Lucky Rabbit

Carefully, well aware of his youngest listener, Bryan explained what had happened to him. He didn’t specify exactly what experiments he’d been working on, though Pandy thought Augustus could guess, based on what he knew of the Avingtons. Bryan ended by turning to Thaniel with a very serious expression.

“I want you to know that while I did bad things because I was trying to help you,” he told his son, “every bit of it was my fault, my choice. Worse, I wasn’t a good father to you. I was so obsessed with trying to solve a problem that I forgot to appreciate what I already had. You.”

“An’ Lian,” Thaniel said, which made Bryan flinch. Pandy was pretty sure the man knew his older son wasn’t going to be nearly as forgiving as the younger one. But Thaniel wasn’t done. “It’s like in Alex and the Dark Magician, except I was the dog. I thought it was Mama, but it was me, wasn’t it?”

In the book, which Bryan wrote and Grace illustrated, Alex did indeed do bad things in an attempt to resurrect his beloved childhood pet. It was a book Thaniel treasured, but hadn’t read again until recently – after he started talking to Lady Arabelle, Pandy suddenly realized. She had a feeling she and everyone who loved Thaniel owed the lady a huge debt of gratitude. Arabelle had been able to address the boy’s deepest fears in a way that was allowing them to heal, not just preventing them from overwhelming him.

Bryan nodded, clearly unable to speak, and Thaniel patted his hand. “I forgive you,” he said simply. “But you can’t do things like that any more, okay?” His father gave another nod, more tears slipping down his lined cheeks, and everyone allowed a moment to pass in respectful silence.

Augustus broke it. “So these people can steal the magic from one person and give it to someone else? Are there limits to it? Will they always have one of these stones in their chest? Does the process have to be voluntary, or can it be done against someone’s will?”

Bryan rubbed a handkerchief Augustus had donated against his cheeks, still holding Thaniel close with his other arm. “They can, yes, no, and it’s best if it’s voluntary, but it doesn’t have to be.” His jaw tightened and he glanced down at Thaniel before elaborating.

“If the magic being given to the person is greater than the one they were born with, it can… overwhelm them. Sometimes the transfer simply fails, leaving them with their original magic or no magic at all. Other times-” He shook his head.

“To effect the transfer, two essence stones are paired, through a process which I would rather not explain at this time. One is implanted into the donor, and for best results, the other should be placed into the recipient, though that’s not… absolutely required. Once the transfer is complete, the donor is Magicless, and cannot be given new magic or regain their original power through any method we have discovered. If the implanted stone is removed, the person dies. We’re honestly not certain why this happens, but it’s true one hundred percent of the time.”

Thaniel shivered, causing Bryan to look down, grimacing apologetically. Softening his tone from the almost clinical one he’d fallen into, he continued. “The process isn’t easy for the recipient, either. As the new magic enters them, it forces out the old, which is not a… comfortable experience. This is easier with some changes than others. Water and Ice, for instance, or Nature and Earth. Light and Dark are always unsuccessful.”

He came down hard on the final word, giving Pandy and Augustus looks that told them one or both of the people involved probably ended up dead. Augustus gave a tilt of his chin to indicate that he understood, and Bryan went on.

“The stones can be placed in different parts of the body, though closer to the heart is better. We were just beginning to experiment with inserting them beneath the skin, so they would be hidden from the naked eye. In a very few cases, they can also be removed. It took a number of failures before we realized that the magic the recipient was given had to run in their family, preferably within the last three generations. I hypothesize that there is still something within these people that recognizes and accepts the magic they could have been born with, allowing them to hold it within their bodies even without the stone.”

Was he talking about magical DNA? Pandy didn’t know much about genetics, but since people here seemed very certain no one could have magic one of their parents or grandparents hadn’t had, there definitely seemed to be a strong hereditary link to what kind of magic someone ended up with. “What elemental magics did your and Grace’s parents have?” she asked, then clapped her hands over her mouth. That had nothing to do with the situation at hand.

But Bryan chuckled, seeming relieved to have something else to talk about, at least for a moment. “My father had Dark magic, while my mother had Air. Grace’s parents,” he hesitated. “Her mother was Light, and her father was Air as well. Light magic rarely breeds true, so we’d hoped that- With Air on both sides of the family, we thought it likely our offspring would have Air as well. Having two children with Light magic was entirely unexpected.”

But they did have two Light children before the third, which was most likely Dark. Unless Pandy was wrong and the baby having an opposite element from the mother wasn’t the reason for Grace’s illness during her final pregnancy. She really wanted to ask, but she’d already derailed the conversation once. Hopefully she would get another chance. She had so many questions about Grace and the heartstone, but right now they needed to be able to identify anyone who had had this ‘procedure’ done, and was thus probably part of the conspiracy.

“What is the conspirators’ end goal?” Augustus asked, leaning forward across his desk as he guided the topic back to the point. “I understand why nobles might want Air magic, but this seems like a ridiculous chance to take when simply marrying an Air mage and getting offspring with Air would achieve the same effect naturally, albeit over a greater period of time.”

Bryan shook his head. “That’s just it. These people don’t want to wait for their children or their grandchildren to have power. They want that power now. With control of the elementals contracted to the palace and most of the remaining noble houses with living estates entirely dependent upon Air, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get that power.” He waved a hand around. “Even the schools require an Air elementalist as chancellor.”

They did? But technically, Augustus wasn’t an elementalist. That was a term reserved for those who had at least one contracted elemental, and he had chosen not to form any contracts, which meant he was an Air mage. Did that mean he wasn’t really chancellor, or that Bryan was simply mistaken?

“Why Dark, though?” Pandy asked, glancing at Thaniel. The boy seemed to have tuned out of the conversation, no doubt emotionally exhausted as well as overwhelmed by the discussion of things he didn’t understand. He leaned against his father’s side, red-rimmed eyes closed and his usually rosy cheeks pale.

At Bryan and Augustus’s questioning looks, she said, “The Avingtons wanted to get Dark magic back. I get that. They need it for their house, right? But what about these other people? Maybe they took your magic as a way to keep you from escaping, but what did they do with it? Why are there so many Bound humans wandering around when everyone says that De- That the elementals needed to create them are so rare, and it drains Dark elementalists so much to keep even one? Who needs Dark magic, and why?”

From Augustus’s look, he’d gotten so caught up in uncovering the immediate threat to the nation that he loved and had spent most of his adult life protecting that he’d all but forgotten the other aspect of the conspiracy. She knew he would have come back to it sooner rather than later, but sooner-sooner was better than later-sooner.

Bryan shook his head. “That, I’m not certain of. My job was to figure out how to improve the efficiency and success rate of the transfer, with a secondary goal of discovering a method of holding two or more forms of magic in one person, so they didn’t have to give up their original magic in order to gain a new one.”

He tightened his arm around Thaniel. “We did have a lot of Dark… subjects. I assumed it was because people with Dark magic are less likely to form contracts, and have societal constraints placed upon them that others do not. They become,” he swallowed hard, his eyes shadowed, “vulnerable to those inclined to prey upon others.”

That wasn’t it, or at least not all of it. None of that was a reason to abduct people and deliberately infect Dark mages with ‘illnesses’ that caused what Pandy’s System interpreted as Dark Aura. If these nobles were so obsessed with Air magic, it would make more sense to take commoners with Air to experiment on, rather than focusing on whatever it was Dark Aura was for, which as far as Pandy could see, did nothing except generate tasty Corruption Points for her.

She froze. Corruption Points. Was it that simple? She knew other Dark elementals could steal her Corruption Points or gift theirs to her. So why had she still been assuming that Dark Aura only affected her? What if it also strengthened other Dark elementals? What if it strengthened Demons? What if – and she knew she was reaching now – a Demon who had access to someone with Dark Aura wouldn’t need a contractor in order to remain in this world?

To take it just a bit further, a Demon who had access to someone with Dark Aura, someone who could produce Corruption Points – which might well be some kind of Dark Mana that was now free-floating in the air for any Dark elemental to slurp up – what if a Demon like that didn’t need to be Bound at all? What if they could run around free, and what if, because they weren’t draining a single mage, but rather many, there could be lots and lots of Demons all at once? Like, say, a whole army of them?

Pandy didn’t even realize she’d stopped breathing until Bryan said, “Lady Eurydice? Are you well?” Then she took a breath so she could speak, and noticed – to her somewhat distant bemusement – that she felt a small amount of relief when she did so, as if her body had actually cared just a teeny tiny bit that it wasn’t getting oxygen any longer.

Augustus, of course, was used to Pandy not doing things living creatures did, so he actually looked startled when she drew in a deeper-than-necessary gasp. Half-rising from behind his desk, he said, “Rab- Eurydice?” in an almost panicked tone of voice. She shook her head at him, wondering just what was going on, and, vaguely, why Keros hadn’t had anything to say about it yet.

Soft tapping interrupted the thing she was totally going to say just as soon as she figured out how to say it without sounding crazy, and Pandy felt relief rush through her as all attention turned to the office door. “Sir? Someone has sent for you… and Lady Eurydice.”

All right, so maybe that relief had come a little too soon. Pandy was fairly certain the only person who could ‘send for’ Augustus so easily was Queen Louisa. Not that Pandy hadn’t met the queen  – and been nearby a few times when the queen was around – but there was a difference between seeing someone as a worried, overwhelmed mother and as a ruler. She remembered the cold, formal queen-regent from Gacha Love, the one who hadn’t been terribly enthusiastic about her son marrying a poor country noble. Pandy suspected she knew which of those women she was about to meet, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Enter,” Augustus said, standing. Rounding the desk, he laid a gentle hand on Thaniel’s shoulder as a Knight of the Royal Eagle entered the room, looking very imposing in their highly-polished full armor and featureless helmet. Pandy suspected it was Sir Bailey, but there was simply no way to know, which was the armor Working As Intended.

Crouching, Augustus addressed the boy, who opened tired eyes to blink at the chancellor. “This knight is going to have to take your father away, Thaniel,” he said, as kindly as he could. When Thaniel’s arms only tightened around Bryan, Augustus looked pained but determined.

“You know your father did things he shouldn’t have,” he tried again. “He still has to take responsibility for those things. The fact that he’s helping us now will make things better, and I promise,” he cleared his throat, giving both Bryan and the knight looks heavy with meaning, “I promise you’ll see him again soon.”

Bryan turned and embraced his son once more, then stood, holding out his hands for the knight, who wound a thick wire around them in a figure eight. When the knight pressed the free end of the wire to their gauntlet, the two metal objects fused. There was no way Bryan could escape without removing that gauntlet or the wire first, and Pandy suspected that would be no easy task. Obviously the Knights weren’t going to count on purely magical constraints this time.

Thaniel was crying again by now, and Pandy went over and hefted him into her arms, ignoring the look of surprise Bryan gave her. Thaniel fought against her briefly, then turned in her embrace, clinging to her like a limpet as her System informed her she was gaining more Corruption Points by the moment, thanks to his tears.

“He’s Magicless,” Augustus informed the knight as they turned to leave, ushering their prisoner before them with a gentleness Pandy wouldn’t have expected. The knight’s helmet turned, something in the angle of it making Pandy even more certain it was Sir Bailey inside the tin can.

“Yes sir,” they said, the voice still hollow and unidentifiable. “There’s a carriage waiting for you and the lady.”

As Bryan and his guard left, Pandy very nearly said something about the Dark thing that had been looped around his neck when she saw him below. Something made her hesitate, however, and she bit her lip as he and maybe-Sir Bailey went down the stairs. No startled hubbub greeted them, so someone must have cleared out the parents and anyone else who might have showed up after word got out about the events of the morning.

She was almost certain of two things. First, Bryan Conroy truly was Magicless now. He had handled aetherbane without any difficulty, and everyone had made it very clear that was incredibly dangerous for anyone with any kind of magic. Other than Pandy herself, for Reasons.

Second, someone – probably multiple someones – had reason to want Bryan to remain silent about what he knew, and they had probably infiltrated the palace, if not the Knights themselves. Whatever the creature around Bryan’s neck was, it might make the difference between Bryan surviving to testify or not. Pandy would just have to take the risk that the thing was on their side, or at least Bryan’s side, and Bryan was now on their side, or at least Thaniel’s side, no matter how disturbing she personally found the creature.

Augustus waited until the newest storm of Thaniel’s tears died down before he said, “We should go, too.”

Pandy nodded, following him out onto the landing, but she couldn’t just leave the boy alone. Who could she trust with him? Geraldine and Abbington should still be here somewhere, but they were children too. Thaniel needed someone older. Someone he trusted implicitly. Lady Arabelle came to mind, but she’d indicated that she was going to leave in order to spread the Approved Story far and wide.

From down below, a voice called out, “Thaniel?”

Thaniel’s head popped up. “Mr. Farrier?” He peered down over the balustrade at the rather roundish man, who was still wearing his apron and had a worried look on his kind face. Pandy lowered Thaniel to the ground, and he gave her a wobbly sort of smile before heading down the stairs.

Mr. Farrier looked from Thaniel to Augustus and Pandy. “I heard there’s a carriage waiting for you, and all of the other students are in the library. Would it be all right if I took Thaniel there as well?”

“That would be most helpful, thank you, Mr. Farrier.” Reaching out, the chancellor took Pandy’s hand, making the chef’s eyes widen. It was well-known that Augustus and the new teacher were dating, and Augustus loved teasing Pandy by flirting with her in public, but this was the kind of gentle, supportive gesture that real couples shared.

Together, they started down the steps, pausing only so Thaniel could give Pandy one more rather desperate hug, which she returned with only slightly less emotion, then offer Augustus a tentative one as well. Then the boy returned to Mr. Farrier, clinging to the man’s hand as Augustus and Pandy continued, leaving them behind.