The Spirit Lens Read Online Free PDF Page B

mistress has not yet heard of you. I took this inquiry upon myself after hearing Portier’s report—”
    “My lord!” Father Creator, he was ready to tell all. “Discretion, sir!”
    “We must tell him the truth, Portier! For my lady’s sake. Sir mage, some days ago, my friend Portier told me of your unusual collaring at Collegia Seravain. I bade him locate you in hopes you might take an interest in my mistress’s needs. In fact, I’ve been thinking of hiring my own mage. I’ve no staff at all save my valet, which is highly improper for a person of rank, depending on others to see to my requirements. . . .” Ilario, lost in his prattling deception, flashed me a desperate look. My head threatened to split.
    The mage tossed his stylus aside and settled onto the dirt, resting his folded arms on his drawn-up knees, as if prepared to lecture us. “What part of my history leads you or you ”—he glared ferociously at me—“to believe that I might be willing to be kept in some aristo’s menagerie alongside the horses, hounds, and birds? I work as I please and study what I please, and no one demands my time be spent making love philtres or skin glamours or servicing whatever ‘unsavory’ desires your mistress wishes to indulge. I’ve countless better things to do.”
    As I tried not to stare at the mage’s now-exposed right hand—a red-scarred, twisted claw living ugly and useless at the end of a well-muscled arm—my mind raced to knit Ilario’s unraveled stupidity into a useful story. The fop had skewed the truth just enough to leave me an opening for the very test of skill and character I wished this visit to encompass. If only I knew how to entice the mage into revelations. Obviously, he cared naught for comforts or renown. What induced him to accommodate those who came here seeking his help?
    “Because the opportunities we offer are unique,” I blurted, insight like a blade between my ears. “Your history and this place”—I waved my hand to encompass his odd home—“and gossip of a forbidding mage who untangles the mysteries of broken minds led me—us—to believe we might find in you a certain . . . nontraditional . . . approach to your work. A talented man interested in puzzles.”
    “Go on.”
    Scarce daring to believe I’d guessed right, I laid down another thread. “We could offer virtually unlimited resources to advance whatever studies you wish—books, funds, connections to information and materials from every corner of the known world, the most prominent mages in Sabria as your colleagues. You would have the opportunity to collaborate in magic of a grander scale than you could—”
    Mirthless laughter halted me midargument. “So you are more fools than villains,” said the mage. “Unfortunately for you, it has been many years since I concluded that large-scale magical works are entirely sham and chicanery, and that the ‘most prominent mages’ in Sabria have not the least concept of true sorcery. In short, your benevolent mistress is misguided at best, some duc’s whore perpetuating a fraud at worst, and she could not offer me gold enough to participate in such a mockery.”
    “Speak no slander, sir!” Ilario’s words dropped in the mage’s lap like a challenge glove. “We serve the Queen of Sabria.”
    “Lord Ilario!” I snapped, horrified. The fop had almost got me believing he had a wit.
    “The queen?” The mage guffawed. “So the ‘prominent’ colleagues you offer are the shadow queen’s trained Camarilla pups? I’d sooner bed a leper than ally myself with clowns and fools.”
    No reasoning man could wholly discount the charges laid against sorcerers—that some of us paraded grand illusion in the guise of true sorcery. But this brutish arrogance was insupportable.
    “Civilized men do not belittle those they do not know,” I snapped, summoning what dignity I could muster ankle deep in a vegetable patch. “You may be gifted, sir, but the mages of the Camarilla