Red Jack

by Alex Linwood

  Portia tried to clean her hands off in the snow, the blood sticky and thick. Water crystals stung her hands as she rubbed them into the snow, leaving blood on the white expanse. Tears filled her eyes.

  She got to her feet, staggering. She walked over to Mark. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded back at her that he was, then look down at the ground, uncomfortable.

  “Stay here, with me, in Coverack,” Portia said quietly.

  “I can’t. You don’t understand,” he answered, refusing to look at her.

  “At least don’t go back to Valencia.”

  He nodded. “No, I can’t go back there. Not after…”

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” Portia said. “It wasn’t—”

  “It matters to me. It matters to me. I should’ve been able to do things differently,” he said, a tinge of anger creeping into his voice. He scowled at the ground. “I need to be a different person, a better person. I need to find that within myself.”

  “Deyelna controlled you. You didn’t do this.”

  “But she did it so easily. And I did those things. It was my hands.” His shoulders shook a little. He turned his back to her, hiding his face.

  Portia didn’t want him to feel defensive. She softened her tone. “Maybe in the future you will find me again.”

  He nodded. “Maybe.” He straightened his shoulders then turned and gave her a nod. She would have to be satisfied with that for now .

  Portia’s heart broke at the awful life Mark had been dealt. Guilt wracked her for not trying harder to get him away from Deyelna. She opened her arms and gave him a hug. He was stiff at first then slowly relaxed and gave her a hug back. “I’ll always be looking for you. I’ll always want you to come back.” She gave him an extra squeeze and then released the hug.

  Mark looked down, then said hesitantly, “Portia, be careful here. Deyelna was working with some dangerous people in Valencia—I don’t know who—but they got us on campus today. They created a distraction on the other side of the grounds to pull away the guards. They were giving her power, but in return, she was supposed to deliver you.”

  “Me?” Portia asked, incredulous. What could they want with her? They couldn’t know about her being a Jack—she had just found out herself. She turned to glare at Peter. “Does he know about this?”

  Mark nodded. He motioned to Deyelna’s lifeless body. “What should we do?”

  Portia turned and looked at the body. She could claim self-defense, but what reason would Mark have for being there? There was no good story they could give that would keep him from being stopped by the guards. They would throw him in prison—and maybe worse. Portia wanted to keep him from that fate. She owed him at least that much. “Go. I will tell them the truth, that I was attacked. They won’t know about you. I promise.” She motioned for Mark to go.

  He did not move. “I can’t…”

  “You must,” Portia said, pain in her voice, “Please, for me?” He hesitated, then finally relented when she motioned again. He ran down between the buildings and away from Portia, who stood between Peter, still frozen to the ground, and the dead body of Deyelna of the Black Cats.

  Chapter 16

  Portia watched Mark go, her heart sinking with each step he took away from her. Finally, he turned the corner, passing out of her sight.

  The sound of metal hitting metal behind her caught her attention. She turned to see Academy guards dressed in blue uniforms peering between buildings, their shields out and swords up. She called out to them and waved to get their attention. They came running towards her between the buildings, looking from side to side to make sure it wasn’t an ambush. She’d seen guards before but didn’t realize there were so many on campus, or that they had swords.

  The lead guard caught up to her. He was well over six feet tall and towered over Portia. He surveyed the scene, seeing Peter caught in the ice, and then noticed Deyelna’s body. He motioned for the other guards to surround Portia while he went to investigate the body. He felt Deyelna’s neck for a pulse and confirmed that she was dead. He bowed his head for just a second then raised it, looking at Portia with narrowed eyes.

  Returning to Portia’s side, he said roughly, “Did you do this? ”

  Portia nodded slowly, swallowing. “They attacked me. I was defending myself.”

  “Are you a student here?”

  Portia nodded again.

  “You do understand, don’t you, that we can get to the truth here?” the guard asked Portia, giving her a meaningful look.

  “I’m not lying. These two attacked me. I didn’t… I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident,” Portia said. She hoped the guard wouldn’t find out that she was from the pyromancy house. If he knew that she was from that house, then he would know there was something off. She should not have been able to freeze Peter to the ground.

  The guard looked at the large number of footprints in the snow then at Portia once again.

  “Who else was here?” he asked.

  “Only these two,” Portia said. Then she locked eyes with Peter and continued, raising her voice to be sure Peter could hear her. “There was no one else.”

  The guard eyed her skeptically but did not press further.

  Two of the other guards were using light magic to melt the ice around Peter. They had freed his arms and hands, which were red with cold, and were now working on freeing his legs.

  The lead guard approached Peter. “Is this true?”

  Peter looked away sullenly. He rubbed his hands gingerly as if they hurt.

  “I expect an answer,” the lead guard said, an edge in his voice.

  Peter refused to look at him. The guard crouched down to Peter’s eye level, forcing Peter to look at him. “Is this true?”

  Peter finally nodded.

  “Is there anyone else?”

  Peter shook his head no. The guard stood then motioned for the two working on freeing Peter’s legs to continue. Once Peter was free, the guards helped him to stand. He was unsteady on his feet. Another guard brought chains and shackled Peter’s feet together.

  Portia watched it all. She glanced back at Deyelna’s body and then down at her own hands. There was still blood around her fingernails and on the sleeves of her jacket. Portia felt a little ill. Her stomach hurt. Suddenly, blackness crowded around her vision and she felt light-headed. Before she knew it, the ground was heading towards her face. She was fainting.

  A guard caught her before her head hit the ground. He gently eased her down until she was lying on her back in the cold snow. Portia’s vision improved a bit, but she was still seeing spots. She felt nauseous.

  The lead guard came back to her and peered down at her. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said weakly. “I was, but… but I fixed it.” She held up her healed arm for him to see.

  One of the other guards brought all the gathered weapons from the ground and laid them at the feet of the lead guard. There were at least five knives, two of them streaked with blood.

  The lead turned to Peter. “Which one of these knives did you use?”

  “The long one,” Peter said. He looked down then said quietly. “It’s poisoned.”

  The head guard motioned to the largest guard in the group. “Get her to a healer now. Bring the knife too.”

  A burly guard rushed over and gently picked Portia up. Portia was not small, but she felt tiny in his arms. A second guard followed holding the poisoned knife. The burly guard picked gingerly through the snow pack, each step sending shoots of pain through Portia’s head as she laid in his arms. She looked up at the light blue sky, foggily thinking it too beautiful a day to die. Her stomach knotted in nausea and then blackness overtook her.

  Portia regained consciousness inside the healer house. She was lying on a tall platform in the main ward. The two guards were still there, conversing with a healer dressed in all white. Snow from Portia’s clothing was melting on the table. She had not been there long.

  “We do
n’t know what happened, exactly,” the smaller guard said. He held up the long knife. “We do know she was cut with this, and it’s poisoned.”

  The healer took the knife from the guard and looked at it closely. She raised her left hand and motioned to the blade. The weapon glowed faintly, purple sparks coming off of it. The healer nodded in understanding. The glow stopped abruptly. “It is good you brought her here so quickly.”

  The healer went to Portia’s side. She looked at her injured arm, brows knit in concern. Drawing a pair of scissors from a nearby table, she cut the sleeve of Portia’s jacket from her wrist to her shoulder, pulling back the material to expose the wounded arm. Portia could see tendrils of black and blue underneath her skin, winding their way up from the wound towards her neck. Where she had healed the wound, it did not look clean. Instead, it puckered in an ugly fashion, red cysts dotted along a white twisted scar.

  “Who did this healing?” the healer asked, her mouth tight as she stared at the wound.

  Portia swallowed. Aelric and Hilda had been adamant that she was not to explain her other skills to anybody, but if she didn’t say anything now, she could die. Hopefully that would be reason enough. “I did it,” Portia said, her voice a low whisper.

  The healer frowned at Portia. “You were lucky this time, but next time get a healer—if you possibly can. You don’t know what you’re doing. This is not the way.”

  This confused Portia. She had healed herself many times in Valencia. It had been a valuable tool for her as an orphan in that city .

  The healer placed her palm on Portia’s forehead, pushing her head back down in the pillow. Portia felt the coolness on her forehead that spread out down through her body. Her arms and legs relaxed. The pain in her wounded arm faded. Her nausea receded enough for her to relax her stomach. Portia exhaled in relief.

  The healer then focused on the wounded arm. She placed both hands on either side of the puckered scar on her arm. The white line glowed faintly red, then orange, then white-hot. The glow expanded up her arm and covered all the blue-black tendrils underneath the skin. Portia watched, feeling detached, as the wound opened up again. The red cysts disappeared, and the skin smoothed along the edge of what had been the scar. A clear liquid laced with traces of blood ran out of the wound into a shallow dish the healer had placed below her arm. Portia did not feel anything except for the cool relaxation from the healer’s touch on her forehead. The liquid flow trickled, then stopped. The healer made a smoothing motion over the wound on Portia’s arm and the edges of her flesh pushed together and blended into a smooth expanse of skin. There was no longer a scar. It was as if her arm had never been cut.

  The glow from Portia’s arm then spread to the rest of her body. It reduced in intensity but did not disappear completely. Portia’s nausea disappeared completely. The fog in her head disappeared, as well as did the difficulty in her vision. The glow encasing her lasted for another second then stopped. Portia felt normal. She was completely healed.

  Portia sat up while the healer removed the dish full of fluid and placed it on a nearby counter. Curiosity pulled at Portia. Was she doing all of her self-healing wrong? She removed the tattered remains of her jacket from her other arm and pulled up her sleeve. That was the side that had been bruised heavily from falling on the ice the previous day—bruises she had healed on her own. “Excuse me,” Portia said, looking at the healer, “is this healed incorrectly as well?”

  The healer returned to Portia’s side and examined the proffered arm. “What was wrong with it?” she asked Portia.

  “Bruising. I fell on it yesterday.”

  The healer grunted, touching the arm gently with her fingertips. Portia felt a tingle of magic as the healer probed her arm, examining Portia’s healing work. “This is well done. I must admit I’m surprised, since I’ve not seen you before in the healing house.”

  “What did I do wrong with the other wound?” Portia quickly asked, wanting to distract the healer from any questions about what house Portia belonged to.

  “Well, poison is a different thing entirely. It actively works against you—especially if it’s a magic poison. You have to do two kinds of magic at the same time, one to fight the poison, and one to heal the wound. And you must do them in the correct order,” the healer said. She removed her fingertips from Portia’s arm. Going to a closet, she pulled a plain black kirtle from the cabinet. She tossed it to Portia.

  Going to a coat closet, she pulled out a dark black coat which she also brought Portia. “It is too cold to go without a jacket. I’ll have my assistant bring me another,” she said, giving Portia a wink.

  Portia gratefully took the jacket. It smelled of herbs and the healing house. “Can I go now?”

  The healer gave her a shrug, then nodded her head at the guards standing behind the platform Portia was sitting on. Portia turned to see them standing there, blocking the exit. She had forgotten all about the guards. She gave them a questioning look.

  The smaller guard stepped forward. “We need you to come to the guardhouse. At the very least, you need to make a statement. We received no further instructions regarding you except to bring you here, so we’re not releasing you until we get the go- ahead from the big boss.” He spoke in a gruff manner, but not unkindly. Portia nodded her understanding.

  They walked through the campus. The sun was setting—its baleful red glow covering the western sky and creating long shadows on the ground. Portia gave a little shiver in the cold air despite the warmth of the borrowed coat. It had been a long, eventful day. She wanted more than anything to rest.

  They reached the guardhouse at the edge of campus. It was a large blue building, built of the same magically tinted bricks as all the other campus buildings but constructed in the style of a fortress, with tall turrets and a large metal gate that could lower in front of the main doors, trapping anyone inside.

  Portia felt apprehension as they walked underneath the metal gate. But when they entered the building, her anxiety dropped. The inside was nothing like the outside. People bustled everywhere, and the hum of constant conversation was steadying. The building was full of small offices along the walls surrounding desks in a large common space. Guards were working at the desks and conversing in groups.

  The guards led Portia to a small room off the main area of desks. A serious-looking female guard sat at the desk, a stack of parchments in front of her. The woman nodded at the two guards, then motioned for Portia to have a seat at the chair next to the desk. “Hello, my name is Myra,” the female guard said to Portia. She then pulled a quill pen from a well on the desktop.

  The two guards who had escorted Portia stood by the doorway, one on each side. They did not sit down themselves. This made Portia a little uneasy. Portia gave them a small smile, trying to foster a sense of camaraderie. The smaller of the two guards smiled back, but the other remained stoic.

  Myra pulled a parchment towards herself, her quill ready, then looked intently at Portia as she spoke. “We need your side of what happened. There has not been a death on campus in a long time. There has not been a violent death in even longer. Part of our procedure here is to take a statement right away. More than likely, it will be followed up with the truth cube in front of a tribunal. Do you understand?”

  Portia nodded, swallowing. She hoped she would have a chance to speak to Professor Aelric or Professor Hilda before she was asked to speak in front of the truth cube. “Okay.”

  “Do you know the two who attacked you?”

  Portia nodded again. “Yes. They’re from Valencia.”

  “Valencia?” Myra said, a surprised expression on her face. She put her quill down. “That is far away—what were they doing here?”

  “They were from my old… I was in a gang before. An orphan gang.” Portia’s cheeks flamed at the confession. She knew she shouldn’t be ashamed. It was not her fault she had to be in a gang to survive, but somehow, she was still embarrassed. She pushed on, ignoring the heat in her cheeks. “The girl wh
o died was the leader.”

  A soft whistle came from the direction of the door. Portia turned to see the friendlier guard looking at her. He was the one who had whistled. “You sure are levelheaded for a gang member. Not like anything I’ve ever met.”

  “Captain Ross,” Myra said to the guard, a hint of reproach in her voice.

  “I’m just saying…”

  Myra closed her eyes slowly then opened them and nodded at Captain Ross. She then turned her attention back to Portia. “Captain Ross does have a point. The orphans in Coverack run wild. We’ve never had one successfully complete the Academy program. Usually their gang has something to say about it. Is that what happened here?”

  “Yes… I think. Deyelna, that was the girl, did not want me in the gang but was enraged when I left. I don’t understand it,” Portia confessed .

  “I think I do,” Myra said as she wrote on the parchment. “I know that type.”

  Portia wanted Myra to explain it to her but didn’t dare ask. It didn’t feel like the right time.

  “And who is the boy?” Myra asked.

  Portia panicked at first, thinking she meant Mark, since she thought of Mark more as a boy than Peter. In her mind, Peter was too old and tall to be called a boy.

  Myra prompted Portia while still continuing to write. “The one frozen to the ground?”

  Relief flooded over Portia. “He was Deyelna’s enforcer. It’s what she called him.”

  “Looks like she needed to pick a better one,” Captain Ross said softly.

  “For our student, it’s best that she didn’t,” Myra said, irritation on her face for being interrupted a second time.

  Captain Ross did not respond, perhaps wisely taking a cue from Myra’s expression, Portia thought.

  Portia cleared her throat. She had to mention something about the possible others. “I think… I think they were working with some other people. Someone who created a distraction on the campus.”

  Myra stopped writing and looked at Portia with surprise. “How did you know about that?”