“Just say it.”
“He was called back to the Halls to finish his schooling with the master wizard of his guild. He told you that?”
He had not told me that. I thought I had a good poker face, but Dad knew how to read my body language too.
“I see. All right. This isn’t mine to say,” he went on. “He should be the one, but it’s important for the coins. I think it’s important for how you’ll want to deal with this. Card didn’t know who wanted the envelope, but I have it on good authority it was his mentor, Stel, who sent him to fetch Fate’s coins.”
“He told me a woman hired him to pick up an envelope.”
He’d said he’d talked to her on the phone, but he’d never said he’d actually seen her in person. A wizard like Stel would have ways of disguising herself. Even from someone as clever as Card.
Dad nodded. “The woman was a wizard. A very powerful one.”
I sat with that for a moment trying to make sense of it. Nothing added up. “He’d have known if it was his mentor, wouldn’t he? You just told me he’s been gone all this time learning magic from her.”
“I told you that’s what took him away from you and the Crossroads. But he didn’t stay long at the Halls. He’s been on the run for a long time.”
“Running from what?”
“His mentor. Magic, his magic. The wizards. But especially his mentor. She...” He leaned back. “Erica, this isn’t mine to say, but she wanted him to choose. Between being a wizard and being a dryad. You know the two magics don’t blend. Some say mixing them can kill the caster or create magic that is an abomination. Uncontrolled.”
I thought about the walking tree, and Card’s wild joy.
It was a mix of magic that not many could control, but it was nowhere near an abomination.
There were my tattoos, too. Those were a mix of dryad and magic. They were magic not sanctioned by wizards.
I didn’t trust my dad, but it made so many other things make sense.
Card needed money, even though he was a wizard. But if he was cut off from the Halls, on the run from them, he’d want to do as little magic as possible, so as not to be found by other wizards.
His mentor, Stel, had been politicking her way up the ranks for as long as she’d been alive. I’d seen more than one of her ex-pupils over the years and all of them had denounced magic.
But if she’d let all of those students go free, why would she hassle Card?
Because he was an amazing wizard, someone who had the ability toWalkeven though he was also half dryad.
Someone who had juggled two magics and talked a tree into moseying on over to new ground.
Someone who had painted ink on a nobody’s skin and linked her to a wounded magical place.
“Okay,” I said, still sorting pieces of this puzzle. “His mentor had some way to disguise herself, and tricked him into picking up an envelope she happened to know Fate would leave at a diner. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I don’t know how Stel knew the envelope would be there. She might have stolen the coins and planted them there.
“She knows he’s desperate to find his sister,” he continued. “It is easy to assume he’d look in the envelope, then try to use the coins to ask for help. I think she tipped off Fate and told her the location of his tree.”
“But why?”
“She wanted him to choose between being a wizard or a dryad.” He shrugged. “If his tree’s dead, he’ll go back to the only other place that will take him in. That will welcome him. That will be a home. The Halls.”
I inhaled, then exhaled, leaning back into the chair. Even though he wasn’t really in this room, even though I couldn’t smell the crushed cedar and faint tobacco scent of him, I could very much see my father.
And I could see he was not lying.
“Shit,” I said quietly.
He nodded. “I’m not going to insert myself into whatever relationship you have with Card.”
