September 1069
The rest of the month was fairly uneventful. Days passed, training happened, and I took a week off to head into London to pick up new tools. The money I had was burning a hole in my pocket, and there were gaps in both my lab setup and my everyday equipment that I felt needed filling.
They were as follows: a set of silver rings, which took up a significant chunk of cash, sized to fit my fingers, to be turned into kinetic force rings; a whole pile of parchment and some ink pots, both for my own purposes and so Eva could practice writing; and the rest of the cash, which hadn't gone quite as far as I'd hoped, was put towards multiple iron and silver storage containers that I'd be turning into mini magical freezers for whenever I wanted to preserve something. I'd been hoping to snag some silver lab tools and/or alchemical apparatus, but those all turned out to be out of my price range after all was said, done, and bought.
I also did some snooping around to see if I could find the Malfoy, or at least where he lived, but that didn't pan out either.
Now, what happened when I came back from London was far more interesting.
In what I hoped would not become a routine occurrence, shortly after I arrived in Dorham Eadric's fyrd… men? Sure, fyrdmen, came by to take me to his family manor, before I could start settling in or even unpacking Shadowfax's saddlebags. Then, after that, I was bundled into his dining room, which apparently doubled as a meeting room when the table wasn't being used for food.
"You got a letter," I said slowly, eyeing Eadric and the scroll he was almost crumpling in his hand.
"Aye," Eadric said, annoyed.
Actually, you know what, considering 'annoyed', 'dour', 'sour', and so on is basically Eadric's default state, I don't think there's any benefit in me adding those descriptors anymore. It's more noteworthy when he's not like that.
"A rider came by three days ago. Tried to deliver it to you, then dumped it on me when he found out you were gone." He held the scroll out to me, and I took it. I turned it around to where one end met the furl, and checked the wax seal holding it shut. It had the weird dog-bird-dragon thing-creature that was Robert's heraldry, so that meant it was probably from him. I carefully broke the seal, then unfurled the scroll and started reading the French written there.
"Blah blah blah greetings and introductions, yadda yadda yadda summons to court…" I trailed off as I reached the end of the letter. "Aaand a job offer." I set the scroll down. "Huh."
I mean, it wasn't a complete surprise, but… well, I guess I should have expected him a lot more. Back home, Marcone was always trying to use and recruit me, and Robert was, okay, actually barely anything like Marcone, but.
Ugh, whatever. Point is I really should've expected this.
Back in the moment, Eadric gave me a strange look, probably because of my summarizing, and I gave him a challenging look back. After a few moments, he shook his head and muttered something under his breath.
"Though maybe job ultimatum is a better way to put it," I said after I judged the awkward silence had gone on long enough. "The wording's certainly strong enough for it."
Eadric eadric'ed. "What does that mean for you?" he asked.
I furled the scroll back up, picked it up, and started tapping one end against the table. "Well, I have no choice but to accept. Which means I'll be moving to Berkhamsted, at least, and may be following him around in general. Which does, I assume, pose a few problems for you."
Eadric eadric'ed harder. "Potentially."
"Well…" I drawled. "I'm pretty sure I know the problem, and regarding Eva's education, you've got two options. I could try and convince Rowena to take Eva on, though she didn't seem that interested when I broached the topic, or Eva comes with me in some fashion. Maybe on a rotating schedule, maybe not, I don't know; that's up to you and your family. Now, if Tim and the others he was with hadn't met or seen Eva, I don't think there would have been a big issue with pretending Eva was my niece or distant cousin or something similar. As is stands though…" I sucked in a breath through my teeth. "I could, maybe, possibly prepare an enchantment that would make her look like someone else. But it would be fiddly, and risky, and require a good amount of lying – and that's ignoring the potential fallout if the deception fails."
Eadric seemed to consider that for a few moments, then gave a kind of defeated sigh and shook his head. "No, no." He seemed on the verge of saying something, then stopped, falling into a broody, eadric-y silence, before eventually sighing again. "I think it may be best if she and Cuthbert accompany you to court."
I blinked a few times, somewhere between three and five. Then tried cleaning my ears out with my fingers. Finally I blinked again and looked at Eadric.
"I'm sorry, did I hear you right? Did you just propose sending your kids off with me as a chaperone?" I asked, my tone a little incredulous.
"Yes," Eadric said eadric-ly.
On a side note, I'm really starting to warm up to the idea of using eadric as both a verb and an adjective. It's wonderfully multi-purpose.
Anyway, I blinked again.
"Huh," I said. "Uhm. You realize Cuthbert's probably not going to listen to me, right? He doesn't seem to like me. At all. So if you're expecting me to run herd on him…"
Eadric grunted. "I know. But he's a man now, he doesn't need his hand held or his road paved. Just… make sure he is not tricked or outmaneuvered."
Easier said than done considering Lucille's presence. And Tim's. And Eva's apparent crush on Tim. God, this was going to suck. Riding herd on one teenager is hard enough. Two, including one inclined to be rebellious?
I'm actually feeling the slightest sliver of sympathy for my first master DuMorne. He was a real rat bastard and deserved everything that happened to him, but dealing with me and Elaine could not have been easy.
I sighed and rubbed my temples. "Why don't you have this conversation with your wife first?"
Eadric eadric'ed. "They're my children."
I sighed, then repeated, slower and more forcefully, "Why don't you have this conversation with your wife first?"
Eadric eadric'ed some more, I gave him a meaningful look, then he eadric'ed back and stood up and went to the door. Or a door, I guess; there were two doors in the dining room. He opened it, I saw Hilda and Eva standing a little ways down the hallway, and then my view was obstructed by Eadric, who started talking to Hilda. About ten seconds later, Eva squeezed past her father and practically burst into the dining room and leapt into a chair, almost buzzing with nervous energy.
I arched an eyebrow at her.
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it again, adopted a thoughtful, frowning, thinking expression, held that for about fifteen seconds, went to say something, stopped, went to say something again, stopped again, thought some more, blushed for some reason, and then blurted out, all in a rush, "IthinkIdidmagic."
I blinked. "Okay. First. Breathe. In." I looked at her, then repeated more forcefully, "In."
She breathed in, and I waited for a few seconds.
"Now out."
She breathed out.
"Now repeat a few times," I said.
She did so, and that seemed to calm her down a bit.
"Now, what happened?" I asked.
She blushed again, then shook herself and schooled her expression. "Some of my… clothes… transformed, or changed, or… became different. For a bit."
I arched an eyebrow again. "Okaaayy… define different."
"Some of the wool… turned into leather? At least I think it was leather," she said.
The other eyebrow joined the first. "Like, permanently?" I asked.
"No, it… once I took it off, it… mostly went back to normal, after a little while. It still feels a bit harder than before, but it's back to being wool."
"And what were you doing when that happened?" I asked.
"Nothing," Eva said, shaking her head. "I wasn't doing anything, it just happened."
"Uhuh. I assume you've continued the meditation and breathing exercises I assigned?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Show me."
She closed her eyes and set her hands on the table, palms up. Slowly, over the course of seconds, she relaxed, and then started breathing deeply in and out, steadily, rhythmically, with long pauses in between.
The basic goal of the exercise was to get her to relax and focus on breathing, with a side aspect of trying to mentally visualize and line it up with the way magic circulated through the body. In through the left hand on the intake, out through the right hand on the outtake. As she did so, I stretched out my arcane senses, getting a feel for how the magic flowed in the room, and in particular the way Eva was starting to channel it.
"Alright," I said. "You can stop."
Eva let out a long sigh and then opened her eyes, shaking her head a bit.
"So, I don't think you actually cast any spells," I said. "Because if you did, you'd know. Instead, what I think happened is that your gift became active. You've started actually channeling, holding, and feeling magical energy, and so you've kind of… woken up. Not enough to cast spells, probably, but enough to start externalizing your inner conflict. And apparently, it's doing that by changing your clothes." I frowned. "Drastically so."
Eva seemed disappointed, and a little conflicted.
"Though I guess we can test that," I said, and again, there was the blush. What kind of clothing malfunction happened? "The externalization, the magical field, gets stronger when you're feeling strong emotion, when you're not relaxed, when you're keyed up. So, I'd like you to close your eyes again."
She did so.
"Look back over your memories and try and find your most emotional one. Happy, sad, angry, frustrated, whatever. Just your strongest one. Tell me when you've found it," I said.
About a minute passed in silence, broken only by the sound of breathing, before she gave a shallow nod.
"Alright. Now, imagine you were back there. Recall the smells, the sounds, the sights. Recall what you were doing, what anyone else was doing. Put yourself in that moment." I spoke in the calm, measured tone a hypnotist might use, aiming to enhance her concentration. I didn't pay attention to her expression, or her breathing, instead focusing on the feel of the surrounding magic and the non-torso parts of her clothes. As the relative silence stretched on, I could feel the air grow tighter, more agitated. The magic Eva was emitting was wilder, charged with emotional energy, and it seeped into the air, and parts of it were in turn absorbed and magnified again.
Eva was wearing a fairly plain brown dress. Not the kind you'd see on someone working in the field, but not fancy or pretty either. It was a simple, utilitarian day dress for someone unconcerned with their looks. But part of it, particularly the right shoulder area, was starting to blur. Not resolving into anything quite yet, but obviously changing.
That was very, very interesting, and not what I expected. What I'd expected was, well, this next part's going to sound a little bit sexist, but something like what Rowena had. A splotch, discolorations, warts, some apparent physical change, something that made her look different.
Well, something was changing, but it wasn't her appearance.
A few seconds later the silence was violently disturbed as the door sharply opened, almost with a bang, and Eadric strode in. The sound startled Eva and broke her concentration, causing her to yelp. As she did so, the magic around her shifted and writhed almost explosively, and the small, blurring patch around her right shoulder expanded and grew and morphed in the blink of an eye.
Literally. I blinked. So did Eadric. So did Hilda, when she hurried into the room a second later.
The right shoulder of Eva's dress was no longer a plain, brown, probably woolen fabric. Instead, it was a giant, puffy, frilly, rainbow-colored monstrosity of a crime against fashion. It looked like someone took the giant pauldron off a Space Marine and Disney Princess-ified it.
"…well," I finally said. "I guess you have a gift for Transfiguration."