Looking at Danthres, Torin said, “Like a closet.”
Millar stepped forward. “What do you mean?”
“The blueprints for your house have a mark on the spot where the closet is now,” Torin said. “It would seem that the hidden closet was part of the building’s original plans.”
“Excuse me,” Boneen said before Millar could go off on another rant about messes, thus marking the first time Danthres had ever been grateful for Boneen’s crankiness, “but why am I here?”
Steeling herself, Danthres told the guard to reopen the door to the Jaros house.
Boneen seemed unperturbed by the stench. He simply looked inside and said, “Oh, dear.”
“Well put,” Danthres muttered.
Shaking his head, the magical examiner looked away from the muck-covered sitting room. “I had assumed this to be a one-time event-someone using the Duality Spell once for whatever arcane reason-but it looks like it’s been used for some time, and still is being cast on a regular basis.” He regarded Torin and pointed at the closet in the back of the sitting room. “That sigil I was translating-it was on the spot where that closet is?”
Torin nodded.
“Can we please close the door before I die?” Danthres asked plaintively. The elven half of her heritage came with a sensitivity far greater than that of humans, and the smell that irritated them was going to kill her ere long.
Waving his hand dismissively, Boneen said, “It won’t do any good, but go ahead.” The guard did so, to Danthres’s relief.
Millar drew himself up to full height. “What do you mean it won’t do any good? And who’s going to clean up that mess?”
“And what exactly,” Danthres asked, “is a Duality Spell?” As a rule, Danthres preferred to avoid magic, but reality didn’t allow for that, and ten years in the Castle Guard made her painfully aware of the most common spells-particularly the ones that were commercially available. This one, however, rang no bells.
“To answer your earlier question, Tresyllione,” Boneen said, folding his spindly arms across his chest, “this magic is of a type devised by a wizard named Ivano the Misguided. He pioneered an entire system of magic that involved checks and balances-every time you cast a spell, there was a concomitant reaction elsewhere. This way there’d be no effort on the part of the spellcaster, and anyone could wield magic.”
“Anyone can use magic,” Danthres said impatiently. “All they have to do is buy a spell-”
“-that’s already been cast.” Boneen sounded just as impatient. “A wizard casts the spell into the scroll, which then goes on the market. The purchaser then uses it, but the energy of the spellcaster has already been spent. With Ivano’s magic, one didn’t need any kind of training to cast a spell, nor did one need to purchase a spell-you simply needed to incant it.”
Torin nodded. “That explains why that Amaralla woman’s people couldn’t clean the place-and why my boots resisted the Cleaning Spell.”
Seeing an out, Danthres said with a smile. “So that means this would be a case for the Brotherhood, wouldn’t it?”
“If I bring this to the Brotherhood, the first thing they’ll ask is why I didn’t bring this to them sooner.” Boneen for once sounded abashed. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not bring that to their attention.”
“Oh, no,” Danthres said angrily, pointing an accusatory finger at Boneen, “you’re not getting out of it that easily. I’ve had far too many murders and assaults shitcanned because it’s ‘Brotherhood business,’ and everything gets swept under the rug. Now, the one time when they’d actually be a help, which only happens once every third blue moon, and you’re telling me you won’t inform them?”
“I’ll help you,” Boneen said.
That brought Danthres up short. The M.E. had never used those three words in sequence before that Danthres was aware of. Boneen considered the work he did for the Castle Guard to be a waste of his precious time and energy, and he begrudged every second of it. For him to volunteer…
Boneen went on. “Give me a minute to gather myself up and let me examine the house more closely. I might be able to trace where the spell’s being cast.”
“Uhm, excuse me?” That was Abbi Jaros, whom Danthres had briefly forgotten, having focused most of her ire on either her father-in-law or the M.E. “What kind of spell is this exactly? What’s happening to our house?”
Boneen started waving his arms about. “Ivano’s magic always has a secondary effect. Someone is doing something pleasant, and that requires that somewhere else there be something awful. However, the awful can be directed, and in this case, it was to the closet that was hidden in your house when it was built.” He cast a glance at the shut door. “But they’ve obviously been casting this spell for some time. The muck in your closet has become too big to fit therein, and it has spilled out into the house.” Now he looked at Danthres and Torin. “We need to find out who’s doing this. At this rate, it will expand to take over and destroy this house. In a week, it will have consumed the entire block.”
Danthres blinked. Perhaps she didn’t want the Brotherhood involved, after all-not if she wanted this solved properly. “All right, then, what do we do?”
“First, I examine this house.” Boneen slowly got down onto the floor and sat in a lotus position; Danthres could hear his bones creak and crack as he did so. The aged wizard muttered something, waved his right hand about, and then started to float upward.
About a minute later, he unfolded his legs, while still floating, and placed them on the ground. “This is worse than I thought. It’s been going on for at least a decade, possibly longer. I can’t tell for sure-there are magically enhanced items in there interfering.” That last was said with an accusatory look at Abbi and Millar.
“That’s impossible!” Abbi said. “We don’t keep anything magical in the house.”
“That’s right,” Millar said. “Got rid of it all. Filthy stuff, magic.”
Noting that was the first thing Millar had said that hadn’t made Danthres want to punch him, she asked Boneen, “Is there any way to extract those items? If they don’t belong to the family, they might belong to whoever cast the spell.”
“It’s possible, but I’m already rather tired, and-”
“Fine, then.” Danthres turned to Torin. “What’s the name of the Brotherhood representative?”
“Ythran,” Torin said. “I’m sure he’d be overjoyed to hear all about Boneen misreading the peel-back.”
“I didn’t misread it!” Boneen was almost pouting. “All right, all right, I’ll cast the blessed spell.”
This time, Boneen didn’t bother with the lotus position, but the muttering took longer, and he gesticulated with both hands.
Danthres had to blink away the spots in front of her eyes that the resultant flash of light caused, but when they were gone, she looked down at the ground in front of Boneen to see seven objects, all encrusted with the muck that had taken over the Jaros house, all looking like articles of clothing.
Boneen pointed at one of two items that looked like cloaks. “That looks like a Protector Cloak-a low-level one, it’d just keep the shit off you walking around Goblin-but that explains the magical interference.”
However, Danthres was more interested in the other cloak.
Breathing through her mouth to avoid the stench-which, while not as bad as the room had been, was still pretty awful-Danthres bent over to grab it. Grateful that her uniform included gloves, she picked it up by one end with her right hand, wiping the center of the cloak off with her left glove.
Then she smiled grimly. “I know who did this.”
Forak’s Perfect Clean had offices in Dragon Precinct, only a short walk from Danthres’ rooms, which was why she had chosen them in the first place. That evening, she entered their waiting area, accompanied by Torin. As had been the case when she had gone there to make the appointment, and again when she filed the complaint about her missing cloak, the waiting area consisted solely of a bench, a desk behind which sat a prim young woman, and a door leading to the back.