Page 12 of Elemental Truth (Mysterious Fields #3)

12

NOVEMBER 13TH IN TRELLECH

V itus was in the Stream, in one of the conversation rooms, but he was trying to ignore all the chatter around him. The lecture that evening had been more scantily attended. Vitus hadn’t quite wanted to go home. He hadn’t wanted to go find others of the Four Metals. He hadn’t quite wanted anything.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have things to do. He’d seen Thessaly on Sunday, for several hours in the afternoon. They’d enjoyed each other’s company, but it had been more about talking through the past week - and a bit of kissing - than anything more intimate. She hadn’t offered any further, and he certainly hadn’t pressed. Not that he didn’t want more when she was ready. He’d woken from rather demanding dreams on that point twice this week. But it was her choice.

Thessaly had told him about her conversation with Cyrus and Andie Smythe-Clive. Besides the rest of it, she’d been taken by how they were as siblings, how they helped each other. It seemed to have made her decidedly wistful, because she wanted that with Hermia, and their parents had put themselves firmly in the way.

It had made Vitus even more glad to see Lucas, in a way that hadn’t come out in language. He and his brother had taken a walk before supper, chatting about Lucas’s horses, the cavalry, the other officers. And Lucas, bless him, had understood that Vitus felt a whole host of things he wasn’t sure how to talk about. He wished Thessaly could have a bit more of that, but she’d admitted her sister was enough younger it was different. The ages fell in a way that probably wouldn’t matter much in a decade, but did now.

Though it was about the same gap as between Thessaly’s mother and her aunt. Vitus wondered how much she was thinking about that, and how different the two had been. It was certainly something Vitus thought about, with Lucas wanting a life full of horses and the non-magical cavalry, while Vitus was increasingly embedded in the magical community.

Tonight, he’d been sitting for half an hour, nursing a drink, trying to decide whether to go home. Or whether he’d be better off to go and sleep in his workshop. That was certainly an option, especially if he wanted to be alone and also not have Mama worry over him. It meant he had missed some of the conversation— or perhaps, no, they’d been moving, coming further into the room.

One of the group, it was three people. Vitus blinked a couple of times to get his eyes to focus, then identified Olivia and Oscar Hemmings, along with Aline Holder. He’d last talked to them what, three weeks ago, and they’d shared some info with Thirza and the others.

Aline turned, then said, “Oh, Vitus! You might have some thoughts. Care to join us?” Vitus blinked at her again and she added, “Some of our experiments, and also, wait. Do you know anyone on the Council who might take a message from us?”

The answer to that, somehow, was in fact yes. Vitus nodded, then pushed himself upright when the other three claimed chairs at the far end of the room, where they could better put up privacy charms. He brought his drink, both because he’d only had about a third of it, and because he suspected the conversation might call for a bit more of it.

Sitting was followed by an increasingly awkward silence. Finally, Vitus cleared his throat. “Where do you want to start? And why were you asking about the Council?”

Olivia and Aline started talking at the same time, before Aline waved a hand and Olivia kept going. “We’ve kept trying our research, but now we’re just confused. We’ve done readings up near Arundel several times.”

Oscar said, “Ten now.”

“And eight of them were what we expected, and two aren’t. Besides the one we talked to you about, when was it? Back in the summer.” Olivia sounded downright peevish and frustrated.

“One of them recent, I assume?” Vitus could at least do the maths on that. One odd reading, even two, could be a number of things. Three definitely seemed like something was going on.

“One last Friday, the other...” Olivia pulled a notebook out of the bag she had with her. “October 7th. A month apart. Though they didn’t react quite the same way. The Friday was stronger.”

Vitus frowned. “And you were wondering if I had someone on the Council who would take a message seriously why?”

“Because it seems like the sort of thing someone ought to look into properly. And we certainly can’t get permission to go tromping around actually on the estate.”

“I certainly can’t either,” Vitus pointed out. “Given everything. I was there for the funeral, on the twenty-seventh of September, but I’m decidedly not on their invitation list for anything else.” Thessaly was, though. Now he’d thought that, he was caught by it. Not that she had free access to the estate either, but she’d mentioned specific spaces she was supposed to avoid.

Olivia, at least, looked somewhat abashed. “Oh. I just meant, I mean, we’ve never been. Not the sorts who’d get invited at all.”

“Give me a moment. Let me think through the parts of it.” Vitus mostly didn’t want to speak too quickly. Certainly, he thought that Council Head Rowan would consider a note from him, given the previous conversations. And Thessaly could certainly pass on a message to her cousin, or to Cyrus, beyond that. “I probably can. But can you tell me more about what you got from the readings? Or didn’t get from the readings?”

Olivia launched into an explanation, though at least she was willing to pause when Vitus looked puzzled. A good half of it involved sympathetic magic and materia well outside his usual run of things, and about a quarter involved locational magics that definitely weren’t his usual work. “So, you’re looking for, erm. Connections between what’s in the water, and the land, and things that are known to be a problem. Soot and gasses and such from factories.”

“Sewage, we didn’t expect much of that in the Arun, of course, but we did in London. No, there’s quite a lot of natural variation, of course. Some of what we’re measuring, it depends on the direction of the wind or the speed of the river. Spring is likely going to be different from autumn. We’ll need to keep doing testing in all seasons until we’ve got a complete run. But we’ve done enough now to have a good sense of the usual range.”

“Right. And this was different. Two times.” Vitus had grasped that much. “I suppose you’re keeping excellent records about anything that might be a variable?”

“We are. And we’d borrowed horses for that one. We covered twenty miles or so. A fair distance, but not so far that the weather was dramatically different. We tested five times along that run, and the other four, all except the one nearest Arundel, they were what we’d expect. There was variation, but entirely within the expected parameters.” Aline rummaged in her notes and held them out for Vitus to look at.

Set out in pencil, the contrast was striking. “And what’s this measuring, exactly?” Vitus ran his fingers down.

“We don’t have a good name for it, exactly. The magical potency of the area. We expected a shift near a demesne estate, you can see the readings for a couple of others if you flip back. We were up by Baddock Hall last week, and Willow Hall, out by Canterbury, the fortnight before that. But this is, I don’t know, an abyss, where those are a peak. Sometimes it’s gentle, like a hill. Sometimes it’s a mountain. Definitely not a valley.”

“And it’s not doing that all the time.” Vitus stared at it, taking a moment to look back through and at least get a sense of the ranges. Though of course, this kind of quick reading didn’t really let you do any analysis. He cleared his throat. “I do know someone who might be there visiting again.” He knew more than one, actually, but he wasn’t sure when Florent Montague might visit, and it certainly wasn’t something he could ask. “Is there something that person could do, a sample of soil or plants, or a charm or something?”

That got a quick flurry of conversation Vitus didn’t follow between the three. Oscar took the lead on it. It was obvious from the interactions that he was the incantation and enchantment specialist in the mix. After a couple of minutes, Oscar turned back to him. “Someone who’d need an explanation?”

“Someone who’d probably do it for my asking, so long as I could give a brief summary and details on any risks. It couldn’t be anything that’d trigger their warding, but something more passive? Maybe. Probably.”

“I can put some things together for you, um. By Friday. Maybe tomorrow. I don’t know if I have enough kermes in stock.”

“Poddington and Groves just got more in.” Aline chipped in, that was one of the better materia shops in Trellech.

“Right. If you can ask, it’d be something in a locket or something of the kind. Watch fob. Or a compact in a pocket, just somewhere on their person. It’ll have some strips of charmed paper on it. They’d need to keep note of how long they were there, and if there were, what do we call them?”

“Direct and intensive magical events. Direct work on the warding or protections, duelling, that sort of thing. Ordinary cosmetic enchantments or talismanic effects...” Olivia gestured at Vitus. “Shouldn’t cause a problem, but a list of worn talismans would be handy, just to filter out any overlapping effects. And we might have a stone or something to carry.”

“I can ask about that, certainly,” Vitus said. “I’ll send a note before I go home, chances are she won’t get it before tomorrow morning.”

“No, you’ve given us a way to go forward. And without, um, making undue demands.” Aline leaned back, looking a little less intense. “Why is that?”

“Well, I’m not fond of the idea of gasses and what have you fouling the land and the water and the air,” Vitus said. “I’d have thought that was self-preservation in part.” He couldn’t say the other piece of it, that there was something odd about the Fortiers and Arundel, and maybe this would help. He knew Council Head Rowan was still curious, and Thessaly. And Vitus certainly was in his own right, not just because of them.

“And?” Olivia leaned forward.

“The rest of it, perhaps you’ll owe me a favour down the road. Testing something, perhaps trading enchantment or consulting or something of the kind. I’m still establishing myself. I don’t know what I’ll need. Having a connection with creative people who solve problems, that seems to be an advantage worth having, doesn’t it?”

It made the other three laugh. “Fair. A reasonable favour, we can trade for that. Proportionate. Besides, we’re all of Salmon House. We know you won’t be trading solely for your own advantage, like a Fox.”

Vitus wanted to protest; he was quite sure that wasn’t how Thessaly went at the world. But it would definitely be a sign of protesting too much and too specifically to avoid comment and teasing. Instead, he just shrugged. “As you say. Oh, does anyone need another drink?” One of the club’s staff was coming around, checking for orders.

Once that was tended, the conversation settled into something broader, a mix of points from other recent lectures, something Aline had been looking up, one of the talismans Vitus was designing. By the time he took his leave around eleven, he felt like it had been a good evening. He paused just long enough to slip the note he’d written for Thessaly during the latter part of the evening into the mail drop at the Scali Bank and went home to get what sleep he could.