Titan Magic

by Jodi Lamm

  But Maddy knew Will well enough to see through the lie, and she wondered what else Marcus was lying about. “How long have we slept?” she asked. Only when Marcus ignored her did she remember their secret. He was not supposed to hear her. “Jas, will you ask him how long we slept?”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  Jas sighed and growled the question. “She wants to know how long she slept.”

  “About thirty hours, I’d say.” Marcus answered without looking back. “I tell you, we were all sick with worry. That man nearly killed you both.”

  “Oh, my father knew exactly what he was doing,” Jas said, walking with one hand against the wall to steady himself. “You can be sure of that. He doesn’t want us dead, but he does want something of us—something he can only get if I’m in my original body.”

  The duke waited for them in the parlor. He eyed his restored son, but did not move to embrace him. Not a muscle in his body twitched, except for the faint smile of satisfaction growing on his tired face. Jas refused to look away from the man.

  Marcus called for their mother. She was there before he finished his second attempt.

  “Baby!” Lotte pulled Maddy into her arms and hugged her so hard she lifted her off the ground. “I was so worried. And you,” she turned to Jas, her face aglow from excitement and too much wine, “come over here.”

  Jas gulped and obeyed like a child who knows he’s done something wrong, but can’t remember what. Lotte just shook her head and threw her arms around the Titan, nearly knocking him to the ground. “Welcome, again,” she said into his ear, “Titan James. Perhaps you will now be comfortable enough to eat at my table.”

  Jas wrapped one arm around his hostess in a tentative embrace. “I’m sorry for all this,” he said.

  “Don’t be, darling.” Lotte patted his cheek. “Because of you, I have a beautiful daughter.”

  Jas turned pink at that, and Maddy thought she had never seen anything more lovely. She tried to count the times she’d missed his blush while he lived inside the stag. Every new expression he made, every new gesture: she locked it all away in her memory. How could she ever have feared him?

  “My apologies, Lady,” Jas’ voice was hoarse, “but may I trouble you for a glass of water?”

  “Of course, you must be parched. I’ll take care of you both. James sweetheart, you can hardly stand. Sit down. Sit down.” Lotte took Jas by the elbow and led him to the sofa where he sat and thanked her. Maddy joined him, her eyes busy tracing the lines of his waistcoat.

  “James,” Eli said when Lotte had gone, “you don’t look happy.”

  Jas closed his eyes and breathed deeply before he spoke. “Never touch her again.”

  “What do you mean?” Eli feigned confusion.

  “What you did was a deception and an intrusion. Never touch her again.”

  “I couldn’t allow her to back down after we had come so far. You understand that, don’t you? You’re healed. Surely, you have some gratitude for the effort I took to restore you.”

  Jas ground his teeth. “You devil,” he said. “I never wanted this body back. You knew that. And you forced her… You must have tricked her. She would never have given her tongue to you.”

  Eli shrugged. “I needed it, so I took it. Look, I gave it back to her.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?” Eli said, and Maddy saw how he anticipated everything. “Never mind. I already know. You’re pretending to be angry for her sake, defending the honor of a lady and all that. Of course, the truth is you’re jealous—horribly, unspeakably jealous that she and I shared a moment you imagine must have been intimate. After all, her skin was soft, her lips were warm, her tongue…”

  “Stop!” Jas stood, but tottered on the spot as though he were drunk and fell back onto the sofa. His face burned red with anger and shame.

  “Here’s what you don’t understand.” Eli made himself comfortable in a large rocking chair, pulled a silver pipe from his pocket, and began to pack it while he spoke. “See that body sitting next to you? I made every curve of it with my own hands. My sculpting tools crafted the tongue in her mouth, and I smoothed its surface with my own fingers.” He lifted the index and middle fingers of his right hand before lighting his pipe. “I created every inch of her body. So I think I am in a unique position to tell you this.” He pointed his pipe at Maddy. “That thing is not human. It never was. The only reason it’s even female is because I decided to make it that way. Your problem is that you’ve never been able to convince yourself it was anything but human. You treat it like a woman, both of you.” He winked at Marcus in a way that made the boy growl. “Young Lavoie is even planning to marry her. I may be the only one here who knows this little work of art for what it is. I don’t lust after statues. Understand?”

  Marcus stood behind Maddy and placed a hand on her shoulder. Jas dug his fingernails into the sofa.

  Eli took another puff off his pipe and continued. “You only confuse her when you treat her like something other than what she is. You make her dissatisfied with her own identity, and she begins to crave things she’ll never be able to have.”

  “Like a soul?” said Marcus, gripping Maddy’s shoulder too tightly.

  Eli nodded. “Absolutely. And a longer life, love, autonomy: all those things impossible to her. She’ll go mad in pursuit of them. All you’re doing is hastening her destruction.”

  Jas sank deeper into the sofa, but Marcus, it seemed, had no intention of letting the duke have the final word. “You’re wrong, Your Grace, about everything, and you’re feeding lies to a Titan. You ought to be ashamed.”

  “Really?” Eli leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “You seem to be a self-proclaimed expert on the subject. Why don’t you share your sources with the rest of us, eh? We should all be working together for the sake of your sister… or is it fiancée now?” He chuckled.

  “I’m not working with either of you,” Marcus snapped. “I never will. You both make me sick.” He stepped around the sofa and pulled Maddy to her feet. “Let’s go, Maddy. Let the Titan nurse his headache. There’s no reason we have to listen to this nonsense.”

  But Eli was quick. He swept across the room and blocked the door before they reached it. “I don’t think you really want to leave us so soon.”

  Eye to eye, Eli’s icy grey met Marcus’ black fire without flinching. When Marcus finally spoke, his voice was so low Maddy had to hold her breath to hear him. “I should warn you, Your Grace. You’ve made a powerful enemy in me. And I promise the day will come when you’ll wish to god you hadn’t.”

  Eli’s smile faltered halfway through its birth, as though he had seen something more than sincerity behind Marcus’ eyes. Without another word, he backed away and let Marcus and Maddy cross the threshold.

  18: Powerful Friends

  Amid a furious and violent wind, Marcus turned to Maddy and shouted, “Carry me! We have to disappear!” He climbed onto her back with a quick apology. “Now run. Be afraid and run as fast as you can.”

  Maddy didn’t question him. Her feet slammed into the ground with such force, she felt it might collapse beneath her. She moved through the woods faster than any creature, and gasped at her own speed. Her legs dodged the trees and branches more easily than her fingers found the right keys on her mother’s piano. She was a bird, a sparrow, flitting left and right, but always moving forward.

  “Where are we going?” she called back to Marcus.

  “Anywhere,” he said, clinging to her with iron arms, “but away from the Titan. Didn’t you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “The way the duke controls him. You aren’t safe with either of them.”

  “His Grace has Jas’ body?”

  “No.” Marcus locked his fingers together. “He has his conscience. I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. The Titan’s will shrank and shrank with every word the duke said to him. The way that man uses shame is disgustin
g. I won’t let him live much longer.”

  “Don’t kill him.” Maddy slowed her pace a little. “I need him. He’s going to restore my memory—he swore it.”

  “Maddy, it isn’t safe.”

  “But it’s the only way to free you.”

  Marcus fell silent and buried his face in Maddy’s hair. She pressed on, cursing the thing that tormented her brother. Each time she saw his suffering, she became more resolved to release him from it. Taking orders was easy; giving everything was easier. Golems existed for other people.

  “Maddy,” Marcus began after a long silence, “I should tell you…” but he didn’t finish, and Maddy knew it would do no good to question him. She felt him tremble and knew he was afraid.

  A monstrous dread surfaced in Maddy, too, but she knew that belonged to Jas. She set her teeth and tried to eclipse his fear with her own resolve. “I know where we can go,” she said. She had already been heading that way. If it was the duke from whom they fled, she knew one place that was fortified against him.

  When they came to the edge of the forest, Marcus leapt from Maddy’s back.

  “We’re close,” Maddy said.

  “Where are we?”

  “Near the parish of Father Androcles Mahler, Eli’s elder brother.”

  Marcus brushed the pine needles from his hair. “We’ve gone to his brother? But why?”

  Maddy remembered how the priest had frightened her with his odd, little house, its walls lined with weapons for a revolution. She remembered the bow he had given her when they parted, the arrows that would not miss his brother’s heart. “Father Androcles hates his brother. And he knows what I am.”

  “Perfect.” Marcus grinned at Maddy, and she beamed. Her brother’s approval was a treasure she had long sought after.

  Father Androcles’ cottage home knelt in reverent supplication to the magnificent, old sanctuary beside it. Maddy knew that the Listening Sanctuary, its stained-glass windows towering far above the trees, was the priest’s true home. She wrapped a strand of her hair too tightly around her finger as they drew close to the cottage. Maybe she had made a mistake. Father Androcles was mad, after all, and he had expectations she did not want to fulfill. But he was the only man she knew who would protect them from the duke. And she didn’t want Marcus to take back his smile.

  Before Maddy could lift a fist to knock on the weathered door, it swung open, and she stared into the priest’s fish-scale eyes, so like his brother’s. No wonder she had not forgotten them. But, she reminded herself, this man was not the duke.

  Father Androcles threw open his arms when he saw her standing on his doorstep. “Puppet!” He drew her inside and Marcus followed, closing the door behind them. “I’m so happy to have you in my home again. But where is the young master?”

  Marcus answered for her. “The Titan stayed behind.”

  Father Androcles eyed the boy suspiciously. “Did he? And who, may I ask, are you?”

  “My name is Marcus Lavoie. I played the role of brother to this golem for three years.”

  “Oh?” The priest’s eyes widened. “The puppet knows herself now?”

  Maddy nodded.

  “Excellent.” He grinned. “It will make conversation so much easier.” He patted Maddy on the head. “We should have something to drink. Boy, would you do an old man a favor and fetch that jug? My back, you know…”

  Under the kitchen table sat a familiar clay jug. Maddy recognized the figures painted on its side as the same she had seen etched into the sanctuary wall. There was a kind of gloomy beauty in the idea that relics of the old religion had become an old man’s kitchenware. The longer Maddy contemplated it, the more comfortable she felt in the priest’s strange home. But when Marcus stooped to retrieve the jug, Father Androcles darted toward him like a man half his age. Maddy saw the glint of a blade and shouted, “Marcus!”

  Marcus swung around and stopped the priest’s hand. Those powerful fingers wrapped around the priest’s wrist, and Maddy flinched for the old man, knowing her brother’s grip more intimately than she would have liked. A moment later, the blade would have plunged into Marcus’ back.

  Marcus tightened his grip more and more until Father Androcles shrieked, fell to his knees, and dropped his knife. “You traitorous old man,” Marcus hissed. “Fight me face to face.”

  Father Androcles shuddered. “I wouldn’t dare. I could smell the power on you before you even entered my house.”

  Marcus squeezed the poor man’s wrist until he yelped again, and then kicked him away and picked up the dagger. “My sister told me we could trust you.”

  “What am I supposed to think of a boy who comes into my home smelling like he’s eaten a thousand magicians in the last hour?” Father Androcles said, nursing his wrist. “I am not a man without enemies.” His eyes darted between Maddy’s shaking hands and the boy who sneered down at him. “I can see what happened now. She warned you. She warned you, and you heard her.”

  Marcus blanched at those words. Maddy knew he made a dangerous mistake in reacting to the priest’s accusation, but it was too late now.

  “You must be extraordinarily powerful to hear a voiceless golem’s words,” Father Androcles said.

  “Extraordinarily,” Marcus echoed. “Yes.” A grave understanding passed between Marcus and the priest that Maddy could not begin to translate.

  “A Titan even.” Father Androcles pushed himself to his feet with great effort. “Because the only alternative would be absurd.”

  Marcus dropped to his knees.

  “Unimaginable,” Father Androcles continued. “An utter impossibility.”

  Marcus wrapped a hand around the priest’s ankle and added, “A deadly secret.”

  Father Androcles’ eyes glittered at that cryptic confession. “Even from her?” he gestured toward Maddy.

  “Yes, especially from her.”

  “Oh, you are powerful. You’re far more powerful than the little puppet, aren’t you?”

  Marcus nodded.

  “And why should I keep your secret for you?”

  A little life returned to Marcus’ face at that chance. “If you do,” he looked up at the priest in earnest, “I will destroy your brother for you. And if you know who I am, you know I’ll find the task far easier than my sister.”

  “Do you hate my brother?” Father Androcles asked.

  “Oh yes, Father.” Marcus bowed his head. “I despise him.” And Maddy knew he was telling the truth. She started to back away from them both.

  Father Androcles clapped his hands and pulled Marcus to his feet. “Then we’re friends!” He laughed and hugged Marcus too tightly for a man who had just tried to kill the boy. “We’re all friends. Oh, I have wonderfully powerful friends!”

  Marcus eyed Maddy over the priest’s shoulder. She shuddered as he met her gaze. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he said and shoved the priest away. “Maddy.”

  She took another step back.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  But Maddy had seen how the priest reacted to him. Father Androcles, who was brave enough to take on the Duke of Silence, trembled at the sight of Marcus Lavoie. “Who are you?” she said, and took another step back.

  “You know me, Maddy.”

  She shook her head and backed into the wall.

  Marcus held both his arms out, fingers spread wide in the posture of surrender. “Please, don’t be afraid of me,” he said again. “I love you. I want to marry you.”

  Father Androcles chuckled and Marcus shot an evil glance at him. Then the old man started croaking like a frog. He seized his own throat and tripped backward over his clay jug. He was suffocating.

  “I won’t let anyone belittle this, Father,” Marcus said, his voice eerily calm. He turned back to Maddy, ignoring the priest’s struggle to breathe. “Not anyone. I suffer because of my curse, but if my own sister has to risk her life to release me from it, I won’t let her. I can live with this. I want to live with it. That’s love, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
You wouldn’t laugh at love if you ever felt it yourself.”

  Father Androcles suddenly drew in mouthfuls of precious air. He could breathe again. Maddy’s hands and feet went numb as she realized that it was Marcus who had tormented the priest, that he had taken the breath from the old man and returned it again without even looking at him.

  “Now we’re even, Father,” Marcus said, inching toward Maddy, who tried not to look him in the eye. “Don’t be afraid, Maddy.” He brushed the hand she used to block him with the tips of his fingers. “I swear I won’t hurt you. I’m incapable of…” He stopped there, swallowing his words as though he knew he would say too much if he continued.

  Father Androcles had stooped to right his jug, and now, in utter shock at whatever Marcus had prevented himself from saying, dropped it to the stone floor. It shattered and spilled its contents across the room.

  Maddy looked from Marcus to the astounded priest and back again. “Who are you?” she said.

  Marcus closed his eyes. “Don’t ask me that.”

  “Tell me who you are.”

  He buckled. “I am Marcus Lavoie.”

  “Tell me who you really are.”

  Marcus sucked in a long breath and held it. His eyes glistened. He pinched his lips together with his teeth as though he struggled to keep something fierce in his mouth.

  “Tell me!” Maddy shoved him away and he stumbled backward. “Who are you?”

  Marcus released his captive answer in one howling scream. “I don’t know!” Then he knelt in the spreading puddle of rum and pleaded. “Don’t make me say more. Please. It’s too dangerous. I’ll tell you everything I know when we’re safe. I swear it.”

  Father Androcles stared at Marcus the way he might have stared at his own god had She suddenly bowed down and worshiped an ass. “Sweet Sophia,” he muttered.

  Maddy clenched her teeth. “Are you a sorcerer?”

  “Please, Maddy, I’m begging you.”

  “Little puppet,” Father Androcles interrupted them in a quivering voice, “maybe you don’t know what you have there in front of you. But I can tell you as a friend, as someone who hopes you will aid him one day, you’ll never get another chance like this, and you could destroy everything by questioning that boy further. Do not ask him. Use him.”