House In Hiding by Jenny Schwartz

Author:Jenny Schwartz [Schwartz, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-02T22:00:00+00:00

Madra headbutted Evander’s hip.

Evander rapped his knuckles against the top of the scytha’s head.

Tough guy greetings exchanged, Evander addressed me. “You watched?”

“Yup.”

He sighed. “It went better than I thought it would. I’ll go back for dinner. I want them accustomed to seeing me around.”

I knew the broad outline of his plan. He had to endure his family until the third night. “If you need me to meet with Hector—”

“I don’t trust him.”

Nor did I. But Hector didn’t scare me and I was curious. “I’d like to experience a harvest festival. If your family invites me, I’ll attend.”

“Hmmph.”

I smiled. “You do your thing. I’ll do mine. I won’t get in the way of your plans.”

There was silence as he realized he couldn’t dissuade me. “If you go, you should take Madra.”

“Mmmrrraaoowh.” Madra was keen.

I pulled his ears. “I think the House has scared everyone sufficiently. Adding Madra would be gratuitous.”

“Satisfying, though.” He sauntered off.

I gave Madra a pat on the shoulder to encourage him to follow Evander down the bedroom corridor.

Stretching, I yawned and considered my afternoon. In taking a break, I’d achieved my primary purpose: to remind Evander that he wasn’t alone. Here in the House, we valued him. Now, I grabbed a quick lunch before returning to my office.

I couldn’t spend all my time spying on Evander’s family. That would be creepy. I left the screen up, displaying happenings on the Zami estate, but asked the House to mute the feed. I grabbed a number of scrolls and brought up the key reports from the information package sent by the imperial secretary. On a fifth scroll, I opened Carlene’s essay on the Ignis Grimoire.

Shuffling the scrolls, I picked out the one which proposed various strategies for handling the situation if magic was proven to be vanishing from the paths of Reality.

The more I learned about Reality, the more I realized that people, whatever their form or background, shared the same compelling emotions: fear, joy, greed, and so forth. It meant that I recognized what was happening better than Cirrus and his cronies might have anticipated.

For instance, a ploy of the powerful, of those benefiting from the current system, was to mislabel or even demonize dissenting voices. Followers of a system of belief that challenged the status quo didn’t necessarily equate to a cult. In fact, most times they wouldn’t be a cult. They could be a political group, a faith group, homesteaders, the list was endless. But the cult label appealed to those who protected the status quo—the lobbyists, media, and business interests. Cults fascinated and distracted the general public.

According to the imperial secretary’s information, the cult they might blame for the vanishing magic was one centered on a dinosaurian mage who’d been dead for seven hundred years.

Peseshet Kus had been a ductu, a feathered dinosaurian, like Carlene. However, unlike Carlene’s subtle yellowish-green plumage, Peseshet Kus had possessed a brilliant scarlet and cerulean-blue plumage. She’d also been a vampire, or near enough. The woman had eaten hearts.

Ew. The public relations experts who’d chosen this cult as a potential scapegoat were smart.

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