Chapter 10: "Tested" (part a)

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True to her word, Hamoni had the two lads carry up a console radio, which Teine immediately cleared a space for near an outlet. There was only the one station, of course, but it played its share of music interspersed with news, sports reports, and updates on the storm. Though things were bad all along the seaboard, Teine himself felt pretty safe in the tower. Some towns inland were reporting damage, including a railroad bridge destabilized by flooding that was putting a halt to all train stops along that route. Aside from the predictable weather-related damage from a hurricane or other storm of this magnitude, the reports of magical activity had been flooding in as well. The news was increasingly peppered with sensational reports of supernatural and magical phenomena, including a formerly docile carriage horse for a private girls' school suddenly speaking telepathically as broadly as an average holidocrith.


"But don't you worry." Teine was just thinking the announcer's tone sounded forced when he continued. "You won't have to worry about a dangerous animal pulling your daughter to school. The poor beast was immediately put down as a danger to the public good." Teine couldn't help but cringe, and wonder in passing why carnivorous, intelligent holidocrith were deemed perfectly safe- while a grass-eating, intelligent horse was suddenly a matter of public safety. It didn't make much sense to him, but he shrugged it off to listen to the advertisements.


Teine listened to the radio for the music, which in his opinion was well worth the wait through all the commercials and alarming news updates. It made a solitary task pass quickly. When the regular broadcast resumed he hummed along with the Paxnem City Orchestra as the station played a recording of the previous night's Eoaster Ball at the Palace. Lively and designed for dancing, the music was a pleasant distraction as he dusted and examined the furniture, setting aside a few choice pieces he liked and thought might be useful in the suite he and Marne were getting. The whole operation made him feel important, and as he reflected on the myriad events of the previous day, he felt some satisfaction in the outcome. As Leis had said, he was on the tracks to a grand adventure. Perhaps this time next year, he and Marne would be attending the Ball at the Palace, rather than listening to the broadcast.


Teine's daydreaming made the work pleasant and it made the hours fly by. By the time Madric appeared shortly before lunch, he'd cleaned and carried down the entire assembly of old school desks, plus many other odds and ends. "Look at that!" Madric exclaimed as he came around the bend at the base the tower stairs. He considered the clean furniture piling up in the main floor great room with an appraising eye. "You've gotten a lot accomplished. I'll send someone when lunch is ready." As Teine continued his way back up, he couldn't help but be pleased by the praise. Still basking in the warm glow of the magician's approval, he went back into the storage room, trying to decide what to do next.


As he surveyed the mountain of furniture, though, something caught his eye. Even though the dust in the room ranged from a few months old on some of the newer additions to many years old, it was still obvious when anything was disturbed. And something had been disturbed. There was a fresh track, where someone had pushed their way through between a couple bureaus and past an endtable. It was obvious, and it was also obvious that it definitely a fresh track that he, himself had not made. "Huh?" Teine muttered under his breath. Curious, he followed the clean trail, wondering what his mysterious visitor had been looking for.


The trail ended at what looked like an ancient, but beautifully made night stand. Covered in handprints, the piece of furniture had very clearly been handled recently. It looked as though someone had rested his or her hand, and also touched the face of the drawer and the drawer pull. Eying the handprint as if it would betray some hint of its owner, Teine made a print of his own hand next to it for comparison. He was a young man, and while the handprint was nearly as long as his, it was much more slender. There was no mistaking it; the mystery prints belonged to an Aoife.


Teine ruminated on that for a second, idly pulling the drawer open. His eyes widened in surprise as a few senta coins fell out, jingling merrily as they hit the floor. But what was odd about the situation is the coins fell not from the drawer itself, but from where they must have been shoved underneath the drawer, to fall when the drawer was disturbed. "That's strange," Teine thought out loud. Crouching to examine the set up, he tried to see if his guess as to where the coins had been was correct. When he attempted to replace them where he was sure they'd been, they fit perfectly and fell out easily at not only the pull of the drawer, but even if the nightstand were disturbed at all. Standing up, he cupped the coins in his hands, contemplating them while he considered their odd placement. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that whoever had put these coins there had made a straight line incursion into dusty furniture territory to place this bait, and had left by the same trail. No other furniture had been disturbed, save for the systematic disturbing that Teine had been working on all morning.


Cupped in Teine's hands, the silver pieces looked like a healthy pile. Keeping them would have more than doubled his personal savings. And he knew that to an Aoife, they represented mere pocket change- a sum that would normally never be missed.


Unless it was a test, of course.


Feeling oddly disappointed, Teine pocketed the money. He'd give it to Madric, of course. He'd have given it to Madric, even if it hadn't so obviously been a test. And he'd do it at lunch, during the normal course of things, as such business should be handled. To run down and disturb the Aoife magician over a trifling sum would have painted Teine as petty and insecure. Teine was very secure, in fact, he was secure enough to wish that he'd found money that hadn't been planted, so he could show he'd do the right thing even when it wasn't expected of him.


Despise his disappointment in the clumsiness of the test, Teine wasn't disappointed that Madric had tried to test him. It made sense to want to know the character, the mettle, of a new servant in one's home. The thing that rankled was the obviousness of the ploy. Either Madric thought him to be a dullard who wouldn't catch on to his bait, or Madric himself wasn't as clever as Teine had thought. If he had his choice, Teine would rather it be the former. He liked Madric, and wanted to respect him.


With a sigh, Teine went back to the edge of the furniture's ranks and began cleaning the enormous oaken wardrobe he'd been avoiding right in the center of the room. He didn't fancy trying to muscle it downstairs, but the more he examined the piece he thought he might not have to. With its burled wood accents and heavy goldtone pulls, it had rather grown on him. Teine was just shoving it into place with a bedframe and a bureau he'd set aside when the bell rang downstairs. He assumed it meant lunch, but he only had to guess for a second before he could hear Hamoni's light steps pattering up the stairs.


Lunch turned out to be a quiet affair, with both Madric and Hamoni engaged with projects in other parts of the tower. Teine was left to himself to enjoy his creamed potato soup and stuffed pocket sandwiches with apple juice. He even had time to retrieve his letter from Vosh and the notebook he shared with Leis, and get caught up on his reading.


Vosh's letter, like most of his correspondence, had been written a paragraph at a time over the course of several days. Also true to form, his handwriting was dreadful. Teine smiled, remembering how Vosh could pass him notes in class with near utter brazenness, as no-one could read his writing except Teine. Vosh had been up to spring training, and from the way he told the tale it was a wonder he'd had the strength to lift a pen at night, after they were done with him. He'd been in training for a year, and after a summer of scrimmage play, Vosh would be offered up on lease as a draft candidate for some of the lower level professional teams when the season restarted in fall. Vosh went through about a page and a half moaning over his indecision over which position he preferred, and shared a lively retelling of the dressing down he'd gotten from Driller Incladius for his waffling. According to Vosh, Incladius (or "Inky" as Vosh called him) made Solmurry's own Driller Goran look like a "a toothless old huggy-hound." Teine couldn't help but chuckle out loud at that one, for the instant he'd read Vosh's words, he'd immediately pictured Marne's hound, "Stinky." It was an apt comparison on two fronts, and two fronts only. Both the dog and the coach had a perpetually sad expression, especially around the eyes. Both also sported some particularly vile breath. Teine didn't care what bravado Vosh might try to pass during a letter, but Driller Goran was very intimidating, especially surrounded by his ill-tempered physical fitness enthusiasts that were his disciples. Now, if he could get Vosh to share his sentiments with Driller Goran when he came home next, that would be a sight to see.


Leis's addition to their ongoing joint storytelling effort was good, but unexpected. Mirriam had been planning to steal one of the foreign raider's horses and ride it home to get help in saving her friend Davy, but Leis had decided that Mirriam didn't have enough horse skill to pull that off. The horse, knowing full well that Mirriam was not its master, and also sensing her inexperience, bucked her off and ran away. Mirriam, now injured and discouraged by her spill, needed a new plan, and it was up to Teine to give her a good one. Many interesting possibilities raced through Teine's head, and it was a thrilling feeling to be on the receiving end of such a huge burst of creativity. Mirriam, like Teine himself, had a world of possibilities available to her that Teine would have not even considered a mere two days ago. He longed to pour out the details of his last day and a half to Vosh, or narrow down some of the choices for Mirriam, but he thought he might be better off if he waited and spent the rest of the day coming up with just the right way to say what he wanted to say in his next correspondence. Leis once compared a good story to a good stew- it gets better if you leave it set. It was a sentiment that was time-tested for the two amateur writers, and one Teine agreed with heartily.


Besides it would give him something interesting to mull over when the news broadcasts interrupted his music.


Just as he was folding up Vosh's letter and using it as a bookmark in the story journal, Hamoni came dancing into the kitchen, humming to music that Teine recognized from the radio earlier that day. "La dee dah, dum, ta da!" she warbled, twirling as if she were dancing in the arms of some invisible partner. "Come on, Teine! Dance with me!" she urged.


Teine's mouth went dry, and suddenly he felt like his hands were twice the size they should be. "Um, I..." he stammered, trying to figure out what to do. Were she a human girl, he could just spin her up into his arms and play along. "I can't... dance," he started to fib.


"Oh, bother!" the Aoife girl laughed. "No-one knows how to dance around here but Madric, and he's too serious."


Teine had a hard time applying that descriptor to the Aoife magician, from what little he'd seen, but he didn't want to risk correcting the girl. Instead, he tucked the journal back under his arm and stood. "Besides, Hamoni-my-dear," He continued playfully, trying to make it clear that he did like her. "It's time for me to get some more of that furniture cleaned. I've had more than enough time for lunch." As if to emphasize his well-bred politeness and other sterling qualities, he carried his plate and cup to the sink and spent a moment washing them, before leaving them on the rack to dry.


"Well, that's what I came down to tell you," Hamoni said, sitting down on the bench to watch. "Madric said he's ready when you are. I'll meet you up there." Then, with a twirl of thick skirts and coil of plaited hair, she was gone.

To read the next installment of Chapter 10, "Tested" (part b), click HERE!
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The Gilded Shackle is the first book in The Evermancer Saga, a series of online serial novels. Go go right to the most recent chapter, go to www.evermancer.com.

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