Ksenia tossed a withering glance his way. “If we were mere magicians, yes. But this is warden work, and there’s alchemy involved. I’ve two wardens mixing a potion that will aid in altering his state of mind so that we may attempt to separate the two spells without triggering the self-destruct one.”
Caris reached out and touched the slate, delicately tracing over the fractal patterns, feeling the edges of the magically made cuts beneath her fingertips. “I can hear the song.”
Ksenia turned and stared at her in surprise. “You can?”
Caris nodded jerkily. “I always have. I always know where to cut. My father let me work in our company’s laboratories since I was a young girl because I always knew how to shape a clarion crystal for any device. The crystals sing.”
“Yes. They’ve sung throughout our entire history, but very few have ever been recorded having the ability to hear them.” Ksenia looked back at the slate and narrowed her eyes. “Can you read this? Can you find the discordant notes?”
Caris traced her fingers upward, following the curls of Nathaniel’s thoughts, wondering if any of them had been about her. “Yes.”
“Good. You’re working down here with us today. If you can map his mind, then perhaps we can free him within a few weeks rather than months.”
“Are you sure?” Blaine asked.
“The song is the difficult part. If she can hear it, then that reduces the time by quite a lot.”
Caris pulled her hand away and made a fist to hide the way it shook. “Set me up somewhere quiet, and I’ll get started.”
She’d do anything to help save Nathaniel, and if the saving of him helped others, so much the better.
Four
HONOVI
“Here.” Honovi set the bowls of Solarian spicy noodle soup down in front of Caris and Blaine, balancing the serving tray on his other hand. “You need to eat.”
The prodding was more for Caris than for his husband. Blaine didn’t look as if he’d been put through a clothes wringer and spat out, still needing another wash. The circles under her eyes were stark against her skin, dark hair pulled back in a queue, shorter strands curling around her narrow face.
She flinched at his words or perhaps at the noise in the refectory. The communal dining hall they were in was large, and nearly all the tables around them were filled with tithes and wardens. The line of those with meal trays waiting to be served their portions of the evening meal was still steadily streaming past the kitchen and its serving areas.
Honovi had noticed since their arrival that wardens ran everything on the Warden’s Island: from patrols to kitchen duty to training to everything in between. They didn’t employ any citizens from any country within the fort, maintaining a self-sufficient society dedicated to the protection of everyone else. Every job that needed to be done was done by wardens who were still healing from a stint in the poison fields, were retired, or were assigned permanent duties on the island for a length of time.
Their table was tucked away in a corner, surrounded by wardens as opposed to tithes. Honovi’s airship crew were scattered throughout the room at other tables, having somehow made acquaintances with some of the wardens for the few days they’d been present.
He sat on Blaine’s other side, placing the tray he’d used to carry the bowls onto the table. Ksenia was seated across from him, looking far more rested than Caris, despite both of them having spent all their time below in the laboratories, working on Nathaniel.
“How is everything coming along?” Honovi asked.
Ksenia took a bite of her salt-and-pepper pork chop and shrugged. “It’s going quicker than it would, thanks to Caris.”
“Oh?”
“I’m helping to map his mind using clarion crystal. Ksenia put the spellwork on the crystal, but I can hear the song. If we know the areas where the compulsion is tied to, Ksenia thinks she can undo it,” Caris said.
“Will it work?”
“Not without alchemy intervention, and even then, there’s a risk,” Ksenia cautioned.
“If you fix him, it doesn’t quite negate the risk of him leaving under someone else’s control,” Blaine pointed out.
Caris reached for her yogurt drink, the thickened liquid freshly made and one Honovi had chosen for his own meal to combat the spicy heat. “I’ve thought about that. The wardens have clarion crystals in storage, and they’ve the kind that Meleri has for the catacomb keys and maps.”
Blaine made a surprised sound that had Honovi glancing at him. “How old is that crystal?”
Ksenia snorted. “Old enough to be useful. So will the map I’ll have drawn for you to take with you.”
“How will that work?” Honovi asked. Magic ran on his mother’s side of the family, but he hadn’t been graced with that power. He was no magician and made a better aeronaut. He’d lived around magic, though, been privy to how magicians practiced, and it had always fascinated him.
