Abaddon's Gift

Chapter Eight

Maeno sat in the library with a spelled recipe book open before him. The pages were nearly empty, only bits and pieces visible to his eye because the rest was beyond his comprehension. The spells in the book prevented him from seeing more than he could understand, to keep destructive spells out of the hands of those incapable of wielding the magic responsibly.

As he turned a page, he looked up.

A woman walked between the rows, headed toward him.

He looked back down at his book before recognition set in.

Naena.

He looked up again as she approached the table he sat at, lit by mage's fire. The fire meant that others were to leave him alone, and the look of it was enough to scare most people away. Most people, but Naena had never been stopped by signs before.

She set a hand on the desk as the mage fire flared in warning.

Maeno raised a hand to quiet the flame, aware that the librarian would be alerted to Naena's presence at his table. The man would, no doubt, be over within minutes and Naena would be shooed away.

"Greetings aside," Maeno said. "You and I know each other, but I have to ask why you are here."

Naena raised her arm and showed off a fresh bandage. Maeno stared at it, then blinked at her, not understanding what she meant, what she insinuated by raising her arm in such a way.

Insinuated was a new word for him, he enjoyed using new words, but he also knew to watch the use of such words around Naena. She would think he thought himself better than her, and then there would be many questions.

Like what he did with those slips of paper all those months. Or why the Seven thought he was the mage.

He feared she would ask about the spells he had laid with her magic, without her knowledge. Of what Naena would do to him in revenge of those spells.

"I'm a mage, I recognized you," she said. "Can we not play some game? This isn't the streets anymore, Maeno. Our reputations are no longer on the line, we need not sneak around."

"For that, we would need to sneak around," he said as he sat back.

The librarian approached with a little placard. He grunted at the two of them and set the placard on the table before he took his leave.

Naena looked down. She frowned at the placard.

"A spell to keep our conversation between us," Maeno said.

"That's..." she frowned at it.

"What?" he asked.

"Two circles and two dots," she murmured.

Maeno frowned at the placard which was not two circles and two dots. There were many symbols on the placard, built together into a spell to prevent a mage from using magic to overhear their conversation. There were other symbols which would cause reverberations and prevent people from listening in with their ears.

"What are you doing?" she asked, stepping closer as she looked down at the book. "Wow, that's, uh, that's complicated."

"You still can't read, can you?" he asked.

"Just what you taught me," she murmured. "They think I can't read at all."

"Keep it that way," he said.

"What?" Naena asked, pulling away slightly. "Why?"

"Naena, Amos is nothing like the stories make it out to be," he said before he glanced around. "It's dangerous. A cutthroat competition that never ends. The teachers look the other way because they only want the strong to survive. Lenfer is—"