Page 40 of Wizards & Weavers
Braiden shook his head, his insides seething with a confused mix of endearment and irritation. A lesser elemental had poked a ferocious hole in his skin not hours ago, but the wizard was far more concerned about the hole it had poked in his pantaloons. Braiden would have chalked up the Wizard of Weathervale as a buffoon if he hadn’t already seen what the man was capable of.
“Hand them over,” he grumbled, straining to focus his gaze on the pants when Augustin did as he was commanded.
Like the shield of woven magic that Braiden could conjure, the pants had been the final layer of defense between his eyes and the almost complete nudeness of the wizard’s body. Braiden kept his head low as he paced to his side of the bed. He searched for his sewing kit so he could help the ridiculous man with his ridiculous problem.
Braiden located his sewing tin, the very same one that had once lived its life as a box of cookies. It hadn’t seemed like the correct thing to pack at the time — especially between more overtly helpful tools like a coil of rope and a lantern — but he’d grown up feeling incomplete if he traveled without a spoolof thread and some basic sewing things. A Beadle couldn’t go anywhere without a needle.
He selected the closest color of matching thread out of the rainbow of spools he carried. A midnight blue. Close enough. Setting it to one corner of the tin, he twiddled his fingers through the motions of a simple spell. Card No. 139. It had seemed so difficult to master at the time, but now Braiden considered it among the most valuable magics in his arsenal. He clicked his fingers to cast the spell.
A wreath of bluish-green flame danced along the trousers, licking at the cloth, crackling merrily as it burned away the stains and impurities. Augustin let out a yelp of defiance before he understood what was happening. Depending on Braiden’s mood, the flames left the scent of fresh linen, or cut grass, or sliced lemons.
“Is that a laundry spell?” Augustin asked, his cheeks rounded with wonder, aglow in the enchanted flames of Braiden’s magic.
Braiden bit on his lower lip, trying not to smile too hard, amused that such an accomplished wizard could be so impressed by this little display of domestic magic.
“It’s better to get the blood out before I try to mend anything,” he said, shaking the trousers off to douse the flame, satisfied that the material was clean enough to work with.
The mattress dipped as Augustin sat on the bed, a little too close for Braiden’s comfort. He still smelled of the flowery soaps and scents from when he’d washed up for the night. He was still wearing nothing but his underclothes. Braiden bit down hard on the inside of his cheeks, fighting not to glance at the very naked man sitting only inches away from him.
Augustin sniffed at the air, prodding his pants as if to make sure that they hadn’t been damaged by the flames. “Smells like oranges.”
Braiden chuckled as he arranged the garment in his lap, poking one arm through one pants leg and getting a feel of the hole. “I can do a few different scents. I thought you might like some citrus. I can also clean clothes without leaving any fragrance on them, if that’s preferred.”
“A very practical spell to have in your repertoire,” Augustin said, nodding with admiration. “There’s no such thing as small magic, I always say. The weaving arts seem so humble, but as you’ve so skillfully shown, even the unlikeliest of spells can be put to astoundingly good use.”
Braiden laughed again. “Are you talking about the part where I saved your life by throwing a blanket in front of you, or when I saved your life by plugging the hole in your leg with a bandage?”
“Oh, please,” Augustin said with an amused sniffle. “Who’s keeping count? But if we were, I’d say that the gust of wind I cast to deflect that first elemental’s icicles must have saved you from being turned into a pincushion.”
Again Braiden chuckled. The wizard wasn’t so bad when it came to banter. He couldn’t help thinking he’d be a little more comfortable with the idle chitchat if Augustin would just put on one or two more articles of clothing.
And then Augustin reached across Braiden’s body to fiddle with the sewing tin. Braiden’s nostrils filled with flowers, his personal space blazing with the heat of the wizard’s body. Just as quickly as he’d invaded, Augustin pulled away again, playing with something red and squishy in one hand.
“Speaking of pincushions,” he said, tossing the little ball from one hand to the other.
It was the plush fabric tomato that lived in Braiden’s sewing kit, the one that he thought looked so lonely trapped in the four walls of a cookie tin. Braiden shook his head and repressed a smile. Hadn’t he only thought that yesterday? And here theyboth were, he and his little tomato, bravely plunging into an underground adventure.
“My grandmother keeps one of these in her sewing kit, too,” Augustin said, juggling the tomato, having a little too much fun with a pincushion.
“I think every grandmother has one,” Braiden said. “Does she do a lot of sewing?”
“Orora Arcosa? Hah! She’s always been about profit and plunder, no matter where the wind might take her. Or where she took the wind, for that matter. She’d summon the wind to drive her ship forward, back when she was younger, but now she commands it to deliver mail for the Lighthouse. It’s funny, the places our magic can take us.”
Threading the midnight blue through a needle, Braiden nodded in silent agreement. Didn’t he know it. Not once had he ever considered the possibility of using weaving magic to deflect razor-sharp projectiles.
“It sounds to me,” Braiden said, “as if you’re hoping to find new places for your magic to take you, too.”
Augustin cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
The exhausted slope in his shoulders that only appeared so sporadically, the way Augustin would drop the mantle of the brave hero when none of his admirers were around? Braiden wasn’t sure this was the right time to get into it, but he could sense it all the same. It colored Augustin’s actions, this small, quiet sadness that seemed to follow him like a gray cloud. Was the Wizard of Weathervale tired of the adventuring life?
Braiden shook his head and said nothing in the end, pretending to focus on sewing the hole shut. He muttered a few words and twiddled his fingers, nodding in approval as the needle obeyed and hovered from his hand of its own accord. Again Augustin breathed a little gasp of delight, watchingenraptured as the needle threaded this way and that, making it so that the hole might have never existed in the first place.
Card No. 41, another simple yet extremely helpful spell. For minor fixes and small projects, nothing could beat the power to move a needle and thread with the mind. The magic drew its level of skill from the caster’s, of course, because that would be too easy otherwise.
He finished the job with a small, subtle knot, snipped the thread, and tucked the end neatly among the stitches.
“There you go,” Braiden said, handing the garment over to Augustin. “And now you’ll have something to wear to sleep, after all.”
