My shirt was beyond ruined. The rip up the back had lengthened, and it was stained with blood, sweat, and dirt. Worse, it itched. I needed to concentrate for this next bit, and I wasn’t going to do it like this. Magic was difficult enough without constant distractions. I removed my cloak then balled up my shirt and tossed it into a corner of my bedroom, where it joined the shattered ruins of my furniture.
My bruises had started to heal while I had slept, and they didn’t hurt the way they had yesterday, but they had been too extensive and deep to mend completely, and my nose was still swollen. Mother’s enforcer had added a new selection of bruises, which were blooming nicely.
I pulled the shirt Captain Gale had given me out of its sink and hung it up to dry. It was still stained, but it was better than anything else I owned, and when it dried, the stains would be less noticeable.
Stop procrastinating. You don’t have time to piss about with household chores.
The truth was, I didn’t know if I could do this. It was at times like these that I cursed my own ineptitude as a mage. Could I have stayed with the Countess and learned more? Could I have been, like Sereh said, better? Good enough to not fail?
You’ll never know if you never actually try. Which was the point, wasn’t it? If I procrastinated long enough, I would never have to fail Benny. I could blame Silkstar, not my own inadequacies.
Depths!
I headed to my workroom.
My apartment wasn’t large. Once you took out my office downstairs, my bedroom, my little kitchen, and my cramped washroom there wasn’t a lot left. I had, however, set aside a small workroom for magic. Apparently, landlords weren’t too happy with the idea of the whole building being blown up or melted by spells gone wrong. I had lined the walls with apple tree wood, which had a remarkable ability to absorb and dissipate magic. There were more robust options, but not in my price range.
I could get Benny out of the City Watch cells. I might not have the power of a high mage, or even of Mother’s new pet, but I wasn’t a street conjuror or a dice nudger either. I had actual power. Physically freeing Benny was something I could manage. Doing it without several dozen witnesses noticing and before the Ash Guard could arrive was another matter.
There were three things that affected a mage’s abilities: the availability of raw magic, our ability to shape it, and the amount of power we could handle. There was always plenty of raw magic in Agatos, and I could show most mages a thing or two about control and fine detailing of spells. Where I fell down was in how much power I could draw in and use at any particular time. I was skilled, I was flexible, but I was weak. To get into the Watch cells and back out again with Benny, but without being seen, needed more power than I could provide. I reckoned I could hide a small chicken, or maybe a particularly well-behaved dog, but two grown men? Not a chance.
Luckily, that wasn’t the only way to handle magic. In the same way that almost any object — the stones of a temple, holy trinkets, sacred texts — could be invested by the touch or presence of a god, mages could also invest the right objects with magic. In simpler terms, we could store spells.
The complexity and power of an instantaneously cast spell was limited by the talent of the mage. In theory, there was no actual limit to a stored spell, if you had the right object to store it in, the time to prepare and feed it, and the knowledge to get it right. The downside was that you didn’t have any leeway or flexibility. Once you had prepared your spell, that was what you had. If you needed something even slightly different, you were out of luck.
What I needed wasn’t an invisibility spell, as such. I didn’t even know if that kind of thing was possible. What I needed was for people to just … look away, to find us so uninteresting that even the dirt under their fingernails became fascinating in comparison.
It would have helped if I had had a week to prepare. As it was, this was going to be a bodge job.
I settled at my workbench and sorted through my collection of magically-susceptible objects.
Eventually, I selected a chunk of quartz, vaguely egg shaped, with a sheared-off end. It wasn’t ideal, but my samples were limited.
An imbued spell wasn’t so different from a curse — they both came from the manipulation of raw magic, and they both required the magic to hold its structure until it was released. Curses were cruder, being released on contact and being more susceptible to disruption. An imbued spell had to be stable and had to release its effects under the command of its user, sometimes instantaneously, sometimes over a period of weeks or even years.
I took my time constructing the spell and laying it over the quartz. The topography wasn’t ideal. Using mahogany or opal would have allowed my spell to be simpler, but you worked with what you had.
When I had finished outlining the spell, laying it over the quartz like a light-blue spider’s web, I started to feed in power. This was the hard part. Feed too much or too little to one part and the whole structure could collapse or warp into something entirely different. More than one trainee had ended up spattered over the walls from a malformed spell. It was all part of the fun of being a mage.
The quartz resisted, pushing back at the magic. It didn’t want to hold the spell. I fed in more, building the reservoirs at the vertices of the web.
Magic wasn’t really like that at all, of course. It didn’t have colour or any kind of geometrical structure. That was just the way I sensed it. Another mage might have heard it as a song, a duet between the mage and the quartz. Me, I saw it as colours and shapes.
The quartz was still resisting. I drew in more raw magic, gasping at the pain that stabbed into my bruises and cuts, then threw it at the spell. The spell bent, shivered, and then shattered. The quartz spun off the table. I cursed, then picked it up and started again.
I needed more time. I needed to insinuate power into it slowly, opening channels to fill it, but that would take days, so all I could do was hammer at it and hope I got one of the hammer blows just right.
The spell broke again.
I slumped. I was covered in sweat, and not just from the growing heat of the day. This kind of work took it out of me.
“Nik?”
The voice behind me was so unexpected that I jerked up, banging my legs against the workbench. I had left my wards up, only allowing a pass for Sereh. I staggered to my feet, turning and gathering magic.
My sister, Mica, stood staring up at me with a horrified expression. She had been able to pass through my wards for almost a decade.
“What are you doing here?” I hadn’t seen Mica for a couple of years. She looked … different. Older, yes, but more controlled. More like Mother. I was shirtless, sweating, and bruised. There were better looking corpses in the city morgue.
“Just wait here,” I said, shouldering past her. It wasn’t the politest way to greet a sister I had scarcely seen in the last five years.
My new shirt was still damp, but I pulled it on, covering the worst of my injuries.
“What do you want?” I said, as I returned to the workroom. I knew I was being rude, but, Pity! Mica hadn’t visited me once since I’d left home. Her sudden arrival tweaked every suspicious nerve in my body.
“You look terrible.”
“Mother’s new pet isn’t gentle.”
I picked up the quartz and placed it back on the workbench.
“Enne Lowriver,” Mica said. “She’s been with Mother for three years. You need to be careful with her, Nik. She’s powerful.”
I had noticed that. She had swatted me twice, and she hadn’t looked like she was exerting herself either time.
“Is she a match for Mother?” I asked. I wanted to know exactly what I was up against.
Mica smiled, and just for a second she looked like that little girl from the Warrens who had followed me and Benny around.
“No one’s a match for Mother. The Wren is more dangerous. Silkstar is richer. But Mother is the most powerful high mage since the Godkiller.”
Then Mica’s face smoothed again, becoming blank and controlled. I had never understood how we could be related. Mica was the perfect model of a young Agatos lady, elegant, charming, and refined, as well as being one of the most talented mages the city had ever seen, while I looked like something dragged out of the bilges of a passing Secellian galley. We couldn’t have been more different. In everything but her temperament, Mica was Mother’s daughter. I didn’t know what I was.
“How about you?” I said. “Is this Enne Lowriver better than you?”
Mica cocked her head thoughtfully. “I don’t know. It’s never a good idea to show another mage the extent of your powers.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Mica was on course to being a high mage sooner rather than later. If this woman was even close to her, I was doing a good job of making the wrong enemies.
I sighed. “Look. I appreciate the warning, but I’m kind of busy here.” This quartz wasn’t going to imbue itself.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Because I’m busy?” That was obtuse, even by a sister’s standards.
“To stop you doing anything stupid.”
Excuse me? “That’s kind of my speciality.”
Irritation crossed her face. “Don’t make everything a joke, Nik. Mother thinks you’re going to do what you’re told just because she told you to. I know you better.”
Five years without visiting, and then she turned up just to stop me rescuing Benny?
“You know what? Fuck you and fuck the Countess and fuck the whole lot of you! Benny is my friend. You think I’m going to let him die so as not to inconvenience you and Mother? He was your friend, too, you know? When you were just an irritating kid trailing around behind us, I was the one who wanted to dump you and he was the one who made me bring you along. When you hurt yourself or got scared, he was the one who looked after you.” I took a step towards her. I was taller than her by a full head, and I was furious. “Get out of my house. Now.”
Mica didn’t move. “Come back home. Join Mother’s service again. Leave all of … of this behind before you get yourself killed.” Her pose was calm, but there was something else in her eyes, something more desperate. Was she afraid for me? Or was she so desperate to please Mother that she would try to persuade me even if it was the wrong move for Benny?
“Silkstar leaned on the magistrates to get Benny a death sentence,” Mica continued. “But he’s not the only one with influence. Mother can push back. We can have the death sentence revoked.”
I shook my head. “So he’ll just get his hands cut off, is that it? Just lose his hands. What does that matter, eh? Benny would throw himself in front of a bullet for me. Depths, he would probably do it for you, Gods help the daft bastard. I’m not abandoning him.” You don’t let your friends down. You don’t cut them loose.
Her eyes didn’t shift from mine. “I could stop you.”
And that was the truth that separated us. She could, and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it.
“Then you’ll have to,” I said quietly.
I turned back to my workbench, my skin prickling, waiting for her magic to seize me.
It didn’t.
“Damn it, Nik,” she whispered.
She came around the side of the workbench and picked up the quartz. She turned it over in her hands.
“This is useless,” she said.
I shrugged. “It’s what I’ve got.”
She shut her eyes, enclosing the quartz in her palms.
Mica didn’t see magic as colours in the way I did. She felt it. She had once described it to me as brushing against filaments in the air. I imagined it must be like walking through a constant dry rain. I had tried feeling it the way she did, hoping it would allow me to figure out why she was so much better at magic than me, but it wasn’t my thing. I saw it as I saw it. I let my eyes unfocus to watch her.
Mica breathed in, and the raw magic in the room collapsed on her like a thunderclap. The force of it sent me staggering. I think I would have fallen if I hadn’t already drawn in a bit of raw magic to support myself. A mage could never pull magic from inside someone else. I didn’t know why. Just one of the entertaining mysteries of being a mage. The raw magic I had taken was enough to keep me upright. Before I could properly recover, Mica channelled the entirety of the magic into the quartz. I saw the light-blue spider’s web burning with an intensity that hurt my eyes.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. I could have worked on it for a year and not managed that much.
She passed the quartz to me, and I took it gingerly, expecting it to be hot. It wasn’t.
“It will only give you a minute once you release it,” she said. “Don’t waste it.”
I still felt stunned. Mica’s powers had come on far more than I had imagined in the last five years.
“A minute?”
“That’s all it will hold.” She shrugged. “I told you it was useless.”
“Right.” And if I worked for the blessed Countess, I would have access to better. She didn’t have to tell me.
A minute would have to be enough.
“Try not to get yourself killed,” my little sister said. “I would miss you. I really would.”
In my time, I had come up with some good ideas, some bad ideas, and — to be frank — some bloody awful ideas. It was the source of my astonishing success, Benny liked to say, and this from a man who was more than familiar with the inside of a City Watch cell. But, I reflected as I settled at a small table in the shadows at the back of Dumonoc’s bar, planning to steal Ash from a captain of the Ash Guard had to rank right up there with the worst. Even Dumonoc’s happy greeting of, “Oh, just fuck off!” didn’t cheer me up.
There was no way this was going to turn out well. If Captain Gale didn’t catch us in the act, she would find out soon afterwards. I couldn’t even use magic to help me because of the dampening effect of the Ash.
I squinted into the shadows by the doorway where Sereh was supposed to be waiting, but I couldn’t see her. Either that meant she was doing her job or she had given up on my stupid plan and buggered off to deal with it herself.
I was so busy watching the door that I missed the figure approaching from the corner until he swung a chair across from the nearest table and seated himself.
“Afternoon.”
I started, then slumped back when I realised it was Squint, the Wren’s information broker.
“I’m kind of busy right now, Squint.”
He ignored me. “You getting some wine in?” He looked meaningfully at the empty table.
“I’m kind of broke.”
Squint waved over to Dumonoc, miming a bottle and a couple of glasses. Dumonoc spat on the floor and shook his head.
“I’m serious, Squint. I’m meeting someone.”
He squinted over the table at me. “Sooner we get down to business the better, then.”
I waited while Dumonoc slammed the bottle of wine and two chipped mugs onto the table. He shot me a disgusted look before stomping back to the bar.
I would say this for Dumonoc: his wine might be as sour as vinegar, and he might have an expression like a goat’s arse, but his cups were clean.
“I’m calling in that favour you owe,” Squint said.
I shot a glance at the door. Still no sign of Captain Gale.
“Can it wait?”
Squint shook his head. I was tempted to tell him where to shove his favour, but Squint worked for the Wren. If you tried to cheat Squint, you were cheating the Wren, and I had pushed my luck too far with him already.
“What do you want?” I said with a sigh.
His lips parted in a toothy smile. Seeing Squint’s teeth was not one of my favourite pastimes. Even if I hadn’t tasted Dumonoc’s wine, Squint’s brown stumps in place of teeth would have been enough to put me off.
“Information,” he said. “Of course.”
I checked the doorway again.
“Fine. But if I tell you, I need you to make yourself scarce for an hour or two.”
His smile widened. “Is that another favour?”
“No. It’s because I know that whatever you’re going to ask me for is worth more than the information you gave me or you wouldn’t be asking.”
Squint shrugged. “Fair enough. I’ve got people to see, anyway.” He leaned closer. “There’s been some weird shit going on with the Countess’s acolytes. They’ve been poking around, holding secret meetings. The Wren thinks your mother is going to make a move against his interests. He wants to know what that move is.”
I gritted my teeth. My damned mother.
“How would I know? I don’t have anything to do with her, anymore. She certainly doesn’t tell me her plans. You know that.”
Squint chuckled. “She summoned you there this morning.” Summoned. That was an interesting way of putting it. Sent her thugs around to kick me senseless and drag me back was more like it. “And your sister visited only an hour ago.”
How the Depths did he know that already?
“They still didn’t confide in me.”
“But you can find out. You’ve got an in. Pretend you’re missing the family. Pretend you want a job — everyone knows you’re desperate. I don’t care. But find out.”
Find out. Yeah. Just like that. From my Cepra-damned Mother. Pity!
I was tempted — really tempted — to face the Wren rather than that. But I was a Warrens boy at heart. I knew what happened to people who defied the Wren.
“All right. I’ll find out. But it won’t be today. They’re not going to trust me immediately.” Or ever.
Squint stood. “Make it fast. The Wren won’t wait long.” He poured wine into his cup and downed it. I watched in horrified fascination.
“Cheers for this, by the way,” he said, before sauntering off out of the bar. I gazed at the bottle morosely, wondering how Dumonoc was going to react when he found out I couldn’t pay.
I couldn’t face my mother again so soon. I was too raw. But what else could I do?
Get on a ship. Leave this damned city behind. Forget everything. Except I would never leave Benny in trouble. I was going to have to go through with this.
It was only a few minutes before Captain Gale appeared in the doorway, peering into the gloom. I raised a hand to signal her.
She wasn’t wearing Ash on her skin, but I could still feel its influence. She had brought it in a pouch, as I had planned. That hadn’t been a given. The Ash Guard didn’t carry Ash unless they were expecting trouble. Part of me had hoped she wouldn’t bring any. That way, I wouldn’t have had to go through with this. If she caught me trying to steal the Ash, she would kill me right here.
I tried to take my mind off it. I needed not to look nervous. I watched her cross the bar. Her uniform wasn’t tight. That would be impractical in a fight. But it hinted at enough as she walked to make my lips feel dry.
Take your mind of it, I reminded myself. Don’t get completely distracted!
She stopped by my table. “You done?”
I coughed and looked quickly away. Damn it.
She lowered herself into the chair opposite. “I see you’ve screwed up my shirt.”
I shrugged. “Hazards of the trade.”
“Not for any other mage.”
That was a fair point. I couldn’t imagine the Countess’s attack dog going around in a torn, bloodied shirt.
Captain Gale cleared her throat, and I jumped.
“You all right there?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Just thinking.” My mind was all over the place. I gave her a smile.
“I’m guessing this is the bit where you explain to me why you’re involved in a second, identical murder and why I shouldn’t arrest you right now.”
Second. At least that meant she didn’t know about Uwin Bone. That really would stretch my credibility.
“Only an idiot says they don’t believe in coincidences,” she continued, “but some coincidences stretch my belief. Two almost identical murders, and the only thing they have in common is you.”
I had noticed that. In her place, I would have my eyes on me, too.
“Just unlucky, I guess.”
“No one’s that unlucky.”
“And yet I keep my sunny disposition.”
She looked at the wine on the table, then pushed it aside with an expression of distaste. Good move. She leaned closer. She smelled of olives and honeysuckle. I had to resist the urge to suck in a whole lungful. She probably thought I was weird enough already.
“What I want,” she said, “is for you to tell me what happened at the Sunstone place. I’ve heard all sorts of confused accounts of ghosts and wild beasts: a bear, a tiger, a wolf. One of the maids said it was a dog.” She shook her head. “People are unreliable witnesses at the best of times, but when they’re traumatised…”
“It wasn’t a dog,” I said, “but there were ghosts.” I had wanted to know more before I brought this to her, but I couldn’t dodge it any longer. “Galena Sunstone called me in to get rid of them. I didn’t think they were real at first, but they were.” Which was where half of my problems had started. The other half was still sitting in a City Watch cell waiting to be rescued. I told Captain Gale what I knew about the ghosts. “They weren’t malign. My guess is that they were murder victims, and that’s why they were still hanging around. They needed to be got rid of, but they weren’t threatening. They were just scared.” At least I hadn’t thought so. I shrugged. “The Estimable Sunstone wasn’t happy with the way I was dealing with them, so he called someone else in. A priest of Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many.”
“Even fewer now.”
I blinked at her across the table. She gave me a tight smile. I had always liked a cynical sense of humour, and I didn’t need any more reasons to fancy her at the moment.
“You realise you’ve just given me your motive right there?” she said. “You were fired. You were angry. You took out the competition. The only reason you’re not in a cell is because the only thing that everyone agrees on is that you were the one who stopped whatever it was.”
Had I? I had thrown every ounce of magic I had at it and it had cut through my shield like it hadn’t been there. The arevena flowers, charcoal, and the silver had slowed it, but I wasn’t sure I had done anything to defeat it. It had just … gone.
“The thing is,” Captain Gale went on, “they can’t agree on what exactly it was you stopped. Some animal? Magic?”
“It was ghosts,” I said. “Ghost. One of them. Both. I don’t know. They changed. Somehow.” It sounded inadequate.
She tipped her head back. “You want me to arrest some ghosts?”
I realised how daft it sounded, but it was what I had seen.
“Well, no…”
“Do you think someone is controlling them?”
That was a good question. You could trap a ghost, hold it in one place like the priest of Gwillan had. Maybe with enough power you could force a ghost to act in a certain way. But no mage could twist a ghost into that thing. It had been too solid and too powerful, and I would have noticed a mage funnelling magic to it. The only other power in that room had come from Gwillan, but that had been weak and the priest had been torn to pieces. Gwillan’s wasn’t a suicidal religion.
“And someone what?” Captain Gale continued. “Scooped the ghost up from Silkstar Palace and brought it over to the Sunstone house so they could … kill a random priest?”
I shook my head. “No. The ghosts were already at the Sunstones’ place. They employed me to get rid of them five days ago.”
I wasn’t making myself sound good here. It was, in theory, possible to move a ghost if that ghost was attached to a particular, easy-to-move anchor, a piece of jewellery for example, but it was rare. After a while, ghosts became attached to their location, too, and they would remain there even if the anchor were moved. It wasn’t exactly safe, either. If a ghost had such a thing as an essence, it was concentrated in its anchor. I tried not to handle them, even if the ghost was passive and unthreatening. And it still wouldn’t explain everything else: the sudden transformation, the deaths of Imela Rush and Uwin Bone in the daytime.
“So, a day trip, then?”
I sighed. “No.”
“You don’t make it easy for me to think you innocent.”
I flashed a smile. “But at least you’re trying.”
She didn’t react.
I leaned my elbows on the table. “Look. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s linked to the ghosts, but it’s not like any ghosts I’ve ever heard of. But I’m trying to find out. This is something new. If you lock me up, there won’t be anything I can do to help.”
She scratched her scar. “I think there’s a chance you’re telling the truth, but I’m pretty much the only one.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. The rest think you’re more powerful than you’re letting on — you’ve got the heritage, after all — but I think you’re just a bit of a damp squib. The runt of the litter.”
“You say the nicest things.” I said it to disguise the hurt, but it did hurt. I hadn’t realised it still could.
“My point is, I can’t help you for long. Anything else happens without a proper explanation, and I’ll have used up my credit. My superiors aren’t going to stand by and let more magical murders happen.”
That credit wasn’t going to last as long as she imagined. The moment I took her Ash and they found out, they would come after me. I was surprised to realise that that wasn’t the thing that upset me. It was what she would think of me afterwards.
You don’t have a choice. Benny’s time was running out. Shit. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. She’s too good for you anyway. It would never go anywhere. She thinks you’re a runt.
“So why did you want to meet me?” Captain Gale said. “It wasn’t so I could tell you how much shit you’re in.”
Oh, I thought about saying, just so I could steal your Ash and have you hunt me down like a rabid mongoose.
“I talked to my mother.” Even saying the words made my chest tighten and the edges of my vision blur. It was either that or the vapours from Dumonoc’s wine.
Captain Gale raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t say I enjoyed it. She told me that whatever power had done this, it was something new in Agatos. She said it wasn’t anything to do with her.”
Captain Gale studied my face for an uncomfortably long time. I tried not to fidget. She had a way of making me feel guilty, even when I wasn’t.
“And you believed her?”
Now that was the question. I couldn’t forgive my mother for what she had done to me, nor for how she had tossed me aside when she had finally concluded that I could never succeed her. But I also couldn’t deny that she was brutally focussed.
“Maybe. I don’t know. She would lie to me if it served her purpose.” I shrugged. “I don’t see her motivation here. Why would she involve me when she knows Silkstar and the Wren would link me back to her? Why would she want to kill Silkstar’s Master Servant and that priest?” And Uwin Bone, I thought, but I wasn’t bringing that up.
“Or,” Captain Gale said, “she could be relying on them following the same line of logic.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. It had occurred to me, too. The Countess would use me and she wouldn’t care that it put me in danger. “It certainly wouldn’t be out of character.”
“Fine.” Captain Gale straightened in her chair, working out a kink in her back with a grimace. I tried not to look at her chest while she did it. “Is that all?”
I nodded.
“I’ll look into it,” she said. “If there’s a new power in Agatos, the Ash Guard need to know about it.”
She stood, pushing away from the battered table and making the bottle of toxic wine wobble. I steadied it quickly. That wine could eat away my skin if it spilled on me.
“You’re running out of time,” Captain Gale reminded me. “I don’t want to lock you up, but I’m not going to have much choice soon.”
I nodded, and watched her walk away across the bar. I didn’t want to do this, but I couldn’t leave Benny to die. Fuuuck! Do it, I told myself. Now. I waited until she was at the steps leading to the door, then I called, “Captain Gale?”
She stopped, turning, her face partially hidden by the shadows.
“I’ll find out what’s going on for you,” I said. “I promise.” I meant it. I wanted to solve this as much as she did.
She paused for a moment. Then she said, “It’s Meroi, not Captain Gale. At least when I’m not wearing the Ash.”
Why did she have to say that? It only made me feel worse.
She pushed open the door and headed out. I dropped my head onto the table. I only looked up when I heard Sereh clear her throat.
“Did you get it?” I asked.
She nodded, opening her hand to show me the pouch of Ash. “When she turned, by the doorway.”
“Good,” I tried to say, but it came out more as a croak.
We had stolen Ash. No one stole Ash. We were dead. Both of us. I fought the urge to call after Captain Gale, tell her she had dropped it, back out while I still could.
The image of Benny impaled on an executioner’s spear flashed across my mind.
You don’t have a choice, I told myself, followed by, They are going to kill you. Right now, you are dead. The Ash Guard wouldn’t forgive this.
With an effort of will, I pushed the thought from my mind. There was no time to waste. Captain Gale — Meroi — could realise her Ash was missing at any moment.
I was almost sure Sereh didn’t see my legs wobble as I stood.
We were nearly at the door when Dumonoc shouted at me.
“Oi!”
I stumbled. Dumonoc had realised what we’d done, I thought. He would grab us, turn us over to the Ash Guard. I couldn’t even use my magic to save us.
“You paying for that?” He pointed at the mostly-full bottle of wine.
My legs weakened again.
“Squint’s got it.” I said. “He’ll be back to finish it later. Don’t throw it away.”
Then I hurried out before Dumonoc could brain me with the nail-studded club he kept under his bar.
I had expected to feel nervous, worried, scared even, after stealing the Ash. And I did. There was a twist of fear curling through every part of my body, making my movements stilted and fragmented. What I hadn’t expected to feel was sad, as though something I hadn’t realised was there had been scooped out of me.
I had liked Captain Gale — not just fancied her, although I did, but liked her. The Ash Guard were the boogeymen you told little mages about in the cradle. If you don’t do what Daddy Mage tells you, the Ash Guard will come, hands and faces smeared with the Ash of a dead god, grim, unforgiving, remorseless. I hadn’t expected a sense of humour and some maybe-imagined flirting. It sounded stupid to say it, but I hadn’t expected a person.
There is no other way. This is it.
There was always a price to pay.
When Captain Gale realised her Ash was gone, she would retrace her steps. She would go back to the bar, search under the table, interrogate Dumonoc. Then she would come for me. My time was running out with every breath.
I had gone over this plan a dozen times in my head, and I didn’t like it any more than I had the first time. One minute, Mica had said. One minute to get to Benny’s cell, spring him, and get us both out of there. If I was too slow, we would find ourselves face-to-face with a hundred heavily-armed watchmen and -women.
I had left the quartz egg imbued with the spell in my workroom. Captain Gale’s Ash would wipe it as clean as a thunderstorm. I hadn’t gone to all this effort to sabotage myself before I began. I would sabotage myself later, thank you very much.
“There’s an alley off Bad Luck Way,” I told Sereh as we approached Feldspar Plaza and my apartment. “Near the knife sharpener’s shop. You know it?”
She nodded.
“Wait for us there with the Ash. I’ll bring your dad to you there as soon as I’ve got him out.”
Sereh looked mutinous. “You’re not doing it without me.”
I hadn’t mentioned this part of the plan, because I had known how she would react. It was nice to be right about something.
“You can’t come. There’s not enough magic to hide all three of us.”
“I can hide myself.”
That was true. Sereh was like a human version of the spell Mica and I had prepared. I wasn’t done, though.
“Someone has to look after the Ash. I’m not leaving it where anyone can find it.” The downside of Ash was that any mage would know it was near when their magic failed. You could feel its presence the same way you could feel an oven from across the room. I didn’t want to get Benny out only to find the Ash stolen. “And we can’t bring it with us because that will kill the magic we need to get your dad out unseen.”
Her face tightened. “Then I’ll go. You stay with the Ash.”
She didn’t trust me. That was hardly news. It wasn’t that she thought I would try to back out. She just didn’t think I was up to the job.
Or was that it? A slight tremor on her cheek made me wonder. But then it was gone, and she was gazing impassively at me.
“You can’t control the spell,” I said, gently.
My answer wasn’t strictly true. I could have set the spell up so that Sereh could have triggered it, but that would have been harder, and if everything turned to shit, my magic would be a better option than her knife. I didn’t want dead watchmen on my conscience.
Her tongue darted across her lips, then her expression spasmed. It took all my willpower not to step back.
“All right.”
I let out a breath as I watched her stalk away across the plaza carrying the Ash. That had gone better than it might have.
Now it was my turn.
I pushed all thoughts of what might go wrong ruthlessly out of my mind and strode towards my apartment.