Seth lay awake for hours, trying to sort his thoughts, before dozing fitfully in the predawn dark. He was asleep when Mau snapped awake.

He was awake the next instant, when her claws dug into his chest and she fell to the floor. To his credit, he didn't shout. To Mau's discredit, she tore his shirt and got him bloody.

Seth hissed in pain and got up to light a candle. Out of habit he picked up the brass striker, before realizing he could just use a cantrip. He focused on casting Ignite, but he hadn't studied that one well enough and couldn't form the spell. Instead, he cast the lightning cantrip Spark.

In the circle of candlelight Mau was on the floor with her back arched and her tail bushy. Her toes were splayed with claws out.

"Right. You got knocked out while the scorpions were still there," Seth said quietly to his familiar. "We beat them. Sort of. Things got complicated."

Mau settled, but her tail stayed bushy and she was standing on her tippy toes as she looked around. 'Where?' she signed.

"We are at Benjamin's house in Rosia. You've been here before."

Mau went still and stared at Seth with wide eyes.

"Yeah. I need to tell you what happened after the scorpion chased you outside." Seth glanced down at his torn and bloody nightshirt.

Mau had the grace to hang her head and sign 'Sorry.'

"It's fine. Do you have any healing left in your amulet? I drained mine earlier. It feels like the second it's not empty someone is bleeding."

Seth sat down on the bed and Mau climbed up into his lap.

'Owen?' she signed.

"He was stung too. It was some sort of sleeping venom scorpion."

Mau stared at the sleeping farmboy for a moment before signing 'Off' to Seth.

Obediently Seth removed his shirt and let the cat do her healing. After she was done and sat on her haunches looking him over, Seth thought about how unusual she was for a familiar.

And how lucky he was to have her.

She'd kept one of the scorpions occupied by herself, and killed it. Something Seth couldn't have done.

He looked down at his torn shirt, and the blood still on his chest. Yup, he still felt lucky. It was a small price to pay. "Wait here. I'm going to wash up and get a needle and thread out of the kitchen."

Seth crept down the servant stairs to the kitchen as quietly as he could. First he dampened a spare rag and cleaned the blood off his skin. Then, in a corner near the brooms was a basket with a variety of household tools. He pulled out a pincushion with a couple of needles stuck in it, both of them were threaded with strands that looked long enough for what he needed. One of them even had the right faded green color.

He turned around to see Mau trying to sneak by into the rest of the house.

"Mau!" Seth growled as firmly and quietly as he could.

The guilty cat froze with one paw raised and looked back over her shoulder at him.

He knew if he tried to pick her up, she would run away and he would be chasing her through the house in the middle of the night, waking up whoever was here. That was probably just John the Butler, but Seth wasn't sure.

She would think it was funny. Seth sighed. If he was a cat, and didn't have to worry about consequences or getting in trouble, he'd think it funny too.

"If you don't want to hear what happened tonight, that's fine. I'm going to go fix my shirt, then." Seth walked quietly back to his room.

Mau was right on his heels the whole way.

Seth smiled to himself. That was a small success, but a welcome one. If only it were always so easy to manage her behavior. Or if he could manage Booth or Duvessa like that. As he thought about it, he realized he probably could. He did a little bit already with Duvessa. It felt wrong to manipulate people, though. Arranging for them to do the things you wanted without just asking them was underhanded. But if by managing them, and minding what they wanted and what they did, got everyone the outcome they wanted, was it really wrong?

Before today, he'd always thought so.

The plan had been working. If everything had gone as planned, Booth's family would have been safer. Ned wouldn't be dead, not that Seth felt bad that the guy died.

Instead, Booth had been convinced he needed to go save his siblings himself. He didn't trust the plan or any of the others to do it for him. He didn't feel the others would try as hard to protect them as he would. That lack of trust brought the trouble right to them.

Seth should have foreseen that problem. Booth had complained about it, and Seth brushed it off. He still needed to be better about pushing for what he wanted. Just because he wanted it or thought it best didn't mean the others agreed.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He set the candle on the bedside table and closed the door after Mau. He sat on the bed and laid the torn shirt in his lap. Seth had become pretty proficient at repairing clothes while he travelled with his father. They weren't always near a village or had time to get minor rips and snags repaired, so Seth's father had taught him how to fix them himself.

Mau's claws had only caused two rips. Considering the number of claws she had, that was minimal damage. He poked the needle in at the start of the tear. Mau meowed.

"Right. So after the scorpion chased you outside, I had cast a Barrier…" Seth did his best to recount every detail. With his hands busy making tiny stitches, his mind was free to focus on the events.

Mau only interrupted twice. The first was when Seth told her what Ned had said about using a cup to steal powers.

"No, he didn't say how big the cup was. No, I don't know if you drink from it. No, I don't know what it's made of. No! He only said it was a cup and they put powers in it! And that now he had the powers! You're a cat, why would you care about these powers anyway? Slow down, I can't tell what you're saying. Oh, never mind. Let me finish the story. No! I'm not answering any more questions about the cup!"

The second time was when Seth described the white ring Booth showed Ned.

"Instead of his knife, he held up a ring, and told Ned it was the real one. I thought Ned already had the real one." He watched Mau sign a question. "The ring was white. I don't know that sign. Made? Most of the rings we found in the Palace Guardhouse were gold. There were a couple of others, but not many. Maybe he took one of the other ones? Wait a second, he didn't take any of those…"

The torn shirt lay forgotten as Seth replayed that scene in his head. "It was an illusion. The ring was really his knife. That's how he was able to stab Ned. Ned didn't know Booth was holding the knife, he thought he just had the ring."

Seth stared at the leopard cub. "I just realized that Booth doesn't have a stone talent. His talent is illusions. The lightstones he makes are illusions." Seth thought about that some more.

When he and Booth were chasing Blaise's kidnappers across the city, Booth had rescued Seth from a worker. Seth didn't know the worker, but the worker had a problem with Seth. Booth threatened the guy with a knife, but then didn't have the knife anymore when Seth was thrown into Booth.

Booth tended to run out of mana quickly, and his transformations never lasted long. Seth had always assumed it was a weak power and incomplete transformations. The ability to cast unstructured illusions was a rare talent. Seth wondered why he would keep that a secret from everyone, including the school. Then he realized that was how Booth did most of his stealing.

That had to be the main reason Booth would keep an illusion talent a secret.

"Booth made the illusion ring white. Why would he do that?" Seth watched his cat. "Why is this upsetting you? You look really nervous. Do you think the gold ring we found in the Palace was actually a copy? Is that what you're nervous about?"

Mau looked guilty, but shook her head and rolled a paw in 'Keep going.'

Seth studied Mau for another moment and then picked up his shirt and needle. If it was important, she'd tell him. "Right. So I'm a little hazy here because I was holding onto Hayfield…"

Mau jumped up next to Seth and leaned into him as he told the more difficult pieces of the story. He kept his eyes on his needle and let the words flow. He didn't miss the tension that thrummed through her when he said that Benjamin arrived just after Ned's death.

"Yeah. I thought it was strange, too. It might be a coincidence that he was in the city, but I don't think it was a coincidence that he was passing by at exactly the right time to see us. Somehow, he's keeping tabs on us. He might have been the one to tell Hellena about us looking for wolves. I thought it was Thurstan, but Benjamin confirmed that they're working together."

'He say?' Mau signed.

"Yeah, he confessed to all of it. I'll get to that. Anyway, Benjamin told his guys to put Ned in a grain sack and they loaded Ned onto the carriage. They had Booth do the seal on the sack."

Mau shuddered. 'Bad feeling. Where dead now?'

"I don't know what they did with Ned. I assume they took him with them."

Mau made another sign.

"I don't know that one. Black what? Flat? Paper? Black paper? Oh, you mean blackmail. Mail is this one, so it looks like paper moving, not the one you were doing before. No I did not just make that up! Ugh, whatever. Yes, I know. Benjamin has blackmail on all of us, particularly Booth. If the body is found and they can get a mana signature on the sealing of the bag, Booth is in real trouble. They'd have to test it though before opening the bag, so if someone opens it first... Fine, I know. But there's nothing I can do about it right now. Anyway, after that, Benjamin and I had a conversation…"

At the end of his retelling, Seth cut the end of the thread from his repaired shirt. "I don't know what to think. I don't think Benjamin was lying to me."

Seth watched Mau's signs. "I don't know that one. Did you just make it up? Mau, you can't get mad at me for not knowing signs when you make up new ones without telling me. That one is egg. Yes? Egg? You want eggs right now? Mau, it's the middle of the night! Oh, no. Bad egg? Benjamin is a bad egg? Mau, you say the weirdest things." Seth sighed. "Someday you'll have to tell me who you really are."

Seth flopped back on the bed. "Oh don't look at me like that. I need to sort out this mess. Saben was acting weird and talking to strange people. I trust him though. And I think Benjamin meant it when he said he was saving Saben's life."

'Shit move.'

"Saben can be hard headed," Seth argued, but his heart wasn't in it. "But yes, it was a bad thing to do. But if Thurstan was going to take his talent away anyway, making it go to me is better."

Mau shook her head. 'No kill you.'

"Are you saying you would just kill whoever had the talent if it wasn't me?"

Her ears flattened, a signal that she knew it was wrong, but would do it anyway.

"Benjamin said he doesn't care what I do. I can mess up Thurstan all I like. Steal all the regalia away from Hellena. Stay at school and do nothing."

'Suspicious.'

"I don't know why he isn't worried about getting caught. Even when he found us with a dead body, he found it mildly amusing and joked about it. He wasn't worried at all."

'Dangerous.'

"Yeah, he is. I believe he is looking for my mom's killer. It's such a weird thing to bring up, otherwise. My mom's been gone a long time. I can see why my dad would care, but not Benjamin." He sat up and put on his repaired shirt. "I need to talk to Saben. Like a face to face conversation. I don't know how much of what Benjamin said I should trust."

'Nothing.'

"Right. There's probably a ton he's not telling me, too. You mentioned a while ago about being a double agent. We know Thurstan is stealing powers, Benjamin straight up told me. Maybe we can mitigate some of the harm going on and get people their powers back while still looking for the killer Benjamin is looking for."

Mau growled. 'Dangerous,' she signed again.

Seth knew she was right. He wanted to believe that Benjamin's actions were in the best interest for both Seth and Saben, but he really wasn't sure. Maybe he did save Saben. Maybe Saben was happy as part of a delving team.

Maybe Seth wasn't in mortal danger being bait for a murderer.

Seth scooted up the bed and adjusted the covers. He planned to try for at least a couple more hours of sleep. "For now, we lay low, stay in school, and stop stirring the pot. At least for a little while."

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