Page 6 of Invocation

Chapter 2

The four of them sat around Aruna’s aunt’s kitchen table. They all fell silent when the door opened again a few minutes after their arrival.

Aruna’s sharp-faced aunt, Shadri, walked in, and slowed when her eyes fell on them. She tipped her nose up and brushed past them, saying something in Varai as she passed. Aruna gave a nervous smile and said something that made the woman huff sarcastically in response.

She set down a basket and set about fixing the fire in the hearth, which had dwindled while she’d been away. Aruna jumped up to help her, but she impatiently shooed him away.

The violet-eyed boy Novikke had met earlier—Aruna said his name was Nhazin—came through the door next, dragging a large stick with him. Shadri looked up and snapped something at him. Nhazin sighed and tossed the stick outside. He was halfway across the room again when she barked at him, pointing at the door. The boy glowered, returned to the entryway, and dutifully wiped his feet on the mat before coming in again.

Their conversation came to an end now that there were other people there to overhear. They sat close to the table, trying not to be any more intrusive than they had to. Nhazin wandered around the edge of the room, playing with the corner of a rug or poking at the fire while he pretended not to stare at them.

Shadri mostly ignored them, but still shot them continual suspicious, annoyed glances.

Novikke wrote in the notebook while Neiryn and Kadaki quietly began discussing something related to the ruin’s magic that was too esoteric for her to parse. “She doesn’t like us being here,” she observed.

“No,” Aruna wrote, not really looking at her. He seemed distracted. “Housing our enemies does not endear her to the rest of the village. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had any other option.”

“But she let us stay anyway?”

He shrugged. “I knew she wouldn’t turn us away.”

“Was it her bed I was sleeping in?”

“Yes.”

“Ash. Please apologize to her for me. You could have just put me on the floor somewhere, I’d not have known the difference.”

He laughed under his breath.

Shadri had started cooking something. She had a stack of some kind of purple root vegetable that she was cutting into slices and throwing into a pot. Aruna tried to help her again, and she turned him away once more. He reluctantly returned to his seat at the table, frowning.

A while later, Neiryn got up and stood by her while she worked. She glanced up at him, disinterested, and went back to her chopping.

But he talked to her, wearing his best smile, the one that improved his already handsome face by at least several notches. Shadri gave perfunctory responses. Over the course of a few minutes, Novikke watched the angry tension drain from the woman’s shoulders. After another few minutes, Shadri laughed aloud at a joke he’d made.

Eventually she started giving him tasks to assist with—cutting or cleaning or fetching this or that—which, to Novikke’s surprise, he performed gladly and adeptly. Aruna watched all of this with a faintly annoyed expression.

She was even more surprised when something Neiryn said made Shadri laugh so heartily that she stopped in the middle of stirring a pot and playfully slapped his arm. Her hand remained touching him a little longer than Novikke had expected it to.

The corners of Neiryn’s lips curved up. His eyes slid toward Novikke and Aruna, gloating. Novikke, grudgingly impressed, mimed applause. Aruna rolled his eyes.

Kadaki was the only one not watching. She had inadvertently caught Nhazin’s attention and was performing an impromptu magic show. She’d seemed uncertain at first, but the longer it went on, the more pleased she looked with the uncritical attention.

Novikke realized, after watching for a while, that she’d been smiling without meaning to. It was all pleasantly domestic.

When was the last time she had spent time with family or friends? Not since her parents had passed, at least. This kind of scene was foreign to her these days.

“Novikke,” Aruna said quietly. He’d gotten up from the table, carrying the notebook in one hand. He jerked his head toward the door.

Novikke followed him out into the darkness. He took her hand and pulled her off the porch, around the corner, to the back of the house. He stopped beside the back wall and turned to her. The night was dark, and the shadows behind the house were pitch black. She heard pages turning. She pulled out her mage torch.

His hand penciled letters in the book. Just one word, and then he stopped. He held the pencil against the paper, as if he’d planned to write more but didn’t know how to finish. He gave up and held it out to her.

“Why?” he’d written.

Why?

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Why had she nearly killed herself to save him?

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