by Unknown
When she’d done this before, the sensory illusion that had resulted had been one of being swept away in a raging river, but this time, she felt herself blasted sideways by a massive gust of wind, a cyclone suddenly whirling her away, trying to spin her ears over tail through a gray and cloud-choked sky.
None of it was real, she knew, so she centered herself, drew the buffeting air into her lungs, pirouetted in place, and blew the power of it out between her teeth, used it to propel her imaginary body backwards in an arc till the swirl of her inner ear told her she was rushing downward, something dark and seemingly solid forming beneath her. A flick of her whiskers made the wind spin her again, and she landed on all fours, the bare stone floor cracking under the impact of her claws.
Looking up, she saw the same small unfurnished room that she’d fetched up in the last time she’d cast this spell, the sky outside the arched glass doorway to her right a sheer, afternoon blue. She puffed a breath, heard two more gasps, and glancing to her left, she saw Crocker and Shtasith each sitting up in a corner of the room, her familiars now both exactly as tall as the other, either Crocker shrunk to firedrake size or Shtasith grown to just shy of six feet long.
Of course, the spell had again made her a little larger than them, and pushing herself onto her hind legs, Cluny couldn’t help grinning at their wide-eyed stares. “Ummm,” Crocker said after a few heartbeats. “You’re not gonna kiss me again, are you?”
Cluny folded her arms. “Am I going to have to?”
That got a little grin from him, and he cocked his head. “It’s just I was thinking how it might be even more awkward this time, what with three of us being here and all.”
“Where—?” Shtasith’s neck ridges were fully extended, his wings quivering behind him. “What is this place? I...we’re within a magical construct of some sort, aren’t we?”
She stepped toward him, motioned with one paw for Crocker to join them, then rested the other paw on Shtasith’s forearm. “We’re inside the standfast spell,” she told him. “While we’re here, time hardly passes outside, but someone in that courtroom will notice pretty quickly that I’m working magic. So we need to know now, Shtasith.” She reached for Crocker’s shoulder when he came up beside them, and without her even prompting him, he set a hand on the firedrake’s other arm. “What were you saying back in the room before Master Gollantz interrupted you?”
Shtasith swung his head back and forth between them, then lowered it with a sigh. “I spent my first twenty years as her Majesty’s private immolator, and on her orders...it was I who sabotaged your spell eight months ago, my Cluny, and killed Lord Hypabyssal.” His head snapped back up, his fear so thick and sour, Cluny couldn’t keep her whiskers from folding. “It was before I’d ever met you, and her Majesty—” His voice broke. “She banished me from the Fire Realms to save herself and me from the wrath of Lord Hypabyssal’s partisans.” His neck ridges began to flex like spiny little wings. “They’ve obviously discerned my involvement in his death and are striking at all around me in their attempt to garner vengeance.”
“Huh.” Crocker looked at her, his mouth sideways. “So whadda we do? Throw the Teakettle at ’em and run?”
“Actually?” Cluny tapped her claws against Shtasith’s scales, the firedrake’s words connecting in her mind with what Master Gollantz had been saying earlier about the raw power this attack would have required. “We might need to make it look like we’re doing that. I’ll just—” Swallowing, she looked down at her two familiars, both dearer to her than anyone else she’d ever known. “I’ll need you guys to trust me.”
They both answered at the same time: “Well, yeah!” from Crocker, and “Of course!” from Shtasith.
She squeezed their shoulders. “’Cause I’m pretty sure—”
Magical discharge spiked her fur, and the air itself cracked, shattering around her, Cluny slapped backwards by Master Gollantz’s voice shouting, “Novice Cluny!”
Back inside Crocker’s breast pocket, she blinked at the magister’s angry face, the ifrit prosecutor glaring behind him. “Might I recommend, novice,” he continued, even drier than the dehumidified heat of the courtroom, “that when your life is at stake, you endeavor to remain focused on the here and now?”
Nodding, Cluny forced away all her doubts—if she was right, she had to act quickly while the remnants of the standfast spell still connected her so intimately to her familiars—and said, “Yes, sir. It’s just...I have new information I must present!”
A quiet sigh from the new ranee. “If this is some ploy to display your clients’ childishness, Magister Gollantz, I—”
“If it please the court!” Leaping from Crocker’s pocket to the stone slab of the table, Cluny flared her power and, popping off a prayer to the gods of evocation that she’d understood the basics of Magistrix Gosstelain’s theory about the magical properties of the mind/brain interface, she dug deep into Crocker, deep into Shtasith, deep into herself, threw out a massive matrix of energy pulled from their unique three-way connection, and coupled it to the fireball spell she’d developed for Crocker during their first semester, the spell that had accidentally summoned the Ifriti Ranee to their dorm room. “I bid your Majesty appear!” Cluny shouted.
Every square inch of the courtroom burst into flame for an instant, but, well, since nearly everyone there was already on fire in some way or another, the only cries Cluny heard were from herself and her two familiars as invisible knives slashed through her and sprayed their power out like blood from a ripped-open artery. Collapsing, Cluny fought to stay conscious, heard a rumble from her left, snapped her head over, and saw the air crack the way it had when Master Gollantz had nullified her standfast spell. The cracks widened, a layer of empty space crumbling away, and there in the front corner of the courtroom stood the former Ifriti Ranee, rage contorting her glowering face, her fists bunching and her muscles bulging.
“Court’s adjourned!” her Majesty shouted, and she swooped forward, those fists wrapping around Cluny, crushing her with a pain like none she’d ever known.
~o0o~
“You little vermin.” The voice was gentle, nearly a caress amidst the waves of agony wracking Cluny. “That a thing such as you would dare set itself against me—”
“No!” The pain was real, Cluny knew, but not somatic; she was lying unbroken on a stone floor, her physical senses told her, the Ifriti Ranee towering above her while Shtasith and Crocker sprawled to her left. But the fiery tendrils of her Majesty’s wrath biting and clawing along her every nerve paralyzed her: just moving her jaw to get that one word out made her want to start screaming again.
“No?” Her Majesty crouched, a smile parting the magma of her face. “You contradict me now?”
A fresh inferno roared through Cluny, and this time she let herself scream: “Please! You can have him! Just let us go and you can have him!”
The whole world seemed to freeze, then the tides of torment pulled back the barest inch. “I beg your pardon?” those gentle tones asked.
Offering a prayer to the Squirrel Mother that this would work—“Shtasith,” Cluny panted. “This has all been about him, hasn’t it? About you getting him back?” She struggled to push herself onto her hind legs so she could turn and bow raggedly to the Ifriti Ranee. “Let Crocker and me go, and I’ll sever our connection, renounce my claim, and disavow him as my familiar.”
Another frozen moment, and every last wisp of pain whisked away, let Cluny gasp in her first full breath in she didn’t know how long. Their gasps once again let Cluny know that Crocker and Shtasith were largely unhurt, but she didn’t look over, didn’t move her attention from the black and white of the granite floor.
“You can truly release him?” the ranee asked. “And let me assure you, mortal, that any attempted tricks on your part will almost definitely cause me to become upset.”
The clench in Cluny’s stomach relaxed a hair’s breadth, but things could still go disastrously wrong....“Master Gollantz will be
able to confirm what I’m saying, your Majesty.”
“Which makes me even more suspicious.” From the corner of her eye, Cluny saw the black claws of her Majesty’s feet dig into the stone. “Still...”
A rustle like a breeze through an autumn tree, and the wonderful scent of old books washed over her. “Cluny!” Master Gollantz cried out. “Your Majesty! I must protest this treatment of my student! She’s done nothing—!”
“Oh, now, really, Gollantz.” Something that might have been respect crept into her Majesty’s voice. “You and I have known each other far too long for such bluster. So just answer me: can this student of yours in fact disavow Shtasith as her familiar and set him free?”
Still not daring to look up, Cluny felt her various internal clenches tighten. Master Gollantz wouldn’t lie. He couldn’t. Everything depended on him telling the truth.
So when he sighed with what could only be resignation, Cluny nearly cheered. “Yes,” he said. “The bonds between novices are always loose. I’ve known students to dismiss five or six familiars before finding a compatible pairing.”
“Very well.” Smoke wafted down around Cluny. “Release to me my Immolator.”
The command pressed against her with a physical weight; dipping her bow a bit deeper, Cluny straightened and turned to Crocker and Shtasith, Crocker flat on his stomach and staring open-mouthed from under that stupid green hat, Shtasith nothing but a ball of scaly legs and tail.
And for all that this was about as right as her haphazard plan could possibly go, she hadn’t had a chance to tell either of them what she was doing. Still, with the Ifriti Ranee’s gaze focused on her hot enough to make her whiskers start sweating again, all Cluny could do was trust them. “I’m so, so sorry, Shtasith,” she whispered, and with a flick of her claws, she cut the threads of power between them, staggered sideways when the sweet, strong force of him wrenched away from her.
“Oh!” The shadows in the room stretched as the ranee moved to Cluny’s side, Cluny swaying, looking up at the lava of her Majesty’s eyes swirling more brightly. “I definitely felt that.” She sniffed the air and nodded. “Honestly done, Novice Cluny. And now that my Immolator is back in my service, all will be well again. You may go.”
“No.”
At first, Cluny thought the word had escaped her own throat, her body rebelling at the horrible, lopsided feel of the magic sloshing through her. But with only the warm, steady grip of Crocker’s power keeping her upright, she knew she couldn’t’ve spoken, and the way Crocker and Master Gollantz were staring at Shtasith, the firedrake unrolling to glare at the Ifriti Ranee—
“I beg your pardon?” her Majesty asked.
Shtasith leaped from the floor, his wings a blur, and swooped to hover in the sulfurous air between Cluny and the Ifriti Ranee. “I will not serve you, your Majesty,” he said. “Not should you fall to your knees and beg.”
Shock seeped across the ranee’s face like water freezing a magma flow, and Shtasith crooked a needle-sized claw at her. “I loved you once and called you my Queen. But you merely used that love, absorbed it, and weakened me to such an extent that when you at last betrayed and abandoned me, I was unable to do anything but betray and abandon you in return.”
He dropped to the floor beside Cluny, and she found her heart was fluttering even faster than his wings had been. “In loving my Cluny, however, I have found a friend and a partner—” Whirling, he wrapped his coils around her, Cluny gasping as he hoisted her aloft and settled with her on Crocker’s back. “Two friends and partners! And the strength they have allowed me to cultivate within myself, it will brook neither betrayal nor abandonment!” His snaky neck snapped his head around, his solid black gaze hitting Cluny’s as welcome as a summer breeze, and his power sprang back into place, plugging the holes within her. “So you will not disavow me, my Cluny! Neither now nor in the future!”
“Yes!” Crocker shouted. Stretched out on the stone floor beneath them, he slapped a palm, vanished in a shower of sparks, and reappeared sitting cross-legged in nearly the same place, his arms flailing out to scoop Cluny and Shtasith against his chest. “You tell ’em, Teakettle!”
Complete once more, Cluny let herself bask in the feeling for two seconds, then she wriggled free from most of Crocker’s grasp and shoved herself around to look up, up, up at the Ifriti Ranee, her molten complexion darkening, the temperature and air pressure in the room suddenly spiking upward.
Unable to keep her ears from folding, all Cluny could do was hope. After all, trusting Crocker and Shtasith was one thing. But having to trust the ranee after everything she’d already tried to do to them today?
Several more seconds drifted by, Cluny not looking away from her Majesty’s eyes, glowering like the last coals of an abandoned bonfire. Then—“Take them away, Gollantz,” the Ifriti Ranee said, her voice also ashes. “See to it that they do not return.”
The room went fuzzy around her, then became the first room they’d appeared in all those hours ago, the banners limp against the walls, a team of salamanders busily rebuilding the wall behind her Majesty’s throne.
Crocker clambered to his feet, and Cluny let herself slide down the front of his robe into her waiting pocket with a sigh. “Stay awake, Novice Cluny,” Master Gollantz muttered, stooping to grasp the trigger of his transport spell. “I find I have a few questions concerning this affair.”
That got a groan from Crocker and a hiss from Shtasith, but Cluny couldn’t keep from laughing. “Tomorrow morning, maybe, sir? So I don’t find myself facing a mutiny?”
~o0o~
Barely able to keep her eyes open, Cluny watched Master Gollantz zip the Material Realm’s reality back into place before he dismantled the spell. Scowling, he stepped to the door and said, “Nine o’clock in my office, novices. Here’s hoping I don’t need to call on certain friends of mine in the diplomatic corps to smooth this thing over...”
As soon as the door clicked shut behind the magister, Crocker folded backwards onto the bed, Cluny too exhausted to move from his breast pocket while Shtasith fluttered up just long enough to miss the impact, then dropped to drape himself across Crocker’s chest. “OK,” Crocker said. “Now that we’ve seen where me and the Teakettle grew up, I’m gonna propose we spend our vacations at Cluny’s folks’ nut farm from now on.” He raised a hand. “All in favor?”
“Aye,” Shtasith breathed, the steam of it rolling gently over Cluny. “But...how did you know, my Cluny?”
“I didn’t.” She coughed a laugh. “I just couldn’t figure out why anyone strong enough to kill her Majesty would want to frame us, especially when killing an Elemental Ruler pretty much qualifies you to become an Elemental Ruler yourself.”
“Whoa.” Crocker’s voice: Cluny lolled her head up, saw Shtasith looking back at Crocker, his head propped on his pillow. “We woulda been in charge of the Fire Realms?”
Shtasith snorted. “Once Lady Felsic had taken the throne, she would never have allowed our Cluny to live.”
“Exactly.” Another little clench twinged Cluny’s stomach, but she breathed it away. “As soon as you told us you used to work for the ranee, Shtasith, I realized she staged her own death in order to get you back. Just outright killing me would’ve caused an interplanar incident, but this way, her successor would have to find me guilty and kill me or risk me becoming a symbolic rival for the crown. After I was dead, the ranee could reappear with some story about finally fighting off my spell, retake her title, and get you as well.” She smiled at the firedrake. “’Cause everybody wants you on their team.”
“Got that right,” Crocker said with a yawn.
Shtasith’s eyes slitted shut, and Cluny almost thought she could hear him purr. “Thank you,” he whispered.
Snuggling deeper into her pocket, Cluny flicked a claw to douse the overhead light and closed her eyes, too.
Justice
by Suzan Harden
Pontius Pilate asked “What is truth?” and finally sent Jesus to die. In
this story the question is “What is justice?” along with what role mercy and understanding should play in a “just” decision.
Suzan Harden is the author of the urban fantasy series Bloodlines, and she is working hard on the sixth book, ZOMBIE GODDESS. She currently lives in southeastern Texas with a husband who supports her ice cream and book addictions, a kid who thinks she’s too enamored with the undead, and a beagle who just wants his belly scratched. That’s the nice thing about dogs. Their wants are simple and easy to understand.
The tinkling bells that lined her cloak announced the girl’s presence as I ate my breakfast. “Justice Anthea, may I speak with you privately?”
Most Orrin inns were incredibly noisy, but the crowd here grew even more boisterous. It wasn’t often a priestess of Love addressed a priestess of Balance in a public business. Not that I could tell if her cloak was the appropriate red silk. At least, not the way most people saw the color. But the clientele went out of their way to speak loudly and ignore us.
The dry musk of pigs underlaid her expensive perfume. I spooned the last bit of eggs into my mouth. Even if her odor hadn’t given her away, she didn’t bother to sit or give her name as an equal should.
Maybe she was too cocky about her deception. Or she was too frightened.
After dabbing the corners of my mouth, I smiled. I couldn’t see her face with the heavy veil she wore, but I delayed long enough to detect her bare hands shift from dark gold to bright orange as they heated with her nervousness.
I should have waited for Luc to return from the bathhouse, but curiosity got the better of me. “Of course, sister.” I held out my own hand, which she took and assisted me in rising from the bench. Just as anyone with decency, or the appearance of such, would help a blind woman to her lodging.
