by Anton Strout
The man seemed unaffected by my father’s angered tone, holding up his hand to him as he stepped close to me.
“Hold on, now,” he said, glancing back to my father and Devon. “You told me the secrets are locked away within him, yes? That’s why you hired me, to get those out, right?”
My father nodded.
The man turned back to me. “The secrets of the Spellmasons are locked inside you, yes?”
“That is what I told my father,” I said, speaking the truth while still fighting to hold back the details.
“I am giving you permission to unlock those secrets,” the human said.
“I cannot.”
“Why not?” the man asked, skeptical curiosity filling his eyes.
The small voice in the back of my head pressed forward, shouting for me not to tell him the truth, but just as quick as it had shouted, it was silenced by the new, dominant presence in my head.
“I am not in possession of the secrets,” I said, a pained spike rising in my head. It throbbed, but my small true voice remained silent now.
“What?” my father shouted, pushing the man out of the way, his brute strength slamming the human into the wall, crumpling him to the floor.
“Easy,” the man whispered in a pained breath.
“What do you mean, you are not in possession of those secrets?” my father shouted, gripping my face in his hand.
“I never was,” I said. “I lied, ‘bluffed,’ the humans call it . . . to protect them.”
My father raged, lifting me into the air by my throat and throwing me. I tumbled end over end, chain and wings intertwining as I flew until I landed on the floor in a tangle.
“The time I have wasted,” he said. “All on a false promise by my own kin.” He turned to Devon. “Tell my men to head back to shore. We march on your family’s building.”
“What are you going to do?” the man asked, easing himself back onto his feet. There was fear in his voice, no doubt in fear for his life. “This alchemy is a work in progress. I just need some time to refine this . . .”
My father grabbed him by his arms, lifting him. The man screamed in pain, which stopped my father, but there was a current of rage underneath the restraint he was showing. “The only reason I am letting you live is because although you have proven a failure in extracting the information, you have at least exposed the truth of the matter.”
“Yes!” the man said, earnest in agreement with my father. “Exactly! See? Some good has come from this. Let me continue my work . . .”
My father set the man on his feet. “I think not,” he said.
The man paled. “So what are you going to do?”
“We tried your way,” my father said, turning and walking toward me. “Now we will try mine.” He looked to Devon, gesturing at the human. “Restrain him.”
Devon went to the man, grabbing him at the shoulders in his giant fists. The man hissed in pain.
“Hey, now, easy,” he said. “We can work something out. I’ll cut my price—”
My father picked me back up by my throat again and lifted me until I was fully in the air again.
“What do you mean when you say you will try things ‘your way’ now?” I asked.
Kejetan’s dark sockets stared into my eyes.“I spared those people of yours,” he said, “because I thought that I was not only getting my son back but that I would get the arcane knowledge I had gathered back. I put my faith in family and a trust in your word, but you have broken with that. You disappoint, Stanis. You have made a mockery of me, and for that, I will make sure your humans suffer when I march against them and reclaim the secrets that are rightfully mine.”
“You speak of family and trust as if those words mean something to you,” I said.
“I have only ever thought of our legacy,” he said. “Our desire to live forever!”
“Your desire,” I corrected. “Not mine. And certainly not at the expense of the people you have and would kill in your mad pursuit of that power. Including me.”
Kejetan shook his head, but there was no sadness in it for what he had done to me, only bitter resolve.
“Your death pained me, for centuries,” he said. “Do you think I meant to strike down my only son? I had just cast off my human form, this stone one new to me. I had not mastered its strength yet.”
“Your desire for longevity has blinded you,” I said, “and that is what pains me most.”
Kejetan shook his head, his words filled with bitterness when he spoke. “What pains me more is the man, the creature that you have become. Full of weakness, invested in these equally weak creatures.”
“I see no weakness in them,” I said. “Only strength.”
“I will show you their weakness,” he said, still holding me there. “Starting with the one you seem to favor most.”
I struggled, a small amount of my strength returning to me at the very thought of harm coming to Alexandra, her family, or her friends. I raised my claws against my father, but he held me farther away from him so that all I could do was claw at his arms.
“Control him,” he shouted out to the human.
“Can’t right now,” the man replied. “Kind of restrained over here by your second-in-command.”
“Release him,” my father said.
Devon did so, and the human stepped quickly away from him, rolling his shoulders as he went.
“Much better,” he said, moving closer to me. “Now, then . . . relax.”
My body went slack at the command, but part of my mind was still my own.
“You will leave Alexandra alone,” I said.
“I think not,” my father said, pulling me closer as he peered into my soul with those dark, dead sockets of his. “First, I will take from her that which her family has stolen from us. Then my people can be awakened from these hideous forms we now possess. Then . . . I will break her, as I did you. So fragile a thing like her must be. So many bones to crush . . .”
Although the dominant voice in my mind left me unable to react, the thought of Alexandra’s going through the painful death I had gone through at my father’s hand was too much to bear. The voice at the back of my head—my true voice—could not live with it and shot forward.
“You will leave Alexandra alone,” I repeated, my own will rising and forcing itself into action.
“So much flesh to rip from her bones,” my father continued, but I barely heard his words.
My entire focus became making sure that never happened. I raised my arms high overhead and brought them down against my father’s. Bits of stone crumbled off the jagged rocks of his skin, and he screamed in shock, letting go.
I dropped to my feet, my knees buckling, but I remained standing. I rammed both my hands straight forward at my father, slamming into his chest and sending him flying back. Still tangled in chains, I pulled my wings close in around me, shaking loose what I could before sorting through the rest.
Devon was closing with me, but, with a flick of my wings, the attached chains spun out from me toward his legs, and he toppled forward in a tangle of his own.
I dug my clawed feet into the metal floor and stayed standing, Devon’s struggles pulling the chains taut. Bringing my wings in around me with as much strength as I could muster, I placed my mouth over the chains still hanging from me and let my heavy stone fangs clamp down hard over them until they snapped off, leaving only a small amount still attached to the spikes.
I needed to leave this place. Now. The cargo-bay doors high overhead were the only barrier between me and what I hoped was the night sky, and I spread my wings, daring to fly for the first time in months.
The act itself was an excruciating burn through both wings, but it was also filled with the pleasure of liberation. My feet left the ground, and I soared in small circles as I forced myself slowly upward like a bird lear
ning to fly.
“Stop him,” my father shouted, the words ringing over and over in my ear.
Down below, the stranger was quickly sorting through the inside folds of his jacket, pulling a vial of this and a vial of that free before placing them to his lips and drinking. I turned my attention back to my flight, circling ever higher to the doors above. With each bit of lift, my wings stayed spread longer, soaring higher, and, in seconds, my clawed hands dug into the seam of the cargo-bay doors.
There was nothing left except forcing them apart, which I set to. The metal did not want to give way, but slowly I forced the tips of my claws in between them and felt them begin to yield.
Chain wrapped around one of my feet, the surprise of it causing my grip to slip out of the small gap I had opened in the doors. Needing my wings once more to stay airborne, I dropped lower for a moment as I righted myself, but all that did was allow the chain around my foot to slacken, and, with a flick of the human’s wrists, it looped around me again. It caught my other foot this time, binding them together as he pulled, but other than inconveniencing me, it was not really a problem. With my superior strength, I could easily lift the man into the air, chain and all. Once I got the doors back open, I’d be skyward-bound and able to fly. Then it would simply be a matter of time and puny human strength until his arms gave out and he fell into the water surrounding the freighter.
Except I never got a chance for that to happen. The man pulled at the chain, but instead of the weak human effort I expected, there was a powerful tug that sent me crashing into the floor. I landed on my side, dazed from the display of strength. The man stood over me, rolled me onto my back with a superhuman strength, and lowered himself until he was sitting on my chest. I raised my free arm to stop him, catching him on the side of his head, which should have ended him, but it did not. My hand connected with the flesh, but the flesh felt as solid as stone.
“Fall in line,” he said, grabbing my arm, forcing it down under his leg, then raised his fists, bringing them down again and again on my head. Again, this would have been laughable under other circumstances, but the blows of his flesh hands felt just as heavy as those of my father or Devon. I fought to buck him off me, but it was no use.
“Fall in line!” he shouted with each shot he took at me.
With each passing blow, more and more of the fight went out of me until there was nothing left to do but take the abuse. My true voice subsided until I had no desire left in me.
I fell in line.
The quality of the blows changed, the stone of them quickly losing their weight, until the softness of flesh returned to them. The man stopped and stood up, wiping them against his pant legs. I remained lying where I was.
“Good gargoyle,” he said.
“Grotesque,” I replied with what hint of mental fight there was left in me. “My maker called me his grotesque.”
“I’m sure he did,” the man said, stepping back. Devon and my father joined him, the three of them staring down at me. “You see? I still have my uses. You shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss me. And you really need to control your temper.”
My father looked to him. “Like now,” he said with a restrained tone.
“Exactly,” the man said, turning away from him to concentrate on the supplies still on his table. “And as a reminder, I may be expensive, but you do get what you pay for.”
“I paid to have our arcane secrets extracted from him,” my father said.
“We can worry about the details of the old contract later,” the man said. “You’ve gotten some very useful information out of this golem, I think. And thanks to my bringing him under control, you’ve got a great tool at your disposal to help you get the information back that you wanted, right?”
“So what now?” Devon asked.
Kejetan moved to stand over my prone, exhausted form. “Now?” he asked. “Now we take what is ours from the Belarus Building. That is not a problem, is it, Stanis?”
I thought about it. Other than the barely intelligible whisper of my true voice at the back of my mind, my dominant mind saw no reason to resist.
“As you wish,” I said.
Seven
Alexandra
Despite all the time I spent trying to decipher the finer points of Spellmasonry, peace and quiet had reigned on the home front until last night. So it was with an angry and fearful heart the next morning that I set upon the dark and personal task of attempting my own arcane warding of the entrance to the guild hall.
If Alexander Belarus had protected the Belarus Building for several hundred years with the power of his wards, surely I could do a single room.
Or so I thought.
The alchemy of how to construct the safety measure was where I had the problem. If I already had prowess in any of this, I’m sure it would be as easy as following a recipe. Most recipes, however, didn’t require you to imbue carved-stone markers with the power to grant or deny entrance to a space.
How the hell was I supposed to do that? I couldn’t rightly “teach” stone how to read minds to determine intent or make judgment calls about anyone who tried to enter. And after several hours of tinkering, I settled instead on something that seemed an easier solution—enchanting the stone to activate and open by the invocation of simply speaking a password to allow safe entrance.
My stomach growled as I sat there satisfied with my work, and I set off upstairs in search of food, grabbing a quick sandwich before heading back down to the basement.
I nearly dropped my plate and soda when I saw a figure standing at the slid-back bookcase that hid the stone door, but, thankfully, it was only Rory, who was putting her key to the building back into her enormous dance bag.
She turned at the sound of my plate knocking against my water bottle, catching the surprise on my face.
“Sorry,” Rory said. “I let myself in.” She pushed against the stone door. “It’s locked.”
“After last night, I decided I needed to try my hand at upping security.”
Rory looked around, her eyes looking low to the floor. She pulled a long, tall water bottle from her dance bag and brandished it like a club. “Am I about to be ambushed by an army of Bricksleys?”
“No,” I said. “He’s actually inside there. I left him putting away a bunch of the alchemy supplies I was mixing. Our supply of Kimiya is running lower than ever down here, thanks to our thief. There’s more up at the Belarus Building, so I’ll probably head up later to grab it, but even that’s dwindling. If we don’t figure out how to make it soon, I may have to back off our experiments.”
Rory relaxed and turned back to the door. “Can you magic it open for us?”
I held up my sandwich and water bottle. “Sorry. Hands full here. You try.”
She looked at me like I had two heads. “Be serious.”
“I am being serious,” I said. “You don’t have to be all fancy magic pants to do it. It’s like my laptop: password-protected. At least, I think it is. You’re my first guinea pig.”
Rory seemed wary, then glanced back at the door, striking a pose like a wizard readying for battle. “So what’s the password?”
“I’ll give you three guesses.”
Rory thought for a moment, then, in her best Hermione Granger voice, said, “Wingardium Leviosa!”
Nothing happened. Rory looked to me, but I only shrugged at her.
She paced back and forth for a moment, then said, “A hint, please.”
“Well,” I said, thinking, “it has to be something all three of us could use, so consider Marshall in this, too.”
Her eyes went wide, and she spun toward the door, shouting, “Friendship is magic!”
Again, nothing happened. Rory sighed.
“It’s something Marshall always calls us,” I offered. “Think Lord of the Rings.”
The disappointment swept away from
Rory’s face as she did her best Gandalf—which wasn’t very good at all. “Mellon.”
The door clicked and opened into the room.
“Clever,” Rory said, going in. “Now we just have to make sure we’re not attacked by anyone speaking Elvish.”
I shook my head as I marched to the table at the center of the room where I had been working. Bricksley had made short work of the mess I had left there, and I put my food down on the recently cleared space, attacking my sandwich.
I was three bites in before something hit me, and I pulled out my phone, checking the time.
“You’re early,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting you for another couple of hours.”
“Well, my dance card literally opened up for the day,” Rory said. “One of the things that the Manhattan Conservatory of Dance frowns on is dizziness and vomiting in class.”
“Rory!” I said, my mouth full of food, almost choking as I said her name. I swallowed. “You okay?”
She nodded, taking a long sip from her bottle of water.
“I will be,” she said. “I guess I was a little more concussed than I thought. Our morning study was all textbook, history and such, which left me with a headache, but our late-morning session was practical. I got into maybe my tenth or eleventh fouette before I fell over and threw up.” She laid her dance bag by the table and sat down across from me, grabbing up one of the books she had been going through yesterday. “I’ll try not to blow buckets of bile on any of your books.”
“No,” I said, taking the book from her. “No researching for you. Absolutely not.”
Rory reached for the book but missed by a mile.
“I’m not going to vomit,” she said, looking a little paler than I liked to see her. “Probably not, anyway.”
I shook my head. “Rory, you must have hit your head last night harder than we thought,” I said. “You need to see the doctor.”
Rory leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest. “That’s where I spent the rest of my afternoon,” she said, but nothing more.
