“You're not going to carry those nasty things on your belt all evening are you?” The doctor sighed and examined the gloves. “Yes, I could sense the magic dripping from those gloves before I smelled your foul cigar. Something in the blood, perhaps?” He glanced at Devin approvingly. “A very subtle, complex spell. Are you a doctor, lad?”
Devin shook his head. “I'm an artificer.”
“No trace of magic remaining at the crime scene. Nothing to set off the watches.” Jemmy shrugged. “Just another violent mugging.”
Devin stared at the gloves as they passed from hand to hand and Jemmy rehung them from his belt. Well the captain is certainly singing my false praises. He is playing a deep game. Wish I knew if I was the beneficiary or the pawn.
The doctor led them to the end of the tunnel. He unlatched and cracked the trap door. Satisfied, he poked his head out like a gopher and glanced around again. “No patrols as yet. Come.”
Once everyone had left the tunnel, Tobias closed this trap door, waved his hand over the planking, and muttered something under his breath. The door melted and reformed into a patch of cobblestones indistinguishable from the street.
A shrill metallic cry cut the night and echoed off the massive stone wall. Tobias bit his lip and pushed them along. “That was only a few blocks away. I'd rather not be a guest at the palace dungeons this night. Hurry.”
“Aren't you afraid using magic will worsen your disease?” Devin asked the doctor as they ran. The man did not reply, but spurred them onward. The youth had trouble not tripping over the rough cobblestones of the inner city. Life in the modern imperial city had spoiled him. Smooth, shining pavement. He winced and bit his lip as he barked his toes.
When do you see the pavement? the artificer groused. That would require going outside. You spend all your time in the shop.
Devin ignored his inner voice and kept running. In truth, it wasn't difficult to keep pace with Tobias. A clothesline draped with twisted, blood-red intestines spanned the street. Devin chuckled as they jogged closer. The intestines were nothing more than knotted hosiery. He swatted them aside. The badge of a bureaucrat. No doubt the red leggings were waiting for their masters to return in the morning. Nobody actually lived in the inner city. Not outside the palace. It was all stores, museums, and office space.
After several twists and turns through the maze-like narrow streets, the doctor paused. “We seem to have lost them. As to your query, one cannot manage this disease by containing it with healthy regimens or simple cures,” the doctor said, gasping for air as he leaned against a wall, “but by alleviating the stressors it places on the human body. The act of casting a spell has the same effect as lancing a boil. Relieves the pressure. But surely I need not explain these concepts to such a great and powerful mage as yourself?”
Devin smiled and said nothing.
Tobias guided Devin and Jemmy through more cobblestone streets and took them to a large shop with a green door and simple brass knocker, which he lightly tapped on the wood. “After the bureaucrats away . . .” the doctor whispered.
A harsh, lilting voice behind the door laughed. “What was that, Tobias?”
The little doctor glanced over his shoulder and wrung his hands. Then he glared at the door. “After the bureaucrats away,” he screamed, pounding the door with his fists.
“Fine, fine, '. . . the mages come out to play.' What playmates have you brought us?” the voice muttered.
“Get in, get in, get in,” the little doctor cried, shooing them with his hands before bolting behind them. “Lock the door,” he yelled at the smirking woman in a red gown holding the door open.
“Fine.” She swung her arm and slammed the door. With a few deft flicks of her long fingers, she sealed the latches. Then she sighed and applied a thick smear of carmine lipstick before bending and kissing each of the locks. “Safe and warded,” she said, stepping away and wiping her lips.
“Oh, bless the five gods.” The little man sighed and the strain melted from his face. The warm glow began to spread down from his finger throughout his entire body. “It's getting harder and harder to hold it in every day.”
Devin stared from one mage to the other. And I wanted to open a school to teach these people. Ha! They should be teaching me . . . if I still had my magic. But maybe what they need right now isn't a teacher, but a leader, a symbol. Someone to unite them.
“May I present the Artifice Mage,” Tobias said, gesturing to Devin and bowing.
The woman had a thin, razor smile. “I see the glowing little slug won't introduce me. Patrice. Delighted to meet you. Maybe you'll save this party we're throwing.”
“Party?” Devin asked, kissing her hand when she offered it.
“It's so boring,” she said, waving her arms. “I grow weary of hiding in old shops and museums. Listening to the same weary shouting matches and pointless little fights. We need action. Verve. Not more talk, talk, squabble, squabble.”
“Talking is safe,” Tobias hissed, ducking when one of her arms swiped past his head.
Jemmy peered through the window glancing up and down the street.
“You always feel the need to check,” Patrice said, smacking his thigh with her skirts. “The door is warded, Captain. None of your old friends will find us here. We are well-defended.”
Jemmy sighed and patted his sword hilt as he turned away from the window. “Any group always on the defensive is doomed to lose.” He glanced at Tobias. “As are those who wield their tongues in lewd of their swords.”
“And what was the winning strategy that got you exiled from the Black Guards, oh brilliant tactician?” the doctor sneered. “I can almost sympathize with the cabal. Better to stay safe and do nothing. I'm still alive.”
The woman threw back her head with a cold, distant laugh. “Until they raid your wonderful apothecary, dear doctor and drag your glowing hide down the street to the dungeons. Then to their little menagerie of death and misery. You'll make quite an attraction at the Atrium of Justice: the luminescent corpse.”
“I'm careful,” the doctor murmured. “I'm discreet. Words unknown to most of our colleagues.”
“The blatant ones do tend to weed themselves out of our little garden.” She snorted. “You're just lucky the patient who discovered your ahem . . . 'skin condition' was a fellow mage. Alas, none of us can hide forever, dear doctor. Which brings us to you.” She smiled at Devin.
“Me?” the youth asked.
“You've never hidden who you are. You shook the foundations of the empire and emerged unscathed . . .” She glanced at his metal foot and sniffed. “Mostly unscathed. You are a survivor. You even got away from this miserable country with your life. Yet here you are back again.” She cocked her head sideways. “Are we entirely certain you're not insane?”
He clenched his fists and raised them. “No more insane that a woman insulting the mage who flattened an army.”
Jemmy grinned. Tobias winced. Patrice clapped her hands. She took one of his fists and gently shook it. “Naked power? In a room full of mages?” she chided.
Devin lowered his fists and sighed.
“A true captain knows when to lower his fists and when to punch,” she murmured. “Not that I don't admire your spirit. Such verve.” She wrapped an arm around Devin's shoulders and pulled him close. “That's just the blood we need to spice our revolutionary rum.”
We could scarcely do worse than the first mage revolt. Devin shuddered and he felt Patrice startle beside him. She spun him around and gripped him by the shoulders. “You shiver, my fiery friend? What troubles you?”
“The first revolution was . . . a disaster. A wreck. And the mages sank with it. Now we launch another.”
“Ah, but what is a ship but an empty collection of timbers, pointy nails, and hot caulk waiting to be filled?” She gave him a squeeze. “This ship has a new captain. A new crew. A new mission. A glorious map to victory.” She tapped his shoulder. “You do have a plan?”
He nodded. The be
ginnings of a plan at least.
“Then grab your rudder, avoid the shoals, and set sail,” Patrice said, pushing him towards a large door with random noise bustling behind it. “We have been languishing around the docks far too long staring at an empty ship.”
Jemmy clapped Devin on the shoulders. “Best not show off in there, eh? We don't want the shop coming down around our heads. Set a good example,” he said, glancing at the doctor's glowing skin. “Keep it contained. Sometimes the knowledge of a thing has more power than the thing itself. If you need to prove yourself by throwing chunks of the building at people, then you're not the man I thought you were.”
As if I could, Devin thought, mentally stomping his foot.
The knight makes a fair point, the artificer murmured. It is rarely one's raw skills that impress, but how you choose to use—or not use—them. If one can even call magic a skill.
Tobias looked horrified. Patrice pursed her lips. “It would certainly make an impression. Why don't you introduce him, Jemmy? Nobody questions your dedication to the cause.”
Nobody questions his dedication to the cause? Which cause? Devin sighed. Am I the only one who remembers this man used to hunt mages?
Jemmy nodded. “It would be an honor and a pleasure.”
She shoved Tobias aside with her hips and opened the door, gesturing for Devin to precede her. “Destiny awaits. Prove with your hard words, not your knuckles, that you deserve to command this dread crew, my sweet captain.”
10. DEVIN, YEAR 497
The dreaded mages were not the fanged, bloodthirsty crew Devin had been led to believe from a childhood steeped in imperial propaganda. At first glance, the crowd in the room looked almost normal. But as the myriad of little arguments and squabbles ground to a halt, silence descended, and every eye drilled into him, certain oddities became apparent. Just sounds, really. A crackling in the air. The quiet rumbling of stones. A discharge of little lightnings between fingertips. The whole room had a charge to it, building up, waiting to explode the moment he spoke.
A podium stood waiting at the center of the room next to a large kiosk overflowing with parchments and fliers. Devin squared his shoulders and marched past the kiosk up to his podium and destiny.
The air reverberated with a loud thunk behind him. Then another. Eyes turned away from Devin towards this new spectacle. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief and then turned to look himself. As promised, Jemmy had grabbed a spike from the kiosk and was nailing the embroidered gloves up with a large whetstone for all to see. A few screams and gasps rose in the crowd, but they were soon shushed by their neighbors.
Jemmy nodded to Devin and then leaned over and whispered in the youth's ear, “Dare say that's all the introduction you need, lad. Get to it.” Jemmy waved to the crowd and took a seat in the corner. He unsheathed his sword, balanced the tip on a divot in the stone floor, and began honing the blade.
The slithery steel noise . . . schick . . . made an odd staccato rhythm . . . schick . . . as Devin walked slowly . . . schick . . . up to the podium . . .schick . . . and he gripped the edges of the platform . . .schick . . . knuckles white. He nodded to Jemmy and took a deep breath.
The knight grinned. He slumped his shoulders and hunched over the pommel of his sword like an old man with a cane enjoying the day. The crowd glanced at Jemmy. The knight was staring at Devin with calm, dark eyes, rolling the whetstone between his fingers. The crowd exhaled and Devin exhaled with them. All the rising tension in the room had vanished.
“My friends.” Devin spread his arms. “I know some of you were fearful of my speaking here tonight. Some of you would even offer me violence.” He turned to look at the gloves and smiled. The dark blood had pooled in the fingers and was dripping.
That should have dried and crusted by now, Devin mused. How much blood did Jemmy spill? He tore himself away from the sight of the tacky, red liquid stretching toward the tiles. It was eerie. It looked as though the blood was reaching for the floor.
Devin swallowed. “We should not take council of our fears. It is our fears that make us scurry in the corners. Our fears brought us here to this abandoned corner of the city under cover of darkness hiding behind spells and wards. It is our fears that keeps us complacent, heads down, looking in the mirror every morning as a coward stares back, saying, 'I survived another day. That's good enough.'”
“That's more than good enough,” a voice sounding suspiciously like Tobias shouted from the crowd.
“Is it? Is that a way for any human being to live their life?” Devin asked. “It's not the emperor nor his guards nor his army that keep us trapped in our own lives. If we act like rats then they will hunt and kill us like rats. Do we not have weapons beyond our magic teeth and claws? Are we no more than cheap tricks of nature?” He pointed to the walls. “Out there, nonmagical citizens sleep in their beds. They're not worried men will burst through the door. They don't have nightmares of their sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, getting dragged off to mutilation and death.”
“Fie on them,” a voice cried. “Kill them all. Slaughter everyone who doesn't have the power of the gods flowing in their veins!”
“No, no, not that.” Devin held up his hands. “Then we truly would become the monsters they claim we are. The empire would have our neighbors believe the worst of us: Subhuman monsters, dragons in human guise, criminal scum. They stole something precious after the first revolution failed. Something that was supposed to be inalienable and sacred, and they ripped it from our breasts.” He clutched the handful of shirt closest to his heart and twisted the fabric.
Now, the response. The need for interaction. That voice crying to be a part of—nothing but silence. Devin stomped his mental foot again. In all the stories, this is where the lone voice in the crowd speaks in unison with the orator. Nothing? By the five gods, the next time we do this, we're going to seed our own patriots among the spectators.
Jemmy cupped his hands and bellowed. “Out with it. What'd the bastards steal?”
Thank you Jemmy. “What did they steal?” Devin let his voice rise to an indignant pitch. “The Iron Empire stole your humanity.” He struck his fist against the podium. “Well I say we take it back! We are not monsters. We are not timid little rodents. We. Are. People.” He stepped back from the podium, shaking his stinging knuckles and breathing heavily. He eyed the crowd of expectant faces. Should I have raised my fist in the air? Thrown the podium into the crowd?
The silence was broken by Patrice whooping and hollering. Jemmy stood, leaned his sword against the wall, and began to clap. A few random cheers trickled through the crowd. The growing accolades swelled like a giant wave until the entire room had flooded with applause.
Devin blew out his cheeks. Phew. The last time I gave a rousing speech, they pelted me with rotten vegetables.
Eventually the applause waned and the crowd began getting that expectant look again. Another thing they don't mention in the stories: the speech after the rousing speech. Thank the five gods, Jemmy saved him from that.
“We need leadership,” the knight said, pointing to Devin. “Well, there's your leader.”
A man in a mottled vest approached the podium. “Pretty words, but this puling boy is too young, inexperienced. I nominate a true leader to the post: Lord Fangwaller.”
“Booo,” Patrice hissed. “We don't need some foreign dragon hunter telling us how to fight.”
“Your precious lord picked a fight he could not win,” Jemmy grunted.“Did you miss my introduction with the gloves?”
“Oh?” the cabal flunkey asked. “And where are those gloves, again?”
“I nailed them to the kiosk, you daft, blind—” Jemmy, and everyone else, turned to stare at the bloody nail and dark pool on the floor. The embroidered gloves had vanished.
A light knock sounded on the door. Smirking, the flunkey sauntered across the room and flung wide the door. “My Lord. So good of you to join us.”
Fangwaller, High Lord of the Dark Cabal, lurched into
the room. He smiled and waved to the crowd. The black, embroidered gloves had returned to his hands, emitting a weak, pale glow. The man's face was the color of spoiled milk. His shirt was unbuttoned and Devin could see glimpses of his sternum and a shattered rib poking beneath the mangled flesh. The man pressed a gloved hand to his chest and the wound began to seal.
“Your knight failed in his task. I live.” Fangwaller raised one gloved finger and pointed to Devin. The man's hands were shaking and Devin noticed large puncture wounds piercing the man's wrist lining up with the nail holes in the gloves.
Devin shrugged. “He killed you once. He can kill you again.”
“He did not kill me the first time, fool.” Fangwaller coughed and wiped the bloody spittle from his lips. “I merely imbued a part of my essence into these gloves.” He took a deep breath and his lungs rattled. “Now they are returned to me, I am whole again. Surely, you have never seen such subtle awesome magic arts in the Iron Empire, have you?”
“No, never in the empire,” Devin replied truthfully, thinking of Styx, yet remembering Drusilla's advice. Never lie when the truth will do. But Styx's secret origins were not Devin's story to share. “But I once saw a mage in Corel imbue a part of his soul into a rough, wooden vessel that never had a soul before. The wood walked and talked and laughed and loved. It even breathed. A true miracle. You merely warmed up a half-dead corpse.”
“You will not have that luxury.” Fangwaller grinned as a small cadre of the cabal and imperials gathered to his side. “But we are more evenly matched now. We may continue the fight.”
Grumbling rose in the crowd. The mages began splitting into two groups: those standing with Devin the Artifice Mage and those who did not. Devin's allies just stood in one lump mass behind him. Fangwaller's compatriots spread themselves out in tight, strategic clusters. Each group had at least one gray-mottled cabal member to direct them. Fangwaller had quite a few dispersed little bands of allies actually.
It was all Devin could do not to whip around and glare at Jemmy. That's a few gullible imperials!? As people chose sides, the air in the room grew heavy and tense.
The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 62
