The trick of flying, Myra found, was in not thinking at all of what one was doing while they did it. And with Aidan beside her and the press of Laurel’s distress somewhere in the dark below, Myra found distraction enough to find the first edge of the Ways that lived in the air far above the ground and ride it upon little more than a broom meant to sweep a hospital floor.
The Ways. Onion skins upon the aether. Layered worlds.
And within which layer does Laurel wait? Myra wondered, seeking Laurel’s nearness with her gift.
Perhaps none at all. The darkness of James’ magic echoed in Myra’s chest, a weight that threatened to send her crashing from the sky. She meditated upon the loss, trapped in it.
In the end it had been as simple as the snuffing of a candle. He was simply gone, had been there one moment and was now empty and still. All that noise and fuss, followed by absolute silence. An unmaking.
And for what? It wasn’t sacrifice. It wasn’t even murder. It was . . . a waste. A complete and utter waste. A life of service, cut down without ceremony or care. In his final moments, James had broken. Fractured. Is that how M.I.’s adversaries had felt? Had he ever done to others what had been done to him? Even having ridden within his soul, Myra was unsure of this last. James had been hard. Unbreakable.
A lie.
The warm buzz of Aidan’s Triewes settled around Myra like a mantle of sweet comfort. Come, fly with me, it said. Do not lose yourself to this soul-wearying grief, this loss of self. It is a fear that destroys a mind. An unraveling, an antithesis of self. James lives on in the truth of the world.
Pulling herself at last from her dark ponderings, Myra fixed her eyes on the handle of her broom, finding that, at last, the sight of the ground far below her did not make her sick or dizzy.
Aidan has more skill traveling in the Ways of the TurnKey than he owns to. I wonder if he realizes that such modesty is perilously akin to a lie. She sent out her compliments along the thread of power that connected the two of them and marveled at how vast tracts of land were made small as she and Aidan flew over the countryside.
It made sense now, where maps came from. But it had Myra wondering how such were made without the aid of magic. Her education spoke up, answering for her. Magic had been used thusly. DMI’s origins were the Department of Topography and Statistics, after all. To hear James tell it, all they had done in the early stages of the second Afghan war had been to redraw the maps, mile by painstaking mile. Myra’s heart faltered.
James. How could he be dead?
Tears gathered on Myra’s cheeks, slipping over and down her chin. Rain for the fields below.
They slowed, Aidan came close alongside, reaching out and signaling to Myra with a squeeze of his hand that they had reached the furthest point where Laurel’s captors might have come. The blur of magic lessened, grew transparent, more akin to frosted glass in the wintertime than the rushing of a waterfall. Myra gasped, fearful that they might tumble to the ground, luckless angels.
Vengeful angels. Myra realized that her Voice was available to her, should she need it. Which meant they had located Laurel after all. Looking downward into the darkness, she cursed the fact that they had had to attempt such a rescue on a moonless night. Granted, with the enemy AethCaster’s cloud cover still holding sway, such assistance as moonlight would have been rendered useless.
Squinting, Myra could see next to nothing in the black on black of the life-sized map below. Patience won out as her sharp eyes parted the veil of magic surrounding her and Aidan. Here and there a late-night illumination still held comfort for the traveler, tiny points of yellow light, dulled by distance. It reminded Myra of how far up they were, and she fought the urge to scream. She swallowed the impulse with difficulty, grateful when Aidan again squeezed her hand, reassuring and solid. He would not let go. He would not let her fall.
Using the guide lights of sparse civilization, she could almost make out the thin ribbon of road winding through the forests and fields.
“We have to get closer.” Or at least that’s what Myra presumed Aidan said. To her eyes it seemed he merely mouthed the instruction, his words cruelly snatched away by the whirling wind and magic around them.
Together, they shimmied low as they dared. Too far and they would fall below the magic which held them aloft. Myra crinkled her brow in concentration, seeing nothing but a world of darkness made darker by their terrible urgency and the horrors they had left behind but minutes prior.
Laurel was down there. And close by. Myra was certain of it. She tried her Voice again, able to reach the others now that she and Aidan were nearer the ground. Everyone, I can use Laurie’s gift from here.
Beneath her, the riders converged, called by Myra, an arrow pointing towards victory. She and Aidan followed the diminutive clouds of dust with eager eyes.
There. On the road far ahead rumbled a carriage.
Aidan pulled close to Myra, this time making sure he was heard. “Go.”
Together, they shot through the heavens, speed blurring the magic. Myra’s eyes watered with their efforts, and her skin tingled. It was as though invisible ghosts tugged at anything left exposed and twisted any loose article of clothing.
They neared the carriage. Myra breathed deep, quelling a memory from what seemed like ages ago. A hearse, driven into an alleyway under cover of night. A driver, foppish and endearing in his dishevelment. A corpse, victim of James’ magic.
But Laurel was alive. She had to be.
A spark of light blossomed from the end of Myra’s wand. A beacon to call the team. Laurie, we’re coming.
Something heavy slammed into Myra and sent her spinning out into the black sky. “Aid—!”
Luck more than presence of mind allowed Myra to keep her wand as she tumbled end over end towards the growing ground. Grasping hands clutched fruitlessly for a broom no longer there, and bereft of its stable presence and Aidan’s guidance, Myra could not right herself before dark trees rose up to meet her.
With a shriek, Myra burned frantic magic in one last gasp of effort to save herself from a broken neck. A shield of protection, fractured and yielding, blossomed around her. The oak tree into which she had fallen took much of the damage otherwise meant for her. Leaves and branches passed in a slowing blur. Ducking, Myra tucked her head into her chest and braced for contact with the hard dirt.
Every part of her body screamed at once. Pain. Never-ending pain engulfed Myra, and her lungs and heart spasmed in heroic effort to continue pumping. But, jumbled as she was, nothing seemed to be working right.
Panic rose within Myra, confusing lungs that already were refusing to draw air. Closing her eyes, Myra prayed for a quick death and found steadiness in the gentle whirl of sparks against her closed eyelids.
The pain receded, became separate aches and throbs vying for attention.
The impact with the earth had robbed her of breath. It was just as it had been for Kady when Myra had taken the Kinetic by surprise during combat training. She concentrated on breathing shallowly. Air in; air out. Better.
She moved to sit up and found that she could. Nothing was broken. Maybe.
Myra looked about her, seeing little more than trees and an old, narrow path. The half-buried stones of the road gleamed eerily in the light of her still-illuminated wand, ancient witness to her tumble from grace.
She was alone.
“Myra Moore. Or was it Wetherby? I never could get your story straight.”
Scrambling to her feet, Myra hissed as she discovered that certain parts of her were quite a bit more injured than first thought. Her left ankle refused to support her fully, and several ribs screamed fractured protestation as she prepared to meet he who had spoken such haunting words. “Who are you?”
Where are you? The latter question was more pressing, but Myra dared not voice that ignorance. Not into the face of such menace as she felt from the unknown assailant. She pointed her wand in what she believed was the correct direction, its bright spell wavering in her shaking hands.
A hooded and cloaked figure stepped out onto the road. The man had a wand of his own. With an ominous crackle, the mage’s weapon sparked to life and shot its broken lightning straight at Myra.
With a spryness that surprised even her, Myra spun to the side, lifting her own wand in battle. Lightning answered lightning. The hooded figure was forced to give ground.
Both put up their wands, the enemy mage out of mocking admiration and Myra from exhaustion that she prayed he did not see. The hood was moved back, revealing dark hair, swarthy skin, and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once in its lifetime. White teeth—distinctly even and bright—flashed as he broke into a mad chuckle at Myra’s expense. His eyes, however, held no mirth. Myra could see as much, even at the distance of the twenty-odd paces at which they stood apart.
How had he gone undiscovered so long within DMI’s employ? One look at the man now, one word from him, gave Myra the shivers. She lifted her wand again, testing Black’s fortitude.
The smiling mouth turned downward, growing sour. “You never answered my question, girl.”
“And why would I answer to the likes of you?” Myra challenged. “Seems you know more than enough as it is. If your nasty, underhanded betrayal of your associates did not give you this last bit of information, I’d rather the victory of leaving you unsatisfied.”
Taking great pains not to limp, Myra met Agent Black on the road. Equals. Or something like it. For all that she refused to give him her name, it bothered her that she did not know more than his surname.
The breath that had earlier eluded her tugged at her chest, new panic that she must quell, else her enemy believe Myra as vulnerable as she felt. She waited to see if DMI’s mole had more to say to her. He put up his wand but did not throw more words between them.
Myra took her shot.
A whirlwind of magic lit the night. The blast from Myra’s power threw her assailant to the ground. She advanced, wand at the ready. She would end it here. Black groaned, and shifted. Too slow to rise, taken utterly by surprise at Myra’s boldness, Addair’s man had lost his wand and now reached vainly for it.
Myra slowed, putting up her wand.
Get him! He’s right there! Internally, Myra screamed at her reluctant arms and legs. A deeper part still, argued in contrast. She could not strike an unarmed man. She would not commit cold-blooded murder.
He attacked you. It’s not the same. That same conscience hammered at her. The pressure of the impulse banged at the back of her eyes. This man is responsible for James’ death, Julius’ imprisonment, Laurel’s capture, and Stephen’s torture. He betrayed everything you and your friends have—
Black rolled over onto his back, collapsing with a moan. He met her gaze, eyes glinting. “Do it.”
Myra raised her wand. She hesitated.
“Do it,” Mr. Black cackled, coughing blood. “Give in and become a murderer. Then you’ll be like us. Like Maclean and Hutchinson and Roberts and anyone else who has taken the mantle of power without understanding the cost. Mad with magic. Nobody is on the side of right, you know. Not you. Not your friends. Not even the government which they served. Do it.”
Myra waited. The war within her conscience waged, paralyzing her. Her wand wavered, its bright point quivering as her eyes dimmed with tears, with pain. He was right. Oh, he was right about her, about her desires and needs and moral ambiguity.
Myra found her heart calling the darkness. She felt within her the strange and wild desire to pull the stars from the heavens and grind them to dust. With such terrible futility came a desire to kill, to maim, to unmake the world, or in the absence of such an option, to wreak as much damage as she could with her small, mortal hands. It was the bleeding out of love from the heart. An emptying and a filling up of fear, of the suspicion that there was a terrible rightness to the wrong.
Past and present converged. Questions and fears bubbled up from the mire of Myra’s rotten core. Sluggish, the brown miasma stirred, causing her to gag upon the memories of lives she had ruined, choices made for reasons that served her pride rather than prudence. Mother. Father. Sister. Allies and enemies alike. The wreckage stretched in a line, long and straight as the Roman road upon which she stood.
“Stop it.” Tears squeezed past Myra’s defenses, eroding the foundation. Her hand brought her wand higher. She could see its bright point raising up before her eyes, arcing around as she brought the tip of the weapon to her temple.
“Yes. The world is better off this way. Better off without you mages mucking it up. Causing trouble and going against the nature of how things ought to be.” Black’s words echoed the thoughts in Myra’s head.
He’s right. Oh, he’s right.
“Better off without me. Yes.” Myra shut her eyes to the searing pain of her Empathy and summoned her power one last time.
Aidan.
He stood within a space ill-defined but somehow inexplicably full of light.
It’s like the Ways. Myra’s brain ponderously called the knowledge to her.
Aidan was sad. Infinitely sorrowful. Why?
She moved to meet him, herself saddened. Empath. She smiled at the realization of her powers. Perhaps she could comfort him.
Aidan, she called.
He turned to her, honest love in his eyes. Overwhelming caring and regard.
Myra stumbled, overcome. The hand that held her wand wavered. The horrid realization that, in the real world, she was about to take her own life with magic, hit her like the icy waters of the North Atlantic Apex.
The Maester of Triewes opened his mouth to speak. “The enemy lies, Myra.”
The loud rush of magic called Myra back from the Ways, and she screamed, throwing her wand to the ground. But it wasn’t her casting that had called her away from the doorway to the OtherLands.
Mr. Black lay broken upon the ground, blasted unrecognizable by his own magic.
Myra’s legs buckled, and she sobbed knowing that, through Aidan, she had seen the truth, seen through the enemy’s black lies. And it had been her own Empathic power that had turned Black’s magic against him so that, in the end, he killed himself. It was done.
Oh, what terrible, terrible power, what a horrid gift to have had. She glanced again to the ruined husk of the black-robed man and retched. That could have been—should have been me. Were it not for . . .
Aidan! He was close by. Had to be, else his truth telling would not have affected Myra so. She rose, grimacing at the pain of her ankle. Sharp and real, the agony of the injury called her back to the urgency of the situation. If she was this hurt from her fall, perhaps Aidan, too, was—
“No.” Myra shut to her mind to the thought. They had already lost one of their own today. The world was not so cruel as to take a second of the M.I. mages from her. She abandoned the broken road, hobbling to the tree line so that she might fashion a crutch for herself. How she would be useful to anyone when they found Laurie was beyond her.
One step in front of the other. Myra reached for her resiliency, found it mostly intact.
“Myra!” A familiar voice rang out. Kady’s.
Heart leaping, Myra forgot her search for a walking aid and turned to the sweet sound of rescue. “Here.”
Running along the road, Kady held aloft her lighted wand. Burning power best left conserved, she looked wildly about until Myra had left the deeper shadows of the surrounding woods once more.
“Oh, thank the gods.” Kady was at Myra’s side in an instant, offering support. “Aidan?”
“Nearby. I think.” Myra leaned gratefully into the Kinetic. “I used his powers.”
“The rest are coming. When you were blown out of the sky . . .” Kady shook her head. “Robert and Stephen are catching me up. The carriage—it was empty.”
“Bait. To separate you from myself and Aidan.” Myra nodded, gesturing to the corpse that had recently been Mr. Black. She quickly caught Kady up—stumbling as she approached the point of her own near-defeat at Black’s hands.
“Hush, dear.” Kady hugged Myra close, not needing to be told more. Together they trudged onwards, Myra leaning on Kady and leading them as best she could through her connection to Aidan’s magic.
They had not gone far when Myra caught a second power. She whispered excitedly, “It’s Laurie. Aidan and Laurel. They’re together somewhere nearby.”
The barest glimmer winked at them through the trees ahead. A light, small and white. Kady drew her wand, and Myra fumbled with her own, unable to let go of the Kinetic lest her ankle truly give.
A hulking rectangle of black sat amongst the dark tree trunks. A coach.
Only one man stood guard. He was cut down before he could defend his prize.
Gesturing that Kady go on without her, Myra rested against a tree, sighing in relief as, a moment later, the Kinetic signaled success. They’d found M.I.’s Ways-walker.
“She’s here,” Kady called out, turning to Myra. She froze, leveling her wand at the surrounding forest. Her next words rang broken, “Oh, Aidan!”