“She knows I didn’t do this on purpose, right?” Maziar asked Marlen as he led them through the common room on the seventh floor of the South Cradle. “Why do I feel like I’m getting punished when I didn’t do anything?”
“I wouldn’t dream of trying to assume anything that goes through the head of the Grand Magician,” Marlen said. “Although saying that you didn’t do anything might be a bit of a stretch. It might do you well to lay low for a while after this.”
“I was laying low!” Maziar told him. “I wanted to lay low! Please, let me lay low!”
“What I want to know is why you, who have effectively gained free labor, are the one complaining over me, the one who’s going to need to sweep your floors and scrub your toilets,” Ennette said, tossing her red hair over her shoulder. Then she paused. “You do have toilets here, right?”
Maziar gave her a pained smile as Marlen reassured her. He couldn’t quite place what it was about this girl, but the longer he stayed around her, the more she unnerved him. Red-haired and freckled, her coloring wasn’t the most common in the kingdom, but she certainly wasn’t different from anyone he had known or met.
He supposed it had something to do with the fact that she clearly didn’t know anything about him, yet still pretended that she did. She certainly seemed to have made up her mind about Maziar from the moment they met. ‘Villain,’ she said as if this were some kind of fairytale.
Maziar scoffed and scratched his chin.
Even though it wouldn’t do him any good, he still had half a mind to feed her to War and forget it had all happened in the first place. It was almost a pity that his mother was already involved; it would be tough to get out of that unscathed now.
One thing was for sure—the girl gave Maziar a headache, and he didn’t need any more of those.
“How about this,” Maziar started, turning to Ennette. “If you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.”
“She will need to attend classes with you at the very least,” Marlen reminded him as they came to where Maziar’s door was, and he started running his hands along the walls next to it.
Marlen wasn’t a bad man. Maziar wasn’t always thrilled with how close he and his mother were, but knowing more about his parents’ relationship, he did his best to let it go. Marlen clearly respected Yulda in a way his father hadn’t—but he was also basically nothing more than his mother’s right hand as far as Maziar could tell. He would never cross her or stop her from going too far—of that he was certain.
Narrowing his eyes, Maziar said, “She’s using her to police me, isn’t she? That damn woman is taking advantage of the situation to make sure I attend classes.”
“I should’ve known you’d be the type to skip classes,” Ennette chuckled next to him.
“Your opinion wasn’t asked for, thanks,” Maziar snapped. She looked like she had more to say but kept her mouth shut after seeing his face.
Marlen seemed to have found a spot on the wall that he liked and began to draw the shape of a door with a glittering trail of mana. After sketching in a magic circle, he snapped his fingers. With a poof, the drawing that he made became a redwood door with little strawberry plants carved into the panels.
“Wow!” Ennette exclaimed, her mouth hanging open.
Maziar scoffed. “This is all it takes to impress you?”
“Well, you certainly don’t,” she grumbled, walking towards the door. “Can I open it?” she asked Marlen, pointing.
“Of course,” the secretary said with a slight bow. “This door and the room beyond it are yours now. Once you open the door for the first time, your fingerprints will be used as the keys. You can request the door to imprint for other people merely by asking it while holding the knob to confirm the order. Should you like the access to be temporary, all you need to do is specify the timeframe in the initial order.”
“That’s so cool!” Ennette said in awe. “That’s super convenient. No keys to lose or passwords to forget?”
“I mean, you can still lose your hands,” Maziar pointed out, which earned him another glare. In the light coming from the nearby torches, her eyes were quite a pretty green; like the color of summer leaves. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against his own door. “I’m just saying.”
“Say less,” Ennette said to him.
Maziar couldn’t help but laugh.
Ennette turned the knob of the door and walked in with Marlen, while Maziar just leaned in enough to poke his head through the door.
“It’s like a whole apartment!” Ennette exclaimed.
It was smaller and less ornate than his room, but it was cozy. It had a small kitchenette with a short stretch of counters, a refrigerator, a small oven, and a countertop stove. The bathroom, fully outfitted with all the modern amenities the Tower could provide, was tucked behind the kitchen. Knowing that Marlen was a very thorough designer, he was certain that there would be a shower, a clothes machine, and–to Ennette’s great relief–he was sure, a toilet.
A wooden canopy bed with a simple green comforter sat in one corner of the larger room. An oaken pedestal desk, a viewing station for crystals and crystal documents, and a bookshelf lined the other wall, and in the center was a sitting area with a comfortable-looking couch and a single wing-backed chair.
On the outside wall, there was a large glass sliding door that went out to a balcony and served as the room's only window. The balcony was just wide enough for a small, round, iron table and a set of chairs.
“Wow,” Ennette breathed as she went around the room, touching everything. “Are these like… appliances? In a magic world?”
“They’re called magic devices,” Maziar told her. “And I’ll bet you break at least one by tomorrow.”
“This is my room, and you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be,” she told him.
“I don’t, but how could I miss such a show?” he said, smirking. “I bet the toilet will be the first thing you break.”
The girl turned as red as a lobster as she looked around the room—probably for something to throw at him.
Watching her struggle would have been delightful, but Marlen pushed up his glasses and said, “That’s enough of that,” he said. “Worry not, Miss Ennette. I won’t leave you to figure things out on your own. Maziar, must you antagonize her further?”
“I’m only trying to make her feel more comfortable,” Maziar lied and did little to hide it. Marlen rolled his eyes and cast a brief incantation. A window to his office desk appeared, and he picked out a yellow packet before closing it.
“Well, then,” said Marlen, clearing his throat as he handed the packet to Ennette. “This document will contain all the information you need to start attending as an apprentice.”
Feeling no need to hang around as Marlen explained Tower life, Maziar slipped away and headed into his own room.
War, in the form of a cat, stretched across the bed as he walked in. Jumping off, he immediately took humanoid form and retrieved an apple from his barrel.
“So I’m not your only familiar now, I take it?” War said. Flopping on the bed himself, Maziar rubbed his face. “It can’t be that bad. I hardly feel any mana drain at all. In fact… it’s almost as if you’re gaining it.”
“I am, apparently,” Maziar said. “How the hell did this happen? Seriously? This was not in the plan!”
War shrugged. “I don’t think I have ever seen a plan that… well, went to plan,” he said. “You have to learn to be flexible. Adapt.”
“Can’t you eat her?”
“Can I?”
“...No.”
“How sad.”
“My mother has assigned her to keep watch over me,” Maziar said, sitting back up. “She doesn’t understand that, but that’s what it is.”
“Do you think the Grand Wizard suspects something?”
“I doubt it. I think she thinks I’m just a brat, to be honest.”
“You are just a brat,” War said, sitting in the desk chair. “A stupid one.”
“I don’t need that from you,” grumbled Maziar, throwing a pillow at his real familiar.
War caught it and asked, “So what are you going to do?”
“The only thing I can do,” Maziar said. “Lay low and hope it all blows over.”
“It won’t.”
“I know, but at least it gives me time to make a better plan.”
“And the girl?”
“I don’t know,” Maziar said honestly. “There’s something weird about her that I can’t place my finger on. We certainly can’t let her find out anything about us. She said something strange right after I summoned her.”
“That being?” War asked.
“She said that I was ‘supposed to be some kind of chaos-wielding super-magician,’” he told him. “It’s almost as if… she knew.”
“You are not a super-magician; let’s make that clear.”
“Not the point.”
“Could she have felt something through the bond?”
Maziar shook his head. “It sounds like she actually knows a lot about this world—not just me. She mentioned another name and was asking about how time worked between dimensions. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Hm,” War went, tossing his apple core out the window. “I can tell you that time flows differently in different planes and that in flipping from dimension to dimension, you can gain or lose time depending on the calculations of the energy exchange between them. It’s not an exact science; the fae realm, for example, has spirited away people for one year of fae realm time to return to find a hundred years had passed in the time of their own plane—and vice versa; a hundred years could pass in the fae realm for someone to return on the exact day they left. If her question was about whether or not she might be able to have some knowledge of the future, then…I would say her instinct isn’t wrong—but it’s complicated.” War gave him an odd look, then, his eyes moving from the top of Maziar’s head to his feet. “I still think she might be a little mad if she thinks you’ll ever be anything other than a waste of space in a caster tower.”
“Thanks,” Maziar said, wincing. “Sorry that you have to serve a waste of space.”
“I said ‘waste of space in a caster tower,’ not ‘waste of space,’” War said. “You have plenty of purpose to me.”
“You know you’ll need to act like a real horse in front of her, right?” Maziar pointed out. “It’s not always just gonna be you and me anymore.”
War tilted his head. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“It's not?”
“Don’t misunderstand—I get dreadfully bored when I’m confined to one shape or another—but how delightfully entertaining will it be to see you try to dance around with this clueless human creature?” War asked. “Besides, it might be healthy for you to be forced to look out for someone other than yourself. It may make you smarter—think better of some of your more stupid ideas.”
“Why does everyone call me stupid?” Maziar asked, not really looking for an answer.
“You’d think you would have gotten the hint by now.”
“I’m so glad I can entertain you with my sorry excuse for a life.”
“You mistake me, boy,” War told him, affronted. “As usual. But alas, I won’t pester you with my opinions anymore.”
Maziar tsk-ed at him and rolled over in his bed.
War was curious about this girl. An accidental summon truly was something unusual—but more importantly, it had been a long time since he’d seen Maziar’s eyes flicker with such light and life. Whatever else the girl was, she was a potential catalyst to distract Maziar from his more dangerous inclinations—and that could only be a good thing in War’s eyes. If she could manage to inspire emotions for him outside of the revenge he focused all his hatred and anger on, then he was determined to help her.
Walking over to the bed, War hung over Maziar. He’d only just lain down, but his breathing was already slow and steady as War felt him dreaming through the bond. Shaking his head, he pulled off the boy’s boots and grabbed a spare blanket out from a box under the bed.
And wouldn’t it be nice if he had someone else to take care of him? War thought sadly, tucking him in. Wouldn’t it be nice if he wasn’t always so alone?
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