Work Text:
It was only after Maud began to think of her magic as tamed that it began again to get her into trouble.
Her lessons with Wizard Tammas were carefully planned, each one building on the previous, as orderly as the folds in the paper Maud made under his watchful eye. The result when she channeled her smoke-curls of magic through the sharp-edged channels was the same in essence as what her mentor's beams of light achieved. The incidental appearance of the magic was, however, very different.
It had been a year and a little more since Maud came to live in the big house with her cousin Clary, Clary's employer Tammas, and his four cats. In that time Maud had learned many useful things she could do with her magic.
She could cool a hot stove in the summer after cooking was done. She could make lights dance up to the high ceilings to make sure she had removed all the spiderwebs and dust, lights that the cats very much enjoyed chasing and leaping to play at hunting. She could identify which preserves had spoiled without opening the seals. And there were a dozen other handy bits of household magic.
Maud had also learned tricks that were of no use she could see, but Wizard Tammas assured her were building blocks of things that would later be useful. She could put a cloud of magic into a jar and seal it up from the inside so it could not be opened. She could chill a windowpane so ice formed on its surface, even when the air around it was warm. She could reach out with a wispy curl of magic and make a feather move from across a room, though she wasn't yet able to bring it to herself or control what direction it moved in.
That would come, her mentor assured her.
She had not forgotten the White Mages, and they had not forgotten her, but there was no immediate threat. Ornate certification had arrived covered in glowing sigils representing the evaluation of the Council that she had been found to have acted lawfully in the deaths of their associates, and it was stored in a safe place in Wizard Tammas's own library.
They would not try anything unlawful. Tammas said so and Clary said so and Maud had to believe them. She had to, and she did. Nightmares and waking worries to the contrary didn't count.
As long as Maud didn't do anything bad, she was safe. And her magic hadn't done anything bad in so long that she began to feel safe, too.
Then she dropped a dish while washing it. It didn't shatter. When Maud bent to pick it up, a jagged ceramic dagger came loose, leaving a narrow triangular gap like a missing tooth.
She was not ready for what happened next. Her magic slipped into the angle as if it was one of the folded papers. Perhaps it meant to mend the plate, but that wasn't what happened.
The dish exploded in her hands. Shards of ceramic and stained powder flew all over, scattering onto the floor, her sleeves, and her apron. Splinters scored her face and stuck in her hair.
Maud tore the apron off and fled, leaving the remaining dirty dishes behind. Out the door, heedless of the wards and her own fear of being outdoors in public, she ran into the park to the big hedge, through the barely visible gap between bushes and into the dim green center.
This was Maud's secret hideout, the one no one knew about but her. She came here to think, or to avoid Clary when Clary was after her to do the worst chore of all of them, laundry, or to make gifts for Wizard Tammas or Clary so they'd be properly secret until the time came to give them.
Usually she was happy here. This time, tears soaked her sleeves until it was as if a very small cloud had been raining on them. She rolled the wet sleeves up and wiped her eyes with her arm instead.
#
Pireet heard Maud leave, the sounds of her footsteps and the big door meshing into a clear meaning. He kept track of the inhabitants of his territory by sound.
He did not like it when she left. She smelled like fear before leaving, if he was close enough to her to catch the scent. She was afraid she would lose her way back, or of the other creatures out there who might prey on her. He thought Maud should stay in her own territory with him. Clary could handle the hunting for the whole household, as she had before.
This time, there was a clatter before Maud left, so he thought she had been scared away by that. Usually she was not so timid, not like Shena, who was probably curled up in one of her hiding spots right now.
After a short time, Pireet went after Maud. He knew her hiding places as well as he knew Shena's, even if they were not sensible like Shena's and weren't inside the territory.
That bush was the one he found her in. "Egg," Pireet said when he found her.
She petted him and said something too complicated for him to follow. But she was sad. Pireet groomed her soothingly.
Maud wasn't looking at him, and he was listening to her, and something came in. It was like the tendrils that surrounded Maud sometimes, but it was from the outside, and it was trying to get inside Pireet. It held him immobile and he couldn't see it, or smell it, or hear it, but he could feel it and it felt wrong. All wrong. He made a helpless, wordless yowl about it, and then he couldn't make a sound, or move.
#
It was nice of Pireet to come out and try to comfort her. Maud nearly laughed when he asked her for an egg, and tried to explain what had happened with the dish.
He probably hadn't followed it, but he licked her arm and it was nice to have him snuggled up against her. She was almost ready to go back in when he made a strange, choked meow that she was almost certain wasn't a word. "Are you all right, Pireet?" she asked.
His head nodded. Maud wasn't sure she remembered him doing that before, but it reassured her anyway. He was awkward when he moved to push his head against her hand, but his fur was as warm and soft as ever. Hesitant out of fear, Maud thought, frowning.
"Maybe you should be afraid of me," Maud told the cat. "If you were there when I exploded that plate," and she stopped, not wanting to imagine that. Tears she had successfully been holding back threatened to fall. "Maybe I should stay here and never go back."
"Esgomtogether," Pireet said. His voice sounded more garbled than usual. What Maud was accustomed to was the cat giving her a single, clear, short word that encapsulated his meaning, even if she had to think hard to figure out how, sometimes. This, though. It almost sounded like he was trying to say, let's go home together, and that was a huge leap in vocabulary for him.
He was, she thought as the tears welled up and no amount of rubbing her arms across her eyes seemed to even slow them down, a wonderful creature, a better friend than someone like her deserved. To make that great an effort to speak, for her. Maud held him tightly and, unlike usual, he didn't squirm to make himself comfortable or make her loosen her hold. He didn't purr, but he nestled close and relaxed against her. The warmth of him and the rhythm of his heartbeat against her chest soothed her, and finally her tears slowed, then stopped.
Only then did he start to purr and squirm to make her let him go. Maud set Pireet down under the bush, and crawled out after him. He was back to himself now, she thought, moving with his typical grace and waving his tail high. "Home," he said in something much closer to his normal voice.
"Yes, all right," Maud said. Maybe it had been a fluke, maybe it would not happen again. If she was more careful and didn't break any plates. If she kept a tighter hold on her magic.
"Egg?" Pireet asked hopefully.
"I'll give you part of my egg," Maud told him. "As my thanks." She didn't need to say what she was thanking him for. He knew, or if he didn't, he wouldn't understand the explanation anyway. He was, after all, a cat. Feelings made more sense to them by observation than by words.
Which was nearly true of people, too, Maud considered. She resolved to watch her own feelings more closely, rather than trying to put them into words, so she might better understand herself.
Over the next several weeks, she noticed that, more often than not, if she had a magic lesson, Pireet was there to observe it. Trying to make sure she didn't run out of the house again if something went wrong, she thought, or maybe he had decided he would rather stay around his people more.
It didn't occur to her that Pireet watching her lessons was anything to worry about.
#
He didn't want to watch the magic things any more. Pireet's silent protests against the not-Maud tendrils that kept him from doing what he wanted went unanswered. Most of the time he was still able to be himself. While Maud slept, or did housework, or sat grooming him or one of the other cats with her handbrush, he was nearly free.
It didn't feel like true freedom, because those tendrils were everpresent. As soon as Wizard Tammas indicated it was time for folding practice or a lecture on theory, it would take him over. At first, all he felt was his own fear and resentment about not being his own cat. Tammas had promised!
Pireet knew this invader wasn't something his people knew about. He wanted to tell them, but the times he had tried, the tendrils had turned threatening. He was angry about it, but resigned. There was nothing he could do.
#
Her left arm curled up in pain tight against her side. Her magic spread, choking the room with itself. Maud hadn't known it could or would hurt her, this was the first time. Wasn't its fury to defend her?
But she had been pushing, so hard, and here was the consequence. She could not believe she'd been so foolish.
Wizard Tammas's words cut through the opaque fog. Though she could not see his face, she knew the expression that must be on it, his anger the greater for his long patience with her. "Maud, you can fix this."
Such horrible words. She could not fix anything, her magic only broke things. Like the plate. Like the White Mages. Maud gripped the paper she had folded in her right hand. Rip it, she thought, and throw away the shreds. She would have, if the difficulty of tearing paper one-handed had not momentarily stymied her.
"Smooth the paper flat and start the fold again," Tammas said.
She put the paper down and put her right hand atop it, then ran it over the surface. The pain in her left arm eased, but she still couldn't uncurl it. "I ruined it." The words slipped out. "I can't fix things, not with this! When I tried," and her voice failed her. When she tried, she broke things worse.
"Your arm is not broken. It is entangled. Maud, listen to me. You can do this." The voice came through. Even with her eyes filled with roiling dark magic, she could see the folds she needed to make, and the place she had gone wrong. By that sense and not by ordinary sight, Maud carefully refolded the paper into the proper design. Not with force but with a kind of longing, she pulled the writhing mass of the magic into those folds.
Her vision cleared as jolts of pain shot through her arm, sharp tingles as though she had been sleeping on it and the nerves had to come back to life. She could move it again.
"There, good," Wizard Tammas said gently.
Pireet was staring at him. She had not thought of the cat being there! What if he had been hurt? "Pireet, are you all right?" Maud rushed over to him. The cat was strangely still, not moving, and her worry spiked again. "Something's wrong with him, what did I do to him?" Her fingers moved to his throat, to feel for a pulse or the vibration of a purr.
She found both. As she did so, Pireet relaxed and pushed his head into her hand. She sighed with exhausted relief.
"I think that should be all for this afternoon," Wizard Tammas said.
Maud looked up at him. She wanted to plead, but did not even know what for.
"Remember this, how you were able to fix this yourself. Maud, you must understand and accept your power. There is nothing more important to your future." Tammas crouched next to her and Pireet, placing his hand comfortingly on first her head, then the cat's.
Then he left the room.
"How can he trust me not to hurt you," Maud said, her effort in vain to keep herself from crying again. But it was clear the wizard did trust her. His cats were his family, she knew that, and he still let her stay here with them, with him, with Clary. It was hard to believe in herself. It was also hard to doubt herself when someone like him did not. "But I wish you wouldn't insist on watching all my lessons anymore," Maud told Pireet. "It isn't like I have time to pet you while I'm practicing."
"Wish," Pireet said.
Maud smiled and stood. "Wish for fish?" she asked, feeling better.
"Fish," Pireet agreed. She took him to the kitchen for his dinner.
#
Nieve wondered for the first time if she had made a mistake. The cat had seemed such a brilliant opportunity. Unsheltered by the wards, able to walk right through them, and carry her awareness with him, Pireet had been a perfect opening to spy on the wizard who had seized her distant young cousin and discover his weakness, so she could get the child away from him.
He was teaching Maud all wrong. Her power wasn't being used the way it was meant to. She was hidden away, not out causing problems for the oppressive mages that kept her family and others like them from living their intended lives, not learning to channel her magic far away from herself so she wouldn't be suspected of the destruction it caused.
But he wasn't harming the child. What he was teaching her was at least well meant, she thought. Kind, even.
Still, she told herself, he was one of them and had to be stopped. Even a good person could stand in the way of destiny and need to be swept aside.
But the doubt was growing in her mind.
#
Clary had lost a dwinnerlock. Maud was not even sure of what the thing was, but Clary had become so intermittently frantic to find it that Maud knew she had to do something.
"Could you teach me finding something lost?" she asked Wizard Tammas before their next lesson.
"Knowing where it has gone and bringing it back are two different things," he told her. "Can you think of a way to use something you have learned to do either of those?"
Maud tried to come up with a good answer. She could make cold and heat, light and darkness, she could seal and open, but directions were difficult, and bringing something close, oh, that was an idea. "Bringing things close would be the reverse of pushing them away."
"Yes," Tammas said, clearly pleased. "And how do you make it selective?"
Maud knew this one. "The sympathetic linking." But what could she use to link to Clary's dwinnerlock? Maybe, since Clary had given her the dress she was wearing, that would work. No, wouldn't that link to everything Clary had brought into the house? That was too many things, it would make a huge mess. "What do you do if the link isn't selective enough?"
"A smaller spell to push away the things unwanted, with their own link."
She could use nearly anything in the room to cancel the pull on things that she knew of. But then it would pull any secret possession of Clary's to her, and that would be cruel, or embarrassing, or both. "Is there a way to make a word into a sympathetic link?"
"Now that is an interesting question." The wizard looked approving. "That which names is a magic neither of us is practiced in, but it is one of the primary strains in the southern island chain." He went on, but she didn't stay focused on the geographical details.
The wizard clearly hadn't understood what Maud meant. She tried to imagine how to make a word a link. It seemed like it must be possible. Write it on the paper, she considered, that could be a way. She carefully spread a piece of blue and white folding paper in front of her, and wrote dwinnerlock on one of the white parts.
Wizard Tammas noticed. "Thought of something you want to try?" he asked mildly.
Maud nodded. "I am going to try finding by pulling myself to the word link," she said. "Only a little pulling, not hard, but it will show me what direction the thing might be." It could work, she thought hopefully.
"You haven't mastered pulling," Wizard Tammas reminded her. "Moving things at a distance, yes, but not drawing them to yourself."
Which was true, she hadn't, and only now that she was trying to do a different kind of pulling did she realize why. "Because I'm afraid of things coming at me fast," she said, explaining it to herself as much as to Wizard Tammas. "If they come too fast, they'll strike me, and hurt. My magic doesn't want to let that happen, so it won't bring them."
He was watching her, listening to her, but he didn't say anything.
So she went on. "But this will be pulling myself, so I feel it, but not so hard it will even move me. And the thing I'm pulling toward won't move. So it won't scare me, so my magic will let me do it." She felt very sure.
"Go ahead, then," Tammas said.
She gathered the magic as she folded the paper into the pattern for moving an object, a mirror image of how she had last practiced the fold, to move a spoon lying out of reach on a table. This time it was to pull at Maud herself, toward the dwinnerlock. The magic spilled and massed in the folds, swirling around them and growing as it reversed course and surrounded Maud in its dark cloud. Was it pulling? She couldn't feel the pull. She couldn't see at all. "What is it doing to me?" she asked in a sudden panic. If she had got the folds wrong, it could be like the time it tried to break her arm. Before she thought again, Maud had pushed the blue and white paper flat again in front of her.
Before she could press it smooth with her hands, Tammas said, "Wait!" in a voice near panic.
Maud froze. "Dizzensayf," Pireet said.
She could see again, though the magic still surrounded her, and though her vision was strange and entirely messed up. Wizard Tammas glowed and so did Maud herself, she could see her hands glowing purple, and the wizard surrounded by sky-blue light, and Pireet glowed green. But while Tammas's glow was the same shape as him, and so was Maud's from what she could tell, Pireet's glow looked like a human, a woman. Not anyone Maud had ever met, maybe a little like Clary or her mother, though it was hard to tell in the green glow.
And Pireet had done that thing again, tried to say a sentence instead of just a word, slurred it like he had forgotten physically how to talk even as he suddenly knew human language ten times as well. That woman, that was not Pireet!
"I think he's possessed!" Maud exclaimed. "Pireet!"
Wizard Tammas did something. Maud couldn't quite tell what, because the blue glow moved his hands but what he held wasn't glowing. Though she couldn't see paper in his hands, Maud thought he was probably folding a spell. The light of his magic flowed out and onto Pireet, and the green glow moved away from the cat. Now there was a faint green glow of cat shape and the stronger one still shaped like a woman. Wizard Tammas set that aside and folded another spell, and the woman vanished, along with the cloud of Maud's magic.
Maud could see normally again. The paper in the wizard's hands was dark blue with scattered flecks of lavender. Pireet was tensely crouched, ears flat against his head, ready to fight.
Well, not quite normally. She could still faintly see the glow on Wizard Tammas and on her own self. "I don't think the finding spell worked," she said, her voice coming out barely above a whisper.
"She is gone," Tammas said. "Pireet, she is gone. You must stay in the house for a time. You too, Maud."
"Bad," Pireet said, then hissed.
"We do not know that," Tammas said.
"It was Pireet she was possessing. I think he would know if she was bad," Maud said.
"He doesn't like her, and that's certainly a strike against her," Tammas allowed. "But she might not mean us ill."
"I suppose," Maud said doubtfully.
"The cats must be brought into the ward until we can find who she is and what she intends," he said.
Pireet growled, but he did not seem to disagree. Only to want to express how little he liked the necessity.
Maud still didn't have any idea where, or what, the dwinnerlock was. But she had a new reason to trust and believe in her magic. Maybe it wouldn't do what she wanted all the time. But it seemed like it was getting better at doing the right thing. And, she decided, that was better.
#
Nieve found she could not return. But it was not all for nothing; she had learned a great deal. Though her plans were in ruins, the girl out of her reach again when she had been so very close, Nieve had gained knowledge.
She could bide her time. The girl's power was greater than the wizard could control. Nieve knew that, and now, she had only to wait until the inevitable happened, the girl destroyed her protector, and Nieve could come to her rescue and show her the true path of her destiny.
Unless, she could not help but thinking, It is not so inevitable as I had thought. Everyone knew... but it had begun to seem possible, in those lessons, in the light of what she had learned, that everyone, even she, was wrong.