The Red King

by Jenn Stark

  “So you’ve mentioned,” Nikki said, eyeing him a little more sharply.

  Budin poked his finger in the air, hard. “Talk to the police and have them check the two Englishmen’s abdomens.”

  It was my turn to sharpen my gaze on the magician. “Their what?”

  “Their abdomens. If what they feared would happen to them was true, they’ll be missing several organs, without a single incision mark on them,” Budin said, his breathless voice turned horrified. “They were eviscerated by magic.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Valetti in five,” Nikki murmured, glancing up.

  “What? No!” With another flurry of finger movements, Budin dropped the cone of silence around us and smoothed down his costume. “He can’t know about me.”

  “You don’t trust Valetti?”

  “I’m a magician!” he hissed. “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Signorinas!” Valetti called out boisterously enough, and I didn’t miss Budin’s flinch as he turned. “And old friend,” Valetti continued.

  He and Budin embraced in the kind of European air kiss that might originally have been invented to accommodate costumes. “The parade is bigger this year than ever, yes? So many people, so much excitement.” The count swept his arms out as he turned, and true enough, the parade had started. I squinted at the crowd around us and frowned. The kids were gone. So were the dark-garbed men trailing them.

  Without hesitating, I flicked my third eye open, laying out the crowd in front of me in a sizzling electrical map.

  To my utter surprise, Budin’s jester had gone back to a totally normal level of movement. The man was still quite obviously Connected, but his abilities were sufficiently banked to the point I wouldn’t have looked at him twice if I didn’t know what he was hiding. He really was a high-level Connected if he could hide from even me. Beside him, Valetti glowed with a far stronger Connected vibe. Off into the crowd, Chiara glowed with levels similar to Valetti’s, though her agitated circuits were due in part to the proximity of the Devil, I had no doubt.

  I took the moment to survey the Devil with the advantage of my special sight and noticed something else too—his circuits glowed a different color from Chiara’s and Valetti’s and even Budin’s did. While the magicians maintained the usual whitish blue of Connected energy, Kreios’s circuitry had taken on a decidedly golden hue. What in the world…

  “Welcome to the Arcana Council, my dear Sara Wilde.”

  The words popped into my mind with Kreios’s pure, seductive drawl, and my brows leapt behind my mask as he chuckled. But he didn’t dampen the golden hue of his energy signature.

  “Not didn’t. Couldn’t. There are some benefits to Council membership, no? But for now, I’ll bid you a fond addio.” The Devil turned, then turned again—and I lost him in the shifting throng.

  Interesting. It would be helpful to know there were Arcana members lurking about, no question.

  I swept the rest of the crowd for other Connecteds—there were surprisingly few, and those that were tended to stay in small clumps, barely moving at all, as if caught up in deep conversation. A trio of women right next to the parade route, their energy arcing even higher than the plumes of their feathered hats, a pair of beak-faced plague doctors hunched together near the edge of the square, looking like vultures awaiting the first death at the party—

  And then I saw them. The energy signature of children was unmistakable, darting through the crowd at waist level, reeling and bouncing along as the children themselves ran and darted in and out of clusters of people. With my regular eyes now focused as well, I could spy the dancing feet, the fluttering hands. These were definitely pickpockets at work. Then the kids moved farther, out of focus of my regular eyesight, though I could still follow their electrical trail with my third eye.

  “—Police report,” Valetti said, and the words drew my attention back enough to refocus on him. He was looking at me expectantly.

  “Sorry—the parade. It’s amazing,” I said, gesturing lamely at the brightly colored horse-drawn carriage that was lurching forward in front of us. “I got distracted.”

  Where I expected annoyance, I got only indulgent understanding. “Venice, it is a city like no other.” Valetti sighed happily. “I am so glad you are coming to understand. But the police report, I was saying, is due within the next day. I’ve used what small powers I have to expedite its completion.”

  I was beginning to suspect that where Valetti was concerned, there was no such thing as small powers, and I wondered how deep his influence went in the city. I decided to take a shot.

  “How are the police handling the return of, ah, your troubles?” I asked, catching myself almost too late. Certain words tended to draw the attention of others, no matter how general. “Butcher” was one of them.

  Valetti nodded at me appreciatively, then made one of his trademark dismissive hand gestures. “They do not respond because they do not know, you see? As far as we can tell, only the magicians received the book, and only the magicians are at risk.”

  “But—the children.” I glanced back to the far end of the crowd. More people had thronged into the square, but I could still track the boisterous, rampaging energy of the children. “Shouldn’t they be warned about possible attacks on children?”

  “In the midst of Carnevale? With absolutely no proof that such a warning is needed? I assure you, they would not thank me for that. They have far too much other work on their hands with so many visitors to our fair city.”

  “Yes, but…” I tried to reassure myself by watching the tumbleweed circuits of the children, clearly Connected, clearly safe, laughing and rushing and shouting through the crowd of those unsuspecting tourists—

  And then a rush of darkness overtook their energy.

  “Hey!” Without waiting to explain, I pushed between Valetti and Budin and took off at a run, barreling along the parade route for several feet before I was forced to leap back into the crowd. The children had moved away from the edge of the parade, and even now I could see that trail arrowed back toward one of the cobblestoned side streets of the square.

  But between me and that tumbling, sparking dance of light was another type of energy, malevolent and smoky, stronger than anything I’d seen from the dark practitioners before. And there was no question that these men, these Connecteds, were dark practitioners, or at least the minions of dark practitioners. I remembered the golems that Mak’rep had sent into my library, but these weren’t like that. These were humans.

  I pushed against the crowd like a salmon swimming upstream and then kicked it up a notch, making headway as I reached the edge of the square. The energy of the children had changed as well. It was moving at a fast, steady pace, no longer darting and dancing. The energy of beings trying to escape. They cut left into a particularly dank-looking street, and I had no choice but to run after them. I plunged left—

  Straight into a virtual brick wall.

  The impact of the magic leveled at me was so strong, I felt the separation of each of my bones, down to the tiniest bits in my fingers. I was flung back into something at least reasonably soft, but before I could react, I was bound tight with restraints that momentarily trumped my own magic. With both my third eye and my regular eyes blinded, I struggled to lift my hands, the heat of my spectral fire billowing around me as I jerked and twisted, trying to break free.

  “Enough,” hissed a voice right up to my ear as my mask was ripped away and replaced with a black sack.

  “Let me go!”

  “You want to know the truth about Abigail Strand, about the legacy you’ve inherited?” The voice was heavy and dark, speaking in rapid Italian. “Then you will let us take you and tell you. It isn’t far. But you must come now.”

  At the sound of Abigail’s name, some of the stuffing went out of me.

  “What do you know about Abigail?” I asked mutinously. I couldn’t see, and my hands were still lashed to my side, but
my legs were still free. The man with his arm around me hustled me along, and I let myself be hustled. Once I got free, I would blow up an entire city block of these asshats, but for the moment, my curiosity was stronger than my pride. “And what did you do with the children?”

  “Give me five minutes to get you where we need to be, and you’ll know everything.” The man’s voice had dropped. It was soothing now, placating, and I instantly distrusted it. Still, I could blindly trot with the best of them, and in far less time than the five minutes he promised, we slowed again. The hood came off my head, and I was turned around, blinking with my ordinary sight as I took in the view.

  A half-dozen children stood before me, their eyes wide with excitement, the expressions on their faces one of pride and satisfaction. Children who’d just done a very good job, I decided. The same children I’d seen in Piazza San Marco.

  I grimaced. If this was any indication, my reputation for saving all the children, everywhere, was going to be a problem. I needed to toughen up in a hurry. And with another glance, it was easy to see why this particular group had known what button to push with me. I could tell immediately who and what they were. Dark practitioners—more than half of them scored with the silver mark of Justice at their temples. I’d circulated among them for several years, and though I didn’t recognize the particular crew in front of me, I didn’t have to know them by name.

  “Do you know who I am now?” I asked, and I didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice. Low and malevolent, it shimmered in the air around me. Another second later, the bindings on my arms fell away, burning to a crisp in my sudden spurt of righteous fury. Another helpful discovery: I had righteous fury.

  To their credit, the men in front of me didn’t move. They were Venetian from what I could tell, gaunt and dark haired, their skin tanned deep bronze by the sun reflecting off the lagoon. Their eyes were dark as well, sunk into their weathered faces, and they watched me now with the indifference of men who knew their time would eventually run out.

  “We know that you may well come for us, yes,” one of them said, clearly their leader, though he looked no different from the others. “But not today. Today we come for you.”

  My energy jacked up another notch, irritation riding high. “You want to explain what you mean by that?”

  “I mean we are not stupid, Justice Wilde. We aren’t now, and we weren’t back in the time when it was Abigail Strand who was plucked out of obscurity and raised to the highest level our kind had ever reached.”

  “Your kind. Abigail’s uncle was a dark practitioner. She wasn’t.”

  “Are you sure about that?” My third eye focused on the man in front of me, and sure enough, his Connected abilities were off the chart. Higher than Valetti’s, even higher than Budin’s. In another place, it might well have been him that the Devil would be chatting up for potential work with the Council, not Chiara.

  Who was to say those conversations weren’t already taking place?

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Lorenzo Garcia, and I am at your service. You have come to Venice for the senate of magicians, and in truth, they are a worthy group. But we have our own assembly, yes? And we are here to tell you, you cannot lay the evil that is taking place in this city at our feet. The original butcher—yes. He was a dupe that we used horribly to advance our own causes. We make no apology for that. But the acts of this Nul Magis? No. That is not us.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because you have very little time to find out who is behind this. The magician who has stolen our history is very strong, and he is very much aware of the impacts of the recent shift in magic. He will not wait to use his potion more widely, to secure his position in the senate and among the magicians of the world. He will negate the magic in any he considers his rival.”

  “And you won’t?”

  Lorenzo spread his hands. “I am telling you, we have our own agenda, much as we have since time immemorial. The recipes we created were not intended to kill the magic within the practitioners, only to augment it. That a few of them went terribly wrong—only a few—is the reason no one knew of them. The Connecteds they affected were lost to history, the magicians who were affected, well, they exacted their revenge. But the truth is, all the recipes prepared by Biasio Cargnio should have worked to enhance magic, not destroy it. They didn’t. We improved the formulations, found the problem, created new formulations. By then, of course, it was too late for the poor butcher. And his recipe book that contained the spell for Nul Magis was lost to us.”

  “Who was the witch doctor?” I asked. “If Biasio was an unwitting dupe, who was the man who lured him down the primrose path?”

  “The sins of the father…” The dark practitioner in front of me sighed, gesturing to himself. “He was my distant ancestor. I have his strength and his depravity in my blood.”

  I curled my lip, disgusted. “He was the Red King?”

  “The Red King! No, no, not at all. That was a name reserved for far grander magicians than we.”

  “Really. Like who?” Once again I thought of the books in the library of Justice. There had to be something in them.

  Lorenzo tilted his head. “That will take some research. It would be a favor I’d be happy to grant—”

  “I don’t need your favors, since most of you are marked, whether you know it or not. Just as your forefathers probably were in Abigail’s time when she apparently cut you a break. I’m a hell of a lot less inclined than she is, though. But say I help you get this Nul Magis off the market. What does that get me from you?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “You know what I want. You guys want to prey on magicians your own size, you knock yourself out. But you’re preying on the weak and defenseless, and that’s gotta stop.”

  Lorenzo glanced toward the knot of children who were staring at me, transfixed. “The life of a child burns the brightest.”

  “You have no idea how sick you sound right now.”

  He tilted his head, clearly understanding my demands. “I cannot speak for everyone.”

  “Oh, I think you can.”

  “But no, it is too much. Too much work to ensure compliance. There must be more in return for such a concession. And of course, it is nullified in the event of your death.”

  “Lucky for everyone concerned, I don’t plan on dying for a long time. But I don’t mind hearing you out. What else do you want?”

  To my surprise, he leapt on the question, leaning forward. “What every dark practitioner has wanted since they first struck out to carve out a place of magic for themselves,” he said. “We change one of our most fundamental processes, we work with magic that is fully formed, we build our strength, then we want a voice. A place. A right to coexist even if our methods are not your methods, our code and creed are not your code and creed.”

  “You are murderers,” I reminded him.

  “And so is your Judgment. And your Emperor. You cannot deny it.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. Lorenzo smiled. “That’s right, Justice. You have our terms. We do what you ask and protect the children of our community…we want a guaranteed seat on the Arcana Council.”

  He couldn’t be serious…and yet, I could tell that he was. Worse, I could feel my own deep-seated desire to believe in Lorenzo, to trust and support, to imagine that a lifetime—several lifetimes—of depravity could be washed away with one simple promise. I was a fool to accept him at his word, I knew it in my bones. And yet…

  Inspiration struck. There was a reason why I’d ascended to Justice; my judgment wasn’t always ironclad. Fortunately, I knew someone’s who was.

  “Very well…” I said, and it was my turn to smile. “But even to begin that process, you’re going to need to be judged worthy. And from where I’m standing, you’ve got an awful lot to prove.”

  Lorenzo stiffened. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to
. I know someone who will be happy to explain.”

  I pulled my bands free and set upon the score of dark practitioners, as the alleyway exploded into smoke and fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  By the time I dragged myself back to Piazza San Marco, the parade had long since left, but the revelers were still going strong. Nikki didn’t ask about the smoke damage to my costume, and I didn’t share Gamon’s enthusiastic greeting to the tea party of dark practitioners I’d dumped into her parlor. If Lorenzo and his crew were serious about their promise, I’d see them again.

  If not…they were dark practitioners. The screens that had flared to life to catalog their misdeeds had made that obvious enough.

  Nikki and I spent the rest of the day going over the recipe booklet we still had, avoiding Valetti and hassling Mrs. French to find the books I’d located in the library. So far, she’d not found any mention of the Red King, which irritated me no end. There had to be something there.

  The invitation to the Spectacle came to Valetti’s palazzo the following morning while we were dining al fresco on the terrace. I could get used to dining al fresco, especially high enough up that you missed out on whatever aromas were hunkering in down at sea level.

  A staffer knocked respectfully at the door, and Valetti looked up, all arched-brow surprise. I didn’t so much mind his exaggerated responses anymore. After multiple days and multiple masks and costumes, it was a pleasure simply to see someone’s face and be able to read their reactions in a glance.

  “Excellent.” Valetti beamed as he took the invitations from the silver salver. For a moment, I felt like we were in the middle of a Regency romance, minus the hunky guy at the head of the table. And come to think of it, I’d gone way too long without a hunky guy to look at. I knew Armaeus had decided to let me fly my first job solo, but surely Kreios had receiving hours today. I needed to see where he was staying. “There are three invitations, so I’m very happy to extend the warmest wishes of the magicians’ senate to both of you to attend lo Spettacolo tonight. You will be absolutely enchanted, believe me.”