Burned by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #1)(70)

Annia elbowed Noria in the side, who yelped. “Don’t say nasty things like that,” she scolded her sister. “Naya’s not the kind of person who’d sit back and rest on her laurels.” She grinned at me. “I’m sure we can expect her to continue getting into all kinds of trouble.”

“What are you going to do now though?” Comenius asked. He tapped the Enforcer’s bracelet on my wrist. “Are you going to chase bounties again, or pursue your magical studies full time?”

I sighed, leaning back in my chair. “I’d like to do both in combination,” I said. “But it depends on whether or not the Chief Mage is going to stop giving me the silent treatment.”

Iannis and I hadn’t spoken for four days now, ever since I’d announced to him that I was moving out of the palace. He’d been utterly furious, claiming that I wasn’t ready to be without his protection because I’d barely been able to defend myself against Yantz and Talcon, and that he had a responsibility to look out for me as his apprentice, and he couldn’t do that if I was living outside the palace. I’d told him that I wasn’t a child, that I could take care of myself, and that if I wanted to continue doing work as an Enforcer I needed to put some distance between us so that people would stop treating me so differently.

He’d threatened to take my Enforcer bracelet away, and I’d threatened to publicly refuse his apprenticeship and humiliate him. We’d nearly come to blows, but in the end he’d just given me one of his frigid looks and swept from the room.

I hadn’t heard from him since.

“Do you really need to continue your apprenticeship after all this?” Noria wrinkled her nose. “I mean, it seems like you’ve learned enough to be able to control your magic. If I were you, I’d ditch town and join up with the Resistance.”

I shook my head. “I’m not so sure that my morals align with the Resistance after all.” I told them about the bombs and weapons Fenris found in Yantz’s mansion, as well as his possible ties to the Resistance, and brought up the terrorist attack I’d heard about at the banquet again. “Their methods are starting to sound pretty questionable to me.”

“I don’t know that any of that stuff is true.” Noria scowled. “So far all the data you’ve gotten has been passed down by mages or people allied with mages. You’re just falling for enemy propaganda.”

“I don’t know about that.” I felt guilty raising my doubts, but I couldn’t back down. Something didn’t feel right about this. “I’m going to have to look into it more before I make a decision.”

Noria tossed her fiery mane of curls. “Do what you want, but I’m definitely joining up once I finish my studies.”

“Noria!” Annia punched her in the arm. “Don’t say things like that in public.”

Noria shrugged, pulling a device that looked like a cross between an amulet and a gadget out of her pocket. It reminded me of the jammer she’d given me earlier. “This thing’s been muffling our conversations,” she said. “So I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Comenius’s eyes widened as he leaned forward to get a better look. “Did your friend Elnos help you with that?”

Noria grinned. “Pretty impressive, right?”

“Yes, actually.” He slumped back in his chair. “It makes me wish that I could work with technology.”

Noria patted Comenius’s hand. “Hey, maybe sometime I can bring something by the shop for you to help me with.”

Comenius pursed his lips thoughtfully. “That would be interesting.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Com, you’re a hedge-witch! You and technology don’t go together.”

Comenius frowned. “Maybe, but if any of Noria’s inventions do end up helping the Resistance, I would like to contribute. You know I support the idea of equality amongst the races just as much as you do.”

“Exactly,” Noria chimed in. “Which is why you should ditch the mages, and join the Resistance.”

“Maybe Naya’s got a different plan in mind,” Annia suggested, arching a brow at her little sister. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes.”

I wrinkled my nose at the uncouth metaphor, and Anna grinned at me.

“Hmph.” Noria jutted out her bottom lip, but she didn’t argue. “I guess so.”

“Besides,” I said, spearing a broccoli floret with my fork, “I want to find out what exactly Yantz was really up to, before anything else, and I’m more useful on my own than in the Resistance. Yantz mentioned that someone called the Benefactor was giving him orders, and I mean to find out who that is.”

“That’s true,” Comenius said. “From what you’ve told us, we still don’t understand why all the shifters who were targeted had to die, or exactly how the poison was delivered to them. I hope the new Shiftertown Inspector finds the answers. There could be other players involved who are still in town.”

That thought nagged at me as I walked the six blocks back to my new apartment in the Heights – a middle-class complex in Rowanville that was a few steps shy of luxury, but still pretty nice. It was on the other side of the artsy district, so the buildings I passed by were covered in New Age murals, and the sidewalks were humming with artists and street performers. I paused briefly as I watched a human caricature artist draw a portrait of a lion shifter child, and felt a pang as I wondered if someone close to this child would be the next victim. It was too soon to tell whether or not Yantz had someone in place to continue the poisonings without him. Then again, according to Yantz the poisonings were part of a grander plan, so maybe they’d already moved on to its next phase. The idea that there was a next phase made my stomach turn – I needed to find out what was going on before things got worse.