The Key

Chapter 13

In the morning, there is training, and for the first time in years, it involves Sam.

Almost rarer, King John is present. Bobby and Rufus eyed him before relocating the knights away from the mage training grounds. Alone among the knights, both senior and active, Bobby has been informed of Sam’s potential second talent. This wasn’t King John’s decision but Sam’s, made and performed without their father’s input.

Bobby had readily agreed to keep his mouth shut, and Dan is certain that only King John’s presence prevented Sam from getting a gruff lecture from Bobby about doing the same.

For today’s test of yesterday’s revelations, they have Sam, they have King John, and they have Jo. Once the three are set up in the mage area, Bobby retreats, bringing Dan with him.

There, in the otherwise unoccupied viewing area, they find Queen Mary.

They look at each other and they don’t say anything. Most of what has to be said, already has been. Much of it happened around three in the morning, and as it is now seven, no one here feels terribly cheerful.

“Care for a seat, Your Majesty?” Bobby asks.

There are folding ones back in the barracks. Bobby would have to leave to fetch it, and thus miss the test.

Dan knows his mother knows this.

“No, thank you, Bobby,” Queen Mary says.

In front of them, past the stone wall and enchanted glass barrier, the three mages stand in a line, two tall royals framing a short knight. To better recreate the incident from their return from Moondoor, no one has told Jo what’s happening. Along with the rest of the vacated knights, she doubtlessly thinks this is a personal lesson from the king and fellow fire mage. Sam’s presence beside them is slightly more difficult to explain.

After perhaps half a minute of watching the three silently converse, Dan sees Jo fire her best two-handed blast. If King John weren’t there, it might even be called impressive. Still, though her stance is impeccable and the pressure is on, the flame is the same maximum size they’ve been getting out of her for months.

Next come her best one-handed blasts, using her right hand and then her left. The fireball from the right is half the size of her two-handed blast, the fireball from the left somewhat smaller.

With each spell, Bobby nods, seemingly to himself, muttering “Normal” at the sight of each. Queen Mary nods in turn and makes no fuss of this commentary for her benefit.

The moment of truth arrives.

Sam turns to Jo and holds out his hand. She looks up at him, and even at this distance, Dan knows her confusion.

King John says something, and Jo immediately takes hold of Sam’s hand. She readies her stance again, adjusting with that hold, and fires another blast with her right hand.

The fireball hurtles itself forward. It explodes outward, roaring. Solid in her stance, Jo startles but doesn’t stagger; beside her, Sam stumbles backward.

The moment Sam’s hand leaves hers, half the fireball dissipates, but Dan is already out from behind the shelter and running.

“Dan, get back!” his father orders, even as he slaps down his hands in mid-air, forcing the remaining fire to snuff itself out on the flagstones.

Later, Dan will blame the roar of the flame for his insubordination, if his father asks, which he will. Later, he’ll say he couldn’t hear. Now, he races to his brother, catches him by the shoulders, and keeps him upright.

“Sam? Sammy?” His voice is too loud in his own ears.

Eyes rounder than the moon, Sam staggers under his hands, laughing. “Did you see that? Dan, did you see that?”

“That wasn’t me,” Jo says, because she’s smart like that.

“Dan,” Sam says again, beaming.

“What was that?” Jo asks.

“Dan, get back behind the barrier,” King John orders.

Immediately, determination replaces the joy on Sam’s face. He grips Dan’s shoulder. “Dad, it’s as safe out here for him as it is for me. I’m not immune to flame either.”

“Your Majesty, may I ask what’s going on?” Jo gently interrupts, deferring in the way Sam refuses to.

“I can boost magic,” Sam tells her, his grin creeping back in the moment he looks away from their father. “I have a second talent.”

Jo looks between Sam and King John, and then she looks at Dan. She doesn’t say it aloud, but Dan hears it anyway: he pushed her for months, and it was somehow Sam all along?

“At least the training improved your technique,” Dan tells her.

“Enough to control the power my son can push you to, perhaps,” King John notes. Then: “Dan, I told you to go back to your mother.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan answers. He doesn’t bow out of respect, only to free himself from Sam’s grip, but he still bows.

“I want Dan here,” Sam tells their father. “It’s easier with him here.”

“Training isn’t meant to be easy,” King John states, and that is that.

Dan returns to the observation shelter. Behind him, he knows the bitchface Sam is suppressing, just as he knows the exact shade of polite neutrality Jo’s painted across her features.

“That was quick,” Queen Mary says once Dan returns to her and Bobby. “I thought they might last half an hour this time.”

“Ever consider changing that royal animal to a ram?” Bobby asks.

“I wouldn’t want to encourage them,” Queen Mary says.

“Only matters if you think they’d listen,” Dan mutters.

Another blast nearly drowns him out entirely. This time, Sam keeps his feet and Jo’s inferno keeps its shape. King John watches with his hands at the ready, ever anticipating the moment when he has to take control, but Jo’s technique proves flawless.

Behind the safety of enchanted glass, they watch huge flares of flame tighten into fierce blue ribbons, into blazing white threads of pure heat. The very air over the mage training grounds wavers and distorts.

Even without hearing his father’s commands, Dan can predict them. Here, Jo must be trying to draw power from Sam without his cooperation. Here, Sam is trying to force it through her. That one, they were definitely striving to neither push nor draw; it’s the closest to Jo’s normal levels. Predicting what must come next, Dan sticks his fingers in his ears and nods at his mother and Bobby to follow.

The roar is tremendous.

Sam must push. Jo must pull.

Because this.

This.

All else was mere sparks against tinder.

His eyes sting. They burn and water, and he squints harder at the three black shapes against the blue-white flare. The shape on the right has both hands raised, raised and moving. The shape in the middle melds with the tall shape on the left.

They’re long past the point Jo can sustain on her own. Her unaided breaking point came and went minutes ago, especially at inferno levels. And yet they keep going. And yet it grows stronger.

The fire begins to bend, to move. King John twists his hands, shaping the magical fire Jo creates, she the force, he the control. It’s a feat Dan has only seen before on a minor scale, though of course he knows the story of his father stealing the fire away from a dragon itself. The superior mage can always wrest control of their element.

Dan bites his lip and unplugs his ears to shield his eyes, and he waits for Sam to do it. For Sam to push too hard, too hot, to overwhelm their father just because he can.

Beside him, his mother leans close to the glass, and he sees the fear in her eyes too.

Dan reaches out, and Mary takes his hand the moment he brushes her fingers. They hold tight.

“Will we know when he starts to hurt himself?” she asks.

Dan doesn’t know. “He’ll know,” he says instead.

Minutes later, an eternity of waiting, the fire lessens. Weakens.

Mary tightens her grip on his hand, perhaps tethering him in place, perhaps forcing herself still.

Jo’s hand stops emitting fire. Together, she and King John silence the remaining flames, pressing them down into blackened flagstones.

The air rings with silence. It burns, eviscerating the dew of early May.

Jo and Sam unclasp their hands. She looks up for her king’s approval and receives it in a gentle hand upon her shoulder. After, King John reaches for Sam. He’s pulling Sam close, embracing him. He’s ruffling Sam’s long, mage-style hair. He’s holding Sam up as Sam sags into him.

Dan can’t breathe.

“Hey,” Mary says.

Dan looks down into her eyes and he twitches his mouth into a grin. “That was awesome.”

Mary looks back with a tightness around her eyes. She turns to Bobby. “I think Sam could use that chair now.”

“Right you are, Your Majesty,” Bobby says, eyeing them both as well as the tableau beyond. He bows with just his head, little more than a perfunctory nod, and leaves them.

Before releasing Dan’s hand, Mary tells him, her head and voice both lowered, “I need you on my side.”

“Of course,” Dan says. He doesn’t say it won’t help.

They let go, their hands and fears at all points hidden behind the stone portion of the barrier. Dan comes around the side first and stops, standing at attention.

“Permission to approach, sir!” he calls out properly.

“Granted!” King John responds.

Dan approaches. All three are sweaty and a little sooty, but somehow not that much worse than Jo usually is after her typical magic practice. Each of their faces shine with sweat, Sam worse than the rest.

“Dame Joanna, report your condition,” Dan orders, focusing entirely on her.

Already at attention, Jo lifts her chin as she replies, “Fit and ready, Your Highness.”

“Is your magic exhausted?”

“My magic is brimming, Your Highness,” Jo answers. “I feel like I have more energy than when I woke up.”

More or less what Cas said. Dan nods. He pivots. “Sam. Same questions.”

It’s stretching protocol, but the training grounds are Dan’s domain. Even King John pretends to defer to Bobby here.

“Fit and ready for a break,” Sam answers. Where Jo has the heavy breathing of exhilaration, Sam has the shallow pants of a fatigued runner. Is that the flush of the heat fading, or is Sam paler than he should be? “Not sure what exhausting my magic feels like, but this might be it.”

“More of a stretch than those visions, then,” King John says. He clasps Sam on the shoulder. “We’ll get you trained up, son.”

Without turning to look at her, Dan can feel his mother about to speak.

“Dad’s right,” Dan preempts, speaking to Sam. “We’ll make sure no one can draw from you unless you let them.”

“Draw from? ” Jo repeats, eyes wide. She takes a renewed interest in Sam’s visible exhaustion before remembering herself. “Sir.”

“He’s not boosting, he’s contributing,” Dan explains to Jo. Speaking to a third party has always helped, in that King John knows he makes the family look disjointed if he outright corrects Dan. “That’s why we have to lock this down and make sure no one can use Sam’s power except for Sam.”

Jo’s gaze shifts, presumably locking eyes with Queen Mary behind Dan.

“I know you can keep a secret, Joanna,” Queen Mary says.

Jo bows deeply before turning to King John. “Your Majesty, I thank you for your personal interest in my training. The other knights will know that you discovered my mental block, which I can only surpass with the memory of the Mage Prince being in mortal danger. Perhaps someday I will be able to cast so well without His Highness present, but until then, I deeply appreciate you both taking the time to train me.”

King John listens to her with a small smile. “Just so, Dame Joanna. You are dismissed for the time being.”

“Your Majesty.” Jo bows deeply. She catches Dan’s eye as she departs, and he nods.

At last, Queen Mary comes forward. As always, it is propriety, not hesitancy, that ever held her back. “How are you, really?” She pulls a handkerchief out of her light jacket and proceeds to wipe at Sam’s face.

“Mom, I’m fine,” Sam says without hope of stopping her.

“I already have one sooty man, I don’t need two,” she says. “How are you feeling, physically? You’re not used to prolonged magic drain, I don’t think you know which symptoms are which. Start describing, Sam.”

Sam looks at Dan instead of their father.

“I’m assuming you went that hard to find Sam’s limit,” Dan says to King John. “That should’ve been enough to put Dame Joanna’s spellwork out of commission for days.”

“The first step in training any mage is finding their limit,” King John replies.

“Not this kind,” Mary says. Her arm wraps around Sam, half an act of protectiveness, half an alliance of body language. She lowers her voice, their seeming solitude no guarantee they won’t be overheard. “John, if we hit our limits, our powers stop. If Sam hits his limit, he stops.”

“We need to find the line between using his magic and using his life,” King John says. His voice lowers as well, but only into a defensive crouch. “That’s what we’re trying to do. He needs to know how far he can push himself.”

“You shouldn’t be getting anywhere near that line,” Queen Mary says. “What happens if this damages him? What happens if a healer draws from him and ends up making it worse? We don’t know what will happen, John.”

“Mom, Dad, I’m fine,” Sam says, sweaty and sooty and trying not to wobble.

“He’s fine,” King John tells Queen Mary.

“He’s exhausted,” Queen Mary shoots back.

“We all are,” Dan announces at a louder than normal volume. “Did anyone get more than three hours of sleep last night? I didn’t. At least you two got to sit down, me and Sammy were dancing all night.”

“Sam and I,” their parents correct him together.

“Right,” Dan says. “We’ve still got two more nights left, so I’m thinking birthday boy here should rest up, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t mind getting more than three hours,” Sam adds.

Queen Mary reins herself in first. “I think we all should.” Her arm around Sam shifts to better support him. “Let’s head on up.”

“Mom, I’m turning twenty-five tomorrow,” Sam complains. “I don’t need my parents to put me to bed.”

“That’s why your brother’s doing it instead,” Dan tells him. He holds out his arm and beckons. “C’mon, Sammy.”

“Turning twenty-five,” Sam repeats. “Stop calling me Sammy.” He comes with Dan all the same.

“Yes sir, Your Royal Samness, sir.”

Dan doesn’t look back to see if this amuses their parents. It has in the past, and that’s enough to bet on.

As they walk back through the training grounds, Dan mocks his brother for the knights to hear. What kind of prince can’t dance all night and still get up in the morning? Sam whines about his three hours sleep and Dan threatens a brotherly contest of running laps, or perhaps sparring. More than one of the knights suppresses a smirk, and Sam’s obviously deteriorated condition doesn’t draw much in the way of concerned or curious looks.

Bobby approaches, wooden folding chair in hand. He sees them heading in, brothers ahead, parents behind, and responds by simply setting down the chair in a prime spot to watch the training session. He waits until the King and Queen pass, bowing to both, before he sits. He does shoot a look at Dan, the sort that promises a conversation later, but at least the thought of this one doesn’t fill Dan with dread.

Sometimes, the walk back into the castle proper is a long, long walk within the palatial complex. From the training grounds, they pass the garden with its large hedge maze. They enter the castle through the smaller door set into the greater doors in the entryway. Then come the stairs, followed by more stairs, and slightly more stairs after that.

By the time they reach Sam’s bedchambers, Sam is much too pale beneath the remaining smudges of soot. Perhaps this is why their parents follow them every step of the way, right up until Sam’s door. At this point, Sam rallies enough to ask them to wait for Dan outside. He and Dan enter alone, and the moment the thick wooden door closes behind them, Sam’s arm comes down hard over Dan’s shoulders.

“That was too much,” he says, sagging heavily. He keeps his mouth close to Dan’s ear, his voice quiet against the risk of their parents listening. “Dan, I don’t want to do that again.”

“You won’t have to,” Dan promises. “I’ll get Jo on it, and you two can work out some hand signals.”

Sam shakes his head. “It was fine at first. It was awesome at first. Seeing that. But that, it wasn’t me, Dan.”

Through the small sitting room, Dan helps him toward the en suite bathroom to wash his face and scrub off the soot. While Sam practically sticks his head under the sink tap, Dan sits on the toilet cover, quietly admiring the plumbing he’ll have to do without in the coming months, once he’s back out hunting. It’s a vague sort of distraction, and it doesn’t last long enough.

Sam towels off his face and his hair, carelessly turning white cloth gray. He holds the towel with trembling hands.

“Y’know,” Dan says, “not gonna lie, me and Mom thought you were going to try to out fire mage Dad. Make a blast too big for even him to take control of. Maybe you are mature enough for twenty-five.”

Shaking his head, Sam sets the towel down on the marble counter. “Dan, I tried.”

“Well, you’re only twenty-four,” Dan jokes.

“Dan,” Sam says in the tone that means Take me seriously. “I mean it. I tried, and I couldn’t. I wasn’t in control. At all. It’s like I wasn’t doing it. No, it’s not like that, it was that.”

Dan sits up straighter. Then, realizing he maybe shouldn’t be sitting on a closed toilet for this conversation, he stands. “C’mon. Bedclothes. Talk while you change.”

Sam rolls his eyes but staggers after him out the door to the bedroom, kicking out of his shoes. He pulls fresh bedclothes out of the drawer in the base of his wardrobe, and Dan turns his back to inspect his brother’s neat array of books and assorted belongings.

Sam’s horned mask still lies on his desk from the night before. Books both new and ancient enough to creak line his shelves. Some shelves have small drawings, some blown glass baubles. An old and battered stuffed horse cuts a sharp contrast against the rest of it, the only item of the batch Dan recognizes. Under Dan’s fingers, the leather of its tiny bridle threatens to crumble where it was once shiny and soft.

“The only control I had was over how much to give,” Sam says over the rustle of clothing. “I couldn’t stop her, Dan. I could slow her down a little, but I felt like a spilled cup. I couldn’t stop pouring. At first, it felt like I was giving, and that was fine, but then it was just taking.”

“I think that’s the stopping place,” Dan says, risking a glance over his shoulder. Finding Sam wearing different pants, he leaves the bookshelf alone and goes to sit on Sam’s four poster bed instead, leaning his shoulder against one of the posts. He views his brother’s anti-possession tattoo with a particularly strong sense of reassurance. “Whenever it was you stopped being fine, that’s where you gotta stop. Your body knows s**t you don’t, so you gotta listen.”

“Like with sword training,” Sam says.

Dan nods. “Like with sword training.”

Buttoning up his nightshirt, Sam stares into the middle distance. He’s somewhere between thinking and falling asleep on his feet.

Dan pats the bed beside him. Sam sits with a hard bounce before flopping back entirely, arms spread in the drama he reserves for private moments.

“I wonder if Jess ever noticed,” Sam muses to the canopy of his bed.

“Why, she heal your paper cuts in the library?” Dan asks.

“No,” Sam says, a smirk in his voice.

Dan twists to look at him. “What are you telling me here.”

“Let’s just say there’s a reason neither of us ever has hickeys,” Sam answers with a conspiratorial grin.

“Dude,” Dan says. “I did not need to know that about you.”

Sam shrugs against the duvet. “Perks of being with a healing mage. No bruised lips either. You can just keep on kissing.”

“Did not need to know that.”

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Sam frowns a little. “Yeah, you did.”

“Uh, no,” Dan says. “Why would I need to know that?”

“Because of Cas,” Sam says, like Dan’s being an i***t.

Dan blinks at him. “What about Cas?”

“Cas is a healing mage,” Sam says.

“What? Since when?”

Groaning, Sam sits up fully. “You said he was using a spell to keep those wings on, right? And it kept them warm, even?”

“How is that healing magic?”

“Nick told Jess and me about a couple cases where healers lost limbs and were able to temporarily reattach them,” Sam says. “Jess says a lot of that research was discontinued because it looked too close to necromancy, but it sounds like the practical problem with reattaching limbs was that continual casting was necessary. Power runs out, limbs fall off. Plus apparently the mobility was pretty awful. Like you can stick your hand back on, but you can’t get your fingers to move. It’s not exactly a functional solution, but it’s the closest anyone’s gotten to regrowing limbs.”

Dan stares at him. “Are you telling me Cas is continually necromancing a pair of taxidermied griffin wings to his back?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Sam says.

Dan keeps staring. “That is so f*****g badass.”

Sam shakes his head at him. “How did you not know he was a healing mage? It’s been days. Their type is the third thing a mage tells you, right after hello and their name.”

“Not Cas,” Dan says. His cheeks twinge, but his grin is as hard to stop as it is sudden to arrive. “The guy doesn’t care. I know, it sounds nuts, but he really doesn’t care. We haven’t talked about his magic at all.”

“Huh,” Sam says.

“I know, right?”

They sit there and Dan still can’t stop grinning.

“He’s something else, Sam,” Dan says. “Something good. Something real good.”

“Good,” Sam repeats, or maybe praises. “You gonna do a long-distance thing after tomorrow?”

“I got plans,” Dan assures him.

“You should probably tell them to Cas, first.”

“I mentioned a couple,” Dan says. “C’mon, I’m not Dad. Told him he could apply to the Men of Letters, you know? Live and research here.”

Up go Sam’s eyebrows. “You told him he could apply?”

“You know, normally when people say they don’t want preferential treatment, they don’t mean it,” Dan says. “Cas, though, he almost looked panicked at the idea.”

“I mean, it would look like he’d only slept his way into the position,” Sam says. “Though I’m surprised he panics. If he had the poker skills to go with that face, he’d probably wipe the whole garrison out.”

“You gotta look at his eyes,” Dan explains, pointing to his own. “It’s really subtle and the mask doesn’t help, but it’s there. Y’know, he thought he’d stumbled into a state secret with your vessel thing, but he just.” Dan holds out his own hand. “Steady as a rock.”

“I think I should be his application,” Sam says.

Dan looks at him.

“No, seriously.”

“No, I was already thinking that,” Dan says. “Except that would mean making your talent more public, and I don’t think we’re ready to risk that.”

“Dan, really, what’s gonna happen to me?” Sam asks. “I mean, besides Dad training me into the dirt.”

“I don’t know,” Dan says. “And that’s why I don’t like it.”

Sam shakes his head a little. “I’m still surprised you didn’t drag me out of the party last night the second Cas told you.”

“I wanted to,” Dan admits.

“But you knew I was safe, and you didn’t,” Sam says. “Maybe you’re mature enough for twenty-nine.”

Dan wavers before saying, “No, Cas just talked me down. Just until I realized that if you really needed me, you would have already come to find me.”

“Cas talked you down,” Sam repeats, because of course he doesn’t listen to the part about Dan being reasonable on his own. “Cas talked you down . Dan, that’s… That’s huge. Are you gonna marry him? Maybe you should marry him.” He only sounds half-joking.

“Have you seen him?” Dan asks, gesturing at his eyes and motioning beyond.

“If I do, should I tell you?”

“Yes,” Dan says. Then: “No.” Then: “I don’t know.” He shakes his head and says, “Don’t strain yourself. C’mon, lie down, it’s naptime for Sammies.”

Sam rolls his eyes but clambers up fully onto his bed. “Jerk.”

Behind the safety of two thick oak doors, Dan answers, “b***h. Get under those blankets, come on.”

“It’s May, I’m hot.”