The Red King

by Jenn Stark

  Valetti smiled. “In the beginning, its name was merely tribute to the raucous parties that were held on its grounds. It’s only in more recent times that its reputation has turned dire. Still, it serves as a fitting location for the arcane library of Venice, which I presume you will want to explore. Alfonse is the titular head of our order, whereas I serve as head of security.”

  I wasn’t making any presumptions yet about avenues of exploration, but I was happy to go along. I needed to talk to another member of the senate at any rate, if only to confirm Valetti’s take on events. He seemed perfectly earnest, but he was also determined to protect his senate, the honor of Venice, and the sanctity of magicianhood. And if his job was security for the senate, then I definitely needed more sources to understand what was really going on here.

  Still, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind of what I’d seen below. “Carnevale starts tomorrow night, you said?”

  “Yes,” Valetti said. “But as I’m sure you’ve seen, there are those who have begun the celebration early. It is always that way, the storm before the storm.” He smiled indulgently. “In Venice, we would have it no other way.”

  “And your neighbors here? These look like pretty nice homes. I assume they’re all residents, not open for tourists to rent?”

  Valetti assumed an expression of patrician distaste. “You’re correct. These are some of the oldest families in the cities, and we are all quite protective of our privacy. And, of course, that is the point of the masks, you see? To allow even the most private of souls, the most powerful, to mix among the dancers and the revelers without fear of being known. To laugh, to love, to dance, to mingle. It’s what makes Venice, Venice.” He sighed almost romantically. “It must remain a place of safety for those who have given so much to it. All would be lost otherwise.”

  I nodded, my eyes once more on the alley. No one else approached.

  “Ah!” Valetti’s exclamation drew my attention. He stood, almost like a soldier at attention, his eyes fixed on the western horizon.

  “The sun is setting on the city, on the eve of Carnevale,” he all but whispered, his words rapt. “All the magic in the world has come to dance in the streets once more.”

  Chapter Ten

  It was another two hours before Valetti finally retired for the evening, and Nikki waited approximately four seconds before she narrowed her eyes at me. “It’s a bad idea.”

  “Nearly a dozen people have entered that courtyard this evening. Only three have come out. Three. And the ones who did looked like their next destination was a detox clinic.”

  “It’s the night before the mother of all parties in the city. Maybe they’re pregaming.”

  “I don’t think so. Valetti said that this area of the city was filled with residents, and judging from the state of these palazzos, they’re residents with a lot of money. You really think they’d open their doors to carnival goers out of the goodness of their hearts?”

  “Airbnb?”

  I sent her a withering glance. “The only way you’d rent out homes like these to strangers was through a service that hooked you up with the rich and famous. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I don’t think that’s what was going on down there.”

  Nikki sighed. She’d seen exactly what I had, because the moment the images had passed into my memory, she had access to them. A process which, of course, was nearly instantaneous. “Fine. It was a mix of men and women, but no way to tell any other details about them. Other than that they didn’t look like this was their first party of the day,” she agreed.

  “And none of them were fall-down drunk, though they were working on it. Dutch courage?”

  “Maybe.” She made a face. “I know I’m definitely going to need another drink if you expect me to help you astral travel, though. That shit always gives me the willies, I don’t care how many times you do it.”

  “Yeah, well. The sooner we start, the sooner it’s over.”

  “If you’re sure—”

  “Here. We’ll get celestial approval if that makes you happy.” I reached in my jacket and pulled out a card from the deck, flipping it around to show her, certain it would be the Magician, the High Priestess, or even Justice.

  It wasn’t.

  She peered at the card and rolled her eyes. “The Red King. Great.”

  “I don’t make the news, I just report it.” I grinned. “Plus, the King of Cups is above all else a guy sitting on flowing water. That certainly describes where we are.” I tapped the card on the table. “In fact, the Red King could be at that party right now.”

  “Uh-huh,” Nikki said, still patently unconvinced. “Or it’s some nice old man hosting a pre-Carnevale get-together.”

  “It could be,” I agreed. “It isn’t, but it could be.”

  “Fine.” Nikki scooted her chair over to me while I pushed my wineglass farther away on the table. No point making a mess.

  Astral traveling was a skill I’d never really much cared for, but it had come in handy, particularly as I’d begun doing work for the Council. It wasn’t always convenient for me to bodily transport myself halfway around the world to report on something for the benefit of the Magician or High Priestess. Granted, I wasn’t the best traveler, especially on Psychic Airlines. I usually ended up hurling my guts if I had to fly the spectral skies for any significant amount of time. But it did make for soothing one’s curiosity in a hurry.

  Nikki sighed heavily, clearly put out, but began the words I’d almost learned by heart, for all that they were in no formal language that still existed on the planet. I felt myself sinking further and further into the self-hypnosis necessary to begin any astral travel journey. I slumped forward in my chair, then felt the lift of my body as my spirit broke free from the…

  Only, there was no breaking.

  No freeing. No nothing.

  “Um…” I slitted open one eye, giving Nikki a sideways glance. “It sounds like you’re doing it correctly, but nothing is happening.”

  Not breaking her chant, Nikki waved at me to shut my eyes again, then repeated the words with more vigor. She leaned closer, in case there was some directional issue with her words hitting my eardrum. I winced at her loud voice, grimacing.

  “Focus,” she hissed.

  “I am focusing. Nothing’s happening.”

  Typically by this time in the process, I was already out of both my body and whatever building I inhabited and soaring over the city. The queasiness would come later, but the initial hit of leaving my physical form and floating in space was something I could never fully articulate. I’d experience pure weightlessness, and my vision would transform into something supernatural, as if it were made up of a thousand different satellites whose cameras were all pointed at the same location. In other words, I didn’t see a single image, but the same image magnified and replicated dozens and dozens of times. It was unnerving, but it was also awesome.

  And it in no way, shape, or form was happening now.

  “Forget it,” I said, leaning back in my chair in disgust. “It’s broken. I’m broken.”

  Nikki watched me with wide eyes, her mouth tight. “Has this ever happened before?” Her lips twisted with grim humor. “I feel like we’re on an erectile dysfunction commercial.”

  “Imagine how I feel,” I muttered, more than a little unhappy. As much as I wasn’t a fan of astral traveling, I was even less a fan of things not working when they were supposed to be working. First there’d been the library brownout at Justice Hall, now this. Before I even knew what I was fully doing, I reached out mentally and rapped on the cosmos’s door.

  For once, Armaeus was home.

  “Miss Wilde,” he murmured, his voice less concerned than curious. I knew the man loved me. I knew he’d moved heaven and earth for me. But there was something that ran even deeper than that love. The Magician’s eternal fascination with my evolution as a Connected.

  “I tried astral travel,” I said with
out preamble. Though I didn’t need to speak the words aloud—Nikki could read my memories of Armaeus’s and my words the second after we spoke—it felt awkward having an entire conversation in my head. “It was a spectacular fail. What’s going on?”

  “I told you when you ascended to the Council that your abilities would be curtailed in some ways, even as you added others. There was no way of telling which skills would be affected ahead of time.”

  I blinked. “Are you serious? I can make blue balls of flame, but I can’t zip around with my mind? Who made that decision?”

  “It’s a sacrifice all Council members must make,” Armaeus said. “You get used to it, or you make adjustments. However, when an ability is lost, it doesn’t mean it cannot ever be reclaimed.”

  “That’s beautiful,” I said sarcastically. “What skills did you leave behind when you ascended to the Council?”

  “None,” he replied, and my eyes widened. A second later, Nikki’s did too. She could hear Armaeus as well, as soon as his words passed into my memory.

  “What do you mean none? I thought this was some kind of rule.”

  “When I ascended to the Council, I had no skills as a magician. I had the magic within me, the deep wellspring of possibility, but I hadn’t begun working any spells. All that came later.”

  I opened my mouth to utter a witty retort, then snapped it shut again. For me not to know something so important about arguably the closest man to me on this entire planet was more than a little unsettling. “Oh.”

  Across the miles, Armaeus chuckled, and I battened down my mental hatches. I didn’t mind the fact that he could read my thoughts when I allowed him to, I simply minded it when I forgot to rescind permission.

  “So where does that leave me?” I asked. “I can no longer astral travel?”

  “It’s perhaps reasonable that the Justice of the Arcana Council must confront her mark directly, versus spying on them from the shadows.”

  “I don’t think that’s reasonable. You ask me, it’s downright irresponsible. What happens if I confront my mark, as you so charmingly put it, and they are way more powerful than anything I’ve been led to believe? I could be knee-deep in serious crap without even knowing it.”

  “You have clearly retained the power of healing and translation, and you can now destabilize enough to travel corporeally,” Armaeus said, his tone only vaguely soothing. “You also have, by your own admission, access to spectral fire.”

  “I’ve also retained my unerring fashion sense and my ability to find ice cream in any city in the world, but that’s not all that helpful when I’m dealing with magicians who’re more powerful than I’m expecting them to be.”

  “You’re one of the most powerful Connecteds in all the world.”

  “Well yeah, I was. That was before I got hit with the abilities tax. Now I don’t know so much how I stack up.”

  I was partly complaining to ensure my skill at whining was still sharp, since it was one of my best talents, but a not insignificant portion of me truly was concerned. Based on what Luca Stone had said about the quality and depth of magical ability heightening in the weeks following the recent war on magic, there were now Connecteds out there who were more powerful than they used to be. Conversely, I was apparently weaker than I used to be. I really didn’t like the math.

  “It would appear you will need to test each ability anew, as well as determine what additional skills you may have developed without realizing it,” Armaeus said. “As the old saying goes, nature finds a way.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m thinking the first skill I’m going to need to develop is to learn how to keep my mouth shut so I don’t piss off the wrong hooligan who’s hefting a lightning bolt when he should only have a glow stick.”

  “As always, I remain fascinated to see what you do, Miss Wilde. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there is a matter of the demon horde at the Met that I need to address.”

  “Fine, fine. Go. Don’t mind me.” I could tell the moment that the Magician broke contact with me and found myself unreasonably glad that Nikki remained beside me. I hated being dis-Connected.

  She looked less impressed. And by far less distressed. “So no more astral traveling?” she asked hopefully. “I absolutely hated it when you did the out-of-body-experience thing, especially since I was usually the one stuck with the body. It never did so great.”

  “Yeah well, astral travel had its benefits. But apparently, it’s off the table for right now. Which means we move to Plan B.”

  Nikki blinked at me. “There’s a Plan B?”

  “There’s always a Plan B.”

  This wasn’t necessarily true, but it was close enough. I stood and moved over to the edge of the balcony, taking a harder look at the side of our own palazzo. We were on the third floor of the structure, and the building had been constructed during the Renaissance era, if not before. As a result, the walls were not hewn into smooth, uninterrupted rock, but a much craggier surface. Add to that the crenelated flourishes of the window frames, and there might as well be a ladder extending down.

  “No, no, no,” Nikki said. “There is absolutely no reason for you to investigate the neighbor’s party. There was no sign of wrongdoing, nobody screamed, no guns were pulled, no—”

  “Shh!” I held up a hand as Nikki groaned and stood, quickly striding over to me. My gaze remained on the doorway to the hidden courtyard as it slowly swung open. Three men spilled out onto the sidewalk, swaying together collegially. Two of them stumbled off down the alley, while the third headed our way. “Those three didn’t show up together.”

  “What are you, the neighborhood watch? Since when is it a crime to leave a party with someone you didn’t show up with?”

  “An excellent point. Which is all the more reason why you and I should make sure this young man makes it home safely.”

  “Home?”

  “At least down to the end of the street.” I eyed the squat, wrought iron banister topping the terrace wall. It was intended almost entirely for show, I suspected, but it did make things a little tricky to go over the side. Still, manageable.

  “Whoa,” Nikki said. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m a little overdressed for climbing walls.” She pointed to her shoes. “I left my hiking Blahniks at home.”

  “Fair enough.” My grin widened as something else occurred to me. “I’m Justice of the Arcana Council, and I can teleport at will. That means I can travel with anyone to a new location, so long as I’ve seen that location. Did you know that?”

  “Ummm…”

  I pointed to the sidewalk below us. “I’ve totally seen the sidewalk. So it stands to reason that I could get us both down there without the whole wall-climbing thing. Purely to protect your heels, of course.”

  Nikki made a face. “Are you serious? Do we really have to do this?”

  “Choppity choppity. Dude is walking slowly, but he is walking. I need your help.”

  For the second time in the space of ten minutes, Nikki let out a long, heartfelt groan. But she didn’t flinch more than a little when I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Is that the best place for your hand?” she protested. “Shouldn’t you hold on to something a little sturdier? Like all of me?”

  “Stop being such a baby.”

  I didn’t close my eyes, but I did tense up as I felt the energy surge over me. As always, I simply imagined myself in the other space. Which was why I needed to see a given space before I attempted going there.

  It worked like a charm. I could feel myself becoming less corporeal, Nikki right along with me. My fingers sank more deeply into her muscled shoulder. This was going to work, I realized. I might not be able to astral travel, but I could legit travel from point to point on demand. I could get used to that. Certainly, it’d make getting home easier. In fact, the only downside was—

  I jerked with sudden realization, but there was no way to reverse the shift once I’d started it. At least no way tha
t I knew of. That meant I was going to have to go through this no matter how awkward it was. And Nikki was too. She realized that two seconds later.

  “Does it feel a little hot to you?” came her alarmed question.

  We flared back into existence a second later at our destination, both of us slightly charred, but fortunately the conflagration hadn’t come with us. I was a little concerned that I’d manifested fire several times in a row now as my transport add-on of choice. Of all the ways for me to expedite the traveling process, it seemed like I could come up with something a little less hazardous than fire.

  A little less noticeable too. As we straightened and gained our feet on the narrow cobblestone alleyway, I realized that the inebriated guest from the hidden courtyard was standing right in front of us. He stared, his dilated eyes open wide, his mouth gaping. I wasn’t sure if he’d seen any of the flame throwing, but he’d certainly made note of the two strangers that’d suddenly appeared in the space before him where there hadn’t been anyone before.

  Nikki and I didn’t give him a chance to get his bearings. Swaying against me with a rough and boisterous laugh, Nikki swung around to the man and staggered forward, crashing into him bodily. Drunk or no, the Venetian had been raised correctly. His arms immediately went out to steady Nikki, his face tight with concern.

  “What—who? How?” he asked in Italian.

  It only took the briefest touches for Nikki to get what she needed.

  Chapter Eleven

  We sent the man on his way with a minimum of fuss, and Nikki turned to me, making a show of checking her outfit.

  “Next time I tell you I’m smokin’ hot, please do not take me literally,” she groused.

  Belatedly, I glanced down to my own outfit. Like Nikki, I was a little crisp around the edges, but not to the extent that anyone would notice.

  “So maybe I had to trade the astral travel for the real teleporting,” I said. “I guess that’s a fair trade.”