He was feigning ignorance, with a touch of a bad accent, but he couldn’t hide the smugness.
“You’re being intentionally dense,” I said.
The guy on the other end hung up.
“Fuck,” I said.
“So… now what?” Rose asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I doubt he’ll give me a fair hearing if I call back. I don’t really know what to expect, here. Even reading up on the basics, it doesn’t get into much depth about this.”
Rose nodded, “Essentials and Famulus were more focused on Other-practitioner relationships than general Other-human relationships.”
I could see her fidgeting. I leaned forward. “Earlier, you said you were nervous. How does that work? You don’t breathe any harder, since you don’t breathe. Does your heartbeat pick up? Does your body flood with the stress hormones, making you fidget?”
“That’s a no on every count,” she said. I turned away from the window to look at her. She elaborated, “My body’s always the same. Stable, steady, there, but not doing anything except… I dunno. Maintaining appearances?”
“But you get nervous.”
“My brain gets nervous,” she said.
“I’m not sure that makes sense, but okay,” I replied. I looked down at the page I’d been rereading for the past twenty minutes, then tossed the book down onto the coffee table.
“You’re onto Demesnes,” she observed, craning her head to peer down. “Me too.”
“It’s a fitting thing to read up on, here,” I said. “Making your own sanctuary, while we have enemies gathering at the gates. It seems like a pretty simple ritual.”
“Deceptively simple,” Rose said.
“Yeah, deceptively simple,” I agreed. “You stake out the area, the magical equivalent of drawing out your borders and planting a flag, you say a few words, and you invite anyone, everyone and everything that objects to come and challenge you. Trial by combat, riddles, placating them with deals, whatever you agree on. The bigger the area you try to claim, the bigger the invitation you broadcast. They each get to confront you the once, and the ritual ends when there are no challengers left, or when a set amount of time passes. Claim a space the size of a closet, maybe get five to ten objections. Claim a house, get fifty.”
“I’m thinking that’s one of the last things we want to do,” Rose said. “When we have a familiar, and when we have an implement, so we have some ability to fight.”
“Except,” I said, “It’s a bit of a catch-22, isn’t it? The demesne gives us a steady supply of power, with bigger spaces giving us more power. It’s a sanctuary, and a place where we can bend the rules in our favor. Right? So we need a tool or a familiar to lay claim to as big a space as we can pull off.”
“Yes.”
“But we can’t infuse our tool until we have some power to infuse it with,” I said. “Except…”
“That power would ideally come from the demesne,” Rose said.
I nodded, “Or the familiar, in terms of strength and shaping how the tool functions. And we can’t start talking with Others about bringing them on board as a familiar until we have some established power already.”
“Necessitating a tool and a claim to some land,” Rose finished for me. “Each of the three things requires the two others.”
I nodded. “Or it necessitates a compromise. We pick one front, we make it easy, like you suggested, go with the bare minimum. Do one thing badly, use the leverage we gain to do the next thing in a mediocre way, and then use the two things to do really well with the last ritual.”
My pacing resumed, though I had my hands free, and I could stick them in the pockets of my wool hoodie.
“How do the others do it?” Rose asked. “The Behaims and the Duchamps?”
“They have backup, I imagine,” I said. “A mom and dad who are willing to sit in on a meeting with a familiar and vouch for them, or maybe even have a familiar arranged from early on or before the kid is born, things ready-made, a space set aside.”
“Magical trust fund kids,” Rose said.
“Basically,” I said.
“What about the North End Sorcerer?”
“What about him?”
“I take it you didn’t read the little black book from cover to cover? Look him up.”
I shuffled through the tomes to find where I’d put the book. “I was going to read it later, after the major four were done, before the council meeting.”
“You don’t need to make excuses to me,” Rose said. She had her own copy. “Um. Page thirty-two.”
I opened the tiny book.
Johannes Lillegard, believed to be an adopted name. Practitioner. The newest arrival in Jacob’s Bell as of August thirteenth, ‘ought-nine, he arrived at the council meeting of said date. Johannes appears no older than twenty-five, but all facts suggest he claimed his demesne six or more years ago, a region spanning all of Jacob’s Bell, west and north of the hospital as well as the entire expansion north of the bridge.
I paused in my reading there, to ask, “The bridge?”
“The highway,” Rose said. “It becomes a bridge where it passes over the marshland here.”
I pictured it, then stopped short. “Wait, the commercial area north of the highway? With the train station, the shops-”
“-The condos, the mall, the prefab houses, yes.”
“As his demesne? The book talks about it in the context of rooms, of houses at the most.”
Rose didn’t reply. When I glanced her way, she was nodding, a serious look joining the general exhaustion on her face.
“There’s a catch there,” I said. “A drawback.”
“Oh, right, you’re only partway through,” Rose said. “Demesnes are like trademarks. Periodically, people are going to test them. You need to respond, but you have the home court advantage. The law’s on your side. But if you claim something that broad, and if you can’t or don’t defend it when someone else puts one foot over the line, that weakens your stance. But he’s defending it.”
“How?”
She pointed back at the little black book.
I read.
In conversation with Aimon Behaim and Sandra Duchamp, we mutually agreed that Johannes must have claimed the territory prior to the expansion appearing, though we’re unsure of when this might have been, for none of us to hear the claim or be able to respond to it, nor how he was able to do this at what might have been the age of thirteen or fourteen. Mara has declined to answer any questions, being more taciturn than her usual,
Johannes seems to bear harsh wounds, no doubt tying back to his ambitious claim, with no use of one eye, one hand and one leg, though the tissues appear undamaged. He bears a set of antique pipes as his implement, and has a Gatekeeper of the Seventh Ring (ref Astral Bodies: vol 3, and Prime Movers) as his familiar, named Faysal Anwar, which takes the form of a rather large Afghan Hound.
Note:
Johannes has made his second appearance at council meetings, February sixth, year two thousand and ten. Occasion to expand my notes. Arrogant, and justified in it. Enigmatic. He spends almost all of his time within his demesne, stepping outside only to defend his claim and attend occasional meetings. This makes gathering information hard. Favors manipulation of space.