by Gail Dayton
He held her gaze a moment, then gave her a solemn nod and hopped out of the carriage to direct the unloading of their trunk, and the box he’d bought for the machine, and Crow in his cage, before helping her down.
The riverboat was neat and streamlined, with a small paddle wheel in the back. Their tiny cabin had two bunks against the wall and barely enough room for Amanusa’s skirts in what remained. They saw their luggage stored in the cabin and returned to stroll on the aft promenade while the boat’s crew cast off from the dock. No Inquisitors appeared, before or after the riverboat turned out into the current and chuffed away up river, leaving Budapest and Kazaryk behind. She hoped.
When they retired to their minuscule cabin that night, Amanusa hadn’t yet thought enough to have that promised conversation with Jax. Everything was mixed up with the horrors of her past, and what had happened since Jax walked out of the forest and into her life.
What she thought about things was tangled up in how she felt about things, and how she thought she ought to think and feel, until she didn’t know what was up and what was down. Left and right had departed long ago and she wasn’t any too sure about inside or outside. Several days passed with that muddle churning inside her while Hungary and then Austria drifted by on either side of the boat.
“The captain says we’ll be reaching Vienna tomorrow.” Jax leaned down to murmur in Amanusa’s ear as the gentlemen joined the ladies in the salon after dinner one evening.
“I know. I have ears.” Guilt instantly consumed Amanusa. She’d been in a nasty mood since they got on this silly boat, and she’d been taking it out on Jax, who deserved far better. Especially since he never responded in kind.
“I’m sorry.” She laid her hand on his arm as he straightened, hoping he understood that she truly was sorry. “You’re too good to me, putting up with my moods.”
His smile touched his lips, glinted in his eyes. “You have much to be moody about.” He came around the settee and offered his arm. “Walk with me?”
She smiled back, grateful for the forgiveness. “Of course.”
Jax took her out onto the promenade where the creak of the stern paddle wheel and the splash of the water would hide their conversation from the other passengers. “The only reason I mentioned Vienna—if I am going to call magic for your protection, it should be tonight. Madame Villet—”
He named the widow who Amanusa suspected had never been married, with her brazen manner and not-quite-respectable fashion. “She has indicated a willingness for me to visit her cabin.” Jax paused by the rail, staring out at the deep blue of the midsummer twilight. “But I must have your permission in order to do what is necessary.”
Amanusa’s insides churned furiously, both her mind and her stomach. Her fingers dug into Jax’s forearm.
“I will not hurt her, Amanusa.” He covered her hands with his other and the assurance of his touch allowed her to relax her grip. “I promise that Madame Villet will exper—”
“But you’re mine.” The words popped out of her mouth so quickly, her hands couldn’t clap themselves over it fast enough to keep them inside. Oh dear heaven, that couldn’t be what had her so mixed up about all this, could it? Some kind of possessive feeling she had for Jax? She didn’t want to own him. She didn’t.
Jax held motionless a moment longer, then slowly turned to stare at her, the blue-green of his eyes—no brown flecks at all—shining in the stern lamps. “What did you say?”
She couldn’t say it again. Couldn’t believe she’d said it the first time. She shook her head at him, eyes wide, hands still clasped over her mouth.
“I am yours, Amanusa,” he said so quietly she could scarcely hear him over the splashing of the water. “It is because I am yours, because I am bound to you with magic, that I am able to call this magic for you—”
“But I don’t want you to.” The words came out muffled, squeezing past her hands.
Gently, Jax peeled her hands from her mouth and held them in his. “What?”
She was better than this. Braver than this. She had faced down Szabo and his outlaws for six years. Somehow, that had not been as difficult or as frightening as this, as explaining—or even understanding—how she truly felt about—about things.
She summoned up all her courage. “I don’t want you to.”
Jax had to bend his head closer to hear her. When he heard, he shook it, looking up at her again. “Amanusa, if magicians in Vienna have set up another ambush, you need the protection this will provide you.”
“I know. I just—I can’t—” She twisted her hands so that she held his hands too, and tightened her grip in frustration at her inability to explain things to either one of them. “When I think about—about you, doing that. With her. With anyone—”
She had to rub a hand over her knotted stomach. “It makes me sick. Not because of what you’re doing. I know it’s not rape and I know you can make her like it, and that’s what makes me so sick, because you’re mine. You’re my Jax. Mine.”
She was clutching the hand she still held to her chest, staring up at him, trying to find her way through to understanding. “Because it’s not ‘just’ sex. Sex is more important than that.
“It has to be. How else could a simple kiss call up so much magic? Why else would—would what happened to me have me so afraid of sex for so many years? I think sex touches more than just your body, Jax. I think it touches your soul. And I do not want that woman to lay one red-painted fingernail on your soul.”
Jax stared at Amanusa a very long moment while she blinked back tears. Strong emotion of any kind brought them on, and she hated it, because the outlaws had always seen her tears as their victory. Somehow, she didn’t mind so much exposing her weakness, her emotions to Jax.
He swallowed visibly. “I—” He had to stop and clear his throat. “I would like very much to kiss you right now.”
Amanusa’s lips curved in a faint smile. “I think I would like that. I would like that very much.”
He lowered his head, she lifted hers, and their lips touched. He let go of her hand and she laid it on his chest over the strong, swift thumping of his heart. His hand rose to cup her face, hold her in place while he took possession of her mouth.
This time, when his tongue swept over her lower lip, she didn’t startle or pull away. She opened her mouth and let him in, let him rub over her tongue and invite her to join in the sensual play. Jax’s kisses felt new and fresh. Untainted, and therefore all the more precious.
He had an arm around her back, she realized, holding her up, holding her against him while his other thumb stroked along the pulse in her neck. They kissed another moment, mouths melding, tongues teasing, until he drew away into a series of kisses across her cheek toward her ear. Then he wrapped her in his arms, laid his cheek atop her head and simply held her.
And magic bloomed all around them.
Amanusa had only to gather it in and give it focus in the warding spell. “Did you kiss me to call up magic?” she asked idly as the shield nestled in around them.
“I kissed you because I wanted to. But the magic is a nice bonus.” Jax turned his head to rest his other cheek on her head. “Did you kiss me for the magic? It’s all right if you did. I don’t mind.”
“I kissed you because I wanted to.” Amanusa liked being held safe in the circle of Jax’s arms. He seemed to like holding her. Her arms were squeezed between them, in the way, so she moved one of them and put it around Jax, over his frock coat, and realized that holding him was quite as nice as being held. She liked the broad solid feel of him in her arms.
“We are not private here,” Jax murmured as she laid her head on his shoulder.
“I know.” She sighed. “Perhaps that is why I’m not afraid. Because I know this can’t go too far as long as we’re out here.”
“You know I will never do anything you don’t want. If kisses are all you ever want from me, I will be happy with kisses.”
“Liar.”
His laug
hter rumbled through her, shook against her cheek. “There is no hurry. This spell will last long enough to get us through Vienna, and if it doesn’t, there are always more kisses.”
Amanusa’s lip curved between her teeth and she captured it. Her old fears—the fears she was determined to defeat—were not her only reasons to hesitate. There were old promises as well. Promises made to her mother, and to herself.
“Jax?”
“Yes, my sorceress?” he said when she didn’t go on.
“Will you marry me?”
Jax went so very still, she might have thought him made of wood or stone, rather than flesh and blood, save for the suddenly speeding beat of his heart under her hand.
“I know I am not the sort of wife a man dreams of.” She had to fill the stretched silence with something besides the splash of the paddle wheel and the thump of his pulse. “I’m too tall and too pale and not at all dainty. I’m old. Twenty-seven. I’m not untouched—but you know that. And then there is that whole sorceress-servant-binding matter. But if we do get you free of the binding, and if you don’t want to be bound any other way—being divorced is no more of a scandal than being a sorceress.”
Jax still didn’t react in any way. She wasn’t sure he breathed. His heart still beat, though, and his arms still held her, so he hadn’t fainted or died of shock.
Amanusa pulled back to look at him, to read what she could in his face. But it held absolutely nothing. Even his eyes were impossible to read. “What do you think?” She had to know.
He blinked and seemed to come alive. “Amanusa, I—I don’t know what to say.” He slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms to her elbows. That reassured her, that he kept his hold. “I—it’s not necessary.”
“Actually, it is.” She set both her hands on his chest, on the gold brocade waistcoat that looked so well on him. She savored the feel of the lean muscle beneath. That wasn’t wrong, was it? “I promised my mother. I promised myself, back when I left the outlaw camp and went to live on my own in the cottage, I promised that I would never have sex with another man unless he was my husband.”
She bit her lip, the tiny pain helping her deal with the things hidden in memory. “I knew no man would ever want to marry me, so I was safe.” She adjusted his collar which didn’t need adjusting. “I see I was right.”
“Amanusa.” Jax captured her hands, held them over his heart. “It’s not that I wouldn’t be delighted to be honored in such a way. But I am your servant. I am not your equal. You should find someone who is. Someone you can love.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes, not after exposing herself this way. She lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a listless shrug. “I don’t think I can love. I don’t know that I want to.” She pulled a hand from his grasp and fussed with his collar and tie again. “I trust you, though. That’s more important to me than love. Besides, we’ve been traveling as husband and wife. Why not make it true?”
Jax took a deep breath and let it sigh out through his nose. “I don’t see any need to decide things now. Let’s get to Scotland, to the tower. If you still want to marry, once things are sorted, then ask me again.”
It had been hard enough to ask him once, and he wanted her to do it again! No wonder women made the men do it. “If I ask you again, will you say yes?”
A smile quivered at his lips. “Yes, Amanusa. I will.” He held up his hand to stop whatever she might have intended to say. “But you can’t ask again until we reach Scotland.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t want to wait until Scotland. Vienna. I’ll wait until Vienna.”
His smile had become a grin. “That anxious to possess my lily-white flesh, are you?”
She couldn’t help laughing as she shoved herself out of his arms. “You’re such a joker. I’m laughing so hard. Ha. Ha.”
“You did laugh. I heard it.” His smile faded from his mouth, but kept up residence in his eyes. “Paris then. When we reach Paris, if you still want it, you can ask me there. But I don’t want you to take such a drastic step for fear of the Inquisition. I want you to do it for the right reasons. Or at least because of your promise to your mother.”
“You don’t think that’s the right reason?”
He touched her cheek lightly with a fingertip. “There are many reasons to marry, Amanusa, most of them good and sensible. But only one is right.”
She understood what he was trying to say, but she didn’t agree. When Jax offered his arm, she took it and strolled with him along the port side walkway back to their cabin. It was settled—as far as she was concerned, anyway.
The next morning, when they were still ten or so miles out of Vienna, Amanusa lured Jax to their cabin for a kiss and a reinforcement of the protective magic spell. This time, perhaps because she felt safe in the cabin, she was able to focus on the kiss, rather than her fears. She was all too aware that it was Jax kissing her. It was Jax who captured her face between his hands, Jax who opened himself for her tongue’s timid exploration, Jax who whispered lovely things she couldn’t remember after the magic swelled. Jax made the magic possible.
Vienna was stuffed full of Inquisitors, both the regularly employed and recently drafted types. Not one of them took a second look at either Amanusa or Jax. If the Inquisition had set up a magical ambush around the city, they sailed right through it unnoticed and untouched.
Kazaryk must have remained in Budapest. Surely he had. Hungary was part of the Austrian Empire, but the Hungarian Inquisition—any Hungarian institution—was not considered the equal of its corresponding Austrian organization. Perhaps the Austrians thought Kazaryk’s news a product of hysteria. Amanusa could only hope.
Her hair had lost the last of the pink tint by this time, and Jax’s bruises had healed, except for a bit of yellow discoloration under his eyes. They didn’t look like anyone the Inquisition might be looking for. So they exited the boat, caught a cab straight to the station, and boarded the first train bound for Paris.
———
In Paris, Harry Tomlinson stood at the edge of the dead zone, scowling at a few inches of wilted weeds. “It’s growing again,” he snarled.
“So I see.” Grey Carteret poked at the dying greenery with his walking stick, careful not to put any of his person over the boundary. “Damn.”
Then he shrugged, as if realizing his foul word didn’t fit his care-for-nothing persona. “Easy come, easy go.”
“If I thought you meant that, I’d knock your block off.” Harry propped his fists on his hips. “Why can’t they figure out what made it shrink? If we knew why it happened to start with, we’d know how to do it again. An’ wot about those machines? Are they doin’ this? What do they ‘ave to do with—with anything?”
Grey shook his head. “Maybe it’s the woman. Miss Tavis. Maybe she’s working the magic.”
Harry lifted his head and turned it to stare at Grey, long enough to make the conjurer fidget. “I know you said that just to stir me up. But I’m thinkin’ you might be right. I’m thinkin’ I might just go look Miss Elinor Tavis up, an’ if she ain’t got a wizard to apprentice her yet, I’ll offer. She can study wizardry if she don’t take to alchemy.”
Grey’s air of ennui faded into a fierce grin. “Oh, that will stir up fireworks. Sir Billy won’t like that at all. A mongrel out of Seven Dials spending time alone with his goddaughter.” He laughed. “Oh, what a show it will be.”
“Her maid can sit in on lessons.” Harry scowled more. “It’s not like I’m interested in her. Just—can she do magic? Can she stop these dead patches?”
The other man still chortled in slightly malicious glee. “You know that. I know that. And likely Miss Tavis knows it, too. She’s not exactly a diamond of the ton. But Harry, nobody will care. The gossip will be too delicious to bother with the truth.”
“I don’t give a flying goose-and-duck for gossip.” The alchemist stalked away from the dead and dying street. “An’ if Miss Tavis really wants to learn, neither will she.”
“To find Miss Tavis. No use wastin’ time.”
“What makes you think she’ll agree? She wants to be a wizard, not an alchemist. You can’t share wizard’s guild secrets with her.”
“Maybe not. Maybe we can figure out a way ‘round that later. Maybe she won’t agree to it. But it’s a chance I’m offerin’. An’ if she’s smart, if the magic is wot she really wants, she’ll take it.”
———
The train chugged its way along the banks of the Danube through eastern Austria toward the Kingdom of Bavaria. Amanusa passed some of the time with sleeping, and with coaxing Crow back into his cage for porter’s visits, but mostly she spent it learning magic from Jax. On the train, with the threat of the Imperial Inquisition rapidly retreating, she allowed Yvaine to emerge and dictate information, which Amanusa wrote down in the notebooks Jax produced for her.
Later, when Jax recovered from his fainting spell and bloody nose, she practiced it. Amanusa hoped that if she could leach all of Yvaine’s old blood from him, he would be easier to free from Yvaine’s old bindings.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle at the Bavarian border. They had to hide Crow and his cage with a bit of “don’t-look” magic. Crow wasn’t happy about being in the cage. Amanusa threatened to tie his beak closed if he didn’t stop complaining. She was only mildly shocked when the bird seemed to understand and kept quiet during the “special exit customs” inspection.
The lone Inquisitor at the border was young and untried. It didn’t take much magic to shield themselves from his inquiry. A bare hour after the halt, the train puffed on its way again. It wasn’t until after they crossed from Bavaria into the Kingdom of Wurtemburg that things began to go wrong again.
Chapter 13
The train had just started up again after its stop in Stuttgart. Crow flew back in through the window after his brief constitutional, and Amanusa called the porter in to make up Jax’s bed early. He’d been feeling ill all evening, looking far paler than usual—a pasty-gray sort of pale, rather than his healthy pinkish-pale—and it worried her. She sat up beside him for a while, to be sure he didn’t get any worse.
