by Bec McMaster
"Would I dare?"
They stared at each other. A muscle ticked in Lady Eberhardt's cheek.
"Lie down," Lady Eberhardt instructed. "And let's take a look at you. Memory hexes are very rare. Toying with someone's mind is quite forbidden as it tends to leave a mark on the person afflicted... which is good news for us. I'm going to see if I can find it and undo the spell craft."
Verity complied, a knot twisting in her abdomen. "Will it work?"
"If it doesn't, you'll never know."
"That is hardly reassuring," Verity protested.
Lady Eberhardt snorted. "I'm the best telepath the Order has at hand, apart from the Prime. If I cannot unknot this hex, then nobody can."
Verity let go of an unsteady breath. She hated the thought someone had been in her mind, twisting her thoughts, her memories. It left her feeling remarkably vulnerable.
Lady Eberhardt sank onto the daybed beside her waist, pressing a hand on her forehead. "Relax, Verity. I'm not going to let anything happen to you. Bishop would never forgive me."
"He might thank you."
"Then you don't know him very well," Lady Eberhardt murmured, and lit a stick of sage, which she placed in a bowl on the small table beside the daybed. "Breathe it in, Verity. Let yourself relax and listen to my voice. I'm going to guide you through this. Close your eyes."
Verity breathed in the sweet smoke. Lady Eberhardt's hand returned to her forehead, her palm blazingly warm as the old lady began to chant.
"Azureh heh dimadi," Lady Eberhardt muttered, and a golden web gleamed against the back of Verity's eyelids, like a fine tracery of spell craft. "Hesta vi astura, drenath vi cura."
A sweeping lassitude swept through Verity. She felt like she wanted to open her eyes, but the scent of the burning sage seemed to tug her down, down, into a cloudy nothingness until she hovered there, unweighted by her body, amazingly light of spirit. It felt like that moment just before she punched into nothingness during her translocations, except it was drawn out.
"Verity, can you hear me?" came a voice from far, far away.
"Yes," she thought she said.
"I want you to think back to the moment when you accepted the commission to steal the Chalice. Can you remember it?"
She slowly came back to herself, standing in the cloudy nothingness. Or floating, to be more specific. Verity looked down. Cobbles began to appear beneath her bare feet. The cloud swirled, becoming a mottled green, like fog.
"Can you take me to that meeting?" Lady Eberhardt's voice seemed to print itself directly in the air, the letters forming in bright gold, and then fading.
Verity looked around. The meeting. The Chalice. There was a pressure in her head, as though some weight settled on her sinuses. Gingerly, she touched her temples.
"There it is," Lady Eberhardt whispered, and a hand brushed over her forehead, scattering cobwebs.
Instantly, the world around her seemed to brighten and become startlingly vibrant. A man appeared out of nowhere, pushing a barrow piled high with an odd assortment of skulls, hourglasses, and books.
"Watch it, lady," he snapped at her, then paused when her gaze locked on him. "Want a timepiece?" He jerked his waistcoat open, revealing a half dozen pocket watches hanging there.
Verity shook her head, then staggered out of the way as he pushed past, her back meeting the wall. A crossroads formed around her, people everywhere. Noise sprang up, but she couldn't make out the words. Murphy swirled out of the fog at her side, checking his pocket watch. He looked up, saw a hooded figure striding toward them. "'Bout bloody time," he said, tucking his pocket watch away.
Verity felt like something tugged her forward, and when she looked down, there were two of her. The second she stopped fighting, she slammed into her body, and then she was walking after Murphy as he strode forward to clasp the stranger's hand.
"Tell me where you are," came that imperious voice.
Verity looked around. The walls were hazy. "I'm in a narrow passage. An... alley, perhaps." Ahead of her, Murphy stalked through the gloom, ignoring the hooded figure at his side. "Murphy's here. And someone else."
"Follow them."
Verity scurried after them. The brick walls seemed to shudder, as though they were inches from her in one second, then nearly a foot away the next. It made her feel slightly ill.
"Where are they going?"
The alley opened into a crossroads. A figure hunched over a barrow lurched toward her, thrusting a handful of threaded beads and dead mice hanging by their tails at her. No, not beads. Warded tokens. Verity hurried past into another labyrinthine twist. "I'm not certain. It's all crooked. Like a maze. There are people here selling magical items, I believe."
"Brick walls?"
"Yes." There were runes painted on them in places, and a painted eye glared at her as she slipped past it. She felt like it watched her. "What on earth is this place?"
"You're in Balthazar's Labyrinth, I believe. Keep going. Where are they taking you?"
The world bled around the edges. Verity's next step took her inside a building. When she looked around, the door was shut and locked behind her. Warded runes were painted over its timbers.
"Come, and sit," rasped a voice from behind her.
Verity spun around.
Murphy took a seat at the table, and Verity saw herself drag out a chair beside him. The movement jerked her incorporeal body forward into her memory body. Then she was sitting there too, looking out through her eyes.
"Well-met," said a cool voice. The man sitting opposite them wore a hooded cowl that covered every inch of his face. "Who's the girl?"
"Protection," Murphy replied, with a faint, mocking smile. "She's of no interest to you. Who's the slump in the corner?"
To her surprise, Verity realized there was another man standing there, one she hadn't noticed. His gingery hair was cropped short, with thin mutton chops at the sides, and one of his eyes didn't quite look straight.
"Protection," the cowled figure mocked, and for a second she thought she knew that voice.
"Who is it?" Lady Eberhardt asked.
"I-I don't know. But I swear I've met him before."
"Have you considered my little proposal?" the stranger asked, ignoring Verity and speaking directly to Murphy. Those crisp vowels.... Who was he?
Murphy leaned back in his chair and scowled, his waistcoat straining over his broad belly. He'd worn the green one with the gold embroidery, which meant he was trying to impress someone, and his curly hair was pomaded flat across his scalp. "I've considered it. Seems a heck of a lot of risk, for little reward."
The figure sat so still, she wondered if he was even breathing. "I'm not going to argue terms. The offer is the offer."
Murphy leaned his elbows on the table and clasped his hands, his eyes narrowing greedily. "Now the way I see it, you might not have a choice. I have something you want: the means to get inside a heavily warded house, break into a safe, and get out without being caught by a Sicarii assassin. There's not a lot of folk as can do that. In fact, there ain't nobody else, and I should know."
"How?" it asked flatly. "How do you get into the house?"
Murphy leaned back and tapped his nose. "That's for me to know and you to find out. After I get you this relic-thingy."
"Then what do you want in return?"
"Double or nothing."
"Double?" The creature slammed a hand onto the table, and she was relieved to see it was human, gloved in tight black leather. "That's impossible. I don't have that kind of money."
"Then find it." Murphy didn't care.
Silence fell. The creature silently seethed as it watched him, but she could almost sense it making its choice. "Done." It stretched its hand across the table. "You have three weeks to bring the Chalice to me. I don't care how you do it. But if you don't deliver it... you will repay in a pound of flesh."
Murphy shook hands, though she saw the threat bothered him. The stranger tugged a money pouch from within its robe
and tossed it on the table with a metallic clink. "Half now and half upon delivery."
It pushed away from the table and Verity tried to see within its hood. "Trask," it called. "Do your job."
The man in the corner muttered under his breath, and Verity blinked as time slipped away from her. A golden web struck her in the face and for a moment, she wasn't sure where she was or what she was doing.
"Can you see?" a woman's voice demanded. "Verity, try harder!"
"Who are you?" she asked.
The woman sucked in a sharp breath. "Hell and ashes." Something warm brushed against Verity's forehead. Then she could see again, and knew where she was. "Verity, hurry!"
She felt ill again. The cobwebs clung to her, but somehow Lady Eberhardt kept them away.
The cowled head turned her way. "What have we here?" it asked, but this time she was certain the words weren't memory. It seemed to step outside its body, the way she had. Then the image seemed to jerk toward her, and the hood fell back, and—
"Noah!" Verity sat upright with a scream, her heart racing as she tried to translocate.
"Stop!" Lady Eberhardt cried, and Verity slammed back into her body as a golden net of pure light hauled her back in, collapsing her back on the daybed.
She felt like she'd plummeted off a building and smashed into hard cobbles. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Surprisingly strong hands caught her by the shoulders and rolled her to her side, where Verity's lungs finally opened up with a sucking heave. Dizziness swam through her vision.
"Just breathe," Lady Eberhardt told her gruffly, rubbing her between the shoulder blades. "That was poorly done by me. I should have let you go. My apologies."
Verity shuddered. Her entire body ached. "W-what happened?"
"You tell me. Who's Noah?"
Noah. Verity squeezed her eyelids shut. "It was Noah Guthrie, a young curser who used to run with the One-Eyed Crows until Murphy threw him out of the gang. But at the same time, it wasn't Noah at all. It was...." She tried to drag herself upright, to recover her composure. It was long gone. All she could see was that horrible face leering at her, superimposed over Noah's, and when she tried to put it into words, she struggled to describe it. "What was it? A monster?"
"Monsters don't exist," Lady Eberhardt replied, turning to pour her a cup of tea from a setting that had appeared out of nowhere. "It could have been something straight out of the Shadow Dimensions. Sometimes they slip through and colonize a person."
"It saw me," she blurted, taking the cup gratefully and draining her tea in one large gulp.
Lady Eberhardt frowned. "What do you mean?"
"It looked right at me and asked me what I was doing there. It was as though it stepped outside of its body, the same way I did." Panic lit through her. "How could it do that? How could it know I was in some sort of trance, watching the scene? That would require slipping through time itself!"
"Not slipping through time," Lady Eberhardt corrected. "But there is one sort of creature who can see through it. Sometimes."
"What?" She felt like she knew the answer.
"A demon."
All of the blood drained from her face. Verity set down her teacup and hurried to the window, driving the sash up to let in some fresh air. She swallowed hard, just as she realized that the sun had reached its zenith and was beginning to head toward the horizon. "What time is it?"
"Late afternoon."
"We've been here for hours?"
"At least three." Lady Eberhardt sipped her tea, watching as Verity tried to compose herself. "And we were speaking of demons, not the time."
"I know." She closed her eyes. Demons were well outside her repertoire. She knew danger; she'd stared into its face far too many times. But a demon could steal your soul from your body and destroy the very essence of a person. That was an entirely different matter. "Just what have you gotten me involved in?"
"Me?" Lady Eberhardt pointed out, with one meticulous eyebrow. "Or your dear friend Murphy?"
Fair point. Verity looked away. "I cannot fight a demon."
"I can."
Verity stared at the old harridan. "You can?"
"The demon is in our world, not its own," Lady Eberhardt said with a shrug, as though she wasn't speaking of a hell dimension. "It needs permission to be in this Guthrie boy's body, and its powers are tied directly to his. Was he a talented sorcerer?"
"Noah?" Verity saw him again, laughing at her as he showed her some sleight-of-hand trick from years ago. "Noah was talented, but he struggled with opium. He began by smoking it in the opium dens, and then after a while he began to eat it. It destroyed him from within."
"Hmm." Lady Eberhardt's eyes grew distant. "That would explain how a demon managed to trick him into playing its host. It would look for weak-natured hosts, or those who had nothing to live for. It needs to make its offer sound appealing." She set down her tea with a sigh. "Well, at least I've solved the problem of the memory hex."
Verity touched her temples. "I cannot recall anything still."
"You most likely won't. It's meticulous work, and it might take more than one session to break through it."
"You recognize the work?"
"I should." Lady Eberhardt's lips thinned. "After all, I taught him."
"Who?"
"Phineas Trask. He was cast out of the Order over a decade ago. Makes his living in Balthazar's Labyrinth selling minor memory hexes, and odd bits and baubles he manages to find from somewhere. His sorcery was supposed to have been restricted the moment he went into exile."
"Supposed to?"
"I performed the warding myself." Lady Eberhardt pushed to her feet. "Looks like I'll have to flush the rat out of its den and see how it managed to slip my warding. This is troubling. It's not the first time someone has been restricted, and yet turns up with powers he shouldn't have. I need to meditate on this. Let's go get you freshened up while we wait for Adrian to return." The old harridan paused by the door and looked back almost reluctantly. "You did very well today, Verity."
Verity couldn't stop a smile. "Was that a compliment, Lady E?"
"Don't let it go to your head. And don't call me Lady E."
* * *
A quick visit to his father's led Bishop to telling the Prime about the Chalice, the flesh constructs, and the scent of demon in the One-Eyed Crows' house.
He was almost finished with his thoughts on Tremayne's involvement when he realized that his father was only half paying attention.
Drake gently picked up the fork and resettled it in Eleanor's fumbling hand. Bishop paced in front of the fireplace, watching them in frustration. He'd always cared for his father's lover; Eleanor might have been a sorceress, but her love for Drake had always come before any interest in advancing her own position in the Order. Or at least she had been a powerful sorceress, until she'd suffered some kind of
apoplectic fit, brought on by her imprisonment by Drake's ex-wife, Morgana.
"The Sicarii held a vote," Bishop finally said, trying to get some sort of reaction.
"Ah," Drake murmured, helping guide Eleanor's hand toward the mush of potato on her plate. For some reason, she had eaten everything on the right side of her plate, but not the left.
"Don't you want to know how it went?"
"You're here, instead of them. I know how it went."
Cursing under his breath, Bishop paced to the fire. "It was a narrow win," he told the fire, for at least it was listening to him. "I think the only thing that swung the vote was the fact that Madrigal fears I will fight my brethren and cause a mess among the ranks. She doesn't want any more chaos to the Order, not at the moment."
Matters, however, might change. He didn't need to say it.
"You're usually more careful than that," Drake said, looking up. His brow knotted. "Don't put yourself between them and me, if it comes to it."
"That's my choice to make, is it not? You're not the only one who can make"—eyes flickering to Eleanor—"sacrifices. And you're missing the
point."
Drake stood, spoon in hand. "That's not what I wanted. You're my son. I don't want to see you hurt."
"And what did you think would happen when you resigned?" Bishop snapped. "It's never been done before. One Prime duels another. The winner remains alive. That's the way it works. The Winter Solstice is coming, and with it comes Ascendancy. There's talk that they're going to have to elect a Prime this weekend, or perhaps candidates will fight for the right to sit in your chair—"
"It's not my chair. Not anymore."
"If you rescinded your resignation, this entire mess would go away." The idea made sense. He stepped closer. "The Order and the councilors would allow it, I'm certain—"
"My role is here with Eleanor. My role is with my family. Do you know what I have given up in my lifetime, to protect the Order?"
Bishop looked away. One son had died in that house, and Drake was still in mourning. His... brother. Half brother.
"Everything," Drake answered, as if he had asked.
"Maybe it's for the best?" he suggested, and from the wounded flash of his father's eyes, he realized that they weren't talking about everything anymore, but about Sebastian. The son who was lost. "He was dangerous, out of control... It wasn't just the fact that he could only wield his sorcery through Expression, Drake, but who could stand up to him? You? Me? I felt his power, and it made me shiver."
"He never had a chance to cast aside Expression, and learn to harness his will," Drake replied. "Everyone deserves a chance."
"Not everyone has the strength to rip London apart at the seams either." How much power was too much?
"And if Madrigal had asked, would you have gone after him?"
If asked, Bishop knew the answer to that. Expression—the art of spontaneous acts of sorcery through emotion—was dangerous. Entire towns had been torn apart before. The Great London Fires had been caused by Expression. The Order had ruled that sorcery must be a rational act, stripped of emotion and guided by rituals, by careful meditation. Only then could the populace—and by extension sorcerers—be safe. Otherwise they would have been banned and hunted to extinction.
The Vigilance Against Sorcery Committee already wanted to do that. The Queen's use of sorcery in her empire expansion, however, meant that Sir Grant Martin's Law Against Devilment hadn't been pushed through parliament.
