by Gail Dayton
“Were you to meet M. Greyson in a particular place?” the guardsman escorting her asked, a concerned expression on his previously stony face.
“No, just—outside the door I went in, I suppose. He and Elinor—Miss Tavis—Harry Tomlinson’s apprentice—were waiting there.”
The nearest magicians noticed them and surged forward. The Massilean escort stepped forward, invoking warding spells against ill intent, and the men swept right past. These were her supporters.
“Here’s our heroine!” They tried to pick her up, apparently to carry her on their shoulders, but her skirts and crinoline foiled that idea, as well as a belated sense of propriety. Instead, they swarmed her, sweeping her into the lobby in a relentless flood of enthusiasm, congratulating her, shaking her hand and kissing it, introducing themselves in a blur of faces.
Amanusa lost her guard escort, lost track of Archaios and very nearly lost her footing before she spotted Harry’s bright red waistcoat through the crowd and shouted at him. It took four tries and a helpful alchemist tapping his shoulder before he responded and squeezed through the crowd to her side. Grey and Elinor came with him.
“You did it!” Harry scooped her into a bear hug. “I never doubted it an instant.”
“Then why did you ask for a pardon rather than outright dismissal?” Amanusa raised an eyebrow at him. “Where’s Jax?”
“Isn’t he with you?” Elinor leaned to one side to look past Amanusa, as if she might be hiding Jax in her skirts.
“No.” Amanusa frowned. She could sense him through the magic—he seemed all right physically, not worried about anything. But she couldn’t tell where he was. “I haven’t seen him since I left you both here to go inside. Except for glimpses when the doors opened. Where did he go?”
“To meet you.” Elinor’s hands clutched at each other, twisted together. “When the fighting broke out inside, at the end, one of the men with the striped sashes—a Massilean—he said you had left the building for your safety and Jax should meet you back at the hotel.”
“No, they just took us to a back room to wait ‘til things calmed down—maybe the guardsman didn’t know. Or maybe he thought things never would calm down.” Amanusa shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go back to the hotel and find him. I want to tell him what happened.”
“He knows.” Elinor’s smile was a little misty. “One of the journeymen passed the word when everything was dismissed. But he knew you were working magic. He seems to have quite a sensitivity to it.”
“Jax is head-blind.” Amanusa headed through the crowd toward the nearest exit. If she waited for the others to move, she might be waiting all day. “He has a sensitivity to me. And I want to tell him anyway. I need to see him.”
“Ah, true love…” Grey’s cynicism shone through.
“He’s my familiar as well as my husband,” Amanusa retorted. “Love is immaterial.”
“Love always matters,” Elinor said as she settled into the cab Harry flagged down. “It’s obvious you two love each other.”
“How?” Amanusa sat opposite Elinor who looked puzzled so Amanusa expanded her question. “How is it obvious? What is it you see that makes you think we’re in love?”
“I don’t know about ‘in love,’ but loving each other—You worry more about Jax’s well-being than your own. Jax worries more about you than himself. You look after each other, protect each other, care for each other. That’s love, and it’s there between you. ‘In love’ is another level, adding passion to the rest. It may be there too, but it’s more difficult for an outsider to see.” Elinor gave a little unconcerned shrug. “But you and your Jax? A blind man could see the love there.”
Amanusa looked at Harry, who nodded.
Even Grey agreed. “It’s quite tiresome, frankly. It’s simply not done to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve.”
“Be quiet, Grey. I find it quite lovely.” Elinor smiled at Amanusa.
Did she love Jax? How could she not know if she loved someone? Granted, it had been a dozen years or better since she’d had anyone to love. She was utterly out of practice. And if she loved him, was she in love with him?
Was this need to see him, to take his hand and tell him everything he’d missed—was it merely the blood bond of familiar and sorceress? Or was it something else? And was the uneasiness she felt trickling through her due to her confusion about love, or was something truly wrong?
They reached the hotel and Amanusa hurried up to their rooms and Jax. But he wasn’t there.
Not in the parlor, in either bedroom, or the bathing room. The others followed behind her, searching the same ground again. She flew back down the stairs, to the concierge by the front door, her unease rising to worry.
“Excuse me. Have you seen M. Greyson? My husband? He’s so tall—” She measured with her hand. “And he has ruddy-brown hair and—”
“I know M. Greyson. He married the lady magician. You. Everyone knows the Greysons.” The concierge gave a tiny heel-clicking bow. “And I have not seen your husband. I am told you and he departed the hotel together before I came on duty.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Amanusa tossed him a distracted smile before pushing her way out the hotel doors onto the street, where she came to a frustrated halt. She checked her sense of Jax in the magic, through the blood that bound them. Physically, he was still unharmed, but something began to worry him. What?
“Amanusa.” Elinor caught her hands, stopped her frantic pacing. Amanusa hadn’t realized she was pacing until Elinor stopped her. “It will be all right. I’m sure he’s simply been delayed. He’ll be here soon. The traffic was terrible outside the conclave chamber, early on.”
“I don’t think so.” Amanusa shook her head, clinging to Elinor’s hands. “I don’t think that’s it. Something’s upsetting him, something… I don’t know what, but he’s worried. Something’s not right.”
“How do you know?” Harry was curious, not dismissive.
“He is my familiar. There is a blood bond between us. I know.” A horrible thought skittered into her head, and all her blood left it, dizzying her. She grabbed hold of Grey for support. “What if—since they failed in their direct attack on me, what if they’ve decided to get at me through Jax?”
Harry swore, long, colorfully, and almost indecipherably as his accent thickened to pure Cockney.
Amanusa led them back inside and found a lobby chair. Where could he have gone? She sat, closed her eyes and reached for her magic inside Jax, invoking the full spell to ride his blood. The distance made it difficult. He wasn’t anywhere near the hotel in St. Germaine. The double layer to their bond—he wasn’t walling her out, but she could only slip through cracks around his edges. He was asleep, she realized. Or unconscious, rather. She could smell herbs and magic, but couldn’t identify which ones.
He was dreaming. Frightening dreams where an armored Jax fought with sword and flail against an army of bowler-hatted bureaucrats, who rose and fought again with missing limbs. He fought to reach Amanusa, to rescue her from the swarming hordes.
Amanusa inserted herself in his dream, at his side with her own bloody sword. Together, she thought at him. Always together. Never alone again.
“He’s waking up,” a strange male voice said.
“It’s magic. The witch is getting through to him.” Someone else spoke. “Send him deeper.”
The scent of herbs rose, became almost overpowering, and Jax’s dream began to crumble around her. Never alone, she cried before it was gone and she was inside her own head. But Jax’s presence rested near her heart. She wasn’t alone, nor was he.
“Well?” Harry demanded.
“He’s unconscious.” Unable to remain still any longer, Amanusa popped out of her chair. “They’re using some kind of wizard magic to render him unconscious, but he’s not hurt. We have to find him.”
“I agree, but ‘ow?” Harry caught and stopped her before she started pacing again.
“Call Vaillon.” Amanusa’s mind
spun, grasping and discarding plans and possibilities. “He likes me. He’ll help.”
“The conclave will help as well,” Grey said. “Some of them, anyway. Gathmann will. It’s illegal to interfere between a magician and his—or her—familiar. Whatever form that familiar might take.”
“Does that blood bond o’ yours tell us where we might begin this hunt?” Harry asked.
“Not in St. Germaine. He’s farther away.” Amanusa bit her lip, nerves and worry getting the best of her. “I might be able to tell which direction to search if I try a few directions, see if any feels more right.”
“Do it. I’ll send word to Vaillon an’ Gathmann—”
Grey interrupted Harry. “Let me or your apprentice write the messages. Your handwriting is so execrable, they might think you were confessing to some crime.”
“All right. Elinor, you write. I’ll organize messengers. Amanusa, you see if you can pick a direction. Grey, go wif ‘er. Best she not be alone, I think.”
Grey raised an eyebrow. “You trust me to accompany her?”
Harry raised one back. “You try anything out o’ line with that one an’ you’ll be wearin’ your balls as watch fobs.”
“Likely.” Grey gave a delicate, ostentatious shudder, then held his elbow out to Amanusa. “Shall we, madame?”
She barely took time to lay her hand on his arm before starting for the door. She needed to find Jax. Now.
Chapter 28
Outside on the street, Amanusa called up her sense of Jax. Was it stronger than before, or weaker? The hotel faced east on a bustling street with spindly saplings in the boxes along the paving. Amanusa walked straight ahead, toward the street, without sensing any real change. She turned left, north, away from Grey, and walked a few paces. The sense of Jax grew stronger. Maybe. She wasn’t sure.
Amanusa turned on her heel and walked south, back toward Grey, and her Jax-sense faded. “North,” she said, spinning to face that direction. “Maybe as far as the other side of the river.”
She started walking. This time Grey caught her arm and stopped her. She barely refrained from striking out.
Grey didn’t flinch. “Wait until Vaillon and Gathmann come, or send envoys. We’ll call out the progressives to search as well. We’ll find him for you.”
He dragged her back inside the hotel just as messengers hurried out the door. Elinor made her go into the cafe and eat the breakfast they’d missed with all the early morning excitement. Amanusa ate to fuel the magic, the buttery croissants tasting exactly like the awful food in the outlaw camp due to the same kind of fear.
Fear for someone else, not herself. Someone who meant as much to her as her mother and her brother had meant to the child she’d been. She did love him.
Vaillon arrived in person. Gathmann sent the captain of the Massilean Guard. Grey and Harry explained the situation and the officers agreed to send their men out in pairs, one policeman and one Massilean together, beginning with the area north of the hotel. The Massilean would use his magic to search and the policeman would lend authority.
Amanusa refused to stay in the hotel and wait, so Vaillon and Harry accompanied her. Elinor did as well, to return to the hotel with Amanusa in case she collapsed.
She wouldn’t collapse. They didn’t know her. She had already survived the worst the world could throw at her. She would survive this, and she would find Jax.
Clinging to her sense of him, she led the searchers to the Pont Royal crossing the river from Faubourg St. Germaine to the Tuileries Palace. The squared-off dome centered on the vast palace of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte—Emperor Napoleon III—shone copper-green in the afternoon sun, sneering at her. Halfway across the bridge, she stumbled. Something was wrong.
Pain ripped through her from the center out, and she fell, screaming. It didn’t last long, no more than a few seconds. It felt as if someone had tried to rip out her heart. Harry was there, helping when she fought to stand, the pain ebbing quickly. Save for her throat. She’d screamed it raw.
“What happened?” Elinor asked.
Amanusa shook her head, shook Harry off. “Pain. Not mine. It wasn’t an attack on me. They attacked Jax. They hurt him, and I felt it.”
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Harry said.
“You should go back.” Elinor took her hand, tried to lead her back toward the hotel.
Amanusa planted her feet. “They’re hurting him. I have to find him.”
“But… M. Vaillon, surely you agree this is no place for a woman.” Elinor appealed to the police captain.
“I might agree perhaps, if she were any other woman. But I have seen how strong she is. If she wishes to come, I will not stop her.”
Amanusa continued across the bridge to the Quai de Tuileries. Crows gathered in the trees and along the wharf, along the roof of the Tuileries to either side of the dome. Was their Crow among them? Did he gather reinforcements? Could he do anything here?
If Crow could help, he should hurry up and do it. If not, he didn’t matter. Only finding Jax did.
Jax groaned as he woke again, this time in a dingy, windowless garret room. Hadn’t he been in a comfortable parlor the last time he woke? Or had that been some sort of drug-and-magic-induced dream? He shut his eyes again as he probed inside himself for Amanusa. Yes. There. She was still with him. The blood bond was safe. She was safe.
“You might as well open your eyes, friend,” an unfamiliar voice said in an unfamiliar accent. “I know you are awake.”
Jax did as the voice suggested and saw a well-dressed man with black hair brilliantined flat to his skull and an enormous waxed and curled mustache. He sat in a wooden chair across from the narrow iron-framed bed where Jax lay. A battered three-drawer chest was the only other furnishing. An oil lamp on the chest provided light. Jax turned over to face the man, feeling at a disadvantage in his shirtsleeves. Where was his jacket?
“Over the years,” Jax said, “I’ve found it best to spend a few moments taking stock of a situation when one wakes up in an unfamiliar place, particularly after one has been kidnapped and bespelled.”
“Just so, the caged bird wishes to return to its cage. You may think you have been kidnapped, my friend, but in the end, you will be free.”
“I am not your friend.” Jax sat up, holding the other man’s gaze. “Nor are you mine.”
The other man shrugged. “I do not doubt you believe this. But when we are done, you will thank us. I am Yuri Mikoyan, and you are Jax Greyson.”
Jax didn’t bother answering. Silence often brought information. Besides, his head was pounding from whatever they’d done to him. He didn’t feel much like talking. He leaned his head against the wall behind him and waited.
“You will be asking yourself, ‘What do they want with me? What are they going to do?’” Mikoyan went on when Jax was so disobliging as to fail to ask the questions. “We—myself and other like-minded magicians—will be freeing you from your slavery to the witch.”
“I am not her slave. I am her husband.” He had been Yvaine’s slave, but Amanusa wasn’t Yvaine. Amanusa had tasted his blood. She had given him the ability to choose. A man who could choose was no slave.
Mikoyan shook his head sadly. “You see how she has twisted your mind? Until you believe that captivity is freedom. It is against nature for a man to be subordinate to a woman.”
“I am not subordinate. We are partners. Equals.”
“She claims you as her familiar!” Mikoyan slammed his hand on the top of the chest beside him, making the lamp rattle, the flame shudder. “A familiar is a thing, a tool. It is always subordinate.”
“How would you know? You’re an alchemist. Alchemists don’t have familiars. A wizard can only have an animal familiar, which does not have a human mind and is, of course, subordinate. Conjurer’s familiars are spirits. I have heard conjurers speak of their familiars as if they were more powerful than the magician, not less. If a magician is afraid of his familiar—if he must force it to do his will�
�then he will of course enslave it and make it subordinate. My sorceress does not fear me. I choose to assist in my wife’s magic. There is no coercion. We are equals.”
Mikoyan’s sad head-shaking returned, and it infuriated Jax. Why wouldn’t the man listen?
“Your mind is so filled with lies,” the alchemist said, “you cannot know the truth. We had hoped you would be willing to tell us how to break the spell binding you to the witch. Our first attempt caused you considerable pain. But I see you are too blind to her evil to help yourself.”
“Amanusa is not evil.” Jax rose from his cot as Mikoyan stood to depart. If he charged the Russian, perhaps he could knock him down, get out the door, and at least know how many he faced. He might even get away, if the plot had only a few coconspirators.
Mikoyan paused at the door to shake his head again. “Poor, blind fool.”
The door opened, Jax lunged. With a flick of his fingers and a single word, Mikoyan used the air to knock Jax flat.
“You will see,” Mikoyan said as the guard at the door let him out. “When you are free, you will thank me.”
The air sat on Jax’s chest while the door was re-locked and footsteps thumped down the stairs. The spell released, perhaps when Mikoyan was too far away to maintain it, or perhaps when the man decided to let it go. Jax didn’t know.
He sat back on the bed and held his pounding head in his hands. They hadn’t been able to harm the spell binding him to Amanusa, but it had hurt like bloody, stinking hell when they tried. More pain was inevitable.
He and Amanusa were bound together by blood. As long as her blood flowed through his veins—and his through hers—the bond could not be broken. And the only way to get Amanusa’s blood out of his bloodstream was for her to call it out. Their blood was so thoroughly mixed together, even after so little time, these men would have to bleed him dry to rid him of hers.
His stomach hurt, like everything else, but it took time to realize some of the pangs were hunger. He’d missed breakfast, and hadn’t eaten much supper last night. He’d been too focused on making sure Amanusa ate to replenish what the magic had taken from her. Who would do that now he’d been kidnapped?
