Chapter XXXII

Silas looked up as the door into the cafe opened. He had been doing the same for every customer that entered so far, on the off-chance that it was either the person he was waiting for, or the person he was dreading. 

Fortunately, it was the former. “Mister Silas!” Carrot said with a big wave as she entered. “There you are.”

“Hello, Carrot, it’s nice to--” he began, then paused as a second figure slid into the shop right behind Carrot. 

A young woman, roughly the same age as Carrot, with dark brown hair and a nice woolen jacket. He might have assumed that Carrot was just walking in at the same time as some random customer, only this woman followed her across the shop towards his seat.

That, and he recognized her, of course. 

Standing, Silas nodded to Carrot, then extended a hand. “Hello,” he said.

The young woman paused, then took his hand and shook. “You’re the wizard that Carrot has been talking about so much.”

“And you’re her Ulvent friend,” he replied. “Though... let’s keep talk of such things down? This isn’t the most private of places.”

It wasn’t the worst place for a discussion like this. The cafe was relatively busy, with more than hald the seats taken. A lot of people were here for the free wifi, or to meet up with friends after work. 

The space was built on two floors, with the one above ringing the lower floor with a balcony. It was a larger space, occupied by some fairly loud jazz-y music in the background and the low murmur of conversation. Still, being overheard wasn’t his goal.

“You don’t have something for that?” Iris asked.

His first instinct was to tell the plain truth, that he didn’t. He might have a privacy spell in his digital spellbook, buried deep in his notes, but nothing on hand. His second instinct was to be a little flippant. “I have discretion,” he replied. 

She sniffed. “Sure. Carrot said you needed something?”

He glanced at the other young woman who grinned even wider at him and gave him a thumb’s up. “She did. Come on, let’s sit?”

Iris stared at him, and for a moment, Silas suspected she’d protest. But Carrot stepped up and pulled Iris along after her, and soon all three of them were settled around the same table he’d been waiting at. 

“So, Carrot said that you’d discovered something?” Iris asked. 

Silas stared back. The woman had a strangely piercing gaze for someone so young. He couldn’t sense magic from her, which he supposed made sense as she wasn’t a wizard, but he felt the same aura of subtle danger that surrounded some of the more senior wizard knights of his ordo. “That’s right. How up to date are you with the situation?”

Iris glanced around, as though confirming that no one was listening in, and it didn’t seem like anyone was. “I think I’m more or less on the same page as you. A wayward wizard came to town and started to raise daemons out of local fauna. Initially just a few, but enough to cause some minor disturbances. Then more. But he’s not raising them to cause immediate chaos.”

“Oh?” he asked. He wasn’t expecting that last bit.

“Iris is very smart,” Carrot said.

“Not that smart,” Iris demurred. “Initially I thought it was just a wizard being a fool far enough away from Magical Society that they wouldn’t get caught up in your politics.”

“Can you refrain from using that terminology so openly?” he asked.

Iris glared. “If anyone overhears, they’ll think we’re talking about a game, or a book, or a movie. Don’t get your magical panties in a knot.”

“Are there?” Carrot asked.

Iris was thrown for a loop. “Are there what?”

“Magic panties? Have I been missing out? What’s the magic do? Are they like... super stain resistant or something.”

“Okay, fine,” Silas jumped in, cutting off... whatever was going on in Carrot’s head and escaping her mouth. “Fine, we can talk about the Master. Now, what did you mean by his plan not to cause immediate chaos?”

Iris nodded along. “How many people have died to daemon attacks in the last month? In this city, I mean.”

“I... don’t know. I didn’t hear anything like that on the local news,” he said. 

“Exactly. The answer is none. At least, none as far as I can tell. The Master might be subtle, but I don’t think his daemons have killed anyone. No injuries of note either. Some people were affected however. I think you both ran into a plot to absorb magic from people already?”

“The doe daemons with the nails,” Carrot said.

“I discovered something similar,” Iris said. “A few days prior. Carrot tells me you both tackled an avowed daemon that was compacting trash into some sort of raw magic?”

“Yes,” Silas confirmed. “I studied a few samples of it. It’s basically a very, very poor substitute for a magic-replenishing potion.”

“Those exist?” Carrot asked. “Like... magic in a bottle?”

“Yes, but it’s complicated. You can’t just absorb raw magic, it needs to be in the right form. I don’t know enough about alchemy or potionmaking to go into the details, but a proper potion like that is expensive. I saw them a few times, and had to take one, once.”

“Why?” Carrot asked.

He winced. “Training accident,” he replied. “Every magic-use class at the academy I went to had a potion in storage, in case of emergencies.”

“Nice to see that the society places some importance on your survival,” Iris said.

He shrugged. “We need more wizards.”

He didn’t bring up the fact that his calls for reinforcement had been ignored, twice. That certainly didn’t leave him feeling like he was anything but expendable. 

“Anyway,” he said. “Are you here to assist us?”

Iris crossed her arms and leaned back into her seat. “I don’t know if there is an ‘us’ here. And as for whether or not I will assist you that depends entirely on what you have.”

“Aww! But you’d assist me?” Carrot asked. “That was the implication, right? No to him, yup to me? Thanks! But I want to help Mister Silas too. Uh, though I want to know what’s up as well?”

“Right,” he said. “So, I did something similar to last time. I set up a grid of detection devices across the city. They formed a net, of sorts.” The last was directed to Iris. He wanted her to be caught up, at least. Carrot knew some of this already, of course. He wove his fingers together, making a net. “That allowed me to measure magical signatures across much of the city. I was still setting it all up when I received another strong signal.”

“Another?” Iris asked.

“Last time, that brought us to the factory where we fought that lieutenant,” Carrot said. 

Iris nodded, then made a ‘go on’ gesture with a roll of her wrist.

“Exactly. This is stronger. And the location is... worse, in many ways,” Silas said. He gestured with a thumb over his shoulder, towards a building just down the street. “You see that office building? The sort of beige one? Blue sign out front?”

“Yeah,” Carrot said as she leaned to the side and practically shoved Iris with her shoulder. “Is that it?”

“That’s where the magic’s coming from, yes,” he said. “I walked around the place and confirmed it. It’s coming from the second or third floor, maybe above that? It’s harder to triangulate height. Not without seeming suspicious.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re not suspicious at all,” Iris said.

He blinked. That sarcasm was thick. He was starting to realize that he had been very lucky meeting Carrot. Sure, she was also a teenaged girl, but Carrot acted... well, she was nice. Iris was a lot more like the average girl, which was to say, a sarcastic pain in the rear. 

His sister could be like that on her off days, but she was usually nice to him. 

Looking down at himself, he tried to see if he looked suspicious. Was it the trench coat? But it was cool out. A coat was only appropriate, wasn’t it?

“It’s okay, Mister Silas. Even if you look like a stalker, I know you’re not,” Carrot said.

“Huh? I don’t look like a stalker,” he said.

“You are one?” Iris asked.

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he grumped. “And don’t... I’m not a stalker, or anything of the sort. I’m a wizard, dammit. Look, did you two want to help or not?”

“That depends,” Carrot said. “What’s the plan?”

That was a good question. Fortunately, it was one he had had time to linger over while waiting here. “I think there’s more than one strong signature in there. I think we should wait. Either set up a rotation, or just position ourselves for an opportune moment.”

“And then what?” Carrot asked. She sat up, her grin fading a notch or two. “Prepare an ambush?”

“Either that, or attack whomever’s left in the building. I don’t think attacking head-on would be a good idea. Not least of which because this is such an open space. We’d be visible to a lot of entirely normal civilians.”

“And you still want to keep magic hidden,” Iris said. “Really shoving sticks into your wheels, huh?”

He couldn’t mask a frown, but she wasn’t technically wrong. “I’d rather avoid notice.”

“Have you considered that the Master wants the same? That’s what I meant earlier, about chaos. No dead, no big disturbances. Lots of daemons, but they’re on a short leash. Whatever he’s doing, he wants it to be subtle.” She leaned forwards. “I think we can use that.”

He did not like where this was going. 

Why couldn’t Carrot just come on her own?

***