Hurry, if you please. It would not do to keep Julius waiting in the alley. The neighbors might become inclined to talk. Master of impatience, that Laurel. Myra kept her eyes on Benjamin as they walked downstairs to meet the rest. An interview with a dead man. Was he serious? He couldn’t possibly be serious. Maybe he meant something else.
‘I resurrected a man. And I was six.’
But . . . but there were laws of nature to contend with! Magic was nice and all, but surely, one could not simply bring a dead fellow back to life for interrogation purposes.
Aidan would be incensed.
Turning the corner, Myra’s suspicions were confirmed. Aidan, James, and Robert stood in hushed conference by the door that led out back to the mews. She could feel Aidan’s anger from ten paces distant.
Benjamin inclined his head. “James? Might you fetch the runegramme for me?”
“Is it in your laboratorium?”
Your laboratorium, Ben? Myra eyed the two men.
Seeing how Myra looked to him, Benjamin clarified, “A runegramme is another tool for decryption. Far better than a cipher disc, however, it can work as a translation device for languages in the OtherLands as it uses the runes of magic instead of symbols from this world alone.”
“And fetch my pipe, too,” Robert chimed in.
“What’s that for?” Myra whispered, wide-eyed.
“My nerves.”
A carriage stood in the alleyway out back of Grafford House. Black. Large. Obvious as to its purpose now that Myra knew what game was afoot. A man waited in its shadow, also conspicuous.
Not a spy then. Myra judged the man—Julius, apparently—as he strode forward to shake Laurel’s hand and hold quiet conversation. Open, expressive face topped with a mop of tight black curls, the man had a jumpy demeanor, a quivery sort of smile. He looked like a person who was always thinking, always learning. He wore no ring on his ungloved hands, no hat upon his head. Pronounced jaw and wide cheeks, Julius might have been entering his twenties. And with his looks might well leave him still a bachelor. But he was not unpleasant to look at, his dramatic and overgrown features somehow coming together to make a whole.
Nothing about the man was subtle. Or forgettable. Definitely not a spy, then. That or he’s right awful at it.
A gentle hand on her arm guided Myra backwards into the doorway. Robert. And helpful, as her legs shuddered beneath her, threatening to give way as her eyes lit upon the carriage’s cargo, now being brought into his home by Ben and Julius.
A body. They’re bringing in a body. Myra gulped, focusing on getting air in and out of her lungs as she turned to go back inside. Following a body.
The door closed behind the small party with a quiet click. Acceptance. Confirmation.
Too late for turning back now.
“You will not have my gift for your use if you make her watch.” Aidan stretched out a protective arm, a barrier between Myra and the rest of the mages.
“Frankly, I don’t see that it is your call to make.” James ignored Aidan, looking past him to Myra. “You can’t pick or choose when it comes to magic, discarding or avoiding that which makes you squeamish.”
Ben interjected, “I agree with Aidan. James, come on, man, you know that this—”
“He’s right.” Myra stepped past Aidan’s restraining arm. “You cannot choose in magic. However, you can choose your actions. That person right there? You could have spared his life, turned those bullets into flowers, surrounded the Queen with shields and only kept our hands so dirty. We could have avoided use of Benjamin’s most terrible power.
“But we did not. And those actions should be seen through. By all of us. It’s part of it all—repugnant or otherwise—integral to what you do and what I’ve signed on for by allying myself with the team.” Myra saw, in her mind’s eye, the moment on the lawn with James, her hand straying towards her wand, ready to strike. She was complicit. She had lost the right to pick and choose, was not one to run away when things became scary.
“Bravo, Myra.” Robert’s words were nearly lost to the shadows, heard by none save for Myra herself and, perhaps, Aidan.
The rest acknowledged Myra’s statement with nods of the head, small smiles. Only Ben did not meet her gaze. He fixed his eyes on the body beneath its coroner’s sheet. “Let’s go.”
“Right!” Julius moved to step forward with the rest, hesitating as all eyes turned to him. “I can watch, right? I mean, nobody said I couldn’t.”
Ben ignored Julius, looking to Aidan. A challenge lay in wait, cousin to the usual competitive animosity between the two. “Can we rely upon you, then?”
“I, too, am—to borrow from Myra—complicit and cannot justify being elsewhere and doing elsethings.”
“A simple ‘yes’ would suffice, truth-teller.” Benjamin curled his lip and walked past, pushing the wheeled, cloth-draped cart down the hallway in dramatic fashion. High dudgeon followed him down the hall as he maneuvered the body to the waiting servants’ lift. The team followed in his wake, a strange, disaffected funeral procession.
“Where are we going?” Myra’s whisper to Robert rang loud in her ears. Irreverent, her mistimed curiosity.
“To the basement. Some magic does not belong to even the pale light of nighttime, the wholesome air of a home,” Robert whispered back, the tenor equally harsh in the somber quiet. “We’ll be taking the stairs, however. That dumbwaiter was not meant for heavy use and the corpse alone shall tax it greatly. Stay close and watch your step.”
A door opened to a staircase both dim and dank. The full force of the stale must enveloped the wizards. Myra crinkled her nose, reaching gingerly for the handrail and thinking none too charitably that it smelled as though the Graffords had been diligently collecting the famous London fog for many generations.
And their careful collection of mildewed miasma is escaping. Myra gagged, descending into the darkness with the rest.
Wands aloft, M.I.’s mages called into being the same illumination that had confronted Myra and Aidan upon their first meeting with the team. Eerie against the weeping brickwork that pressed in upon the narrow stair, the pale white points of light bumped along with every step downward, downward, downward.
Myra suppressed a shiver, realizing that she ought to have raised her wand as well. But then, simple though it seemed, she did not know this spell. And nobody commented on her lack of participation, so that was that.
They reached the bottom of the cellar stairs. Benjamin awaited them. The body still lay upon its bier, covered in its protective sheet.
“Here.” Aidan materialized out of the darkness to hand Myra a long match. “We all must participate, lest we not provide the spirit a hospitable atmosphere in which to return.” He indicated a row of candles lining the mildewed baseboard.
“No spooking the spook, eh,” Julius’ voice rang harsh against the cellar walls. His joke clearly unwelcome in the somber, stale atmosphere, the ord shuffled dismally back into the shadows, cowed. His own match he clasped, forgotten, in his fingers.
Myra wasn’t certain there was enough air down in the cellars to even light candles. Or maybe the squeezing of her lungs was due to her growing fears.
The light in the basement of Grafford House steadily grew as the M.I. mages went about their business. Myra followed Aidan to a section of unlit candles, accepting the wavering flame from his match to hers. Different than the illumination given off by the mages’ wands, this light was less utilitarian and more symbolic. Warm and yellow, it softened the hard edges of the space, driving both the shadows and the stink of unused air from the gathering of wizards. And Julius, who now participated hurriedly, lest he be uninvited from the arcane proceedings.
“Myra, I would ask that you refrain from doing—or even intimating—magic for the time being,” James kept his voice low as he spoke close in Myra’s ear. His eyes swept the room, cautious.
With the magic Benjamin was about to undertake, it made sense that they all refrain from further use of their gifts. Around her, wands were being extinguished. Myra nodded sagely.
“M.I.’s director does not know of you, Myra. We’d like to keep it that way," James correctly interpreted her look. “Julius . . . Well, he’s a smart man and can make his own conclusions. But anything an ord guesses at is likely to be wildly inaccurate. For your safety and his we’re opting to keep him in the dark for now.”
“I’ll be careful.” Myra slipped her hand into her pocket in illustration. She still kept Laurel’s wardstone close.
“Good girl.” James gave a small smile and left her to assist Ben more directly.
“Do you know what they’re about here?”
Myra startled as Julius spoke to her. He stood close behind, a warm smile on his face. No menace, no jest. Just polite conversation. Like they had met in a park and he was commenting on the weather.
She shook her head, nonplussed.
“Julius Griggs.” He performed the tiniest of bows.
A gentleman, then.
Myra pulled back the offered hand of introduction, feeling stupid. “Um, Myra Wetherby.”
“American. Yes?”
She searched his face, alarm pulling at her and stealing any answer she could have possibly given. He read her look wrong in any event, responding with an awkward, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Nonplussed, Myra spoke without thinking, “Oh, I’m not—! I mean, I’m not one of—”
She forced her flustered words to die lest she say something altogether foolish.
Ally or not, the man was an ord.
It seemed to her that her sudden leap to silence fit his idea of what grief looked like, for he looked away and fiddled with the edge of his cuff. “A lot of things have changed over here for us, too. And not merely from our loss of Stephen.”
Something in the hardened way in which he said “changed” set a shiver through Myra’s Empathy. Julius likely he had his own opinions on what had happened to DMI’s original team. A true ally, then. Why the caution, James?
“They told you who I am, then. Yes? No?” Surprise rendered his squashed face handsome. Myra decided in that instant that she quite liked Julius. He took her smile as encouragement and continued, “I am . . . what is it your lot calls us? An ordinary. But an ordinary who makes extraordinary things out of the mundane.”
He paused for effect, waiting indulgently for Myra’s puzzled look. She obliged.
“I am an inventor. I make the gadgets that the agency relies upon. That the Queen herself relies upon. I dunno if you’ve been briefed on the events of today,” he leaned close, a rapturous look enveloping his features, “but the Queen came under fire this afternoon—that’s how this fellow got himself killed”—he jerked a thumb at the wizardly proceedings occurring near the sheeted figure—“and I got to see my latest and greatest in action.”
Truly curious, for she had seen no invention, amazing or otherwise, nearer to the Queen than the carriage itself, Myra prompted, “And that would be?”
“A bullet-proofed—! A bullet-proofed parasol,” Griggs finished his triumphant reveal in a whisper, guilty as a schoolboy in church. “Has two layers of silk with a fine mesh betwixt the two. Like chain mail.”
Myra’s face must have indicated her doubts, for Julius moved to insist on the point. He stopped himself as a low, droning murmur filled the cellar. They both focused their attention back on the wizards of M.I., rapt at what they were seeing.
The coroner’s sheet had been pulled back so as to expose the face of the dead assailant. He lay still upon his platform. His face looked peaceful in spite of the scrapes and cuts which marred forehead and cheeks. Somewhere within that placid skull lay the piece of shrapnel that had killed him. Myra wondered if he would feel it upon waking.
At the dead man’s side and holding his hand under the thin sheet, sat Benjamin, his head bowed.
James, Robert, and Laurel proved the source of the droning. The words were those of magic, though Myra hadn’t enough knowledge yet to understand them. Aidan stood by, unmoving and unmoved.
The sharp intake of breath at her side proved that Julius Griggs had quicker eyes than Myra. The droning increased in volume, grew frantic. Laurel shuddered and swayed. The motion drew a look of concern from James.
The white cloth twitched. Or was it a trick of the light? The candles, each and every flame, seemed to flicker in unison. Once. Twice.
“Aidan,” Robert broke from the trio of chanters to call the attention of the American.
“It’s no matter. He won’t come,” Benjamin whispered through gritted teeth. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. They glistened in the yellow light of the chamber, bright stars dotting a dark sky. For the mage seemed as far away, as inaccessible and unapproachable, as the heavens themselves.
“I’m finding his soul.” Laurel sank to her knees, waving off James’ concerns. Whether she meant Benjamin or the deceased was unclear.
A hand tightened on Myra’s arm, forcing a scream up into her throat where it died before it could make entrance. Thankfully, for she did not wish to bookend the day with unwanted drama.
Julius clutched her arm, unaware that he did so. His eyes were glued to the scene before them, bright and intense.
The dead man sat up. Laurel slumped, spent. The chanting stopped, and James held Laurie in his arms, crooning comforting words. A temperamental shake of her head revealed she was not unduly hurt.
And good thing, too. For the reanimated corpse was now trying to stand, Aidan and Robert keeping him seated with much effort. The protective sheet had slid even further down, revealing a massive gash in the dead man’s chest.
Myra did look away then, burying herself in Julius’ sleeve before she had time to think of her actions. The goal was not to retch.
Griggs’ comforting arm slid up and around Myra’s quaking shoulders. A hissing sound, like air leaving a balloon, sounded from across the room. Myra didn’t have the heart to look.
“I give you voice,” Benjamin’s command sounded deep and clear. He was back then, from wherever he had gone. Back and brought a dead man with him.
A handkerchief appeared before Myra’s terror-stricken eyes. A second kindness from Julius. What she was to do with it exactly, she wasn’t sure. But she was grateful for the gesture, nonetheless.
“I won’t. I won’t go,” the dead man screamed at long last, still fighting Robert and Aidan for freedom.
“Do something, man,” Robert yelled, his complaint mingling with that of the unruly, undead guest.
“I take your arms, I make them heavy. I take your legs,” Ben bellowed. The thrashing of the prisoner ceased. Myra looked back on the scene, carefully keeping her eyes on the dead man’s face.
His eyes rolling in his head, forced into near-paralysis, M.I.’s prisoner spat at Benjamin, “Take it all, magus. Take all and see if Our Great Master does not do the same to you tenfold.”
“Did you act alone?” James rose to face Addair’s man.
“As if I would tell you,” the corpse turned his attentions to the questioner. “ ’S not like I have anything to lose.”
“We can put you in places you scarce conceive of in your nightmares.” Laurel stood by James’ side, strong once more.
“A Ways-walker. It was you who dragged me here, then. Not this broken man-child with power bigger than him.”
“Shut it. Or we’ll not bother saying ‘pretty please’ next time we’ve a question,” James hissed. “Did you act alone?”
“Yes.” The dead man offered up a spectral grin.
All eyes turned to Aidan.
Head cocked to the side as if listening to music only he could hear, M.I.’s Maester of Triewes appeared dumbfounded. Long moments passed. Myra found herself wishing for even the monotony of a longcase clock, if only to break the oppressive silence and drown out the painful drag of the dead man’s lungs against the air.
“I . . . I cannot tell,” Aidan stammered at last. He passed a shaky hand before his eyes, “It’s as if— It’s as if, in passing through the veil, he has lost that which separates truth from lie.”
“What do you mean?”
Aidan bristled under James’ challenge. “I mean that the dead don’t follow our rules. They don't see things as we do, and so it all comes out—the truth, the lies—it all comes out blurry. Mixed up.”
James answered with anger of his own, “Had we known that, you could have stayed upstairs and read like you’d wanted to.”
“Had I ever questioned a dead man before today, I might have not bothered coming down here,” Aidan shouted back. “My team didn’t have a practitioner of forbidden magic within our ranks.”
“Out with you, then.” James pointed a finger, quivering with rage, towards the stairs. “If you’re going to give him more than we get, then out with you this instant.”
He needn’t have bothered. Aidan had already stormed off into the corner, his lips pressed shut in mutinous animosity. The reaction automatic, Myra tried to soothe the angry American with her empathic magic, earning a nasty look herself from James.
I’d forgotten! She made her silent apologies, thrusting her hand into her pocket to grasp the wardstone. Aidan’s grateful glance made James’ ire worth it.
“Well, I’m not going to hold him here if we don’t actually make use of the moment.” Benjamin sweated through his words, still concentrating on holding up his end of the magic.
James whirled on Addair’s man. “You acted alone today. There is none of the power on you. I cannot see what role you could possibly play—”
“Then you are blind!” he cried, arching his back so that the sheet once again fell away. There, low on the corpse’s chest, was emblazoned a tattoo. From where she cowered alongside Julius, Myra could only tell that the symbol was complex, done completely in black ink, and had been greatly destroyed by the coroner’s knife. “Addair isn’t looking amongst the gifted for his glorious revolution. The answer is to be found in us, the greatly unworthy, who strive for answers. We seek the song of the universe and strike down all who do not raise their voices in chorus. Your Queen, she too will—”
The corpse grew rigid. Killed mid-sentence.
“We had our answer, yes?” Benjamin stood, speaking in his normal voice once again.
“Would have been easier to just lift the sheet from the first,” Robert rumbled his complaint. “Come, let us repair upstairs. Griggs, the corpse is yours.”