Witch-Blood

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Magus Carver?” I echoed, cutting my eyes to Hel. “When did that happen?”

  “Eh, courtesy title,” she said, brushing it off. “Magus Jenner, honored magi, this is my brother.”

  “Hi,” I said. “I’d shake your hands, but you know…” I bit into another piece of bacon. “Messy. Where to, Hel?”

  “Conference one,” she replied, but she lingered while the wizards headed off toward the conference room I’d seen that morning. When we were alone, she murmured, “Aid.”

  “Hel?” I said, all innocence and bacon grease.

  “Be nice.”

  “Why bother?” asked Rufus, who appeared from behind us with a fresh cup of coffee. “They already look at us like dog shit on a satin shoe—that’s not going to change. And here, at least take a napkin,” he chided, handing me a folded stack of paper towels. “You may have grown up Arcanum, kid, but surely they teach table manners down in the bunker.”

  Hel watched with mild disapproval while I tidied myself up. “You remember that saying about flies, honey, and vinegar, right?”

  “Sure,” I told her, tossing the napkins into the ether. “And I also know that look they all just gave me. Not quite as bad as Dad’s, but it was in the neighborhood.”

  She turned to Rufus, but he shook his head. “I know it hurts,” she told me quietly. “And you have every right to be sensitive about it, Aid. But for my sake, and for the sake of everyone camped out around the silo, could we all please be adults about this?”

  “I will if they will,” I replied, going back to the bacon. Rufus rolled his eyes and handed me another napkin.

  “Fair enough,” she said with a sigh, then led the way toward the waiting wizards.

  I’d long been accustomed to being on the receiving end of odd looks from Arcanum members. Duds merit a certain amount of pity, after all, and those wizards that didn’t know better smiled too brightly when they spoke to me, as if I were not only magically inept, but also slow. The magi who did know about my dirty little secret preferred the tight-lipped smile, an expression that conveyed their overall displeasure with my presence and their simultaneous recognition of societal niceties.

  I was getting a lot of tight lips from the installation heads, but few smiles. Instead, they watched me with unease, either fidgeting or sitting perfectly still but for a telltale tapping foot or clenching fist. These were some of the top wizards in the world, the territorial governors whose portraits hung around the silo’s halls, and I realized as I watched them watching me that they were afraid.

  The Arcanum’s best and brightest—save Hel, who silently pleaded with me from the head of the table to not be a jackass—feared me.

  Honestly, it was intoxicating, but I did my best not to embarrass my sister.

  “There’s a force waiting back in Faerie. I don’t have an exact figure, but it’s substantial,” I told them, punctuating my words with jabs of the broken bacon in my hand. “And they’ve had a few hours to rest up, so they should be ready to go. Bring them over, point them in the right direction, and see if they can’t find Moyna. Assuming, that is, that we can get a sufficient quantity of magic flowing into the area.”

  One of the more talkative magi, whose lined face was tanned a deep chestnut under a shock of white hair, sounded like he’d strolled out of the Outback and could only have come from Arcanum 7. He pushed up his sleeves and gave me a hard look. “You aren’t even going to try to talk her down first? Girl’s your blood.”

  I ignored the overtone of disgust in his declaration. “I’ll give it a shot. But have you spent any quality time with her, Magus…”

  “Bartow.”

  “Magus Bartow. Ever had any dealings with Moyna before this? Because I’ve seen what she can do. She’s closed to negotiation when she’s pissed, and she’s been pissed for months. I’m not holding out a lot of hope.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched into a little smirk. “And here I’d heard that the half fae were reasonable.”

  “There’s really no telling what percentage she is,” I replied, catching the look Hel was shooting me. “Coileán’s half, Meggy was half, but that half was one of the Three on both sides. She could be almost fully fae, for all I know. Whatever she is, she’s strong.”

  “And you think you can beat her?” Magus Jenner interjected as she polished her glasses on her robe’s dangling sleeve.

  “Yes. But if I’m sending my forces in, you’re going with us,” I told her, then cut my eyes to Hel. “And we’re going to need Georgie.”

  “Of course,” said the old man I recognized as Magus Aminu, the long-serving head of Arcanum 5 and the first magus ever chosen out of Nigeria, “this solution would leave us with an army of faeries outside Arcanum 1. Surely we should wait until the grand magus decides.”

  “Which will take how long?” I asked. “I mean, my Morse isn’t up to snuff, but I’m betting someone in here could shoot him a message. Who’s manning the communications room right now?”

  “Justine Lin,” Hel offered, “and I gave her a message for the grand magus before this meeting began.” The other wizards stiffened and turned to her, and Hel smiled. “I didn’t call you here to ask your permission for this attack,” she told them. “I called you here to explain what was going to happen. And Justine is telling Greg what to expect. We’re tired, they’re tired, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to break the siege by morning if at all possible. Aid’s in control,” she continued, meeting my eyes, “and he has assured me that his forces won’t turn on ours.”

  Her look dared me to call her out on the lie, and I held my tongue.

  “So go back and ready your people,” said Hel. “This ends today.”

  “Let’s shoot for high noon,” I added, waiting as the room swiveled back to face me, and chomped into my cold bacon. “Seems appropriate, doesn’t it?”

  A few minutes and some halfhearted protests later, the wizards filed out as a muttering herd. Once the door slammed behind them and their footsteps ceased to echo outside the conference room, Hel leaned against the wall and slowly exhaled. “Please tell me I’m not off base,” she mumbled, glancing at me and my bacon crumbs. “You do have this in hand, yes?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?” she echoed. Her voice cracked, revealing a flash of the stress she was holding in beneath the surface. “That’s not good enough. I need some reassurances—”

  “I’m flying blind,” I interrupted, pushing my plate away, “and I’m going to do the best I can, but Hel…they’ve been locked up for weeks, and they’re out for blood. You should see some of the corpses,” I added, rubbing my forehead to dispel the images that had popped up uninvited. “Abused doesn’t begin to describe it. Know what I mean?”

  “Psychos on a rampage? Yeah.” She perched on the table beside me and shook her head. “You think you’re flying blind?” she murmured. “At least you can strong-arm them into listening, right?”

  The pictures weren’t going away, and I rubbed harder. “Theoretically.”

  “Well, I can’t. I’ve got magi old enough to be my grandparents second-guessing every decision I make, and I’m barely holding on to control, but only because they have enough respect for Greg to follow me. But that’s fraying, and this may have been the final straw.” She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “If this goes to hell and we somehow still live through it, then I can kiss the grand magus spot goodbye. That’s if the Council doesn’t reissue the warrant, of course. I mean, helping you run off was bad enough, but to stand back and let a pack of faeries get within spitting distance of the silo…to invite them…” She turned to me again, and I saw desperation in her eyes. “Even if there’s not enough magic left for them to power up, if that’s not treason, Aid, it’s damn close.”

  The look on my sister’s face scared me more than I wanted to admit, but I tried not to show it. “I’ll talk to Val,” I said. “Make sure we’ve got a game plan that includes a clean exit. And if things go awry…w
ell,” I muttered, “then I guess the court will get that demonstration of my power after all.”

  The tightness lingered in Hel’s shoulders as she watched me. I was about to try to come up with something more reassuring when she softly asked, “How strong are you, really? Be honest with me. If I’m trusting you as my safety net, I need to know the truth.”

  I thought for a moment, looking for the right words. “The realm loaned me Coileán’s power, or something close, but I…you know, actually wielding it properly…”

  “In other words, you have no idea what you’re doing?”

  “More now than I did before Val started working with me, but I’ve got a long way to go.”

  She ran one hand over her face, up and down. “Rufus said you killed Oberon.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered.

  “And a bunch of others.” I said nothing, but Hel didn’t blink. “Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but I need to know that you have this thing under control, that you’re not going to get out there and go full berserker. I…” She hesitated, reading my face. “I’ve got a lot of lives on the line, Aid, and I know you wouldn’t do anything intentionally, but do you—”

  “That part’s solid,” I told her. “Ask Joey if you don’t believe me.”

  “I do,” she said gently. “No need to drag Joey into this.”

  “You’re sure? He can vouch for me.”

  She slid off the table and straightened her shirt. “I trust my brother. And if Joey were to sleep through the next few hours, I wouldn’t be too upset.”

  I stood and joined her as she headed for the door. “We need Georgie, Hel. She’s the only one of us who can use dark magic.”

  My sister’s face twisted. “I don’t know, she’s still so young…”

  “She’s done it before!”

  “Okay, granted,” she mumbled, “but that doesn’t mean Joey has to go with her.”

  I couldn’t quite read the subtext in my sister’s expression, and having been on the wrong end of an amateur’s mental exploration, I wasn’t about to pry into her thoughts. But there was enough in the way she hugged herself to confirm what I suspected.

  “He really loves you,” I told her. “And I know you’re worried about him, but Joey’s tougher than you think. Let him help you.”

  When she replied, her voice barely broke a whisper. “If something happens to him…”

  She let the thought hang, and I shrugged. “Wake him up. You know it’s what he’d want. If you sent Georgie without him, he’d never forgive you.”

  She glanced off down the hallway, visibly torn, then shot me an exasperated glare before heading toward the staircase. “When did you get so bossy, anyway?”

  “Oh, excuse me, Magus,” I retorted, “did I not kowtow quickly enough for you that time?”

  “Dork.”

  “That’s ‘Lord Dork’ to you, jerk.”

  Hel shoved me in the shoulder and kept walking, shaking her head and muttering about the incorrigibility of the males in her life. And finding nothing further there to let me stall against facing my army, I opened a wobbly gate and struck out to locate Val.

  To my surprise, the throne room was halfway full but calm when I returned. People milled about—a few had set up tables and chairs, and a little crowd was gathered around a chessboard—but the chaos I had feared was nowhere to be seen. I looked around and quickly spotted Val, who had placed a long desk at the foot of the dais and was sitting behind it with several of the guards, making notes on sheaves of paper as one person after another approached with questions or information. I knew most of the guards by face, not dress—Coileán never insisted on uniforms, and their attire ran the gamut, from the senior lieutenant at Val’s left in his formal robes to the younger man at the end of the table who favored, of all things, jorts and sandals.

  There were also guards on the doors, I noticed, and suddenly understood the subdued mood.

  No one seemed to notice my arrival but the realm, who jubilantly welcomed me back, so I walked over to the table for an update. “Is anything burning?” I asked as I neared.

  Val’s head shot up from his ledgers, and he smiled wearily as he and the other guards stood. “Not anymore, my lord. The fires have been extinguished. And I’d begun to fear that they would let you sleep all day.”

  “Not quite. I heard that Toula stopped by.”

  “We had a few issues to discuss,” he replied. One of my eyebrows rose, and Val snorted. “More of a speech, really. I assume Helen gave you a similar reception.”

  “Joey got the worst of it. And, uh…” Val sat, and the others followed suit. “Thanks,” I muttered, leaning against the stone pillar beside the table, and cradled my sore hand. “Did you flush out the others?”

  Val cut his eyes to the brunette to his right, whose freckled face broke into a grim smile. “Hence the fires, my lord,” she said.

  “How many dead?” I asked her, trying and failing to place her among the guards I’d met.

  She consulted her notes. “Most came quietly. Another fifty-three dead since this morning, three hundred twenty-seven more in custody. Have you decided what’s to be done with them?” she asked, putting her pen aside. “The dungeons are overflowing. We could expand them, but at the moment”—she paused to look at the throng around the throne room—“no one’s really of a mind to worry about their comfort.”

  “Understandable. And you are…”

  “Lady Mina,” Val cut in. “My second, recently back from sea.”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Must you remind me, Captain? Two years on a boat with those idiots, and I come home to this nonsense. Honestly, you should have summoned me sooner.” Mina rested her chin in her hand and looked up at me. “Five of my imbecile cousins had the bright idea of mapping the western sea. I told them it’s been attempted. I showed them the books, but were they deterred? Of course not. So Grandmother sent me along to keep them from…from I don’t know, trying to swim back or some such,” she said, shaking her chestnut ringlets, “and out of nowhere, I had this vision of a woman who warned me away from shore. We all did.”

  “Short, blonde, likes her clothing see-through?” I asked.

  Mina nodded. “Oh good, I’m not crazy. Anyway, she returned at dawn today and told us to get back here with all speed, so here I am. And I come ashore to find Grandmother gone, Oberon on a pyre, my little uncle sleeping it off, and…I take it you’re Lord Aiden, then?”

  I thought briefly, putting her rapid story together. “You…you’re Titania’s—”

  “Granddaughter,” she offered. “One of Oberon’s brats killed my mother some years ago. You wouldn’t have known her.”

  “About twelve hundred years ago, more or less,” Val added. “Lady Autel. Mina is—”

  “A half-breed mess who grows bored easily,” she interrupted with a grin. “And Valerius continues to tolerate me, for some reason. I can’t imagine why.” She brushed her hair from her shoulder and sobered. “Captain thinks you might be in need of some crowd control, my lord. Accepting volunteers?”

  Distantly, I registered the fact that I was talking to my niece, who was considerably older than Coileán. “Uh…yeah, sure. Can you keep them from turning on the Arcanum troops?”

  “Quite possibly. I often find that deploying a few well-placed threats of violence works wonders. And if the Ironhand is really on the throne,” she muttered, “then I think we all know what could happen if he should wake up cranky. So Moyna’s his, then? I missed that.”

  “Apparently…”

  Mina smiled. “Well, I suppose there’s no one to fight with you for the title of Grandmother’s youngest, is there? And it’s just you and Coileán…” She grimaced. “I never had any strong attachment to my younger aunts and uncles, but still, family. What are you going to do about it?”

  I glanced out at the waiting crowd, then back at Mina, Val, and the other listening guards. “I’d thought about trying to capture Moyna and kill anyone else who didn�
��t surrender, but if you’ve got a better plan, I’m listening.”

  Mina drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Oh, I think I’m going to like you. And did I understand correctly that you’re kin to the grand magus?”

  Val subtly nodded reassurance, and I made a face. “Close. My sister’s next in line. She’s also heading up the Arcanum’s assault force, and I told her there wouldn’t be friendly fire.”

  She considered this briefly, then nodded. “It’s doable, but why don’t you leave the pre-attack remarks to the captain and me? I appreciate that you’re keeping the throne warm,” she added with a friendly smirk, “but I’m going to assume that you’ve not done this before.”

  I folded my arms. “That obvious, huh?”

  “A good guess, my lord,” said Mina, smiling in earnest.

  “And did anyone mention to you the fact that there’s almost no magic left around the silo?”

  “That’s what swords are for, dear.” She went to her feet again and patted the bronze hilt at her left hip. “Now, shall we begin?”

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  I didn’t know at the time what Val and Mina told our forces by way of a pep talk. Later, I’d hear it in snatches when the conversation returned to that morning: warnings to follow orders, followed by a thrice-repeated list of targets that were explicitly off-limits, and finishing with a graphic depiction of what would happen to anyone who disregarded the earlier parts of the speech. Val painted me as just this side of stable, liable to lose my temper and control if provoked, and reminded the assembled that despite earlier indications to the contrary, I most certainly was Titania’s son—with all that entailed.

  And for my army, who knew too well what my mother had been capable of, that seemed to do the trick. The faeries who marched by twos and threes into Wright’s Mill were an orderly lot, dressed for comfort and protection, most wearing blades, a few with crossbows. They bunched up as they stood in the snow—many produced coats and cloaks after a few minutes of turning their backs to the wind—and simply waited for instructions.