Book 2, Chapter 30

This time of day, the villagers were busy in the fields or gardens. The children were in school, and only a few of the older generation who’d grown too weak to continue working were relaxing. Of course, that included our nosy neighbor, Malra. She spotted us as soon as we left the hut. I knew because I could feel her mana core, unusually full for a villager’s, right near the window in her hut she liked to spy out of.

A glance over in that direction revealed an older woman with gray hair and a lot of wrinkles staring at us, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. As soon as Malra realized I’d seen her, she flinched back and the curtain closed so fast I’d have sworn it was magic if I didn’t know any better.

Mother followed my gaze and let out a soft laugh. “She doesn’t like to talk to me much anymore,” she said. “Things were already strained with her helping herself to our garden while we were gone those few days. After all the rumors about your exile, she came around trying to get the details from me, then left in a huff.”

“She’s heading somewhere in a hurry,” I said after we walked past her house. I could feel her mana core leave the hut and slip around the backside to the street running parallel to ours. I was sure that news of my return would have spread through the whole village by the time I was done with Karad.

I expected Mother to try to take my hand while we walked like we used to, but it seemed she’d broken herself of that habit. Other than the initial hug when she’d first spotted me, it was almost like she’d gone out of her way to treat me like an adult. It was nice, and I was thoroughly annoyed at the part of my mind that wasn’t happy about it.

The village felt even smaller than I remembered after my recent experiences in Derro. The streets were empty and quiet except for the occasional retiree. There was no market. There were no farmers bringing their crops in to sell. No enforcers patrolling. It was just six streets of huts unevenly spaced apart by their gardens of varying sizes surrounding a single square that had the village’s two administrative buildings.

We reached Karad’s home in under ten minutes. Knocking wasn’t a thing here, mostly on account of how no one had actual doors. Instead, Mother said, “Melain? Karad? It’s Xilaya. Can I come in?”

A hand reached out and pulled aside the curtain that blocked the entrance into the hut to reveal a young woman in Garrison leathers with a short sword hanging off her belt. She started to say something, but the words caught in her throat when she saw me standing next to Mother. “Are you out of your damn minds?” she hissed, stepping through the empty doorway and forcing us back.

“Hello, Nianta,” I said. “I’m surprised you’re on your feet. I hear everyone else is sick.”

“I caught it early, and I’m feeling much better now,” she said curtly. “Xilaya, get that boy out of here. He’s exiled.”

“It’s a leftover from Noctra,” I said, ignoring her words. “It’s probably not going to kill anyone, but if it was, Karad would be the most likely person.”

Mother shot me an alarmed look, but stayed quiet. It was true what I’d told her earlier. No one, not even Karad, was going to die from the enchantments Noctra had been weaving in their minds, but there was no reason they needed to know that.

“Let me guess. You’re the only one who can stop it,” Nianta said.

I shrugged. “The only one here, at least. Unless some new mages moved in who I don’t know about?”

“Wait here,” the Garrison woman said before spinning on her heel and walking back into the hut. I caught a low murmur of her talking with someone else, another woman, and thirty seconds later, Nianta reappeared. She gestured for us to follow her in.

Karad was propped up in a padded chair, one that I recognized from Noctra’s manor outside of town. I suspected a lot of his furniture had ended up in the homes of the more influential citizens of Alkerist, and why not? It wasn’t doing anyone any good back at the manor. Its location a mile away from the village itself made it inconvenient to use for administration purposes, and since no one was working on any sort of nefarious schemes, there was no need for the privacy so much space afforded.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they got around to building a new town hall at the north end of the village at some point. Any other direction would cut into field space, but there was a thousand feet of empty scrub grass between the village and the edge of the arbor.

The commander of the Garrison was a ridiculously handsome man in his late thirties or early forties who normally had sharp, clear eyes. I spotted a lot of new gray hairs coming in around his temples that weren’t there before, but that was overshadowed by the stress lines wrinkling his forehead and the pain-induced clench of his teeth. Another woman I hadn’t met, but who I thought was his wife, hovered nearby, worry plain on her features.

“You,” he said, looking straight at me. “You did this?”

“No,” I said. “This is… a very minor version of what would have happened to your nephew if my father hadn’t donated mana to him for over a month so that I could remove the subjugation enchantment from his mind. I assume Noctra worked his control over all of you, but I suppose it could have just as easily been Iskara.”

Her cabal name had been Perfidy, and mind magic always struck me as something more in line with her abilities anyway. Noctra might have been the one in charge of the village, but Perfidy had been the person responsible for handling him. She’d only been an adept, not a mage, but more and more, I considered the difference academic. Most true mages around her seemed to source their mana from whole crowds of people anyway. The fact that she couldn’t generate her own like a mage could wasn’t all that relevant if it came down to a fight.

Karad started to reply, but interrupted himself with a pained wince. Once he’d recovered, he said, “You knew? Never said anything.”

“I never checked,” I admitted. “I knew it was a possibility, but your Council was borderline hostile towards me. It wasn’t worth the time or mana to spare people who so obviously hated me a few hours or days of discomfort.”

“Typical,” Karad said. “You’re only ever interested in what benefits you. Still a monster walking around in a child’s body.”

“I am,” I said. “I don’t think I ever made any effort to disguise that fact. But I was always willing to deal fairly with you.”

“Let me guess, you’re here to offer a deal now. You fix whatever’s wrong with me, with all of us, and you get something in return. What? Your exile status lifted?”

“No, no. I don’t want to live here anyway. I merely need a temporary place to set up some equipment I acquired in Derro. I doubt I’ll be here more than a week, then a few days here and there in the future until I decide where to set up my own home.

“Let me be clear. I’ll be here as long as I want. I’m not asking for permission. What I am offering is to take a few hours to remove the lingering enchantments from everyone Noctra was working on in exchange for the lot of you not hassling me.”

Though to be honest, I expected that I’d be hearing from Shel as soon as she learned I was home. She’d been the only one who’d managed to talk me into igniting her core before I’d decided to leave. There were three other students I’d been preparing to undergo the ritual who would probably be looking for my help as well, though it was possible they’d managed to complete the process without me. Part of me hoped they had, but if so, their improved mana generation speeds probably weren’t up to my standards.

“I can’t make a decision on behalf of the whole Council,” Karad growled, his eyes scrunched shut as a fresh spike of pain stabbed his brain.

“Suit yourself. I guess I’ll be on my way then.”

“Wait!” Karad’s wife said. What had Mother said her name was? Melain? That sounded right.

“Yes?”

“There must be something else we can do. Please.”

I thought for a moment. It would probably save me some hassle in the long run if Karad owed me a favor. “Fine. I’ll fix up Karad. In return, he will do his best to convince everyone to leave me alone. If he manages that, I’ll take care of everyone else on the condition that they have to be brought to me at Noctra’s manor.”

The Garrison commander cracked open an eye to size me up, then sighed and said, “Fine. You win.”

“Alright. Go ahead and lay down.”

“Why?” he asked.

“So I can reach your head without having to stand on my toes,” I told him.

Melain helped her husband over to the overstuffed pallet they shared and I took up a position sitting just behind him. He flinched when I touched his hair, but other than that kept control of himself. If I didn’t know any better, I might not have thought he was afraid of me.

The mind magic on Karad was subtle, so subtle that if I hadn’t specifically been looking for it, I would have missed it. That wasn’t a testament to Noctra’s skill. He’d used an extremely light touch because he was an amateur who knew enough to know that if he screwed something up on people who were mentally healthy, it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

All the enchantment did was encourage people to view Noctra in a friendly light, something I should have thought to check months ago. They’d given the former governor the benefit of the doubt, lean into the most charitable interpretation of his actions, at least in theory. Without him alive to spin the narrative to his benefit, the enchantment hadn’t done much to save his posthumous reputation.

The enchantment had only survived as long as it had because it fed off the host’s own mana core to renew itself, but it wasn’t enough to endure indefinitely. With the nightly mana tithing being a part of everyone’s routine here, that had probably hastened its demise. It also explained why not everyone had been afflicted at the same time. People who frequently used all of their mana would have starved their enchantments faster.

Removing the spell took me about ten minutes and cost me enough mana that it’d take five hours to regenerate it. Karad gasped and jerked upright the moment I was finished, almost smacking into my nose with his skull. Only the shield ward hanging from my neck prevented it.

“Karad?” Melain asked.

At the same time, my mother started forward. “Gravin!”

I waved her back. “It’s fine. I’m not hurt.”

Karad stood up and peered around. Tentatively, he lifted a hand and waved it back and forth. I watched his eyes follow the motion. “The pain’s gone,” he said. “Thank the spirits for that.”

“More like thank me,” I grumbled, but everyone ignored me. Melain rushed to her husband and was swept up into a hug while Nianta and my mother watched. Rolling my eyes, I stood up and moved over to the door. I raised my voice to say, “Now, I’m off. You go do your meeting and convince the rest of the town to leave me in peace while I work. As long as they agree, you can bring anyone else Noctra got his mind magic into to the manor to be fixed.”

The smile faded from Karad’s face and he clutched his wife to him tightly. The fear was more evident in his eyes, like he was remembering all the reasons he’d wanted me gone in the first place. “A deal’s a deal,” he said. “I’ll come find you later at the manor and let you know what I was able to get people to agree with.”

“Perfect,” I said. I glanced at Mother, who nodded back, and we left together.