Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Aeden, my boy,” he said, smiling at him. “A little bird has told me that you desire to take up the fine tradition of music-making. A grand and wonderful thing, to be sure. But alas, with no implement to make this music, you are at a loss.”

  Fahtin must have told her father about her idea. Aeden waited for Darun to finish.

  “I was cleaning out the wagon the other day and found something I forgot I had. I was debating whether to try to sell it at the next town or use it for firewood. Perhaps you could help me by taking it off my hands.”

  The man handed the blanket-covered lump to him. Aeden peeled the cloth off it to reveal a fiddle and a stick with some kind of string tied to it. He had seen instruments like it in the caravan. The man who played it rubbed the string on the stick against the strings tied to the fiddle and it made noise. No, it made music. He looked up at Darun.

  “Well, what do you say, boy? Will you do a man a favor and relieve me of this burden?”

  Aeden looked down at the fiddle. It was a little battered and scratched, the surface not as shiny as the others he had seen. Its dull brown color was not attractive, but the slim lines of the shape of it was the most beautiful thing he had seen in a long time. He hefted it, the light weight of it surprising him. The thing was hollow!

  “Thank you, Darun,” he said. “It is a wondrous gift. Thank you.”

  “Gift? No, boy, you misunderstood. I have no need of it and you are the one doing me a favor by taking it. Thank you.” The leader of the family winked at him, turned, and walked away.

  Aeden cradled the instrument in his arms like it was an infant. He had no idea how to play it, but Fahtin would be able to tell him who to visit to solve that problem.

  Aeden caught up to Fahtin half an hour later, after he had finished with the firewood.

  “So,” he said as he walked up to her, fiddle in his hands, “your father just happened to have an old fiddle he wanted me to take off his hands.”

  She tilted her head and suddenly found her hands to be fascinating.

  “What a coincidence, eh?” he said.

  “I guess I may have just sort of mentioned to him that it would be good if you could learn to play an instrument.”

  Aeden laughed. “Somehow, I don’t think the conversation went quite like that, but that’s fine. Thank you. It’s a lovely instrument. I’ll need to learn to play it.”

  Her smile broke out and she tossed her head, causing her hair to fly up and settle back down like fine thread on the wind. “You will love it. I can’t wait to hear you play.”

  “I’ll need to find someone to teach me, Fahtin. This isn’t something you learn on your own.”

  “Oh no,” she said, “you won’t have to. I’ll ask Charin Mez to teach you. He’ll have you sorted out in no time.”

  “Thank you,” he said again. “For that and for the instrument. I’ve never owned anything before that wasn’t a weapon.”

  “Really?” she searched his face as if trying to determine if he was joking with her. “The more I learn about your people, the stranger they seem. Anyway, now that you have figured me out, I’ll give you the second part of your gift.” She reached around a water barrel near her and brought out a battered case roughly the same shape as the instrument. She handed it to him.

  “Ah,” he said. “I was wondering how to keep it from being damaged. The blanket your father had it wrapped in didn’t seem adequate for the job.”

  “I wanted to give you something, too, not let him have all the fun.” She wrinkled her nose at him and made a silly smile.

  “Then thank you for the third time. I seem to be owing you a lot of thanks today. I’ll need to do something for you to even the score a bit.”

  “Funny you should mention that because I have just the thing. I was thinking of what we were talking about earlier, how you were going to sing for me—”

  “How I may sing with you,” he corrected.

  “Yes, how you may sing with me and how I would train in fighting with you.” She paused.

  “Go on,” Aeden said.

  “Well, I want you to teach me to fight. I am good with my knives, but I know you could teach me to be better. And maybe you could show me how to do those things you do with just your hands and feet.” She made striking and kicking motions. “You know, so I can defend myself if I don’t have my blades.”

  She looked at him expectantly, chewing on the right side of her bottom lip.

  “I think that is a wonderful idea,” he told her. “It’ll be good exercise, good practice, and it will be fun. Yes, I would love to teach you to fight.”

  She laughed, spun around, and clapped her hands. “That will be great. Thank you, Aeden. Thank you.”

  He made a half bow to her and put his fiddle into its case. “Would you like to start now? We have the better part of an hour before dinner.”

  “Yes, of course. The sooner the better.”

  As he put his instrument down, a smile came to Aeden’s face. He would be busier than he had been, a good thing. With teaching Fahtin and learning to play the fiddle, there would not be idle time to breed boredom and laziness. He was looking forward to it. The busier he was, the less he thought about his life and why he was alive. The less he thought of what had happened to him and what he had lost.

  His smile slipped a little at that thought, but he was thankful for what he had received. He didn’t know the purpose of his life, but he would find it, and when he did, he would be ready to excel in whatever task it required of him.

  Chapter 18

  Aeden and Fahtin were practicing with wooden weapons he had carved himself using a fine knife Fahtin had given him. Hers were rough duplicates of the knives she carried about hidden on her person, and his was as close as he could come to the shape of the practice broadsword he used to use.

  He had originally been drawn to that weapon because of Raisor Tannoch, the hero of the clans, or at least the hero of his own clan. He used to imagine himself as the hero, fighting at Erent Caahs’s side and vanquishing evil. After he had started practicing with it, it just felt right in his hands, so he stuck with it. He had mastered many different weapons, but his favorite was still the broadsword.

  “You need to pivot more at the hips when you strike, and when you turn aside the opponent’s blade with your knives,” he said to her. “It gives you more power and helps to make your movement smoother.”

  “Like this?” she said, swiveling her hips in an exaggerated manner, making it look like she was dancing. It was…provocative.

  Aeden laughed. “No. If you do that, you’ll do nothing but make the man you’re fighting drop his weapon and gape at you.” He thought for a moment, then laughed harder. “Actually, that might work better than the fighting you’ve been doing. He’ll stand there, lovestruck, and then you’ll put a knife in his heart while he’s staring at you. I hear that’s what women do anyway, figuratively speaking.”

  She stopped wiggling her hips and glared at him. It lasted for three seconds before she broke into a smile and started laughing along with him. “Maybe I can wear very tight clothing and move like this,” she slinked around him, making his face flush.

  Though her clothing was loose, it was clear every line and curve was in exactly the place it should be. She had traded the skirts she often wore for pants similar to the ones the men wore, but cut so they accentuated her hips. The colors were just as bright, though, red for her trousers today and a riot of yellows, blues, and greens for her blouse. A matching headscarf held her hair out of her eyes as they practiced. Aeden cleared his throat. “Yes, maybe that will work for you,” he said. “But let’s just work on the fighting techniques. You can use that other method as backup.”

  They went back to practicing movements, slowly so she could do them correctly before progressing to a faster pace. As they did, Aeden glimpsed a shadow in the nearby trees. It didn’t move, but he kept part of his vision trained on that area in case it did. He could kill with his practice sword if he
had to.

  As the lessons progressed, he realized the shadow was that of a young boy. He thought it was the same boy he had seen the night of the story he told, the one who sat with Jehira, the soothsayer.

  Aeden and Fahtin trained every day. He taught her some of his exercises, and they worked on proper, efficient movements. She had some skill with her weapons to start, though she also had bad habits he had to correct, which took extra time. Within a few months they could spar at full speed. She couldn’t match him, of course, but he had enough control to keep from hurting her and also to keep her from hurting him accidentally.

  Through it all, their little shadow observer watched. Aeden had even caught sight of him practicing the movements with them from the safety of nearby vegetation. He quirked an eyebrow at Fahtin when he saw that she noticed the boy, but they never spoke of it.

  “He is a solitary boy,” she said to him one day when he finally mentioned it. “Shy, with few friends. His parents were killed years ago, and now he lives in the wagon of his grandmother, Jehira.”

  Aeden’s heart went out to the boy. He had not lost his parents in death—at least not theirs—but he knew well the feeling of being without family. He did a little. Because he did have a family now, solely because of the kindness of Darun and the others, he decided he was obligated to help others as well.

  “Why don’t you come out in the sunlight, Raki?” Aeden called one day as he and Fahtin were preparing to train. They were two miles out from the town of Brausprech, still traveling in their eastward direction toward the Kanton Sea, an inland body of water that was also sometimes called the Sea of Magic. It was spring and the air was cool, perfect for physical activity. The blue sky held a few fluffy clouds. “Join us.”

  Surprise lit up Fahtin’s eyes, but then she smiled widely at Aeden. “Yes. You have practiced enough in the shadows. Come train with us.”

  The boy’s shaggy head poked out from the bushes bordering the clearing the two had chosen for their activities. His body followed, and Aeden got the first good look he’d had of the boy. Every other time he had seen him had been in shadows or by firelight. Raki never seemed to be out and about in the camp as the other children of the family were.

  He was thin, waifish. His headful of brown hair was messy and came down almost to his shoulders. He swiped at it to move it out of his face, and his clear brown eyes looked about nervously, as if he expected a trap or some other danger.

  “Come now,” Aeden said in as soothing a voice as he could use. “We’ve seen you practicing with us in the trees. Would you like to join us, learn to fight like Fahtin here? Don’t you think she is a fine warrior?”

  The boy nodded and took a step closer.

  Fahtin, impatient as always, huffed and went to him. She hugged him and took his hand, leading him back toward Aeden.

  “Raki Sinde,” she said, gesturing toward Aeden, “this is Aeden Tannoch. As if you didn’t know the newest member of our family. Aeden, Raki.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you formally, Raki Sinde,” Aeden said as he slapped his fist to his chest in salute. The boy emulated the movement and a small smile crept onto his face.

  “Is it really true that the Crows tried to kill you, but the whole lot of them couldn’t do it?”

  Aeden looked to Fahtin. She had a neutral expression on her face. Too neutral. Her eyes glittered, though, the green starbursts inside the hazel irises shining with unexpressed humor. She shrugged slightly.

  “Aye, I suppose that’s close enough to the truth. Is that what the young folk amongst the wagons have told you?”

  “No,” Raki said, flushing. “I just hear things.”

  “Well, then,” Aeden said, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder, “now that we have that out of the way, would you like to learn to fight? A man can never learn enough about protecting his home from dangers on the road.”

  Raki nodded, excitement emerging from the wariness in his eyes before.

  “Aeden,” Raki said after they had trained together for a few days. “Is it true that the tattoo on your wrist makes you invincible, unable to be touched by weapons, and that’s why your clan had to attack you with just their hands?”

  Aeden looked at the boy, not quite knowing how to start his answer. “No. I won’t even ask who told you that. This tattoo on my wrist,” he held up his left wrist to show Raki, “means that I passed the Trial of Combat. I had to fight four other boys my age or older to do it. If I had passed the Trial of Magic, there would be another one on my other wrist. All clan warriors have both tattoos.”

  “Oh,” Raki said, and left it at that, though Aeden could tell from the distracted look in his eyes that he was logging the information into his memory.

  Raki fit right into their training, all three doing the warm-up exercises and stretches before actual combat training, and then the combat itself for an hour or two a day. He learned quickly, having already practiced some of the movements the other two had been performing, but Aeden realized that hand-to-hand fighting would not be enough for the boy.

  “You see,” Aeden told him, “the problem is that fighting with your hands is fine if your foe is a man or two. You can’t use it to defend yourself from a bear or to hunt for food, though. That’s important. Some men live their entire lives without having to kill a man, but everyone has to eat. What we need is a weapon for you. What do you fancy?”

  “I’ve never used a weapon,” Raki said. He had proven to be quite talkative once he was comfortable with his new friends. “I have only ever held some of the knives made by Payta Torn, but mostly just to cut up vegetables for the stewpot.”

  “Hmm,” Aeden mused. “Knives could be a good weapon for you, though with your size, I was thinking maybe something with a little more reach to make up for the fact that every opponent you will face will be bigger than you.”

  With no other ideas, Aeden had carved another pair of practice knives like Fahtin’s so Raki could practice. It was by accident that they found his true talent.

  “Can I see that knife?” Raki asked Fahtin one day as she was idly throwing it at a target board Aeden had set up for her. She was a fair hand at throwing the blades, hitting the target board most of the time, though not exactly the spot she was aiming for.

  Fahtin looked at the boy skeptically. “Yes, but be careful with it. It’s not like the practice knives. This one will cut you if you slip with it.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  She flipped it and caught it by the blade, handing it to him with the hilt first. He took it reverently, eyes growing wide.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  Fahtin’s smile lit up the clearing. “Thank you. Payta made me five of them, all alike, for my last name day. It is a lavish gift. He could have sold them for quite a bit of gold. My uncle is very generous.”

  “Can I try to throw it?” Raki asked.

  Fahtin shot a look at Aeden, rubbing her earlobe with her thumb and forefinger as she did when she was indecisive about things. Aeden shrugged at her.

  “I…I suppose you could. You have to be very careful, though. Here, let me show you how to judge the distance and how to hold it.”

  She walked him closer to the target board, about ten feet away from it, and flicked her wrist. Another knife appeared there. Aeden was used to seeing her flourish her knives like that, pulling them quickly from hidden sheaths, but Raki’s mouth dropped and he stared at the blade in her hand. He looked from it to the one in his own. “Ooh,” came from his mouth. Fahtin winked at him.

  “The secret is to know how many turns the knife will make, end over end, until it strikes your target. You have to change how you hold it, either by the blade or by the hilt, and how you flick your wrist to change the speed it turns, to get it right. You will probably strike near the target with the blade flat or with the hilt at first until you get used to it. It’s just all practice.”

  After a few minutes of showing the boy how to stand and hold the knife, she stepped back t
o let him try. Aeden knew she was nervous about him ruining her knives. They had bone handles, and her anxious expression made it obvious she feared the boy striking the handles on the target and loosening them. Still, she let him try.

  Raki pulled a stray lock of hair from his face and stood in front of the target as Fahtin had showed him. The look of concentration in his eyes and the set of his mouth beneath his smooth cheeks almost made Aeden laugh, but he settled for a smile the boy couldn’t see.

  With a gentle flick of his wrist, Raki launched the knife at his target. Fahtin’s exhalation turned to a grunt of surprise mid-breath. The knife had struck solidly in the center of the target, the point buried an inch into the soft wood.

  Raki smiled as he went to retrieve the knife. Fahtin glanced over her shoulder at Aeden. He nodded at her, still smiling himself.

  They had the boy try again, and again. Each time, he stuck the knife in the center of the target. They had him back up and try again. Every time, he struck his target exactly where he was aiming. It was uncanny.

  “Raki,” Aeden said to him. “I believe we have found your weapon. We’ll continue to train in fighting with the knife, but this throwing, well, you are a natural talent at it.”

  The boy was all smiles as he handed Fahtin’s knife back to her.

  The three visited Payta Torn to ask a favor.

  “Fahtin!” the man said, wrapping her in a hug that engulfed the girl.

  Aeden had seen taller men, but Payta was so heavily muscled, the only word Aeden could think to describe him was massive. The clans produced big men, but Payta looked as if he could bend steel without the help of his forge and hammer.

  “Uncle Payta,” she said after he had released her. “This is Aeden Tannoch—”

  “I know of the new member of the family,” he said, putting out a hand to shake Aeden’s. It swallowed the boy’s hand as if it was a thin twig. “Well met, Aeden of the clans.”

  “Thank you,” Aeden said. “Well met to you.”