Imrah shook her head, not answering, then reaching for the accordion file resting against the leg of the table. She drew out the first collection of sheets held together with a paperclip.
“Here,” she said, shoving the papers into Milo’s hand.
A photo of a dark and surly-looking fellow with a weak chin was stuck under the paperclip. The papers were the medical records for a soldier in the missing patrols, an unfortunate named Klaus Schuster.
“So, this is supposed to happen?” Milo said, looking up from the paper and nodding at the glassy hide. “It’s supposed to look like that?”
Imrah gave an impatient snort, but checked herself, and then bobbed her head in confirmation.
“Yes, that is exactly what it is supposed to look like. In fact, even though I’ve made dozens of these in my life, I’ve only had this happen a handful of times. The cloudier it is during this stage, the more imperfect it will be on completion.”
Milo gave a grunt and looked at the picture of Klaus again. He felt a slight tug at the back of his mind, where the magic binding the proto skin-coat to his blood sang. Not sure how the process worked, he stared at Klaus and let his mind drag every feature over that thrumming chord at the back of his mind. It was something like sending puzzle pieces down a chute, knowing that they will reach their proper place. As long as he kept feeding the information, it would find its proper place.
Imrah gasped, and Milo was just about to look up when she stopped him.
“Don’t stop,” she said quickly. “It’s working perfectly.”
Milo finished with the photograph and then began to read the papers, overlaying numbers and descriptors on the image he’d formed of Klaus from the picture. Height, weight, a slight stoop here, a birthmark there. Within a few minutes of reading, Klaus Schuster was a whole creation in Milo’s mind. Somehow, he knew the skin-coat on the table was complying as well.
As the mental image thickened into a three-dimensional creation, the words on the paper swam in front of his eyes, and Milo’s head began to spin. He felt that gravity was disproportionately affecting parts of his body, his head and hand were suddenly so much heavier. He was certain he was going to need to lie down very soon.
“Finish it!” Imrah cried at his side, and her shoulder braced him under one arm.
He couldn’t remember when his legs had decided to stop working.
“Finish it and break the connection!” Imrah ordered.
Milo struggling to come to grips with soft and slippery thoughts, remembered that chord at the back of his mind. With fumbling awareness, he tugged on that clinging sensation and realized it wasn’t just a feeling. It was the anchor of a magical umbilical cord, and it was pumping more of him into his creation. He had to sever it or it would suck him dry, though all this occurred without the requisite fear he should have felt.
His mind was numb and clumsy, but somehow with the last vestiges of his jagged will, he sheared through the magical connection. Like a taut string snapping back into place, his senses snapped back with painful clarity. He was covered in a cold sweat, and he ached in every way possible—and a few impossible ones to boot.
On the table lay what looked for all the world like a deflated Klaus Shuster.
“Well,” Imrah said with a grunt since she was still holding him upright, “I suppose for doing forbidden blood magic, that went exceptionally well.”
Milo tried to straighten, but his joints sent protesting spasms of pain in rebuke. Instead, he swung his burdensome head around to give the ghul a pained grin.
“And to think you doubted me.”
As carefully as she could manage, Imrah lowered him to the floor and propped his back against a table leg. Milo didn’t protest, in part because he didn’t want to and mostly because he couldn’t. He settled onto the floor, a low groan passing from deep in his chest to leave his lips sonorously. His eyes fluttered closed, and he surrendered to fatigue, but then fingers squeezed his jaws open, and that sweet onion taste washed down his parched throat.
The nightwatch’s bouncing energy rolled through him, battering his limbs to wakefulness. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant as the first dose he’d taken, but by God, it woke him up and dragged him to his feet with fierce intensity. His eyes popped open as though they would burst if he didn’t let them loose.
Imrah had already stepped away and busied herself with something in a small cup at the table.
Milo realized with a start that he must have been out longer than he thought because the skin-coat was no longer on the table and the leftover ingredients had been cleared as well. The knife he’d used to open his hand was still there, sitting next to the bowl whose flame had shrunk to little more than the fire to be found on a candle stub.
“So, that was interesting,” Milo said a little breathlessly, the nightwatch dancing in his chest.
“Indeed,” Imrah remarked, casting a critical eye over the interior of the cup. “I suppose it goes without saying that what you did was incredibly reckless and stupid.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But it worked. Speaking of which, where is my handiwork?”
His eyes roved around the basement as Imrah turned and held the cup over the shrinking witchfire in the bowl.
“I hung it on the racks, along with the file,” she remarked, watching the cup mildly. “If we fold or bundle it up, we’re likely to get creases and seams we don’t want. They’d fade with time and use, but we might as well avoid it if we can.”
“Good, good.” Milo nodded over-eagerly. He knew his behavior bordered on manic, but he couldn’t stop.
Imrah peered at him, looking weary around the eyes, though her human guise remained as vigorous as ever.
“I suppose your success makes you think you can keep doing things like this?”
“Yes, yes, it does,” Milo said as he bounced on the balls of his feet. “Now that I know how the connection drains me over time, I can be prepared. Dump the details into the hide and then break the connection. Simple, simple, simple.”
Imrah nodded and sighed.
“Yes, it seems so,” she muttered. She lifted the cup from the flame as little gray wisps emerged. “We’ll have to be careful it doesn’t kill you, but these sorts of skin-coats are relatively simple. Your control is amazing with the blood, but the drain on you physically is a concern. When you begin to learn about protective coatings and replicative adaptations, it will be more dangerous, and I can’t imagine you could pull off extra-dimensionals powered by blood alone.”
Milo was nodding rapidly, taking in the information and pairing it with fanciful, frantic imaginings. His mind caught on extra-dimensionals.
“What are those?” he asked, then remembering he hadn’t said the words out loud, added: “Extra-dimensionals, I mean.”
Imrah smiled wickedly through the saturnine vapors.
“How do you think I carried all these things from Ifreedahm?”
Milo balked and stared around the room, his magically stimulated mind tumbling into a freewheeling spin.
“What? Really? All of it? WHAT?”
Imrah chuckled and held the cup out to him.
“Drink,” she instructed.
His mind still spinning, Milo took the vessel and threw back its scalding contents in one wincing swallow.
“Ugh, that hurt,” he said, but his discomfort hardly slowed his train of thought. “Imagine what we could do with that? It would be incredible. It could revolutionize everything, everything! Why, we—”
“Milo,” Imrah said firmly.
His mind was working so quickly he could hardly see her.
“No, just wait—”
“Milo!” she snarled
“What?” he shouted back.
“The elixir I just gave you is a restorative,” she explained with forced calm. “It is going to counteract the nightwatch I gave you in a few minutes. Unless you want to pass out on this floor, you best get upstairs to something soft!”
After losing a day to sleep, Mil
o’s world accelerated very quickly.
While he’d slept, Lokkemand had arranged for all the corpses they would need to be stored in the empty home next to Milo’s “lab.” The official explanation was concerns of the dead being infected by a deadly fungus that a specialist needed to examine. The combination of location and the rumor of disease-spreading corpses assured them that Milo could carry out the operation unmolested.
When he had awakened from his alchemically enhanced stupor, Rihyani and her companions had arrived with all the supplies they would require to make skin-coats for the rest of the dead soldiers. Imrah had vanished again, and Milo was in no rush to start the process just yet since the fey brought the supplies in after nightfall. Milo supposed Imrah would arrive soon, and if she didn’t, he would start without her after he shared a meal with his bodyguard and the contessa.
The fey companions, whose names Milo still didn’t know, had elected to leave as soon as their duty was discharged.
The food, sandwiches made from dense field biscuits, canned meat, and local goat cheese, weren’t bad, but the smell of the moldering corpses next door was ever-present. They’d eaten in silence, forcing down bites, trying to ignore the scent of putrefaction.
Ambrose had managed to find some coffee and was brewing a pot whose smell seemed to drive off the worst of the odor next door. This, combined with the plummeting temperatures of the arid world outside, meant the stink was muffled.
“Any news from the Bashlek?” Milo asked as he brought the contessa her cup on the second-floor veranda. Rihyani decided to smoke one of her cigarillos there in the hopes of not offending Imrah whenever she returned. Milo had at first worried at the stir such a luminous and unearthly creature might cause, even when they were nestled away from most eyes, but she’d insisted she would make certain they were unobserved.
“Thank you,” the fey lady said as she took the cup. “There is quite a bit of news from Ifreedahm, not all of it from our friend Marid.”
“Do tell,” Milo urged as he struck a match to light the hand-rolled cigarette hanging from his lip. Ambrose had also found a way to replenish their tobacco in excess of the commissarial allotments.
Rihyani blew out a plume of smoke, and it turned to silver filigree in the light of the moon before dissipating. She sighed, her eyes distant, then took a sip of the coffee.
“Humans and their marvels,” she muttered, then looked at Milo standing at the doorway. “Won’t you come stand next to me as we talk? I so rarely get to enjoy tobacco and coffee with anyone.”
Milo hadn’t brought his coat with him, and even from where he stood, he felt the night prickling his skin with gooseflesh. All the same, he steeled himself, thankful that he had hot coffee, warm smoke, and a fetching creature like the contessa to fight the chill.
“So long as you plan to tell me about that news,” he said, puffing on his cigarette as he came to stand beside her. “Among most humans, making comments like yours and providing nothing is called ‘being a tease.’”
Her wine-dark eyes studied him for a moment as her head tilted to the side, and one corner of her mouth hitched up in a wry grin.
“Can’t two friends just enjoy a moment together? Very soon, you’ll be back to your schemes, and I’ll make busy running my errands. Can’t we just savor the coffee and each other’s company?”
In response, Milo took a sip and then a drag on his cigarette to buy time. As he sent a jet of smoke into the night, he realized he wasn’t sure what to make of the situation.
“So, we are friends?” Milo said, the words coming out flatter and harder than he’d intended.
Contessa Rihyani paused and frowned over the cup she’d just raised to her lips.
“I’d like to think so,” she said, the barest hint of rebuke in her tone. “I’ve been more forthright with you than most of my own kind, let alone any human I’ve ever encountered. I supposed I’d hoped that sort of thing would engender trust and camaraderie. Was I wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” Milo said quickly, the look in her eyes a warning he was eager to heed. “It’s just that, well, you’re not only the first fey I’ve ever been friends with, but also the first woman, or female, I’ve ever been friends with.”
Rihyani laughed, the sound producing that same ache in Milo’s chest.
“That’s me,” she said, tossing her head back to strike a regal pose. “A pioneer all over again.”
“I suppose so,” Milo said, acutely aware of how blank his mind had gone. “So, uh, the news?”
Rihyani turned to look at him again, and Milo busied himself with enjoying his coffee to avoid the gaze that was making him uncomfortable. She held the stare long enough that Milo was certain he was being rude by avoiding her gaze before letting out a sigh and drawing on her cigarillo again.
“The Bashlek agrees with the plan, obviously,” she said as she sent twin jets from her nostrils. “He even recommended some areas that we utilize for depositing the bodies. He says they’ll be close enough to the enemy lines to seem reasonable positions for an ambush.”
“That’s helpful,” Milo said, nodding. “We’ll just have to make sure that we don’t stumble into a real ambush when we go to set things up.”
Rihyani tapped some ash off on the rail of the veranda before scattering it with a gust of conjured wind from her fingertip.
“We can scout the locations out ahead of time,” she said, looking down into the small courtyard in front of the house.
“Thank you,” Milo said woodenly, hating how stiff and distant the conversation seemed. He wished he could say something to put the contessa at ease, to draw her into those familiar tones, but it was no use. With disgust, he thought he might have an easier time talking to Imrah than this radiant creature.
“Fazihr returned to Ifreedahm,” Rihyani said once the silence had stretched past the point of discomfort. “But he did not return to the court of the Bashlek.”
Milo looked up through his cigarette smoke with a frown
“Where did he go?”
Rihyani took another drink before setting her cup down in front of her.
“To Lady Dazk,” she said, her tone making it easy to guess how she felt about the matter. “The rumor is the little worm crawled back to Dazk with all sorts of slander and scandal coming off his poisonous tongue. Tales from the broken House of Marid and the wayward daughter Imrah.”
The fey gave a sniff of disgust before drawing and exhaling a dragon’s share of pungent smoke.
“It’s unlikely a word of it is true, but his treachery could prove an unwelcome complication for Marid. Perhaps it is for the best that all this happened. Now is a most uncertain time for you in Ifreedahm.”
Milo let out a long curse along with a plume of smoke.
“Should we tell Imrah?” he asked before flicking the butt into the courtyard below. “Or will she already know?”
Rihyani shrugged.
“In all the time I have known Marid, he’s never acted as though Imrah cared that her father was the Bashlek.”
She let out a final puff of smoke before vanishing the cigarillo with a flick of her fingers.
“Tell her if you want, but there is something of greater concern for Ifreedahm besides who is Bashlek.”
“What now?” Milo groaned after frowning into his empty cup.
Rihyani turned toward him, and he wasn’t quick enough to look away. Her gaze pinned him in place, intent that he pay very close attention to her words.
“More ghuls have gone missing,” she said, her lips tightening into a grim line. “More outposts near routes where humans have been spotted. There are growing mutters of it being the work of humans, which only stokes fears and produces calls for Marid to do something. He’s shut up the city, and precious few are allowed to pass the gates. Still, those who go near the surface tunnels disappear.”
Milo swore bitterly and shook his head.
“Almost like someone wants to provoke the two sides to war,” Milo growled, cupping th
e mug in both hands.
“Almost,” Rihyani replied with a nod.
Milo chewed his lip before heaving a sigh.
“What are the odds that thing in the tunnels isn’t involved?” Milo sighed. “I mean, seriously; disappearing ghul outpost and human patrols, all leaving no evidence, so everyone is poking around and asking more questions. What are the odds a creature like that just shows up now?”
Rihyani gave him a wry smile.
“Most unlikely,” she said. “I asked the Bashlek if he’d heard of anything like what you described, and he mentioned very ancient tales of bound demons and forbidden experiments, but he didn’t seem to give it much credence. Either way, if it becomes bold enough to attack Ifreedahm, he’s been told it doesn’t like fire.”
“That’s something,” Milo said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Rihyani said and turned back to the courtyard as she gave him a sidelong glance. “If we were friends, I’d tell you I was glad to do it.”
“If?” Milo asked.
“If.” She nodded.
“If we were friends,” Milo said, joining her in gazing across the courtyard, “I’d tell you to be careful, and I looked forward to seeing you in a weeks’ time.”
“If?” she said softly.
“If.”
Imrah did not return from her ramblings, which Ambrose muttered darkly must be finding “ghul-fodder” until early the next morning, but when she did, she was eager to join Milo in making the skin-coats.
Unfortunately, Milo had made adjustments to their resources and division of labor.
They were not appreciated by the ghul princess.
“You did what?” she snarled.
Milo knew she’d heard him, so he didn’t waste the effort of repeating himself as he worked at his mortar and pestle. He’d made three coats in the course of the night and was feeling the drain on his soul, something that seemed to translate directly into marked fatigue. To counteract the effects, he was making some nightwatch to keep him upright for the next three.
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 27
