Murder by Magic (36 page)

“Maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “But all shape-shifters can talk, and Lady Ulla says there’s lots of things out there that can shape-shift. She says some of them are all right, like witches, but some you better not trust, ’cause they’re up to no good, like—like demons and werewolves and some wizards when they get all—all—I forget. Mira, what did Lady Ulla say about some wizards?”

“They get power-mad,” my little niece replied. Her hands dropped to her sides, the twinkle of magic at her fingertips went out. Something wasn’t right; her boldness had vanished. Niko had gotten over his initial fear of me (even if he was insisting that I produce proof of my identity; he’d make a great law-speaker someday), but Mira was shaking, and I didn’t much care for the glassy look of apprehension in her eyes.

“Mira?” I said gently, taking a step toward her. “Mira, love, what’s the matter?”

“Power-mad,” she repeated to the air. “They thought that because they knew how to do some tricks, there wasn’t anything they
couldn’t
do. Lady Ulla said that was bad. Worse than bad; that it was
evil
of them. That only terrible things could come of—of overreaching yourself, of trying to be more than who you were, of—of forgetting your proper place.”

“Yes, I’m sure that someone like Lady Ulla
would
be rather insistent that people remember their proper places, as long as hers stayed on top of the heap,” I said dryly. “She can’t help saying stupid things like that, darling: she’s an aristocrat.”

“She said that people who tried to get—to get above themselves were proud and that pride is always punished.” Mira was taking two steps away for every one I took toward her. It lasted until she backed herself into Joram’s big worktable in the middle of the kitchen floor. “She said that pride—pride would out, that the guilty would suffer, soon or late, that they might think it was over and their secret was safe, the price was paid, but when they thought they’d bought safety—”

“Hogtwaddle!”

The kitchen resounded with the thunderous echo of steel striking wood. The three of us jumped halfway out of our skins. My eyes flashed sparks, and I spat out a kindling spell that caused all the oil lamps to flare into life.

There, by the butcher block in the corner, stood Joram. He’d struck the thick beechwood tabletop a mighty blow with a cleaver the size of an eagle’s wing. “Hogtwaddle!” he roared again, striding forward. “Hogtwaddle and catpiss!” Before I could react, he scooped little Mira up in one arm and cradled her to his hairy chest like a babe.

“I thought we’d settled your mind on that, m’ladylove,” he said to her. His voice crooned sweetness, and my niece buried her face against his shoulder, gulping back dry sobs. “There, there, my nestling, you mustn’t hold fast to blame. She’d never have wanted that. It was an accident, was all.”

“An . . . accident?” I echoed, leaping up onto the butcher block, the better to see my niece and her ferocious guardian. My guts felt cold. “What’s all this talk of accidents and blame?”

“Aye, an accident!” Joram rounded on me, shaking the cleaver a finger’s span from my whiskers. My gift of speech had not flummoxed him for an instant; he knew me for who I was, and I don’t think he liked me any better than when he’d believed I was an ordinary cat. “Care to pretend
you
never had one? Or did you come to the witch’s trade when you were already old and full of wisdom, eh?”

“If you’re speaking of my
craft,
” I said coolly, “then know that my sister and I were both nine when we were first tested and admitted to the study of—oh!” A terrible thought touched me.

We were
tested.
We were brought before the local Gather and examined closely to determine whether we had what was needful for the making of a good witch. We had the brains, but it took more than brains to become one of the Knowing Ones. It took courage and patience and empathy, and above all, it took self-awareness. You had to know yourself: how much ambition you really had; how far you were willing to drive yourself, and for what cause; how much or how little pain, despair, and outright terror you could swallow and suppress if holding it in check meant the difference between a spell that you could harness or a spell that escaped your control and—

“What was it?” I asked Joram. “What kind of spell?” I tried to meet Mira’s eyes, but she kept her face hidden. I wanted to let her know that it was all right—or as all right as such a thing could ever be—that accidents did happen, even world-shattering ones.

Even accidents that kill someone you love.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Joram said, still my niece’s staunch defender. “That Lady Ulla, she ought to have her tongue tore out for her, the kind of notions she put into this poor infant’s head. All her fine, high tales of witch-queens, spell-castin’ girls done up in armor usin’ sword and staff to win kingdoms!” He sighed and gazed at Mira’s sleek, dark head. “How was she to know the fool was just romancin’? Mira loves her. She believes in her. Between those mad tales and Lady Ulla’s harpin’ on all she lost when her kin was forced to flee Tyrshen, the child thought to make her a gift of something that might win her back the family holdings.”

What was the one thing strong enough to win back a kingdom where wizards battled one another with demon armies?

Another demon. A demon so great, so powerful, so exalted in the hierarchy of the Underrealm that he could clear the battlefield of lesser fiends with one casual sweep of his hoof.

His left hoof.

I erupted from my disguise without a second thought, too blinded by red rage to care about my nakedness. “Ulla, you
idiot
!” I shrieked loud enough to wake the dead.

“Hush, you rude creature.” Lady Ulla stood in the kitchen doorway, her scrawny frame wrapped in a thin cotton night-robe, her hair done up in curling rags. “I hear you. The entire neighborhood hears you. What is the meaning of this untoward uproar?”

I couldn’t put my fury into words. Instead, I lunged for the old harpy, my fingers curved like cat’s claws, ready to tear that sour face clean off the front of her head. And I would have done it, too, if Joram hadn’t set Mira down and hooked his meaty arm across my waist, knocking the wind out of me as he reeled me in.

“There’ll be none of that in my kitchen!” he instructed us.

“Bitch!” I shrilled at the governess. “Brainless bitch, what were you thinking of, filling my poor niece’s head with nonsense?”

Lady Ulla sniffed disdainfully, very much upon her dignity. “Stories are not nonsense if you’re dealing with sensible people,” she informed me. “I took great care to teach these precious children the difference between tales and truth.”

“If that’s so, then why did Mira decide to use magic to give you back your ancestral lands?” I countered.

“What?” Lady Ulla laid one bony hand to her equally bony breast. “I never heard the like!”

“Don’t play games with me, Ulla. I know what happened: Mira called up a demon to serve your selfish ends—the demon lord Vadryn the Venomous, no less!—only she didn’t have the knowledge, the power, or the endurance to lay strong enough bondspells on him once he appeared. She was helpless against him, trapped, sure to die at his hands. The only question was how slowly he’d destroy her, how much he’d enjoy doing it. Magda must have heard the noise he made, must have come running down here to see what was wrong. She threw down all her craft as a fire wall between her daughter and the demon lord, shielding Mira and banishing Vadryn at the same time. Only there wasn’t enough shielding magic left to save herself.
That’s
what happened,
that’s
how Magda died, and it’s all
your
fault!”

Almost,
said a voice like a thousand chirring locusts. It seeped from the walls and the floors and the ceiling; it oozed up out of the darkness beyond the wine cellar door and echoed inside my head. Vadryn the Venomous, grand demon lord of the Underrealm, stepped out of shadow and smiled.

Hail, Alisande,
he said, inclining his horned head toward me with awful grace.
As great a fool as your sister. She perished for her foolishness over that brat of hers. So shall you all.
His eyes, bright with blue flames, surveyed the five of us, and his tongue, which was itself a serpent, passed hissing over his upper lip.

It is true that the child summoned me and then lacked the skill to master me,
he went on.
But she did not do so at that hag’s bidding.

“Young man, that remark was uncalled-for,” Lady Ulla said huffily. “When you speak of me, I will thank you to keep a civil snake in your head!”

“You don’t mean she decided to do it on her own?” I couldn’t believe that in a million years.

Children are creatures that dwell even more outside of human law than demons,
Vadryn said.
They are born to nose about, to explore, to experiment, to dabble. Even when you tell them not to touch a harmful thing, half may heed you, half will ignore your words, and the other half will regard your ban as an open invitation to embrace what you’ve forbidden.

“Lovely,” Lady Ulla muttered. “There goes
this
week’s mathematics lesson, shot to the Underrealm.”

“Are you telling us that Mira raised you because she was . . . experimenting?” I asked.

The fiend-king nodded.
She watched her mother at her craft and wanted to be like her. A shame that the girl did not have the woman’s talent for clear pronunciation. She’d heard her mother complaining of the summer heat and was trying to perform a spell to make snow fall out of season.

I knew that spell. Like all the rest of our repertoire, it was uttered in the Olden Tongue. My skin shivered over my flesh: the spell was rife with words and phrases that came perilously close to the Invocation of a Demon Lord.

“It was a
mistake
!” I exclaimed. “A simple mistake in pronunciation, and you would have killed the child for it?”

Vadryn’s empurpled brow creased with perplexity.
Of course. Why not? Tell me that you would not devour a basket of tea cakes if it was delivered to your door by mistake! And a child is
much
tastier than a tea cake if you get it young enough.
He gazed at Mira and licked his chops.

That was when Lady Ulla hit him with the frying pan.

“How
dare
you, sirrah!” she declaimed. “How dare you stand there before my charges and advocate the illicit appropriation of property that does not pertain to you!”

“Yeah! Or swipin’ stuff!” Joram put in. “Even when I was m’self, I never took but what belonged to me. A fine example for the kids!”

The . . . kids, as you call them, will soon have no further need of ethical examples, good or bad.
Vadryn rubbed the side of his head where Lady Ulla had scored a healthy whack. It hadn’t done much damage beyond leaving the demon lord testy.
Food is beyond morality.

“Oh, no, you’re not laying a tooth on them!” I cried, placing myself between the children and the fiend. My skin crackled with the energy of a hundred banishing spells. Even as I stood ready to launch them against Vadryn, I knew that such a sudden expenditure of magic would likely leave me just as dead as it had my poor sister. That didn’t matter: I had to protect her children.

Fool!
Vadryn stamped his hoof.
Any spell of banishment you can lay on me is temporary at best. You, like your sister, lack the full amount of power needful to bar me forever from this place and this prey. You’ll kill yourself for nothing, and I’ll allow it because it amuses me. Then I’ll simply wait out the term of your puny banishment spell once more before coming back and finishing my business here. You can die, or you can be wise, get out of the way, and let me devour what’s mine by right.
He took another step closer to the children.

Lady Ulla hit him with the frying pan again at about the same time that Joram chopped at his woolly leg with the cleaver. The demon king jumped back, roaring with rage. I saw lightning gather in his paws and knew that he would slay them both where they stood for their insolence.

Then I saw the sparks gathering at Mira’s fingertips. My niece was no longer helpless with remorse and fear. She was angry. The women of my family do some of their best work when they’re angry.

I reached out and grabbed one of Mira’s hands in mine. “Follow my lead,” I whispered. She met my eyes and nodded, looking less like a little girl and more like a battle-ready warrior woman. I felt the untapped depths of the power within her tiny frame and drew on it, weaving those first tender strands of awakening magic into an unbreakable chain with my own. Just as Vadryn leaped for Lady Ulla, I shouted out the words of Ultimate Banishment in the Olden Tongue.

I was
very
careful with my pronunciation.

Just as I spoke the final syllable, I felt someone claim my other hand. My eyes met Scalini’s.

“Well, I
did
vow to take a horrible vengeance on whoever encompassed your sister’s death,” he said just as the demon lord exploded.

It was quite spectacular. The addition of Scalini’s power to Mira’s and mine made Vadryn the Venomous burst into countless flakes and blobs of radiant ooze that splattered every available surface of Joram’s kitchen.

“Great,” he said, looking around at the horrid mess in disgust. “That’s what I get for givin’ help where it wasn’t wanted.”

“Joram,
you
—?” I began.

He nodded. “Soon as I sensed what you were about doing with the girl, I sent my own mite o’ power to join yours. I guess Lady Ulla did the same.”

“Just so,” Lady Ulla said primly. She lifted her free hand to her lips and blew away the strands of smoke wafting from her fingertips. “I received some instruction in the magical arts when I was but a girl back in Tyrshen. No more than was appropriate to my station, of course. I was raised to be a lady, not a mountebank. I thought I had forgotten it all.”

“It’s like riding a horse,” I explained. “You just need to get back in the saddle for all of it to come back to you.
You,
on the other hand—” I turned to Joram. “How would a simple cook come to command magic? Beyond the making of a decent meringue, that is.”