap—the sound of heels striking the pavement.
Gadrian's gaze rested on the girl, then shifted to the boy.
Black hair, golden eyes.
Even at a glance, the boy brought someone to mind. Karman, King of Petrora.
Gadrian realized at once that this was Karman's third son, Cassion.
They say he's gravely ill, yet he looks hale enough.
Long, long ago, Gadrian had received a letter from Violetta, the former queen of Petrora. It had come roughly two years after she was cast down from her throne and gave birth to the child.
The boy suffered intermittent bouts of violent fever, she wrote, and no one could name the illness. Come once, just once, and look upon him—her earnest plea. And Gadrian, for reasons of his own, had let it go unanswered.
I was buried in a cave, researching the magic that would carry me from the 7th Circle to the 8th.
Back then, he had truly shut himself away, studying nothing but magic. It felt like yesterday, yet here stood the child before him, looking reasonably healthy.
Death stews in him, to be sure—but he doesn't seem near the end. By Violetta's account, he could have dropped dead at any moment. Then who is this girl?
Gadrian met the eyes of the pretty golden-haired child.
The girl looked back at him, making no attempt to hide her delight at the meeting.
And yet beneath that pleased glitter lay something else entirely: appraisal. A gaze measuring whether Gadrian would prove useful to her—or not.
"Hello. I am Diana Viola Ehrenberg."
Everything one needed to know about the girl was packed into that simple greeting. The confident tone, the flawless etiquette—and the name Ehrenberg.
When she finished, Diana nudged Cassion with her elbow.
"Cassion Lichte Petrora."
Once even the guarded-eyed Cassion had given his greeting, the disciple visibly wavered.
He had seized two children by the napes of their necks—and one was a prince, the other an Ehrenberg, a family whose influence rivaled the crown itself.
Only a talent of Gadrian's caliber could stand unbowed before royalty. Still, the disciple was a mage, and Gadrian had no wish to watch him grovel.
"Step back."
Gadrian clicked his tongue inwardly. The moment his disciple retreated a couple of paces, he cast a silence shield.
A small translucent dome settled over Gadrian, Diana, and Cassion. From now on, nothing the three of them said could escape—unless a mage skilled enough to shatter Gadrian's silence shield happened along.
The more I see of magic, the more wondrous it truly is.
Diana, lamenting—as she always did—her own lack of magical talent, looked Gadrian squarely in the eye.
"Have you lost your way, little ones?"
Gadrian asked, playing the kind elder for the two children.
"I'd say we found our way rather well."
Diana replied.
"I don't imagine you hold an invitation to this place."
"Invitations can be gotten, if one knows how."
Gadrian's lips twitched into a smile as he caught sight of the small, gleaming rings on Diana's and Cassion's fingers.
"And what, pray tell, did you intend to do with those dearly bought scalped tickets?"
"Please examine him, Lord Gadrian."
The child's brazen demand caught him so off guard that Gadrian was, for a moment, left speechless.