Page 33 of Strange Familiar

“The control groups,” Han spat.

“Yes. I mean, they’re not wrong, but,” Cillian added hastily, “that could have been corrected. That’s what Anciela brought to the committee. She wanted trials run in the various high houses, to expand the experimental groups and see if they could replicate results. The problem with the scientific approach was that the technique could trigger the ability in a familiar to wield magic, to become a full wizard. There wasn’t an obvious control for that.”

Han and Iliana stared at him in smoldering rage, as if he’d been the one to decide that. “I’m not defending the committee’s debate,” he clarified, “just explaining it.”

“But, they could have—” Iliana burst out, cheeks bright red, usually warm brown eyes glittering.

“The other houses didn’t want to conduct the experiments,” Han interrupted, sounding resigned.

“It appears not,” Cillian agreed. “I have to read more, but it seems they implemented a number of delaying tactics. Anciela planned to return to House Phel to create a new experimental paradigm. The minutes are quite dry, as you can imagine…” He cleared his throat aware of descending into pedantry again to avoid the extreme emotion of the topic. “But it seems clear that Wizard Phel was exceedingly upset with the committee.”

“Good ol’ Anciela,” Iliana murmured. “And no one even remembers her.”

“Erased from history,” Cillian agreed. “Along with her research.”

“Did they destroy it all?” Han demanded, sliding a look at Iliana.

And Cillian became abruptly and painfully aware of the keen-edged presence of hope in another. Did he nurture that hope, only to risk having it dashed forever at a later point—or kill it now out of mercy and in the expectation that they might find something eventually? What would you want? he asked himself. The truth.

“We don’t know,” he said. “It could be it was destroyed as too dangerous to the status quo.”

“What would wizards do without familiars?” Iliana asked bitterly, of no one at all.

“They would be less powerful,” Han answered thoughtfully, though they all knew she hadn’t been seeking an actual answer. “Converting familiars to wizards would double the population of wizards.”

“More like quadruple,” Cillian put in absently, skimming the rest of the committee minutes. At their fraught silence, he glanced up. “Is that not well known? The number of familiars has been regularly three to four times as many as wizards, closer to four in the last fifty years or so.”

“No,” Iliana said. “At school they made it sound pretty close to one to one.”

“At least in the classes for familiars,” Han added. “No wonder they keep floating the idea of changing the laws so wizards can bond more than one familiar.”

“Though with the practice of keeping in-house familiars for general use, like House Sammael planned for me,” Iliana replied, “they effectively have that setup but without the bonding.”

“I wonder how many wizards have bonded more than one familiar?” Cillian mused aloud, then nearly laughed at their shocked expressions. “Oh, come on—surely you can’t be surprised by the suggestion that the high houses might bend or break the law within their own hallowed halls? It’s practically Convocation custom to do so.”

“I wonder if that’s what Sabrina had planned for me.” Iliana looked at Han. “That would make a certain sick sense.”

“It would,” he agreed grimly. “But I want your opinion, Wizard Cillian.”

At the sudden formality, Cillian straightened and met Han’s gaze. “On whether the experimental design and data were destroyed?”

“Yes. You’ve been talking about how you believe a Harahel wizard had to create this folded archive and that they might have done so in order to avoid fully destroying the texts. What if it had been a bonded pair? A wizard-familiar partnership might have worked together to subvert the destruction of the data, maybe thinking they’d be able to get it out again, once the conspirators weren’t watching so closely.”

“Harahel wizards don’t work with familiars,” Cillian replied automatically.

“Ever?” Iliana pressed. “Never ever in all of House Harahel’s storied history?”

Cillian gave her a dry look for her exaggeration. “All right, not never ever, but not typically. Let’s say rarely.”

“And if there was such a pairing, maybe they were in love,” Iliana continued, warming to her subject. “The wizard would have wanted the best for their familiar, the same freedom and social status. They could have planned the hidden archive and saved the information, for someday.” She cast a longing glance at the middle of the air where Cillian focused when accessing the folded space, as if she could see it for herself.

Cillian didn’t point out the flaws in her romantic story, unwilling to rain on her parade—and dash her hopes. “What we can postulate is that these minutes were certainly hidden first or early on. And that House Phel was destroyed by a coalition of other houses in order to suppress this information.”

“The Phel library was only partially sunk, though,” Han pointed out. “Why not destroy all of it, if they wanted to be sure?”

“A good question,” Cillian allowed. “Another question is how. How did they manage to suppress magic in the Phel family to bring down the house?”

“And why did it suddenly pop up again in Gabriel and Seliah?” Iliana wondered. “We’re always speculating on that.”

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