‘Happy birthday, Vega. Much luck on your journey. I’ll . . . I’ll see you when you get back. I hope you find the ring.’
‘Thanks, Petra. I hope I do too.’
She turned and left.
We silently appeared at the rear of the train station in Greater True. We were wearing long coats and hats pulled low that covered most of our faces.
Dennis, Sara and Amicus knew this place better than I did, having lived here for so long.
We had gone over the plan several times before leaving Empyrean.
When I looked at them, I could tell they were ready. Their wands were held loosely in their gloved hands; their gazes were steady and calm.
I led them through the darkness towards the barracks of the Elite Guard. Along the way I saw a paper tacked to a wooden post.
I used my wand to illuminate it so we could see what it said.
REWARD FOR ANY INFORMATION LEADING TO THE RETURN OF THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUALS AND THE CAPTURE OF THEIR KIDNAPPERS
And there listed were fifty names.
Dennis, Sara and Amicus glanced at each other when they saw their names there. I thought they might be frightened, but I was heartened to see that each of them looked, well, proud!
I took down the paper and balled it up. ‘So they turned this into a mass kidnapping instead of a mass breakout for freedom,’ I said. ‘No doubt they’ve blamed it on the awful Campions.’
As we continued on, I was hoping for something, and it turned out to happen.
‘Subservio.’
The spell hit the uniformed bloke dead in the back.
Dennis and Amicus each grabbed an arm and dragged him into the dark recesses of an alley.
I looked at the blank-faced bloke for a moment. I didn’t recognize him, which wasn’t surprising. There were a lot of them, after all.
I held up the disc that Delph had made for me.
‘Have you seen a ring with this mark on it?’
The man looked dully at the image and nodded.
‘Where?’ I demanded.
‘The commander of the barracks has it. Major Nelson. He wears it on his hand. Spoils of war, he called it.’
‘Did he tell anyone else that he had it? Mr Endemen or any of his blokes?’
The man shook his head. ‘No. He hides it from them when they appear.’
‘Because they’ll take it?’
‘They’ll take his life.’
This comment surprised me. It showed a deeper understanding of the Maladons than I would have given this gent credit for.
‘You know that they are murderous?’
‘I have seen them kill.’
‘Do you fear them?’
‘We all fear them.’
I glanced at the others, who were staring open-mouthed at the man.
‘OK, where is Major Nelson now? At the barracks?’
He shook his head. ‘At home.’
‘The address?’
‘One Hundred Greater True Court.’
‘That’s right next to the general assembly building,’ noted Dennis. ‘Big brick building with a blue door. My mas— the ones who enslaved me lived only one avenue over.’
I nodded.
I wiped the bloke’s thoughts and sent him on his way, oblivious to what had just happened. We heard him whistling as he walked down the darkened street.
I looked at Dennis. ‘Lead the way.’
We hurried through the darkness. I had to keep reminding myself that we were no longer invisible. When we heard steps approaching our way, I cast a befuddlement spell in front of us.
A moment later two soldiers appeared carrying guns. They passed right by us, the incantation having done what it was designed to do.
We kept going and reached the house five minutes later.
We looked up at the place from across the street. The building was imposing and totally dark.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Everyone here knows that all you lot have disappeared. It’s been a long time, granted, but they will still be on their guard. So if anything happens, we must act quickly and efficiently.’ I tapped Amicus on the shoulder. ‘You’ll bring up the rear. Keep an eye out for anything that looks or sounds suspicious.’
He nodded and I turned to Dennis. ‘You’ll be on my left flank.’ I glanced at Sara. ‘And you on my right.’
She nodded.
I lifted my wand to the ready position and they all did the same.
We were all breathing fast. They had trained long and hard, but always within the safe confines of Empyrean. This was far different. This was the real thing, and there were blokes here who would want nothing more than to kill us.
Amicus looked determined, Sara keenly observant and Dennis a trifle nervous.
We entered through the back door. A simple incantation did the job.
The house was beautifully decorated and furnished but I didn’t care a whit about that. I just wanted my ring back. It was the only thing I had left of my grandfather’s. Even if it couldn’t turn me invisible, I would have wanted it back.
There was no one on the first three floors. That left the top floor.
I used my Crystilado magnifica spell to see inside the rooms until we came to the last one on the left.
The man was asleep in bed.
On his finger was my ring.
‘Ingressio.’
The door swung open and we edged inside.
My gaze hit every corner of the room before it settled back on the bed where Major Nelson was fast asleep.
‘Rejoinda ring.’
It flew off his finger and on to mine.
I instantly twisted it round.
When I looked at Sara, my heart sank.
She could obviously still see me.
‘Embattlemento,’ I cried out as the spell lights shot at us.
A dozen Maladons had appeared in the room and were firing spell after spell at us.
Dennis cried out as a spell ripped into his arm and blood spurted from the wound.
Using Destin, I soared above them all and fired spells downward.
‘Triangulate,’ I cried out.
The three of them quickly formed a three-point perimeter stance, which I had taught them.
I continued to rain spells down on the Maladons, which meant they had to lift their wands and defend against me.
That gave my lot free rein to fire away.
Sara sent a wickedly curving Jagada curse at a Maladon. After slashing him, it bounced off and cut through another.
Amicus was a bloke on fire, sending Impacto spells that blasted a half dozen Maladons across the room.
One-armed, Dennis ensnared two more Maladons and then knocked them out.
I finished off the rest with a brilliantly tricky spell that Astrea had shown me.
The first wave of the spell was a blinding wall of light. When they shot at it with their wands, they found out, too late, that the wall of light was actually a magical mirror that sent their spells hurtling right back at them.
When the last Maladon fell, I returned to the floor.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. I was just about to magically tether them and cast my Pass-pusay incantation when a figure appeared inches from me.
‘Looking for this?’ sneered Endemen.
He held up a ring – my real ring. The other had been a decoy.
‘A useful magical element, wouldn’t you say?’
There would have been a time when the mere sight of the bloke would have paralysed me. That time had long since passed.
I lowered my wand and bowed my head.
‘Acknowledging my superiority, Vega of Wormwood!’
I lifted my gaze to his. Right then I could tell the bloke knew he had made a mistake. But it was too late.
I knocked the sneer off his face, not with my wand.
But with my fist.
My gloved hand, powered both by Destin and all the loathing I held for this disgusting creature, hit him so hard that he was catapulted across the room and sl
ammed into the wall with such force that he smashed right through it and into the next room.
I stared at the crumpled mess of a Maladon for one glorious moment.
‘Rejoinda my real ring.’
The ring shot off his hand and flew on to mine.
I tethered us together, turned the ring around, said my incantation and we vanished.
This had been my absolute best birthday ever!
38
THE END OF ME
Once we got back to Empyrean, I used the Adder Stone to fix up Dennis’s arm, a burn on Sara’s face and a gash on Amicus’s leg. I praised all three of them on their performance in battle.
At breakfast we all recounted the story of how we had got the ring back. When Sara got to the part about me blasting Endemen through a wall, the cheers rang out so loudly I didn’t think they would ever stop echoing through my ears.
Having my grandfather’s ring back buoyed my spirits wonderfully, and we continued our training. I threw more and more difficult tasks to my troops, confident that they were up to it.
As Astrea Prine had done with me, I used the Golem Masquerado spell to craft clay statues for us to use as targets. I know it was a bit cheeky of me, but I fashioned the statues so they all wore bowler hats!
As time passed, we moved on to ever more complex spells. When I looked around the Great Hall, I saw lights zipping across and smashing into the statues, either exploding them or ripping them to pieces.
I was so proud!
No doubt emboldened by having fought Maladons for real, Sara Bond had become a spell machine, whipping her wand around and incanting like she had been doing it her whole life. She had become one of the most popular among the fifty. For weeks after our adventure in Greater True, I could hear the others asking her to recount in exacting detail everything that had happened during the course of the battle.
Dennis and Amicus were inundated by these requests too. I didn’t mind all the curiosity. I wanted them to explain to the others exactly what it felt like to be in a fight for your very life. I knew that would be important later on.
Now that we had the invisibility ring back, Petra and I took turns shepherding groups of twos and threes to True, Greater True and even Bimbleton Station. We had several skirmishes with soldiers and Maladons but we always survived and came back intact. The experiences were helping to mould my young army into quite the fighting machine.
I grew to take a real interest in all of them, because I knew that at some point we would depend on one another to make it through the coming war alive. So while Dennis, Amicus and Sara were well on their way to becoming fine magical warriors, I needed all fifty to be at the same level.
Cecilia Harkes was a tall, lithe girl of nineteen. She had red hair, freckled cheeks and a quick but steady wand hand. We had rescued Cecilia from an elderly Greater True couple who thought nothing of making her sleep next to the coal bin, forcing her to eat her meals from a bowl served on the floor and slapping her across the face whenever they felt like it.
I gave her some finer pointers on the Jagada spell, showing her how to move and turn her hips together with the wand motion. As Astrea had shown me, it added to both the speed and potency of the incantation.
I watched her do it once more, and nodded approvingly as the clay statue became riddled with innumerable cuts and slashes.
‘Nice job, Cecilia. Couldn’t have done it better myself.’
She swelled with pride as I moved on.
Across the hall, Petra was putting a group through the rigorous process of mastering the Subservio spell. I watched as Petra performed the incantation on Nicholas Bonham, a tall, sturdily built young man with handsome features, beautiful blue eyes and long blond hair. Nicholas stiffened and assumed a blank stare when the spell hit him.
Petra then made him jump and spin around, then hop on one leg.
The rest of the group laughed, but I wondered.
Did Petra fancy the strapping lad?
I could only hope.
I had James Throckmorton, a small man who had been enslaved the longest of the group, starting at age nine, perform the Embattlemento spell. I broke through it easily the first six times he tried, but the seventh time his shield held against my wand’s blast.
His face sweaty and his chest heaving, he accepted my congratulations with a single nod before getting back to work.
I kept moving through the group, helping Alabetus Trumbull succeed in deploying the Engulfiado spell, which doused poor Pauline Paternas, a pugnacious woman of twenty.
As I helped her up and dried her off with a wave of my wand, I said, ‘Now it’s your turn.’
Which she took with a flicker of malice in her eyes. Her stream of water was far stronger than Trumbull’s and sent him sailing headlong into the wall.
I had to work hard to hide my smile.
Aloysius Danbury struck Tobias Holmes blind with the Impairio spell but forgot how to reverse it, which I quickly fixed.
Charlotte Tokken straightened out a maze I had created in one corner of the hall by employing with confidence the Confuso, recuso incantation.
I shuddered when I recalled how that spell had saved our lives in the Quag as we were going through the First Circle.
Anna Dibble, a tall girl around my age with brown hair cropped short by her former masters, which gave her face a severe look, trapped her sparring partner and former slave mate, Sara Bond, with the Incarcerata incantation. As the white lights swirled around Sara, I recalled how that same prison had held a huge jabbit in Astrea Prine’s cottage. A jabbit that would have done me in, had I not been exceptionally fast with my wand!
I walked halfway up the stairs and looked back down, surveying my little army going about its training.
Over there Dennis O’Shaughnessy used the Rejoinda spell to take the wand of Miranda Weeks. She promptly turned the tables on him after she got her wand back and roped him neatly with an Ensnario incantation. In another corner a door was opened by Reginald Magnus using the Ingressio incantation. Another corner was brightened by the Illumina spell.
People rose with the Elevata spell and others fell with the Descente incantation.
A tree I had conjured in the middle of the hall had its trunk shrunk by the Withero spell.
I smiled. All in all it was a good day.
I wandered into the room where Delph was holding forth.
As usual, he was dressed in a suit with a waistcoat and looked fetchingly handsome with his thick, long hair and tall, strong body. There were twenty students in the room and I noted, with a bit of apprehension, that all twelve of the young women sat there somehow managing to copiously write down every word Delph said while simultaneously gaping at him. I watched as several glanced at one another and giggled.
I closed the door to the room and walked away, shaking my head.
Females.
At dinner that night we all ate together. I usually liked to split the group up so as not to overburden the kitchen, but Mrs Jolly insisted that it was fine. The meal was particularly splendid, with chicken and ham and vegetables from the garden and soft rolls that seemed to melt in my mouth. Then followed pudding, and soon we all sat there happy and drowsy.
We said our goodnights and went our separate ways.
Petra caught up to me as I walked to my room.
‘I think things are going rather well,’ she said. ‘Artemis Dale gets everything right after just a few attempts now. Regina Samms nearly so. Katie Watson’s Ensnario spell is quite something. Alex Prettyman’s convulsing hex is nearly unbreakable.’
‘And Nicholas Bonham?’ I said slyly. ‘He seems awfully good too.’
Petra turned pink and looked away. ‘He’s all right but he also needs a lot of work.’
‘I’m sure you’ll give him all the attention he needs,’ I said encouragingly.
I looked her over. Ever since coming here, it seemed to me that Petra had become even more lovely. She could now bathe regularly, wear clean clothes and wash her
hair. Mrs Jolly’s food had filled out her gaunt look. She was a beautiful woman, I had to admit. Nicholas Bonham would be fortunate to win her good graces.
‘He tried to kiss me the other night,’ she said, startling me.
‘What did you do?’
‘I hexed him.’
‘Really?’
She smiled. ‘But then I kissed him back.’
I laughed.
‘Delph wants to kiss you.’
My smile faded. ‘How do you know that?’
‘He told me. A while back, in his room. We were talking about you. He loves you, Vega. I’ve always known that. I suppose I flirted with him sometimes just to annoy you. Anyway, he wanted my opinion about what he should do.’
I thought back to that night when I had almost sent Petra to her death. They had been talking about me?
‘What did you tell him?’
‘To follow his heart.’
I shot her a curious glance. ‘So you’re not . . . ?’
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ She paused, but only for a moment, before adding, ‘And I plan to follow my heart too!’
She said goodnight, spun on her heel and went off to her room, leaving me standing there.
What else should I have expected from Petra Sonnet?
A moment later Delph came around the corner.
My face instantly felt warm and I said, innocently, ‘Hey, Delph, Petra and I were just talking about you.’
‘Really? What about?’
‘Oh, nothing important. You’ve become a fine teacher.’
‘Right.’ He seemed distracted and I wondered why.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘I’m glad you liked your present.’
I touched the necklace. ‘I love it, Delph.’
He edged a bit closer. ‘I wanted to give you another present on your birthday, but I wasn’t . . . I wasn’t sure you’d like it.’
‘Delph, I’m sure I would love whatever you gave me.’
He took another step forward.
And he kissed me. I mean he really kissed me.
Before I realized it, I was kissing him back. We stood there for about five minutes. My heart felt like it might burst.
Then we heard a giggle. The sound of someone clearing their throat.
We turned to find half a dozen people standing there watching us.
Vega Jane and the Rebels’ Revolt Page 25
