Seamus’ gaze flicks to mine, but that’s as much of a reaction as he gives. So I’m guessing Letty did in fact tell him more; he just wants to hear it from my mouth to judge. “Yeah? If you could do that, what took you so long?”
“I hadn’t stolen Grand Magus Evram’s wand yet.”
Thatmakes him stumble. “Get out.”
“That’s what she said. Me, I mean, when I banished him.” I consider. “Hmm. That delivery didn’t work, did it?”
“How thefeckdid you steal that old bastard’s wand? Let’s see it then.”
“Can’t, I already broke it so he couldn’t track me with it again. But I have my own wand now connected to a pool on Low Earth that I can draw from for a little while, and if we get through this I can pay you in a new wand. Or cash if you’d rather, but—“
“Shut up. What do you mean ‘again’?”
He glares at Nariel, who merely lifts his eyebrows in response.
“It’s been a busy couple of days,” I say dryly in the understatement of the century. “And when I start working at Stonehenge, the grand magus will show up for sure. So surprises on this job are inevitable. That’s why I can’t give you the wand until afterward—I’m going to need all the magic I can draw until I have the anchor set up. Once I get the spell active at Stonehenge, it’s all yours.”
Seamus stops and stares hard at me for a long moment. A glance at Nariel for who knows what, then back to me.
And then Seamus says, “All right.Youdrop trou then.”
Ha.
I draw my wand. It’s not like what he’ll remember from the intricately carved wands in High Earth, just a rough branch. But it’smyrough branch, and if Seamus is sensitive enough to meet spirits he’ll be able to feel the magic in it.
But to make it abundantly clear, I cast glowing lights all around us.
Seamus’ expression tightens, and his hands clench.
He stares around the magical lights.
He gazes through them, to all the people walking past us with no awareness of them.
Nariel has come up at my side, a silent presence and support.
With my other hand, I slowly reach into my pocket and withdraw another stick, give Seamus a moment to feel the difference between this one and the one I’m using.
Seamus’ voice, when he speaks again, is rough. “You crazy fecker. I’m in.”
At night, the car trip to Stonehenge should only take about an hour. At the speed Seamus drives, testing Nariel’s cloaking, it is... considerably faster.
I comfort myself with the knowledge that for the first time in years, in an emergency I can cast a spell to cushion just about anything that can happen to a car. So I ignore what it means for the countryside to be passing by at quite this speed—it’s dark, I can hardly see it anyway, this is fine—and catch Seamus up onthe broad strokes of how we got here, gently skating over the role of Nariel’s power in affairs.
Seamus’ reaction when I finish is just: “Hm. Always knew you had good nerves.”
It’s not what I expect, and after a second I sigh, catching on belatedly. “I’ve traveled faster than this before, Seamus.”
“In the last ten years? Only on a plane, sweetheart. Tell me more about your duel. What kind of spells do you fight with, when you can’t be flashy?”
It occurs to me he might not totally believe me—my experience of High Earth was wildly different from any other wizard’s.
But that’s fine. As long as he can focus on the parts he can use—like low-power spells—and will let me do what I need to do—and he hasn’t stayed out of jail this long by being stupid about how he fights—that’s as much as I can reasonably hope for.
It’s not what Iwantto hope for, though, and I’m struck by the unfair comparison that Nariel was willing to dare to hope for more than that. He didn’t believe what I was capable of before either, but he believed enough to watch me try, and now he’s seen me work. Seamus has more context about what my life in High Earth was like because I’ve told him, but he hasn’tfeltit.
So I bury the hurt once again of even the people who are in theory on my side not being able to share my dreams, and I spend the rest of the ride talking to Seamus about spell theory.
He remembers more than I feared, but it’s hard to ignore how muchmoreI learned to begin with. Seamus one-handedly tosses me a beaten-up notebook from his car’s console for me to sketch out spells for him that he can use in the short term with what little foundation he has—this actually takes me some thought because let me tell you, I am not the best person to go to for basic spells, I fucking thrive on layers of complication and even my low-powered ones use elaborate diagramming to targetspecifically, limit magic draw, and all that—until I have all three anchors set up.
