The Scofflaw Magician (The Artifactor Book 3) (26 page)

“They will be
overjoyed to do so.” Aran had a dreamy look in his eye as if he were imagining
bringing in a hundred or more children all at once. It would be quite the sight
to see.

Sevana pointed
to the covered plate. “There’s dinner for you, if you haven’t had any.”

“I haven’t.”
Snagging it, he lifted off the cover and grabbed a fork before joining them at
the table. He took a bite before offering, “It’s good, but this isn’t something
you made.”

Blinking, she
asked incredulous, “How did you know?”

“These aren’t
spices you use.” Aran gave her a subtle wink before digging back in.

Did he have
gourmet taste buds? Sevana had cooked for him only a dozen times, at most. And
already he could tell? Shaking the thought aside, she told him, “All the tunnels
have traps. One tunnel has serious ones,” because she hadn’t thought to run a
behavior analysis until after she’d had one tunnel partially set up, “and the
rest are non-lethal. Regardless, don’t trip over any of them. Stay inside of
our designated rooms until I tell you otherwise.” When he nodded, mouth full,
she relaxed a hair. Even if he had tripped over one of their traps, with his
reflexes and magical ability, it wouldn’t hurt him much. But Sevana frankly
didn’t like the idea of him being hurt at all. “I’ll have you and Kip help me
tomorrow. After that, I’ll set the rest of the lethal traps.”

“And when
that’s done?”

“While we’re
waiting on our scofflaw magician to show up, Master and I plan to work on a few
projects like Milly’s mirrors and Aranhil’s Caller. The two of you are free to
do whatever you wish, but if you’re here in Big, try to not be completely
alone. If that man does catch us off-guard, it would be better to have at least
one person to help fight at your side.”

“We’ll stick to
each other as much as possible,” Morgan promised her. “And don’t worry about
entertaining us. Arandur and I will keep each other entertained.”

Aran put his
fork down and looked at Morgan squarely across the table. “Oh?”

“It will be a
good time for us to get to know each other better.” Morgan’s smile had a
challenging edge to it. “Man to man.”

An answering
smile stretched across Aran’s face. “Yes. So it will.”

Sevana had a
few ideas of how to tweak the Callers so they would work with Fae magic. She
took several readings of how Aran’s magical core worked, which gave her a
baseline, and then worked from there. Three days into tweaking, she put her new
Caller statue down and frowned. The statue itself was fine but something about
it seemed off. Perhaps she should see if Aran could use this.

Pushing back
from her work table, she wandered out into the hallway. “Big, where is Aran?”
Last she’d seen him was over the breakfast table, but that was several hours ago.

Outside. In
front. Dangerous.

Sevana stopped
short and looked up. “Dangerous? How?”

Aran and Morgan.
Arrows.

They were
shooting at things with arrows? It couldn’t be a real emergency, Big would have
alerted her if it was, so what were they shooting at? Becoming increasingly
confused, she grabbed a shielding wand from the selection near the door and
headed for the front door. Activating the spell, she stepped cautiously out
into the front yard.

Before she even
had the door fully opened, she heard the sounds of arrows whizzing through the
air and the
thunk
as they hit the target. Fortunately, it seemed the men
had the sense to not fire toward Big. They had a target made of deadfall
several yards away, their backs toward the front door.

“You’re not a
bad archer,” Aran complimented Kip. He almost sounded sincere except his timbre
made it sound somewhat challenging.

“I expected you
to be good.” On the surface, the words were a compliment, but intonation said
instead,
I expected you to be better than this.

Aran heard the
unspoken words and bared his teeth in the semblance of a smile. “Can you get
three arrows in flight?”

“At this
distance? You’d be doing good to get two in the air at the same time.”

“Really?
Because I manage three at this distance all the time.”

“Is that right.
Why don’t you show me, then.”

Sevana watched
this back and forth play out and shook her head in exasperation. It was just
like watching two bandy roosters in the same hen yard. What had started this
marital arts competition anyway?

One thing was
clear, she wouldn’t be able to break this up. Later, when Aran was no longer
strutting about like a peacock, she’d get his help. For now, she might as well
go back in and see if Master needed any help with Milly’s mirror problem.
Hopefully whatever madness this was would end today and the boys wouldn’t be
doing this nonsense again tomorrow.

~ ~ ~

Sevana was glad
that she hadn’t bulled ahead and set all the traps like she had originally
planned. It seemed nonsensical to her now to do so. What if a person didn’t
approach the tunnels the same way she did? What if, because they weren’t too
familiar with the area, they hugged the wall instead?

It behooved her
to run a few trial runs to see how people moved, and if her traps would really
go off. Of course she had the perfect experimental subjects—ah, that was to
say, dear friends who were willing to sacrifice themselves to help her. Sevana
waited charitably until the next morning and approached Aran at the breakfast
table. “I need some help.”

Aran was
instantly on his feet. “Of course. What do you need?”

“The tunnels on
the far left, run through them and see how many traps you set off?” Seeing his
expression of growing alarm, she hastily added, “None of them are lethal. I put
paint in all of them.”

“Ahhh, I see.”
A crinkle in the corner of his eyes, he said, “That’s what you were talking
about last night. Alright then. Just me? I can see magic, you know. And the
darkness in there will not be much of a hindrance either.”

“I’ll send Kip
in as well. I think between the two of you, I’ll get a good baseline for what
adjustments need to be done.”

Aran seemed to
think this series of challenges from her and Morgan were nothing but mild
entertainment as he said readily, “I’ll go now. If that’s alright?”

“I’ll round up
Kip as you run through them.” He had made noises about packaging some of her
wares this morning, getting them ready to ship off. Just because they were
waiting for an evil magician to storm the castle, so to speak, it didn’t mean
business stopped.

Agreeable, Aran
headed off. Sevana went in search of Morgan and found him in her workroom,
lifting several finished projects off of her back table and into a crate with
packing straw. “Kip, I need you for a moment.”

“Hm? Oh, sure.”
Setting what was in his hands down, he followed her out and to the mouth of the
tunnel. “What am I doing?”

“Seeing how
many traps you set off.”

Jaw dropping,
his voice climbed. “WHAT?!”

“They’re armed
with nothing but paint, it’s not going to take an arm off. Don’t be a baby about
it.”

Morgan gave an
anxious look at the tunnels that suggested he really, really wanted to be a
baby about it.

“These three tunnels only. Do
not
go into this one,” she said sternly, pointing to the far right tunnel.
“It’s already been fully armed and traps set, so don’t go in there, I can’t
guarantee you’ll come out with all your limbs.”

Morgan gulped and agreed faintly,
“Yes, I’ll stay well clear of that one.”

Satisfied she had made her point, Sevana
pointed a finger. “In.”

Staring at it with open dismay, Morgan
bit his lower lip. “Really? I have to do this?”

“Aran’s going in there too.
Actually, he’s already in there I should say.” He had taken both Baby and
Grydon with him. Why, Sevana wasn’t quite sure. It wasn’t like either of her
pets knew where the traps were.

“But—” he started in a clear
whine.

“Go, Kip. I need a behavioral
pattern to see if the traps are placed in the right places and how obvious they
are. I set them, Master helped me plan where to put them, so we know more or
less where they are; therefore it’s useless for us to run the test. That leaves
you and Aran.”

“That sounds all logical and
reasonable, but the truth is,
you
don’t want to do it,” he accused, shaking
a self-righteous finger at her.

Sevana gave him a serene smile.
“Your point being?”

“Made.”

“With circumstantial evidence,”
she riposted without missing a beat.

“That leads to an obvious
conclusion.”

“Yes, the conclusion being that
you are still one of two people that are the perfect test subjects.” Sevana
gave him a grand bow, arms both gracefully pointing toward the tunnel entrance.
“Begin.”

Morgan sucked in a soulful breath
and blew it out in a steady stream. “You’re really hard to be friends with
sometimes.”

“It’s just paint, Kip. It’ll wash
off.”

Grumbling something under his
breath that sounded like ‘
It better
’ he bounced on his toes, sucking in
several breaths, hyping himself up. Rolling back his shoulders, he gripped his
fists into the air in front of him, like he was gearing up for a fight. Then he
nodded to himself. “Alright. Ready. Here I go.”

Sevana watched him run in, without
a single thing to shield himself with, and shook her head. She was actually
going to offer him a wooden shield so he at least had something to duck behind.
Ah well, the paint wouldn’t kill him. Just turn him rainbow colors for a few
days.

He was in there for all of a
minute before she heard the first yelp. Already hit a trap, eh? That was quick.
That had been one of the more obvious ones, too. This did not bode well for her
friend.

Aran came jogging out of the far
left tunnel with a nonchalant expression on his face. He had two paint smears
on him, one on his chest, the other on his upper thigh, but he was remarkably
clean. Neither Baby nor Grydon had a single streak on them. Both of them came
up and put their heads into her palms, and she gave them scratches behind their
ears as she asked Aran, “You really got through all of them without setting off
more than two?”

“Some of them I could see,” Aran
explained. “But most of them, Grydon and Baby were able to navigate me around.
Their senses are much better than mine, they could smell the paint.”

Oh-ho, which was why he’d taken
them as pilots. Smart man. Morgan was going to whine about not being able to do
the same.

One of Aran’s ears swiveled in
Kip’s direction. “I don’t think he’s doing well.”

“You hear a lot of the traps going
off?” Sevana couldn’t hear much of anything at this distance.

“More than that. He’s complaining
to himself all the way through.” Aran’s mouth quirked in dry amusement.

Now why didn’t that surprise her.

Very, very faintly she could hear
a whine echoing through the tunnels: “It got
in my mouth.”

Choking back a snicker, she lifted
her hand to cover a smile.

Aran jerked a thumb that
direction. “You keep him around for the entertainment, don’t you?”

“To be fair, he’s a very good
business partner.” Hearing from the tunnels a wordless howl of pure
frustration, she bit her lip to keep from laughing before admitting, “And it’s
hard to find good free entertainment.”

“I thought as much.”

About this point, Morgan came out
from the far left tunnel. Or a better way to describe it would be, he came
staggering out like some sort of color-blind monster that had experimented with
dyes. There wasn’t a trace of skin that wasn’t touched by paint. He had one eye
clenched shut to avoid getting blue paint in it.

Sevana couldn’t help it. She
doubled over, laughing at the sight.

Morgan growled, face drawing into
angry lines, which just made his painted face more comical. His mouth was open,
ready to lay into Sevana, but upon seeing Aran an indignant finger came up to
point in his direction. “You.
You
. Why were you only hit twice?”

Aran pretended to think about this
a moment before offering, “I’m better at dodging than you are?”

“He had Baby and Grydon to guide
him,” Sevana explained, wiping away tears of mirth. Ahhh, Morgan was always
good for a laugh.

For some reason, this set Morgan to
fuming. “Sev. Hit me with one of those cleaning spells of yours.”

Blinking, she stared at him.
“Those cleaning spells that you complain about because they sting? The ones
that you told me you would rather go fight a dragon than be hit by another one?
Those cleaning spells?”

“We’re going again,” Morgan
explained, eyes locked with Aran’s. “And this time, you’re not going to use
anyone to help you.”

Sevana might have strong-armed him
into doing it the first time, but if he was foolhardy enough to go in again,
she wasn’t about to dissuade him.  So she pulled a wand and hit him with a
cleaning spell that squeaked every speck of paint off of him.

Of course, even braced for it, Morgan
yelped. But he shook off the feeling and gestured for Aran to go in first.

Aran paused and confirmed with
her, “They will still go off?”

“All of the traps have enough
paint in them to set off five different times,” she confirmed. “You’re good for
another round.” Why they would do that to themselves just for the sake of pride
was something she didn’t understand. Or want to understand.

With a shrug, Aran took off at a
lope into the tunnel.

Sevana turned to Morgan. “You
realize you just challenged a man that has the eyes of a cat and can see
perfectly well in the dark?”

“It won’t save him; most of those
traps are fiendishly clever, how you hid them. He’ll get hit more than twice.” Morgan’s
expression suggested that Aran had
better
be hit more than twice, or he
would start cursing at the unfairness of life. Counting to five under his breath,
he gave Aran more of a head start before charging into the tunnel after him.

Sevana watched them go, shaking
her head at the idiocy. “They can blame me for the first round, but not the
second. And when they wake up tomorrow in a motley color of hues, that will be
exactly what I tell them.” With a final scratch behind fuzzy ears, she let go
and wandered for the kitchen. “This’ll take more than a minute, I think a snack
is in order.”

Baby and Grydon were of the
opinion that this was a splendid plan and darted ahead of her, going straight
for the kitchen.

Sevana had a foot inside the
kitchen when a sound coming from dead ahead stopped her in her tracks. It had
been soft, barely detectable, but alarm shot up through her spine. Absolutely
nothing
should be in that direction. Past this door was where the booby-trapped tunnels
started. “Big. Tell me there’s no one in that tunnel.”

The mountain
hesitated, as if considering whether to be truthful or not. Finally, he
groaned,
Morgan. Arandur.

Her eyes bugged
out of her head. “BOTH OF THEM?!”

Playing tag
?
the mountain offered tentatively.