The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

“So this Cranst is mage we fought.” Kadka easily matched Indree’s pace, leaving Tane several steps behind.

  “Looks like.” Indree didn’t break stride.

  “How do we find him now?” Kadka asked.

  “We have cause to justify a divination focus,” Indree said. “We should be able to pull something from his room.” She cursed under her breath. “I’ve already sent to my superiors. They’re arranging a warrant, but we can’t afford to spend long digging around for hairs right now. If he tries to contact his cousin he’ll realize something is wrong, and mask himself from seeking spells.”

  “Will these do?” Tane asked. He fished around in his pocket and then thrust his hand between the two women. A few tangled strands of brown hair sat in his open palm.

  Indree stopped mid-stride to look down at the hairs, and then back to Tane, frowning. “Where did you…”

  “His pillow, when we were in his room. I had a feeling.”

  “Tane, that’s against the law. We didn’t have cause or warrant.”

  He shrugged. “I’m no bluecap. You didn’t break any rules.”

  “You’re going to get yourself arrested one day. I hope you don’t expect me to get you out of it.” And then Indree’s mouth tugged up at the corner, just a bit, and she snatched the hairs from his hand. “Come on. We’re wasting time.”

  Chapter Eleven

  _____

  “ANY SIGN OF Cranst?” Dean Greymond’s voice, accompanied by a sudden pressure in his ears. She sounded nervous. As the University’s liason to the investigation, she’d insisted Tane keep her informed—she was more familiar with him than with Indree, which made the sending easier.

  “We’re just off the discs in Porthaven,” Tane sent back through the open link. “He’s still masked, but Indree thinks we’re getting closer.”

  Indree’s seeking spell had found a bearing on Cranst, but his Astral signature was blurred. A cursory masking—probably not a sign that he knew they were coming—but enough that even the divination focus couldn’t give her more than a broad sense of his location until they were closer. She’d led them to Porthaven, and from there toward the north side of the harbor. Wherever they were going, it wasn’t terribly far from the airship’s drydock. The narrow streets were falling into shadow as the sun set overhead. It reminded Tane a little bit too much of the night before. He half-expected a burst of spellfire from the rooftops at any moment.

  Indree led them briskly through the streets and alleys, Cranst’s hair clutched tight in one hand and her ancryst pistol in the other. He’d been taken aback when she’d drawn it from beneath her coat—it was still hard to look at her and see a bluecap.

  “How did you end up here, Ree?”

  “Indree,” she corrected reflexively.

  “Sorry. Indree. But really, why this? You were at the top of your class. You could be drafting spells for any of the manufacturing firms in Thaless for more money in a day than a constable makes in a month.”

  Indree glanced over her shoulder, and something flickered across her eyes. “Really? You’re asking now?”

  Tane shrugged. “It just… this isn’t something you ever talked about.” He didn’t really expect an answer, but it was a distraction from his growing unease.

  “You don’t know me very well anymore, Tane.” She was silent a moment, and then she surprised him. “I wasn’t angry when I learned the truth about you, you know. I already knew about your parents, and after I read your dissertation, I… well, I suppose I was angry. But not the way everyone else was. I just wanted to understand. I wanted you to explain.

  She didn’t look back again, just kept talking as she led the way. “I didn’t give up, after you disappeared. Everyone said you’d just run away. Even Allaea…” Her voice failed her, for just an instant. “Even she said you weren’t coming back. She always liked you, but she knew. Me, I didn’t think you could do something like that. I thought something had happened to you. Someone had heard about the way you fooled the University and decided to punish you for it. It kept me awake at night.

  “So I tried to find you. I cast seeking spells, but you were masked, which only scared me more. Someone was trying to keep you from me. I tried a focus, a hair you left in my bed, but even then you were too well hidden. The focus was just enough to get me a slight feeling every few days when the masking started to fade, before a new one went up. Not enough to find you. But I did my research. Looked into every seeking and masking spell I could find, tracked the times when the mask seemed to weaken. I kept trying. Every day, for weeks. And then one day there was a gap. I suppose they—you—thought no one would be looking by then. But I was.

  “It didn’t last very long, but it led me to Porthaven. I had an area. And every day I went back there, looking for some sign. Until one day I saw you, across the street, strolling through the fish market.” Her fist clenched tighter around the strands of Cranst’s hair. “You weren’t in trouble. No one had taken you away. You were just… there.

  “It was just like Allaea said. She… she was always better at seeing things like that. I should have given up on you as soon as you left. And after that, I did.” Still she didn’t look at him, but she squared her shoulders and raised her chin a little higher. “But I learned that I was good at that kind of divination. The kind the constabulary specializes in. And there are always people in this city in real trouble, people with families and friends who are just as scared and worried as I was. People who need help. So I decided to help.”

  Tane hung his head. “I’m so sorry, Indree. I didn’t mean to… I thought I was helping you. You would have been expelled too, if they’d thought you were part of it.” I should have known she wouldn’t quit. When has she ever?

  “I don’t care,” Indree said flatly. “I’m not looking for an apology, and I’m long past expecting to understand. I just wanted you to hear what it was like, not knowing. So if anyone else”—she glanced at Kadka, there—“is stupid enough to get close to you, maybe you don’t put them through that.”

  Kadka didn’t react at all to the rather pointed hint—she appeared to be listening to something else entirely. And Tane recognized the look on her face.

  “There’s someone following us again, isn’t there?” He touched his watch case nervously, and then reached into his trouser pockets to check the charms there, better organized than the last time—darkness on the right and charmglobe on the left, loaded and wound with a flash charm inside.

  “Many someones,” said Kadka. “I think we are surrounded.”

  Indree frowned. “No, I…” Her eyes glazed a moment, and then, “Spellfire, I was concentrating so much on Cranst, I didn’t think… She’s right. I can sense maybe a dozen, all around us. His cousin must have warned him. It’s a trap, and I led us right into it.”

  Kadka had a knife in her hand now, and she bared her teeth. “Not over yet.”

  “You’re right.” Indree raised her pistol and drew her baton from beneath her coat. Again, a cloud passed across her eyes. “I’ve notified Stooketon Yard. They’re tracking my location, and there were already men on the way to help take Cranst in. We only need to hold until they get here.”

  “Come then,” said Kadka. “Why wait to fight where they want?” She sprinted ahead. Tane exchanged a look with Indree; she raised her shoulders slightly, and followed Kadka.

  A man in a black coat darted from an alley ahead to cut Kadka off. She didn’t even slow, just lowered her shoulder and hit him full on. He went down. She didn’t.

  Tane heard the sound of the lingua coming from somewhere deeper in, and he recognized the words. Spellfire. “Kadka!” He lunged ahead, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back. A gout of silver flame poured from the shadowed mouth of the alley, barely missing her. Tane looked back, but there were already men emerging along the street behind.

  “Stop!” Indree pointed her pistol at a second black-clothed man emerging from the alley ahead—the one who had cast the spellfire, Tane guessed. “By the autho
rity of Stooketon Yard, I demand you let us pass!”

  More came after him, from the side-streets ahead and behind, all dressed in black. Men and women, most human, but there were others too: a pair of dwarves, an elf, a kobold, a goblin, a gnome. Very soon the street was blocked by a half-dozen in either direction. A few of them brandished weapons, and one woman wore an ancryst pistol at her hip, but it was the unarmed ones Tane found most worrisome. By the extremist literature he’d found in Cranst’s room, he had a feeling that most of them would be mages. Magic users tended to assume their spells were better than any weapon, and they rarely carried ancryst pistols or the like unless extensively trained—their own magic would throw their shots off course.

  The man Indree was aiming at laughed. “Let you pass? You’re in no position to make demands. Three of you, and two with no magic. You think an orc”—he spat the word with disgust—“can best a mage?” He looked to Tane, ignoring Indree’s pistol. “You shouldn’t have come after me, Carver. You’re out of your depth.”

  “Cranst.” It had to be. He was dressed in a black topcoat over dark clothes, but he hadn’t bothered with the mask. There was a certain resemblance to Dedric, though Randolf was younger, with a stronger jaw and a full head of brown hair.

  Pressure in his ears, and then Greymond’s voice: “Mister Carver, have you—”

  “Not now!”

  She must have recognized the urgency in his words, because the pressure abated immediately.

  “I told you to let the scrollcaster be,” Cranst said. “If you had, maybe less people would have gotten hurt. But I had to deal with it.”

  Bastian. Tane glanced at Kadka, and saw the same realization on her face. His fingers wrapped around the charm in his right pocket. It was the only one worth using at this close a range. Anything else would affect Indree and Kadka too.

  Kadka snarled at Cranst. “Enough talk. You want us dead, come try.”

  “Gladly,” Cranst answered with a sour smile. “One less orc in the world.” He started to utter words in the lingua.

  One advantage to pre-cast spells: they were much faster than speaking the words in the moment. “Get ready to move,” Tane whispered to Indree and Kadka. They were going to have to do the rest—he wasn’t going to be much use in a moment.

  He drew his hand from his pocket, crushed the charm’s seal, and threw the little roll of paper to the ground at his feet.

  The street went black.

  Chapter Twelve

  _____

  KADKA’S EYES ADJUSTED almost instantly to the sudden darkness, casting the world in washed-out shades of pale color. Amid cries of alarm and confusion, she threw herself to the side. Carver and Indree did the same.

  Silver spellfire roared across the space where they’d been standing.

  The strange thing was, the flames didn’t light the darkness at all. Kadka could see them clearly, but the light didn’t go anywhere. The magelights along the side of the street were the same: globes of isolated silver-blue that illuminated only themselves. And yet the darkness wasn’t absolute—something filtered in from outside, like a sliver of starlight peeking through on a clouded night. Whatever charm Carver had worked, it seemed to stop magical illumination in its tracks, while allowing just enough natural light for those blessed with keen night eyes. Even under these circumstances, it was a wonder to see, like so many things in this city that so few seemed to notice.

  Other voices were already starting to chant in the strange language of magic that Carver called lingua. A quick sweep told Kadka that most of them were utterly blind in the dark, save for two dwarves, a goblin, and an elf—those four moved like they could still see.

  Kadka leapt for one of the dwarves, a woman chanting nonsense magical words. The ones who could see were the danger now, and spellcasters above the rest. A fist to the throat cut the spell off mid-cast, just like Carver had said. Blind them, distract them, shut them up. That was the gist of the advice he’d given her for fighting mages, and he’d provided the darkness already—it was only fair she do her part.

  The goblin came at her next, and to her disappointment he didn’t try a spell, just swiped at her with a knife of his own. She grabbed his wrist, spun, and heaved, lifting him over her shoulder and slamming him down on the ground.

  Indree’s half-elven eyes must have been keen enough to pierce the dark too, because she aimed her pistol at the second dwarf. But she didn’t shoot. Instead, she spoke a sequence of magic words—quick and practiced, unlike some of their attackers—and from nowhere, bands of translucent silver-blue wrapped around the dwarf’s mouth and wrists and ankles. Indree flicked the barrel of her pistol downward and spoke another word, and he was forced to his knees. One of the humans stumbled blindly at her, and she backhanded him across the face with the baton in her other hand. He went down, at least for the moment.

  Kadka was impressed, and not just by the spell. The woman knew how to take care of herself.

  Carver, not so much. Unable to see in the dark, he’d pressed himself to the ground just ahead, trying to stay out of the way, but a kobold man was only a few steps from tripping over him. Kadka lifted the gasping dwarven woman by the collar and heaved her at the kobold. Both fell in a heap, and Carver scrambled away from the noise. Behind her, Kadka heard the elven man utter the first words of a spell; she whirled and threw her knife in the same motion. The blade bit deep into the elf’s shoulder, and a scream of pain signalled his broken concentration.

  Someone else was muttering the words of a spell, but before Kadka could find him by the sound, Carver’s voice interrupted. “Idiot! If you start throwing spellfire without a precise target, you’re going to burn each other alive!” The strange words ended abruptly.

  She was starting to understand what he’d said about most mages not being trained for battle.

  A flicker of movement ahead. Kadka looked up to see Cranst sprinting away down the street. Apparently his confidence had only lasted as long as his advantage. She drew another knife and hurled it, but at the same moment a tall human finished speaking a spell, and a barrier of silver-blue energy blossomed from his hands to span the street. Kadka’s blade rebounded from the shield, sending silver ripples over its surface. She had another knife in hand before it hit the ground, but the way forward was blocked. Cranst was out of reach.

  The goblin was up again, and he’d given up on a fair fight—he was sneaking up on Carver, who had crawled away to huddle against the wall. The goblin raised a blade. No time for Kadka to get there. “Carver, watch out!”

  Indree spun toward Carver and aimed her pistol at a spot on the left side of the silver shield, where no one was standing at all. There was a silvery flash from the barrel, and at almost the same moment the shield rippled bright where the ball neared it and banked away. An instant later the goblin man cried out and dropped.

  “Not bad!” Kadka said, grinning wide. She liked this woman.

  Another man staggered past, blind in the dark. He flinched at the sound of her voice, but he couldn’t avoid the hilt of her knife against his temple. He collapsed. Normally she might have killed him outright—he’d attacked them first, after all—but there were still questions to ask, and she suspected Indree would object to a slaughter. Better if they could be friends.

  Before she could find another target, a wave of silver force struck her in the side, throwing her against hard brick. She hit the wall laughing, even as her arm twisted and her vision blurred. It hurt, but it was magic. Nothing she’d ever done before warmed her blood like this. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of it.

  She landed on her feet, searching the direction the spell had come from. The dwarven woman had risen to her knees, and she was already casting another spell.

  Kadka charged, snarling for effect—people in the city didn’t seem to like when she showed her teeth. The dwarf’s eyes widened, and she fell back on her hands, scrambling to get out of the way.

  She didn’t get far.

  Kadka’s mo
mentum carried her foot hard into the other woman’s windpipe, and the dwarf went down, choking and grasping her throat. Won’t be speaking again soon.

  She glanced from side to side, looking for someone else to fight.

  And then, suddenly, she was standing in the dim light of the evening once more. Carver’s charm was spent.

  _____

  The darkness was gone, but Tane didn’t much like what there was to see.

  There were still seven of them standing, one holding a shield-spell to cover Cranst’s escape. Kadka closed with a gnome who was chanting a spell and backing away too swiftly for his illusory camouflage to keep pace. Indree had stowed her spent pistol; she was speaking in the lingua and fending off a big human man with her baton, all while maintaining her shackling spell on a dwarf nearby. That was impressive—most mages couldn’t hold more than one spell and still do much else. A wave of force erupted from her hand, hurling the man she’d been fighting against the magical shield blocking the street. The shield flickered under the force of her spell, but held; the man fell to the ground on his hands and knees.

  The ladies were holding their own, but they couldn’t last against so many. If just one mage gets a spell off… But it wasn’t a spell that spurred Tane into motion. As Indree turned to face the other attackers, a human woman put her back against the shield and took aim with an ancryst pistol. From there, the magical force of the barrier wouldn’t interfere with the shot—it would send it right into Indree’s back.

  “Ree!” Tane didn’t have time to think, just threw himself forward, yanking the daze-wand from his belt as he moved.

  He leapt at the woman with the pistol and jabbed toward her torso, hoping for the best. They collided hard; she caught the wand with one hand, holding the end inches from her chest. The pistol went off in a silver flash. The two of them pitched to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

  The woman held the wand tight and battered Tane’s head and shoulders with her expended pistol. He gritted his teeth and pushed, avoiding the blows as best he could. Then, all at once, he relaxed his arm. She wasn’t expecting it. Her grip weakened for an instant, and he shoved again with all his strength. The copper tip of the wand touched her chest, and she went limp. The already cloudy peridot set above the grip was entirely consumed by opaque white, and a crack ran down the center as the last of its structural integrity was utterly consumed by magic.