That was when the hard part started. I fidgeted with my paper napkin before setting it on my lap.
Percy swooped overhead and landed on the café roof, some sort of rodent clutched in one clawed foot. He got to work on his snack while the waitress arrived with ours.
Emeric had followed my gaze to the falcon. He said a few magically charged words, and the air quavered with the formation of the deflective spell he’d mentioned. Then he lifted his chin toward the roof. “Your familiar?”
I nodded. “It would have been tough leaving him behind, especially when I don’t know how long I’ll be gone for. But he’s pretty self-sufficient.”
“Portland’s not so big a city that people will stare at a bird of prey flying by, so it shouldn’t be an issue.” He dug into his pie, his fork clamped in one of those gloved hands. I couldn’t help watching his grasp, an odd but not unpleasant shiver running through my chest at the impression of strength it offered.
I broke off a chunk of my own slice and was momentarily distracted by the tart berry sweetness, but the question kept tickling through my mind until I decided I might as well ask. “Do your hands get really cold even in July, or…?”
Emeric gave a short, gruff laugh. “That’s about the politest way anyone’s ever asked about these.” He tugged on the ends of the gloves by his elbows, one and then the other, and spun his fork between his fingers. “I lost my hand and most of my forearm in the final standoff between the barons and the scions. The new one’s titanium. With a few physicality spells, it does pretty much everything my old hand could do, but it’d draw a whole lot of attention I don’t want from the fee—from the Naries.”
He’d caught himself just shy of calling the people around us “feebs”—but then, that was what I’d called them just a couple of years ago, what most fearmancers had called them before Rory had started pushing for more respect. I wasn’t going to hold the slip against him, especially after what he’d just revealed about his arm.
“That one?” I ventured, trying not to outright stare at the hand holding his fork—the one that’d manipulated the utensil so deftly. It was a hunk of inanimate metal? Well, animated by magic, not by muscles and nerves. Hell.
“That’s the one. You’d never figure, would you?” He said it easily, as if it didn’t matter all that much. Half an arm torn right off. I still had an illusion over my cheek where the tiny scratch marks from a few days ago hadn’t quite healed, where my one lingering mark from that battle split the pale skin with a sliver of a paler line. I guessed he’d gotten pretty comfortable with the fact over the past two years.
“No. It’s impressive.” I glanced from his gloved hand to his face again, searching for a trace of the emotion I expected behind his light eyes. Maybe that was where the sadness in his smile came from? But he didn’t sound sad about it, only matter-of-fact. “You must have been right in the thick of it.”
I had been, alongside the scions and the rest of their Guard. Mostly I’d been diverting attention and startling our attackers with illusions—the brutal physicality spells of actual combat weren’t my cup of tea—but someone else from my side must have been responsible for that injury. “And you turned to the new barons after all that?” I had to add.
Emeric made a dismissive motion. “None of them personally cut my arm off. It was an explosive spell before the battle even really started. I wouldn’t know who to blame for it if I wanted retribution. And it seems to me there isn’t much point in that now that the dust has settled.” He set down the fork and flexed his fingers. “In some ways this hand is even better than the real one.”
The injury had to give him some cache with the other reaper families, anyway, even if they didn’t respect his family a great deal. It was proof of how he’d fought and what he’d sacrificed for their side.
And here he was switching over to the other. “So, no hard feelings, then?” I said, still watching his face.
The mistiness of his pale eyes darkened to something stormier, but his tone stayed brisk. “Is this the way I pictured my life going? No. But I wouldn’t have been there if the old barons hadn’t gotten caught up in their crazy scheme, if it hadn’t seemed like we needed to support them or they might crush us too. Why shouldn’t they take the blame? And now this bunch in Portland is trying to screw us all over again.” He shook his head with a grimace.
Yeah, we should probably get down to our real business. I popped another bite of pie into my mouth and considered what I needed to know as I chewed. “The local families haven’t let you in on their plans—you’ve just picked up on enough to realize they have one. We’re counting on them being willing to bring me in. Who are the main players here? Is there anything specific that’ll help win them over?”
“Right to the heart of the matter,” Emeric said with a rough chuckle. “I knew you’d be the one for the job.” He pulled out his phone. “I have a few photos with the main people you’ll need to schmooze with. There’s a get-together happening tomorrow that I can bring you to so you can meet most of them.”
“Tomorrow?” I repeated with a hitch of my pulse. There was no reason we shouldn’t be getting started that quickly—I wanted this trip to be over soon, didn’t I?—but somehow I hadn’t anticipated leaping into the fire quite that immediately.
“Just a luncheon thing. The Portland mage community is pretty tightly knit; everyone knows everyone, and they socialize a lot. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince them to trust you with your name and how much they already hate the new barons. They won’t be all that skeptical of any story that involves them being jerks.”
“Perfect.” I dragged in a breath and scooted my chair around the table so I could see his phone more easily. My arm brushed his, the glove warm and unexpectedly soft against my skin. I focused on the photo he’d brought up instead, preparing to absorb everything I’d need to know to make it through this luncheon with all my limbs intact.
Chapter Six
The homes of Portland’s higher echelon of fearmancers weren’t that different from the houses I’d called on with my parents over the years—stately and fortress-like, just smaller than those of the real upper crust who would never have dreamed of keeping a major residence in what they’d see as a podunk town.
As we climbed the front steps of the dour stone building that belonged to the Acheling family, Emeric shot me a reassuring smile that softened what seemed to be his typical brooding expression. I resisted the urge to grasp at his hand like a kid on her first day of school. Maybe this was my first day as an active secret agent, but I was pretty sure that job required a little more self-assurance than a Nary kindergartener possessed.
The most prominent fearmancers in Portland might not have lived at the standards of my former social circle, but they had plenty of the trappings of wealth all the same. A butler greeted us at the door and ushered us into the “day room,” a space about the size of my dorm common room back at Blood U. Antique armchairs and a couple of settees with embroidered cushions stood in an elegant arrangement around a few mahogany side tables with platters of wine glasses for guests to take at their leisure. An ornately framed landscape painting hung over a small fireplace, cast with an illusion that made the clouds appear to drift through the sky, shifting the shadows that streaked the rolling hills beneath.