Spell of Intrigue | Page 6

the letter's probably only another warning to be careful with his boat."
"I don't know," Roni said. "There, now you can appear in public. Give me your hand. But about this letter - do you think we can trust the crew?"
"It's Groot's boat," said Karlini. "It's Groot's crew, too. You might as well ask if we can trust Groot."
"Well, can we?"
A seagull flapped down and perched itself on Karlini's shoulder. He ignored it. "As far as anyone, I guess. Depends on where the profit is. He's always had a soft spot for Max, though."
"Haven't we all," remarked Roni. "That's better. Try to wait at least five minutes before disgracing yourself again, will you please, dear?"
"You knew what you were in for when you married me," Karlini said.
"Right. I told you I didn't wasn't ready for children and I ended up married to one instead ."
"Would you like me to give you back your receipt?"
"Shut up," Roni said, "you idiot."
"Very well, dear." Karlini said, affecting an aggrieved expression. "How's the research coming?"
"It's hard trying to work out of boxes, with the apparatus packed away, but--I think the trip won't be a total loss. I do have enough data put by to just sit and think about stuff for a stretch."
"You won't, though, if I know you. You still think all this is leading somewhere?"
"Oh, yes," said Roni, "no question about that. The biologically cellular roots of magical power, no less. Whether we can understand it well enough to harness it, of course, still remains to be seen."
"We all have confidence in you," Karlini said.
"Confidence isn't the point. We're dealing with intricate systems, tremendous energies, things we're not even close to being able to comprehend. Traditional magic is dangerous enough as it is, and that's when you already know what you're supposed to be doing, and yet here we are trying to forge new tools out of a whole new field. It's intimidating as anything. If you ask me, I'll take pure research over this any day."
The seagull, which had been nibbling inquisitively at Karlini's earlobe, hopped into the air, beat its wings once for balance, and landed nimbly atop his head. "Why does this thing keep following me around?" he said, craning his eyes upward in an attempt to gain early warning of the gull's next move.
"Maybe it thinks there's something lovable about you. There's no accounting for tastes, I suppose."
A leathery, attention-getting "hurrumph" sounded from behind them. Karlini shifted his position to crane his head around without dislodging the seagull. It was Haddo, the bright sunlight doing no more than the gloom in the cabin to reveal a single detail within his hood. "Bird," announced Haddo, "must fly I."
"Go ahead, Haddo," said Karlini, "and thank you. We'll see you later."
Haddo scuttled away. "'Thank you'?" said Roni.
"Don't ask." They watched the passing water traffic for a moment. Then Karlini said abruptly, "Don't let Max stampede you into this, dear. He'll survive."
"Yes, but that's just the point, dear, don't you see?" Roni said. "Will he? And will we?"
I took a last look around my office. I know it's ridiculous to get sentimental about places, especially rental ones, but the office and I had covered a lot of ground with each other, so to speak. At any rate, I couldn't begin to count the number of times I'd covered the floor of the office with my own body, and for all I knew some of the copious amounts of organic fluids I'd spilled in that place were still dripping through knotholes to the floor below. The room was as bare as I'd found it, which really wasn't that bare; I'd known that anything personal I brought in was as likely as not to wind up smashed against the wall, if not across my head. The old bashed-in shield still hung over the entrance door. It had come in with the place and would go out with it, too. It was only in the last few weeks of investigation that I'd discovered that the shield had not actually been mine, receiving its dent in some campaign of my youth, but then it had only been a few months or so before, when I'd fallen in with Max and his crew for the first time, that I'd realized I had virtually no memory of my life before I'd arrived in Roosing Oolvaya seven years earlier.
The Curse of Namelessness, as Max had called it, was apparently not something you ran across every day, even if you were a sorcerer specializing in that sort of thing. Max wasn't that type of specialist, or at least I didn't think he was; his strongest talent that I'd been able to identify was an absolute genius for driving people crazy with cryptic references and vague allusions he would consistently refuse to