A Cat, a Thief, and a Wizard

Duvessa was quiet the whole trip back to school. An unusual but welcome occurrence. It gave Seth time to think.

"We should find the others and figure out what we should be doing next," Seth said as they walked through the gate. He was sure he didn't misinterpret Helena looking up at the northern mountain's waterfall. She was planning to do something up there.

He didn't know if they should do anything about that, or if they should leave it be. There was no reason to go after the regalia, except to thwart Helena.

"You didn't need to yell at me like that," Duvessa said.

"When did I yell at you?" Seth asked, glancing up at her. He couldn't remember raising his voice at all today.

"You said I sabotaged my grandmother. I would never do any such thing."

"I didn't yell at you."

"You were talking mean. It's mean that you think I would sabotage Nana."

Seth stopped and turned to face her. The Water Tower loomed behind her, the water dark inside the tower stones compared to the evening sky.

"You did. I wasn't talking mean; I was telling you what you did." Seth kept his voice calm and low. "It was a coincidence that we saw Helena in that cave up the mountain, but meeting her here let her know we were looking into her. She knows who you are. She knows who your grandmother is. She is going to tell Thurstan that your grandmother can't be trusted. You did sabotage that."

Duvessa folded her arms sullenly and glared at the ground. She didn't reply.

"Why did you ditch the plan like that? We were supposed to listen to what they were talking about. She was hiring those guys for a job. We could have had all kinds of details about what they were up to. If we were lucky they might have said where and when and what they were up to, but at worst we'd know who was involved and where they were meeting for a more private discussion."

"I was tired of sneaking around and being careful. I thought the direct approach would get better results."

"By walking up and sitting at her table?"

"I wanted to rattle her and put her on the back foot. People who are upset or confused are less careful. I thought by doing something unexpected she'd let something important slip."

At least Duvessa had some sort of plan. "And how did that work out?"

"It didn't."

"Duvessa, some of the people we are dealing with are very dangerous. Don't ever get tired of being careful. People can die here. And what you do might not hurt you, but it could kill someone else. Maybe one of us, maybe someone else, like your grandmother."

"Pshaw. Nana can take care of herself."

Seth sighed. How did he end up being the mature one giving lectures to someone two whole years older than him? Duvessa was fifteen, nearly an adult.

Despite how difficult she could be at times, he liked Duvessa, he really did. She was kind and brave and generous. But she just didn't think. This was an adventure to her, and she had more drive than sense.

Seth glanced down at Mau to see if she had an opinion on all this.

Unfortunately, Mau wasn't paying attention to them. Instead, she had taken the opportunity while Seth and Duvessa were just standing there talking to rub on the ground. She was rolling vigorously in the grass near the tower, with all her paws in the air.

She still had some of the stinky slime on her that Reginald had hit her with earlier. For some reason she'd made no attempt to lick herself clean. Come to think of it, Seth couldn't remember ever having seen her lick herself.

He made a mental note to get Mau to the baths later. If she wouldn't clean herself, he'd need to wash her. There was no way he'd let her in his room smelling like that.

Over Duvessa's shoulder, Seth could see a bioluminescent jellyfish within the Water Tower stones. It floated by in whatever distant place the stones were connected to. The water niggled an idea, something about waterfalls and water powers, but he dismissed it and turned his focus back to Duvessa.

"There are so many other ways we could have tried to do something there. We could have pretended to be working with Thurstan, or the mercenary. You could have put a shadow there to listen to them. My talent might have let me hear them. We could be scholars with information about the regalia and send her on a wild goose chase."

"I thought you were trying to avoid a confrontation," Duvessa said. "You don't really like conflict. You hate fighting in gym class."

Well that was true. You only need to lose everything that matters to you once or twice to be a little gun shy. And he had been trying to stall Duvessa to give her grandmother time to do her investigation.

That plan wasn't likely to bear fruit anymore.

"The other problem with what you did there was I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I ended up just standing there, because what you were doing surprised me, too."

"I didn't have a role for you in my new plan, so it didn't matter what you were doing."

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"By not talking to me about your new plan, you were wasting a resource," Seth explained.

Duvessa's scowl twisted. "I don't like the idea of needing permission to do anything."

"I'm not stopping you from doing things," Seth said, struggling to hold onto his patience and keep his voice calm. "You don't need my permission and I'm not your boss. But if we are going to be working together, we need to know what the other is up to. Teamwork, Duvessa."

"Of course we're a team." Duvessa looked scandalized that Seth thought they might not be. "We're all on the team. Me, you, Blaise, Owen, Booth, Reginald, Mau, even Selendrith."

"Right. And team members communicate with each other. They coordinate. They make plans and follow them."

"We did talk about plans, though," Duvessa argued.

"But when you changed it, you didn't tell me."

"Is that why it didn't work? I didn't tell it to you right there? But she might have heard it."

"It didn't work because it counted on rattling Helena. She wasn't rattled, just angry," Seth explained. "The teamwork between you and me didn't work because you didn't tell me anything. You could have whispered it to me, pulled me aside, or even used hand signals."

"Oh."

Seth could practically smell the dust burning off in Duvessa's brain. Maybe he made a sufficient point that she wouldn't be quite so loose a cannon.

He was kidding himself if he actually believed that.

"Do you know how far your grandmother got in her investigation into Thurstan?"

Duvessa snorted. "Of course not. Nana doesn't like sharing the juicy stuff. I have to find that out on my own. She would only tell me after everything is over and I can't do anything to help anymore."

It sounded like Duvessa's grandmother knew and understood Duvessa quite well.

"She knows about the power thefts, and your babysitters told her about the inn in Laureli. Do you know what she's doing about those?" Seth asked.

Duvessa gave a frustrated sigh. "She's had meetings with people, mostly friends of hers, and a few others. Most don't believe that powers can be stolen. They say that talents come from the soul, and that stealing talents is like stealing a part of someone's soul. Ridiculous, right? We've seen that talents can be stolen."

Seth thought they had a valid argument, despite it being wrong. In the research he'd seen his father involved in, back in their Palace days, there was a significant amount of evidence that talents were related to souls. It was postulated as the reason animals didn't develop talents, and instead developed smaller, more specific abilities.

Animals could absorb mana and gain power. Humans didn't. If a human absorbed too much mana then they were at risk of burning out their talent.

But whatever it was that held a person's talent, it could be taken. It bothered Seth more than a little to think someone might have cut a piece of Saben's soul out and stuck it onto Seth's.

He realized that the idea of bits of souls getting stolen probably made most people uncomfortable. Rather than face the idea that something as violating as that could happen, they just denied it. They didn't want it to be true, so they insisted it wasn't.

It might be very difficult to get the support they needed to find the culprits.

If Thurstan was smart enough to cut off communication with Duvessa's grandmother, then they might have a very difficult time getting the right authorities involved. And Seth had no reason to think Thurstan would be an idiot.

He didn't know who Duvessa's grandmother might have reported this to, if anyone. Only telling one person didn't feel like a sound strategy to Seth.

There had to be someone else they could tell. Someone that would believe them. There was no way they could do this on their own. They were kids. The fact they were kids made Seth really worried no one would take them seriously.

Not to mention that there were people working for the thieves, and Seth didn't know who or how many. Some of them worked in the school, too. It was fair to think there might be some authorities also involved.

Or he could just be paranoid, and turning this over to the town guard and the Crown was the right course of action.

In the distance, a warning bell started to ring.

"Oh! It's the ogre bell!" Duvessa spun to face the direction of the clanging. "I want to see the ogres!"

"No, it's not an ogre bell," Seth said, exasperated. "That's the wyvern bell." He scanned the sky on that side of the city.

"A wyvern!" Duvessa said excitedly. "I thought you were pulling my leg saying they came by every year." She scanned the sky too. "What do we need to do? Do we man ballistas? Do we have battle stations? Is getting under cover mandatory or can we watch?"

Seth chuckled. "No. No battle stations or ballistas. We don't have to worry about cover yet, either. It's on the other side of town, and there's only one."

"How do you know there's only one? We can't see it from here."

"There's only one bell ringing. The more bells, the more wyverns or the bigger it is. If you like, we can head up to the library roof and watch? We'll have to hurry, the guards will probably kill it pretty quickly."

"Yes, yes!" Duvessa took off running for the library, with Seth close behind her. Even Mau scrambled along too. She looked just as keen as Duvessa to see the wyvern battle.

The library roof had a covered terrace with a parapet. There was a small crowd on the library roof already, all watching the distant wyvern. A teacher Seth didn't recognize was already there, standing by sigils on the parapet.

The wyvern circled above the city between the west and north mountains. It was small, its body was probably no bigger than a dog, and a wingspan about four times its body length.

Proportionally, Chicky-chicky's wingspan was shorter. Seth wondered if that was because Chicky-chicky had spent so much time below ground, or if wyvern wingspans normally didn't grow like their bodies did.

This was the size Seth usually saw at this time of year. This one being a single wasn't unusual either. They tended to show up by ones and twos at first, by mid winter there might be a single flock of three, and then more singles at a larger size as winter faded. By spring, all the current nestlings would have died or gone elsewhere.

The one they were watching was about to die. Two mages in different sections of the city were casting spells at it.

"Oh, that was a Magic Arrow," Duvessa said, excited. "We'll be learning that next week. Oh, that one has a blue color to it. Do you think they made it water aspected?"

Seth hadn't realized they were going to finally be learning an attack spell. Well, he had been about to read the handbook this afternoon before Duvessa dragged him off to the restaurant, so he couldn't really be blamed for not knowing yet.

If they could cast an attack spell, that would make them all better able to defend themselves. The more adventurous activities that Duvessa wanted to do would become just a little safer.

Another spell launched at the little wyvern, and the little scrapper dodged it. The wyvern sprayed flame in sticky bursts at the mages casting at it. When the flames struck the thatch roofs they smoldered a moment and went out.

"Oh! I thought for sure those would light right up!" Duvessa exclaimed.

"No. The blue grass in the thatch has a strong water aspect. It won't burn," Seth said.

Another spell launched up, this one bigger than the Magic Arrow, with jagged and aggressive spikes from what looked like a lance. It caught the wyvern in the palm of the left wing and knocked it from the sky.

"Aww," someone on the roof said. "Poor thing."

"Oh, no. Not 'Poor thing'," Duvessa said. "Those things are nasty and will eat you. Nope. Let it fall."

The warning bell stopped.

Across the courtyard, Seth saw Booth and Blaise walking in the campus gate. "Let's go get dinner," he said to Duvessa. "We've got some things to talk about."