by Gail Dayton
While the others were thus occupied, Jax handed Amanusa the silver vial and proceeded to shrug out of his white frock coat.
“I don’t need your blood.” Amanusa frowned at him as she pulled the disguise spell around her to veil guild secrets.
“I think you do. I think you should.” Jax laid his jacket on the nearby steps and unbuttoned his shirtsleeve. “It’s five blocks, Amanusa. Use some of my blood so you don’t have to use so much of yours. I know mine carries less power than yours, but it has more than theirs. And now that we’re husband and wife, I am even more blood of your blood, even though we haven’t yet—It might add that much more power.”
He held out his wrist, demand in his eyes. “My blood is yours, Amanusa. Use it.”
She couldn’t deny him, not when he looked at her like that, all masculine power and—and something else in his eyes that made her feel as if he held up some great iron shield for her to huddle behind. She looked away just in time to pinpoint his vein as the lancet plunged home.
He took the vial back from her numbed fingers and caught his own blood, letting it flow past five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. When she would have sealed the wound, he moved away, out of her reach, until twenty seconds had ticked by. Then he held his wrist out to her again and Amanusa slapped her damp thumb across the wound.
“Do not—” she hissed.
“Half” he growled back. “I put in half of what is needed for this. And I will do so any other time so much of your blood is required from your veins. I am not just servant anymore, Amanusa. Yes, you are still the sorceress, but I am your husband now, and I will not stand by and watch you bleed yourself dry when I have more than enough to spare.”
Shaken, trembling at his words and their vehemence, Amanusa glanced from the blazing blue of his eyes to the still-oozing wound at his wrist. He bled for her. He’d insisted on it. So she wouldn’t have to. To lessen her burden.
Raising her eyes to his again, she held his gaze as she lifted his wrist to her mouth and suckled gently at the little opening, tasting once more the lovely difference in his blood. She licked her tongue across the cut and spoke the “quick-heal” spell with her lips brushing over his skin. It made Jax shudder.
She licked the last taste of his blood from her lips, defying his scowl. “I already have your blood in my veins. A little more won’t make any difference.”
“We’ll discuss it later.” He turned away, rolling down his sleeve.
“Is it my turn yet?” Grey popped up to ask. “To work magic? Though I haven’t actually seen much sorcery besides blood-letting. Are you through?”
Amanusa shed half her shawl, thanking Elinor when she lifted it away and folded it in her arms. “Just one more bloodletting to go, and I can work the first spell. Then you, then me again to tie them all together.” She reinforced her disguise spell, encouraging the others to look away, to focus on their own magic.
Jax took the lancet from her, opening her vein before she could argue. He had to move her hand with the vial into place, to catch the blood, so quickly did he act. “This deep,” he murmured, “it’s easier if I do the lancing.”
He counted off twenty seconds and fastened her thumb over her cut, then brought her wrist to his mouth in an echo of her action. The sensual slide of his tongue across her skin made her nipples tighten and her breasts anxious all over again.
Could they be wanting him to lick her there! The picture of it bloomed in her head and made her squirm. A whisper of magic floated across her skin, scented with desire. She caught it, swirled it into the magic riding the blood in the vial.
Dragging her gaze from Jax, Amanusa turned and poured the blood all at once into the bucket. She pushed Elinor’s sticks aside to swish the vial in the water and rinse all the blood from it, then she used the sticks to stir the mixture thoroughly.
She held her hand out to Jax. “I want that other magic from you now.”
He took her hand as ordered and seemed to open himself. The sex magic their kiss had made flowed toward her, sliding from between bone and muscle, from the spaces between his organs and around his blood vessels. She poured it into the blood in the bucket, whispering the words of protection Jax had taught her and adding a few of her own.
Amanusa let go Elinor’s twigs and straightened to look at Grey, who took it as his signal to act. He withdrew what appeared to be a cigarette case from his pocket, but when opened, it turned out to be a pencil case. He selected a thick bar of graphite and crouched in the middle of the street at the edge of the intersection to write a sigil on a cobblestone, muttering in rapid Latin.
The air cooled and Amanusa felt a breeze whisper past. Except it wasn’t a breeze, for the leaves of the trees didn’t stir, nor did her fallen wisps of hair. Grey’s spirits had come to call.
His Latin came faster, and a bit louder, almost as if he argued with the spirit. He marked other symbols on the stones around his first and the Latin changed into something else. Not German, but something like it.
“I don’t believe Grey’s spirits want to cooperate,” Harry said quietly.
“Maybe I should bind the magic together so they can’t get away.” Amanusa plucked one of Elinor’s leafy twigs from the bucket and dunked the leafy end in the earth-water-blood mixture. “Whatever you need to do as I mark the barrier, do it.”
Elinor took out another twig. Harry picked up the bucket and carried it to where Grey shouted at his spirits in something that might be Polish now.
“Don’t blot out my sigils, for God’s sake.” Grey was sweating as he kept marking more and more stones. “I haven’t got them sealed yet so they’ll still wash away.”
“We’ll be careful. Is this a good place?” Amanusa indicated a nearby cobble with a toe.
“Yes, fine.” Grey squeezed the words out between bursts of angry near-German, Polish, and probably Spanish, before going back to Latin.
Amanusa swished her leaf-brush in the solution again and let it drip onto the stone. Elinor wedged her twig into the gap between the stones, for all the world like a tiny green picket. All of them spoke, invoking their own warding spells—Harry in Latin, Amanusa in English, and Elinor in a language utterly unrecognizable to Amanusa.
Amanusa spoke again, reaching for the donated blood, reaching through it to Grey’s spirits, Harry’s mud, Elinor’s twigs. She used the magic in their blood to tie all the magics together. It felt right as she did it, the magics blending into a smooth whole.
“Here. Come here,” Grey ordered, springing to his feet and beckoning. “Drip a bit of that just there.” He pointed at his original sigil, glowing a faint blue.
Harry and Amanusa hurried over with bucket and brush and she carefully let a droplet fall where Grey indicated. She felt the magic solidify.
“Now Elinor, one of your twigs… there.” Grey’s hands twitched, as if he wanted to snatch the little stick from her and thrust it home himself. Elinor anchored the twig firmly between Grey’s marked stones.
Amanusa could almost see him wrap his spirits around the twig and cement them down with the sorcery-alchemy solution. He spoke one more sentence in a firm declarative tone, and the magics locked tight, swelling suddenly into a high, solid, invisible wall a few feet long.
Grey snatched off his top hat and sent it sailing high into the air as he whooped in victory. He snatched Amanusa into his arms, sweeping her off her feet into a giddy whirl, before planting a smacking kiss on her mouth. He let go before Jax could protest and did the same with Elinor, whirling her higher because she was smaller. Then he grabbed Jax and kissed him too, catching him off guard. Jax, being larger than Grey, did not whirl.
Grey turned to Harry, who was as tall and thicker than Jax, and the celebration stopped when Harry looked at Grey and said, “Don’t even think about it.”
Instantly the giddy delight vanished from Grey’s face and he looked around for his hat. It had fallen near the curb. He retrieved it, replaced it on his head, and returned to the others, adjusting his cuffs. “I
’m sure Harry knows that conjurers have tried countless times to work magic on or around the dead zones and always the spirits have refused. But when Amanusa bound the four magics together, they lost their fear. It’s as if—” He looked from Amanusa to Jax and back. “Could the sorcery protect them from the ill effects of the dead zones?”
Amanusa shook her head at Jax. She did not want to be consulting Yvaine here, especially when Yvaine likely had no answers about this. “I don’t know. It’s possible no one knows, since these dead zones are so new. When we get back to London, I can look in the sorcery books in the council library to see what they say.”
“A few feet of warding don’t ward much,” Harry said. “We still have five blocks to cover, an’ not much time before the meeting starts. We’ll be late enough as it is.”
“Right.” Grey strode to the corner and went to one knee to mark his sigil on the sidewalk, right against the corner of the abandoned house. Amanusa dribbled a bit of the solution on it and Elinor wedged her stick between the cobblestones there.
As they moved on around the dead zone’s perimeter, Jax took over the solution painting from Amanusa. She didn’t know how he could tell she needed to concentrate on holding and binding the strands of magic together, but he knew. With every sigil Grey drew, every twig Elinor planted, each drop of bloody mud painted, the wall stretched and solidified, becoming that much stronger.
The machines moved with them, peering out of broken windows, clanking to each other in the streets, becoming noisier and more threatening with their claws and blades with every stretch of wall that was built. The twigs and sigils and splotches created anchors for Amanusa to tie the blended magic to, but she had to hold it all in her hands—her will—whatever her magic-using appendages were—until the spell was complete.
Five o’clock had come and gone by the time they got back around to Grey’s mass of glowing symbols where they’d begun. A small crowd had gathered, standing at a distance to stare at the glow and at the scurrying scores of machines. Those who’d followed them on their circling route—children mostly—joined up with the people waiting.
“Monsieur Invoquer,” a man called out. Mr. Conjurer, Amanusa’s translation told her. “What are you doing there?” he asked.
“Building a wall,” Harry told them. “Now stay back so we can get it closed up.”
Elinor’s twigs were gone, but there was still a layer of slurry in the bottom of the bucket, thick with magic. All five of them stared into the bucket at it. Amanusa tugged at the heavy weight of magic she hauled behind her. Jax handed Elinor the paintbrush twig he’d been using, its leaves tattered and mostly gone, and took Amanusa’s hand. When he did, though she could still feel the weight of the magic, it became easier to move it.
“Pour the rest of that between the cracks,” she said. “There’s blood in it. We can’t leave any behind.”
“Pour it over the stones,” Grey said. “Over the sigils. It won’t harm them now, might even power them up more.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was thoughtful. “I’ve never seen them glow this bright before. Not in daylight.”
Without a word, Harry upended the bucket and let the muddy liquid splash out over Grey’s glowing symbols. The sigils seemed to shudder, then glow brighter, as if soaking in the magic that poured over them and slid down to seep into the earth beneath the stones. Elinor used her battered twig-brush to sweep the last clinging bits of bloody soil from the bucket, and planted the twig on the opposite side of the central stone from her first.
Amanusa tied the magic to that twig, led it somehow through that central stone with its bold sigil, and tied it to the first twig. “Blood of my blood,” she murmured. “Blood of alchemist and conjurer and wizard, bones and blood of the earth, broken flesh of green life, animating spirit, join now in protection. Hold back what would do harm. Hold fast your magic against what would steal it away. Hold strong in your guardianship. Hold.”
The other voices, of Harry and Elinor and Grey once more invoking their spells of protection, fell silent when she did. For a moment, nothing happened. The world seemed to hold its breath with her, the magic burning through her, pulling at her, crushing her.
Then, a visceral thunk boomed through her, as if a gigantic lock clicked shut, and the magic thumped into place around the dead zone. The sigils glowed yet brighter, for just an instant, then faded to a dull gray. The air where the wall rose shimmered faintly, almost opalescent in peripheral vision, invisible when observed straight on.
“Why do you build a wall?” a woman’s shrill voice demanded. “Why do you not destroy what is killing us, so that we can return to our homes?”
“We’re workin’ on it,” Harry shouted, turning to face the crowd. “So far we ain’t been able to touch these patches at all, much less stop ‘em from growin’. But if this wall works like I think it will, then we’ve got that figured. An’ if we can stop ‘em from growin’ any bigger, we’ll ‘ave time to work out ‘ow to destroy ‘em.”
“Why should we believe you? Magicians.” Another woman, narrow-faced and dressed all in black, spit on the ground. “It is you who have caused these abominations.”
“No, it’s you.” Harry advanced on the woman.
The small crowd faded back behind the woman, until she realized her exposed position and tried to lose herself in its midst again. She didn’t succeed, standing pressed against the leading edge of the group.
“You’re the ones brought this on.” Harry stabbed a finger at the woman, then at the crowd. “With your rules against magic and turnin’ your nose up at it. That place in there is like it is ‘cause all its magic’s been killed. There is no magic there. None.
“An’ when the magic dies, plants start dyin’ and animals an’ people. Even the stones themselves die. So think about that, why don’t ya, every time you sneer at a magician, or punish your kid for usin’ a study spell to ‘elp ‘im understand ‘is lessons.”
“Tomlinson.” Grey got Harry’s attention. “Lovely speech, but it might be more suited to the conclave chamber. Where a meeting is going on this very minute.”
“Right.” Harry looked back at the crowd, glowering. “Don’t pass that wall. It’s not safe beyond it, an’ we don’t know what passing through all that magic might do to a body. Nothing, maybe. But I wouldn’t want to be the one to test it, would you?”
Chapter 22
Jax went to the next street and collected a cab large enough for all of them, including the ladies’ hoops. Amanusa let him hand her in and collapsed in the corner, feeling as if she’d just built the Great Wall of China single-handedly. She’d seen pictures of it, when she was a little girl in Vienna. Elinor sat opposite, and this time, Grey squeezed in next to Jax. Harry climbed in last, after supervising the cabbie stowing the machine in the boot.
“I know you meant for Amanusa to attend the meeting this afternoon,” Jax said, “but I am taking her back to the hotel. After that spell, she’s in no shape to handle the strain of a meeting where half those present will think it a pity the criminals didn’t slaughter her.”
“She may be your bride,” Elinor said, “but she is a woman grown, not a child, and a magician as well. You cannot make decisions for her without at least soliciting her opinion.”
A slight snore from Amanusa’s corner announced her thoughts on the matter. Jax smiled and slid his arm around her, tipping her head onto his shoulder, reveling in the knowledge that she’d given him the right. “Even adults can push themselves beyond their limits. And when they do, it’s the responsibility of those who care for them to see that they take the rest they need. Harry can report what happens.”
“I don’t suppose as it’d be too effective if she fell asleep in the meeting and slid off ‘er chair,” Harry conceded.
Amanusa woke enough to walk into the hotel under her own power—mostly—when the carriage paused to let her and Jax off. Elinor stayed with the cab. She could wait in the chamber lobby, she said, and hear the news all the sooner.
Amanusa fell asleep while Jax was getting her out of her corset and hoops. She slept until she heard voices, and the light sliding through the gap in the curtains was a mellow, late-summer-evening gold.
She found her new dressing gown—white, but with pink-embroidered ruffles down the front—and slipped into the parlor to see what was afoot. Her head ached horribly, but not enough to dim her need to hear their news.
The three English magicians—or two magicians and an apprentice—had returned. Amanusa hid her yawn as she padded into their little parlor and curled up next to Jax on the sofa, tucking her bare feet beneath the skirts of her dressing gown.
Elinor turned to her, eyes alight. “The most wonderful thing, Amanusa. You won’t believe what has happened.” She sat on the settee opposite, Grey beside her, leaning on his walking stick.
“Let’s tell it in order, a’right?” Harry sat perched on an ornately carved chair upholstered in blue-and-gold striped satin, looking as if he feared it might collapse under him. His derby hat perched on his knee, which jiggled nervously. What did he have to be nervous about?
“We got to the meeting,” he said. “Late, but not too late. Maybe five-thirty. Gathmann recognizes us right away from the podium an’ wants to know where you are. So I told ‘im.
“I told ‘im about the attack last night, an’ about the warding spell this afternoon—an’ about the wedding this mornin’ too. They understood as how you might be a bit tired.”
“And then Harry asked that you be recognized as a master magician,” Elinor blurted out.
Amanusa looked from one magician to the other. “What does that mean? Won’t it complicate things?”
“I ‘ope it clears ‘em up.” Harry set his hat on the floor and propped his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward to explain. “Your status in the conclave right now is based on your membership in the English council. Which is based on you bein’ apprentice to Yvaine. It’s provisional, an’ it’s an apprenticeship. Which Sir Billy didn’t bother to explain to the conclave governors, an’ I don’t blame ‘im for it. But that’s what is. Or was. Apprentices don’t generally get to attend meetings, unless they’re ready for th’ journeyman’s test.”
