Throwing his napkin on the table and grabbing his kit, Sy hurried after her. Sabina called his name. Impatiently, he faced her.
“I honestly thought–” She broke off, hoping for him to save her. He didn’t. “Look at her. No one who looks and acts like that could possibly – it’s such an outlandish story. I thought she was deceiving you, Sylas, for the prize money.”
“We all thought she was,” said Terrence.
“We played pranks like that constantly at Sangfeder,” Claude put in. “She’ll be alright.”
Sy laughed in disbelief. “I’m not sure an apprentice’s pranks are the defense you think they are.”
“And it was cruel and stupid then, too,” added David. “When we were granted our licenses, we all swore oaths not to use our magic that way. If we were in the city, you could have your hand crushed, Sabina.”
Sabina raised her hands helplessly. “It’s only our way of saying hello. Welcoming her to the fold, right?” she asked the table, and most of them nodded. Not David. Bertrand, too, kept his head still, his gaze pivoted to where Anya had disappeared.
Sabina clasped her hands, penitent. “Only bring her back, Sylas, and I’ll grovel at her feet.”
Snickers; Claude hid his behind a hand.
As disgusted with himself for letting it happen as he was with them for doing it, Sy left to find Anya.
CHAPTER NINE
He had a notion she would be halfway back to her cottage by now, abandoning the entire quest. Instead, he found her stalking back and forth among the trees like a wounded beast, trying to calm herself. Without a word, he rolled up his sleeve and pulled out his pen. She wouldn’t accept his help in his apartment; said he couldn’t help her. Perhaps he couldn’t. What plagued her may be mental, beyond his magic’s reach. Or, a strange illness he knew nothing about.
Or a strange, incomprehensible magic.
But a botched spell, he could fix.
When she saw him, she turned abruptly away. “I brought you along to keep me safe from the likes of them,” she growled. “Not throw me into their open jaws.”
“Let me help you,” he said.
She stopped stalking, her shoulders raised to her ears. Her voice was uncharacteristically timid. “I don’t think you can.”
“I can,” he said, piercing the skin of his arm, knowing if his blood was already drawn, she wouldn’t refuse it. “And if I can’t, I can try.”
He was right. After a moment, she turned to face him.
“My teeth are coming loose.” She no longer growled. Her speech was still oddly slurred, and her voice wavered pitifully. “And my tongue–” She winced.
“I’ll have to see,” he said gently, clicking the nib into place. “So I know how to fix it.”
Closing her eyes, she lowered her hand bravely. “Don’t tell me,” she said, her eyes screwed shut. “I don’t want to know.”
He successfully hid his startled gasp by clearing his throat. He hoped.
“It isn’t so bad,” he lied, shivering as the tongue curled back into her mouth. “Won’t be a moment.”
The spell had turned her tongue black indeed, and unnaturally long, like a bat’s or a bird’s. Stretched out as it was, he imagined it hurt.
She kept her eyes closed and grimaced. “The spell. Will I have to drink it?”
“There are other ways,” he assured her.
He withdrew a slip of paper and his drawing board. Balancing it on his knee, he began penning a paraglyph to restore her mouth to its usual shape. He pictured it clearly before he began; the curve of her russet lips, the subtle jut of her chin. He remembered the diagrams of the human mouth he studied at Sangfeder, a diagram he had call to return to frequently – straightened and whitened teeth were a favorite, and lucrative, commission.
Then he scrawled. Carefully, so as not to do worse damage than Sabina already had. Quickly, because he still was not certain her tongue would not rot and fall out of her mouth, like her teeth were threatening to, and because his blood would clot in the heat if he didn’t.
He had seen many botched spells in training. Whatever Sabina had done to the spell she cast on Anya, he had never seen the like. Something bothered him about it, another itch he couldn’t scratch.
