New Blood (30 page)

“Jax?” Amanusa tightened trembling fingers together. He was an
earl
? And she was the daughter of a valet and a parlor maid. No wonder he argued against marrying her.

“Th' Devil Earl 'imself—” Harry Tomlinson whispered.

Grey Carteret burst out laughing. Everyone glared at him. Save for Jax, who stared straight ahead at
nothing, as if glaring were beneath his dignity. As if everything were beneath his dignity, including the company. Especially Amanusa, who sat directly across from him.

Amanusa straightened in the seat and Jax—the earl of Leaford—shot her an anguished glance, there and gone again when he went back to his staring over her head.

“Oh, Uncle George will be apoplectic,” Grey wheezed, wiping his streaming eyes. “He's twelfth earl of Leaford. Only he can't be, can he, since the fourth one's still alive. M'mother was a Greyson. Hence the name: Greyson Carteret.” He gestured at himself, as if introducing himself afresh. Perhaps he was.

“So, Uncle Jax—” Grey grinned like a maniac at his newly discovered relation. “Obviously you didn't make a deal with the devil . . .”

Jax blinked, then turned bleak eyes on the conjurer. “No,” he said. “I made a deal with Yvaine, who was not the devil. But it still cost me everything I possessed.”

“Even your soul?” Elinor asked in the kind of fascinated horror that made people gather at train wrecks and house fires.

Jax's eyes warmed, though Amanusa was sure she was the only one able to recognize it. “No, not my soul—though for a time I wondered. But my memories. I did not know any name other than Jax until a short time ago.”

He turned his hard look on Grey Carteret. “And you will not inform your uncle George, or anyone else, of who I am. I am no longer that man, have not
been for centuries. I only wanted a name. My own name. There are any number of Greysons in the world. We do not have to be related.”

“Oh, but I like the idea,” Grey drawled. “Though I suppose if you insist on secrecy, you will have to be Cousin Jax, rather than Uncle, since Mama has all of her siblings numbered.”

“I could be Alvanleigh.” Jax raised an eyebrow as he considered.

Why did he want another name? Because Amanusa had claimed him as her fiancé? Was this his way of trying to maneuver out of it? Or did he want a name to give her when they married? She was afraid to hope.

“Amanusa Alvanleigh,” she mused. “That is quite a mouthful. Amanusa Greyson is much simpler.”

“Then Greyson it shall have to be,” Grey Carteret said. “And you shall just have to put up with me as your shirttail relative.”

“Are you certain?” Jax looked at Amanusa, his old Jax-look back. Amanusa discovered that she'd rather liked the new Jax-look, and missed it now it was gone. He sat forward and slid his hand over hers and it was all right again.

“I am not at all certain I wish to put up with your relations.” Amanusa made her voice tart and teasing. “But since I have none at all to claim as my own, I suppose any family is better than none. We can always invite him to visit and smother him in his sleep if he proves too annoying.”

Grey burst out laughing. “Mama is always making that same threat. M'brothers just threaten to shoot me.”

“Too bad they never carried it out,” Harry grumbled.

Conversation faded as the carriage rumbled on for a considerable length of time. Finally it rattled to a halt and Harry peered out the window. “Yeah, we're here.”

He opened the door and climbed out, the other men following. Jax let Harry hand Elinor out, but stepped in to assist Amanusa's exit. As if making his claim on her clear. Amanusa rather liked that. He might be a once-upon-a-time earl, but she was a sorceress. Surely that balanced things out. She wouldn't insist he marry her if he truly did not want to, but she did not want to marry anyone else. And she had other things to fret about now.

Amanusa laid her hand in the crook of Jax's arm. He hefted the case holding the machine, which had traveled in the luggage boot, and followed Harry and Elinor into the building, Grey bringing up the rear. The building was the only substantial construction in the area, solid brick rising three stories in the air amidst ramshackle warehouses lining a different part of the Seine than Amanusa had so far seen.

“The city wouldn't let us work near the
Chambre,
” Harry said as they mounted the stairs inside the building. “On account o' th' smells. An' the occasional boom. Same reason why the French council wouldn't let us have a laboratory in their chateau. The conclave had to buy this building because no one would lease us space. Can't lease out the rest of the space neither. Either. Except maybe to other magicians.”

He tapped on a wall as they passed. “Might make
good personal workshop space. For those that don't need more privacy.” Harry seemed to be making an effort to control his accent and correct his grammar.

At the top of the building, Harry opened the door into a large open space broken by columns and tables holding all the accoutrements of all the great magics. Save for sorcery, of course. Men sat and stood around the tables, mixing, peering, sniffing, tapping—working magic.

“W
E GOT A MACHINE
,” Harry called out, and a dozen heads popped up to stare.

One of the men cheered and the others joined in as they quickly gathered around the table where Jax set the case. “Where did you get it?” asked a short, balding man with black hair that stood out in tufts over his ears. “When?”

“Someone gave it to me,” Amanusa said. “In Transylvania, about three months ago.”

All eyes turned on Amanusa. The intense scrutiny was a bit unnerving, but she detected no hostility in it.

“What are you about, Harry?” another man demanded, this one tall, dark, and Latin-looking. “Bringing women to this place. It is not safe.”

“ ‘S'okay. This one's my apprentice. Miss Elinor Tavis.” Harry tugged Elinor forward and she bobbed her head at them. “She's studying wizardry, not alchemy, because no wizard would apprentice her.
Mikkelsen.” He scowled at another tall man, this one slender and blond.

“I could not, Tomlinson,” Mikkelsen retorted. “You are a single man and more able to than I.”

“Yeah, well—” Harry kept scowling. “Teach 'er wot you can while we're 'ere.”

“She does not need much teaching. She is quite accomplished in the magic already.” Mikkelsen bowed to Elinor, who was blushing again. “I will, however, be happy to share what I know.”

“Guild stuff, Stein.”

“
Ja, ja.
I said I would do it.”

Amanusa watched them, trying to read the nuances and failing. It was none of her business.

“And who is this beautiful lady?” The Latin fellow had somehow captured Amanusa's hand while she wasn't looking and was bowing over it, pressing his lips to it. He started to turn it over, as if to kiss her palm, and she snatched it back, wrapping both her hands securely around Jax's arm.

“This, gentlemen—” Harry raised his voice, filled it with portent. “This is the new sorceress. Amanusa Whitcomb. Blood magic is with us again.”

Silence fell as everyone stared at her. Then someone—perhaps the same man who'd done it before—cheered, and they all burst out in huzzahs.

Amanusa flinched at the first shout. When she realized the shouting was friendly—delighted, in fact—her throat tightened with tears. This was the first positive reaction to the news of her magic that she'd received, and it caught her off guard. Hostility, rejection she was used to. Acceptance—delight—was something new.

“Back away, Tonio.” The balding man with the fluffy hair shoved the Latin man out of his way and pulled the machine case in front of him. “Let's see what they've brought us.” He flipped the latches on the case, but couldn't open it.

“Oh. Sorry.” Amanusa squeezed through to the table, pulling off her “proper lady” gloves as she did. “I'd forgotten. I had to seal it up. The machine was quite harmful to my . . . my fiancé, and I had to wrap magic around it to keep it from hurting him.”

“Fiancé?” Tonio, who apparently fancied himself a great lover, looked disappointed for half a moment. Then he moved closer to Elinor and smiled at her.

“Jax Greyson.” Jax offered his hand to the man examining the machine. “I am also Amanusa's blood servant, as I was for Yvaine before her. Which means I'm held together with magic. That machine doesn't like magic.”

“Pyotr Strelitsky.” The alchemist shook Jax's hand, never taking his eyes off the case and what Amanusa did to it.

“Blood of my blood,” she murmured under her breath where no one could hear. She caught hold of the magic with something that wasn't her hand, but could be manipulated the same way. She pulled the magic tight as she licked her thumb and rubbed it over the smears of blood on the three unhinged sides.

“Your task is done,” she whispered, and felt the seals dissolve. The magic dissipated.

Amanusa flipped the top open and winced at what she saw inside. Several of the spokes were corroded almost completely away, and the central shell had holes eaten through it to expose complicated inner
workings, which also showed signs of corrosion. She pulled it out of the box, blackened bits flaking away as she did.

“Apparently,” she said, “magic dislikes it as much as it dislikes magic. It seems my protective warding caused it some damage.”

“This is good to know. So we know that magic does have an effect on these things, on the dead zones. It is not immune.” Strelitsky took the machine from her and held it at eye level to inspect it. But he had only a moment or two to peer into its insides before his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed.

The machine clunked to the floor, magicians skittering out of its way as it rolled lopsidedly off a few feet. Tonio dropped to his knees beside the felled alchemist and ripped the man's shirt open to put his ear to Strelitsky's chest and listen. “He is still alive.”

Tonio straightened and pointed at one of the gathered men. “Pascal, get the bag. Now.”

The very young man ran to do as he was told. One of the other magicians shoved the machine farther out of the way with the toe of his shoe and Elinor picked it up by a spoke and set it back on the table.

“Can I help?” Amanusa hovered near the wizard as he rummaged through the colored glass bottles in the case his apprentice brought.

“We want to keep him alive,” Tonio muttered, preoccupied. “Not kill him.”

Amanusa recoiled at the verbal blow, though she quickly understood it came from ignorance rather than malice. “Blood magic has its healing arts,” she said evenly as the wizard marked Strelitsky's bare,
hairy chest with herbal oils. “May I add my magic to your dosing?”

Tonio looked up at her, his gaze sharp enough to bore holes, all trace of the Latin lover gone. “His heart scarcely beats. I do not know if I can strengthen it. I do not know if I can get my ‘dosing' down him. If you believe you can help him, and you swear to do no harm, then by all means.” He gestured with the blue bottle in his hand. “Join me.”

“Measure your medicine.” Amanusa knelt on the other side of Strelitsky. “I will administer the dose.”

It was awkward lancing a finger one-handed inside her pocket. The power residing in the sorcerer's blood had been a guild secret of sorcery since it began. Amanusa understood why, once Jax pointed it out to her. If others knew the true source of the magic, they could be tempted to appropriate that power by appropriating the sorcerer's blood.

And while innocent blood cried out for justice, if the sorceress was dead and all her blood spilled out through the gash in her throat, she couldn't work magic with her own innocent blood. Ignorant and greedy people too often couldn't resist killing the goose for the gold.

These men could perhaps be trusted, but all the great magics had secrets held within their own guilds. This was the greatest secret of sorcery. Amanusa would keep it.

Tonio handed her the tiny cup with his potion in it. Amanusa smeared a generous drop of blood along the lip of the cup where the medicine would sweep it up as she poured it into Strelitsky's mouth. Much of it dribbled out again, but enough slid down his throat in a choked, reflexive swallow.

As she held her magic quiescent, waiting for the proper moment, she could sense the magic Tonio had brewed into his potion. It was different from her workings, the magic instilled when the potion was created rather than at the moment of its use.

“Do you draw no blood?” the wizard asked, checking Strelitsky's feeble pulse again.

“All the blood I need is inside Mr. Strelitsky,” Amanusa said with complete honesty. “And that is where it will stay for now. When it is time, I will take only a very little. A drop. No more.”

The alchemist's color was improving, from pasty to pale. The potion was working. Time for Amanusa to go to work as well. She woke her magic inside the odd little man. It was dim and blurred, hard to see, and uncomfortable. Nothing like the crystal clarity and sense of belonging she had when wandering through Jax's bloodstream.

Images from Strelitsky's memories kept impinging on Amanusa's awareness. Plump-cheeked little girls and an equally plump-cheeked wife. Cluttered workrooms. Spell formulas. Amanusa shoved them aside as best she could, trying to keep them out of the way without harming them. He would need those spells again, and losing any memory of one's family was a tragedy. She didn't need to sift his memory. Amanusa's purpose was purely physical.

The potion was a stimulant, something to give Strelitsky back the strength and energy the machine had stolen. Amanusa linked with Tonio's magic, adding life magic to life magic. Then she willed the magic to show her Strelitsky's heart.

It stuttered, lacking any rhythm, as if it had forgotten how to beat. Amanusa pulled up the magic—the
wizard's and her own—and listened for the beating of her own heart. She called it into the magic—carefully, for she'd learned to heed Jax's warnings—and shared it with the stricken alchemist. Strelitsky's heart began to beat more soundly, but it needed more.