Rise of the Reaper

by Lorna Reid

  Chapter 12

  ◊

  RUSSELL COULDN’T HELP BUT notice that Katrina stuck with Thom on the journey back to the Honorax, barely talking during the heavily guarded wagon ride. Can’t blame her, he thought, feeling guilty for being glad he hadn’t been on her side of the glass. Thankfully there was no uncomfortable vacuum, as Airrell was talking nineteen to the dozen about both the match and the fight, seemingly unfazed by what had happened.

  Russell wondered for a moment whether Katrina was snuggled close to Thom for comfort, or just to avoid the questions burning on Poppy’s lips whenever Katrina caught her eye. He knew that if that were him, then he’d still be trying to process everything, so he respected her right to peace.

  His mind kept harking back to the blood and swords, and he wondered whether his father had taken a life. He must have, Russell reasoned. He was a soldier; he didn’t wear a blade for decoration. He wondered if his father had ever lain in a pool of blood. The notion started to make him sick, but like all intrusive, insidious thoughts, it wrapped around the core of his mind and refused to die away, no matter how he twisted and fidgeted, until it gave him a headache.

  *

  ‘Here,’ Isa said, passing Russell a small glass of murky-looking grey liquid and then taking a seat beside him. They’d been back at the Honorax for several hours and had been left in Isa’s charge in a comfortable suite of guest rooms, along with a spread of food that Russell could barely bring himself to touch.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, trying to breathe in as little of the nasty aniseedy odour as he could manage.

  ‘Down it in one – it’s less vile.’ She smiled, rubbing his back. She looked stressed, but her smile was genuine. It calmed him down and threw sparks into the dark mess in his head, knocking some of the thoughts off kilter and giving him some relief.

  ‘Sure you don’t want any more?’ she asked, taking the glass and laughing as he pulled a face and wiped his mouth.

  ‘No, thank you, that was disgusting.’

  ‘I meant dinner,’ she said, nodding at the table. ‘If you do, you’d best get there soon, or Air and Danny will have cleared the lot.’

  He looked over and sighed. ‘I wish it affected me as little as it does him,’ he muttered, mostly to himself. They watched Danny filling his third plate of food, listening to yet another of Air’s gruesome stories about Aquattrox injuries, complete with expansive gestures. Poppy was also absorbed.

  ‘And they never did find his foot,’ Air said with a triumphant flourish as they resumed their seats nearby. He seemed to enjoy the appropriate noises of disgust and awe, and he gnawed on a chicken leg. Isa rolled her eyes at Russell and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

  ‘It was actually just a toe, at least in that case. Next time he tells it, it will probably be a whole leg.’ Russell laughed, and for the first time in hours felt some of the tension seep from his body.

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen now?’ Poppy said, sitting down beside Isa and stretching out her legs.

  ‘The Oracle will be given extra round-the-clock protection, and my father is trying to find a Shadow Mage who can help with the security,’ said Isa.

  ‘If Blake were here, they’d not stand a chance,’ snorted Air. ‘I’ve heard some awesome stories from Thom and Knox.’

  ‘Sadly, he isn’t,’ said Isa.

  ‘Maybe he will be if he’s in the same place as Mum,’ said Danny. ‘Which reminds me, I want to speak to Thom and see if he’s heard from Dad yet.’

  ‘Don’t you think he’s got his hands full right now?’ said Poppy.

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ Danny shot back. ‘My mother’s been trapped all these years. The Oracle has her freedom and her life.’

  ‘She nearly bloody didn’t,’ said Russell. ‘Your timing is shitty.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I want Mum safe. I don’t want some assassin or whatever getting her. I just …’ Danny trailed off and started picking at a thread in one of the cushions.

  ‘They’ve only just found the beacon, Danny. Give them time,’ said Isa. ‘It’s a damn good lead, better than they’ve had in years. Whether or not Blake is with her, I don’t know.’

  ‘Blake could have found her, y’know,’ said Airrell, popping a grape into his mouth. ‘In between being a Drift Mage – someone who filled in when needed – for the Allies, he was a private Searcher. Used his magic to find missing and lost people. He never failed.’

  ‘Why haven’t they found Blake and used him to find Mum, then?’ muttered Danny. Russell scowled. He’s so damn selfish, he thought. Isa evidently thought the same.

  ‘If it were that easy, don’t you think they would have done that by now? They haven’t been idly twiddling their thumbs for the last few years. Knox especially has nearly killed himself using his magic to try and go back and find out what happened to Blake. Last time, he was unconscious for a fortnight.’ Isa shook her head.

  ‘And you don’t “use” anyone,’ she continued. ‘Shadow Mages are people, not commodities, despite what the more ignorant in our society think.’ Her face was hard, eyes angry, and Danny looked away, unable or unwilling to argue. Good, thought Russell. He needed a dose of reality.

  After a few minutes of awkward silence, Danny detached himself from the group and settled at a nearby table where he started doodling on the back of an Aquattrox programme that he’d taken from the floor of the stadium. Russell had also taken one for his scrapbook.

  Russell rubbed his head as Isa started chatting to Katrina, drawing her into conversation from the quiet fog she’d been under. Why hadn’t his headache shifted? Isa turned to get a glass of fruit juice and the sunlight caught the silvery ends of her braids. Suddenly a cold mist hit him and, for a split second, he was somewhere else. There was a faint buzz of noise around him, but all he could see were the braids flashing as Isa spun.

  ‘Russell?’

  He blinked.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Isa said, touching his arm. ‘Looked like you were going to pass out.’

  ‘I just … I don’t know. It was weird. I thought I was somewhere else for a moment. It was like a cold mist.’

  ‘It’s been a busy day.’ She smiled. ‘You probably need to rest.’

  ‘Yes.’ Russell managed a smile, but for the rest of the afternoon he couldn’t shake the odd feeling of something being wrong.

  *

  ‘Are you excited about staying here?’ Poppy asked Katrina, watching her shift in her armchair and play with the small pocket mirror that Thom had given her.

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, I just hope that the stuff today was it. You know, over.’

  ‘Well, they looked pretty dead to me,’ Poppy said. ‘Partly thanks to you.’

  Katrina’s shoulders tensed and she gave Poppy one of her ‘looks’. Poppy ignored it; she couldn’t put it off any longer, despite Russell’s frown of admonishment.

  ‘Look, sorry, it’s just incredible. You stopped a blade. With your hands.’

  Katrina broke into a small smile. ‘Yeah, that was kind of amazing.’

  ‘How? Did you mean to? Did you feel anything? What was it like?’ Out of the corner of her eye, Poppy saw Russell roll his eyes up and shake his head, but she ignored him. She knew he wanted to know as much as she did. Why wouldn’t he?

  ‘I … it was just weird. I didn’t do anything. I just put out my hands and it stopped. I don’t even know what I did. I’m just glad I did it.’

  ‘So am I.’ Poppy smiled and held her hand, and Katrina broke into a teary smile and clutched her fingers. Her hands felt colder than usual, Poppy thought. Maybe it was affecting her worse than they knew. She had nearly been stabbed, after all.

  Poppy watched her watch Danny doodling, and she couldn’t help feeling an odd sensation of jealousy. She wanted to be able to do magic, to be like her father, to match all the stories everyone told. A Rainbow Mage. Those were rare, from the little she knew. Now it was what she wanted more than anything. Katrina had been the first t
o do magic and, for some reason, Poppy had wanted it to have been her.

  She swallowed back the grief at the thought of her father and tried to focus on Danny. ‘What are those? Aztec carvings?’ she asked, trying to study his drawings upside down.

  ‘Stuff I saw in my visions with the Oracle,’ he said. ‘I keep seeing them. I just get this cold mist thing happen. Then they’re right there. I don’t know what they mean.’

  ‘Cold mist? You think that’s related to the Oracle visions?’ asked Russell, looking up from his Aquattrox programme.

  Danny shrugged. ‘Must be. That’s how it felt, and that’s what I saw.’

  Russell frowned and looked down at his hands, lost in thought.

  ‘Let’s see.’ Airrell stuffed a whole biscuit in his mouth and pulled the drawings over. ‘Mmmph. Never seen them,’ he said, poking a few escaping crumbs back into his mouth, to his sister’s disgust.

  Isa took the proffered programme and studied it with a shake of the head. ‘Hmm. Not familiar. They have a style similar to some of the carvings of the Ancients in the Old World. I couldn’t tell you more. The man for that is Edred Tarrin, but then you probably already know that.’ She pushed the programme back to Danny, who stared at her, open-mouthed.

  ‘Edred? Edred Edred?’

  ‘Yes, he’s close to Thom and your dad, isn’t he? Very revered scholar.’

  ‘That old man?’ Poppy asked. Danny scowled at her and Russell choked on his fruit juice.

  ‘Poppy.’

  ‘He’s not old,’ Danny argued. ‘He’s just … just …’

  ‘Scholarly?’ supplied Russell. ‘He’s very nice. I didn’t know he came from …’ He caught himself just in time, before he could say ‘this world’ and hurried on. ‘Uhm, from the city.’

  ‘So, do you think those carvings mean something? They wouldn’t have been in a vision for nothing,’ said Poppy.

  Danny shrugged. ‘Maybe. Mum was there, though, looking at them. So I thought that wherever they are, she must be.’

  ‘Then you need to speak to Edred once your dad gets back from the Great Watchtower.’

  ‘I take it Edred isn’t about in the city?’ asked Poppy.

  ‘He lives over in Arvalton. Quite a ride from here,’ said Isa. ‘Like many prominent scholars, he’s been offered an official residence in some of the best areas of the city many times, but he’s always refused. He’s set in his ways, as Thom says.’

  ‘I’d like to see him anyway,’ said Danny.

  ‘Well, we’re staying here,’ said Russell, sensing another Danny scheme beginning to take shape. Danny stared at him for a moment and then went back to his drawings.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  Russell opened his mouth to argue but was distracted by a noise outside. No one else reacted to what were likely mundane sounds – just a distant thud and some shouting – but his sight was swallowed as chilled mist enwreathed him without warning.

  Flashes of sound, movement, and the clash of metal on metal, sharp and grinding. And a scream, like nothing he’d heard before. It sank into his bones and cemented them with terror. Black scales glistened briefly, and then it was all gone, leaving just his headache, which had returned with a vengeance. Isa peered into his face and felt his cheeks.

  ‘I think you need to get some rest.’

  ‘Something … something …’ Russell rubbed his head, trying to hold on to the tendrils of what he had seen, to make sense of them.

  ‘Whatever it is, it can wait. You should all rest. It’s been a busy day. Also, your dad will likely be here tomorrow.’ Russell nodded and allowed himself to be helped up. His legs were embarrassingly shaky and he wanted to get to bed before he had to explain the inexplicable to Poppy and make his headache worse.

  *

  ‘You think Danny will run out on us in the middle of the night?’ asked Poppy, flopping down on Katrina’s bed. Katrina finished buttoning up the black pyjamas that had been left on her pillow and turned around.

  ‘Hope not, the bastard. I don’t want to be left behind.’ She sat down next to Poppy, careful not to sit on the long blonde hair that was fanned out over the quilted covers. ‘Not like he knows where to go, anyway.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Poppy, sounding uncertain. ‘So, are we all going to be hanging around the Gateway, do you think, when Thom takes us back?’

  ‘Well, maybe not Russell,’ said Katrina.

  ‘Jack’s going to be a bit pissed off, as usual,’ said Poppy, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Big surprise,’ muttered Katrina. ‘Russell goes off to the supermarket without permission and it’s the end of the world. Talk about protective. Is a killer mage going to pop out of the freezer in Tesco?’ She lay back beside Poppy and stared up at the swirling texture on the ceiling.

  ‘Are you pleased?’ asked Poppy after a long moment.

  Katrina turned her head and looked at her. ‘Pleased about what?’

  ‘Doing magic,’ said Poppy.

  ‘Yeah, I am.’ Katrina tried to place her own hesitation. Normally this was something she’d be over the moon about. ‘I just … It wasn’t me, you know? I didn’t do it on purpose.’

  ‘But you still did it,’ said Poppy. ‘No matter if it was an accident or not, it was still you. It came from you.’

  Katrina felt a small weight lift off a piece of her cluttered mind and smiled. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Frequently.’ Poppy grinned.

  Katrina laughed and whumped her over the head with a cushion.

  ‘Urgh.’ Poppy flicked the duvet over her as she slipped off the bed and scuttled to the door before any further reprisals could be made. Katrina sat up and a thought suddenly occurred to her.

  ‘Poppy?’

  ‘What?’ Poppy paused in the doorway, her long hair trailing over her shoulders, setting off her blue pyjamas to a tee.

  ‘You know you’ll have a ton of magic, don’t you? Your father was one of the rarest mages – Thom said he had all the magics. You’ll be as good as him and your mum.’ For a moment, she thought she’d said the wrong thing, as Poppy’s face creased. Poppy struggled to regain control, and then smiled.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You too. Night.’

  ‘Night.’

  Poppy closed the door, but not before Katrina saw tears filling her blue eyes. Bugger, she thought. She hadn’t meant to upset her. She hadn’t lied, either. With Poppy’s father being that good, and Josie being a skilled mage and a martial arts expert, Katrina would need all the magic she could get to keep up with her friend.

  She looked over at the mirror hanging on the wall and smiled. ‘Thanks, Mum. At least I got your awesome magic,’ she said, padding over and peering into it.

  Katrina’s smile froze. Jagged black lines raced across the mirror, spidering and fracturing over the surface while she stood rooted to the spot. Before she could react, an image appeared. A room, softly lit. Empty. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. There was a flurry of action: people running, figures in dark clothes everywhere, and swords clashing. Katrina recognised one of the Oracle’s escorts fighting with a cloaked figure. The woman cut down her assailant, only to be killed by a sword thrust from behind. Before her body had even dropped, figures closed in on the Oracle, who was fighting her own battle. Two fell to her blade, while another darted in, wounding her arm.

  Her sword was knocked across the floor and the man raised his weapon. Katrina screamed and thrust out her hands, and the mirror exploded into the Oracle’s room. Shards knifed through the air and thudded into the assassin, staggering him back into a bloody heap.

  Concessa spun around, and through a last, resilient fragment of mirror their eyes met. In the background, Thom burst in, taking on one of the last assassins, while the remaining escort and guards felled more attackers as they tried to edge back to protect the Oracle.

  Any respite Thom’s presence may have brought was short-lived. As Concessa began to turn away, a man dropped down into the fireplace, unnoticed, and ran at her. Bef
ore Katrina could scream, the Oracle was falling. Thom’s blade felled her attacker, but it was too late.

  Blinded by tears, she ripped herself away and ran, yanking open the door, and startling a guard outside. As she raced down the hall, vague memories of the path they’d taken to see her that day were nudged by an odd feeling in her gut and she allowed herself to be pulled until only the screams and commotion were needed to guide her.

  ‘What in Neath are you doing here?’ Knox pushed past a guard at the door and blocked the entrance to the Oracle’s chambers. Inside was a chaotic scene of bodies in black, dead guards, and milling people, while medics crouched over casualties and barked for more assistance.

  ‘I just … I …’

  ‘You can’t be here. You need to go back now,’ Knox said, wiping a trickle of blood from his head and throwing a glance over his shoulder.

  ‘I saw what happened. I saw it,’ Katrina cried.

  Knox frowned, her words seeming to stall the whirl of confusion and mess for a moment. He opened his mouth to speak when the Oracle’s remaining escort ran up behind him.

  ‘She wants the girl. Now. You must come now.’

  Knox took one look at the woman’s face, grabbed Katrina’s hand, and led her through the aftermath.

  She picked her way through the smashed furniture as best she could, barely aware of avoiding trails of blood, which relentlessly pursued the joins and grain of the floorboards.

  On the floor of the bedroom lay Concessa, surrounded by medics. Blood was staining her dress. Thom cradled her as she gripped his hand, and tears streamed down his face. Katrina crumbled against Knox as he led her over, and she was barely able to see through the burning tears. Concessa’s eyes fluttered open.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I wish I …’ Katrina sobbed.

  ‘You helped more than you know. You gave me this chance.’ Concessa looked up at Thom and her eyes flicked to the medics trying to stem her bleeding.