New Blood (14 page)

He strode forward normally, past the first pair of
trees in their sidewalk spaces, but his face began to pale and his breath came quicker, in shallow gasps.

“Monsieur?”
Dalcourt called.

Harry pushed onward, beginning to stumble on the pitted, crumbly paving. He veered toward one of the elegant buildings and examined its surface. The stone facing was discolored and eroding as well, the magic and the life stripped from it. A faint skittering sound echoed along the empty avenue and Harry's head jerked up.

“There—” he called out. “Did you hear that?”

“
Non, monsieur.
I heard nothing.”

Leaning against the wall, Harry struggled to breathe without sound, listening intently. The noise grew louder, took on a metallic tone. Harry bent, looked down the barred stairway to a lower-level entrance, and saw a hole through the building's foundation. A hole big enough for a large dog to pass through—something bloodhound-sized.

“Wot in blazes—?” Harry wiped clammy sweat from his face and searched for the gate giving access through the black iron fence. The metal wasn't corroding. It was devoid of magic, but it wasn't dead or dying, like the stone.

The gate was locked, but that wouldn't stop Harry. He'd learned many useful things during a childhood in the Seven Dials. By the time he had the gate open, the skittering had become clanking, and he needed the support of the iron railing to remain upright. He took a deep breath and was seized by a coughing fit.

When it passed, he wiped his streaming eyes and opened them onto a horror coming through the hole below. Made of bits of metal turned from other
purposes—plates off a furnace, spoons bent and flattened, riveted to melted tea trays—it resembled a nightmare insect more than anything, with multiple legs. And multiple stingers—sharpened knives bristled from oddly jointed arms.

Harry scrambled back, letting the gate clang shut. Deprived of his support, he fell to the ground, scooting backward like a crab on hands and feet.

“Monsieur Tomlinson!” Dalcourt dashed into the dead zone, intent on rescue.

“No, stay back!” Harry waved him off as he rolled to his knees and convulsed in another fit of coughing.

Dalcourt ignored him, lifting the bigger man to his feet in a burst of fear-powered strength as the metal creature reached the top of the stairs and clanged into the fence railing.

“Should've found a bigger clerk,” Harry mumbled, trying to stand on his own. “Bigger'n me, any road.”

“I am big enough,” Dalcourt retorted. “And there is none more determined. My family lived next to the house where Louis Martine—the child—died.
Ma mère
was frail for months after we moved away.”

The monstrous machine cut through the fence railings faster than Harry and Dalcourt could stagger away, using some sort of saw—clippers combined with a fierce heat. It broke through just as Harry tripped over a pit in the paving and fell to his knees, taking Dalcourt with him. The thing clanked toward them, its mode of travel awkward, ominous, and relentless, until abruptly, it froze.

Harry's head lifted. He sniffed. “Smell that?”

Dalcourt sniffed as he continued his fight to get
Harry upright again. “It is only the river. It stinks as always.”

“It's
life.
” Harry planted both hands on the stones beneath his knees. The paving had been cut and minimally shaped, but otherwise the stones were the same substance they'd been when pulled from the earth. “There's magic in these stones. Not much, but it's there. And I could swear it wasn't there ten minutes ago.
Two
minutes ago.”

He dragged in a deep breath and paused, as if waiting for another bout of coughing to strike. It didn't. Finally, he allowed the slender clerk to drag him to his feet.

“And look,” Harry said, pointing. “That monstrosity—it's retreating. It can't come where there's magic.”

The creature was indeed sidling slowly back to its stairwell, scraping step by multilegged step, as if being driven back.

Abruptly, Harry shouted with laughter, snatching off his hat and tossing it high in the air. “They've done it, Dalcourt,” he cried. “The council—one of the magicians—
somebody
'as figured out how to stop this bloody mess from spreadin', how to drive it back. It's over! Nothing left but the cleanin' up.”

Dalcourt stared warily, hopefully at the other man. “Do you mean it? Can it be so?”

“Course I mean it. What else can it be? Feel.” Harry grabbed the Frenchman's hand and slapped it against the stone flower box at the curb. “There's magic there. A minute ago there wasn't. Now there is.”

He plunged his hands deep into the soil in the box
and brought them up again. Dry, sandy grains clung to his skin like glitter, nothing like loamy topsoil, but no longer the dead ashy stuff that had filled it moments before.

“I will have to take your word for it, Monsieur.” Dalcourt felt his way along the stone briefly before giving up. “I have no sensitivity to magic. I am also tone deaf.”

Harry clapped Dalcourt on the shoulder, leaving a perfect sand-colored handprint on the black twill suiting. “Come on, man, let's go find out 'ow they did it. An' call me 'Arry.”

“
Oui,
'Arry. And I am Armand.”

“Pleased to know you.”

The two men shook hands. Harry slung an arm around Armand's shoulder as they marched back up the boulevard. “An' thanks for the rescue. I 'ate to think 'ow that thing might've cut through me, if it caught me.”

“It is, as you say, no worry, 'Arry. I am pleased to be of service.”

 

A
T HER COTTAGE
inherited from old Ilinca, Amanusa collected the few bits that held memories of her lost family. The lace collar her mother had knitted. Her brother's cap. Her father's shaving cup and razor. They retrieved Jax's frock coat and overcoat from beneath her bed. He looked much more elegantly turned out than she when he put them on, despite his now-grimy shirt.

It didn't matter. Stationmasters didn't care what you wore if you had money for a ticket, and Jax assured her their supply was ample. She piled everything
she wanted to take on the blanket without holes, and tied it into a bundle which Jax threw over his shoulder. He refused to let her carry anything, saying that until he ran out of arms and his back filled up, the burdens were his.

Just after sunset, they were on the road bound for the railhead at Nagy Szeben. They stopped when the full moon was at its zenith to catch a few hours of sleep. Amanusa slept. Jax stood watch. He slept when they caught a ride with a market-bound farmer and his aromatic wagonload of onions the next morning. The next night, they both slept, figuring it far enough from the mountain hideout. But when they reached the town, they discovered rumors ran on faster feet than theirs.

The sun was just tucking itself behind the mountain peaks when they reached the outskirts of Nagy Szeben, though Amanusa was certain it had been at least an eternity since noon and the last of their hurriedly collected foodstuff. But they hadn't quite got into town proper when she gasped and ducked into the shadowed gap between two houses. Crow fluttered into a tree nearby and cawed a query.

Jax took another moment to realize where she'd gone and to follow. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him out of sight beside her.

“What's wr—”

She cut him off with a hiss, then whispered
“Look,”
and pointed.

There, stalking down the center of the rutted dirt street as if he owned it and all he surveyed, was an
Inquisitor.
Which meant that though he might not actually own the street, he could do as he liked with it.
He could enter any building, destroy any property, slaughter any animal, arrest any person, all in his quest to root out illicit magic.

“Who is he?” Jax whispered back, catching at least a bit of her urgency.

“An Inquisitor.” Amanusa wanted to shake him for his ignorance. Didn't he know anything?

“How do you know?”

“Look at him. He's all in black, even his shirt and neck cloth. And he's got the red badge on his coat.
And
a cockade in his hat.”

It was the bright red-feathered badge stuck jauntily to the brim of his shiny top hat that made Amanusa's blood run cold. It meant the man was Inquisitor Plenipotentiary, a leader among the howling pack.

“That doesn't mean he's necessarily looking for you. If you behave suspiciously, they will suspect you. Act as if you have nothing to hide and they will see an honest citizen.” He scrutinized her from head to foot and glanced down at himself, then handed her the blanket-wrapped bundle. “I am afraid we can do nothing about the bruises on your face, and until I can tap your funds, we can't do anything about your clothing. I recommend we trade roles. No one looks at servants. I will keep everyone looking at me, and no one will notice you.”

“B-but-you don't speak Romanian.” Amanusa liked the idea of hiding behind Jax so much, there had to be something wrong with it. It was, at the least, cowardice.

Jax grinned at her. “All the better. I'll be the mad Englishman on a world tour, with a local to translate for me.”

“But if I'm supposed to translate, won't that make me noticed?”

“Hmm—you're right. So you'll be mute. Just carry the bundle, follow my lead, and we'll breeze right past the nasty chap.”

Jax stepped out of the shadows and made a show of studying the flowers planted around the house in an attempt to brighten its raw, unpainted wood construction.

“Lilium variegata,”
he said in a plummy voice. “Not that you understand, of course. Don't know why I'm bothering. Education just rolls off a woman, you know. Like water off ducks. Useless. Well, I suppose some of it might soak in. Women do read, after all. But the
things
they read . . .”

He nattered on about the various flora they encountered as they continued down the road, disparaging the value of female education and making up Latin nomenclature. Amanusa knew he made it up because she knew some of the proper names. Jax sauntered past the deadly blade that was the Inquisitor. Amanusa kept to his shadow.

“Halt.”
The Inquisitor's voice sent horror racing down Amanusa's spine and back up again.

Jax ignored him, strolling on as if he hadn't a thing to fear. Or as if he didn't understand Romanian.

“You!” The Inquisitor took two strides and caught Jax's arm, hauling him around. “I said
stop.
”

“I say—” Jax removed his arm from the other man's grip. “There's no need to accost me like that. You only had to speak civilly to me. Talk sense, my good man. You can't possibly expect me to speak the sort of gibberish the locals go in for.”

Amanusa had to stifle a sudden urge to giggle. It diluted her terror, but made it more difficult to play the stolid, beaten-down peasant.

The Inquisitor tried again, speaking another language. One Amanusa didn't know. French, perhaps. It sounded rather nasal. Then he tried German, which Amanusa understood, and Hungarian, which she didn't.

“Look, it's no use speaking anything but English,” Jax said, putting on impatience. “Another sort of gibberish is still just gibberish. You'll have to speak a proper language if you want to talk to me. Now if you'll excuse me?” He touched his forehead in a substitute for tipping the hat he didn't have and turned to walk away.

“You—” The black-clad menace pointed at Jax, driven to hand-gestures as well. “Come.” He beckoned, then made walking feet of his fingers. “With me.” The Inquisitor pushed Jax ahead of him.

Amanusa trailed behind as they marched down the street, Jax being propelled with the occasional shove. Crow followed too, a silent black presence flying from tree to tree, lamppost to lamppost along their path.

The Inquisitor marched along, ignoring Jax's endless flow of words. The tone of Jax's speech sounded as if he protested his detention, but the words were instructions for Amanusa, telling her how and where she should run.

She wanted to. Desperately. She longed to run away and hide until the danger was past. But she feared the danger would never be past, not as long as she remained near the mountains where Dragos Szabo—and the Inquisition—could find her.

Nor could she abandon Jax. He had given her the tools to achieve the justice she'd hungered for for so long. And when the magic had blown up in her face, due to her own mistakes, he'd rescued her. He had carried her for miles on his back. Leaving him in the hands of the Inquisition would turn her into the person she'd sworn never to become. The kind of person everyone believed a sorceress to be.

Besides, she was certain the Inquisitor knew exactly where she was, and if she didn't come along, he would make certain she did. In ways she wouldn't like.

Their little processional drew attention, gathering folks along the edges of the streets and on the sidewalks when sidewalks appeared, but they followed only with their eyes. Amanusa could read in all those watching eyes the relief that it was not them marching to the center of town under control of the Inquisitor Plenipotentiary. She was just glad that most everyone's eyes focused on Jax in his splendid leather overcoat and scuffed kneeboots, skimming over her modest self with her bruised face and shapeless, drab, brown dress.

The Inquisitor took them to the center of town and marched them up the steps of the brand new city hall with its high, pointed towers, into a plain room at the back. A rawboned boy—surely he could not be so old as twenty—with an Inquisitor's patch on the sleeve of his uniform coat, jerked to his feet from the small table against one wall where he'd been industriously writing, surprised by their entry.

“Go and get Captain Janos,” the Chief Inquisitor snarled. “The man speaks English, I believe.”