Although… He looked around the room at the truly stellar assembly of powerful wizards and familiars.Nic and Gabriel sat side by side at a large desk, apparently going over House Phel business while they waited, their intertwined magics like red wine, pure water, and roses under moonlight.Seliah and Jadren, looking road-worn, but wearing triumphant grins, greeted the four of them and waited until Alise sealed the door and invoked the enchantment to prevent anyone from entering until the occupants decided on it.
As Gabriel and Nic stacked up their documents and joined the rest of them around a large table, Jadren set a jangling bag in the center.Several boxes stacked nearby held copies of the documents they’d deemed most likely to contain Anciela’s data, copied at House Phel’s expense and brought from House Harahel.
“Is that the key?”Gabriel asked, giving the lumpy sack a dubious look.
“Keys,” Seliah answered, inverting the bag to dump the contents on the table.
Cillian eyed the pile of silvery boxes with considerable surprise.They radiated moon magic.Moonsilver, which made sense for a Phel wizard wanting to create an enduring set of clues.
“May I?”Alise asked.
“Of course,” Seliah answered.“These belong to all of us.That is, if Nic and Gabriel agree.”
“I echo the ‘of course,’” Gabriel said with a nod and reaching for two of the moonsilver boxes, giving one to Nic.
Following suit, Cillian took two and gave Alise her choice between them.As it happened, there were eight, a coincidence Cillian decided not to give too much thought to.
“They’re books,” Alise commented with surprise, opening hers.
“Like jewelry books,” Iliana agreed.“So lovely.”
“And enduring,” Nic commented.“How do you encode information so that it lasts forever in a watery climate?”She tapped the edge of the book on the table.“Engraved moonsilver.Brilliant, Anciela.”
“You found these in the House Phel arcanium?”Gabriel asked.
“Yes,” Jadren answered.“In the back of a drawer.”
Nic and Gabriel exchanged looks.She shrugged.“We never did get around to searching through everything in there.”
“No, because you always get distracted,” he returned warmly.
“Youdo,” she shot back, although a blush darkened her brown skin.
“We both do,” he agreed, taking her hand and kissing it.
Seliah, her skin as brown as Nic and Gabriel’s blushed even more deeply.“We, ah, did our best not to look around, too much, you know—at stuff that was clearly not relevant.”
“I looked,” Jadren offered jauntily, actually waggling his eyebrows.“I might need arcanium tips from you two.Tell me, do you think something like the moonsilver bed would work for any wizard and familiar enjoying kinky sex, or should I—”
“Jadren,” Seliah interrupted, aghast.
Alise turned to Cillian, her own black, elegantly winged brows raised in amusement.He took her hand under the table and squeezed, suppressing his own laughter.Iliana, face as crimson as her bright hair, put a hand over her eyes.Han cleared his throat, patting her on the back.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we should focus on these books.Are we sure they’re the keys?”
“As sure as we can be,” Seliah answered with dignity, ignoring a still snickering Jadren.
Cillian studied his, the thin metal pages shining undimmed and untarnished even after all these years.The magic of moonsilver.It did look like jewelry, with engraved script decorating the pages of the book.However, as often seemed to be the case with engraving on jewelry—like the inside of his parents’ wedding rings—the script was illegible.He adjusted the perch of his spectacles on his nose, moving the lenses away and back in an attempt to get better focus, but nothing made the letters assemble into words and sense.
“I can’t read mine at all,” Alise complained.“And I have good eyes.”She gave Cillian and archly smug look as she teased him.
It made him indescribably happy that she’d recovered enough of her natural resilience to want to poke at him.“You have incredible eyes,” he told her with feeling.
She rolled those incredible eyes, but looked pleased.
“No one can read these,” Nic declared in a tone ripe with frustration, tossing her book down with a clatter and pressing her elegantly tipped fingers to her temples.“I have good eyes, too, and these aren’t even letters, not even in a cipher or another language.It’s just scribbles.”
“Like waves of water,” Gabriel said, taking up the book she’d discarded and comparing it to his own.“But they were hidden in the House Phel arcanium, so they must be important.”
