by Juliet Kemp
Beckett stepped just inside the door and stopped, looking slowly around the room. “Cato is not here,” they said.
“You got it,” Reb said. “So there was a spirit here, and now Cato’s gone.”
“And wherever he was off to, apparently he didn’t have time to clear up properly,” Jonas said, wrinkling his nose. In his experience all Marekers were less tidy than he was brought up to – not much room on board ship. But this was something else again, and it had the look of a habitual state, not the disarray caused by someone searching.
“He’s left some of his kit,” Reb said. “But… not all of it. Not the essentials. Those are all gone.” She was looking closely at the table. “What he’s left out, here… If I had to bet, I’d bet that he was talking to a spirit, before he left. The feather nib, and the mirror… He wouldn’t pack this mirror to carry, and if he used the nib, it’s used up now…”
Jonas blinked at her, uncertain if she wanted a response. Not that he had the first clue what she was talking about.
“He spoke to a spirit?” Beckett was prowling around the room, still almost sniffing. “I can tell that it was here, but if he spoke to it…”
Reb looked over at them and nodded slowly. “Yeah. That occurred to me as well. You’ve left a space, up there, haven’t you?”
Beckett’s lips had drawn back a little from their clenched teeth. “It is my space.”
Reb was looking around again, chewing on her thumbnail. “Fishscales,” she swore suddenly. “I suppose I’ll have to.”
She went to pick up the bowl on the table, then obviously thought better of it and dug into her pockets, pulling out little bags of this and that. Carefully, she mixed a pinch from each of them into her cupped hand, muttering something Jonas couldn’t hear as she did so, then gently blew it over the table and shelves. Jonas’ neck prickled again as the dusting of scraps settled across table, bowl, feather, and floor.
“You should probably stand back a bit,” she said absently, mixing up another collection of bits and scattering it around her. “I don’t like working with someone else’s things – and Cato would have my guts – but we need to know. I don’t like the feel of this.” She glanced up, and said sharply, “Stand back, I said!”
Jonas retreated to the door. Beckett didn’t move.
“You too,” Reb said without looking round. “I told you, I don’t like the feel of any of this. You’re why we’re here. Let’s not find out the hard way if that’s related to whatever happened to Cato. Especially not if he really was talking to a spirit before he left. Or before he was made to go, perhaps, but – well. Let’s see what I can find out.”
Beckett, face expressionless again, stepped backwards to join Jonas. Reb scattered the latest mixture around her on the floor, then, hesitantly, picked up Cato’s bowl with her sleeves tugged down over her fingertips. She made another mixture, this time in the bowl, shaking rather than stirring it, and carefully stowing her little packets away after she had taken what she needed from each one. Finally, she tipped the mixture out of the bowl onto the table, set the bowl down very carefully, and picked up the feather, again with the edges of her fingers.
“Sorry,” Jonas heard her say under her breath, then she started to draw patterns in the dust on the table top.
Jonas could feel the pressure building in his head, but this time nothing popped. It just kept building, as Reb kept drawing patterns. He shook his head and swallowed, trying to disperse it, without any effect. Reb had stopped drawing now, and was staring down at the table and the bowl and the patterns. Jonas’ head felt almost unbearably tight, and he clenched his teeth against the urge to say something, or do something, to break it.
Then, with a noise that was almost a thunderclap inside his head, the pressure vanished, just as Reb sailed backwards across the room. She landed, hard, against the wall, and crumpled to the floor. In front of the table was a ripple in the air, blue and green with swirls of red. It intensified and grew, the red streaks getting wider and brighter.
Jonas’ ears were ringing, the noise growing louder as the ripple grew bigger. Reb was slumped unmoving on the floor, Beckett stood to his left. The ripple was growing, moving, reaching out towards Beckett… That was here, wasn’t it? Here and now? He’d seen this thing in his flicker, seen it pulling Beckett in…
The ripple had nearly reached Beckett, and Beckett wasn’t moving. Jonas wasn’t sure if Beckett was even seeing what he was seeing. Did that mean it wasn’t really there? The colours intensified, the air looking hot and strange, and Beckett was starting to move as it reached towards him…
He should run. He should run right now.
Instead, without conscious decision, he stepped between Beckett and the ripple. With another thunderclap, the ripple disappeared.
k k
Jonas’ ears were still ringing, but under that he could hear that the room was silent. None of them moved for a moment. Then Reb groaned, and Jonas ran over to her.
“I’ll live,” she said, pushing away his offered hand and slowly unfolding herself from the floor. “I think. Fishscales and demons, that hurt.”
“What in flame was that?” Jonas asked.
“More to the point, what did you do to it?” Reb asked.
“I didn’t do anything!” Jonas protested.
“But it stopped.” She looked at him, narrow-eyed.
“It did not wish to touch me,” Beckett said, from behind them. “It was a ward, perhaps?”
Was that the truth? Jonas blinked, trying to remember. It had been moving towards Beckett, and Jonas had stepped in front of it. But had he imagined that moment of the ripple bouncing off him, folding back in on itself? He would much rather believe that it had all been Beckett. And surely the cityangel wouldn’t lie. He’d imagined it being anything to do with him; he must have.
He swallowed. He still felt a bit sick.
Reb was looking over at Beckett, shaking her head. “I don’t know what the hell that was, but it wasn’t a ward. I think Cato was talking to a spirit, and that, whatever it was, was left behind. Which is – well. A bit worrying, let’s say. What in the hells is going on here?”
“An excellent question.”
Jonas blinked, startled, and all three of them turned to the door. A short dark-haired woman, older than Jonas himself but younger than Reb, stood in the doorway. Her cloak and the trousers showing under it looked expensive; and Jonas had been in Marek long enough to recognise her clipped accent. What was someone from Marekhill doing over here in the squats? And the arse-end of the squats at that?
“What is going on here? Where is my brother, and what are you three doing in his rooms?”
Brother? This Cato was her brother? Some dodgy sorcerer had grown up Marekhill?
“I said,” the woman said impatiently, stepping over the threshold, “what is going on here? Where’s Cato? What are you doing in his room?”
Belatedly, Jonas looked round for an exit route. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to hang around arguing with some Marekhill type. One against three might be poor odds – unless she had backup waiting outside, which in this part of town she really ought to, though the sorcerer’s sister was perhaps very safe – but if she was to swear a writ against them they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Surely Cato must have had more than one way out of this place? But the only obvious options were the door, which meant getting past the woman, and the third-floor window, which was certainly possible but not with the other two in tow. Of course, he could just ditch them; he didn’t exactly owe them anything.
But he still hadn’t talked to Beckett about his flickers. And if Cato wasn’t here, Jonas had no link to him, and he was the only other person who might be able to help. This Marekhill woman was Cato’s sister, which was surely another way to find him, even if she didn’t know where he was right at this moment.
Beckett was calmly watching what was going on. Reb’s hands were hanging apparently idle, but Jonas could see the balanced, wary, t
ension in her stance; and a slight frown, as if she were trying to remember something.
The woman came to a stop in front of Reb. Reb blinked, dismissing whatever it was, and spread her hands.
“We have no idea where Cato is, and we have done nothing to him, I swear. We came looking for him too.”
“He owed you something? Or you had need of his services?”
Reb shrugged her shoulders minutely and didn’t answer. The woman was glaring at her.
“Did you remove the wards?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Reb said. “But they were set from the outside when we got here, not from the inside. He knew he was leaving.”
“You broke in?” The woman’s eyebrows were raised.
“I had reason,” Reb said, folding her arms.
The woman was looking at her narrowly. “You know Cato, then?”
“We’ve had words,” Reb said, neutrally. “Once or twice.”
“Cato never has liked other sorcerers. But breaking in – you had no right.”
Reb opened her mouth, then closed it again and looked more closely at the woman facing her.
“You,” she said, voice tight. “You’re Cato’s Marekhill sister? I remember you. Marcia. And to think I thought he was a bad ’un.”
The woman – Marcia? – flinched, then her chin rose and she stared back at Reb.
“It was a long time ago,” she said. “I was young, and I was stupid, and I haven’t been anywhere near b’Leandra, or any of his lot, since. Though I don’t suppose you’ll believe me. You seemed to have the righteous anger thing down pat at the time, and it doesn’t look like it’s changed much.”
“Didn’t I have the right?” Reb demanded.
“Yes,” Marcia said. “You were right, and they were wrong. I shouldn’t have believed him. I made a mistake. I spent a good long while afterwards telling myself all about how swamp-slimed foolish I was. Does that help?” She glared at Reb. “And whatever I may have done a decade ago has no bearing on you breaking into Cato’s room, for which you still haven’t given me an explanation. Now. Are you going to justify yourselves, or am I going to call the guard?”
k k
This wasn’t what Marcia had expected. She’d come here for Cato, to talk to her brother. And quite possibly, at this time in the morning, to find him an infusion to deal with his hangover. She hadn’t expected to be faced with no Cato, and a sorcerer she’d last seen at a point in her life she’d expended a lot of energy in forgetting.
“Guard won’t come here,” the Salinas boy said.
Marcia looked at him. What was he doing here? His white-blond hair was caught back, Salinas-style, in a twist of rope, but his skin wasn’t as shipboard-tanned as most Salinas. And he wore a messenger’s armband. Mostly Salinas folk kept to their ships, sailing the Oval Sea then returning to their villages between voyages and around the Mid-Year trading lull. For certain, there were a handful of Salinas families in Marek, mostly around the docks, plus there was the embassy and its staff. But he didn’t speak like he’d grown up in Marek and if he was a messenger, he wasn’t employed at the embassy.
“She’s Marekhill, Jonas,” Reb, the sorcerer, said. “They might. Maybe.”
She was still eyeing Marcia suspiciously – as if it weren’t Reb who was the one who’d broken into a warded room.
Jonas made a hmm sound. “Well. You think there’s something odd going on, and this Cato’s gone. So while you’re arguing about guards, I’m going to go down those stairs and see what I can find out about when he was last here.” He flicked an eyebrow up. “Can’t see any of the rest of you managing that.”
He nodded round at them and slipped around Marcia and out of the door before she could stop him. His footsteps clattered down the stairs and the front door banged. She had a sneaking suspicion that he might not be back again.
The situation was slipping out of her control. She had to say something.
“So. You’re looking for Cato, and you think there’s ‘something wrong’. Enough to break into an innocent person’s rooms.” Room singular, and it wasn’t like there was much Cato was innocent of, but anyway. “Perhaps if you tell me why you are concerned about my brother, we could settle this amicably.”
People took you at your own value. She kept her chin up, and locked eyes with Reb, waiting. Outside the window, in the street below, she could hear voices.
Reb looked away first.
“Well. He’s out, at this time of the morning, which you must admit is unusual,” Reb said, and Marcia found herself nodding. “And I have reason to believe that the last sorcery he did in here was to speak to a spirit, and they left a trap.”
“That’s his job,” Marcia said impatiently. “And if the trap wasn’t for Cato, it’s none of your business. It wouldn’t have got you if you hadn’t been breaking in.”
Reb was watching her again, her arms folded. Marcia was accustomed enough to dealing with people who carried power, but Reb’s presence was still nearly overwhelming. Even though – Marcia’s eyes narrowed slightly – there was something off about her, too. That competence and authority that Marcia remembered from ten years ago was still there. But there was also – something crumpled, a sense of self-doubt, when she turned away, that hadn’t been there ten years ago. What had happened to her since then?
Reb ran a frustrated hand through her short brown curls, then gestured around the room. “Do you see anything unusual in here?”
“Why are you here?” Marcia demanded. She was missing something. Or Reb wasn’t telling her something. Marcia knew the signs well enough.
What was Reb hiding?
“I am Marekangel,” the other one said, the odd-looking one that Marcia hadn’t been able to place.
Reb threw her head back in – exasperation? Anxiety?
“I was Marekangel,” they said again. “Now I am not. I am Beckett. And I must solve this.”
Marcia stared at him, her mouth hanging open for a moment before she caught herself and shut it with an audible snap. Her mind whirled. The Thirteen Houses were barred from using magic, either directly, or through someone else. As a result, magic was something that was rarely or never discussed, treated as something for the Guilds – who also tended not to use it, in imitation of the Houses, especially in recent years – and the lower city. And the cityangel, in turn, was a foolish superstitious story. That summer ten years back, Cato had discovered his abilities, and Marcia had been dragged into Daril b’Leandra’s disastrous plans. All of them defying the ban on magic, and for long enough that Marcia knew, now as then, that the Houses were wrong, that magic and the cityangel alike were truths.
Cato had decided he wanted magic more than the House. Marcia had realised how foolish Daril had been, and how foolish she had been in turn to follow him, and she’d wanted nothing more to do with any of it. She’d stood by Cato when their mother disowned him, but she’d done her best never to ask about what he did or how; and she’d done her best as well not to think about magic, or the cityangel, since.
Now, apparently, the cityangel was standing in front of her? And Cato was gone. She swallowed. What was happening here?
Reb took a breath. “Well, now that Beckett’s gone for the blunt approach,” she said. “They’re speaking the truth. As far as I can tell. They used to be the cityangel, until a couple of days ago. Now they’re not, and they don’t know why. I don’t know why either.”
“And that brings you here?”
“Cato knows more about spirits than I do. I was hoping to consult with him.”
“Why do you even care?” Marcia demanded.
“The cityangel makes Marek’s magic possible,” Reb said bluntly. “Magic that isn’t blood magic, more or less, though it’s a little more complicated than that. I have a vested interest in sorting this out. As does Cato. Or so I would have thought. We are sorcerers. We are Marek sorcerers. We need the cityangel.”
“The cityangel?” Marcia asked softly. “Or a cityangel?”
&nbs
p; “Magic needs a cityangel,” Beckett said, suddenly, and Marcia and Reb both jumped. “It does not follow that it need be me. But also, I have – I had – the cityangel has – a great deal of power. Within and over Marek. At present, that power is not – attached.”
“But, then – what has this all to do with Cato?” Marcia asked. There was a ball of dread in her stomach. “And where is he?”
“There’s two sorcerers left in the city,” Reb said. “And someone’s removed the cityangel. Last night, Cato was talking to a spirit. It’s the last thing – the last thing with a magical trace, at least – he did in here. And it left some kind of trap, something I triggered. Beckett seems to have shut it down. The thing is, like I say, Cato deals with spirits, at least sometimes, and I don’t. He knows more about them than I do. That’s why we brought Beckett here in the first place. So. Beckett is no longer in their place. Cato has been talking to a spirit, and has packed up his stuff and gone. It’s a bit much to think that these things are entirely coincidental. Especially given that he’s your brother.” She stared at Marcia.
“What do you mean?” Marcia demanded.
“You were mixed up in that dangerous nonsense ten years ago. How do I know that you’re not up to the same thing again?”
Marcia stood up, pulling herself up to her full height. “I have had nothing to do with anything of the sort between now and then. You know as well as I do that I have no magic of my own. I didn’t even discuss magic with Cato,” she added, half-despairingly. “And now I wish I had, because maybe then I might know something.” Damn. She hadn’t meant to give that much away.
Reb, narrow-eyed, stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. “I’ll believe you, then. For now.” She sighed. “In which case I too wish that Cato had told you more.”
Marcia’s stomach was tight. Spirits – but no, even the very little Cato had ever mentioned about what he did, she knew that not all spirits were bad. Not of necessity. Just because the one, that time… Cato had refused to be involved, back then. He hadn’t changed that much in ten years. She knew he hadn’t.
