The Child Prince (The Artifactor) (17 page)

Bel had expected from the beginning that he would be carrying all the game on this trip. After all, that’s how it always worked between student and teacher. The student always carried the burdens while the master taught. So he opened one of the never-ending bags that Sevana had lent him, stuffed the rabbit inside, and then slung it over his back. A little heavy, but not bad at all. Satisfied he could keep up, he nodded to Baby.

The cat turned and started off, leading him directly to a nearby tree. This time, the cat moved with greater care in ascending, taking it in shorter leaps, showing Bel a way up that even a human could manage. Rubbing his palms together, Bel started upwards, following as best he could.

Maybe having a mountain lion as a teacher was unorthodox, but there was no better predator in the known world, and if he was willing to teach, then Bel would certainly do his best to learn.

~ ~ ~

Sevana holed herself up in her research room, running numbers and thinking of different combinations. Unfortunately, everything she thought of either wouldn’t be sufficient to do the job, was dangerous, or outrageously expensive.

She lost all track of time as she did this, with no thought to how many days passed while she worked. But after failing to get an epiphany, Sevana set the idea aside for a time and gave herself a mental break from it all. She wandered out of her research room and found that evening had come at some point.

“Big, where’s Bel?” She hadn’t seen him for hours.

The mountain whispered,
Outside.

Really? Hadn’t he mentioned something about doing his own research at the library? Although that was probably an excuse to see Hana. Not that it really mattered, either way.

Shrugging, she went and fixed herself something quick and easy for dinner before snagging a book and heading for her favorite comfortable chair in the main room. She snuggled in with a blanket around her legs, letting the warmth of the fire chase the chill away, and settled into her book.

A good amount of time passed before she heard the front door open and close. Big didn’t announce anyone to her, so she assumed it to be Bel, finally returning from his outing. Then the door to the room opened with a whoosh of displaced air. Sevana looked up in surprise as Bel came into the room. He looked tired, clothes covered in mud and grass stains…and did she spy leaves caught in his hair? Last she checked, the library didn’t have leaves or mud. “Where have you been?”

“Outside,” he answered as he wearily dropped into the couch, slinging his swords off automatically as he moved, setting them on the ground so he could sprawl sideways.

“That’s obvious,” she informed him, pointing at the state of his clothes. “Doing what, wrestling a bear?”

“Learning how to hunt, actually. Baby’s teaching me.”

For a moment that sentence didn’t compute at all. A mountain lion was teaching a prince how to hunt…that had to be the strangest thing she’d ever heard of. Well, aside from a boy falling prey to the Sleeping Princess curse. “And how is that going?”

He thought about it for a moment before answering, “Quite well. He’s a good teacher. I caught two quails and a rabbit today.”

With what? His bare hands? Baby didn’t use traps or anything like that, after all.

“Baby had me release them, though,” Bel continued with his eyes closed, already half-asleep. “He won’t let me kill anything that I won’t eat.”

After living with the cat for almost thirteen years, Sevana knew good and well that Baby could communicate even without being able to talk. But few people could read the cat’s expression and body language well enough to understand him. She, Big and Kip were the only three. Or so she’d thought before now. So Bel had learned how to truly pay attention to people, eh? Well enough to have a cat as a teacher.

Baby sauntered into the room and came close enough to rub up against her legs. She scratched at his chin and told him, “Your student is asleep on the chair. What are you going to do about that?”

With one last rub up against her, he casually walked over to the chair and jumped up lightly into it. Somehow, he managed to fold up so that he could squeeze into the open space behind Bel’s legs with his head pillowed on Bel’s chest. With a long sigh, the cat closed his eyes, breath evening out into a deep rhythm.

“Snuggle in with him, of course,” she murmured to herself in amusement. Cats. They just couldn’t resist a good snuggle, could they? Well, she had considered moving Bel to his bed so that he could sleep without getting a crick in his neck, but there was no way she was going to shift both prince and cat. They were on their own.

Shrugging, she went back to her book.

It had been something of a peaceful morning. Ever since Baby took Bel on as a student, they spent a good portion of the morning outside hunting…or stalking things…or whatever it was they were doing out there. It left Sevana a clear window of time each day to work without distractions.

She holed herself up in her workroom, for once focusing on something other than Bel’s problem as she dealt with some of the other orders that were piling up. There were the usual potions orders, a few of which she would need to brew and not rely on what she had in stock. Then a selection of charms, two warding spells, and—

Two paws and a head landed on her thigh. Distracted from the notebook in her hand, Sevana looked down to see what Baby wanted. The cat looked up at her dolefully, ears almost flat, and let out a soft mewl. She recognized the look all too well.

“Baby,” she asked with false mildness, “What did you do?”

The cat, if possible, drew his head even further backward so that he looked hunched over.

Oh yes, he’d done something alright. The last time she’d seen
that
look on his face, he’d broken into the cooling cabinet and eaten all of the meats. He normally didn’t report his misdeeds afterwards, though. In fact, he only came to her like this when something had seriously gone wrong, something he’d had a paw in, and he needed her help to set it right again.

Normally she would have him show her what was wrong, but since he and a certain prince were inseparable these days, she could likely just ask Bel and save herself some trouble. She looked up, toward the workroom’s door, and paused when she realized Bel hadn’t followed the cat in.

“Baby, where’s Bel?”

The cat, if possible, looked even more guilty, ears flattening straight to his head.

She gave him an incredulous look. “You lost him?!”

Giving up on trying to appeal to her sympathy, the cat changed tactics and instead tried to bury his head under her knees.

“Baby!” she spluttered, trying to push him away with both hands so she could properly see his face. “Stop that and answer me properly. Where did you lose him? Please, for the love of all that’s merciful, don’t tell me in Noppers Woods.”

Unable to hide under her legs, he switched tactics entirely and instead flopped onto his back, showing his belly and trying to look cute.

“You idiot!” she thundered, getting to her feet so quickly that it sent her chair rocking wildly behind her, nearly crashing to the floor. She ignored it and leaned menacingly over the cat. “After all my warnings?! You know better than I how dangerous those woods are! You promised you’d be careful with him!”

If Baby thought hiding under the nearby table would do any good, he’d have likely tried for it at that point. As it was, he simply rolled back over and tried to avoid her eyes.

Letting out a breath, she promised herself she’d kill him later. Right now, she needed to go on a rescue. “Alright, so who took him? The Curupira? Muma Padurii?” Either one would be bad. The first would kill him just because Bel hunted in those woods, the second would either enslave him or cook him and eat him.

Baby looked even more hangdog.

“Baby,” she growled, “Tell me it wasn’t the Fae that took him.”

The cat heaved a great sigh, his tail flopping once.

Sevana dropped her head, rubbing at her forehead in a vain attempt to prevent a headache from building. “I’d prefer for him to be eaten over dealing with that lot!”

From overhead, Big sighed,
Sevana….

“Oh stop that, both of you! Especially you, Baby, I don’t want to get those puppy eyes from someone that lost the kid to begin with.” Irritated with the world in general (and Baby in particular), she spun on a boot heel and headed for the door. “I’ll go rescue him. And Baby,
you’re
showing me the way.”

With a resigned growl, the mountain lion slouched after her.

~ ~ ~

It took a three hours hike to reach the right area. The woods always held a particular ambiance to it, as if the filtered sunlight and heavy air cast its own magic on the forest. But now she had ventured in further than she’d ever dared to before, and the woods didn’t just
feel
enchanted, but had obviously become so. Flowers and fauna she had never seen before grew up around the trees, some of them hanging from the branches, giving off their own magical light in dim whites and greens. The trees were ancient, gnarled with age and large enough that ten grown men could not wrap their arms around a trunk. Baby hadn’t dared to climb even one trunk and take his more lofty highway, which said something all by itself. He meekly stayed on the ground, following the very winding dirt trail that snaked its way between the trees.

Sevana breathed in deeply as she moved, feeling the slight ache in her calves from the continuous hike. She could smell water from up ahead, which didn’t particularly surprise her, as the Fae preferred to build their homes around bodies of water. (Humans did the same thing.) She hadn’t thought a river or pond existed in these woods, but then, no human had dared to come and explore the area well enough to draw a map. Even she wouldn’t have come this deep without a life on the line.

She didn’t think that she could just waltz in and out of Fae territory, not without either a fight or a very interesting discussion. So before she’d left Big, she’d armed herself with four different wands, a focusing crystal around her neck, two daggers strapped to her thighs, a sword at her back, and a pouch at her waist with various potions and ready-made spells. Sevana didn’t believe for one second that she could hold off all of the Fae with just what she had on her. But she didn’t think this would become an all-out war, either.

Many eyes followed her as she walked along the path, but she didn’t look up, and didn’t do anything that they would mistake as threatening. If they were letting her come in, she would. It would likely be hard enough leaving, she didn’t want to make it twice as difficult by fighting her way
in
as well.

The path led her around one of the more ancient trees, its branches so long that they dipped down to touch the earth before rising up again. She ducked her away around it, careful not to touch any part of it—Fae were funny about their trees—and at last came into view of the Fae…village? Town? It didn’t look like any of those, not by human eyes. The buildings were round and flowing, made of a material she couldn’t begin to guess at, which wrapped its way naturally from one tree to another. Stones had been moved to create natural walkways that led up to the different levels, as the…village…wrapped its way gradually upwards, using the massive branches as platforms. Even standing here, looking at it directly, she knew that there were parts of this place she couldn’t see. The builders had done that remarkable a job in blending in their homes with the woods.

The pond stretched out in front of her, stepping stones leading across the water, but she stopped right there at the water’s edge. The Fae kept interesting pets, some of them water-bound, and she had no intention of tempting fate by crossing that water until she was invited to do so. Instead she called out in a strong voice, “I have come unto your home and I offer apologies. My name is Sevana Warran. I have come in search of a boy named Bellomi.”

The cat behind her started to slink back toward the relative safety of the woods.

“And Baby, if you move one more step, I’ll castrate you,” she promised from the side of her mouth.

The cat stopped dead, giving off a pitiful whine.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she retorted, still speaking softly and from the side of her mouth, never taking her eyes from the area in front of her. “You’re the one that took the kid too deep into the woods.
You’re
the one that gets to apologize.”

Baby let out a disgusted snort.

“He says that it’s not his fault.” The speaker stepped out into view from thin air, as far as Sevana could tell. He stood taller than she, taller than even Kip who was unusually tall. Slender, fair of skin, with platinum blond hair that floated around his shoulders and the clearest blue eyes she’d ever seen, he was the epitome of beauty. But then, all Fae were. He took two gliding steps toward her, the ankle-length coat of deep green he wore flaring about as he walked, revealing bare feet. “He said that he was nowhere near our territory and so cannot be blamed.”

Sevana took in a deep breath to control her rapidly beating heart. She normally wasn’t a woman that turned her head over a good looking man, but a woman would have to be
dead
to not react to him. “It’s still his fault,” she responded levelly. “The child you took is his student. His safety is Baby’s responsibility.”