Excerpt: The Giltcity Folly

It was all their fault. Why couldn’t they follow her simple rules? They were all written very nicely on a vellum scroll posted over the kitchen door, as well as on the rental agreements each of them had signed. She supposed she could kick them out for the next infringements, but then she’d have to find new boarders, and that would waste even more of her precious time.
So she sat and sulked, surrounded by her laboratory, and thought dark thoughts, and the morning swept its rosy fingers past the city and full daylight came on.
She was about to write down her order to send on the pulley down to the kitchen when there was a familiar—and unwelcome—scent of violets and thunderstorm that filled the room in a poof, as if someone had squeezer the atomizer on a bottle of perfume. She stood up in a rush that almost knocked over her chair, and turned around just in time to see the purple smoke unfurl into quite an artistic cloud, which rained little sparks like a fanfare for a lovely young woman to emerge out of thin air. The smoke remained behind her like a train or a regal collar or something, and it set off her blonde curls and golden armor nicely. “Riis! Oh my dear Riis you have no idea how relieved I am to see you!”
She threw herself at the copper-headed sorceress in a flurry of white cape and soft leather boots. Riis’ severe posture sagged a little though she didn’t really hug back. “I don’t,” she admitted, then greeted the woman with the sort of un-enthusiasm that can only be accepted by very close family members. “Hi Lasli.”
Lasli Scriven stepped back from Riis, her face stricken with powerful and grave emotion that did not inhibit her natural loveliness at all. She was a very composed-looking woman under any circumstances, and always had been. Riis suspected that was part of why she had married a prince. “I must ask something of you that I could ask of no other. Only a sister could do something of this magnitude.”
That didn’t sound good. Riis tried to look non-committal, but apparently Lasli took that as solidarity, and so she went on in a gush. “Oh I knew I could count on you! It should only be for a few days, but of course you never know with these things. Dear Terel and I are both being called this time, and we just don’t feel comfortable leaving them with servants—who knows who you can trust these days.” She looked tragic, then enraptured “Except for sisters.”
With that she gave Riis another big dramatic hug, and the scent of thunder-and-flowers intensified. Riis started coughing and so she didn’t see what was happening until it was too late—when her sister’s presence before her was replaced by something quite different. Somethings.
“You remember your auntie Riis!” Lasli was saying. There were a lot of rather high-pitched voices repeating the word ‘mommy’ and a lot of chatter from Lasli, and Riis realized she was watching her sister bid farewell to her squadron of four bratty children. “Oh darlings of course we’ll be all right! Your father and I are heroes of the realm! And heroes are always victorious!” She kissed them all, which they did not really appreciate, and then proceeded to kiss Riis’ cheek as well, which she really did not appreciate. “I promise I’ll send word as soon as I can. Thank you, you’re the only one I could trust!”
With that, the purple smoke shrank away to nothing, taking Lasli and the violet smell with it. But it left the children.