Puss-in-Boots

Author’s Note: Question—How can you possibly compete with a suave, seductive, ginger-furred Antonio Banderas? Answer: You can’t. Or at least I knew I myself couldn’t. So—since I wasn’t in the mood for another science-fiction piece—I just swapped genders. Let’s see if this one works . . . and yes, we’re actually returning to the Sons of Destiny universe for another brief visit . . .

SIONA cursed, as only a cat could curse—by yowling, hissing, growling, and clawing up the earth behind the stables. If there had been a rat within her reach at that moment, it would have died in a rather bloody fashion . . . but even that level of violence wouldn’t have satisfied her. Only the death of the figurative rat responsible for her predicament would solve her problems. The filthy, overgrown rodent had expanded his catch wards; she couldn’t take her natural form any closer than this inn, which was outside the range of her estate, and at that, she could only do so under the heaviest of wards.

Someone else’s wards.

Unfortunately, her fit of rage caught the attention of the stable hand. He peered around the side of the building, scowled at her, and shouted, snapping his fingers, “Hey! Hey—scat! Get out of here!”

“That sounds like a real scrapper,” another male voice stated, amusement lacing his words.

Startled out of her rage, Siona flicked her ears. That voice . . . she knew that voice. Instead of leaving, she trotted after the stable hand. Her viewing angle was wrong, coming from down low instead of close to level with his head, and he had a beard now, a neatly trimmed growth of rich brown hair covering him from nose to chin, but she thought she knew who he was. It was confirmed by the way he lifted his hand and rubbed his chin, then slid his finger up to rub behind his ear, giving the expected little tug on his earlobe as he finished. There was only one man she knew of with that little habit, though she hadn’t seen it in at least four, maybe five years.

Marc Tresket of Thessalina . . . finally, a fellow mage! Of course, he spent all his time studying Arithmancy and not nearly as much on the offensive and defensive spells most of the rest of us studied. I don’t know how much help he’ll be in my current quest, but any—

“Hey!” the stable hand shouted, kicking at her. “Scat!”

Siona jumped out of the way. Dodging a second kick, she darted between Marc’s boots, twined quickly around his ankles in a deliberate show of affection, and hissed at the stable hand.

“Damn feral cats,” the inn worker muttered, reaching for the pitchfork hung on the stable wall. “The barn cats are good mousers, but they attract all manner of strays, which end up fighting at all hours, clawing at the patrons, and plague us with too many useless litters that have to be drowned. Mind stepping away? I don’t want to get you.”

“You’re actually planning on killing this cat?” Marc asked as Siona narrowed her eyes and growled.

The stable hand gave him a sardonic look. “No, I’m planning on crowning it our next sovereign king.” He stepped forward, but Marc shifted, blocking him. “Out of my way, milord. The innkeeper doesn’t want feral strays hanging around.”

Come near me with that pitchfork, you idiot, and you’ll need a healer, she growled, though she was unable to say the actual words in her current form.

“Excuse me, but this is my cat.” Hands came down and scooped her up, one under her ribs, the other under her hind legs. Wisely, Siona didn’t protest being manhandled. Switching from growling to purring wasn’t possible, but she did manage to nuzzle her former academy mate in a show of affection.

“Hmphf.” Backing off, the stable hand hung the pitchfork back up on its pegs. “Make sure you keep it in your room while you’re here. One of the other servants might not wait to find out if it’s yours or not. We’re dog people hereabouts.”

Balancing Siona in the crook of one arm, the mage holding her slung his saddlebags over his other shoulder and headed for the inn. The scents of horses and hay were exchanged for the scent of cooking and canines. Siona sneezed, catching the attention of the innkeeper. He scowled, but allowed Marc to rent a room for the night. Their path through the common room took them past a table where three men sat, clad in the yellow and blue tabards of her enemy.

Restraining the urge to hiss and fly at them took most of her attention. It wasn’t until Marc hissed at her that she realized she had dug her claws through the wool of his sleeve. Relaxing her paws, she let him carry her up to the assigned room. Once the door was closed and he had draped his saddlebags over the footboard of the bed, Marc lifted her in both hands so that they were nose to nose.

“No claws, got that?” he ordered, giving her a slight but gentle shake. Lowering her to the bed, he stroked her from head to tail. “I have just rescued you from being pierced by a pitchfork. It would be a sign of gratitude on your part to refrain from playing the part of a pitchfork around me. Not that I expect you to understand, of course.”

I understand more than you know . . . and I owe you a debt for saving me from having to dodge that stable hand, she thought. More than that . . . I think I can trust you. It’s not like I have many options to find a better mage to assist me, this far from the more heavily populated lands.

From her position on the bed, Siona could just see onto the nearby table. As she watched, he pulled out some of his belongings and set them on the age-worn surface, including some of the tools of his mathemagic trade. Jumping down from the bed, she trotted over to the chair, leaped up, worked her way as close to the back as she could, and leaped again.

The gap between the back of the chair and the edge of the table was narrow; she barely made it. Marc frowned softly at her. “What are you looking at, puss? Are you a curious cat?”

Sure enough, he had set some shrunken chalkboards on the table, as well as a slender book with an interesting title, The King Who Heard a Joke, and Other Salacious Tales. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to investigate it; stopping her family’s killer was more important. Pawing at the dusty surface of the topmost slate only got her scooped up, however.

“Bad cat! Don’t go messing with my equations, you got that? Do I have to spank you?”

Meeting his gaze, Siona deliberately shook her head no. Firmly, from left to right. Marc frowned softly.

“Did you just . . .?”

She nodded just as emphatically.

He blinked. “You’re not a regular sort of cat, are you?”

Again, she shook her black-furred head. No.

“Are you . . . trapped by a spell? Do you want me to free you?”

She hesitated, then shook her head.

That made him frown. “Then why don’t you just pop out of your fur and talk to me?”

Looking around the table, Siona spotted a snapped-off stub of chalk. Though her paws weren’t exactly designed for holding things, she padded over and did her best to pick it up. Carrying it back over to the topmost slate—patiently, since she dropped it twice—she placed it on the surface and gingerly pushed it and patted it, marking what she wanted to say in crudely drawn squiggles.

sIOnA

Moving aside, she let him read the letters. His jaw dropped and he peered at her. “You’re Sio—”

She hissed loud and clawed at him, ears flatted to her skull. She didn’t get near enough to actually touch him, but at least it shut him up.

Marc gave her a wary look. “Do you mean that you’re trapped in this form because of a spell that Sio—”

She hissed and clawed again, then shook her head hard. Come on, figure it out!

“So you’re not trapped in a spell?” he asked cautiously. She nodded firmly. Marc frowned again. “You’re in a cat shape because of your own free will?” Again, she nodded. Pulling out the chair, he sat down and braced his elbows on the edge of the table. “So what does that have to do with Sio—”

Hiss! She thumped her tail for emphasis. His brown brows lifted.

“So it’s the name you don’t want me to mention?” he asked. Siona nodded sharply. Marc eyed her speculatively. “Are you . . . her?”

She nodded, glad he had finally caught on and wasn’t going to state her name out loud. That would cause the mage-wards seeking her to trigger.

Marc slumped back in the chair, staring at her. “But . . . you’re dead !”

Shaking her head, she turned back to the chalkboard. Scraping with the little piece of chalk, she managed another word.

OgeR

He leaned forward and read it. “Baron Oger? That doesn’t make sense. From what I’ve heard, His Majesty sent Baron Oger to manage the Marque of Calabas while the deaths of your family are being investigated. It’s even been rumored he’ll get the estate permanently if a living inheritor can’t be found.”

She patted the chalk on the board, squeezing in a few more letters. The piece was melting down as it scraped across the slate, dragging her toe-tips through some of the marks she made. It took him a bit of squinting and muttering to make out what she wrote, for all it was a single word.

muRdEr

“Your parents . . . were murdered?” At her nod, Marc tapped the previous word. “So what about the baron?”

Deliberately facing the chalkboard, Siona hissed and swiped her paw at the name, raking her claws across the four letters. Both of them shuddered at the nerve-wracking scree, but that was all right; it made her point all the more effective.

Marc sat back again. “But then why . . . ? Of course. He’s a fellow mage, and a powerful one. I remember you from the Academy; you weren’t bad at spellcasting, but Baron Oger . . . he has a reputation as one of the best. And the ear of the king. As His Majesty’s officially sent investigator . . . he could easily cover up any evidence that pointed to him.”

Siona nodded.

“The question is, what evidence?” Marc muttered. “I wish you could talk; I have a lot of questions I’d love to ask you.”

Pawing the surface of the chalkboard, Siona wiped away the three previous words and started scraping new ones on the cleared surface. She ran out of chalk when she had only written “BiG wA,” and had to mark the “Rds” in the dust of the slate with her furry little foot.

“Big wa . . . big . . . Big wards?” Marc asked, and received an equally big nod. He mulled that over for a few moments. “I think I understand. I saw some artifacts set up at the crossroads outside. The curves of the wires caging the crystals looked like tracking symbols. No doubt he’s told everyone they’re up there in the hopes of tracking the murderer . . . but given how even your family’s few cousins to the third and fourth generation on your father’s side have wound up dead in their beds over the last week, they’re probably designed to track down the Calabas bloodline instead.”

Siona nodded.

“Well. If there’s one thing I’m good at as a mathemagician, it’s precision, getting the most magic out of the least amount of spellpower. It’ll take me several hours to craft something appropriate, but I should be able to come up with the right runes for a ward circle tight enough to disguise a major Netherdemon, never mind a mere former Academy mate—if you don’t mind my putting it that way,” he allowed.

She couldn’t shrug very well in cat shape, so she settled for blinking at him, tail curled patiently around her haunches. Marc rubbed at his bearded chin for a few moments, then slid his finger up to his ear for a little rub and tug, ruffling his brown curls.

“Right. How about I go tell the innkeeper I’ll be staying here for a few more days, get us something to eat for later, and then the two of us hole up in this room while I craft a means to safely talk with you?” he asked. Siona nodded. Marc lifted his hand to the nape of her neck, smiling as he scritch-rubbed gently. “You know, you are just as pretty in this form as you ever were as a student. I’m regretting not spending more time getting to know you back then.”

Siona decided it was a good thing cats couldn’t blush.

SHE had forgotten what she was, or rather wasn’t, wearing. The moment her senses finished testing Marc’s carefully drawn wardings, telling her it was safe to expand back into her normal form, Siona had done so . . . only to find herself wearing a very short sleeping gown and a pair of low boots.

Marc, seated inside the chalk-drawn circle with her, whistled slowly as he looked up, and up, and up. Blushing, Siona squeezed her bare thighs together and folded her arms across her chest. “Hush. I didn’t exactly have time to dress the moment I realized a foreign mage was casting magic inside the manor.”

“You had enough time to throw on some boots,” her former Academy mate pointed out, still studying her curves.

“I thought the attack was coming from outside, and they were right there by the bed.” Sinking down, trying her best not to flash him, Siona settled on the floor with a sigh. “I was just starting to grab my dressing robe when I felt a spell being targeted at me. Specifically, at my name.”

“Name magic?” Marc asked. He focused on her face, now that she was seated at his level. “Isn’t that Mendhite magic?”

“Yes, it was among some of the spells Don Carlo taught in his Runic Theory classes. And Don Carlo is old enough, he could have taught the baron,” she added grimly. “That was when I shifted my shape.”

“I didn’t know you studied Animism. Don Marie only took on those students who showed an aptitude for spellshifting,” Marc admitted. “I’ll confess I never passed the entrance test for her classes.”

“It’s . . . not spellshifting.” She blushed as she admitted it, but forged on. “The Marque of Calabas is a bit unique in the Kingdom of Guchere. The estate is entailed. Magically entailed. Some of that entailment is tied to the title of ‘marquis’ or ‘marquess,’ but some of it is tied to my family’s blood. So long as one of the line of Calabas lives—a legitimate descendant—certain spells and spell-like effects will remain in existence. The king knows this, and I suspect the baron does as well, considering how careful he’s being in exterminating anyone with a legitimate claim to the place.”

“What’s so important about these entailed spells?” he asked her. “If the Calabas line is wiped out, doesn’t the magic go away? Is that what Baron Oger wants, to get rid of whatever magical benefits you’re enjoying and thus make Calabas a normal sort of marque?”

Siona shook her head. “No, he wants the spells attached to the title. A long time ago, an ancestor rescued the people from enslavement to a vile sorcerer. The bloodlines of most of the villagers and farmers within the marque were enslaved to the marque. Permanently enslaved. They had to obey the person who held the title marquis or marquess of the estate. My father’s ancestor came in, defeated the sorcerer, and when that didn’t stop the enslavement, he oath-bound his life and the lives of his descendants to protect these people, rather than exploit them.”

“What sort of exploitation?” her former classmate asked.

“Imagine, if you will, being able to order a family to give you every last bushel of beans, haunch of meat, and copper coin they had saved . . . and them actually doing so, even if it meant their starvation and death.” She held his gaze as he paled. “That’s the level of abuse Baron Oger wants to inflict. He’s not bound to protect this land like my bloodline is. And there’s worse—the sorcerer who originally enslaved the local peasants . . . sometimes he’d order them to fight against and kill each other, just for his amusement. They had no choice but to obey. It wasn’t pretty.”

Marc rubbed at his chin, then tugged on his ear. “So what does the cat thing have to do with all of this?”

She blushed. “That’s something from my mother’s side. Her great-plus-grandmother saved the High Priest of Cheren from being eaten by rats—it’s a very long story—and the God Himself blessed her family line with the ability to become cats. The reason it helped me escape the name magic is because I’ve never been called by my name when I’m a cat, and I’ve never answered to it as a cat. That name has no power over me as a cat, and thus the name magic has no power over me . . . but only while I’m a cat—you know, I’m giving you a lot of my trust by telling you these things.”

“I won’t betray that trust,” Marc reassured her. “Besides, I agree: if you don’t ever answer to it, then it’s not your name. I remember Don Carlo’s lectures on the subject. ‘If you don’t like what someone is calling you—’”

“‘Then don’t respond to it, Stupid,’ ” Siona agreed, smiling. “I remember them, too. Anyway, the spell missed. Barely, but it missed. It’s still out there, too. I can feel it.” She grimaced. “Unless Baron Oger recalls the spell . . . or if he dies . . . I’m stuck either living out my life as a cat, or living it inside very tight wards. Just saying my name outside these wards will cause his finding spells to focus on the speaker. The last think I needed was for him to magically overhear you speaking my name while you were figuring out my identity.

“I can also sense the spell hovering near those catch-ward crystals he’s been putting up . . . and I’m now outside Calabas lands. Just barely outside, since the other side of the crossroads is Calabas land, but those wards now extend beyond my family’s property. With the king backing him, he could have every major and minor city covered in just a few more weeks, plus all the crossroads watched . . . I’d have to flee the kingdom practically.

“I need your help, Marc,” she murmured, holding his green gaze. Hoping he could help, somehow. “I need to figure out some way of taking him down before every last relative within seven generations ends up dead. Time is running out.”

“If you don’t have solid evidence he’s doing it . . . he’s too politically powerful to demand that he be Truth Stoned. Not without evidence to cast enough doubt on his innocence. Not to mention there are a few spells in existence for getting around that sort of thing, or at least the standard truth-sensing spells—I actually started out studying Veritamancy, thinking I might become a royal inquisitor,” he explained. “But I have a better head for math and logic, so I ended up studying for my degree in Arithmancy. In some ways, I should have stuck with Veritamancy; there’s always a demand for truth-discerning in the court systems, both here and abroad.

“My last job . . . I quit because my employer wanted me not only to do an audit of his business to find where he could tighten up production costs and lessen the amount of magical energy expended on his creations, he wanted me to fix the numbers magically so that the records would never show how much money he was really earning in his glassmaking shop. Particularly whenever tax time rolled around.”

Siona smiled. “You’re an honest man, Marc Tresket. We didn’t have more than a handful of classes together, and we weren’t ever paired for assignments . . . but I did see that much in you. It’s why I decided to trust you.”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “Honest men don’t always find honest employment. Which is ironic, because I left the last job due to an ethical conflict, yet here you’re asking me to help you in exposing . . . or even eradicating . . . a government official.”

“A murderer,” she corrected.

“How do you know Baron Oger is the murderer you seek?” Marc challenged her.

Siona gave him a sardonic look. “Because I studied Auramancy under Don Divestia . . . and because I got close enough to him as a cat to sniff the baron magically. I have a hard time casting active magics when I’m in cat form, but the passive ones still work well enough. That name spell came from his own energies. I’m so sure of it, I’m staking my life on it, because if I had any sense, I’d flee to the far side of the world. That . . . and if I weren’t oath-bound to protect the land-bound peasants of Calabas. So long as they’re in danger, I have to stick around and figure out how to save them all.”

“Ah.” He mulled that over. “So how do we get him to confess?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know what his weaknesses are or where his skeletons lie.”

He rubbed at his chin and his ear, then tugged on it. “I suppose I could offer my services to him as a freelance Arithmancer, offer to go over the estate books, see if there is any sort of monetary motive behind the killings. Then we’d have an ‘inside man’ on the scene.”

Siona nodded. “That could work . . . particularly if you claimed to be working on behalf of Dowager Queen Jalta—she’s related to the family by marriage. I also happen to know something which has been kept hushed up from general knowledge. Her Majesty’s been forced to take to her bed because of a stroke and is under healer’s orders to have strict peace and quiet while she struggles to recover full speech and mobility—her primary healer sent a note to my parents just days before . . . well. The note explained why she wouldn’t be visiting us later this summer as planned.”

“That just might work . . . With her out of touch and the reason why she can’t be reached hushed up, I can drop her name to get my foot in the door. I can also bring you onto the estate as my pampered pet cat, though I’d have to give you a suitable name—hey, how about Boots?” he teased, giving her feet an unabashed grin.

With his beard framing his white teeth, he looked a little wicked and rather sexy. As a younger, beardless man, he had been kind of cute, if shy and self-effacing. With the beard and that grin, he looked rather handsome. Siona felt her face and other parts farther south warming. “I suppose that one will do, if you must give me a name.”

He scratched his chin, then his ear. “We’ll also need to ensure some way of communicating while you’re in cat form. It’s been a while since my Artificing classes, but I think I can cobble together an amulet you could wear on a collar, something which would translate your verbal intent, your yowls and such, into actual Gucheran speech. It would have to be recharged each night, though, since I don’t have the right ingredients on hand to make it long-lasting. The rather expensive ingredients. Unless you’d prefer to wait?”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I’d rather not wait for the expensive stuff. I—”

She was interrupted by the boom-boom-boom of someone thumping on a large set of drums. Royal messenger drums. Siona quickly resumed her cat shape, allowing Marc to break the chalked lines of the wardings. As soon as both of them were free, they hurried to the window. Marc scooped her up in his arms in time to hear the drumming stop and see the royal messenger unrolling his scroll.

“By royal decree!” the man mounted on the horse called out in deep tones. “His Majesty has commanded that, due to the unexpected and tragic loss of all known inheritors, Oger Havant, Baron of Shellid, shall be named successor to the Marque of Calabas. This proclamation is to be made all throughout the bounds of the Marque of Calabas and its immediate environs. Let all hear His Majesty’s decree and honor your new governor, the Marquis Oger of Calabas! ”

Siona hissed. She didn’t realize she had dug in her claws, too, until Marc himself hissed. Squirming out of his arms, she stalked over to the center of the broken wards and paced, waiting impatiently for him to return and begin inscribing the circles and runes all over again.

As soon as she safely could—many minutes later—Siona shot back to her natural form and glared at her former classmate, hands clenching in fists. “They’re both in collusion on this! It’s the only explanation why His Majesty would act so fast, when it’s barely been a week!”

“Calm down,” Marc ordered her, catching her wrists. “What you’re suggesting could be considered treason if someone else hears us mentioning it. I did put up sound-dampening wards, but they’ll only go so far. If we can’t catch him by taking your evidence to the king and demanding a truth-testing . . . then we’ll have to find evidence some other way, and . . . I can’t believe I’m even thinking this . . .” he muttered.

“And what, take justice into our own hands? I’m more than willing!” Siona asserted. He hushed her again, glancing at the door and the walls around them. Subsiding, she thought out loud in a lower, quieter tone of voice. “You’re right. We need evidence. But not just to prove it’s Oger. We need evidence to hold over His Majesty’s head. I don’t want anyone else trying to gain control of Calabas once Oger’s out of the way, and I don’t want the one man who is supposed to be protecting all Gucherans to just turn around and back another greedy murderer.”

“I’d better get to work crafting that collar—if there’s anything you can do to help, we’d better brainstorm what that is right now,” he added, releasing her hands. “It takes too long to set up these ward circles. We’ll want to be prepared and ready before we start, if you’re going to help make that collar, and help me think of ways to get the evidence we need. Here—I have a couple of miniaturized slate boards and some chalk in my pouch. You take one, I’ll take the other, and we’ll list out our objectives, requirements, and goals.”

Siona smiled wanly. She settled back on the floor, tucking the hem of her nightdress down for decency. “Were you always this organized?”

“Third best Arithmancer in my graduating year. The only thing keeping me from a higher ranking was my lesser magic. I wasn’t even a quarter as powerful as that Serina girl, the one from outkingdom,” he admitted with a shrug. “She took the top honors.”

“Serina . . . Serina . . . tall, skinny, pale blonde?” Siona asked. “Skinny, but really pretty?”

Marc wrinkled his nose. “Too tall, too skinny, and her hair was too straight.” He smoothed his expression into a smile and added a wink. “I like curly haired Gucheran girls.”

Mindful of the uncombed state of her own curls, Siona ducked her head and concentrated on writing down whatever ideas might be of use in her—their—quest.

FROM the ends of her whiskers to the tip of her tail, Siona trembled with rage. It was all she could do to keep from growling and flexing her claws, the latter of which might have caused Marc to drop her. As it was, her tail thumped repeatedly against his chest.

Baron Oger lowered the lash in his hand, giving the whimpering man at his feet a brief respite. Strolling around to the front, he grabbed the peasant’s curls and lifted his tear-streaked head. As he was a very large man and the peasant somewhat short, the Baron managed to lift his victim almost off his knees. “Now will you call me by my new, rightful title?”

“I’m so sorry, milord! Bright Heaven, I’m sorry, but I can’t call you that!” the man begged.

“And why not?” Baron Oger all but purred. “Why can’t you call me ‘milord Marquis,’ hmm?”

“Be-because there isn’t a Marquis of Calabas!”

“I should beat you until—”

Marc cleared his throat, interrupting the older mage. As soon as he had the baron’s attention, he spoke in a dry, bored tone, “Is this going to go on much longer? My time is very valuable.”

His languid, foppish drawl made Siona blink. Where did he learn to sound like a pampered Draconan nobleman?

Baron Oger, would-be Marquis of Calabas, frowned. He dropped the farmer he had been whipping, shifting his hand to his hip. The stance only emphasized the breadth of his shoulders, making him look like a muscular wall. “Your time is valuable? Who are you, and why are you here?”

“My name is Arithmancer Marc Tresket. I was sent here as a favor of a certain high-ranking someone to offer my services in investigating any possible reason as to why the Calabas line has been slaughtered. Certain other parties insist on having an Academy-trained Arithmancer rule out financial gain as a motive. After all, Calabas is a prosperous marque, and money is always a motive.” Pausing to pet the black cat lounging in his arms, Marc shrugged and continued. “Of course, if you think you could do a better job at figuring out how money could be a motive, and the truth of the estate accounts covered or uncovered . . .

“Oh, wait, you don’t have a degree in Arithmancy. Any attempt you might make at trying to uncover embezzlement and so forth would be about as successful as any attempt you’d make to cover it all up.” Another pause, a shift of his weight, and Marc tossed his head, settling his curls back from his face. “Either way, the longer I’m delayed, the more likely my employer is to recall my services . . . and send a more formal inquest as to why they were delayed.”

“And who, pray tell, is your employer?” Oger sneered. The peasant was all but forgotten; Siona could tell the farmer was struggling to keep silent in spite of the blood-speckled welts on his back.

Marc gave a languid, graceful gesture with his free hand. “The Dowager Queen Jalta . . . but I’m here on her behalf discreetly. One of her uncles was related by marriage to the Calabas line, you know, and she is eager—out of sentiment, I’m sure—to settle the question of who inherits what, now that the family line is dead. Not to mention the death taxes need to be assessed and independently verified, for which reason I am also here. I do realize my appearance at this juncture is unannounced . . . but then that is the way these things are done these days. I am supposed to be an independent assessor of the situation, after all.

“I will require access to the entire estate, its storerooms, barns, warehouses, flocks, herds, and other accountables, plus of course all fiscal records for the last fifty years, and the original copies of any wills or other entailment documents. Personal correspondences if they can be found, in case anyone wrote any uncivilized, inflammatory letters at some point. I also require a study with a writing desk, several expandable slate boards . . . if they have any in such a backwater marque as this . . . and of course my own private suite of rooms,” Marc added, as if such an endeavor were unthinkable otherwise. “I refuse to share quarters with anyone of lesser rank and status. The staff must also be informed about the needs of my precious puss here. It wouldn’t do for my pretty little Boots to go hungry while I’m working, now would it?”

Siona affected a purr as he kneaded the nape of her neck. It wasn’t too difficult, since Baron Oger’s mouth had sagged open under the impact of Marc’s performance. Marc paused once more, sighed, and tossed his head again, bouncing his brown curls.

“Now, if you’re done punishing this criminal, or whatever he is, I’d be deeply obliged if you’d instruct the staff to prepare my rooms—unless this is some member of the staff and they’re being unruly?”

“They’re all being unruly.” Shoving the farmer away, Baron Oger gestured behind him at the steps leading up from the courtyard into the manor house. Like most Gucheran noble homes, it was arranged in a square two stories high, ringed with arched balconies and centered around a garden courtyard shaded by trees and cooled by fountains. There was enough room on the flagstones directly in front of the wrought-iron entry gate to receive guests. Or to punish someone. The baron gestured for Marc to follow. “This way.”

It didn’t take long for a servant to show Marc to a guest suite on the second floor. Once there, and once his baggage had arrived from the coach hired to bring him to the manor, Marc warded the front room against scrying. Siona, set free to sniff around while they waited, joined him on the overstuffed cushions lining the wicker couch.

“Your assessment?” he asked quietly.

She squeaked and mrraurred, and the collar they had crafted for her over the last two days translated her intentions in an approximation of her own voice. “This is bad. He’ll beat them until they call him the Marquis of Calabas, but the entailment means they literally can’t. Not the spellbound ones. The others, the freeholders, they can call him whatever they want, but the enslaved ones cannot lie.”

“What if you told them to lie?” Marc asked.

She shook her head. “They can’t. Unless there is an actual Marquis of Calabas . . . they can’t. They can only say that someone is the marquessa, which would be me. Or the marquess if I were married . . . Ohhh.”

“Oh, what?” he asked. She blinked up at him and he reached over, scratching the top of her head. Siona enjoyed it for a moment, then pulled both her head and her mind back, concentrating on the business at hand.

“Well . . . if I got married, then they could say there was a Marquis of Calabas. But . . . I still can’t order them to lie to a government official. That’s part of my own family’s spellbound covenant with them, part of the things which ensure we’ll never abuse our powers. Particularly that we will never abuse those powers and then try to conceal it from the law.”

He mulled that over. “What about . . . if you ordered them to obey me, and I told them to lie?”

“They wouldn’t have cause to obey unless you were my husband. And even then . . . I don’t know how much of the spellbinding on the Calabas line would affect a spouse’s commands.” Siona sighed and groomed her shoulder, thinking about it.

“What if I told them—or even if you told them—to seem as if they were addressing him as the Marquis of Calabas . . . so long as I was present and was your husband? You know, like the way how you can be looking directly at one person, but are actually talking to someone else?”

She paused in her grooming, tail tip twitching. “That . . . might work. Of course, it would require us to get married, but such things aren’t irreversible. We could always get an annulment afterward.”

Marc slowly shook his head. “No . . . I don’t think so.”

About to lick her paw and groom her face, Siona quirked her furry brows. “You don’t think so? I know marriage is a bit extreme, but I’d really rather my people weren’t beaten for something beyond their control.”

“No, I meant an annulment would be out of the question, not the marriage itself.” Reaching over, he scooped her up and cuddled her against his chest, putting their heads close together. His was large, brown, and curly; hers was small, black, and furry. Meeting her green gaze with his own, Marc quirked up the corner of his mouth. “You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman, Boots. I’d have to have the willpower of a god to resist the thought of making love to you if I had the chance. As it is, I’m a young, healthy man, and you’re a young, healthy woman. If we marry . . . I’m afraid we’d have to get a divorce. I insist on having a wedding night. And any other following nights.”

She opened her mouth to mrrau in protest at him, only to have his fingertip lightly bop her on the nose.

“Besides, how do we know I’ll even count as your husband, at least where the entailment spells are concerned, unless the marriage is first consummated? Hmm?”

He had her there. Subsiding in his arms, Siona mulled it over. He isn’t a bad catch, as far as husbands might go. He’s not a messy roommate, and he did buy me a set of clothes to wear so I’m not stuck reshaping myself into nothing but my nightdress and boots. He’s smart, and funny, and cute . . . and he smells nice, she admitted. Plus he’s rather good at finding all the right spots to scritch while I’m in this form. Hopefully that should translate into reasonably good skill as a lover . . .

Marc lifted his brows, waiting for a reply. Making up her mind, she nodded. “All right. We should probably do it in the manor chapel, too, as soon as possible. After supper. That is, presuming Priestess Selva hasn’t been retired precipitously. She’s one of the few surviving people within the marque who know I can take on a cat form. Just caution her not to say a certain spell-targeted name, to avoid catching the attention of Oger’s wards, and we should be fine.”

“Agreed. And if she can’t do it, well, whoever is there will just have to put up with my wedding my cat,” Marc muttered, though he wrinkled his nose.

Cats, Siona discovered, could actually smirk. “I look forward to seeing you pull off that.”

THANKFULLY, the priestess was still there. She had almost turned them away, citing the need to continue preparing the bodies of other Calabas family members still in the process of being brought to the family crypt for interment, but she consented eventually. Namely after several surreptitious, thoughtful looks at Siona, and Siona’s own solemn nod upon the third viewing. Their sole witness was the young acolyte who served as Selva’s altar boy. The youth stared with wide green eyes at the amulet-translated cat while “Boots” meow-spoke her vows but otherwise didn’t comment.

Baron Oger confronted them not more than a minute after they left the chapel with the blessing of their patron god Cheren still dampening their brows in an oily blue dot. Or rather, he confronted Marc. He met them on the winding garden path leading through the back gardens to the rear entrance of the manor.

“I tried getting ahold of Her Majesty via scrying mirror,” Oger growled, glaring down at the shorter man, “but it seems the dowager queen is currently experiencing a bout of religious fervor and is ‘contemplating her life.’ Which means I cannot ask her directly to confirm your presence here.”

Marc tossed his hair and stroked the cat in his arms. “It’s not my fault her relatives have been dropping like day-flies. Her Majesty is probably busy confessing her sins and purging her guilts in the understandable effort to avoid spending part of her afterlife in a Netherhell. Besides, I’m supposed to be here as an independent investigator of the nature and status of the Calabas estate. It wouldn’t do to connect me too strenuously with a potentially interested party.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Siona watched this languid, foppish version of the normally sane Arithmancer give the larger man a wink . . . and then purse his lips. Oger paled and backed up. Marc smirked and strolled past him for a few steps, then turned and spoke again.

“I’ll need access to all books, scrolls, logs, journals, letters, receipts, and other forms of record-keeping bright and early tomorrow morning. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a terribly long day of traveling already, and I’ll need to spend what is left of this evening preparing my mathemagics for the morrow’s accountings.” He paused, glanced around the lantern-lit shadows of the garden, then stepped close enough that Siona had to suppress a sneeze at the musky-sour scent of the baron’s body odor. “If you have any specific instructions on what I should or shouldn’t find . . . slip them under the door. I’ll set up a catch spell to hold them confidential until I can attend to whatever you have in mind.”

Baron Oger stepped back. His lip curled up. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Hardly. I save all of my passion for my sweet puss. Isn’t that right, Boots?” Marc asked, lifting Siona and turning her so that he could nuzzle her face with his own. She licked his cheek above his beard, doing her best to look like an affectionate, pampered cat. Cuddling her to his chest, he gave the baron a superior smile. “I am, however, smart enough to seize an opportunity, or even just see the possibility for it. Particularly if there is some profit in it for me. I am an Arithmancer . . . and manipulating money is just one more form of mathemagics, isn’t it?

“Sleep well, Your Excellency,” Marc added over his shoulder as he turned back toward the manor. “I certainly intend to . . .”

AN hour later, as soon as the last chalk mark sealed most of their suite against any possible intrusion, physical or magical, Siona unfurled herself into her human form and smirked at her ersatz husband. “You are unbelievable. Whatever gave you the idea to act like that around him? Did you want to risk having him throw us out?”

“It’s a trick I learned from a classmate from my primary schooling years. Well, not a classmate, per se,” Marc amended, putting his chalks back into their pockets on his satchel. He had marked all of the walls, plus the edges of the ceiling and the floor in shades of blue, white, pink, green, and silvery gray. “Eremen Gestus was an extraordinary eleven-year-old con artist. He would affect a brash, over-the-top personality to distract anyone and everyone around him during the luncheon break . . . and while we were all distracted, he would swap out bits of lunch brought by the others.

“Pocket breads, fruits, even baked sweets would end up in his hands, if we weren’t careful. And though many of us swore time and again we wouldn’t let his antics distract us . . . sooner or later, his little theatrics and gestures would draw our attention away from guarding our sticky buns and our pasta bowls, and there would go a spoonful of this and a nibble of that into his mouth, and down into his gullet.” Wiping his hands on a rag taken from his satchel, Marc smiled wistfully. “It took me more than three months to realize he never brought food of his own from home. I don’t think his family had any to spare. Not and still afford to give him an education.

“When I realized why he did it . . . I didn’t begrudge him the way he cadged his meals, since it spared him his dignity. He went on to be quite famous—I’m sure you’ve heard of him, Gestus nii Vestas?”

“Gestus nii Vestas?” Siona repeated, startled. “The Magicless Wonder? The entertainer who has successfully challenged hundreds of mages to explain how he makes things appear and disappear without any traces of magic? You grew up in the same school as him?”

“Primary school only, since I went on to the Academy to learn real magic, and obviously he didn’t follow, but yes. However,” he stated, moving close enough to cup her shoulders, clad as they were in the short-sleeved, short-cropped tunic he had bought for her to wear, along with the matching rose-pink skirt wrapped decorously around her hips, concealing her legs down to her ankles. “This is our wedding night, and I would rather you paid attention to me, tonight.”

Twisting, Siona double-checked the wards he had scribed. “Did you remember to ward against the passage of excessive sounds, as well as intrusions and scryings?”

“That’s what the pink runes are for.” Sliding his hands from her shoulders to her back, he stroked along her spine, subtly tugging her closer.

When Siona looked back at him, he seized the opportunity to kiss her. His lips were sweet, warm, and slightly scratchy, thanks to his mustache and beard. They also grew on her rather quickly, coaxing her into responding with soft, savory nibbles. It had been a while since her last lover; she had forgotten how satisfying in and of itself a good kiss could be . . . and Marc was undeniably a good kisser.

By the time it ended, her lips stung a little from the scratching of his beard, but she didn’t mind; his kisses were quite enjoyable. He had also loosened the ties of her blouse and had splayed his hands across her bared back. Siona smiled. “I take it you’ve done this before?”

“Just because I’m an Arithmancer doesn’t mean I’m as passionless as my numbers and formulae,” Marc admonished. He smiled as he said it, rippling his fingers in a subtle massage along either side of her spine, then sliding them down to the ties of her skirt. “Besides, I tutored Stasia Nicolmo in applied statistics and Geomancy in exchange for lessons on how to please a woman properly.”

Siona wrinkled her nose, remembering the girl in question. “Stasia Nicolmo? But she looked like a . . .”

“As she put it, since she never had the looks to catch and hold a man’s attention, she always had to rely upon pure skill,” Marc told her. “She exchanged tutoring lessons with at least five other classmates and managed to graduate with decent grades. Last I heard, she had moved west to Nightfall to work for some guild in the brand-new kingdom.

“But enough about her,” he added, drawing his hands around her waist. The action brought the ties of her skirt around as well, unwrapping the garment. “We need to focus on me and you.”

Siona mock-frowned and tucked her hands around his waist, finding and tugging at the ties of his own trousers. “Not fair. If I have to get naked, so do you.”

Marc grinned. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

I don’t know why, Siona mused as she backed off, divesting herself of clothing and giving him the room to do the same, but somehow, getting naked so I can make love to my husband, and not just a casual lover, is rather titillating. Illicit, even. Possibly because it’s only temporary . . . but possibly because it is a commitment. A legal right to pleasure. In other words, she thought, moving back to run her fingers over the whorls of hair dusting his now naked chest, mine, all mine. Acres and acres, and it’s all mine . . .

She paused and pulled back, looking down. His trousers had fallen, thanks to her own efforts, but while he was still wearing a loin wrap, it was the impediment to the removal of his trousers that had caught her attention. Smirking, she looked up at him. “Perhaps I should start calling you ‘Boots’ as well?”

“Just for that, I’ll make you remove them,” he quipped. He shuffled over to the side of the bed, sat, and stuck out his feet, draped in a tangle of cloth and leather. Kneeling, Siona untangled his clothes and removed them, noting with approval the contraceptive amulet tied around his ankle. She crawled up onto his lap when she was done, meeting his lips even as she straddled his hips.

With each of them clad in a loin wrap and nothing else, she was free to touch almost anything she wanted. What she wanted to do most, she did: Siona ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. “Mmm . . . very manly. Last time I saw you, Marc, well, you still looked like a boy. Young and hairless. But this makes you look very much like a fully grown man. I like it.”

Grinning, he lifted his palms to her breasts, gently cupping the soft curves. She shivered when he rubbed his thumbs in slow circles around their peaks, and shivered again when he spoke. “Alas, I can’t say the same, since you already had these when I first saw you . . . but they’re a very nice pair of these.”

She laughed, tilting her head back. Marc shifted, taking advantage of her bared throat. With the edges of his thumbs rubbing her nipples, he nuzzled and gently bit the exposed skin, feathering his teeth over her skin. The combination was simple, yet stunning, connecting not only her breasts to her throat, but her throat to her loins. Breath hissing in, she raked her fingers gently through the coarse fuzz of his chest and tugged lightly on the strands.

Marc shivered under her. “Mmm . . . are you sure you didn’t tutor Stasia in anything yourself ?”

That made her laugh a second time. “Maybe I’m just naturally talented. Or maybe I just prefer practicing on hairy men.”

He pulled her close, pressing them together from pelvis to chest. Nipping at her ear, Marc growled, “Well, you’re married to me, now. For however long this marriage may last, I don’t believe in sharing.”

That was titillating, too. Digging her fingers into his dark brown curls, Siona tipped his head back, baring his own throat to her lips. “I don’t believe in sharing when married, either.”

“Mmm, good,” he murmured. “Then we’re agreed . . . we’ll have lots and lots of lovemaking together—and if we don’t get it right, we’ll just keep practicing until we do.”

Chuckling, she nibbled on his ear. He growled again and nipped back, somehow finding a ticklish spot she hadn’t known existed. Squirming, Siona fought back to nibble while avoiding being nibbled on in turn. Somewhere in there, their mouths met, this time for a much more heated kiss than before. Fingers buried in her long black curls, tipping her head this way and that, Marc kissed nearly every inch of her skin from brows to collarbone.

The pleased, hungry noises he made as he did so thrilled her. It had been a while since she’d had a lover, particularly one so enthusiastic. As the sole heir to Calabas—in the immediate family sense, before the odious baron began his killing spree—she had been caught up in learning how to manage the marque in a responsible, oath-sensitive manner. That hadn’t left a lot of time for pursuing anything other than a casual romp. This wasn’t a casual romp, though; for however long or short it lasted, they were married.

Recapturing his mouth, Siona kissed him hungrily. She didn’t know if or when Baron Oger might uncover their deception, or how long it might take to find evidence solid enough to prove his guilt, or how to deal with him once they did. It felt right to seize the moment with this man. With her husband.

Pushing him down onto the bed, Siona kissed her way down his chest, nuzzling her face into the crisp strands of his chest hair. Marc played with her curls, letting her be aggressive. She had to slip off the bed in order to kiss lower than mid-chest; by the time she did, the modest bulge in his loin wrap had formed a distinct ridge. Unbuckling the thong holding the wrap in place, she freed the spike of his flesh from the folds of cloth.

The reddened head was peeking out through its little cowl, encouraging her to gently grasp and stroke it. Marc sucked in a breath, lifting his hips into her touch. He reached for her hands, curling up a little so that he could tug on them. “Come up here on the bed. If you’re going to play with me like that, I want to play with you, too.”

She complied. He guided her into lying down diagonally on the bed, giving both of them enough room to stretch out past each other, heads to loins. Siona lifted her upper leg, bending her knee so she could brace it upright, but he didn’t accept her silent invitation immediately. Instead, he leaned over her thighs and kissed their soft skin. Enjoying it, she returned the favor, exploring the differences between the smoother, nearly hairless expanse of his upper thighs versus the hairs scattered with increasing thickness over his lower legs.

His erection bumped against her shoulder and throat. Gradually, the accidental brushes became more deliberate touches, until with hungry little moans of her own, she kissed her way from his sack to his spike and back. He returned her efforts by nuzzling his way into her folds, proving within moments that he had been well paid for his tutoring efforts. Siona enjoyed it thoroughly, until he murmured something she couldn’t quite catch.

Lifting her mouth from his spike, she pushed up higher on her elbow and craned her neck. “What did you say?”

Beard glistening, Marc removed his head from between her thighs. He flashed her a grin. “Just a little spell I read about, a few years back. One which I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

The moment he said one, her loins throbbed. It was a subtle vibration, but a distinct one. Blinking, Siona eyed him. “Did you just . . .”

“I am an Arithmancer. Numbers are my specialty.” Smirking, he paused, pursed his lips, and carefully enunciated, “Four.”

The subtle thrumming became a distinct buzzing in her flesh. Siona gasped, hips bucking. Rolling onto her back, she squirmed in the attempt to escape, but she couldn’t. It stayed with her, enervating her senses. “What did you . . . ?”

“What, don’t you like that number? How about five? Six? ” he asked. The tremors strengthened, spreading from the little peak at the top of her folds to the base of her spine, making her buck again in surprise. “Or would you prefer three?”

The intensity backed off, allowing her to unclench her hands from the bedcovers. It didn’t fade completely, but it wasn’t quite so strong. “How . . . how high does it go?”

“Five plus five . . . but I won’t say the exact number just yet,” he added. He waited until she stopped arching her back before continuing. “You’re not quite ready for that.”

“Gods, no!” she breathed, panting through the pleasure stirred by the vibrations. Then she reconsidered when he curled himself around so that he lay the same way, allowing him to massage her breasts. He rotated them in time with the restless circling of her hips, until Siona panted, “Well . . . maybe . . .”

“Did you know that most people consider mathematics—the plain, non-magical kind—to be quite boring?” he asked. His tone was idle, but his fingers were not. They toyed with the peaks of her breasts.

“No, really?” she managed to pant.

“Oh, yes. I consider it one of my missions in life to instruct people in all the joys of counting.” As she relaxed under the lessened sensations, he smiled, abandoning her breasts for her thighs. Nudging them apart, he stroked through her now palpably slick folds for a few moments, then probed into her depths. “Ah, yes . . . I do believe you are now receptive enough to learn all about three of my favorite numbers.”

Shifting over her, Marc settled between her thighs. Ready and willing, Siona lifted her knees, giving him more room to find the right spot. But he didn’t do more than prod.

“My first favorite number is zero.” He waited a moment, allowing her to absorb the lack of vibration. “Before it was ‘invented,’ math was sometimes awkward to calculate. And if I say it twice—since I’m the one who cast the spell—it’ll end the magic. But I won’t. Not just yet.”

Siona sighed, glad the buzzing had come back. She tried to coax him closer with her hands and her heels, but he didn’t move. Giving up, she raked her fingers lightly through the manly fur on his chest. “What’s the next number?”

“My next favorite number is pi,” he added, bracing his weight comfortably on his elbows and knees. “Three . . .”

He pushed in a little. Moaning, Siona arched her hips up into his. “Mmm, yess . . .”

“Point one . . .” He backed out a little, then pushed in again. “Four . . .” He pressed in a little deeper than before, accompanying the increase in tremors. “One . . . Five . . .” Out and in again, matching penetration to vibration—then a sudden thrust of word and flesh, “Nine!”

Siona gasped. Fingers clutching at the bedding, she waited for him to move, to match the intense pleasure buzzing madly through her flesh. She tried lifting her hips into his to encourage him to continue, but he shifted with her, avoiding all but the smallest of frictions. Frustrated, she finally growled, “Move!”

“Move? Like this?” Marc asked, lifting his hand and wriggling his fingers in an aimless flutter.

“Spike me!” Siona ordered, not caring if the term was crude and beneath her station. “Spike me hard !”

Flashing her a grin, he complied. Vigorously. Even better, he leaned down close enough to tell her what she could only presume were the decimal numbers associated with pi, given how randomly they were placed. With each flex of his hips, he matched the strength and depth of his thrusts to the value of each number growled.

Somewhere in there, at a depth of mathematical understanding only a mathemagician would bother to memorize and recite, she shattered in bliss. Thankfully, he gasped out a zero between thrusts and shuddered a few strokes later in his own orgasm. Sagging gently onto her, considerate enough to brace some of his weight on his elbows, he pressed soft kisses to her shoulder and collarbone.

As her breathing recovered, a stray thought floated through Siona’s sated mind. “So . . . ?”

“Mmm?” he asked, placing another kiss on the upper slope of one breast.

“So . . . what’s your third favorite number?” she clarified, arching one of her brows.

Her husband laughed, delighted by her query, until she lifted her head from the bedding and claimed his parted lips for a kiss.

“SO . . . we’re supposed to say ‘Marquis of Calabas’ . . . while looking at this Baron Odious . . . and it’s not going to be a lie?” Errick, the manor’s farrier, asked dubiously.

Siona—or rather, Boots, since she was in her cat form—nodded. Marc had remembered to charge her translation amulet earlier that morning, after she had hissed at him and pawed at her throat. But it was working, and it was very handy. Having introduced herself as an “agent of the new marquis” to explain her authority, she was using Errick as a test subject. The farrier was phlegmatic enough to accept a talking cat, but smart and skeptical enough to poke holes in her logic. “Yes. Just think of the real marquis and answer as if you are addressing him, even though you’re not actually looking at him.”

The farrier rubbed at his chin, though he didn’t tug on his ear like her husband did. “I don’t know if I can . . . Maybe if the real one was right there? Or at least in hearing range?”

Cats could sigh, even if they couldn’t shrug. She nodded patiently and mewed, letting her necklace translate her words. “I’ll see what I can do. But I am asking you to indulge the baron in his little whims to spare yourselves further harm. You’ll have to decide on your own what that requires doing. Spread word to the others when you can, but do it discreetly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to run down to the miller’s house and tell Marla about all of this. She’ll spread the news of this across the west half of the marque.”

“How do you, a mere cat, know so much about Marla and her gossiping habits?” Errick asked

“Magic,” she mrraued, flicking her tail. He laughed as she scampered away, heading for the edge of the manor grounds. Pausing briefly to look back at the house, Siona fancied she could see Marc through one of the upper windows, but knew it was unlikely. He was stuck inside for the next few days, going through all the estate records.

At least his diligence would have a twofold effect. One, it would allow her to spread the word about appearing to call Baron Oger by the title of marquis, even if they might only be able to do it when Marc was alongside the odious, overgrown man. And two, it would be good to have a proper mathemagical analysis of the Calabas accounts and properties. Her family had always done well enough with basic accounting practices, the sort that didn’t require a mage to compute, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the books gone over by an expert.

An expert who had taught her a deeper appreciation for mere numbers just last night . . .

“WHAT are you doing in there?” Marc hissed two days later. Scooping her off the threshold of the partially open door, he hurried both of them down the length of the balcony to his suite of rooms. Siona barely had time to paw the air, closing the doorway where he had found her. Shutting the door to his own rooms, he cradled her in one arm while he fished out a scrap of chalk. Marking the panel with a quickly scribbled silencing ward, he glared at the black cat in his arms. “Do you know what he would have done to you if he’d found you snooping around in his bedchambers? Or one of his guards?”

Siona flattened her ears and hissed back. The wire and crystal necklace translated her intent. “They aren’t his quarters! They’re my parents’ quarters! And he’s gutted their things! Most of their clothes have been tossed into sacks like they were rags, and I have no clue where my mother’s jewelry casket went! That thief is ruining everything he touches!”

He shook her. Gently, but he shook her. “This is not a game! He’s pressuring me to find some way to increase the rents off the tenants and hide the extra income in the record books.”

She growled wordlessly for a moment, then mrraowled in a way that the translator spell could actually use. “I know it isn’t a game. I also know he went down to the solar to have a few drinks before dinner, so I thought I had plenty of time! Why aren’t you down there with him?”

“I had to use the refreshing room. Don’t go doing things like that while he’s actually in the manor house,” Marc admonished her. “The risk of being caught is too great!”

“I can’t do it when he leaves the manor because he spell-locks his quarters!” she shot back, tail flicking rapidly. “Besides, I think I’ve found evidence against him.”

“You have?” he asked. “What? How?”

“He brought a writing desk with him. One of the legs smelled rather strongly of sweat and body oil at about the midpoint, indicating it had been touched a lot more than normal. Handled a lot more than normal. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to sniff out a couple of other spots along the underside which he’s also touched a lot more than would normally be touched. I think there’s a hidden compartment in his desk.” Seeing he was paying attention to her, she calmed the thrashing of her tail and flicked her ears. “I intend to find out.

“My plan is to craft a couple of recording crystals tonight and position them around the room, very small and subtle ones which individually won’t record very much, and which won’t give off enough of an aura to be detected since they’ll be scattered separately. But once they’re gathered back up and assembled into an illusion projector, we should be able to re-create how he gets into the desk, without risking an ignorant—and thus potentially dangerous—attempt ourselves.”

He considered her suggestion. “All right. But if we’re going to do this, it’ll have to be carefully timed. And I’ll want to do a test run of these recording Artifacts, to see if they are indeed as subtle as you claim—you do realize that if you’re going to work on crafting them tonight, we’re not going to be able to make love?”

His reminder lowered her ears. In just three short nights, she had grown rather fond of his inventive lovemaking. Sighing, Siona flicked her tail. “I guess it’s a sacrifice we’ll just have to make. At least the artificing can be done in a single night, though I’ll have to stay here to catch up on my sleep in the morning.”

Marc groaned. “Ugh. I was hoping to have you along. I’m supposed to be taking a tour of the exact extent of the Calabas estate boundaries with His Excellency on the morrow. Several hours of being stuck in a carriage with Baron Odious isn’t exactly my idea of fun.”

“As you yourself said,” Siona mrrewled, “this isn’t a game. We both have to take some risks and make some sacrifices. At least with you along, he shouldn’t have any excuse to flog the oath-bound peasants he runs across.”

“Yes, whatever you said to the stable hands, the way they addressed me while looking at him cheered him up when we were outside earlier,” Marc agreed. Moving away from the door, he set her on the bed, pausing just long enough to stroke her spine a couple of times before heading for the refreshing room. “We’ll have to figure out how to get you into that other suite without getting caught. Maybe when the servants clean it?”

“How about when you go in there to make an inventory of the previous owners’ wealth?” she mraowled after his retreating form, glad he had restored the sound-dampening ward. So long as the door wasn’t opened, she could talk to him openly like this. Leaping down to the floor, she trotted over to the refreshing room door, not wanting to meow too loudly, since that would stress her shape-shifted throat. “His attention will be on you, not on me. He’ll be watching your aura to see what magics you cast, if any. If you do nothing but Arithmancy in his presence, but do enough of it, that could mask me placing the crystals.”

“Perhaps, but if you do it while the maids are in there,” Marc countered through the door, “he won’t be watching for magic, because he’ll be elsewhere.”

“But what if he’s paranoid enough to do a thorough scrying sweep after each cleaning?” she retorted. “If you’re there and he doesn’t see you casting any untoward spells, then he’ll probably not feel the need to recast any detection spells immediately after. I am a mere cat, after all, and thus hardly noticeable.”

“To everyone but me. I’d notice you anywhere.” Having washed his hands, Marc emerged after a few more moments, brow pinched in thought. “That might work, but we’d have to give him a reason to access his secret compartment before the next thorough cleaning. I suppose I could draw up a contract that, if I come up with a way to hide the extra income he wants to squeeze out of the Calabas tenants so that it can’t be assessed and taxed by the government, I can’t be held liable for his illegalities should they be uncovered. A magically binding paper of a nature he’d want to keep hidden from all other prying eyes.”

Siona purred. The translator necklace surprised her, for it spoke up in its approximation of her natural voice. “I knew you were brilliant . . .”

Smiling, he scooped her off the floor and nuzzled her with his bearded face. “Thank you, my dear, for the lovely compliment.”

She squirmed a little in feline instinct, then licked his cheek.

“HURRY!” Siona hissed as Marc worked his fingers into the hole at the back of the drawer slot, trying to find and activate the last puzzle tumbler. “I don’t know how much longer the manor servants can keep him occupied with one fiddly little crisis after the next.”

“I’ve got it, I’ve got . . . there!” Bending his arm sideways in the drawer slot, he pulled out a book, two scrolls, and several papers. He set the papers on the floor for her to read, quickly unbound the scrolls and laid those next to the papers, then pulled out the larger blank book, pen, and jar of ink he had prepared for this moment.

Siona pounced on the scrolls, unrolling them and scanning their contents. She hissed at the contents of the second one. “Here! This one is a missive granting Oger the rights to the Marque of Calabas . . . and it’s dated two weeks before we were attacked. Is this evidence enough for you?”

“I have even more evidence right here,” Marc murmured, flipping page by page through the blank book and the book he had pulled from the niche in the writing desk. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and drew a straight line across the next blank page, his gaze on the text of the Baron’s book, then let the copying spell spill that line of ink into a duplicate of the pages he was speed-reading. “Calabas isn’t the first crime he’s committed, though it’s the biggest. This is his . . . his brag book, for lack of a better word. Everything from drowning the prized puppies of a rival cousin back near the beginning of this thing,” he flipped over the next pair of pages, “to blackmailing a certain marquess into having an affair with him . . . He’s a real piece of work.”

“Master-crafted in a Netherhell,” she agreed. “Make sure you get a copy of this scroll. Once we take down Oger, I want to keep it as evidence to blackmail His Majesty into dropping all further pursuit toward taking over our lands.”

Marc smiled, though he didn’t stop his rapid spellcopying. “Our lands. I like the sound of that. We work rather well together, don’t we?”

Sitting on her haunches, Siona curled her tail around her paws. “Yes, we do. Getting married as quickly as we did was indeed a bit hasty, I’ll admit, but I wouldn’t say it was a mistake. At least so far.” That earned her a sharp look. Siona smirked and added, “I’ll have to give it another twenty years before I can be absolutely sure. So . . . what would you think of sticking around for a while, of trying this marriage thing for real, if and when we take out the Odious Oger?”

His smile broadened. “I’m game if you are—why, Boots, are you purring at me?”

She flicked her ears. “No, I’m playing the harp. Of course I’m purring!”

“Shh,” he admonished. “Unless you can jump up here and wield this pen for me, I’ll need to concentrate. As you said, we don’t have much time, and you can’t do this for me.”

Not for the first time in her life, Siona wondered why her ancestress had to have been granted the shape of a four-toed cat, rather than the six- or seven-toed kind that had a sort of awkward opposable thumb. Instead of bothering Marc with more comments, she contemplated a much more important question: How to kill a mage more powerful and dangerous than both of them combined.

By the time he shooed her off of the second scroll so that he could copy it, she was reduced to thinking up wilder and wilder ideas. Most of the plausible ones weren’t all that feasible, given the disparity in their power levels. Even combined, Marc and I could barely take him on in a straightfoward fight. But we can’t neutralize his magic with, either; his aura reeks of self-protective spells against all manner of outside forces.

The only way it would work is if he limited his powers, and then we ambushed him. But even without his magic, he’s still physically powerful—one of those mages who doesn’t believe in letting his magic do all of his fighting for him. And I can see why. Magically or physically, he’s a tough opponent.

Outside, she could hear birds twittering; their high-pitched chirps were annoying. Not just for the way they made her sensitive, pointed ears twitch, but because they plucked at her feline instincts. Part of her wanted to go outside and stalk those birds, but she couldn’t do that just . . . yet.

Oh! “Marc? Can you shift your shape?”

“Not naturally. No grateful gods in my family history.” His attention was more on his copying efforts still, but he did give her question consideration. “If you mean via a spell . . . I did take the basic course in Anthromancy and I passed it with a reasonable grade. But I didn’t pursue it as an elective. I didn’t have the aptitude.”

“Could you . . . you know . . . steer him into a discussion of shape-shifting magics?” she asked.

“There, done,” he murmured, quickly rolling up the scroll and retying it. He cast a delayed cleaning spell on the scroll and stooped, tucking it into the niche with the other scroll, the letters—which included his contract of non-liability—and the bragging diary. Having carefully replaced the puzzle locks, he fitted the drawer back into place and packed away his copying materials. “So . . . you want me to engage him in a discourse of applied metamorphism. Why?”

“Because I’m wondering if you could not only get into a discussion of it, but, say, challenge him to a demonstration? Flatter his power and abilities, encourage him to try large shapes, that sort of thing?” Siona asked.

She let him scoop her up after he cast another cleaning charm on the floor and the door so that he could carry her back out of her parents’ former quarters. Falling silent, she waited with bated breath while he checked to make sure no one could see them entering the upper balcony, and stayed silent until they were back in the guest quarters with a freshly applied silencing rune.

“More to the point, Marc, after challenging him to take on a large form, since that’s easy enough for a large man to do . . . could you trick him into taking on a small form?” she asked, looking up into his green eyes. “A very small form?”

Catching on to her idea, he nodded slowly. “Yes . . . yes, I could. But that would place the burden on you. He’d expect an attack from me, just as he would be checking for untoward magic from me. Could you . . . well . . . ? Fast enough that he couldn’t . . . ?”

She nodded solemnly. “I’ll do my best. I have done it before, though only with actual rodents. It is the God-wrought duty of the women in my family to learn how to kill rats, after all. We certainly can’t take this to the king. Not when that scroll implicates him, too. All we can do is use it to blackmail him to stay off of Calabas lands. We can’t do that to the baron, too, now that he’s been formally declared the new marquis. He’s too firmly ensconced. But that means . . .”

He sighed and rubbed behind her ears. “Yes. Morally repugnant, but I guess there really is only one thing left for us to do.”

IT wasn’t quite as simple as engaging the odious baron in a conversation about magic. Though her husband did manage to confirm Baron Oger knew several shape-shifting spells, he couldn’t get the man to actually display any of them. So, as Siona watched from her “pampered pet” position on a chair cushion, Marc decided to get the two of them drunk.

Normally, mages didn’t overindulge. Alcohol lowered inhibitions and weakened willpower, which could make a mage lose common sense and self-control—untrained mages were forbidden to drink until they had passed a certain level of control and competency at the very least. But by using the same distract-and-conquer tactics, and by playing the part of an increasingly tiddly court gossipper, Marc egged Oger onward, both in increasingly salacious conversation and in refilling each other’s drinks. He was witty, charming, wicked, and over the top.

Listening to the two men getting into a belching contest, Siona flattened her ears against her skull and lowered her chin to her paws. Men . . . No refinement, no sensibility . . . Wow, that’s an impressive burp . . . but . . . ewwww! Oger has now completely earned the title “Odious.” I didn’t even know it was possible to pass gas simultaneously from both ends, on command! Disgusting!

Evidently her husband agreed. Marc flapped his hand in front of his bearded face. “Gods . . . I can’t even top that . . . S’ppose I’ll hafta challenge you to shape-shifting, now.”

“You still on ’bout that?” Oger asked. He tipped his glass up to his lips. Marc leaned over and poured more rum into it. “Thanks . . . What is it wi’ you an’ shpellshifting?”

“I think I’ve found somthi-hic-ink I can beat you at, magicamally. You’re all talk,” Marc added, waving the decanter around before topping off his own glass, “but no acshun. I don’ think you can . . . you know. Shift-spell . . . shift.”

“Course, I can!” He belched and scratched his ribs. “I can shift sheveral . . . several animal forms.”

“Okay . . . what is your largest spellshape?” Marc asked.

Oger tapped his lips with his finger. “Dromid.”

“A what-id?”

“Dromid! Dromid! Aren’t you educated?” the baron snapped, picking up his glass for another sip. He waved the small goblet around as he gestured, not quite slopping the drink. “One of those . . . desert-y things. Sundaran animal. Looks like a . . . a shaggy overgrown sheep with a really long neck an’ a really bad back.”

“Ah.” Marc frowned in thought. “But . . . if it’s a sheeplike thing . . . well, that inn’t very fierce, is it?”

“It’s big. And unusual in these parts. They like deserts, an’ we live in a lush foresht. Or something. Good rum.”

Marc grunted and offered the decanter again. “Good enough, it’s running out—hey!” He paused mid-pour and gestured, tilting the decanter up to keep from spilling the dregs of the amber liquid. “What’s your fiercest shape? We c’n call in th’ maid to fetch up ’nother bottle for the decanter, an’ you can scare her!”

Siona reminded herself this was an act. If she hadn’t been keeping an eye on the difference in how much he refilled each of their cups, she might have thought Marc was indeed inebriated beyond good sense. His tactic worked, though.

Baron Oger laughed heartily at the idea. Setting down his cup, he grabbed for the bell on the small, six-sided table set between their lounging chairs. Ringing it fiercely, Oger stood up, settled his shoulders, muttered the words of the spell, and transformed himself.

A few seconds later, the door to the parlor opened—and the middle-aged woman summoned by the bell screeched at the sight of the huge lion lurking just beyond the door. The lion roared, making her scream again, before shifting back into his normal, odious baron-self. Oger laughed heartily at her fright.

“Rum, woman!” Marc shouted, waving the decanter. “Rum! Fetch us more rum! And be quick about it!”

Trembling, the woman staggered back out onto the balcony, letting the door swing shut behind her. Still laughing, Oger stumbled back to his chair and plopped down onto it. “Priceless! That’ll put th’ fear a’ me into her. Bet you can’t do better’n that!”

“Oh, well, large forms are easy,” Marc dismissed, flipping his free hand airily. “The . . . um, whatsits. The conversion rate of magic to matter in the art of Anthromancy is forty to one! Any idiot can make hemshelf . . . himself . . . into something of a . . . a comparable size or even something larger. It takes a true spellshifter, an’ a great deal of power an’ control, to redushe your shize. If you really want to impress me . . . what’s the smallest animal you c’n shift into?”

Baron Oger scratched and belched, thinking about it.

“A rabbit?” Marc prompted. “A . . . rat?”

Oger smirked. “A shrew.”

Marc snorted. “Ha! I don’t believe you! You’re like . . . twice the size of me! All big . . . burly . . . muscles . . .” Having paused to top off both glasses, Marc lifted his to his lips. “Prove it. Prove you c’n turn into a shrew, and . . . and . . . I’ll do your taxes! For free! ’Cause I don’t think you can.”

“Ha!” Knocking back half his glass, Oger shoved to his feet. Siona tensed, watching and waiting. The baron set his glass on the table with a thunk, rubbed his large palms together, shrugged his shoulders, and muttered a new set of spellwords. With his back mostly to her, she quickly rolled from her side to her paws, crouching in anticipation. As soon as his body finished shrinking, his clothes shifting from blues and greens to a mottled gray and his nose lengthening into a long, slender snout, she sprang.

Leaping twice, once from cushion to floor, the second from floor to prey, she slammed into the little creature’s back with her paws and clamped her jaws down on his neck and head. A hard, fast shake snapped something—and the body swelled abruptly, letting her know she had succeeded. Knocking him unconscious wouldn’t have ended the spell; only death could have had that power. Jerking her teeth free, Siona scampered away from the dead baron, jaws gaping and throat yowling. The pendant translated her wordless distress.

“Gods in Heaven! Get it out of my mouuuuth! Disgusting disgusting disgusting, I’ve got his blood in my mouth! Ewwwww! Out! Out! Out! ”

Scrambling out of his chair, Marc grabbed for the water flask on the sideboard and a bowl of nuts near the flask. Dumping the nuts on the sideboard tray, he splashed water into the bowl and tucked it under her distress-wrinkled muzzle when she came near. Disgusted but grateful, Siona buried her head in the liquid, swishing her face. Pulling out, she sneezed twice while he dumped the water on the floor and gave her a fresh bowlful to swish in. The second time she pulled out, her wail of disgust turned to a choking yowl.

The collar translated that, too, projecting her distress as, “Oh, Gods, I’m going to be sick—hairball! Hairbaaaall!”

Her husband had the temerity to laugh at her, proving he was at least somewhat drunk. Not completely, but somewhat. Recovering enough to stroke her back while she coughed up the contents of her stomach, he offered her a third, fresh round of water to clear the new nasty taste from her mouth.

“There, there, puss . . . You’ll have to stay Boots a little while longer, to wait for the baron’s magics to fade,” he reminded her. “Given how strong he is, or was, that could take up to a week. But it’s over. You did it. You were very brave and skillful, my dear.”

Muzzle wet, gut still cramped, Siona leaned into him as he scooped her up for a post-battle cuddle.

At that moment, the parlor maid returned with the bottle of rum. She opened the door cautiously this time, peering warily around the edge. The moment she spotted the bloodied, mangled body on the floor, she gasped.

Staggering to his feet, Marc stepped over Oger’s unmoving form and held out his hand. “Ah, the rum. Thank you! You have perfect timing. I would like to apologize for egging him on like that and thus scaring you. I’m terribly sorry, but I hope you can take some comfort in the fact that it was necessary at the time.”

“But . . . the baron . . .” she stammered, glancing between him and the corpse on the floor.

“Ah, yes. It seems he not only insisted upon scaring you as a lion, he foolishly went on to transform himself into a shrew, ignoring the fact that there was a cat in the room,” Marc dismissed airily. “And, cats being cats, with their instincts written into their bones by the Gods Themselves, well . . . every mage is cautioned that such things can happen, and warned over and over in their spellshifting classes to be alert for such possible dangers.

“But he went and did it anyway, so only the baron himself is to blame for his timely . . . pardon me, terribly sorry, his untimely demise.” Patting her on the shoulder, he took the bottle of rum from her. “Be a dear and call up some manservants to carry the body out to the chapel for consecration and preparation, will you? I’m sure Oger’s family will want it spell-preserved and transported back to his family plot, too.

“Don’t you worry,” he added as the woman gave him a doubtful look. “The rightful heir to Calabas will be returning shortly, and everything will get back to normal very soon. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. Come along, Boots. We’re still on our honeymoon, and I’m in the mood to celebrate!”

Bottle of rum tucked in the crook of one arm and slightly damp wife-cat cuddled in the other, the Marquis of Calabas strolled out of the downstairs parlor, leaving the poor, befuddled maid behind.