Kinnek snorted out a laugh that was almost a sob. “Vergis’s biological father. Another hangu mage. Not as skilled as me, but…he was better than me in all other ways. He deserved better.
“We were sent on a mission to free Raikengana who had been captured. It turned bad. They took Aragis when we tried to get away, but we’d made a pact. We’d promised each other.” He wiped his eyes when the tears started falling, and I reached out to take his hand, like Lissir had done for me before. I hoped that was right. Kinnek closed his fingers around mine. “I didn’t have it in me to make him a sacrifice. It was what we had promised one another. Maybe he always knew that about me. He took a Koa Esher’s knife and slit his own throat. He smiled at me, but I’ll never forget the blood. I still see it in my dreams.”
Don’t suppose you have anything for that? I said to the presence, the land. Wisely, it didn’t respond.
“I… Do you… I don’t know what to do. Can I do anything? Anything at all?”
Kinnek looked away from the painted back of the bagu he’d loved—the bagu he still loved. His gaze stayed on the floor for long moments while all I did was hold his hand and not let go. After a while, he squeezed my fingers and looked at me. “Look at you, Rory. You really are a sweet thing.” He took a deep breath. “You lost that basket, didn’t you, snapdragon?”
“Guess I did.”
“Nothing we can do about that. But we have preserved strawberries in the basement. You want to help me turn those into… What did you call it? Discourse jelly?”
I smiled at Kinnek. His eyes had gone puffy and his skin looked blotchy. “Dissent jelly.”
“I see. Wanna make some?”
“Can we have iced tea while we work?”
Kinnek nodded. “We can. I love Charlie’s iced tea.” He got to his paws slowly, and he wasn’t his chatty self when we got to the kitchen, but that was fine. I didn’t know much, but I knew he didn’t have to be just then.
Chapter 17
They put the cola ash dude in the bunker. What bunker, you ask? The bunker that, of course, existed here. And who wouldn’t have a bunker on their property? Why was I even asking? I wasn’t allowed to go down there, and Charles hugged Kinnek close when he told us there was no chance of the Koa Esher getting out.
That first day after that was pretty tense, and Inkiri, who’d been happy to let me walk around the homestead before without going all clingy, suddenly didn’t want to leave my side. The only time I wasn’t within arm’s reach was when he went to take care of a monster that was testing the wards or the times when he was on guard duty down in the bunker.
Guard duty was a thing now that everyone other than Kinnek and me were doing. I was sort of happy no one would even trust me with an apple peeling knife, much less with guard duty. It sounded super boring.
It went on like that for over two weeks. The thing was, if I hadn’t known that there was a bunker with an evil mage stuck inside, I’d never even have suspected. The guys didn’t talk about it, Charles wasn’t chatty to begin with, and there were no noises, no screams or whatever was to be expected when you kept someone in a bunker under your backyard.
The guys did their morning workouts like normal, and sometimes Charles joined them, dragging Vergis along every now and then. Kinnek and I worked on magic and my Lugarra skills. It was surreal, and I could’ve written the cola ash guy’s arrival off as a dream.
For our magic lessons, Kinnek would pull Vergis in more often than not these days. We’d do smaller things, like parting and passing through the veils around the property, but for our first lesson together, Kinnek sat us down at the kitchen table with a large pot filled with water in front of us.
“As a magic dispenser, you need to practice dispensing, and Vergis needs to practice using you. In a consensual, mutually beneficial way, of course.” Kinnek gave each of us a bright smile. It was a scorching day in July, and he was wearing hot pink shorts that Gran would’ve called “indecent in the best of ways.”
Vergis gave me copious side-eye. “Dad, unless you let me gag him, I don’t see where the benefit lies.” He was being Vergis like effing always.
“Must the bagu be so base?” I said in halting Lugarra.
From the looks both Kinnek and Vergis gave me, I had overacted. Or asked why the bagu had to be so smelly. I really wasn’t sure. Some of the words were similar sounding.
“A gag, you say?” Kinnek’s brows quirked up, and for a second there, I wasn’t sure he was joking.
Vergis glared. “Big gag.”
Kinnek tapped the edge of the bowl. “Muffin, I know you’d rather water the vegetable garden and help your dad picking herbs, but how about you can each have a strawberry popsicle if you do well? Your daddy made a big batch yesterday, and you’d be the first to try them.”
Vergis eyed me. “Fine. Dispense away, Princess.”
So I did, as best as I was able, and instead of me freezing and unfreezing water, Vergis did it using my dispenser magic. I wasn’t sure whether it was the prospect of a popsicle or the relief of not being made to do manual labor that had him complying, but it wasn’t actually that bad.
Still, through all this magic practice, a part of me couldn’t let go of the anxiety that came from knowing some dude was being kept prisoner in the bunker outside. After all, there was always another shoe, and it had to drop sometime.
When it did, it was another very hot day toward the end of July. The sky was a vibrant blue, cloud free, and the sun was high overhead. Fellisse, Inkiri, and I were picking tomatoes behind the house. The plants had grown taller than a bagu. I hadn’t known they did that, city kid that I was, but it was nice, being out among the fragrant leaves that were so greedy for the sun that they left someone my height with a decent amount of shade.
Even so, Fellisse looked like he couldn’t decide whether to rush inside and get my hat or carry me indoors bodily where my hat was so I could put it on and be safe from sunstroke sickness. The warmer the weather had gotten, the more of a nag he’d become about that.
