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At 5:53 in the morning, the wizard mostly known as Caleb Widogast wakes with bile burning his tongue and a profoundly familiar horror weeping in the back of his mind and Astrid, her voice half-memory, half hiss, saying directly into his head, Bren. Something’s wrong. Bren, wake up.
He opens his eyes. It’s still dark, in his room. Essek has already left, although there’s a scrawled note on the bedside table with a reminder to prepare Sending. He’ll be gone awhile, this time. It’s not safe to linger so close to the empire these days. He hasn’t been gone long; the ink hasn’t dried and the room is still shimmering faintly with his arcane signature. Chalk dust hangs brighter than dust motes.
Caleb takes the note and traces the outline of the script.
Bren, Astrid snaps, sharp enough to hurt and loud enough that he flinches. So she hadn’t been part of his dream. He remembers everything, but in the early morning, when nightmares still have their nails under his skin, he’s not always quite sure what’s real.
I’m awake, he says.
Astrid says, Something’s happened to Beauregard.
At 5:59 in the morning, Caleb Widogast grabs his spell book, and burns through a half-scrawled, not-quite prepared spell to teleport out of his tower.
Astrid, Yasha, and Eadwulf barely flinch when he steps out of the teleportation circle and into Astrid’s dimly lit office. Yasha is by the door, arms crossed, wings folded flat against her back. She’s bitten her lip bloody and her eyes are terrible hollow things, the exhaustion in the come down from a rage. She’s staring at the wall. She says absolutely nothing.
“Bren,” Astrid says quietly. “Glad you could join us.” She’s sitting behind her desk, back straight, hands clasped in front of her. She is fully dressed. Her spell book is open and shimmering faintly with arcana. “Yasha was just saying that we weren’t allowed to rescue her wife without telling you.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?”
“No,” Astrid snaps. “Because I knew you would impulsively teleport into my office with no spells prepared in your godsdamn pajamas. I was going to just send Eadwulf and tell you in when I saw you after classes today, when we’d safely retrieved her.” She’s using her Archmage voice on him, flat and cold and oh so steady, but she hasn’t slept. And while they’re closer to strangers than anything else these days, he still knows her. Her right eye is twitching ever so slightly. And her interrupted spell prep—ink blots on the desk, ripped out pages—is a kind of sloppiness their master would have punished her for. She’s worried.
Caleb lets out a breath. “What’s going on? I didn’t even know Beau was out.”
“She’s been tracking Volstrucker and had a lead on one of our most recent students. She went out yesterday afternoon and she never checked in. This was supposed to be a quick interrogation, and it was easy to send her by herself.” Astrid sees him eyeing her spell book and slams it closed.
“Beauregard is quite capable,” Caleb says, pulling out a chair. He has a feeling this argument may last awhile. “Why are we going so soon?”
“We?” Astrid raises an eyebrow.
“I’m obviously going.”
“You need to teach class, Professor Widogast.”
“It’s nearly the holidays; I’ll give them an open study session. That’s what you and Yasha were arguing about yes? Yasha has children to look after; she can’t go. So I am.”
“Do you not trust me?” Eadwulf asks.
“No,” Yasha says softly from the back of the room.
He shrugs.
Astrid looks Caleb up and down like he is one of her students. “This is foolish.” When he doesn’t say anything she sighs and tosses old training robes at him from under her desk. “These are clean. They’ll probably fit.”
Eadwulf crosses the room and helps him change, fastening the back of the shirt, sliding book holsters and harness around his arms. His touch lingers on the back of Caleb’s neck, his shoulders, his upper arms. They’ve done this together many, many times. A decade ago. There’s muscle-memory lingering, warmth in the gesture that stings just a little. “Ready?” Wulf whispers.
No, he’s not. This feels fraught and fraudulent to the identity he’s built for himself, a mission like this. But Beauregard wouldn’t hesitate to go to him, and he doesn’t have time to call the rest of the Nein. And they cannot draw too much attention. And Yasha is looking at him. He says to her, “Go home. I’ll let you know when I’ve got her.”
She nods. Takes a quick breath. Lets it out.
Eadwulf’s hand slips into Caleb’s, fingers intertwining. He leads him to the teleportation circle. They step in. Wulf bends down and completes the chalk marks with a sharp line. Caleb looks at Yasha for as long as he can before the magic rips him somewhere else.
When they appear, near an abandoned house along the outskirts of Blumenthal, Caleb draws in a breath of cold autumn air and Bren exhales smoke. He moves instinctively to Eadwulf’s right, turning just a little so he can see behind his back when the other wizard steps forward.
Wulf moves too, shifting to a crouch to examine the ground, his half step mirroring Bren’s turn. He says, “they fought here. They’re inside the building, I suspect.”
It’s far too quiet for a scene of active torture, but there are likely wards and silence spells around the building. “Beauregard would not break,” Caleb says. “And it is nearly impossible to penetrate her mental defenses. So I expect the torture would be…” he trails off, and then, because it’s Wulf, just says, “exquisitely textbook.”
Wulf smiles, crooked and awful. He says, “I’ve missed you.”
Bren says, “Focus, please.” He steps around the other wizard and walks a few paces through the over grown field towards the house. Dispel Magic is such a low level spell that the sting of the arcana leaving barely pricks his side. It ripples out like an exhale, but there’s no purchase, it shivers off into the sky.
“There’s no silence spell,” Wulf says from behind him. “She would have had to be repeatedly casting it.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s possible she left Beau here. She might be gone.”
“But you’re certain Beau is here?”
“Yes.” Wulf pulls a throwing star from his pocket and spins it between his fingers. “We share these, remember? She has one on her. And it’s here.” He pockets it. “Let’s go.”
It’s harder, working in a pair without their third. Bren stays to Wulf’s right, but there’s no one to cover his left, so they walk out of sync with each other, Bren half a step behind. They’re not trying to be quiet, but it’s still good to be cautious.
Wulf pushes open the door. The door creaks on broken hinges. The air is sweat with rot and mold. Bren instinctively summons fire. They step inside.
The house is mostly wild, grass creeping in through the floorboards, shattered windows jagged with glass shards. The cupboards have been flung open. There’s a table, still standing somehow, in the corner. A chair. A molding couch.
And on the floor, on her side, Beauregard. Her back is to them. She’s breathing, the sound an audible, whistling rasp in the otherwise haunting quiet. Caleb moves to step around Wulf to go to her without thinking, and Wulf’s arm shoots out to block him. His sharp look says, something’s wrong.
Bren steps back, and lets Eadwulf work first.
Wulf whistles, low, sweet, four distinct notes. They echo into the quiet. He waits for two heartbeats. Hisses, “shit,” softly, and then spins on his heel, shoving Bren back two paces, counter spell crooked and tangled in his fingers.
The Volstrucker drops from the rafters, her spell spitting out spark as it hits the solid wall of Eadwulf’s arcana. She’s younger than Caleb had expected; easily barely twenty. A child, really. The last of a recently graduating class. Astrid’s last, probably. Her hair is still buzzed short, a shadow against her pale scalp. She whistles back to Wulf like some kind of furiously bizarre songbird.
It must be new Volstrucker code; Bren doesn’t know it.
“It’s not too late to come home, Runa,” Wulf says, as if any of them think that’s an option.
She smiles. “I am home.”
Wulf doesn’t take his eyes from her. He flicks a hand behind his back to Bren: one finger, tapping twice. An old signal. This one he knows. Bren steps sideways, along the wall, reaching into his components pouch. The phosphorus is a comforting weight in his palm. He breathes in. He breathes out. Smoke tickles the back of his throat. The wall of fire erupts from his hands and spreads, flames hungry and eager on the old wood. He steps back into the room with Beauregard, closing Wulf and the Volstrucker in the front area and kitchen. The two Volstrucker’s counter spells collide. Wulf shouts something, but Bren can’t hear him over the flames.
On the ground, Beau lets out a strangled, wheezing cry. Caleb runs, stepping over her prone form and dropping to his knees. It’s dark enough even with the fire that he still needs to conjure flame in his fingers. He says, “Beauregard, it’s me.”
She’s curled up in the fetal position, hands tucked against her chest, bent at the wrong angle. Her eyes are clenched shut. He can see dried blood on her temple. Her lip is split. Her breathing is fast and trapped-animal frantic.
He doesn’t dare touch her. “Beauregard,” he says again. “Beau. We can’t stay here.”
She opens her eyes, a flash of awful, bloodshot blue. “Can’t. Move.”
“She paralyzed you?” Caleb looks her up and down. Probably at least fractured ribs based on her breathing pattern, broken wrists, broken hands, likely broken ankles or feet. It’s what he would have done to a monk of the Cobalt Soul.
Beau lets out another frustrated keen, the sound cut short with a wheeze.
If he picks her up her ribs could puncture her lungs. Caleb pulls a healing potion out one of his holsters and uncorks it. Behind them, the flames snarl. He can’t hear what’s happening, but the house is starting to shake. They need to move quickly. He slips a hand under Beauregard’s head, tilting her chin up. “Drink and swallow,” he says, and tips the potion into her mouth. It’s not going to be enough, but it’s a start.
She convulses in his grip with the effort but gets it down. He half lifts her into his lap and she reaches up, wrapping her arms around his neck. She’s trembling, sweat-slick and feverish. She whispers into his ear, “fuck, man.”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
The Wall of Fire extinguish with a sputtering hiss.
“Bren,” Eadwulf calls from the other room, “is she alive?” He doesn’t even sound winded.
“Fuck you too,” Beau wheezes against Caleb’s neck.
“She’s alive,” Caleb says, glancing over his shoulder.
Eadwulf steps over the smoldering embers of the fire, the Volstrucker girl slung over his right shoulder. He has lifted her like he used to lift feed sacks for his family’s horses growing up; effortless and balanced. Steady.
“Did he kill her?” The question from Beau is so soft he can’t quite be sure he’s heard her.
“She’s not dead,” Wulf says. “Unconscious. I figured Dairon might be able to help us with the questioning, or Astrid could talk to her. I can kill her if that’s preferable.”
“Please don’t,” Beau says. “She’s a kid.”
Bren says, “that doesn’t matter, Beauregard.” It’s an automatic answer, here in the fields of his childhood with smoke in his throat and spells humming fresh and wanting under his skin; Eadwulf, so fierce and so close.
He feels her close her eyes; her eyelashes flutter against his skin. She swallows hard. She doesn’t say anything.
“I can’t move her,” Bren says to Eadwulf. “Her ribs are broken and the healing potion helped, but I’m worried if we teleport…”
Wulf sets the unconscious Volstrucker down without apparent effort and not terribly gently, on the molding green couch. He pulls a potion from his own bag and crouches down next to them. Beau is still mostly in Caleb’s arms. Wulf says softly, “Can I touch you, Beauregard? I have another healing potion. We won’t be able to travel until at least your ribs heal so we don’t risk killing you in the teleport.”
She nods, and Wulf sits, wrapping one arm around Caleb’s shoulders, and tilting Beau’s head up with the other. He pours the potion into her mouth again. She grimaces, swallows. Wulf stays leaning against both of them, steady, solid, warm. Bren leans back into him instinctively.
Wulf runs a thumb along Beauregard’s cheek. “We’ve got you, Lion,” he says. “No more tears.”
“When I see Astrid,” Beau says. “I’m going to kill her for what she did to these kids. What the fuck.” She tilts her head back, grimacing as her broken nose clicks back into place. “Fuck.” She spits out blood on Caleb’s shirt and doesn’t apologize.
Caleb holds her a little tighter. He wants to hug her, but he’s worried about how breakable she is.
“One more healing potion I think,” Wulf says quietly. “Then your ribs should heal enough.” At her grimace he says, “we can take a short rest while we wait.” He presses a quick kiss to Bren’s temple, and one to Beau’s forehead. “I’ll go sit with Runa.”
Beau stretches out her arms. “Caleb, she broke my hands.”
“I know,” he says softly. “We’ll get you to a cleric when we can go home.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. That was stupid.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything.”
“Of course I do.” She tilts her head back to look up at him. “I could have killed her,” she whispers. “I probably should have, and then we wouldn’t be here. But I just…she’s a kid, Caleb. She’s a fucking child.” A tear slips down her cheek. She starts shaking again, her sobs closer to panic-attack frantic than actual tears.
Caleb pulls her further into his lap and cradles her head in his arms, tangling his fingers in her blood-stiff hair. “I know,” he whispers.
After an hour, she falls asleep.
Caleb watches her breathing ease as she dreams and the healing potions’ magic settles along her cracked ribs. He wipes the tears off her cheeks and casts sending. Yasha, he says. We’ve got her. She needs a cleric, but she’s okay. Should we take her to Caduceus?
The reply is instant, one-word desperate: yespleasethankyou
Wulf says, “you want to bring a Volstrucker to the Blooming Grove?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“I take Runa to Astrid and you take Beau to your grave cleric.”
Splitting up hadn’t even occurred to Caleb. He bites his lip. Oh.
He must be making some kind of expression because Wulf laughs quietly and crosses the room. He reaches out and cradles Caleb’s face in his hands, thumbs brushing temples. Bren, head tilted up, on his knees, feels reality shudder against memory again.
“This is hurting you,” Wulf says, like he knows. “Caleb Widogast.”
“Most things do.”
“They don’t have to, Schatz,” Wulf says. “Not anymore.”
Beau wakes suddenly one hour, twenty seven minutes, and thirty two seconds after Eadwulf and the Volstrucker teleport out. She jerks up like she’s drowning, like she’s surfacing from water, head flinging back against Caleb’s chest. Her arms spasm, and he pins them to her side before she tries to hold on to him with broken fingers. She fights the hold, a strangled, wounded animal sound erupting from her throat, and he says “Beau, Beau, Beau, shhhh, you’re alright. Beau. She’s gone. It’s me.” Low like a litany and quiet as a command.
She lets out another snarling sob. “And who are you?”
He shifts a little, pushing her away from him so she can see his face. “Caleb Widogast,” he says carefully. When she blinks at him with stunned, prey-wild eyes he says it again.
“Say it like you believe it,” she says, and he understands.
She’s always been afraid for him, and now here they both are, alone together chasing his own ghost story in the form of a broken teenage girl taught to be better than he ever was. She’s felt evocation magic in his hands when he held her. She heard Bren.
“Beauregard,” Caleb says quietly. “It’s me.”
“Okay,” she says. “Fuck.” She takes three quick breaths and exhales sharply. “Fuck.”
“I’ve spoken with Yasha,” Caleb says while she works to get her breathing back under control. “I’m going to take you to the Clays. Wulf has the girl and brought her to Astrid. No one is dead. We’re going to take care of you.”
She breathes deep, wincing only a little. “Ribs are sore, but good,” she says. “Let’s do this. Draw your chalk circle or whatever the fuck.”
He presses a kiss to her forehead. She smells like salt and sweat and blood and his very best friend. His chest aches. His head hurts. He has so much magic left to burn. He pulls out his chalk from his components pouch and starts to sketch the teleportation runes.
(He thinks, briefly, about burning the house down to its crumbling rotten foundations. He leaves it standing and smelling of smoke).
At 3:19 in the afternoon, the wizard mostly known as Caleb Widogast teleports into a graveyard with an Expositor of the Cobalt Soul in his arms. She promptly throws up. Mutters a rough, ‘sorry” that doesn’t sound particularly apologetic, and then passes out again.
“I thought you were retiring from adventuring,” Caduceus says when he sees them. “Get her inside and on a bed. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
There’s already tea brewing; the Clay’s house smells of turmeric and lavender. Caleb breathes in and Caleb breathes out. There’s never room for Bren in these walls. “Can I help?”
“I don’t think so,” Caduceus says. “Sit by her head and journal in that book of yours. She’ll want to talk when she wakes up, but we need to reset all these bones before I can heal them. It’s probably best she’s out for this anyway.”
Caleb does as he’s told.
At 5:22 in the evening, Beauregard opens her eyes.
“Hey,” Caleb says softly. “Easy. Go slow. Cad fixed you up but you’re probably still sore, yes?”
She flexes her hands, wiggles her toes, rolls her shoulders. “Damn,” she says.
“How are you feeling?”
She raises the middle finger of her left hand and waves it in his face.
He laughs. It hurts. The joy and relief of it hurt. He’s forgotten that particular ache. Caleb knows it well. Bren never quite understood the difference between relief and surrender, and burrows deeper under Caleb’s skin. His work, at least for the moment, has been done.