Page 51 of Reluctant Wizard

It took more than the hour she’d cleared, as Tandiya Uriel might be more autocratic than some people liked, but she was also thorough and so intensive in her questioning that Cillian regretted not having Alise present. He could not, for instance, tell the provost the name of the Ariel wizard who’d visited Alise. That lapse was exacerbated by his need to dance around Alise’s involvement in severing the wizard–familiar bond.

Nothing like trying to lie by omission around a powerful psychic wizard skilled at ferreting out the truth. Tandiya studied him with a vaguely disappointed expression, though much of it might have been the trouble increasingly clouding her brow as she listened. Her magic nudged him, not an invasion of his thoughts—anathema to anyone of House Uriel’s proud principles—but delivering an impulse to speak more, to spill any of his several secrets, including an abrupt and unwelcome urge to talk about Szarina, which he never felt under normal circumstances.

He narrowed his gaze at the provost. “Stop that.”

“Then tell me whatever it is you’re withholding.”

“No. It’s not mine to tell.”

She sighed with extravagant weariness and dropped her head into her hand, braced by the elbow on the arm of her chair. “Alise Elal. The bane of my existence. I should never have readmitted her to Convocation Academy.”

“She prefers Phel now.”

“I’m aware. That makes her no less of an Elal. She might struggle against her fate, but it will chase her down regardless. Some people attract trouble and she is one of them.”

“It’s not her fault. Allowing her to complete her education isn’t what’s causing all of this.”

“No, but she’s the one who woke the bear and brought it here on her tail,” the provost retorted. “I don’t like it. Hanneil espionage and high houses jockeying for political position in my hallowed halls. I don’t like it one bit,” she repeated, glaring at Cillian as if he’d somehow allowed it all to happen.

“It’s not as if any of us do,” he replied in mild rebuke, making her sigh again in exasperation.

Launching herself from the chair, Provost Tandiya Uriel prowled to the windows ringing her tower office, gazing out with her hands folded behind her back. Pressing her fisted hands to her lower spine, she arched backwards, groaning at the stretch. “I’m getting too old for this,” she remarked.

“Nonsense, Provost,” Cillian said. “You will live forever.” Tandiya Uriel had been provost of Convocation Academy his entire life. The prospect of someone else helming the august institution alarmed him on a foundational level.

She turned and gave him a wry twist of lips that wasn’t a smile. In the harsh winter light of the windows, her skin looked papery thin, the map of fine wrinkles apparent. “No one lives forever, young Harahel,” she replied, not unkindly. “It’s the one thing each of us can be sure of. However,” she continued briskly, “today is not that day for me. Not quite. I will handle the problem of this imposter who managed to be hired under fraudulent circumstances. You will remove young Wizard Alise from my academy with all speed. Take her on your field trip to House Harahel. And for the dark arts’ sake, get me some real evidence, please. If we’re going to deal with House Hanneil once and for all—as should have been done back when they first took down House Phel, which I curse my ancestors for allowing—then we need documentation to convince the majority of Convocation high houses to take the risk moving against Hanneil.”

So many questions swarmed through Cillian’s mind that he didn’t know which to lead with. “Then you believe that House Hanneil engineered the fall of House Phel?”

She snorted. “Of course. Everybody knows that.”

“No,” he said slowly, “I don’t think everybody does.”

“Anyone who was paying attention when it happened does. House Uriel knows. I’m surprised House Harahel doesn’t. Surely at least one of your eager historians wrote it down.”

He would certainly be asking questions on his visit home. “What about the other enemies of House Phel, like Sammael and Elal?”

“What about them? They’re simple scavengers and opportunists emboldened by Hanneil’s machinations. They’ll fall into line when faced with the might of the allied houses of the Convocation. They won’t like it, but they’ll do as Uriel tells them. Especially if they want to keep their lucrative high-house contracts.”

Cillian mused to himself over the commonly accepted wisdom that Elal was the most powerful house in the Convocation, when it was apparently Uriel, but obviously didn’t say so. “You mention the risk of taking on House Hanneil. Surely if all the wizards and familiars of all the high houses stand together, Hanneil will not be able to prevail?”

Provost Uriel raised her brows, pressing her lips into a line. “First off, we won’t get everyone. There will always be those who seek to ride the coattails of those lunging for absolute power, thinking they themselves will enjoy same. They are fools to believe that. House Hanneil, if they attain the power they crave, will destroy or assimilate their former allies in time. There is no room for anyone else on the throne of an empire. The other houses are wise in their cowardice, perhaps. There is no guarantee that we can defeat Hanneil. The unprincipled control of thoughts is a powerful weapon, and insidious in its operation. There are few defenses against it.”

“The dark arts,” Cillian offered, wondering how Alise was doing under Morghana Seraphiel’s tutelage.

“The dark arts, yes,” Tandiya acknowledged with a tone of resignation more than enthusiasm. “Though those operate on an individual basis and not all can learn those skills. I anticipate that Alise will be able to, but she is unusual in many ways, even uniquely suited to that sort of wizardry. There had been discussions early in Alise’s academic career regarding adding the dark arts to her curriculum. No doubt Morghana will be able to give her useful tools this morning. I know everything that occurs in my academy,” she added at Cillian’s start of surprise.

He bit his tongue on the retort that she hadn’t known about Gordon Hanneil.

“Most everything,” she amended, “and I intend to correct my recent failure to notice what I should have. At any rate, worrying about these things is my problem not yours. Remind me what you are to be worrying about?”

“Documentation of Hanneil’s conspiracy against House Phel.”

“Good boy,” the provost said with a twinkle of amusement.

“Provost, I think that Gordon Hanneil wouldn’t have tried so hard to stop Alise’s search of the archives here if there wasn’t something to find.”

“I’m not an idiot, Cillian Harahel. I understand the implications. I have understood all along, which is why I assigned the task to Alise Elal to begin with and you to supervise, given your own unique abilities. Did you think I made those decisions randomly?”

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