by Gail Dayton
“Blanket?” Amanusa pulled those over her shoulders closer.
“Cutting a hole in it. I thought my coat and jacket would give me away as something other than lackwit, but I didn’t want to come in only my shirtsleeves.”
“Blankets are easily replaced. It was quick thinking.”
“I’ve played the idiot before.”
She felt his shrug more than saw it as he dismissed the compliment. She knew she should pull away, tuck her feet under the blankets. She had no real reason to trust him. Except that she had slept.
In this place, surrounded by memories of horror, pain, and death, Amanusa had slept. Soundly. Uninterrupted until—until Jax left the tent. Something in her trusted him. Maybe even… liked him. And that disturbed her. Confused her.
“What happened this afternoon?” He held tight to her feet, almost clinging. “What did I say?”
“Nothing. Yvaine taught me to heal wounds.” Amanusa’s mouth twisted in an unseen smile. “Spit magic, not blood.”
“You heard Yvaine?” Jax’s voice held suppressed horror.
Amanusa didn’t blame him, given what the woman had done to him, how tightly she. had bound him so that even his manhood was not his own. “She spoke with your voice. It wasn’t you speaking. The difference is… marked.”
“And have you decided?” He spoke quietly, softer than before. “Will you learn the magic?”
Chapter 4
“Yes,” Amanusa said before she understood that she had indeed decided. The magic called to her. Whispered her name. “But not here. Not from Yvaine. This place is too dangerous for you to have any more fits. Even with the protection you just built. Unless it’s something you can teach me on your own, like the spell we just did, I want no more lessons here.”
“Yes, Miss.” Jax dipped his head in his servant’s bow. Amanusa could just see it. “I can teach you how to ride the blood, which is the beginning of justice.” He paused. “I know you want justice. I can feel you crying out for it.”
“Justice,” she said. “Not revenge.”
“Sometimes, it looks much the same.”
She pulled her feet back and folded them under her. “Then teach me.”
“Tomorrow.” He moved back near the door. “It’s not always a gentle ride. This night is too old. You need rest for tomorrow.” He slid his tarpaulin nearer the tent opening and stood there, hunched over, until Amanusa lay down on her cot.
“How long will they keep you here?” He stretched across the doorway.
“Until Costel is out of danger. That’s what Szabo usually does.” She wrapped herself tighter in her blankets.
“Will he live?”
“If the magic you taught me works like you said.” She sighed. “It will be a miracle if he does. Belly wounds…”
“The magic will work.” He fell silent.
Amanusa wanted to ask how he could be so sure, but decided she didn’t want to hear the answer.
———
The next day was spent checking on Costel, changing Szabo’s bandages and those of the others who’d let their minor injuries suppurate, and hunting the herbs that insisted on clinging to high mountain slopes rather than growing placidly in a garden plot. Jax made a bulky shadow, but Amanusa found herself grateful for his presence, and not only for his beast-of-burden talents.
After last night, she trusted Jax a bit more. Maybe more than a bit. He’d shed blood to keep her safe. Not much, but blood nonetheless. She’d inspected the scratch on his thumb in the morning’s light and almost laughed at his sly request that she lick it whole again. She did lick her own thumb and rub it over his small injury. Even if she did not completely trust him—and she didn’t—she trusted Jax more than she did anyone else in this hellhole.
As darkness deepened, Amanusa left Miruna to watch Costel through the night with instructions to spoon more broth and willow-bark tea into him if he woke again. She began to be cautiously optimistic that Costel would indeed survive his terrible belly wound. That did not explain the bubbles of tension that simmered along her nerves. She strolled with false casualness toward her tent.
“Amanusa,” Teo bellowed. “You do not drink with us?”
“Not tonight, Teo,” she called back and stepped through the magical perimeter surrounding the tent. It enfolded her lovingly as she passed through it, then solidified again into shimmering protection.
“You will make us think you don’t love us.” His teasing shout seemed to carry underlying threat.
“I love you all, Teo.” She blew him a mocking kiss. “I just don’t like you very much.”
Jax eased up behind her, so close that his blanket-cloak brushed her hand. He stood straighter than his awkward madman’s stance and Amanusa could feel the hostility simmering in him. Dear Lord, she did not need him starting anything tonight. Dead Yvaine hadn’t turned him completely eunuch. He had a man’s possessive jealousy.
“Go inside,” she told him. “You’re only making things worse.”
He snarled, lip curling, eyes fastened on Szabo’s second-in-command, but he obeyed her.
“Is that the secret?” Teo shouted. “You only fuck the feebleminded now? Half-men?”
Amanusa swallowed the hot-tempered retorts crowding her tongue. She had a hundred of them, a thousand, beginning with the size of brains compared to the size of—but she didn’t dare use them. Even with the protection Jax had built for her.
She was tired of it. Tired of swallowing her temper and choosing every word. Tired of this place. Tired of this life.
And Jax waited inside the tent with something new. Fresh magic. Powerful. Different. Suddenly she wondered why she’d ever hesitated.
“Good night, Teo.” She turned to walk the few paces to the tent’s opening.
“Don’t you walk away while I’m talking!” Teo’s voice came closer, grew louder. “Come here, woman. I’m talking to you!”
Amanusa ducked inside, stomach churning, just as Szabo snapped out Teo’s name. The outlaw fell silent, and after a moment she heard the crunch of footsteps walking away again.
Her knees crumpled and she reached out for… for… she didn’t know. Something. Anything.
Jax caught her trembling hand. He helped her to the cot. He brought her a tin cup of tea, blowing on it to cool it before he handed it to her. He wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and knelt to unlace her shoes and ease them off.
“Thank you.” She took a sip of the tea, huddling ‘round its warmth. She didn’t know why she should be so chilled; the night hadn’t yet stolen away the day’s warmth. “I feel so silly.”
“That man means you harm.” Jax set her stocking-clad feet on his thighs again and began to rub them warm. “It’s natural to be afraid, especially since you have not had the magic to protect yourself. I don’t know what he said, but I heard how he said it. We have work to do tonight.”
Amanusa frowned as she sipped again. “I thought you understood Romanian.”
He gave her a crooked smile, his rubbing changing from warmth-inducing to deep, penetrating kneading. Heaven. “I understand you. I can tell when you’re speaking—Romanian, is it? But I don’t understand them when they speak it. Helps with the simpleton role.” He patted her toes as he set her second warmed, soothed foot back on his leg. “Finish up the tea and lie down. Better that way for your first ride, I think.”
Now Amanusa was the obedient one as she drained her cup and handed it to Jax. He stretched his arm past the door flap to set it on the table outside while she stretched out on her back.
“There we go.” He tucked the blankets close around her feet. “Arms out,” he said. “At least for now.”
“Explain what we’re doing. What does it mean to ‘ride the blood’?”
Crow walked into the tent and cocked his beady eye at them, as if checking to see what they were about, then turned and hopped out again, apparently satisfied. Jax chuckled as he sat on the ground near Amanusa’s head, looping his long arms around his upthrust
knees.
“Exactly what it sounds like,” he said. “You will follow the blood—yours—” He pointed at her. “Inside the subject—me—” He turned his finger toward himself. “And ride it. It’s one of the foundations of blood magic.
“When you ride, you can search out hidden thoughts, hidden illness—whatever you need to find. It’s how the sorceress obtains justice. Secrets are impossible to keep when you ride another’s blood. You can heal while riding the blood, though it’s difficult and requires more blood from you.”
He paused. “Death—the execution of justice—requires only a tiny drop. Which is why I will take more from you than that.”
“Why only a drop?”
Jax met her eyes a moment, before looking back at his loosely clasped hands. “Yvaine never explained it to me. That I can remember.”
Amanusa shivered at the reminder of the magic he bore.
“But I think it’s because the small amount allows the sorceress to maintain her distance. More blood means a closer binding.”
“So how much did you take from Yvaine?”
He ducked his head between hunched shoulders. “Over the years? Seems like gallons, but I’m sure it wasn’t so much.”
“Will her magic interfere with this? With what we do now?”
“It shouldn’t, or she would not have told me to do it.” He unbuckled his belt. In another man it would make Amanusa run away in alarm. Now, she rolled onto her side and watched him.
“It was the last thing she told me, when I came to her before they burned her. ‘Have her ride your blood,’ she said. ‘Soon as you can. Don’t wait. Teach her to ride your blood.’ Then she sent me away or they’d have burned me too.”
His matter-of-fact tone sent more shivers crawling up Amanusa’s back as he opened a hidden pocket in his belt and pulled out a small silver object and showed it to her.
It was flat, about as long as the tip of her forefinger at its sharp point, and twice as wide where it spread out at the base below. The chased metal was tarnished almost black at the base, but the point gleamed silver-white.
Jax rubbed at the tarnish. “I haven’t had this out since Yvaine gave it to me. Haven’t thought about it, to be honest, but it’s good enough for tonight. I’ll polish it later.”
“What is it?”
“Yvaine’s lancet.” Jax began gently bending the broad, flat sides down, shaping them into a circle. “Now, it’s yours.”
Amanusa blew out a breath, wishing she could calm her nerves. She spoke lightly, to hide their state. “So far, Yvaine’s bequeathed me a man and a lancet. What else?”
“Well, there’s the tower.” Jax concentrated on his task, glancing now and again at her hand trailing over the edge of the cot. “And the land that goes with it, of course. And the books—quite a lot of those. She had a fair bit of jewelry too. That should be all right. No one’ll have gone into the tower. Then there’s the bank accounts—”
“Wait, wait.” She caught Jax’s arm to make him stop fiddling with the lancet thing and look at her. “I was joking.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t. All of Yvaine’s possessions come to you, since she had no other heirs. Council law. Possessions—gold and jewelry and such—can be left to heirs of the body, if there are any. But in any case, a magician’s workshop—Yvaine’s tower—and all the magic items go to the magician’s apprentice. You. In Yvaine’s case, you get everything. The money and jewels, the books, the instruments—glassware, lancets, and such—and me.”
“You’re not a possession.”
He winked at her. “No, I’m a magical item.”
Amanusa huffed out a breath of laughter as Jax made a few more adjustments to the lancet. She could almost like this man, and how was that possible?
To be honest, she knew. He could make her laugh, even when she didn’t particularly want to. He warmed her feet. He made her—somehow—feel safe. She didn’t trust the liking any more than she trusted the man.
“There.” A world of satisfaction swam in his voice. “May I have your hand?”
Bemused, she held it out.
“No, your other. You’re right-handed. I want the right.” Jax lifted her hand hanging off the cot. He slid the lancet over her forefinger and squeezed, tightening it a fraction more until it fit snugly. The broad flat section that had extended to either side of the instrument now curved around to hug her finger, while the sharp point extended beyond it to create an artificial claw.
Jax let her examine it. “You’ll use your right hand as a source of blood eventually, but you’ll want to take it most often from the left. Not because of any difference in the blood, but because many times, you won’t want to impair the use of your right. There are other places to draw of course, but for small amounts, fingers work quickest and best.”
The designs wrapped in silver around her finger included ancient words—Latin perhaps. She’d seen Latin written in churches, though not these words. They twined around tiny lilies and skulls. The whole of it sent shivers skittering through her. No wonder people feared sorcery if it could frighten even its practitioners.
“What do the words say?” She let him work the lancet off her finger.
“No idea.” He sent her a crooked smile. “Might have known once but—” He lifted one broad bony shoulder. “We’ll have to look it up together, when we get to those books. I’ll draw the blood, all right? Until you learn how deep for how much.”
“Yes, all right.” Amanusa gave him her hand again, the correct one this time, her left.
Jax separated out her middle finger, the longest, and looked up at her with the lancet poised over her work-roughened fingertip. “Ready?”
Mutely, she nodded.
“Breathe in,” he said. “Hold it an instant, then let it out. Focus on your body. Hear your heart beating your blood throughout. Feel me holding your hand, your finger. Feel the sensations in your finger, the air around it, the warmth inside it, the hand that touches it—”
As he said the word “touches,” the sharp point of the lancet drove into the plump pad of her fingertip. Amanusa cried out, her hand jerking reflexively, but Jax held tight. Because she had been so focused on her finger, it hurt more.
“All right?” Jax watched her from beneath frowning brows. “Shall I stop?”
Amanusa bit her lip as she shook her head. The pain wasn’t so much. She’d cut herself worse—nearly to the bone at least twice, and had the scars to show. It was just that she’d been concentrating so hard on her finger and its senses when he lanced it.
“These are the words.” Jax squeezed her fingertip and blood welled up to glisten in a fat bead.
“Blood of my blood,” she repeated the words he gave her. “Carry my soul safe with thee. Be with me. Answer me. Even as you journey without. My blood. My heart. My will.”
Magic stirred. Deep inside her, something blossomed, opening to the magic’s call. Warmth glowed through her and she followed its path through her body.
“Can you feel it?” Jax’s voice came from very far away. “The magic?”
Amanusa started to nod, but she feared her head might wobble right off her neck. The warmth hadn’t gone that way yet. She started to turn, to make sure her head was properly attached. But something pulled her the other way.
“Sorceress. Miss Whitcomb.”
That was Jax. Her servant. Her manservant. Amanusa blinked her eyes. Yes, there he was, his head floating in front of her. No, it was attached to his shoulders too. Something called, tugged at her.
“Do you feel the magic, sorceress?”
Carefully, Amanusa shaped her lips, pushed breath from her lungs. “Yes.” A whisper.
“Follow it. Sweep it into the blood—this blood.” He held up her hand and she saw the scarlet bead quivering on her finger, on the verge of trickling down its length.
“Yes-s-sss,” she whispered. That was the call, the urge. The magic wanted to go into that droplet of blood. She let it go, giving way to the need
, and she flowed through her body, down her arm, out her hand to the blood that adorned her finger.
“Pull back now.” Jax quivered, his voice the tiniest bit shaky. “The magic is in the blood. It will answer your call. Pull back.”
How? Amanusa wallowed in the glowing warmth. She hadn’t felt anything so lovely in so long. Had she ever? Even the bum felt nice. It did burn a little—no, a lot. It burned.
She gasped, took a step back somehow, and as the cool air swept over her skin, she could think again.
“Sorceress—” Jax touched her cheek, lightly with just the barest tips of his fingers and she gasped again, jerking away.
Her skin felt raw, flayed from her body. The edges of—of what? Her soul? Her mind? Her self? All of those things together felt scorched. Seared by the magic’s heat. It hurt, and at the same time, it felt good. Glorious. Warming all the frozen corners of her life.
“Are you well, sorceress?” Jax reached out again and she turned her face away.
“Well enough. Your touch hurts.”
He spat some oath in a language she didn’t know. “Magic burns. You should not have stayed with it so long. Didn’t you hear me tell you to pull back?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know how.” She could speak properly again. It hurt a bit, talking. Everything hurt a bit.
Jax swore again. His hand holding hers jostled, and the fat drop of blood began to slide down her finger. He swore yet again when he saw it and tilted her hand to slow its path. “Do you want to stop? The magic is in the blood. It won’t burn you now. But we can stop if you’d like.”
“Can you feel it?”
“What? The magic?” The brown-flecked blue of his eyes searched hers. “When it went into the blood, I felt it then. Strong magic. Do you want to go on? I can tell you what to do, but I can’t tell you how to do it. Perhaps we should wait.”
Amanusa shook her head. A slight scorching was nothing next to the power she’d felt roll through her. “I managed to pull back. I can work out how to do the rest. I want to learn. Besides—” She wiggled her bloody finger. “Something tells me we shouldn’t waste this.”
He held motionless a moment longer, then he lifted her hand to his mouth. His gaze never leaving hers, he licked his tongue along the brief blood trail. Then he wrapped his mouth around her finger.
