I called in paper, pen, and ink. I already knew the node could truth-read a signed statement. Now, I needed to figure out how that worked. It wasn’t like when I summoned items using a Truth. But I also wasn’t drawing on the node myself. Felix thought my ability to hear the truth in written words was proof that the node was unlocked, that I was drawing on its power. I needed to understand how he was wrong.
I kept things simple, writing out a sentence declaring my name and signing the paper. Then I held it to the flames, listening not to the truth of my words, but straining to hear the magic beneath that. I repeated the action over and over, but the power fueling the spell was too faint to hear under the bells that proclaimed my statement to be true.
I reached out again, my arm tired by this point. I didn’t expect to hear anything different, but I didn’t know what else to try. There had to be a way to reconcile the fact that I was using the node to truth-read the paper with my inability to touch the power in any other way.
This time, I didn’t hear the bells. My eyes snapped open, and I saw my hand trembling just outside the flames, while oranges and reds danced over the paper. I pushed my arm forward, my fingers entering the node, and I heard the bells.
“Well, damn. Demeret was wrong.”
Apparently, charms could be made without using the correctly shaped vessel. Because the flames were a giant charm. That was why I had to be touching them to truth-read the paper. I wasn’t using the node’s power directly; I was accessing shaped power that had been stored in the flames for anyone to use.
I studied the fire, especially the tendrils near the top. I was assuming the magic was tied to the flames, but perhaps I was thinking of it incorrectly. What if touching the flames to truth-read wassimply a product of the charm and the fire both being tied to the node itself?
Perhaps Demeret wasn’t wrong, and the node formed a perfect octahedron, ideal for a truth-charm.
I stepped back. “Let there be on the floor of the great hall the item of a chair.”
Nothing happened. The summoning spell was odd. It could give me items I didn’t know to name if I described what I wanted, like the silver drawer pull still in my pocket, but it wouldn’t bring me an item if I was too generic. I pictured my sitting room, then tried again. “Let there be on the floor of the great hall the item of a gray damask wingback chair.”
The chair materialized. I slid it as close to the plinth holding the node as possible and climbed onto the seat. My feet sank into the soft cushions, and I fought to maintain my balance. Once I was steady, I reached toward the tip of the flames, making sure to get both my hand and the paper inside them at the same time. Nothing. I slowly lowered my hand. It was only when I reached about the middle of the entire height of the flames, still well higher than I had been using before, that the truth-reading charm worked. My hand was right at the edge of what I would consider the main part of the flames. Above, tongues of fire flickered back and forth, with any one space just as likely to be clear as filled with fire. Below, the flames settled into a steady whole, curving to fill the base of the copper bowl.
The flames weren’t the charm, the node itself was.
I jumped off the chair.
I needed to tell Felix about my discovery.
I searched throughout the castle, but a small cat was hard to find in such a large and clutter-filled building. The node didn’t help by guiding me in the correct direction, either. Apparently if the duke so much as thought that my help might be useful, the power of the contract would pull me toward him, but I could have urgent information to share and it did nothing.
At one point, I crossed paths with Marc, who must have returned only a short time before.
“Have you seen the duke?” I asked him. I had already traipsed through the entire castle.
“He was in his office about an hour ago.”
“Which room is his office?”
Marc directed me to a room I had been through three times already. I went back to check it for a fourth time, already knowing that I wouldn’t find Felix.
The office connected to the main negotiation room behind the great hall. I wandered through that room and slid open the pocket doors. The wingback chair I had summoned still stood next to the node. I looked at the chair for a moment, wondering if I should move it. I didn’t want to send it back to my sitting room.
Then I blinked, thinking about how I had pulled the chair into the great hall in the first place.
I smiled. “Let there be in this great hall the duke by the name of Felix Truthholder.”
The black cat materialized halfway between me and the node. His fur stood on end, and his tail puffed out to twice its normal size as he hissed and spun. His gaze skipped right over me on the first pass. Then he finished surveying the room, and blinked at me, sense slowly returning to his eyes.
Fifteen
Felix
???
“Did you justuse the summoning spell on me?” I stared at Isa, still a little disoriented.
I had been in the spire room of my tower while Isa explored the entire castle. When she entered my suite and called out to me, I hadn’t answered. Until I understood why Marc hadn’t brought back the contract I had sent him with, I didn’t want to face Isa. She already thought of me as a liar. If I told her I had tried to free her, but oops, the contract went missing, she’d never believe me. She’d think it was a ploy to improve her opinion of me.
I did hope to improve her opinion of me, but it wasn’t a ploy.
