by J M Sanford
“That was unpleasant,” said the one carrying the brass contraption.
“Yes. We must endeavour to avoid such incidents in future,” said his brother, still evidently a little unhappy with the state of his suit, although it showed no sign whatsoever of Harold’s attack. He raised the lightning pistol to take aim, but Amelia was faster: a bolt of green fire shot down from the deck of the Storm Chaser, knocking the gentleman off his feet.
“Leave him alone!” she screamed, white faced and shaking, but readying another fireball.
A shimmer like moonlight on dark steel swept across the figure of the gentleman, and he got up again, once more apparently completely unharmed, his fancy clothes immaculate. He stamped out the little green flames that danced around his feet. Meg’s shot, refined and blinding white, took his arm clean off, the lightning pistol skidding across the platform and off the edge, into the void. This time, Harold saw the gentleman change from flesh and blood to a dark glossy statue, arms and legs all complete. A moment later, the change reversed and the gentleman’s arm was back, as suddenly as it had gone. He looked quite cross at the loss of his lightning pistol, though.
“He was slower that time!” Harold shouted up to Meg and Amelia. “Try again!” This time, when the bolt of green struck, Harold didn’t wait to see the effect, but ran for the ladder. He hurled himself over the edge and lay on the deck. “We can go! We can go!” But Captain Dunnager had made no delay, and Harold felt the deck tilt under him as the Storm Chaser swung away from the Ilamiran dock. He lay flat on the deck, hands over his head and dreading the imminent touch of lightning reaching out from the Ilamiran dock, but it never came. Eventually, feeling quite embarrassed, he got up.
“Let’s see that there, lad,” said Sir Percival, gently taking the sword from the trembling young Paladin. He held the blade up to the light, examining it closely. In the sunlight, the blood shone like rubies over the bright steel. “That was quite a swing you took at him. No mortal man should have been able to stand up from that.”
Meg scoffed. “Those of us that weren’t cowering in the shadows could see he was no mortal man. We were lucky to get away from there today.” She glanced at Harold. “Good job, for a butcher’s boy,” she said grudgingly.
“Did I hear him correctly?” asked Percival, ignoring Meg’s comments. “They wanted to take the White Queen alive?”
“That’s what he said, but he made it clear they don’t care much for the rest of us.”
“They just wanted Amelia,” said Harold. She’d been so brave, fighting for him even though she still struggled with her magic. He’d never seen two women so brave as Meg and Amelia… “Where’d she go to? Is she all right?”
“She’s gone for a lie down, I expect,” said Meg cheerfully. “Magic takes it out of you a lot, ‘specially when you’re first learning. I’ll go and check on her.”
~
Entering the quiet privacy of the cabin, Amelia shivered. Even after the fight, well away from the two gentleman assassins, the rings felt heavy on her hands. Too much responsibility. It amazed her to think that Meg had allowed her to use her crude and dangerous fireball spells in such a populous place. Why, the slightest flick of her fingertips at the wrong moment and she might have set all of Ilamira ablaze! She shuddered to think of the City become an insatiable inferno thousands of feet above the ground… Just as she was about to slip off those heavy rings, she saw the gilded cage, lying wide open on the floor. When she saw the open window above it, her heart dropped. “Oh, no…” Her first thought was to hide it, but what was the use in that, and besides, she could already hear Meg coming down the steps behind her. “I didn’t do it!” Amelia blurted out. “It must have been an accident.”
Meg just stared at the empty cage, her face reddening in anger, and said nothing. Amelia struggled for a moment to feel more than misplaced guilt, struggled to remember why they had been keeping the clockwork dragonette captive in the first place. In all that time feeling sorry for their captive, Amelia had forgotten all about the notion that it could be a spy. And they had kept it with them all that time, talking carelessly about their plans because they’d thought they were amongst only friends…
“I didn’t let it out!” Amelia said again, afraid that Meg wasn’t listening to her. “And if you turn me into a mouse, I shall bite you, because that just isn’t fair when I didn’t do anything wrong! It was only a stupid… accident… Oh. Wait a minute.” Amelia got down on her hands and knees and lifted the sheets that overhung the edge of the bed. She peered into the gloomy corners until she found what she’d suspected she might: a faint, barely visible haze of unhappy yellow flame. “Oh, Stupid! You wretched creature! You awful jealous nuisance! Do you know what you’ve done?” But Stupid only cowered further back in the dusty recesses under the bunk, too foolish to know the potential impact of his actions, knowing only his mistress’s anger. With a muttered spell, Amelia dived in and grabbed hold of the fire sprite with both hands. He felt unexpectedly soft, like luxurious fur, alive and writhing. He struggled, tongues of flame licking round her fingers, flickering lukewarm against her skin. Sparks flew and singed her hair, but the spell on her hands held good, and seizing up the cage, she stuffed him into it, latching the door.
“There! Perhaps that’ll keep you out of trouble!”
Stupid fizzled anxiously, never having been handled in such a way before, and quite cowed by the new experience.
“And I shan’t let you out until we catch the dragonette again, if we ever do!” Amelia shouted. She trembled, part in anger and part in fear of Meg’s wrath, but instead the witch turned on her knight, who had come to investigate the source of the racket.
“Percival, you fool! How could you let something like this happen?” she demanded.
For the first time, Amelia found herself truly glad she couldn’t see Sir Percival’s face. “Madam, I have always done my duty,” he said, stiffly. “And I will gladly continue to do whatever you request of me, but I regret to inform you that I am not infallible.”
“You know as well as I do how dangerous that thing could be – why didn’t you keep an eye on it? Sat here in safety while we were out in the City, it’s the least you could have done!”
Meg should never have kept the clockwork dragonette, suspecting it to be a spy. She should never have been so lax as to forget about it, talk openly around it. Meg had discussed their flight plans quite openly with Captain Dunnager, knowing that he could hear and speak to her wherever she happened to be on board the Storm Chaser. Amelia bit her tongue, but Sir Percival’s pride would not allow him to do likewise.
“I did not stay behind out of cowardice, Madam,” he snapped. “I stayed behind to guard the ship from thieves, pirates and stowaways. What you and your unfortunate protégé deem fit to carry with you is scarcely any of my business.”
“Get out!” Meg bellowed. “Get out before I set your hair on fire!” When Percival had the good sense to retreat, she sank down on the bunk, chewing her thumbnail and looking utterly miserable.
Amelia cowered, still clutching her caged fire sprite. Tears prickled at her eyelids. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Stop saying sorry, you stupid girl,” Meg snapped. “Never say sorry for what weren’t your fault.”
Amelia just caught another apology about to fall from her lips. “Right. Then…” She hesitated. Yes, it was stupid to apologise for something that hadn’t been her fault. It had been Meg’s fault, but then without Meg they probably never would have caught the clockwork dragonette in the first place, and who knew what might have happened if the little spy had been left to roam free all this time. Amelia was ashamed to realise that without Meg, she would still be locked up in her tower and hiding from the world… So, what would Meg do, if Meg were not sitting there looking defeated and miserable? Amelia didn’t have a clue. “What can we do?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Meg, not looking up. “Absolutely nothing we can do about it now. We have to go on. We have to
get there first. We’ll need fair weather and a devil of a tailwind, though.”
Amelia looked out of the porthole. The sky practically glowed a bright and spotless blue, the day warm and calm. Meg must know spells to call the winds and speed them on their way, although right now the witch looked in no mood to do so. Amelia could see no sign of ships pursuing, but as the Storm Chaser rounded the beaky prominence of Ilamira’s main gates, she saw something that turned her blood to ice water. Tethered at a second dock on the other side of the City, there drifted a skyship with distinctive bright yellow sails. Sharvesh, the Black Queen’s vessel.
“Meg! Come and look, quickly!”
Meg was at the porthole quick as a flash. She hissed, but then turned and grabbed Amelia by the shoulder, staring fierce and wild into her eyes. “Remember the spell for invisibility? I’m going to need your help for this.”
17: THE BLACK MAGE
Just off the coast of Ilamira, something blinked out of existence. The change in the field had been just on the fringes of Bessie’s vision and she looked round a moment too late. “What was that?” she asked Bryn.
“What was what, Miss Castle?” He’d been busy preparing Sharvesh to take flight, so he likely hadn’t seen anything, but Bessie still wished she could read Argean expressions better. She’d asked Greyfell about the subject, but he’d confessed his ignorance: he only knew that Argeans who spent much time around humans eventually began to take on human expressions. Who could tell how much, though, in any given individual? Those round cat-like eyes often looked a little anxious, a little guilty. After Greyfell’s unfortunate first impression upon him, Bryn had never quite let his guard down around either of them. Understandable, really, but irritating nonetheless. Doubly so as Bessie quite liked the Argean when his natural enthusiasm bubbled over.
Yes, bubbles – that’s what it had been like. “I…” It had been like a bubble popping in froth, out of the corner of her eye, where only its disappearance had drawn any notice to its existence or sudden non-existence at all. “There was something out there, just north-west of here. And now it isn’t.”
“That is the nature of things, Miss,” said Bryn, grinning and with that silly theatrical air he’d put on when they’d first toured his skyship. “Things come and go. Such is life.”
“No, I mean… It just vanished into thin air.”
Bryn shook his head, still infuriatingly amused by the conversation. “Young people have such imagination… You worry too much, Miss Castle, and spend too much time reading books. Why don’t you go back into the City for a while? Visit a shadow theatre, or a tea house, and relax.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t know when Master Greyfell will be back, and I can’t waste time on frivolities.”
His smile became fixed, poised somewhere between human friendliness and feline hostility. “Suit yourself, Miss,” he said.
“Thank you for your concern though, Bryn,” she added. “And keep an eye open for anything out of the ordinary, please.”
She returned her attention to her shopping bags. She had to admit a guilty thrill in the new experience of having money to spend as she saw fit. She’d been careful with it, of course, or at least as careful as one can expect a thirteen year old to be with sudden riches. The streets of Ilamira had tempted her terribly, and only the threat of Master Greyfell’s disapproval had curbed her desire for extravagance. With Greyfell still in the City, Bessie pored over her purchases. She’d mostly stuck to her plan of restocking essentials, but here and there she’d given in to the lure of exotic ingredients for spells she wanted to try one day. At the soul forge she’d bought a couple of small souls, making big plans for them on the spot. Elsewhere, she’d picked up a handful of spells that would allow her to fall from any height and land unhurt, along with some other odd one-use charms, and a very fine knife that disappeared neatly into a sheath in her boot. She’d drawn the line at something purported to be unicorn hair – any sensible person knew that unicorns had been extinct for thousands of years. The talkative and charming vendor might have had more chance of convincing her of the stuff’s validity if he hadn’t had a whole herd’s worth of it hanging from the ceiling of his shop. It had no practical use that she knew of, anyway.
Like Amelia, Bessie had spent much of her own journey thus far immersed in her textbooks. And, like Amelia, she found the fireball spell simple and appealing: most beginners in gesture magic did. Unlike Amelia, Bessie had taken to magic the first moment she’d been allowed to try it. She’d gamely struggled through the first term of her education with a set of conjuring rings borrowed from the Academy’s stock – they’d been battered and scratched and even lost a couple of minor jewels before Bessie ever set eyes on them. She’d made quite a few embarrassing misspellings and been the butt of more than a few jokes by girls from wealthier families (which is to say, virtually all of the girls at the Antwin Academy) but she’d excelled in potions and written spells, and at New Year’s, Master Greyfell had discretely presented her with a new set of conjuring rings. She wore them with pride whenever it was appropriate to do so, although the budding assassin in her wished the bracelets didn’t make so much noise. The rings, too, could draw more attention in public than she liked. At least she’d discovered she could cover the rings with her gloves and the bracelets with her sleeves with no ill effect when she had to. Some of the other girls at the Academy were brash and outrageous, keen for fame or notoriety, but Bessie found considerable advantages in being able to fade quietly into the crowd when she wished. In that respect, she wouldn’t miss Sharvesh when all this was over.
~
Greyfell returned sooner than expected. “Did you speak to the Archmage?” she asked him, as she guiltily shoved some of her more frivolous purchases back into the bags.
Greyfell, keen-eyed as ever, tactfully made no comment on Bessie’s obvious shopping spree. “He has no interest in any of this, Elizabeth. I warned you that a man of his standing might not even deign to bargain with us.”
“We can’t afford him? Can we afford any of the Archmages, then?”
“The highest tiers of mages live mostly in their own little worlds, I’m afraid. They can’t be bought in the same way as mere mortals can. It’s not that their price is too high, but more that they operate using a different currency altogether.”
Bessie thought she understood: she’d heard the same of the very best assassins. Few formally trained assassins ever wanted for material wealth, coming as they so often did from well-bred and prosperous families. A client had to be able to offer a real challenge, intellectual or otherwise. Each commission had to be an opportunity to increase the assassin’s reputation amongst his peers towards the legendary. “I still don’t understand why I can’t be my own Mage,” she muttered. Immediately she wished she’d held her tongue: Master Greyfell looked shocked at such a notion.
“The rules of the contest dictate –”
“Yes, I know the rules,” Bessie sighed. She knew the rules by heart, but that didn’t mean she understood them. She didn’t understand why the candidate White Queen should get to make the first move, while Bessie had been stuck waiting, preparing, hoping that she would have time enough to gain an advantage. She closed her eyes, wishing herself back in her potions class. That had been her favourite subject. When she opened her eyes again, she found Greyfell still watching her as if she were some unpredictable wild animal. “Sorry,” she said. “Mages just seem so hard to come by.”
“We will hire a suitable Mage before we reach the temple,” he assured her.
Bessie didn’t particularly want his reassurances. She wanted to secure a Mage for her Side. She wanted to reach the temple safely ahead of the White Queen, take her prize and –
Greyfell’s froze like a hunting hound catching a faint scent on the breeze: head raised, nostrils flared. “Did you hear that?”
Bessie hadn’t heard anything unusual above the constant background noise of the busy dock, but instinctively she looked to Bryn. He too had
frozen, his listening all the more obvious because his large and sensitive ears had fanned out to ridiculous proportions, flicking this way and that. Bessie held very still, resisting the urge to close her eyes and focus on her ears, and carefully unpicked every sound around her, searching for the one that shouldn’t be:
Men shouting as they wrestled with heavy kegs on board the ‘ship docked beside Sharvesh.
The creak of strained ropes, the heavy flap of canvas in the breeze.
The cries of street vendors advertising hot soup, fried shrimp, nuts and dates.
Old men gossiping about some fracas on Main Street.
What had happened on Main Street? She’d been shopping there; she might have missed the excitement by minutes. And then, before she could say anything, another sound caught her attention:
Somewhere nearby, underneath the ship, a sound faintly reminiscent of crickets on a summer night, but somehow metallic.
Silently Bryn dropped to all fours, stalking across the boards towards the railings. Bessie couldn’t suppress a cold shiver at the sight: the amiable and silly-looking figure she’d grown fond of transformed in a heartbeat into a graceful, lethal hunter, nothing like human. And then something shot up, past the railings, a blinding flash of sunlight on metal. Bryn leapt clear ten feet in the air, not a pounce but an escape. When he came down he crouched, growling low, muscles trembling, as the thing hovered in the air, high above their heads.
