Page 17 of Strange Familiar (Warriors of Magic #2)

~17~

T he three of them sat in stunned silence for a very long time.

“But…” Iliana breathed the word, then licked her lips. “That means—”

“That means they knew hundreds of years ago that familiars weren’t doomed to be this this way,” Han filled in, a deep and long-buried rage in his voice. “That our inability to wield magic isn’t a natural state of being, but instead a correctable malfunction. Do I have that right?”

Aching for them, Cillian nodded. “According to the data Wizard Anciela Phel presented to the committee, yes.”

“And they buried it,” Iliana said, face and voice hollow.

“They contested the results,” Cillian corrected, feeling pedantic.

“The control groups,” Han spat.

“Yes. I mean, they’re not wrong, but,” Cillian added hastily, “that could have been corrected. That’s what Anciela brought to the committee. She wanted trials run in the various high houses, to expand the experimental groups and see if they could replicate results. The problem with the scientific approach was that the technique could trigger the ability in a familiar to wield magic, to become a full wizard. There wasn’t an obvious control for that.”

Han and Iliana stared at him in smoldering rage, as if he’d been the one to decide that. “I’m not defending the committee’s debate,” he clarified, “just explaining it.”

“But, they could have—” Iliana burst out, cheeks bright red, usually warm brown eyes glittering.

“The other houses didn’t want to conduct the experiments,” Han interrupted, sounding resigned.

“It appears not,” Cillian agreed. “I have to read more, but it seems they implemented a number of delaying tactics. Anciela planned to return to House Phel to create a new experimental paradigm. The minutes are quite dry, as you can imagine…” He cleared his throat aware of descending into pedantry again to avoid the extreme emotion of the topic. “But it seems clear that Wizard Phel was exceedingly upset with the committee.”

“Good ol’ Anciela,” Iliana murmured. “And no one even remembers her.”

“Erased from history,” Cillian agreed. “Along with her research.”

“Did they destroy it all?” Han demanded, sliding a look at Iliana.

And Cillian became abruptly and painfully aware of the keen-edged presence of hope in another. Did he nurture that hope, only to risk having it dashed forever at a later point—or kill it now out of mercy and in the expectation that they might find something eventually? What would you want? he asked himself. The truth.

“We don’t know,” he said. “It could be it was destroyed as too dangerous to the status quo.”

“What would wizards do without familiars?” Iliana asked bitterly, of no one at all.

“They would be less powerful,” Han answered thoughtfully, though they all knew she hadn’t been seeking an actual answer. “Converting familiars to wizards would double the population of wizards.”

“More like quadruple,” Cillian put in absently, skimming the rest of the committee minutes. At their fraught silence, he glanced up. “Is that not well known? The number of familiars has been regularly three to four times as many as wizards, closer to four in the last fifty years or so.”

“No,” Iliana said. “At school they made it sound pretty close to one to one.”

“At least in the classes for familiars,” Han added. “No wonder they keep floating the idea of changing the laws so wizards can bond more than one familiar.”

“Though with the practice of keeping in-house familiars for general use, like House Sammael planned for me,” Iliana replied, “they effectively have that setup but without the bonding.”

“I wonder how many wizards have bonded more than one familiar?” Cillian mused aloud, then nearly laughed at their shocked expressions. “Oh, come on—surely you can’t be surprised by the suggestion that the high houses might bend or break the law within their own hallowed halls? It’s practically Convocation custom to do so.”

“I wonder if that’s what Sabrina had planned for me.” Iliana looked at Han. “That would make a certain sick sense.”

“It would,” he agreed grimly. “But I want your opinion, Wizard Cillian.”

At the sudden formality, Cillian straightened and met Han’s gaze. “On whether the experimental design and data were destroyed?”

“Yes. You’ve been talking about how you believe a Harahel wizard had to create this folded archive and that they might have done so in order to avoid fully destroying the texts. What if it had been a bonded pair? A wizard-familiar partnership might have worked together to subvert the destruction of the data, maybe thinking they’d be able to get it out again, once the conspirators weren’t watching so closely.”

“Harahel wizards don’t work with familiars,” Cillian replied automatically.

“ Ever? ” Iliana pressed. “Never ever in all of House Harahel’s storied history?”

Cillian gave her a dry look for her exaggeration. “All right, not never ever, but not typically. Let’s say rarely.”

“And if there was such a pairing, maybe they were in love,” Iliana continued, warming to her subject. “The wizard would have wanted the best for their familiar, the same freedom and social status. They could have planned the hidden archive and saved the information, for someday.” She cast a longing glance at the middle of the air where Cillian focused when accessing the folded space, as if she could see it for herself.

Cillian didn’t point out the flaws in her romantic story, unwilling to rain on her parade—and dash her hopes. “What we can postulate is that these minutes were certainly hidden first or early on. And that House Phel was destroyed by a coalition of other houses in order to suppress this information.”

“The Phel library was only partially sunk, though,” Han pointed out. “Why not destroy all of it, if they wanted to be sure?”

“A good question,” Cillian allowed. “Another question is how . How did they manage to suppress magic in the Phel family to bring down the house?”

“And why did it suddenly pop up again in Gabriel and Seliah?” Iliana wondered. “We’re always speculating on that.”

“Maybe we can answer those questions,” Cillian said, thinking. “Han, when did I pull out those bound minutes—today?”

Han uncoiled gracefully to his feet and went to check his ledger. “About two hours ago. Since then you extracted a booklet on wasps and the effect of their larvae on young peach trees, a book of recipes for using dried fall fruits, and a record of the ball gowns worn by the last Lady Phel to various Convocation functions.”

“It makes no sense that they hid away such banal stuff,” Iliana complained. “Or that any of that information was in Convocation Archives to begin with. Who cares about Lady Phel’s ballgowns?”

“Lady Phel did, along with her friends,” Cillian answered, unable to help himself. “It was a common practice in that era to note what was worn to society functions so as not to repeat outfits or inadvertently wear the same gown as a friend. They stopped after House Ophiel took over the trademark for all formal wear and, as part of their service, they began tracing style, color, etc.”

Iliana gazed at him for a long moment. “Sometimes I worry about how you’ve spent your life so far, Cillian.”

“In the library, nose in a book, thank you.” He gave her his version of her impudent nose-wrinkle. “You should try it sometime. You’d be amazed at what you learn from gaining a general knowledge of even what you call banal records. They can give insights into the lives of the people of the time, illuminating that history, revealing layers of meaning that…” He trailed off as the significance struck him.

“Layers of meaning,” Han echoed, raising his pale brows.

Iliana looked between them. “What am I missing?”

“It’s a code,” Cillian said with rising excitement and the certainty of intuition. He seized the slim book of ballgown records, which included sketches of the designs and listing of fabrics used, embroidery, jewels, and other accessories. Even as he scanned the pages with their meticulous detail, he fumbled blindly for another. Iliana put one into his outstretched hand.

“Experimental data on wasp larvae,” she said, practically vibrating with hopeful excitement. “Do you think this is code for Anciela’s experiments on turning familiars into wizards?”

Cillian tried to train his own wild and hopeful speculations into a rational and clear-headed analysis. “If we go with the theory that the archive was initially created to hide documents out of a desire to protect the Phel records rather than out of malice, then that could make sense.”

“Anciela went back to House Phel,” Iliana mused, picking up the story thread, “to prove that the other houses needed to test this widely, gathering her data.”

“Meanwhile, House Phel became aware of enemies moving against them,” Han filled in. “They couldn’t have been so na?ve as to imagine this discovery would be widely embraced by the Convocation, especially after the committee’s reception.”

“But Anciela might have believed the committee, at least, would be more invested in knowledge and sharing information than in suppressing it,” Cillian added thoughtfully. He would have been like her, blithely trusting his colleagues.

“House Phel would’ve been a fully staffed house at that time,” Han said. “Even if Anciela had been immersed in the research and knowledge side, Lady Phel and her support staff would have been thinking in terms of conflict and how to manage that. They’d have accessed their allies and determined who would support them. Even if they couldn’t predict that this would result in the demotion of the house and the destruction of Phel to the point of sinking the manse entirely, they would have known this information had to be preserved and protected. And hidden, just in case.”

“Phel took a risk allowing the research in the first place,” Cillian agreed, holding up a hand. “I’d have to think they’d have planned for the eventuality that the Convocation would move to destroy the information and suppress all knowledge of it.”

“Uriel and Harahel would have helped preserve knowledge,” Iliana said staunchly. “Those two high houses have always believed in that.”

“And in fairness,” Han agreed, holding Cillian’s gaze. “House Harahel would have helped.”

Cillian appreciated their faith, and that they took the time to express their confidence in House Harahel. It had bothered him deeply, maybe more than he’d acknowledged, to contemplate some Harahel archivist ancestor working on the side of the conspirators to conceal the books that rightfully belonged in Convocation Archives, violating their sacred charge. This new spin, that the clever and powerful maker of the folded archive had been acting to help House Phel to preserve this crucially important knowledge, instead of working to destroy it. He wasn’t sure about Iliana’s fanciful tale of the wizard and familiar working together. It seemed a little too romantical.

“It makes sense this way,” he said slowly. “Though that might be because I want it to. If Phel and Harahel worked together to codify and hide Anciela’s data, we still have to account for a few facts we’re unsure of. One is that House Hanneil had to have erased memories of all this, especially as they’ve been actively working to prevent anyone from knowing about this archive. But Hanneil wizards couldn’t have continued to add to the folded archive over the ensuing years. You need a librarian wizard for that, and that means Harahel. So why did they continue to hide everything Phel related if they weren’t on the side of those protecting the knowledge?”

“I know why,” Iliana inserted, nodding so that her fat, fiery braids slithered over her shoulders. “Once things like that get started, they’re perpetuated. Who knows what happened to your unknown Harahel wizard, Cillian? They set up that archive, hid the coded information, then maybe had to go into hiding themselves.”

“Or were killed,” Han said bleakly.

“It sounds like maybe a lot of people died, the memories of their existence erased, and no one left to save their stories,” Iliana agreed sadly. “But the Hanneil conspirators could have embedded an instruction in a Harahel archivist of the time to continue the work, since they couldn’t be sure if more information had been encoded in books that hadn’t been hidden away. I don’t know if a Hanneil wizard can do that, but—”

“They can,” Cillian assured her, thinking of the compulsion Gordon Hanneil had embedded in Alise’s mind. If not for her powerful will and wizardry, she wouldn’t have been able to resist it as well as she had. A lesser, milder librarian wizard might not even have been aware of the compulsion. “And that would make sense that they simply stowed everything that came across their desk—or that they found in the stacks—regarding Meresin and House Phel until there was nothing left.”

They were all quiet a moment. Then Cillian shook himself. “All of this speculation is worth only so much. What we need is to break the code.”

“Don’t look at me,” Han said. “Iliana is the smart one in this relationship.”

Iliana was already shaking her head. “Not that kind of smart. I’m not good at puzzles and riddles. We need someone who is.”

“You are, Cillian,” Han pointed out.

“Not in the way we need.” Besides, Cillian couldn’t devote the extended time it would take. More urgently than ever, he needed to get to Alise and tell her what they’d found. “We need someone who can find the key in here.”

“Key?” Han echoed blankly.

“A legend,” Iliana explained. “There has to be a document—also in code—that explains how to unlock the rest of it, like the letter A means the number one, though it won’t be that easy.”

Cillian nodded. “And that indicates which texts contain the relevant information to decode, along with a guide for assembling it all back together into one picture.”

They looked at the nearly one-thousand texts Cillian had painstakingly extracted from the folded archive. “That will take weeks,” Han said. “Maybe months.”

“More likely years,” Cillian corrected, feeling the same weariness as showed in Han and Iliana’s expressions. “And that’s if we can find an expert codebreaker.”

“You won’t like this,” Han said, “but I’m worried that we don’t have that long.”

“House Hanneil.” Cillian said it half question, half sigh.

“And the others in the conspiracy. They won’t wait to move on House Harahel. I’m surprised they waited this long.”

“Do you think it’s possible they don’t know you’ve extracted the folded archive and brought it here?”

“It’s a possibility,” Cillian agreed judiciously, “but I hate to rely on us being that lucky.”

“Maybe they thought we wouldn’t be able to figure out why these texts were hidden,” Iliana suggested.

“Maybe they don’t know,” Han pointed out with excitement.

“Maybe,” Cillian agreed, though doubtfully. “They could be waiting on something else.” An uncomfortable thought wiggled to the top of his mind. “House Elal is in the thick of this, too. It could be that Piers Elal is holding them off until…” Until Alise was firmly in his pocket. “I have to go see Alise. I can at least tell her all we’ve discovered.”

“I suppose we can continue the cataloguing and guard these texts,” Han said.

“And make copies,” Cillian instructed firmly. “I’ll get my grandmother to clear it, but I think we can recruit in-house help for that. Also, I’d lay down good coin that many of the texts first hidden away are not in the Harahel archives. Those would be the ones to start analyzing for coded information.”

“And we need to look for that key,” Iliana added, a frown line between her brows. “Do you maybe have any books on codebreaking that I can reference, to see what I should be looking for?”

Cillian laughed. He was far from happy, but the amusement felt good. “Iliana, you are in House Harahel. We have books on everything .”