C. M. Waggoner - The Ruthless Ladys Guide to Wizardry

Unnatural Magic

The Ruthless Ladys Guide to Wizardry

Dellaria Wells had misplaced her mother.

That maybe wasnt so accurate, to be very fair to herself, which Delly preferred to be. To be very fair to Dellaria, she didnt have to do too much to misplace her mam. Her mam had a way of misplacing herself, like a cat whod dart for freedom if you left the kitchen door open. But itd been two weeks now, and even as gristly an old cat as Dellys mam ought to have gotten hungry and come home after a fortnight of roaming. Something had gone wrong, then, and as dreadful as her mam might be, it made Dellys stomach take disagreeable turns to think that she might be sleeping in a garbage pile somewhere. Delly, curse her eyes, was going to have to do something about it.

If you asked her mam, shed probably say that her not having a place to stay was all her daughters fault. That was the way it was when you paid someones way: it went straight from you doing them a favor to them thinking you doling out cash was all part of natures plan, like a bee making honey. But Dellaria hadnt yet discovered how to make a moneycomb, and at the moment she was so damn broke that she couldnt cover her own rent, let alone the rent of her dreadful brigand of a mother. Shed lost the steady work shed had as a barmaid two weeks ago, when a regular got a little too insistent about trying to kiss her and shed used her fire witchery to set his beard on fire. Now she was down a job and forced to live off of her wits alone. Her wits, as it turned out, made for very unsatisfying dining.

She was so presently impoverished, in fact, that shed been avoiding her landlady for a week by only entering and exiting her room via the back alley. On this particular occasion, though, Mrs. Medlow was lying in wait for her by the kitchen door. Dellaria, she said. You know the rents been due for a regular span now, dearie.

Oh, might it so, maam, might it so, Delly said, thinking at her fingertips a bit. I was just going to say when I saw you next, maamand me having found it very right peculiar how I havent seen you in some time, maam, right peculiar indeedthat I present you with ten sen of interest per day Ive been late, maam, if that might be ensatisficating to your fine self?

At that her landlady got a considering gleam in her eye, which she attempted to cover over with a delicate and motherly twitter. Thatll do very nicely, dearie, she said, if youll let me put another very wee hard promise on you.

Delly drew herself up a bit at that. Her landlady wasnt all that much of an expert wizardjust a gutterwitch, like Delly herselfbut she could cast a hard promise with the best of them. Since the Lord-Mage of Hexos had invented the parameters for the damn things ten years ago, half of the ill-intended gutterwitches and debt collectors in Leiscourt had learned to cast a hard promisethere was nothing like them for extracting money out of the recalcitrantbut Mrs. Medlows could have been used as examples in a course on the subject. Get your rent to her an hour late and youd break out in throbbing pustules at best. That aint needful, Mrs. Medlow, she said. Ive always been as good as my word with the rent, you know that.

Youve always been as good as your word because Ive put hard promises on you when you looked likely to run off to Monsatelle, dearie, Mrs. Medlow said, to which Delly was forced to concede a trifle. Let your landlady curse you once with an itchy rash on your haunches and youre unlikely to cross her a second time.