Phony Potions

Chapter 34.5

I contemplated. I was healed. I could gag him now and get answers for where Mallow was, but then he'd drop the spell, and I would be too broken to restrain him. And alone, he would kill me and no one would know. I watched his body language. He seemed like a sadist. I knew this from the encounter with the fairy and the pain spell. Yet it wasn't as simple as that. Sadism did not seem to provide him either competence or confidence. His posture was anxious. He was scared of those other beings, too much to go on-

"Azark, did your relationship with your family get better after your Age Day?"

I blinked, taken aback by the question.

"Enchanted One?"

"Your family... wherever you came from before you decided to take up lying and deceit as your primary occupation. The ones who were around you as a child."

"I know what a family is, Enchanted One."

"That is surprising, for in all my wisdom, I am not sure that I do." Winsor shifted away from me. Shutting down. "Never mind."

He had gone quiet, like Mallow did. Mallow. I needed to keep his trust. I needed to maintain it so I could find out where he was keeping her. For that, I must give something to him, some form of honesty.

"No," I answered. "It got harder after my Age Day. I haven't spoken to my mom in decades, though she was alive and fine in her dad's home when I last heard of her."

Winsor's eyes searched my face in the dim light.

"Your parents were divorced?"

"If that were it, loves flame petering out, I would seek out my mom this very minute. No. My family lost our herd on our ranch. The ranch it had taken our entire lives to build up, far up north at the edges of the Arcanacracy's reign. There weren't any sorcerers supervising the area so the land was cheap, the cows and bulls less so. And then, one day... it was all gone. We went from comfortable to poor overnight. My mom had gotten used to comfortable; I certainly was... and then, because we were always hungry and working hard to survive until we could rebuild, my father got sick... and my mother left when things looked to be at their worst. She didn't even have the grace to sneak out in the dark of night. Some man from the town we used to sell to came and picked her up in a carriage one afternoon. She told us never to follow, she was done, this hadn't worked out."

"But... that is when you needed her most. I'm sure she felt quite the fool when you and your father improved—"

"She was wrong in saying things couldn't possibly be worse than when she left. They did get worse. Maybe... she had no choice. Maybe leaving was the only thing that kept her alive." I felt a sudden pang of sympathy for my mother, unable to meet my eyes as she left. At first I had called after her begging her not to go, before I called after her with cruel names as the carriage faded from view. "We went to another town nearby. A few weeks after we arrived, my father died of starvation and disease," I finished succinctly.

"What about your town's Avalons?" Winsor asked.

"The Avalons were too busy. The day my dad died, I had spent most of my time waiting for them. I did eventually get some bread and some cheese, though they refused to come back to where my dad was. I couldn't move him; he was too sick. I'd waited for five hours and gotten my food. I hoped it would help Dad get stronger. If he had enough to eat, to fill his stomach for once..."

The neglected, molding shed my dad and I had been squatting in all those years ago rose in my memory. Its uneven roof more imposing than any tower. The sun had been setting behind it, casting a long dark shadow I walked through to get to the crooked door. I had seen, through the gaps, my dad slumped against the wall. No, not my dad. His body.