Abaddon's Call

Chapter Sixteen

"No pockets?" Graydon asked as he leaned against the door and watched Naena.

"Of course, I have magic pockets," she said. "Just not in those pants. In my dress. I haven't had time to move it over."

"So you got nothing? I thought you wanted to get in there first to make off with something. We had several detailed arguments—"

"Conversations," she said.

"Arguments," he countered. "We had several arguments about what if we got in there, and then I went against my word. And then we get in there, and you make out with absolutely nothing?"

"Well, just this," she said, holding up an arch mage coin. "Except. Don't have a father to present it to. Don't have a proofing to do."

Naena held one of the coins from the cauldron. He recalled seeing her at the cauldron only as she entered, and then, as far as he could tell, she hadn't touched it.

"What the—" he started.

"And this," she said before she stuffed the coin's edge into her mouth and produced an iron coin.

She turned her hand in front of her and let the arch mage coin drop gently into her outstretched palm—all that as she held the blanket against her chest with her other hand. The pair of coins were too large to hide in the palm of her hand.

There should have been an obvious turn to the hand. Naena's hands had clutched fabric and nothing more.

Graydon frowned at Naena.

"Where... were..." he motioned to the coins.

Naena showed him how she had pushed the coins into a fold in the blanket with her left hand. Her hand hadn't been clenched in the blankets in anger. It had been there to keep the coins from falling out.

"How did you know they wouldn't want to search you?"

Naena moved the blanket to the side and motioned up and down as she arched an eyebrow.

"I kind of guessed no one wanted to see this," she said.

Graydon hesitated. He almost didn't say it.

"Everyone wanted to see it."

"What?"

"Well," he hesitated and sighed. "My father maybe didn't since he knew who you were before you were naked, but he's still a man. Mother encourages him to look. Gives him ideas or something she says."

"You know you're talking about your parents having sex... right?"

Graydon's mind broke a little. Once he got it back where it should be, he motioned to the iron coin as if she had just shown him how she had held it in the blanket.

"What's the iron one?" he asked.

"Even arch mages couldn't spell iron," she said. "Or didn't want to or something. It was out of place. Everything else was magic, but not this."

"For the third time, you can spell iron, but only while it's molten."

"And only metallurgy mages can manage it," she said. "Arch mages never did. Right? This can't spread something. That's why I took it, Graydon."

"As a rule, arch mages didn't manipulate iron," Graydon said. "Mages couldn't. Arch mages kind of agreed that there should be something that is typically safe. And only the Seven teach metallurgy magic, which you likely already know, so why am I even telling you? Of course, you knew what would be safe. Then why not take the magic?"