“Oh, but I want to see this famed ward.”She slid out of the bay window and ambled towards them, abandoning the book and magnifying glass on a plush sofa on the way.She was like an exotic, spindly insect, all stick-thin limbs and small breasts (of course Kai looked) wrapped in diaphanous fabric like mantis wings.“Allow me to bear witness, O Warden.”
Saros looked like he wanted very badly to say something.River rubbed his face, weary.
“Lady Ione,” Hilo said, inching forward – and Kai noticed then that he had worn his nicest shirt, full linen sleeves replete with embroidery of waves and dancing fish.“A pleasure to see you again.”
Ione blinked.Frowned.“Oh, yes,” she said – and Menon wept, she did not recognise Hilo whatsoever.Poor bastard.“A pleasure, my lord.”
She did recognise or at least know of Malia.“Admiral Malia,” she said, cordial.“I have no quarrel with you.Welcome.”
“An honour, Holiness,” Mother of the Year said with admirable graciousness.
“And you.”She stood before Kai, calculating.This close, Kai saw that her eyes oscillated back and forth in short, rapid movements, like she was struggling to focus.Her eyebrows twitched and she blinked hard before turning away.“Do what you came to do.I’m in the middle of a chapter.”
A sigh from Saros.“Yes, son,” he said, and Ione smiled at a briefly panic-stricken River.“We’ll finish here and join the priesthood for dinner.”
Suddenly feeling everyone’s eyes on him, Kai swallowed.Withdrew the wardstone, held it on his palm.There wasn’t much to do: place the crystal somewhere safe, weave the loose ends of his magical signature to the island, and let the ward settle.Protecting an area of this size was no small task, but for the first time Kai worried that putting a rock on the ground and waving his hands at it was going to be terribly anticlimactic.
Ione padded away to the sofa at the other end of the room and stretched out on it, openly disinterested.That actually helped for some reason.Kai tossed the wardstone in the air and caught it, scanning the wide, opulent space for a fitting home for his ward.
It would work the same wherever he put it, but the middle of the floor didn’t seem appropriate.Kai decided on a bowl of sea-glass upon the marble mantle, something central and significant-looking.He nestled the wardstone into the bowl, specks of sea-glass forming a colourful wreath around it – actually it looked cheap, a grandmother’s table display, but second-guessing himself was worse, he reckoned.
The room felt too quiet, so Kai said, in the name of showmanship, “All wards need a physical anchor – a space, a piece of jewellery, a stone.Skilled wardsmiths can even weave a ward over a person, say, with siphoning wards.”
A soft laugh from Saros made him flinch.Was this stupid?This was stupid.
“The, uh – the anchor is swathed with the caster’s magic,” Kai forged on, “which is drawn out in strands and woven into the necessary pattern.”
He glanced back.Hilo and Mam looked bored; River, unimpressed.Ione had gone back to reading her book.Only Saros watched with wolfish eyes, his mouth open in an intent little O.He at least seemed interested.And only Saros, truthfully, mattered here, so Kai kept his focus on him as he blathered on about the differences in mist and ice wards; how a ward’s pattern could be altered to give a different effect; how genuinely fucking difficult this particular ward was.
The strands of magic surrounding the wardstone shone as clear as day to him.He knew his mother couldn’t see them, and that Hilo could only vaguely sense them.River didn’t seem to sense them, but from the way Saros gazed at Kai’s hands as he worked, Kai surmised that the old man was somewhat of a wardsmith, himself.
Having drawn up strands of Oseidos’s own signature, its breath and soul, Kai knotted them to the ends of his ward’s dozens of loose strings.This part took more concentration; beads of sweat dotted his forehead as he whispered the spell he’d composed in the ancient gods’ tongue.
The last strand pulled taut, and a surge of energy shot out on all sides, making even River stumble back a step.With a breath, Kai released the strands and wiped his forehead on the back of his wrist.
“Oseidos is protected now,” he announced.“So long as this wardstone remains undisturbed, no Moth – or anyone, for that matter – will be able to step foot on this island without my or Archpriest Saros’s permission.”
He hadn’t expected applause, but the ensuing silence was a little disappointing.Ione, still lying on the sofa, raised her arms over her head like a swooning court lady.“That wasn’t nearly as exciting as I’d hoped,” she lamented.
“How do we know it works?”River asked, leaning against the wall beside the door.“It seems too good to be true.”
“Well, Swords, the tide’s out, so why don’t you walk onto the mainland and see if I let you back in?”Fuck.Kai tempered his tone and said, this time to Saros, “I’d be more than happy to demonstrate, I mean.”
Saros laid a hand on River’s shoulder.“River isn’t… magically gifted.You understand he has questions.”He left River to frown, incredulous, at that and shuffled over to the window, squinting out at the black slash of land separating the night-dark sea from the sky.“I see it, I think,” he said, pointing.“There – that shimmering, about midway between us and Lodestone.”He nodded, businesslike.“A good distance.And River, to answer your question, anyone trying to breach the ward will have quite a hard time.”
“It’s like walking through gelatine.”Kai crossed his arms, daring River to argue.“They’ll either have to turn around, or black out from the lack of oxygen and drown when the tide comes in.”
“It isn’t fun,” Hilo said, having experienced it personally the last time he tried to break into Kai’s quarters to steal one of their father’s admiral’s brooches.
“But it’s possible,” River said thoughtfully.Kai wasn’t sure what his problem was.“Someone with enough endurance could get through?”
Kai didn’t respond, because technically that was true.But the average spellcaster from Soliz Shrine wouldn’t be able to crack it.Hell, Nalu couldn’t get through Kai’s wards, and his brother Nalu was insane.
Ione raised her hand.“It also leaves us vulnerable to sky attacks.”She smiled, somewhat disturbingly, like the thought pleased her.“Caelos was felled by comets summoned by the Moths.”
For all his snapping comments towards Ione earlier, Saros pursed his lips at that.“Your ward prevents living intruders,” he murmured to Kai, “but wouldn’t prevent an attack from afar, yes?”
You could hear a pin drop.Kai opened his mouth, closed it.“I’m working on a solution to that, actually.”He peered at the wardstone, made some calculations.For fuck’s sake, this would take weeks.“I’ll attach some ice wards to it, to act as a shield.They’re smaller, but I’ll weave enough to cover us.”
