“We don’t need magic,” she answered extra scornfully, so he wouldn’t guess she’d seen through to his insecurity on the topic. “I can make a fire the old-fashioned way.”
“Nothing is older than magic,” he corrected. “You want a fire, knock yourself out, but if we want to sleep secure, we’re sleeping behind wards”
“Wards?” Her turn to echo a word in surprise. She didn’t even know what that was.
“Yes. I may not be able to conjure fire to titillate your curiosity, but I can establish basic wards. I just need something with four walls, a ceiling, and a floor to structure them around.”
“I think we’re fresh out of those,” she replied, looking around consideringly.
He muttered something under his breath about unsavory wildernesses and the crying need for inns. “Fine,” he finally said to her, “I can build a shelter for us. I assume your half-feral, swamp-creature experiences will enable you to pick a likely location.”
“You can build a shelter?” she cocked a dubious brow at his soft wizard’s hands. They were pretty hands, elegant and fine, but they did not look like he’d spent much time swinging an axe.
“I’m not completely useless.”
“I thought you only know how to make enchanted artifacts, assorted widgets, and do a few other tricks.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Do you memorize everything I say? I should be flattered, I suppose. You pick the spot, sweetling, and then you’ll see.”
“I don’t mind sleeping on the ground.” Under the sky, in the fresh air.
“I can’t ward the ground. Besides, I mind. When you’re on your wild escapades, you can sleep with the snakes if you prefer, but I have standards. Rapidly degrading and pitifully few standards, so I’m clinging to the dregs of what’s left.”
“Seems like an odd line to draw,” she observed, “but I’ll play along.” She began scanning for places to get off the road, somewhere with dry ground and well-screened in case anything came after them.
It was quite a while later that she heard Jadren quietly reply. “Sometimes keeping to your lines is the most one can do.”
~ 5 ~
Jadren eyed the small clearing Selly had picked out. Yes, it was off the road, reasonably concealed from anyone passing by, and—thankfully—not a bog, which satisfied her stated requirements. Nothing else made it look like a place he wanted to spend any time, however. Long ferny plant tendrils draped from the trees, waving in the evening air uncannily like spirits. He’d nearly jumped out of his skin, thinking Elal had sent some sentry spirits after them.
Of course, Selly had then reassured him they weren’t snakes. She’d never let him live that down. One more reason to wish his maman would die in a lake of fire. As if he needed more reasons.
“Leave off with fussing with that campfire and come assist me,” he instructed Selly. True to her word, she’d built and lit a small fire in the time that it had taken him to pace off the boundaries of the working he intended to perform. When Selly scowled at him, he held out a preemptory hand and snapped his fingers impatiently, well pleased when her amber eyes narrowed in anger. It was good for her to hate him. Then she’d spend less time trying to get into his head. Nobody needed to enter that vile, desolate landscape.
“I know nothing about building a shelter,” she protested, but she stood and came over, eyeing the square outline he’d made with twigs. “Although even I know you’ll need more wood than that.”
“Familiars should be seen and not heard,” he informed her.
“What?” she gasped, outraged. The chit had a lot to learn. Hopefully Lady Phel would spend some time polishing those rough edges. When he’d used the same line on Nic, she’d barely seemed to notice. But then, Elals were a cold-hearted lot, and he meant that in the nicest way.
“You don’t need to flap your jaws to hand over that nummy magic,” he explained with honeyed patience. “Less talking. More giving up the juice.” He wiggled his fingers at her.
He thought she might be about to refuse, but she pressed her pretty lips into a thin line and slapped her hand into his with enough force to sting. That was his girl. Nothing daunted her spirited nature for long. “I can’t wait to see this,” she muttered.
“Oh, me too,” he agreed cheerfully, then bent his attention to the twigs she’d sneered at.
“You mean you haven’t done this before?”
With a sigh for the interruption to his concentration, he glared at her. “What, built a shelter in the middle of nowhere so I could hide with a half-feral familiar from rogue hunters because I somehow ended up as a junior wizard to a fallen house so imperiled that another high house attacked it? Why no, come to think of it. I haven’t.”
“Must you always be so sarcastic?” she gritted out.
He pretended to consider that. “Yes. Now be quiet or I’ll muzzle you.”
“I’d like to see you try,” she muttered, but she said nothing more.
Focusing again on the image he’d built in his mind, Jadren carefully constructed the shelter. It didn’t need to be big, just large enough for Selly and him to sleep in without being too intimately crammed together. That was all he needed, to accidentally touch her long, lissome body during the night, fraying his already imperiled control around her. “It’s just another artifact,” he remined himself. “Basically a box. Don’t get fancy.”
