Dead Magic

by A. J. Maguire

  "Lord Agoston!" Valeda cried just before he leapt.

  It was a terrifyingly long drop and he thought he'd resigned himself to a fracture or two, but then it came alive. Like flint igniting flame, his Talent burst awake, wrapping itself around that Wildness inside him, fusing the two powers together in a disorienting and overwhelming way. Every sense he had flared to life. He saw the porous grooves of frosty cobblestone rapidly approaching him, felt the sting of frigid air rushing past his body as he descended. He smelled the acrid gun smoke on the air and could taste Bartholomew's blood in the wind.

  Winslow landed with unnatural grace-feline grace-and charged forward. Bart fell backward as the carriage continued to flee, but he managed to grab hold of the edge before toppling to the ground. He hung there, flopping awkwardly against the back of the carriage as it bounced down the street. Winslow ran faster, praying Bart would keep hold long enough.

  Someone shot at him but Winslow ignored it. He got close enough to the carriage that he could see the panicked expression of one of the inhabitants through the back window. A second later, the man's face was replaced by the muzzle of a pistol and Winslow jumped, shoving forward with a Talent-propelled push that sent him straight up and onto the carriage roof.

  Landing lightly, he managed to balance on the jostling roof and reached instinctively for Bartholomew. Bart sent him a surprised look, but collected his wits enough to climb back up and onto the roof. Grinning, Winslow winked at his friend and turned toward the front of the carriage. The driver took a sharp turn to the left and they both had to hold on with all their might to avoid being thrown off.

  "I've been shot with a Remora stone!" Bart shouted above the clop of hooves and ballyhoo of speeding carriage.

  Still clinging to the roof, Winslow glanced at him. His friend's expression was a mix of rage, pain and resignation. They both knew that Bart could be of no use here. Until the stone was removed, Bartholomew would be unable to access his magic and therefore be unable to fight. Winslow nodded once in acknowledgment of the problem.

  "Try not to break your neck when you get off!" Winslow shouted.

  A sword pierced through the wood directly between them and Winslow cursed. Bart rolled to the right just as a muffled gunshot reported from inside the cab. The bullet missed Winslow's arm by an inch and he was forced to roll away as well.

  Darkness swallowed them as the carriage careened through a tunnel. Winslow held his breath, praying the occupants inside didn't try anything more while he was blinded by shadow. He could hear them arguing, muffled at first, but when he focused his Talent he could distinguish the argument.

  "The assignment was for him to be taken alive!"

  "I ain't dying here for no Witch-Born! Leave him!"

  Lamplight came again as they emerged from the tunnel. Winslow spotted that Bartholomew was missing, then turned back to the driver. The man snapped the reigns, driving them off the street. The wheels hit the curb and Winslow found himself airborne, scrambling for a desperate hold on the lip of the carriage. Then he crashed into the roof again, his mouth smashing into the unforgiving surface with bruising force. For a dazed second he tasted his own blood, and then he spotted the driver leaping from his seat. Two other bodies flew out of the passenger compartment, each hitting the ground in a jumble of limbs and movement.

  Winslow looked back to the front of the carriage, to the speeding horses and curving street ahead. Scooting as fast as he dared, he flung himself toward the driver's seat and discarded reigns. Half in the seat and half on the roof, he grabbed the leather straps and yanked back. But his nearness only managed to spook the creatures more. Winslow smelled their fear, knew instinctively that he was the cause, and recognized that he had to think of something else.

  Spotting the steering pin that connected the horses to the carriage, Winslow forced himself to move again. He let go of the reigns, fell to his knees on the footpad of the driver's seat, and leaned over. It was an unfair distance between footboard and steering pin. He had to stretch and lean, but finally managed to grasp the pin. Shouting, he yanked it up, freeing the carriage from the horses.

  The horses tore off. The front of the carriage dipped down, metal and wood scraping across the ground before the triangular tip of the steering mechanism hooked into a groove and the entire carriage pitched forward. Ducking, Winslow tried to cover his head as the whole thing tilted, rolled and crashed to a halt.

  ***

  Valeda ran as fast as her pointy-toed boots would let her. She could sense the spark of her newly gained Talent yearning to be utilized, but truly had no idea how to access it. Unlike her impetuous companions, she'd been forced to use the stairs to get to the street level rather than leap the three stories down. She'd been more than a little surprised that Winslow-Lord Agoston, she firmly corrected herself-was not wounded by the feat.

  Left with no other options, Valeda had decided to chase the ill-fated carriage in its misadventure through Three Points.

  Panting, feet aching in the silly boots, Valeda stopped half inside a long tunnel. Her chest was painfully tight and her heart thudded so loud in her ears that she didn't hear his approach.

  "Think of your Talent as a friend, Miss Quinlan," Lord Feverrette said, with a pained grunt. "A relationship. Let it go. Stop holding it back."

  Valeda yelped in surprise and squinted into the shadows. A moment later, she found Lord Feverrette limping toward her. He'd tied a strip of his torn shirt around his thigh and his fine blue dinner jacket was limp and ragged, hanging from his torso in defeat. A deep, jagged scratch flayed open his left cheek and as he came into the light, she swore she could see the paleness of bone through blood and tissue. Her yelp turned into a gasp and she hurried to his side.

  "My Lord Feverrette, you're hurt!"

  He waved her off. "It'll keep. We should get to Winslow."

  "But . . . why don't you just . . ."

  "Heal myself?" Feverrette's mouth twisted into a scowl. "Because they used a damn Remora stone as a bullet and it's currently so deep in my leg that it's inspecting my femur. Now," he paused to take a deep breath, "let your Talent go. You'll be more useful if you let it help."

  Frowning, Valeda looked away from him. It sounded sensible enough but at the same time, she hadn't been aware that she was suppressing it. There was that image of a golden cord again, coiled at her center, waiting to be stretched, but she didn't know how to reach it. For a moment she imagined that she could touch it, and to her surprise it reacted. The little hairs on her arms stood suddenly stiff as an unnatural warmth tingled over her skin, blocking out the winter's chill. She did it again, imagining herself stroking the golden coil, and all at once her heart stopped pounding, resuming a natural pace, and her lungs quit aching, and even her toes ceased their throbbing.

  "There you go," Feverrette said. "Now come along. I think I heard them crash not far from here."

  He began limping forward and for a moment she hesitated. Then she remembered Winslow and the carriage and decided she could ask them later about the nuances of magic. She hurried to catch up and then matched his pace through the tunnel. They emerged on the other side to see the wreck. The road made a curve, but it was obvious by the tracks that the carriage had not followed. It had proceeded through a grassy bit of park, managed to avoid several trees, and finally crashed several yards back on the road again.

  A growing crowd was converging on the wreckage, but Valeda managed to spot Winslow as he climbed into the splintered and ruined carriage. She quickened her pace and wove through the gathering of people. There were several exclamations from the unwitting audience, most of them having to do with the sight of Lord Agoston.

  "-thought he'd lost his Talent."

  "That ain't Agoston, that's the other fellow-"

  "Saw him go under the carriage! A regular man would be dead!"

  She almost paused at the last comment, her stomach knotted with the images that brought to mind, but Valeda focused instead on reaching him. She didn't know exact
ly why, but her Talent needed to get to him, to make sure he was solid and real and whole. Pushing her way to the front of the crowd, Valeda was forced to step onto a slat of broken carriage, where she paused.

  Winslow had managed to drag Lord Delgora out of the wreckage. He stood atop the rubble with his unconscious friend hanging off one shoulder, his clothes just as ragged as Bartholomew's, and bleeding substantially from the mouth. He looked formidable and heroic, and what was more, he had stopped to stare directly at her. Moonlight flinted off the green in his eyes. His mouth twitched into that wicked smile of his and Valeda realized all of a sudden that she'd been holding her breath.

  Breathing again, she hiked her skirts and climbed the rubble to get to him. She still didn't know why she had to reach him. Getting to his side at last, her ankle rolled on a loose bit of the carriage frame and she nearly fell. Winslow, however, caught hold of her elbow and drew her closer to his side.

  "Careful now, Vee. I'm holding Dorian just fine right now, but I've no idea if I can carry you both down." He half whispered the words, but she heard him clearly. Heard him and felt the purr of his magic because her own Talent seemed suddenly euphoric.

  "Mother, Maiden and Crone, Winifred!" Lord Feverrette shouted up at them. "Quit making a spectacle of yourself. Poor Dorian needs our attention."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  He'd had nightmares before. Prior to marrying Elsie, Dorian had spent much of his life being hunted by assassins, so he was quite used to the weltering churn of worry in his gut. However, his nightmares were normally restricted to the general fear for his own life or the lives of his closest family. The current nightmare-the one he was fairly certain was still a dream and not a reality-was a haunting of Elsie's vision.

  There were jumbled voices around him. Voices that didn't belong to the sights of wolf-like creatures and bloody assault in the vision, and that was how he knew he was still dreaming. Frustratingly enough, Dorian couldn't summon himself awake.

  Someone was prodding at the wounds in his shoulder, digging the Remora stones out of him. That alone should have roused him, but try as he might he could not open his eyes. He wondered if this was how it was for Elsie. There had been many times he'd caught her pacing and tried to talk to her, only to be given that glassy, blank stare of half-sleep.

  Trying to ignore the chaos of the nightmare, he thought of Elsie. He felt stronger by thinking of her, so he focused. The attacks presented in the vision had failed to show where Elsie would be during all of this.

  Do you really want to know?

  The voice startled him. It was familiar and foreign at the same time, not a part of the regular vision. Magic, he realized. The same voice that taunted Elsie, the voice that had been missing from Magnellum for eight years.

  Dorian wanted to say yes, but didn't know how. Dreams were not like reality. He had very little control here. But it didn't seem to matter. Magic understood him.

  The haunting stopped. The scene changed, pulling him to the base of the ark. It was closed; he noticed that straight off. Great vines pounded at the curved iron structure, trying to break through. There were large dents in the ark but Dorian didn't see any tears. Not yet, anyway. He knew, however, that it would only be a matter of time before the Wild got through it.

  His heart sank at the sight.

  What was the point of all their years of building, of preparing, if they were destined to fail?

  There is more at play than you see, Dorian Delgora-Feverrette.

  His focus switched to Elsie. In the vision, she wore her assassins garb again. The last time he'd seen her in the black, loosely fitted pants, she'd been killing the man who murdered her sister. He remembered that more clearly than he liked; the way she'd slammed the assassin into a building so hard the foundations shook. In the vision, she was sitting, looking dazed rather than fierce.

  Dorian watched as she reached for the base of the ark with her tattooed arm.

  "How many more?" Winslow's voice snapped the dream away.

  "One," Bartholomew said with a grunt.

  Pain pierced through his shoulder and Dorian woke up.

  "Oh dear," Miss Quinlan said. She was sitting just in front of him, holding a little jar that contained four small green stones in it. He was slightly disconcerted at her presence, but too focused on the sharp pain to mention anything. "He's awake."

  Movement beside him and suddenly Winslow crouched into view. "Fates be praised." Winslow gave him a cocky grin. "He really is."

  "He should stop tensing his shoulder," Bart said from behind him. "It'll hurt more when I pull this last bit out."

  "He would love to but is in a cursed lot of pain," Dorian half-growled at them. Still, he made a conscious effort to relax. He felt the metal tool Bart had shoved into the wound. It slid damnably slow on its way out of him, but he could feel Bartholomew's steady hand because it didn't shake and disturb more of the wound than it had to. The final bit of Remora stone popped out of his shoulder and all at once Dorian felt his Talent burst to life. Without having to command it, his magic began mending the holes in his body.

  Sitting up carefully, Dorian glanced between Winslow, Bart and Valeda, trying to think of something appropriate to say.

  "Who have you gone and pissed off now?" Winslow asked.

  "Winifred!" Bartholomew threw a bloodied towel at Winslow. "There is a lady present!"

  All eyes turned to Valeda, who looked a good deal healthier than she did when she'd visited Delgora. That wasn't to say that she'd been sick in Delgora, but there was something extra in her glittering gray eyes. Her cheeks tinged a rosy pink at the sudden attention but she managed not to squirm. Dorian wondered how long she had been in Winslow's company and why his friends had suddenly opted to trust her in such an intimate setting.

  For that matter, he wondered why the hell his wife trusted her. He couldn't see anything that would mark the woman as Fated.

  "This lady has been helping you pluck stones out of Dorian's shoulder. She has blood on her boots and grease in her hair from carrying the poor bastard in here." Winslow pushed to his feet again. "If she can withstand all of that, I imagine she has the constitution for a bit of foul language."

  "That's hardly the point." Bart moved to a side bar set into the west wall and proceeded to collect crystal glasses for use.

  Still a little rattled, Dorian chose to wait and watch.

  It appeared that they were in the front vestibule of a rather luxurious room. Brightly lit by candelabra, brass fixtures and a blazing fireplace, the place spoke of wealth and comfort. The velvet upholstery of the settee underneath him was printed in flowery patterns that reminded him of Delgora House in Lorant. Valeda sat in a matching armchair, quietly sealing the stones inside a glass jar and setting it aside. Winslow, curiously enough, moved to lean against the arm of her chair, scandalously close and deliberately protective. Dorian watched as his friend crossed his arms in a belligerent display of possession.

  A moment later Bartholomew shoved a glass of brandy into Dorian's hands, meeting his eyes long enough to let Dorian know that he was also aware of Winslow's strange behavior. There was something familiar about the sight of Winslow and Valeda together, but Dorian was hard-pressed to define it.

  "The real point," Winslow said as Bart handed him a drink, "is that someone just tried to abduct Dorian. And I would dearly like to know why."

  "You never were very well liked, Dorian," Bart said, settling in the settee beside him. "But I never imagined someone would try this."

  "The people who don't like me try to have me killed, not taken," Dorian said.

  Winslow snorted a laugh.

  "The real question," Valeda said with a pensive frown, "is where they got their Remora stones. If we can find that out, we might be able to discover who did this."

  Faltering, Dorian looked at her again. Leave it to the reporter to connect the dots so succinctly. "The Warders guard the stones."

  "Well, yes, but are they the only ones who can get them?"


  "Technically no, but it is illegal for anyone except the Warders to possess them," Bartholomew said.

  "And it's damned dangerous to try and get one on your own," Winslow said.

  Valeda frowned some more and stared at her own feet. Dorian looked up at Winslow, who took a sip of his brandy and frowned as well. The room fell silent, each lost in their own musings, and Dorian tried to will the memory of the nightmare away. He needed to concentrate.

  "What if someone stole the stones from the Warders?" Valeda asked. "Would they ever report such a thing?"

  "Fates, no," Bart said. "A report like that would set the Witches into a panic."

  "So the only people who would actually know would be the Warders themselves," Valeda said quietly. "How many Warders do you know?"

  Dorian felt the attention of the room settle on him. "Just one," he answered and drank his brandy in one burning swallow. His voice was hoarse when he finished. "But he'll be enough."

  ***

  Winslow crouched on the rooftop of the Pinnacle and Pyre, far too restless to sleep. Dorian's near abduction had been traumatic enough that he'd managed to avoid Bartholomew's questions, but he knew he'd have to answer in the morning. Bart was too quick by half and always had been, so there was no way his friend had missed the fact that his Talent was suddenly alive and well. Albeit slightly altered, he thought.

  He could feel it pulsing through him, this new Wildness. Combined with his magic, Winslow felt new and sharp, like a blade come right out of the forge. The cold did not bother him because something deep within kept him warm. And yet, when he stood next to a fire he was comfortable. From his perch he could see the whole of Three Points, clear in spite of the late hour, and tried to remember if his Talent had been capable of so much before.

  No, he decided. His Talent had been able to enhance his natural abilities, but not to this extent.