The reply was immediate. “You shall.”
Sebastian was already eating when she came down, with a book propped up in front of him. He was shoveling the food into his mouth automatically, completely absorbed in what he was reading. As she entered the dining room and the invisible servant pulled out her chair for her, he actually jumped, as if she had startled him, and scrambled to his feet.
“I am so sorry. I beg your pardon,” he blurted, blushing. “I got involved in researching things, and completely forgot that I wasn’t alone here. I’m just not used to having any people here but Eric anymore, and most of the time he’s off doing whatever it is he needs to do.”
“Do you often read while you are eating?” she asked, taking her seat and nodding when the invisible steward offered her some of the first course.
“Generally, yes,” he admitted. “Eric rarely eats supper with me, and even when he does, he’s not much of a conversationalist. I think he prefers it when I read, actually. It keeps him from having to try to make conversation.”
Why am I not in the least surprised? she thought. Eric does not strike me as a fellow who considers conversation necessary at a meal. Then again, she couldn’t really blame him. Sebastian probably wouldn’t want to talk about anything Eric was interested in. What would Eric be interested in? Women, she supposed. She couldn’t picture Sebastian in a convivial, hearty, semidrunk discussion of women, the way many young men seemed to occupy their time. The sorts of things she had seen going on in taverns, but also in the private parlors of the wealthy when they weren’t out being polite to the young women they were supposed to be assessing for marriage. There were any number of parties she had gone to because Genevieve insisted, where she had taken to wandering off to see what she could find. It was amazing what young men would say when they thought there were no parents or young women about.
But Sebastian didn’t seem at all the sort who sat about and boasted about what he’d been doing with the first chambermaid. Which sent her mind off briefly on a tangent… Could you get up to mischief with one of the invisibles? They had hands, but she wasn’t sure from Sapphire’s and Verte’s ministrations if they were human hands or not. And if you wanted to, how would you know which one was in your bed? She supposed an invisible lover might be very titillating for a while, but they were silent as well as invisible, so would that be off-putting?
Ruthlessly she dragged her mind out of the gutter and back to the dinner table, blushing a little at herself.
Considering the number of meals she had taken in her life where mindless chatter had virtually dominated every bite, she wouldn’t have minded a few meals in silence herself.
“I can see that. Eric does seem to be the sort who won’t use three words when one will do. So, what had you so enthralled?” she asked. If this was a book about magic, it would probably give her the opening she needed to start asking questions of her own.
“I don’t know if enthralled is the word I would use,” he said, making a sour face. Unlike Eric, who seemed to have two expressions, arrogant and sullen, Sebastian practically radiated everything he was feeling. “It’s not very pleasant reading. It’s about accidental Transformations, times when something went wrong and a person or object got transformed that wasn’t supposed to be. I thought I would see if there were any were-creatures that had ever been created that way, and if there were, if they were infectious afterward. It’s just not fair for you to be locked up here for three months if there’s no need, but before I can say ‘there’s no need’ I have to have evidence. So since no one knows how I got this way, it seems reasonable that the same rules would apply.”
Good heavens, he is taking his responsibility to me seriously! This was somewhat unexpected. She’d thought she would have to keep at him about it. Evidently not. “Why is it unpleasant reading?”
“It’s a set of very detailed accounts. And since these are accidents, the results are, as my father would have said, ‘Not appropriate for dinnertime discussion, young man.’” He smiled at her over his spectacles, inviting her to share the joke. “That used to strike me as grossly unfair since he and his men saw nothing wrong with discussing tournament wounds, bloody battlefields and detailed ways they’d dispatched whatever it was they had been hunting that day over their food.”
She laughed at that. Then felt both surprised and gratified that she could still laugh.
But after talking with the Godmother, after seeing her father, she felt a great deal better. Not that she wanted to stay here, but she did feel better, less frantic — and here was Sebastian looking up yet another reason to think that she wasn’t going to change because of his bite. “I can sympathize with your feelings, but I would prefer not to hear the details of that book,” she told him. “I am enjoying this fine cooking, and I would prefer not to have it spoiled.”
“It’s good to hear you laugh. I take it that the mirror worked for you?” He closed the book and set it aside, changing the subject.
“It did. It did, quite surpassing my expectations.” She paused. “I confess that now that I have had something that magical in my own hands, I see the attraction of magic,” she replied slowly. “I never really did before. Partly it just didn’t seem real in the way that something I could measure and shape was real. Partly because magic things always happen in stories to other extraordinary people, and I am, as my stepmother says, so ordinary I positively repel magic. And partly, well, it just doesn’t seem…the sort of thing that a rational person would want to be involved with. It always seemed to me that either magic was too large and uncertain to be controlled, or that you could get the same results with less effort and means that were not magical.”
“It is uncertain, but The Trad — Ah, it’s more predictable than you might think,” he responded, flushing as he corrected whatever it was he had almost let slip. Since she couldn’t begin to imagine what “The Trad” both he and Elena had mentioned might be, she simply set it down as some sort of magician’s secret. “It does take an awful lot of effort, though. You are correct about that. And more often than not, it is more efficient to do things without it. I’ve been studying magic since the Godmother identified me as having the sorcerous talents and I still find it a lot easier to just go fetch what I need from the storerooms and light candles with a wax-dip. Since I was about four when I started, I’ve had a lot of experience in figuring out when not to do things.”
Four! And here I thought he was just a sort of dilettante who took up magic when he was confined to his estate!
“‘What is wisdom, then, but knowing when it is best not to speak, and when it is best to hold one’s hand,’” she quoted, and winked at him. “So wise for one so young!”
He turned serious and she saw the weight of responsibility he suffered under. “I wish I were wiser. I could probably come up with answers faster. Most of what I do, when it’s not repeating spells that I know work, is trial and error. Mostly I make things for other people; I’m quite good at protective amulets, for instance, and the Godmother relies on me for them. Since I don’t go out and ride the boundaries of my property, I have my servants place more of those amulets at key places to keep my people safe from supernatural and magical hazards. I have Eric to ensure that they are safe from ordinary perils. I’ve been working on my own problem ever since it happened, when I’m not making sure my people are safe from me, and from things outside. At least I am fairly certain I didn’t transform myself. The things I was doing before I changed were all tried-and-true spells and I definitely took all the right precautions.”
“Do you think your servants might be humans that had been transformed?” she asked. “The invisible ones, that is. Transformed from humans into whatever it is that they are.”
“Oh, a magician could do that, but why would he?” Sebastian returned a logical question for hers. “You’ve seen for yourself that having invisible servants is deuced inconvenient. I frankly cannot think of any creature so hideous that making it invisible would make up for not knowing where it was, and I can’t think of any other magicians, even the nasty ones, who wouldn’t feel the same. Especially the nasty ones. The nasty ones are always having to look over their shoulders for enemies. Can you imagine how having invisible things lurking about would make them feel? Besides, I already know what they are. They’re Spirit Elementals.”
“Pardon?” She had heard of Elementals before this, but…not that sort. “Spirit Elementals? Aren’t all Elementals spirits?”