The Unmaking (2 page)

Abimbola’s stomach rumbled and he remembered that he should eat. He turned away from the window and went to his desk to pick up the phone and call the maid. As he did so, a shadow stepped out of the opposite wall and said a single word in a strange language.

He tried to scream. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. He tried to reach for his phone and found he could not move. Abimbola Broom had never before in his life had cause to feel truly afraid, but he was afraid now.

“You should be happy, aye,” said a young, female voice. “You were just wondering how you would find me and here I am.”

She came closer. He could see her face now, a brown, beaky little face under a mass of disorderly curls. Why, she was not even a grown-up! She was a girl of no more than fourteen or fifteen. Her hair and clothes were wet, as if she had recently been out in the rain. She was dressed quite ordinarily for a girl her age, in a pair of slim trousers, laced black boots and a long winter coat, perhaps dark green, although it was difficult to tell in the unlit room. She wore a shard of white crystal around her neck. She did not appear frightening until she reached into the coat and drew out a dark blade the length of her forearm.

“You’re wrong that it’s impossible to carve something from a dragon’s claw, by the way,” she said. “There are mystical ways of moulding even something as hard as this, if you know a great deal about Magic and a great deal about dragons. I dinnay know much about either, as it happens, but I know someone who does.”

Abimbola could not breathe or think. His mind was a roaring black cavern. He was going to be murdered, he understood that perfectly, and had not imagined himself capable of the terror he was now experiencing.

“I’m nay going to kill you,” the girl said impatiently. “Though you dinnay deserve any better. But Di Shang has its own kind of justice for men like you. I’m going to hand you over.”

Free of the fear of death and given a moment to recover from it, Abimbola’s mind began to race. There was nothing that could be proved against him, nothing at all.

“Lah, you’re wrong there,” said the girl, circling him with her awful black blade pointing towards him at all times. “You may be able to mix a messy little potion of invisibility and creep around unseen to your meetings with the Cra, but there are more kinds of Seeing than you can imagine. You dinnay know much about Magic, of course, so I’ll share a few facts with you. For example, did you know that I could touch your coat and discover its entire history? Everywhere you’ve been, everything you’ve done while wearing that coat – I can find out about it with a simple spell. I could do the same thing with your shoes or your briefcase or your wife’s diamond necklace. Then there’s the Vindensphere, which you’ve never heard of, but which could be used to show a judge everything you’ve been up to for the last eight or nine years. Of course,
I’m
nay going to go marching into a court of law to testify against you. I think one of the Emmisariae of the Mancers would be better suited for that, lah. Nobody would question what a Mancer said. And yes, the Mancers know about you, and yes, they want to see you prosecuted and convicted for the murder of innocent children, and yes, I am the one who has been hunting down the Cra. My name is Eliza.”

Abimbola Broom was dizzy. Whatever invisible force had been holding him immobile lifted suddenly and his knees folded beneath him. He crashed to the floor and found his voice.

“My children,” he managed to say. “I have two daughters. Without me, what will become of them?”

Eliza’s face clouded over. “I dinnay know. I’m very sorry that they will grow up without a father and that they will have to be so ashamed of you. But I cannay undo the things you’ve done.”

“I beg of you,” he said, “I will find a way to...atone. I have given a great deal of money to charities, you can see the receipts in my desk, thousands of –”

Eliza interrupted him with a brief command and once again his voice was gone.

“I cannay listen to you,” she said, disgusted. She put away her dagger and unlooped a coil of slender brown rope from her belt. She uttered brief commands and as she did so he found himself getting to his feet and putting his hands behind his back for her to bind. She bound his feet as well. The cord did not feel tight and it did not look strong but he could not move his limbs where it bound him.

“That’s better, aye,” she said. “Now I dinnay have to concentrate on keeping you still.”

She strode to the window and threw it open. The rain was thunderous now, crashing down onto the city.

“Charlie!” she called. A giant winged creature swooped past the window and Abimbola gave a little scream. Eliza tugged the rope that bound him and he skidded to the window. She was about to push him out into the dark when there was a tap at his door. He looked down at Eliza, wide-eyed, and she looked back at him, her expression impassive. The door opened, revealing Nekane, silhouetted by the light of the hallway behind her. She had come, simmering with resentment, to say goodnight and a few other things, the exact wording of which she had been working on all evening with the unread book open on her lap. But her face changed now. She stared at the young girl at the window and her husband, bound fast.

“Nekane,” said Abimbola desperately. He wanted to shout for help, he wanted to tell her to do something, to stop the girl, but what came out of his mouth was what he least expected – “Forgive me.”

Then Eliza gave him a swift push and he tipped out the window. Something hard and bony closed around him, stopping his fall. When he dared to open his eyes he found himself looking at the powerful chest of a gryphon that had caught him in its talons. Eliza jumped out the window onto the gryphon’s back and they soared off over the drenched, shimmering city. If Abimbola had been able to see into his study as they flew away, he would have realized that the expression on his wife’s face was one of unmistakable relief.

~~~

In spite of the rain Eliza enjoyed flying over the city, its countless lights swimming beneath her like phosphorescence in the sea. She was terribly pleased with herself for having captured Abimbola. Charlie had drawn her attention to the Cra’s unusual activities months ago and had taken the guise of one to discover whom they were working for. When he told Eliza about the arrangement they had with a wealthy businessman, she had hardly believed it. How could a
man
be responsible for organizing such slaughters? She didn’t understand it and she didn’t much want to. She would hand him over to the Mancers and they would deal with everything from there. Of course, she wasn’t foolish enough to think they would be pleased with her. But who were they to argue, when she had been out doing what they had neglected to do for years?

Abimbola, nearly crushed by the gryphon’s grip, had begun to gibber with fear. Eliza slipped upside-down towards him, hooking her leg over the gryphon’s neck and getting a firm grip on its foreleg with one hand. She stuck a piece of the rope in Abimbola’s mouth to still his tongue, then pulled herself back upright with her leg. They left Kalla behind them, flying south across the Interior Provinces. Cities were scattered below like twinkling pools of light in the vast darkness of the plains. She was soaked through but exhilarated, she and the gryphon one in their joy of flight. Only the bound man was not enjoying the journey. Dawn glimmered on the horizon as the lush plains dried out into stony, unforested gullies and ridges. Further south was the Great Sand Sea, home of the Sorma, her father’s people. She could go that way and deliver this man to their care to be sent on a spirit-quest and have the
poison taken from his soul. It would be better for him. If he survived, he would be whole. But she wasn’t interested in what was best for him. She wanted him to be punished, not healed. They flew over the great river Noxoni, a brown torrent with a swathe of green on either side of it, and the gryphon veered west.

Less than an hour later, on the ragged lip of a vast canyon, the Citadel of the Mancers came into view. The Citadel formed a square with towers at every corner enclosing the grounds, which were startlingly green in contrast to the arid world outside. The Inner Sanctum loomed at the centre, a giant white dome. As the gryphon swooped down towards it, Eliza began to mutter under her breath, requesting entry in the Language of First Days. She could feel, as always, the slight surprise and annoyance that came in response to her request. They didn’t like the way she came and went, as she was well aware. But they always let her in.

Eliza and the gryphon landed in the grounds by the south wing. The early morning sky was bright and cloudless. Her beloved teacher, Foss, was waiting for her, shaking his head.

“You are soaking wet!” he scolded, sounding so motherly that she laughed out loud. He looked rather offended and turned his attention to Abimbola Broom.

“Who is this and why in the worlds have you brought him
here
, Eliza Tok? A human. And bound with the Onbeweglich Cord! Rather extreme, is it not?”

“I didnay want him being difficult,” said Eliza.

Abimbola Broom spat out the piece of cord that was lodged in his mouth and gaped around him. Although he had never seen a Mancer, he was certain that was what stood before him, towering and gold-skinned with pale hair and eyes like suns.

“Sir,” he began, his voice shaking, “I have been most abominably treated! I have been
kidnapped
while my family slept and I pray to the Ancients that you in your infinite wisdom will be able to rectify –”

Charlie, who had ceased to be a gryphon and become a boy again as soon as they landed, interrupted this speech by bending down and sticking the bit of cord back into Abimbola’s mouth, silencing him. Being a Shade, Charlie could take any shape he chose, but he kept Eliza company by appearing most frequently as a boy her own age. She thought it was unnecessary and a bit vain of him to insist on being such a good-looking boy but didn’t say so.

“He should be put in the dungeons with a barrier,” said Eliza. “I’ll show you what he’s been doing, aye. Then the Emmisariae can take care of things.”

Foss sighed. “If you want to put a human in the dungeons, Eliza Tok, you will have to speak with Kyreth. He is expecting you, by the way.”

“I know,” said Eliza. “Will you keep an eye on him, Charlie?”

“Aye aye, Cap’n,” said Charlie, settling down in the grass next to Abimbola.

“Dinnay call me that,” said Eliza, and then smiled at him involuntarily. “Nice flight, nay?”

“Wet,” Charlie came back flatly.

“Perhaps you should change into something dry first,” said Foss to Eliza, only just managing to refrain from saying
before you catch your death of cold.

“I’m almost dry. But aye, you’re right, I should get cleaned up anyway. Come on, walk with me. Have you nay missed me at all, Foss? I’ve been gone for weeks!” She looked up at his brilliant face, his eyes much brighter than when she had last seen him, and she remembered that they were approaching winter, his strongest season.

“I would have missed you more and worried less if I’d had any idea what you were doing. Although, as it turns out you were terrorizing and kidnapping a human, I think I would have worried even if I had known.”

“He’s been in league with the Cra, Foss,” said Eliza as they made their way into the south wing and up the marble stairs, in the direction of Eliza’s bedroom. “He’s been
planning
their attacks and making sure they didnay get reported!”

“The Cra.” Foss’s shoulders slumped noticeably. “I have mentioned, I believe, that none of us are terribly happy about you going into battle alone with so little training. And I am understating the case quite dramatically.” He looked as if he was about to say more but decided against it.

“It’s just the Cra,” protested Eliza. “It’s hardly dangerous. And lah, besides, I always have Charlie with me.”

Foss shook his head. “Kyreth will not be pleased,” he said.

Chapter

~2~

F
oss was right.
Eliza spent the morning rehashing the same argument she always had with the Supreme Mancer Kyreth, which, as usual, left them both even angrier than when they had started.

“It is beyond irresponsible! You are a fool, Eliza, a foolish girl. When you are sufficiently trained and you have a daughter, that is the time to fulfill your duty as the Shang Sorceress. But to put yourself in danger so
deliberately
– you are too much like your mother, and will meet her fate or worse if you do not learn to obey those who hold your interests at heart!” Kyreth paced back and forth behind his heavy marble desk, hands locked behind his back, his eyes blazing so white-hot that Eliza could not look him in the face. The room hummed with his anger. Behind him one of the blank Scrolls hanging from the wall wrote out swiftly
too much like your mother
, and another Scroll wrote
her fate or worse.

“I was
not...in...danger
,” Eliza ground out between her teeth for what felt like the twentieth time. “Charlie was with me the whole time, aye. Anyway, I can
handle
the Cra. I can
handle
a man. Lah, if the Mancers had ever bothered to deal with the Cra then I wouldnay have had to do it in the first place!”

“Do not be insolent!” Kyreth flashed with rage, making Eliza wince. “Is it your belief, Eliza, that the Mancers spend their days in idleness? Answer me!”