Magic's Design

by Cat Adams

  “Terrific,” Tal said sarcastically. “I taught you how to outsmart the law. That’s something to carve on my gravestone.”

  “No. You taught me respect for the law … and the reason for it in the first place. I might not buy into the notion that to be honorable I must do it in poverty, but I have limits, and you put ’em there. I’m a good son to me folks, and good to me mates.” He took off the glove from his right hand and held it out. “You used to be one of those mates. Have I completely ruined that or can we start over?”

  Tal stared at the proffered hand for a long moment and then shook his head. “I don’t know that I can forgive you just yet. Maybe when this is over and I’m still free and Mila is safe, I’ll consider shaking your hand.”

  The look on Jason’s face mingled regret with insult. Finally, he swallowed both inside and offered a stony face, lowering his hand with a nod. “I guess I earned that, and I don’t know if I’ve it in me to live up to the standard you do so it may be that we never do shake.”

  They stared unblinking at each other until Mila could almost smell the testosterone in the air. “Let’s just give it a rest for right now, and go see the Tree. None of this may matter once we do, because I haven’t got a clue if there’s anything I can do.” She hooked her thumb toward the freezer door. “But won’t you get fired if you don’t get back?”

  The grin reappeared on his face. “Nah. I actually had the rest of the day off anyway. I just told Tal that so I could get back and party with me mates. But this sounds like a much more interesting way to spend the evening, so—” He waved his hand and gave an exaggerated bow. “Shall we?”

  Mila nodded agreement and Tal grudgingly did, as well. “Is it far from here? Does one of you have a car?”

  Apparently, she’d either said the wrong thing, or the right one, to cheer them both up, because they let out nearly identical chuckles. “No cars down here, luv.” Jason looked her up and down quickly, but with no interest attached. “And that jacket has to go. Too noticeable. That’s why those men thought you an easy target. It’s obvious you’re not from around here. They just didn’t know where you came from. I think me mum has something in the back that might work. She’s a bit shorter than you, and broader … but since the magic’s nearly gone, few can claim to be fashion plates.”

  The garment he handed her moments later was a beautiful hunter green, and though heavy as wool, was silky smooth. But when she put it on, she realized it was a confusing mass of cloth with holes and fasteners that made no sense. After two failed tries at wrapping herself in it, to Jason’s supreme amusement, Tal finally came to her rescue.

  “Here, let me. This goes across like so and ties under here.” He reached under her arm with exquisite slowness and slid his hand from shoulder to waist while staring into her eyes with a look that made her breath catch. She didn’t even realize he was attaching one long length to a fastener until the cloak suddenly balanced and stopped making her feel as though she was tipping forward. In addition to the shivers his hands provided, he stayed close enough to smell his wonderful cologne each time she took a breath—a lemony sage blend with some sort of musk. “And then this flap comes across the shoulder to hook here. You see?”

  He stepped back, looking as flushed as she felt. He stepped to the table and slugged down the rest of his juice, as though dying of thirst. When she lifted her arms, she realized that the various folds had become sleeves. It all made sense now, and she experimented to see if she could later undo the mess and reattach it. While still feeling swallowed in the thing, it made her smile because it reminded her of when she used to disappear under her father’s coats in the closet during hide-and-seek.

  Jason looked on approvingly as she lifted the hood onto her head and then twirled to get a feel for it. “That would look right smart on you if not for it being a bit too short.”

  She looked down at the hem, which came to about midcalf. “Is it too short? It looks about right to me.” But then she looked at theirs, and realized that it should just touch the top of her shoes. “Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I sort of like it this way, for what it’s worth. Easier to walk in.”

  “That’s good,” Tal commented, “since we’ll be walking several miles.” He looked at Jason, his jaw clenching and then loosening after a deep breath. He was trying to make nice, which she appreciated. “Unless you happen to have a gate that will get us there quicker?”

  Again that fast grin from behind dark lips, showing brilliant white teeth with just a few crooked bottom ones. “As a matter of fact, I do. It comes out a few blocks away, anyway. See how valuable it is to know me?”

  Tal snorted with equal parts annoyance and amusement. “Well, let’s have at it then. Lead the way. And while we’re traveling—Mila, you might as well explain what the paper was you showed me earlier.”

  Jason hadn’t seen it yet, so she pulled it out once more and passed it over his shoulder as they descended to the lower floor of the shop. He shook his head when he passed it back at the foot of the stairs. “If this has significance, I’m afraid it’s beyond me.”

  “Well,” she said as she tucked it back in her pocket on her way out the door between them … since she had to return it to the vault eventually. “Either there are two men in the world with that singularly unusual name, or somehow a man who should be confined in the tightest prison in your world managed to pop topside in 1964 to change his name and then wander back behind his bars. The courts here used to require the physical appearance of the person before the judge in name changes.”

  That made both men stop and stare at each other for a long moment on the sidewalk outside. Tal spoke first, but it was pretty obvious Jason was thinking the same thing. “That’s not possible. It must be coincidence.”

  She nodded and stepped past them just to get moving again. Jason corrected her direction by turning her shoulders with firm guidance. “I would have thought that, too, at first. But this particular person happens to be an heir to a major hotel in the city—except the hotel owner didn’t know he had an heir until David showed up. And David Pierce is the only client of our firm who has never been inside our offices. The partners always go to visit him … wherever he might be at the time. I’d never really thought much about it and had just presumed they went to see him at the hotel, but now I’m wondering. According to Tom Harris, one of the original partners in our firm, Myron Sanders had a lot of witchy clients who were shoestring relatives. Apparently, there were always problems when they came in—with the plumbing, furnace, and with potted plants.”

  “Sanders,” Jason mused, turning his head back slightly from where he’d walked past Mila. “Could be descendants of the house of Saunders mage clan from down near Brighton, I suppose.”

  Tal shook his head as they followed Jason to an old iron gate near what looked to be a stone dumpster—or maybe it was an incinerator. “I suppose. There were probably a few from that clan who didn’t come down after the joining decree.”

  “But to what end? Did he somehow get out and later get captured again? Wouldn’t there have been news reports, or at least rumors?” Jason stopped in front of what looked like a padlocked door through a high stone fence. He started forward again, but then got an impish look on his face before waving his hand in invitation to Tal. “Care to go first?”

  Tal shrugged and stepped past her, then walked forward with authority … smack into the iron gate with a thud that made her wince and fight not to laugh.

  “Oops,” Jason said lightly before winking at her. “But you’ve no alchemist blood in you, have ya, mate?”

  Talos gave the other man a sarcastic grimace while rubbing his nose lightly. “Funny.”

  Jason bit his lower lip in an impressive struggle not to laugh out loud and Mila found herself fighting not to giggle. “Yeah, actually it was.” He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “C’mon then, lad. Hold me hand like a good boy so we can go through.”

  He growled low and glared, making Mila realize he�
�d had his pride bruised. “Oh, c’mon Tal, he’s just teasing you a little.” She reached out and grabbed his hand and then put her other one in Jason’s waiting one. She was starting to like Jason despite her better judgment. He reminded her a lot of Candy’s brother Tim when they were young—always the prankster. Well, she’d lived through that, and had managed a few in return, so she could do it again.

  Jason grinned and winked at her again and then looked at Tal with raised brows. “Oh, I like this one, Tal. She’s got spirit.” As he popped his fingers outward and the gate began to glow an eerie brownish-black, he looked down at her once more. “Sure you’re not Irish, lass?”

  She shook her head and squeezed his hand lightly. “Ukrainian. We’re where the Irish learned it.” The resulting laugh from both men was lost in the roar of sound as they stepped through the gate. She’d noticed it when she went through the gate in the library, and wondered what made it. Was it wind rushing by from moving incredibly fast to span the distance? Or could it be that there was something between here and there, some magical location that they stepped through? She’d asked Tal the previous night, and he’d confessed having never thought much about it.

  They emerged at the edge of what had once been a park. But the grass was unkempt and had gone to seed, the carefully pebbled paths overgrown and littered with animal droppings. It made her realize she hadn’t seen many animals down here. Just a few raccoons and what had looked like hairless hamsters. No cats, no dogs … not even birds. It contributed to the eerie sense of this place, and made her wonder what it had looked like when it was normal.

  Whether the wondering caused it, or she just finally noticed it through her mulling, she heard the sound. Her head raised and turned to the choir of voices that weren’t voices at all. It was similar to the sound the duszat had made on the mantel, but this was deeper, richer—like comparing a first-grade chorus to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Her heart sped up as the sound filled her. She had to get closer.

  She tightened her hands on the others and moved forward quickly, pulling them along. “C’mon. I need to go see what’s making the sound.”

  But apparently Tal and Jason couldn’t hear it because they just stared at her quizzically. Tal shrugged and looked around. “What sound?”

  Mila just shook her head and pulled her hands free of their palms, knowing she’d never be able to describe it. “Never mind. But I know where the Tree is.”

  It wasn’t until she felt the hood fly from her head that she realized she was running … racing toward the Tree with the same enthusiasm as she used to dash for the playground. Joyous, eager, and with the firm knowledge the effort would be worth it.

  It wasn’t what she expected—even though she hadn’t realized she had an expectation. The Tree of Life was massive, the trunk as big around as a sequoia, yet with branches far too short and frail for its size. The leaves were in places broad and wide as an elephant’s ear, and in other places as small and delicate as a rosebush. I don’t even know what species this is. And if this is a slave to the real Tree, does the parent look the same? She couldn’t even imagine where she might find it, since she’d never seen anything like it in a tree species book.

  Arrangements of flowers, now-rotting fruit, and other items were heaped around the Tree’s base, offerings from people who had fled when their prayers weren’t answered, and tromped on and scavenged by those who remained. Jason and Tal reached her as she stood and stared at it while catching her breath. Both of them let out whooshes of air that said how fast they’d been running. “See what you mean ’bout needing a shorter cloak, lass,” Jason said between gasps. “Didn’t imagine those little legs could move that fast.”

  “I do a lot of walking,” she replied absentmindedly, before reaching out one hand toward the Tree. She could feel the life here, sense it the same way as a wall in the darkness. She closed her eyes to allow her inner eye to see more clearly. They were right that the Tree was dying. She could see it in the pale blue bands where leaves had withered and wounds gaped in rotting bark. “It’s not dead yet, though. It can be saved.” She muttered the words, not taking her gaze from it as she searched for what Viktor had claimed was here—eggs in the branches that she needed to replace. She wasn’t even positive she’d spoken out loud until she heard Jason’s pleased response.

  “Brilliant. Absolutely bleedin’ brilliant. Go on, then. Tell us what needs doin’.”

  She stepped forward, hearing the crunch of leaves and wilted flowers underfoot, smelling the sickly sweet scent of rotten fruit. Her inner eye searched each branch in turn, looking for the egg. She had to find one, or she couldn’t even hope to start. The manuscript Baba had left had only revealed the recipe for the dyes and steps to create a duszat, but without any indication of what designs to put on the eggs. Perhaps that was knowledge she was supposed to already have … but she didn’t. If she could just find one of these, somehow see what they looked like through bark and wood, she could reproduce them.

  Wait. There! She saw a flash of a rune as she reached the nearest limb and passed her fingers over the rough bark. Yes, a double straight line that cut across the pattern of growth rings. “The ribbon of eternity.” But there was a jagged breaking of the image, where a secondary branch had sprouted out. She tried to turn it in her mind, moved around the branch, trying to see what else was on the egg.

  “Blimey, Tal. Would you look at that?” Her ears heard Jason speak, his tone reverent, but she couldn’t be distracted from her task enough to turn to whatever he saw. She could only hope they would keep her safe from any problems until she was done. She dropped to her knees under the branch, shuffling through the scattered gifts until she touched ground. She followed the cracked edges of the fragment with her mind and fingers. Dots inside circles, over a basketweave. But what’s the main theme?

  She extended her focus, reaching further around the branch, realizing the egg must have broken and moved long ago. Finally she found it near the trunk where it was put so long ago … the mostly whole shell. The runes glowed bright in her head, so close she could nearly touch them. A sun pattern with trees and crude stag outlines. Heat, warmth, and life. This must be the mage guild’s limb. It was a complicated pattern but elegantly done. The artist who’d made this egg was obviously extremely skilled. She only wished she could see the actual egg to know what colors they’d used. But she’d have to rely on the manuscript and hope for the best.

  But wait! There was one tiny piece that had worked out of the branch over the years. It was just at the edge of the bark. She reached forward to yank it out with her fingernails, being careful not to break it. But when she tugged, the fragment pulled back. A tingling flowed over her fingers, strong enough to pull a gasp from her throat.

  “Craters! Help me get her out of there, Jason!” She heard Tal’s panicked voice and her eyes shot open. What she saw made her gasp and fight not to scream. Her hand was deep inside a crack in the branch, her fingertips still clutching the egg fragment. But the Tree had reacted and had closed bark over her hand. Even as she watched, rough scales were crawling up her arm toward her shoulder, as though the Tree was trying to absorb her inside it.

  Tal grabbed her around the waist while Jason got her feet and they both began to pull her away. But the Sacred Tree wasn’t to be denied that easily, for the pressure on her hand increased, tugging her in. She tried to release the egg fragment, in case this was some sort of self-defense spell the original Parask artist had put in place. She tried the counterspell Baba had taught her. “Avatay!” and heard both Jason and Tal spout words that had no meaning to her.

  “Arasht!” from Tal, and “Meeyelk mesha!” from Jason. Heat flowed over her with each casting, and at last the combination of them pulling and casting, along with her frantically yanking her arm in circles cracked the bark. They all flew backward to land in a smelly pile of rotten squash, breathing hard and fast.

  Her arm was still mostly covered by bark, and she peeled it off with her other hand, revealing
skin that was pink and shiny, like a healing scar.

  Tal helped her get the rest of the wood stripped from her fingers, and she realized she still had the bit of shell between her fingers. She dropped it into her other hand to see her prize. Even after all the years, the colors were still brilliant. Lacquered black, ruby red, and yellow bright as the sun were cut across with lines of white. She nodded her head, staring at the patterns, her mind already on the task of re-creating it. But Tal’s flat, hollow voice dragged her back to the present.

  “So it’s true then.” He was staring at the bit of eggshell in her hand, his face a mask of conflicting emotions. She didn’t know what to say … how to make better something so devastating as the end of his whole belief system.

  She opened her mouth to say something—anything to get that pained look off his face when a faint voice came from the distance. “Help me! Oh someone please help me with her!”

  It was obvious that both Tal and Jason were trained police officers, because their entire demeanor changed into alert professionals. She followed their gaze to a pair of women—one fair skinned, one dark, in long red cloaks, stumbling toward them. The pale, elderly woman was supporting the other, who was having a hard time keeping her feet. She was obviously ill, and Mila closed her eyes once more to read their auras. It wasn’t just what she saw that panicked her, but the worried voices of the men on either side of her that revealed their identities.

  Jason’s voice came first as she watched his energy aura shift in her mind’s eye. Patterns swirled and flowed as he raced forward to catch the dark woman as she collapsed. Her robe opened as he turned her over, revealing the dark red tendrils of Tin Czerwona crawling over her body. “Mum?”

  Then came Tal’s voice, also filled with dread. “Sybil? Mom, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”