New Blood

by Gail Dayton

  The soldiers in the hall slammed their makeshift battering ram into the door which splintered, and they stumbled into the room. Their cries of alarm and shouts for assistance layered under the screams of the condemned, and in the roar of noise and confusion, Amanusa and Jax slipped out of the room and out of city hall, picking up the carpetbag on their way out the front door.

  She tried to help Jax across the square, but his torso was far more tender than his limbs. He could walk, and it hurt him when she put her arm round him. She confined herself to hovering.

  As they climbed the platform to the train station, Amanusa gradually released the magic hiding herself, so she wouldn’t seem to appear out of nowhere. Keeping Jax close at her side so no one would stumble over him, she produced the tickets the boot boy had purchased for her that morning. It was last call for the last train of the day out of Nagy Szeben. The tickets secured them the last private compartment on the train. Overnight to Budapest, arriving just after noon. Surely the Inquisition wouldn’t be able to organize a pursuit so quickly. Kazaryk wouldn’t be capable of conjuring at midday. She doubted he would be capable of speech.

  At the last moment, Crow swooped in through the open compartment window and took a perch on the overhead luggage rack with a mutter. Amanusa gazed out the window as the train puffed out of the station, watching the expanding uproar of the search for the escaped prisoners sweeping around city hall, catching up more and more of the passersby in its turmoil and confusion.

  When the train was well away from town, she had the porter bring a basin of hot water so she could clean Jax up and tend his injuries. Just looking at him made her throat close up and her temper flare. They had hurt him and he was hers.

  After she finished her cleanup, she took one look at Jax’s tightly closed fists and shallow panting and pulled her lancet from her pocket. She punctured a finger, waited for the blood to well up, and touched his cheek with the two smallest fingers of her lancet-hand, brushing gingerly against his swollen lower lip with her thumb. “Open.”

  He obeyed instantly, watching her through slitted eyes as she slid her little finger into his mouth.

  “I need to see how badly you’re hurt,” she said. “I don’t like you hurting.”

  Jax rolled his tongue over her finger, once more turning the taking of her blood into a sensual event. Amanusa burned, and she wasn’t sure it was all magic. She felt peculiar, even after she swept all the heat and all the magic into the droplet of blood. She pulled back, both physically and magically.

  “If I might—” Jax caught her eye a moment before dipping his head in a seated bow. “I ask that you leave me my thoughts. They are too ugly for your eyes and ears.”

  Amanusa gave a bitter laugh. “I doubt they could be uglier than mine. But yes, of course I will leave your thoughts to you alone. Everyone should have the right to be private in his own mind.”

  His crooked, lumpy smile made her heart twist. How could he be so grateful for something so small?

  While she waited for the blood to work its way into his bloodstream, Amanusa busied herself with bespelling the outrageously expensive train-supplied vodka into her healing potion. She’d done it enough times at the camp that while it required focus, it didn’t require much time. Then she got out the pirogies she’d bought and offered them to Jax. He was grateful for the food, but insisted on sharing with Amanusa.

  With her stomach ‘knotted up so, she wasn’t very hungry, but she took a pie. Jax wouldn’t eat if she didn’t at least pretend to. Something else disturbed her peace. Something other than Jax’s injuries. She spoke his name. “Jax?”

  “Yes, my sor—Amanusa?” He pushed himself straighter.

  “At the outlaws’ camp, when I lost control of the magic—how did I lose it? Why? What did I do wrong?” She stared hard at him. “I don’t want to hear from Yvaine. You’re in no shape to endure a visit from her, so if you feel her coming on, stop.”

  He nodded, his mouth attempting a smile. “I believe that your magic controls hers now, especially with your blood in my veins again. Amanusa is my sorceress, no longer Yvaine. So when you say Yvaine shall not rise, she does not.”

  “All right then. Yvaine shall not rise tonight.” Amanusa sat back in her corner. “So where did I go wrong? Were there words I didn’t speak?”

  Chapter 10

  Many of them.

  Amanusa couldn’t see the teasing twinkle in Jax’s swollen-shut eyes, but she could hear it in his voice. She rolled her eyes at him.

  “This evening, you used the words I spoke in the room to work the magic that freed us. Do you remember them?” He stared at the pie in his hand, then took a careful bite. He didn’t speak again until after he swallowed. “When you call for justice, you must set limits. You have to say, ‘Justice for this crime and no other.’ Tell it which crimes it is judging.”

  “But doesn’t the blood of the victims, the blood used in the spell, create those limits?”

  “It can. But in the camp, you were one of those victims, and you are the sorceress. When you released the magic, you called merely for justice, which allowed the magic free rein to do what it willed. Words have power, but you have to use them.”

  “Just ordinary words? The conjurer used… strange words. Latin, or Egyptian. Something I didn’t know.”

  “For sorcery, ordinary words suffice. Yvaine experimented, using the old Latin and using only English, and the magic worked just the same. Better, actually, because the sorceress can enforce her will better if she knows what she’s saying. You can also cry payment short of death, and tell the magic where to go when it is done. You forgot that as well, in the camp.”

  Amanusa blinked at him. “Where can it go, besides into me?”

  Jax sighed, shaking his head. “Did you not listen at all to the instructions Yvaine gave you? Or to the words of my spell tonight? The spell you used?”

  “I was a trifle busy trying to hold onto the magic. They’d spilled so damn much of your blood, I had enough magic for the whole town.”

  “Yes, well…” He took a deep breath. “The magic will want to go back into you. You’re its… lodestar, perhaps. Its natural gathering place. And often, you’d be wise to let it return to you. But that much magic—you know what happened in the camp. If you need to conserve magic, or let it build, you’re better off shunting the magic into me.”

  “Oh yes, I could have carried you so easily down the mountain.”

  “It’s unlikely the magic would have knocked me unconscious. First, because I’m larger than you. And I am—when I said that I was a magical instrument bequeathed by Yvaine to her apprentice, it wasn’t a metaphor. A large portion of the magic worked on me, magic that transformed me into her blood servant, made it possible for you to use me to store excess magic.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Amanusa didn’t like the idea of using a man—Jax—as a coal bin, or an oil tank.

  “Some spells require more magic than you can contain in your own body. Though you, with your height, can contain more than Yvaine, who was quite small. I am given to understand that a wizard’s familiar works in much the same manner.”

  “Familiars are animals, not human beings.” She shook her head. She would learn about those “larger” spells later. Maybe. “But if the magic doesn’t return to me, or to you, where does it go? Where should it go?”

  “To rest. To peace. Especially if you are using blood from the dead, from a murdered victim. You should send it to find peace with the soul it belongs to. A murder victim’s blood doesn’t seek justice on those who did it no harm, but it still burns hotter than other blood, other magic.” He paused, his head lying against the high back of the seat, his legs sprawled wide.

  “Your blood has reached my veins,” he murmured. “Already it eases the pain. I did not expect that.”

  “Good. I don’t like the idea of you in pain.” Amanusa moved to sit directly in front of Jax, dusting off spilled crumbs from her uneaten pie.

  “You
said that.” Jax lifted his head and peered at her. “When you gave me your blood, you said it. Not as part of a spell. You just said it.” He pulled the rest of himself up to sit straight, staring at her. “The words alone were enough to focus your intent and create a spell.”

  The way Jax stared made Amanusa uncomfortable. “Then I suppose what you said is true. The magic works better when the sorceress understands what she’s saying.”

  “It also means you’d better be very careful of what you do say, when you’re bleeding. Or I am.”

  Dear Lord in heaven, he was right. Who knew what she might do? “Then it’s a good thing I’m not particularly chatty, isn’t it? I’ll keep my mouth shut when I bleed myself.” She summoned up a smile, felt it trickle onto her face. “Let’s see what’s happening inside you, shall we?”

  She gathered the magic, spoke the words he’d given her, and reached for the magic inside Jax. His internal organs were as battered and bruised as his outsides, or nearly so. The blows had to go through skin and muscle to reach his inside parts, but the organs were more delicate. Amanusa wished she knew more about the body and how it worked so she could understand what she saw. The magic told her there was damage, but nothing that would not heal on its own. She hoped the magic was right. Jax’s pain made her chest ache.

  “Ease his pain so he can sleep,” she whispered. “Assist his body in healing these injuries so that he is sooner whole.” She feared doing more. Feared even that might be too much.

  When she pulled back into herself, Amanusa felt drained of what little energy she had left. Jax lay sprawled on the seat, his battered face utterly relaxed for the first time since—since ever, she realized. The entire time she’d known him, he’d always had some worry or other weighing him down, wearing it on his face.

  Amanusa put a “don’t look” spell on Crow when the porter came in to make up the beds. Neither she nor Jax had eaten much, so she used the scraps to keep the bird quiet. Falling crumbs seemed to puzzle the porter a time or two, but he brushed them aside and completed his task. They would get a good night’s sleep, and they would be in Budapest in time for lunch tomorrow.

  ———

  Not far from the Paris Bourse, magicians in clumps and trickles wound their way up the stairs into a boring red brick building. A woman scurried alongside one of the men, talking earnestly, her navy blue skirts bobbing at the speed of her pace.

  “You must accept me as your apprentice, Mr. Mikkelsen,” Elinor Tavis said. “You have seen the magic I am already able to work without benefit of training. How can you deny me the opportunity to learn?”

  “I must do no such thing, Miss Tavis,” the tall, thin Norwegian replied. “Yes, you show astonishing ability, but surely you can see how impossible it is. You are a lovely young unmarried woman. My wife would not understand—”

  “I would explain it to her. I would tell her that I have absolutely no romantic interest—”

  “She would not care.” Mikkelsen interrupted her in return. “It is not your interest that would concern her.”

  “Mister Mikkelsen!” Elinor recoiled.

  “No, no. I love my wife. I am not interested in straying. And my wife knows this. But the gossip—no one else would believe any woman could be interested in magic to the exclusion of everything else. And the gossip would wound her. No, Miss Tavis. It is impossible.” He headed up the stairs, leaving Elinor behind on the cobbles.

  “But—how am I to learn?” she cried after him in despair.

  “Poor thing,” Harry Tomlinson said as he brushed past her.

  “Don’t tell me you think the man should have said yes?” Nigel Cranshaw sounded utterly appalled, climbing the steps alongside Harry and Grey Carteret, the conjurer of their delegation.

  “Why not?” Harry pushed open the door and they entered the clamor of the lobby outside the Great Hall where the conclave was meeting.

  The lobby soared two stories and stretched across the entire front of the building, paved in black-and-white diamond-patterned marble, lit by sunlight slanting through the rows of second-story windows to reflect off the mirrors lining the opposite side. Just now, it smelled overwhelmingly of the cigar smoke twisting its way through the rays of light.

  .”Because, dare I say, she’s a woman?” Grey sounded as if he didn’t particularly care either way, save for the entertainment value of a quarrel. He handed his hat into the cloakroom as they passed it, and the others followed suit.

  “So?” Harry led the way through the knots of talking, gesticulating men. “If she can do the magic, why shouldn’t she learn?”

  “Because she’s a woman!” Nigel exclaimed. “It’s unnatural. Women’s constitutions are simply not made to—”

  “Bollocks,” Harry interrupted. “I been lookin’ at the old books, tryin’ to find some cure for these dead zones. Back then, back when there weren’t any dead zones, there were all kinds of women magicians. The charter says the council will accept and train any candidate with the talent for magic. How else did I get to be a magician?”

  “Point to Harry,” Grey said cheerfully.

  Nigel sneered. “But you’re a man. The charter says nothing about accepting female apprentices.”

  “It says nothing about the sex of apprentices at all. It just says ‘any’. Seems to me ‘any’ means ‘any’.”

  Nigel stared at Harry in horror. “You’ll destroy civilization as we know it.”

  Harry’s expression went hard and grim. “No.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of the river. “Those dead zones are the death of civilization. And if we don’t figure out how to stop ‘em, they’ll keep growin’ until there’s nothin’ left at all. All the magic’ll be gone, and so will everything else. An’ if takin’ on a few female wizards’ll ‘elp stop those damned death traps, I’m all for it.”

  “Take her as your apprentice then,” Nigel snapped, “because I never will. Nor will any other wizard I know.” He stalked away.

  Grey watched him go, a speculative expression on his face.

  Harry swore and ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. “I would,” he said, “if I thought she could learn alchemy.”

  “They’re afraid,” Grey said, his voice unnaturally serious. “Wizardry is female magic. They’re afraid they’ll be surpassed if women begin taking it up again.”

  “What they ought to be afraid of is those dead zones.”

  “True, true.” Grey looked around. “Let’s go in and claim a seat and hear what the investigators have learned.”

  They’d learned a great deal, as it turned out. President Gathmann reported that dead zones all over Europe had decreased in size. The farther east the zone, the more the decrease. Of course, the farther east their inquiries ran, the more difficult it was for their investigators to travel to inspect the zones, and the fewer telegraph lines existed to send requests for information.

  Conjurer’s communication spells were working, but they occasionally took more time than a telegraph. Especially when the conjurer at the other end of the spell had less talent. Or wasn’t listening. The conclave hoped for a report from Moscow and St. Petersburg by the next day, but so far none of their questions had turned up reports of new magic being worked.

  The Hungarians were also slow in responding. The telegram had reached the council offices for the kingdom of Hungary in Budapest, but the staff there reported that all the magicians in the whole of the Austrian Empire had been called out to deal with some sort of crisis in Transylvania. The conjurers certainly weren’t paying any attention to visiting spirits. Gathmann wondered whether the crisis could have something to do with the changes in the dead zones, but no one had any way of knowing, and no one knew when the magicians might report in.

  ———

  With every hour past their train’s scheduled arrival in Budapest, as day faded into night, Jax’s worry grew. Because with every hour that ticked away toward midnight, the Inquisition’s conjurers grew stronger and their magic more powerful. Trains in Tra
nsylvania and Hungary were notorious for their failure to stick to schedule, but this seemed worse than usual. Was it deliberate? The possibilities felt ominous.

  “Perhaps we should get off the train,” he suggested for what seemed the sixty-dozenth time. “The Inquisition won’t expect us to arrive on foot.”

  “They don’t know for certain we’re arriving by train either. Or if we are, which train.” Amanusa began ticking items off on her fingers. “They can’t know for sure we’re coming to Budapest. We might have gone the other way, into Romania or Bulgaria. To Greece, maybe. They’ll have to inspect every train coming into every station. They can’t have that many Inquisitors.”

  “Process of elimination would have them focusing on Budapest,” Jax retorted. “The Hungarian Inquisition can’t look for us in Romania, since it’s part of the Ottoman Empire, not the Austrian—”

  “They can watch at the border.”

  He ignored her interruption. “And given where they know we were, in Nagy Szeben, and that the last train out that day was bound for Budapest, it’s only logical they look for us to arrive here. We should leave the train. Should have left it hours ago.”

  “But we didn’t,” Amanusa said. “We have to be almost to Budapest by now. Where do you suggest we get off?”

  “It stops for water and coal. We could get off then.”

  “And maybe it won’t stop again before we get there. Maybe they’ll think we ran back into the mountains. Maybe they’re looking for us there.”

  “Amanusa.” He sighed at her. “They think we’re both English. Where would we run but back to England? We need to get off the train.”

  She sighed back at him, turning away to brush her fingers down Crow’s feathers where he sat at the window. The bird opened an eye and complained, fluttering to the luggage rack over Jax’s head to take himself out of human reach.