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“You introduced this method of magic replenishment,” he reminded her.
“Believe me, I regret it,” she bit out.
He laughed, sounding not sorry at all. “The ground-stone doughy stuff,” he said, changing the topic and answering her earlier question, “is a mix of lime, clay, and sand. When you add the right amount of water, it becomes like stone once it sets. It will form a core for the levee that won’t wash away like the packed earth does. We should’ve built it that way to begin with.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I only recently found the technique in the library—right before I came for your Betrothal Trials—and I wasn’t sure if I could pull enough water out of the existing levee, and hold the river back at the same time, until just recently.”
She returned his grin. “And now you believe.”
“This is why I did not fail,” he replied gravely, his lips twitching into a smirk.
“Ha ha. You can make fun, but—” She halted in her tracks.
Gabriel tensed, following her gaze to the elaborately gilded carriage powering around the lake. “Who is it?”
“Those are the El-Adrel house colors,” she replied through numb lips. House El-Adrel hadn’t replied to any of her overtures on a formal collaboration to develop and distribute water-based artifacts. The silence had been of concern, but it hadn’t been unreasonable to assume that El-Adrel was simply too busy raking in money to pay attention to a small business proposition from an upstart house.
Gabriel studied her with concern. “Why is this a surprise? I thought you wanted one of their junior wizards to work with us on your product line of ever-replenishing water flasks and waterproof footwear.”
“I did,” she replied, not tearing her gaze from the approaching carriage. “I do—but a visit from Lady El-Adrel herself doesn’t bode well.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows climbed, his magic bristling silver around him as he spun to face the approaching carriage. His fingers twitched by his sword hilt, and Nic put a staying hand on his arm. “She won’t be unguarded, and we don’t want to start a war with El-Adrel if we don’t have to.”
“Seems like we should just declare war on the entire Convocation and have done with it,” he muttered blackly.
“Oh yes,” she shot back in the same tone. “That’s a brilliant idea. Then we wouldn’t have to spend all this time and energy rebuilding House Phel. We could simply sink the whole thing ourselves and go live in the swamps like Seliah.”
“You say that like it would be a bad thing,” he grumbled, but his silver-sharp magic softened slightly, one corner of his mouth twitching in amusement.
She wouldn’t reward his behavior by laughing. “Can you keep up the rain shield for a while?”
“Oh yes,” he replied softly, grim determination in his voice.
The carriage glided to a smooth halt, the apparent wheels—with gold spokes, no less—a clever device that could roll or glide over watery surfaces as required. Gabriel extended the rain shield to cover the ground between them and the carriage too, and a footman hopped down to open the carriage door. He didn’t move quite like a human, his skin a bronze color a bit too metallic for flesh.
“Is that guy a…?” Gabriel asked, trailing off as he searched for the proper term.
“An enchanted artifact, I’m guessing,” she replied quietly. “Like an animated doll. I didn’t know El-Adrel was doing that.”
The footman looked over at them, as if overhearing, a glint of feral intelligence in its gaze that an automaton shouldn’t have. Nic caught her breath in shock.
“What?” Gabriel askedsotto voce, his magic pricking her with urgency. “Is it a weapon?”
“I won’t say no, but I don’t think there’s any immediate danger,” she whispered back. “It is, however, animated by a spirit, rather than enchantment.” Which absolutely meant Elal was collaborating with House El-Adrel. Was it Papa or someone else, and did the Convocation know?
A tall woman stepped out of the carriage. Her glossy black hair, threaded liberally with the platinum of graceful age, flowed nearly to the ground over her simple pantsuit of gold-trimmed ivory. The El-Adrel crest of a lightning bolt—signifying their metaphorical bringing to life of mundane objects—jagged over one shoulder in glittering gilded thread. Her depthless black gaze traveled over House Phel, taking in the manse and surrounds, casually taking in the rain shield with studious boredom, before resting on Gabriel and Nic. With her height and long nose, she appeared to be gazing down from above, a goddess deigning to visit mortals. Nic had met her a few times at Convocation gatherings, but you’d never guess that from the way Lady El-Adrel studied her like an uninteresting species of bug.
Two more guards followed her from the carriage, also bronze-skinned, with alert, not-quite-human intelligence in their eyes. Her familiar followed last, a man of similar age, his auburn hair silvering, his strong body fit and muscular. Nic remembered him too, though not his name, if she’d ever learned it at all. Lady El-Adrel preferred to rule her house alone, so hadn’t granted her familiar any rank. His brown eyes sparkled with admiration as he studied Gabriel, then lit on Nic, giving her a saucy wink of solidarity that took her by surprise. Both of them familiars to powerful High House wizards made them comrades of a sort, she supposed. An odd society she’d never before had entrée to and not one she’d ever imagined existed.
“Lord Phel,” Lady El-Adrel said as if correctly identifying an unusual bird. “And Lady Veronica Phel, late of House Elal. How the mighty have…” Her black gaze lingered on Nic. “Well, ‘fell’ doesn’t quite work grammatically, tempting though the wordplay might be. Shall we go with ‘creatively reinvented themselves’?”
Nic stared back at her steadily, declining to dignify the snide remarks with a reply, nor would she meekly lower her gaze.
“Lady El-Adrel,” Gabriel rumbled, not sounding very friendly, inclining his chin just the right amount to indicate polite respect, one equal to another. “What an unexpected surprise.”
She arched one thin black brow at Gabriel’s less-than-elegant manners. “Are there expected surprises? I suppose I’m to understand from your stilted greeting that my visit is not a welcome one. And yet, you invited us.” With a snap of her fingers, she summoned one more person from the depths of the covered carriage. A man with wizard-black eyes, his mother’s nose, and his father’s auburn hair emerged, an irritated frown creasing his forehead—no doubt for his mother’s theatrics. Nic was certain she’d never seen him before and searched the archives of her brain for his identity. An El-Adrel scion, no doubt, but there were at least six, and several of them wizards. And he looked to be about ten years older than she, so they wouldn’t have any Convocation Academy friends in common. Still, she should havesomeidea of who he was.
“Our youngest,” Lady El-Adrel declared, giving her son an assessing look, as if checking to see that he hadn’t smudged himself somehow. “Jadren. He wishes to apply to be a junior wizard at House Phel.”
