New Blood (16 page)

“Amanusa.” He smiled at her, voice warm and gentle as his smile, warming her inside where she'd never known she was cold. “As a favor to me, when you buy a dress—make it any color but brown.”

The smile stole sneakily onto her face, a bit at a time, as if her mouth had trouble remembering how. “I will,” she said. “Brown is
your
color. I'll come show you, tomorrow.”

“What? No, wait—” Jax began his protest, but she didn't wait to hear it. She was out the door, shutting it behind her, with only a glance from the soldiers guarding it.

Amanusa kept her pace deliberate, remembering what Jax had said. If she behaved as if she belonged, people would see what she wanted them to see.

So far in their adventures together, Jax had pretended to two different roles, neither of which put him in a good light. He'd taught her magic and saved her life. For a woman determined to stand on her own feet and live her own life without depending on a
man for anything, she'd been doing a poor job of it these last several weeks. Now it was time to do as she claimed she wanted and make pudding for the proof, as it were. It was her turn to rescue Jax.

She just had to figure out how to do it. As she started across the oddly busy square in front of city hall, Amanusa felt an odd tug. A stir in her blood, in her magic. And she remembered that Jax hadn't been able to leave her. They'd been together for so long now—which hadn't actually been all that long, save that they'd been side by side every minute of the day
and
night, so that it seemed she'd known him forever. Long enough she'd almost forgotten how it all began.

Could she leave city hall? She tried it, walking slowly across the square toward the bank on the far corner. The tug intensified. It was uncomfortable, but not painful. Did it feel the same to Jax? She didn't want to hurt him. She stopped beside the small round fountain in the center of the open space and
reached
for the magic her blood had left inside Jax. It felt stretched thin, straining between them. Would it break?

Amanusa didn't think so. The magic seemed incredibly strong. But there wasn't much for her to catch hold of. Maybe she shouldn't have called her blood back from him. Since she had, however . . . She tried feeding more magic into the binding between them. She still felt stretched out. Pulled in one direction. Toward Jax.

Amanusa looked up at the night sky, at the sliver of a waxing moon surrounded by all the stars. Then she looked at the square around her, at the soldiers
walking their quiet patrols, meeting now and again to exchange a few words, perhaps a joke. The train station to her right showed dim light around its edges. Trains would only pass through on their way to Istanbul or Vienna at this hour of the night. They wouldn't stop.

Farmers and peddlers were bringing carts into the square even at this hour, to be ready for market day in the morning. Most parked their carts in their favored spot and crawled beneath to sleep for a few hours, until time to rise and set up their displays. The soldiers wouldn't notice another body sleeping in the square.

Obeying the pull, Amanusa walked back to city hall, having to skirt only one eager merchant who'd arrived since she'd crossed in the other direction. In the corner beside the grand stairway to the front doors, she curled up, tucked her bundle beneath her head, and closed her eyes. Crow gave a “there you are” caw as he fluttered down to strut a moment on the paving before flying up to perch on the roof edge. Now that she knew where Crow was, her worry about Jax and her nonexistent plan to free him kept her awake. Mostly though, it was the simple absence of Jax that disturbed her.

She thrust the thought aside. First thing tomorrow, before she did anything else, she would go to the bank. Once she had money, everything else would fall into place. Maybe she could bribe the Inquisitor, if all else failed.

A laugh snorted its derisive way out her nose at the thought.
Bribe an Inquisitor.
She'd have better luck trying to seduce one of the Sultan's eunuchs.
Inquisitors were about power, not money. But maybe she could bribe Captain Janos.

 

J
AX HAD WONDERED
whether the Inquisitor would leave him all night in city hall. He would much rather they had, despite its lack of a cot or other amenities. That room was at least dry and free of stinks, unlike the dank, mildewed cell to which a squadron of soldiers escorted him. It did have a cot, but the blanket on it was damp, and the cell's previous occupants had left behind pungent aromas Jax didn't care to identify, as well as a large variety of wildlife which all thought Englishmen quite tasty.

The jail cell was also farther away from wherever Amanusa had settled for the night, which gave him a pounding headache. He'd hoped the distance might magic him out of the cell, the way it had turned him around on the road, but no such luck. He comforted himself with the reminder that she had to wait until morning to get to the bank for money to catch a train. He hoped the pain wouldn't get too much worse when she left town.

Considering everything, Jax was actually pleased to finally be collected and returned to city hall for further interrogation, especially since they'd left him kicking his heels and nursing his terrible headache all morning and much of the afternoon. He wasn't thrilled, however, when they sat him back in the chair and this time tied him down.

Apparently, it had taken all day for the Inquisition chap to winkle the box open. Or smash it to bits. Jax wasn't sure which. The box was nowhere to be seen, and large splinters of wood lay scattered near the
walls. Inquisitor Kazaryk did look pale and sweaty. Either way, the nasty bit of machinery sat on a table in the center of the room.

It looked even nastier than the last time Jax had seen it, when Amanusa put it in the box. Not more wicked, but more disgusting. The dull sheen of its surface was almost entirely gone, covered with pits and scaly corrosion, as if someone had poured acid on it. The edges of some of the arm segments were eroding away.

It didn't upset Jax any to see the thing in such poor state, except that the deterioration would make it that much harder to figure out what it was, and why and how it had done what it did when Jax touched it. Of course, all of that assumed that he and the object would be liberated from the hands of the Hungarian Inquisition.

Jax very much feared that was Amanusa's intention. His headache had worsened fairly early in the morning, and he'd rejoiced. Until it improved dramatically a few hours later, according to the chiming of the city clock. In the hours since, the pain had waxed and waned, as Amanusa apparently went here and there around town, doing Whatever it was she thought so necessary to do. Why didn't she just get on the train and go? He didn't need rescuing. The fear of what could happen to her if she didn't go hurt him far worse than any headache.

The Inquisitor spoke, crackling his knuckles inside the black leather gloves he wore, his voice laden with cruel intent. A chill slid up Jax's spine, though he couldn't understand a word the man said.

“What is this thing?” Captain Janos tried to echo
the other man's sinister tone, and very nearly succeeded. “You are very much in trouble,
Úr Angol
, Mister English. It is forbidden to transport harmful magical devices through the Austrian Empire.”

“I don't know what that thing is,” Jax retorted. “I can tell you what it's
not.
It's not magical. It's not in the least bit magical. In fact, it's
anti-
magic. That's why I'm taking it back to England. So a decent scientist can examine it and learn what it is.”

Janos spun on his heel, toward Jax, putting the momentum of the spin behind the fist he slammed into Jax's face. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing in Transylvania? Where did you find that evil thing?”

Jax spat out the blood collecting in his mouth, wishing he had the power to use it. But if his sorceress came back, it would be there for her to use. A bit of it got on the Hungarian. Good. “My name is Albert King,” he said. “I am in Transylvania on business, and I bought the machine in the mountains. In a town with mines and smelters. I don't know the name of the town.”

“Lies.” Captain Janos hit him again. “What is your name? Where did you meet the anarchists?”

“My name is Albert King.” Jax tried to spit the blood as far as Inquisitor Kazaryk, where he hovered in the background, but failed. “And I don't know anything about any anarchists.”

Janos's fist drew back again, but Kazaryk lifted a hand, murmured something. The captain let his fist fall. Then when Jax relaxed, Janos punched him in the gut.

“We want to be sure you can talk,” the captain said
with a cold leer. “Tell us what you know about this abomination.”

“The man who sold it to me said . . .” Jax gasped out the tale Dragos Szabo had told them in the mountains. His head hurt from the blows to his face. So much that he couldn't tell whether Amanusa came near or drew farther away. He hoped desperately that she'd caught the train for Paris. Or Budapest. Or anywhere—Vienna. Moscow. Madrid.

He couldn't bear the thought of Amanusa in the hands of these villains. Her sex would evoke no mercy. Even he with his faulty memory knew how ruthlessly the Inquisition in this part of the world—from the Baltic to the Caspian and beyond—crushed any female with aspirations to practice magic. And his sorceress had gone far beyond aspiration.

“Who was the magician you hired to seal the box?” Janos asked between blows. “Where did you find her?”

“Wasn't a woman,” Jax groaned. “Old man. Found him down the valley from where I bought it.”

“Old—” Janos said after conferring with the Inquisitor. “White-haired?”

Why did that matter? “I don't rememb—”

Apparently the Inquisition did not approve of faulty memories, for Janos cut off Jax's reply with another blow to the face. Jax got to spit blood again.

“I-I suppose. Yes. Yes, I remember now. He had white hair. He had whiskers. Mustaches and side whiskers. They were white.”

“Think carefully,
Angol férfi,
Englishman—” Janos said. “Could this magician have been a woman? A tall, mannish woman?”

“Not with all those whiskers, he couldn't.”

Jax paid the price for his impudence. When Captain Janos tired of bruising his knuckles on Jax's ribs, he paused to catch his breath and confer with Inquisitor Kazaryk. Jax fought for his own breath and had to spit out more blood. It was getting everywhere.

“Why do you do that?” Janos demanded suddenly. “Spit your blood? Do you think it possesses some power to save you?”

“Of course it does. Everyone knows the blood of innocents will rise up and cry out for justice. I am innocent.”

“Pah!” Kazaryk's scowl blackened when Janos translated Jax's retort.

“The blood magic is lost.” Janos translated Kazaryk's words. “It was lost when the last evil sorceress died, hundreds of years ago. It is nothing more than superstition, without power.”

“Maybe.” Jax's mind whirled. He'd been hunting Yvaine's apprentice a long time, but
hundreds
of years? Could so much time have passed? “But maybe not. What if you're wrong? What if sorcery is real? What if it was never lost? What if every drop of innocent blood you've shed is only waiting for the proper time to reach for justice?”

Janos hit Jax again, this time so hard it knocked the chair over, Jax with it. Fear fed the blow. Jax could see it in the man's eyes. And he hadn't bothered to check with Kazaryk first.

Captain Janos opened the door, snapped some order to the soldiers standing guard outside. They slung their rifles over their shoulders, came into the room, and lifted Jax and the chair upright again, then went
back where they came from and shut the door. Janos flexed his hand, working out stiffness, or perhaps pain. Jax hoped it hurt to hit him so hard. He hoped Amanusa was on the blasted train. But he was very afraid she was not.

 

“L
OOK.
”
HARRY TOMLINSON
stood once more on the boulevard where four days ago the dead zone had receded.

This time, he stood with a veritable horde of men in black frock coats and shiny top hats. It had taken the conclave of magicians' councils this long to be argued into coming out and actually seeing what had happened.

Old Billy—Sir William—had refused to believe it when Harry first reported the news. The conclave hadn't discovered anything new, hadn't worked any magic at all, so obviously Harry was mistaken in what he thought he observed. The head of the Magician's Council of England had refused to report any such nonsense to the conclave.

Harry had to resort to buttonholing other alchemists and dragging them to the site two and three at a time, along with a Frenchman of some flavor to confirm that yes,
l'endroit de la mort
had indeed extended this far. Then he got them to verify for themselves that magic and life had been restored to this once-dead stretch. The tiny sprouting of weeds in the flower boxes inspired him to haul a wizard or two out to see, and finally the whole conclave had decided to come and have a look for themselves.

“The limit—the boundary of the dead zone—was here, right?” Harry indicated the previous location of
the place where the magic had stopped. “You French, you know that. It was here.”

The chairman of the French Magician's Council consulted with his clerks, looked at a series of maps and charts, studied the buildings around them, and sent an apprentice off to pace the distance from the corner behind them.

“Oui,”
he said finally. “That is correct. I thought perhaps the measurements were wrong, but
non.
This is where
l'endroit de la mort
began as of this past Monday morning.”

“All right then.” Harry beckoned them forward, advancing some ten yards down the street to the point where the weeds began to lose their struggle for life. He opened his mouth to speak, then paused and cocked his head as if listening.