“I am not settling.”
I got rid of the first mug of tea and called in a new one. “Ginger tea, then.”
This time Isa reached for the tea, only then realizing she still had a scroll in one hand. She placed it carefully on the desk and wrapped both hands around the ceramic mug.
I placed a paw on the scroll, but didn’t bother to unroll it. That was much harder than turning pages with a claw, I had found. “What did you find?”
She took a slow sip of tea, keeping the mug up near her face. “Signing a contract leaves a magical signature as well. If I listen to the power on one contract, I can find other contracts signed by the same person. The Truthholder who witnesses the contract doesn’t leave behind the same signature, however.”
“And this contract?”
“A Truth scroll. I’m not sure what to make of the power coming off it. It reminds me of pure node power, but it’s not steady enough. I didn’t get a chance to see if I could find the same magical signature anywhere else in the archives, though, because Marc came down right after I found it.”
“I stalled him as long as I could.”
She lowered the mug slightly and gave me a wan smile. “I know. That wasn’t a complaint, just a fact.”
I nodded and studied the scroll under my paw, trying to call up my magical sight. I could locate the strands I knew for Truths without trouble, but it was harder to scan my surroundings for magic in general. It required an odd mix of concentration and unfocusing of my sight. After a moment, though, I could see the power shimmering all over the scroll. It did look very similar to the power in the node.
I let the magical sight drop. “If the node is locked to Duke Valois’s magic, and he wrote this scroll, it makes sense that the power would look the same.”
Isa shook her head. “Valois didn’t write this Truth. It was signed by Duke Sebastien.”
I knew, from reading his journals, that Valois’s heir had been able to make Truths. He complained about the grandiose spells his father cast, which tested the limits of magic but ignored the most pressing practicalities.
If my father had invented enchantments to keep the entire castle tidy, I wouldn’t have complained about the fact that he forgot to put an exception on the nursery.
Especially if I could create my own Truths to handle any practicalities he overlooked.
I jumped to my feet, tugging on a strand of power and summoning one of Sebastien’s journals to the table. I flipped through the pages as quickly as my claws allowed.
“What are you looking for?” Isa asked.
“Sebastien could create Truths.”
Isa tapped the scroll. “So I gathered. That doesn’t answer my question, though.”
“He regularly created Truths that balanced out the ones his father made.” I found the passage and scanned quickly to confirm that my memory was correct. Then I spun the journal to face Isa. “Read this.”
“‘Father is so concerned with doing the impossible and making his own life easier that he never considers how his actions affect others. I found Eloise crying today because the doll she was playing with disappeared. She had left it on the floor, and the tidying Truth father had cast moved it to a shelf she could not even reach. I had to convince father to leave off his current experiment long enough to fix the problem. Once I wondered aloud what would happen if a toy disappeared while Daniel played, Father agreed the issue was more pressing than his experiment. The threat of one of my son’s tantrums is enough to make anyone act with haste.’”
Isa looked up. “If Sebastien could create his own Truths, why did he need to ask his father for help?”
Of course, she spotted the inconsistency immediately. I sank down on the desk, tucking my paws under my body. “That is thequestion. To answer a few more you may have: yes, Sebastien had written his own Truths by this point, and no, I don’t think he cared about showing his father the unintended consequences of his actions. From what I read in his journals, Sebastien resigned himself to his father’s inability to focus on practical matters while still a boy. He was the one who negotiated the letter of patent granting Valois the duchy.”
“He knew he couldn’t change a Truth his father created,” Isa stated the conclusion I didn’t want to contemplate.
I stared at the journal, then with an angry swipe of my paw, sent it back to the shelf. “I’m going to be stuck as a cat forever.”
Isa’s hand stretched out. For a moment, I thought she was going to touch me, but then she pulled back. “Just because Sebastien couldn’t alter one of Valois’s Truths doesn’t mean we can’t break the curse. There are too many variables to draw such a conclusion with confidence.”
“What other variables do you think might matter?”
“Well, there is still the question of how Cecily accessed node power at all. Plus, you are the primary tie-holder.”
“I can’t create Truths. I tried to use my node-tie to reverse the curse first thing. Nothing happened.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t create Truths. It only means you failed—on that attempt—to reverse the curse.”
