“Of course.” He bowed his head slightly. “Thank you, Lady Searus, for listening with an open mind to my . . . proposal. We will be coming to an agreement on it very soon, I assure you.”

Lothain let his gaze turn to take in Merritt, from his long, wavy hair to his boots and back up again. It was a condescending examination.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you, boy, that real wizards don’t need swords?”

Magda expected the trouble to begin, but Merritt instead did something that surprised her. He grinned. As he leaned against the doorframe he shrugged with his other shoulder.

“I’m compensating for my many inadequacies.”

Lothain arched an eyebrow as he bulled the taller man out of his way. “I imagine you are.”

Merritt looked back over his shoulder, watching Lothain and the prosecutor’s private army depart.

“What did he want?” Merritt asked, his grin gone.

“A wife.”

“What?”

Magda waved off the question. “I’ll tell you later. What about James?”

Merritt sighed. “I got lucky. He was having a lot of trouble breathing. They thought his lungs had been burned when he inhaled the illumination from the explosion of the collapsing web. They just didn’t understand the reaction caused by the combination of spells involved. Those spells were still stuck together, I guess you could say, still reacting and suppressing his ability to breathe. Once I decoupled the elements of the spell-forms to cease the reaction, he could breathe again.

“He’s still hurting, but the others can heal him now. We have more important things to worry about.”

Magda let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.”

Merritt didn’t look to share her relief. “There are still three other wives mourning the deaths of their husbands.”

Magda nodded. “Let’s go next door, to the storage room, just in case Lothain comes back. I told him that you were here for Baraccus’s tools. Let’s not give him any excuse to think we’re up to something.”

Chapter 61

As they walked into the storage room, Merritt swept an arm out to ignite the lamps. Since he was gifted, his presence also lit the half-dozen heavy glass light spheres in iron brackets on the walls. The closed shutters held back the night and the distant flickers of lightning at the horizon.

“So what’s this about Lothain wanting you as his wife?”

His tone betrayed his displeasure.

“We have trouble,” Magda said without answering his question.

“More trouble than Lothain wanting you as his wife?”

“Lothain has been named First Wizard.”

Suddenly speechless, Merritt stared at her, not unlike the way she had stared at Councilman Sadler when he’d first told her the news. The only sound in the storage room was the hissing sputters of the freshly lit lamps.

Merritt finally found his voice. “That is trouble. I’ve never trusted the man. He’s not half the man needed for First Wizard.”