“Take up with?” he asked, slapping the cup down and sliding it to Milo, sloshing water on the table. “I wouldn’t call it that. More like keeping a tired and naïve man from making a fool of himself. Lokkemand was inconsequential in that equation.”
“Naïve?” Milo said after washing down his last bite with a slug of water. “What in all our time makes you think I’m naïve?”
Ambrose scowled as one of his eyebrows cocked up.
“You know, it is exhausting, trying to find ways not to believe you are just stupid.”
Milo choked on a hunk of bread and cheese as much as the insult, coughing and hacking for a bit before he could retort.
“I’m stupid?” he croaked, jabbing his chest for emphasis, forgetting he still had a greasy hunk of lamb in his hand. “I’m not the one letting enemy forces get away with valuable intelligence and friendly remains. That’s Lokkemand, remember?”
“Take a drink already,” Ambrose growled irritably as he bent and refilled Milo’s glass, his brow knitted in thought. “You sound awful.”
“Must be from all the time spent with you,” Milo quipped as he raised his cup to comply. “All that smoking and carousing. You're a bad influence on the younger —much younger—generation.”
Admittedly, it wasn’t his sharpest bit of humor, but in the realm of friendship, the laughs and barbs flow easily, so it was unsettling to Milo when he realized that neither chuckling nor a stinging retort was quick in coming. Milo looked up from his drink to see Ambrose staring at him, brow bunched as it had been in Lokkemand’s office earlier.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said on the balcony,” Ambrose said, slowly at first but warming to his point quickly. “You said I had something to offer you still. I’m beginning to believe that you might be right, but it’s nothing to do with fighting. Rather, I think it has more to do with imparting wisdom and insight that you as a young man don’t have.”
Milo stared at Ambrose, then carefully placed a hunk of meat back in the bowl and licked the grease from his fingers. He pushed the plate of cheese and bread away next and set his elbows on the table, fingers intertwined in front of him. Ambrose watched it all in silence, his expression unreadable.
“All right then,” Milo said in a dangerously soft tone. “Tell me. I’m listening.”
Ambrose looked unsure, but he shook off the anxiousness like a bear shaking water from its pelt as he set the jug down. His pawlike hands settled on the table as his head slung forward between his expansive shoulders so he and Milo were nearly eye to eye.
“You’re scared,” he rumbled. “Worse, you're too scared to admit you're scared.”
Milo met his gaze, felt the pressure building between them, then slowly and deliberately picked up his cup without letting his eyes wander.
“Do tell,” he replied frostily before taking a small sip of water. “What am I afraid of?”
He wanted to lash out, but he knew that would confirm to his bodyguard that he was unstable because of his supposed fear.
“You’re afraid you aren’t the only wizard,” Ambrose said, refusing to look anywhere except directly into Milo’s eyes. “You’re scared there are others, and that means you might be the lesser wizard, the inferior one.”
Milo felt the urge to look away and squirm just a little.
“Doesn’t the idea of another wizard, one working for the enemy, concern you?” Milo asked smoothly to cover the internal shifting he felt. He told himself he had to keep being rational, and everyone would follow suit eventually.
“Concern, maybe,” Ambrose admitted with a slow bob of his head. “But not so much that I’m going to deny what is right in front of my face.”
Milo couldn’t keep a short, sharp laugh from cutting between his teeth.
“Oh, really?” he said, chuckling without a hint of humor. “And what is right in front of me?”
“The threat isn’t over,” Ambrose said, each word coming slow and heavy from his lips. “The Americans weren’t the ones Jorge was worried about, and we need to think about what that means for you, for the operation, and for Rihyani.”
Milo felt something hot and angry building in his chest.
“What do you mean, for Rihyani?”
Ambrose wasn’t quick to answer, the anxiousness creeping back into his eyes as he rose from where he perched on the table.
“I’m not saying it’s easy,” Ambrose began. “I’m just saying we can’t have you going off the deep end trying to save her. We’ve got other problems, big ones, headed our way.”
Milo felt a twist in his chest as the implication of what Ambrose was suggesting began to sink in.
“You want me to let her die,” Milo muttered, disbelieving.
“Now that’s not what I said,” Ambrose began, but Milo shoved away from the table hard enough to make the bench bark across the stone floor.
“You’d rather me focus on preparing for some enemy that may or may not be coming,” Milo growled as he rose slowly to his feet, “than spend my time trying to save the woman who is responsible for saving both of our lives and who came here to help us because we asked her to!”
Ambrose crossed his arms over his massive chest and scowled.
“First, I’m not saying you can’t try or even that I could stop you from trying,” the big man retorted, his voice sinking lower, softer, and yet somehow more powerful. “But you nearly killed yourself trying to figure out formulas for Jorge. We don’t have time for you to be out for a week again, trying to save her.”
Milo could see his concern, and part of him even acknowledged it was a fair point, but his temper was up and he was standing angrily across the table, so he wasn’t about to back down just yet.
He sneered. “Anything else?”
“Second,” Ambrose growled, his hands curling into mallet-sized fists. “These aren’t weather predictions you can shrug off. The Americans weren’t the real threat, and pretending that things are ready to wrap up is setting yourself and everyone else up for a hard fall. Like it or not, Lokkemand may be the commanding officer, but you’re the one leading this operation. You need to think bigger, bigger than Rihyani. You bleed yourself dry and wreck yourself trying to save her, then this all falls apart.”
Again, Milo could see Ambrose’s point, but there was something his anger and will could find traction on, and he went after it with zeal.
“Why do you think I need to save her, huh?” Milo asked, pointing toward his study where the stricken fey now lay. “You think it’s because she’s beautiful and I have some childish feelings for her?”
Ambrose looked ready to fire back but caught himself with his mouth opening and shutting. He let out a spluttering sigh and ran a hand over his face.
“Are you telling me that isn’t the case?” he asked with deliberate calm.
“I’m telling you it is more than that,” Milo replied, leaning forward so Ambrose could look deep into his eyes. “I’m telling you I’m thinking bigger, much bigger, and yet smaller.”
Ambrose narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
“Start making sense, or I am going to have Brodden check you over for a head injury.”
Milo felt his anger cool at the bemused look on the big man’s face, even as he warmed to his subject.
“The bigger picture here is not that a bunch of armed men is moving around Georgia,” he explained. “It’s the Great War, after all, and that’s been normal for decades. No, the bigger issue is that we are dealing with intervention and manipulation by supernatural forces into this ugly, bloody mess.”
“By which you mean, besides you, the Shepherds and the Guardians?” asked Ambrose, cocking his head to one side.
“Exactly,” Milo agreed. “We are certain the Guardians mean all humans harm, while the Shepherds mean to help at least some of us, right? And we’re fairly certain that unless something drastic happens in this war, it will keep dragging on as it has for the last twenty years. The drastic thing is either the Guardians or t
he Shepherds. The Guardians have already chosen to side with, or at least manipulate, bastards like Epp and others.”
“Which is precisely why you need to be focusing on preparing for them. You know, arming up and resting up?”
“All the preparation in the world won’t do me much good if I don’t have a guide,” Milo explained, forcing the words through gritted teeth. “There’s still so much I don’t know. You say I’m scared of being an inferior magus. Sure, I guess that is true, but I’m not nearly as scared of that as I am of not knowing what I can do to stop the Guardians. For that, I need the Shepherds, and last I checked, the contessa is the only Shepherd we know.”
Ambrose began to nod.
“So, having her come here wasn’t just a bribe from Jorge, and you saving her isn’t just an act of desperate romance?”
Milo gaped at his bodyguard.
“Is that what you both thought this all was?” Milo asked, appalled. “Some sort of schoolboy crush?”
Ambrose shrugged, his cheeks coloring a little.
“You have to remember something, Magus,” he said, scratching his whiskery cheek. “To us hoary old veterans, you look half a step past being a snot-nosed brat, yet we all know you’ve got the keys to the kingdom, as it were. I think sometimes we forget there’s more meat than milk running through you.”
Milo shook his head slowly, and then, looking at the reminder of his food, decided he’d calmed down enough he could do with a little more lamb.
“Given what you feed me,” he said before stuffing the cooling chunk of flesh between his teeth, “you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.”
“I suppose so,” Ambrose said, his eyes twinkling as he watched Milo. “You never explained the smaller thing.”
“Huh?” Milo asked as he filled his cup.
“You said you were thinking bigger and smaller,” Ambrose said. “You explained the bigger, now what about the smaller?”
“Oh.” Milo grunted as he gulped down a mouthful of water. “What I meant is that when it comes down to it, even though the smaller thing is to worry about the damsel in distress, that doesn’t stop it from being the right thing. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the only thing any of us can do and still be something like decent humans.”
“So, here you get to be a decent human and take care of the big picture?”
“I’m sure hoping.” Milo took one last bite.
“I guess if you're wrong, it’ll be too late,” Ambrose mused. “And at least you’ll have tried being decent.”
Milo nodded somberly.
“That’s the idea.”
9
The Hex
“Nothing,” Milo snarled, throwing the codex on top of the others. “Nothing!”
He stalked away from his desk then walked back to snatch up the opened envelope they’d retrieved from Lokkemand. Milo’s hand slid inside, and his fingers rested on the bone handle as Ambrose watched him from a chair he’d dragged over to the door. It was the third time Milo had magically “inspected” the knife, but each time made Milo’s hands trembled as he opened his senses to what lay beyond the physical.
The knife was possessed of magic, Milo was certain, but it was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. Energies simmered within it, but they were not the raw essence Milo had learned to manipulate. It was too active for that, possessing a nature that he at first compared to shades, but it was both more and less than that. It seemed to have a will or life of its own, where shades only had impressions and echoes of original lives, but the life and will was unidirectional, a myopic focus, unlike anything Milo knew in life.
And that focus was ruin.
Milo could feel the corruptive, gnawing potency seething hot and tight within the crude material of the knife like an infection in a swollen wound. Having felt it, Milo grasped the corroded punctures in Beli’s skin and the unhealing wounds on Rihyani’s arm. When flowing freely, such magical energies would lodge themselves in wounded flesh and render it as impotent and lifeless as salted earth.
But it didn’t flow freely, not now.
It was present but seemingly inactive, and even stranger, it didn’t seem to respond to Milo’s metaphysical probing. When he had first opened himself to inspect the blade and felt the potent conscious energies within, he’d withdrawn quickly, fearing it would try to infect him, maybe even form a bond like a shade. Yet, that hadn’t happened. The magical presence in the knife stayed within the confines of the weapon, seemingly oblivious or uninterested in Milo’s mind or his power observing it. Oddly, when he pressed as deep as he dared against the skein of the magic, he felt as though it was waiting like an expectant hound at the door.
When its master returned, it would spring to its unkind work, but until then, it waited, death roiling invisibly under the surface.
A fresh inspection revealed nothing new, and Milo let the envelope and its infuriating burden slide to the table.
“Is there some sort of experiment you could run on it?” Ambrose asked after giving Milo a heartbeat or two to stew in his deepening despair. “You know, exposing it to different ingredients or elixirs or whatever else, to show something.”
Milo shook his head and then threw it back to rake his fingers through his hair.
“I could expose it to everything in my lab,” he said, trying to keep his voice level and failing. “But there is no guarantee it will do anything I could understand, and there is a very real possibility it could touch off some sort of magical meltdown.”
“What would happen if you set that off?” Ambrose asked, eyeing the knife suspiciously.
“Anything from destroying the knife to setting off some sort of magical backlash that could kill me and possibly others,” Milo said, glaring down at his suddenly useless pile of codices.
When he’d first been given the texts, they had seemed like such a treasure trove of knowledge, but now it seemed like the treasure was in a currency that could not buy him the answers he needed. He needed a translator, someone who could show him where the connection was to his experience and this new magic. A guide or a teacher.
Milo’s eyes wandered to the hidden resting place for Imrah’s remains.
“Ambrose,” Milo began, moving to the door to check that no one was passing through.
Ambrose had followed Milo’s gaze before he’d gone to check the hall, and he stood up from his seat sharply.
“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” he asked, his tone making it quite clear what he thought about the situation. “It’s pretty taxing, and you still are going to need to get bled for the contessa soon. I’m not sure we have enough restorative.”
“This isn’t necromist work,” Milo said, stepping back from the door, satisfied they had the necessary privacy. “I don’t have the breadth of knowledge. I can’t even guess what this is.”
Ambrose shuffled to the concealing stone but stopped short of fetching the box.
“But if it isn’t necro-whatsit, what use is she going to be?” the big man asked with a scowl. “Isn’t that the only kind of magic her kind does?”
“True,” Milo said, nodding as he dragged out the box where they kept most of the necessary materials for managing the shade. “But she has lived in the world of the supernatural longer, and she could probably recognize what is going on, maybe give us a direction to go for finding answers.”
Ambrose’s mustache bristled and gave a fretful waggle.
“All right,” he surrendered, his face downcast. “But for the record, I think it is a dangerous waste of time.”
* * *
REMEMBER
The word was intoned, the tortured transformation occurred, and Milo stood in front of Imrah’s shade, now a patchwork of human and ghulish flesh held together by rippling strings of shadow.
“Oh, Milo,” it cooed in a layered voice that was human and ghul tongues speaking together. “I knew you would return to me.”
“Enough of that,” Milo instructed, the words driven by simpl
e confidence rather than magical will. “Speak plainly, or you are going back in the box.”
He stared directly into the shade’s eyes as if it were a cur that needed chastening. He needed to convince the shade in whatever capacity it could understand that he was in control. It couldn’t know how desperately he needed its help, or else it would use its low cunning to extract something from him, and Milo was scared to admit to himself how much he would sacrifice.
“Very well,” came the petulant groan, and the specter imploded with a hiss of tightening strings.
A second later, the collapsed fold burst open, and Imrah’s human guise emerged from the waist up like a gory fresh blossom.
“Does this suit you better, master?’ the shade asked as it trailed fingers through the crimson fluid that coated its hallucinatory flesh.
“I’m growing bored.” Milo sighed and bent to pick up the lock in front of him. “Maybe we can talk when you are in a more serious mood.”
“NO!”
The shade’s cry had a desperate, piercing note that made Ambrose wince and shuffle a bit, but Milo only paused, his fingers hovering over the lock.
“If you want to have your time out of the box,” he began matter-of-factly as though speaking to a rather slow child, “you need to behave correctly while you are out.”
The shade’s gleaming eyes tried to burrow into Milo’s gaze but found no purchase in the glassy surface of his pale blue eyes. It may as well have tried gouging an iceberg with a teaspoon.
“I’m sorry,” the shade muttered softly. “It was worth a shot.”
Milo gave the wraith a long, sardonic stare until it flinched.
“No more warnings,” Milo told it, praying he wasn’t painting himself into a corner with all this tough talk. “Behave yourself, or I’ll have your remains sent to the bazaar in Ifreedahm to be ground up for essence. I imagine you would fetch a pretty penny.”
The shade drooped slightly, looking up with teary eyes, but upon seeing Milo’s face, the tears dried with incredible speed.
“As you wish.”
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 43
