Wind Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  I’ll be lucky if I can hide everything in time, if I don’t end up arrested, or stuck as a fugitive.

  It was Mordon’s silent acceptance earlier that rattled me the most. No angry words. No grumbling. No guilt trips. The burden of Cole’s prisoner he shouldered with the same steadiness that he shoulder all responsibility with. Even when it had to add to his strain. That was the last thing I wanted to do, to add to his worries.

  Now, I was really beginning to think Mordon had been right. What on earth was I going to do with this guy?

  Chapter Four

  Owing to my recent botanical acquisitions, there wasn’t much floorspace left in the sun room, so we had our patient situated in the seating area near the minty kitchen. Everything smelled of the sour taint of the dungeons, of iodine, and increasingly of the saucepan of rosemary I’d set to simmer as an aromatic.

  When the others arrived, I would find out if the winds from the walls were as obvious to other people as they were to me. Each smelled faintly of its origination: the dust of a ripening grain field, the wet vegetation of a river pouring over rocks, the sweet tang of an orchard in the clouds, the decomposing matter of a forest.

  I wondered if they’d notice the illusion hiding my portal wall. At a glance, my plain walls had seen the application of acrylic paint and an amateur’s attempt at a serene countryside mural. It was quick work, the majority of the wall nothing but penciled-in outlines, a few places with rough colors blocked out: a red barn in a yellowish wash meant to be a wheat field, a sponged-in mass of fluffy clouds, a half-formed canyon with steep cliffs, a hazy swath of blue-green intended to be a woodland. They had nothing on Bob Ross’s happy trees, but perhaps one day I’d learn better how to imitate his techniques. That barely begun mural gazed down at me and my patient.

  Skills of the Thaumaturge was propped open wide to a blank page, me scribbling quickly to capture the tattoo and marks on the man. Previous spreads were filled with symbols and spells. Thus far the book had remained silent, no doubt a result of centuries of working with busy sorcerers.

  I was so preoccupied analyzing the man's Celtic boar tattoo that I did not notice the entrance of others until a hand fell on my shoulder. I jerked, tumbling backwards and glimpsing Leif.

  “I see we were too late to stop your escapade,” Leif said, his tone bemused rather than upset. I supposed that made sense, given that everyone would know by now exactly what I was going to be up to in a circumstance like the one Railey had given me. A letter from a ghost? Too good not to check out.

  His voice was as crystalline as his blue eyes and every bit as piercing. It aged him well beyond his years. In the dark of the early morning, his ears seemed pointier and his cheekbones harsher. In our coven, he was spokesman and tie-breaker. He was also my old friend, a judge in Merlyn's Market, and impossible to really lie to. That was the danger of letting someone know you well; they knew you.

  I tugged my shirt into order and sat upright.

  Since showing up weeks ago at this coven with a pathetic memory-loss story, I had shared the coven’s communal living quarters. This private house of towering plants was connected to those living quarters. Years ago it had been a fire watch station headed by a solitary drake, but with the addition of a tower on the highest part of the not-so-distant castle, the watch house had gone out of use.

  Now it was mine, in all its mint-green-appliances glory. Despite a promise to myself that the plants in the sun room would one day croak, that prediction proved to be true only for a single amaryllis. Even so, I thought the plant may possibly be dormant, not dead.

  “Leif,” I said. My heart was slowing back to its regular temp again. He'd given me a bit of a scare. Even my skin was thick and ashen, caught in between its peach tone and the silvery scales of my dragon form. Mordon handled surprises better than I did. “Who else came with you?”

  “Lilly and Barnes. Is Mordon here?”

  “Last I knew he was getting an emergency medical kit from King's Ransom.”

  Leif nodded. “Can you turn up the light?”

  I flicked my fingers, stirring magic through the air to fan the gas sconces into a brighter flame. Leif knelt by the man with a slackened jaw. “Barnes, come here please. Do you recognize him?”

  Barnes approached, his handlebar mustache twitching as he studied the patient. “Well, well. I wonder what's 'e doing alive?”

  The Constable was a man I didn’t know too well. He managed the law amongst sorcerers, restricted to those areas where magic was allowed to flow without censure. I liked him well enough, and I thought he liked me, but he tended to keep his mouth closed even with the generous application of brandy.

  Constable Barnes was a bit rectangular and very solidly built. Tonight he wore a heavy smoking robe and pretty much appeared as if he had walked out of a museum exhibit. He was Lilly's guardian, and not a man anyone would be entirely sane to cross.

  I regarded him with impatient curiousity. “What do you mean by that? Something to do with that stab wound in his gut?”

  “Everything to do with the stabbing. The dungeon doc said there was nothing to be done for him,” Barnes said. He touched the man's arm and withdrew. His mustache twitched again. “Well, I'll be a centaur's uncle. He is alive.”

  Mordon entered into the fray, elbowing people to the side and bearing an old-style surgeon’s kit, the compact kind that field doctors used on the battlefield. Lilly knelt beside him, muttering incoherently to herself.

  This morning marked the first time I was not even a little envious of her beauty. Lack of sleep did not settle well with her near-ethereal skin and slight, willowy body. Nor did the pressure of a man bleeding on the floor contribute towards a pleasant mood.

  Lilly and Leif were siblings, cruelly forced together in Merlyn's Market despite both their efforts to go their own ways upon reaching adulthood. They managed to survive the inconvenience by banding together in a place where the law wasn’t always smiled upon.

  Lilly touched the chain on the man’s wrist, frowning. “Leif, do you think we can re-enchant this?”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Leif knelt beside her, running his fingers along the chain’s links. “It’s a silver chain. Made by moonlight and quenched in holy spring water. Usually only the person who put it on can take it off again.”

  “I hear a but.”

  “Yes. But, two Market authorities should be able to override it.”

  “Lucky for us.”

  “Not considering that it’s a standard tool for restraining annoying people,” Leif said as both he and Lilly took hold of the chain. They pulled, and a link opened. Lilly removed the chain, Leif got up and dusted himself off.

  “He should be dead.” Lilly shook her head and pressed absorptive padding over the wound. “He's been treated already. The best we can do is keep from jostling him while the last healer's spells finish what they're doing.”

  I stepped off to give her plenty of room to work, motioning for Leif to join me. I tossed the discarded rags into a bucket enchanted to wash clothes, rinsed my hands free of the blood in the sink. My pot of honeybush tea was ready, so I passed out cups to those who wanted it.

  My attention shifted back to Leif. All at once I felt weary and hungry, even as I had no appetite.

  Softly, I asked him, “You said you knew the man?”

  Leif gave the guy on the floor another glance. Circumstances were clearly not as he'd anticipated them being when he had come to confront me about my nighttime wandering. “His name is Lucas Bucksley. Do you happen to recognize him?”

  I squinted, examining the man again. My attention caught on Lilly as she warmed a wax strip to tack bandages on his skin. I shrugged. “He's kind of familiar. I think I've seen him—oh.” A memory fell into place, perfectly clicking in retrospect. “Oh. He was the one who bothered me in the courthouse waiting room.”

  Mordon snorted. “Why do you think I wanted to leave him?”

  I gaped at Lucas Bucksley. They seemed in m
y eyes to be two entirely different men. “I swear I didn't recognize him before. It was like he was a stranger.” I couldn't stop staring. “Are you sure?”

  Barnes folded his arms in certainty. “Following the attack on you, he went right to the dungeons. Word got around. Dunno if 'twas someone defending you or an employer showing the penalty for failure, but Bucksley was stabbed as you see. Dead, too. He left in a coroner’s bag.”

  I frowned. “Then how did he end up on a transport rig alive?”

  Mordon said, “He was not dead. It had to have been staged to get him out of the dungeons.”

  “But he's near dead as it is,” I said.

  “It was a less than perfect plan.”

  “That's a nice way to phrase 'suicidal'. I don't know, something feels off.” Arguing with my coven about semantics would get me nowhere. “Dead or not, where was he going?”

  Barnes said, “That depends on who was helping him.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. Leif? Any ideas who would be able to pull off an escape like this?”

  Mordon stroked his chin in thought, gazing distractedly through Leif. Leif tapped his fingers on the back of a chair.

  Leif said, “They would have to have money, enough to bribe the correct people in the prison population. And then enough to pay off or blackmail the resident doctor. Then access to the morgue. And the cost of getaway vehicle, and whatever crew was required to man it. That degree of power is only held by oh, between two and three hundred people within the sorcerer's ranks.”

  “Fantastic,” I said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “This pool of people would also happen to have enough money to not leave a paper trail, I take it?”

  Mordon frowned, and we all knew very well that a paper trail could end in a false lead. Assuming that a paper trail did indeed exist.

  Lilly stood, cleaning her hands on an antiseptic-doused rag. It smelled of vinegar and lemons. And blood. “I think I may have a good lead for you,” she said. “I found ink glyphs drawn on his ribs. Whatever spell it is, it isn't any healing spell I have ever seen.”

  “Oh?” I asked, intrigued.

  Five heads collided as we all went to look at the man at the same time. Rubbing my brow, I grumbled and angry word at Mordon, who returned the favor.

  A figure-eight was sketched crossways over his chest, one half of it was finished with strange yet familiar symbols. It was not a completed spell, one of the letters was cut off midway. Our arrival must have stopped whoever was casting it. Then I knew where I'd seen those symbols—or at least a fairly close approximation of them.

  “It's Cyrillic. The letters,” I said.

  Mordon touched part of the unfinished edge. “Whoever did this was not confident in writing it, either. They traced it first in chalk.” He held out his hand with its rings. “Do you have some of my disenchanted paper near at hand?”

  I did. I got it from the kitchen drawer—or I tried to. The child-locks prevented it. Desperate, I yanked and wriggled. As Mordon was starting to stand to help me, the drawer opened. I brandished a scroll triumphantly.

  Mordon accepted it without even a raised brow to rebuke my harsh treatment of the cabinets. Carefully, he transcribed the spell onto the parchment. Were he to commit it to any ordinary surface, there was a chance of accidentally casting the spell—even if it was incomplete. Little could be worse than the results of an ill-formed spell.

  When he had it down and Lilly was carefully scrubbing the marks off the patient's chest, Mordon asked, “Do you recognize it?”

  I shook my head.

  Lilly said nothing. Barnes tipped the parchment for a better angle.

  “A binding spell,” he said.

  I sighed in relief. “You know it?”

  I'd been concerned that it was one of the Unwrittens, a spell so powerful it had been intentionally forgotten. Or attempted to be, at least.

  “I know it. It's used for kidnapping,” Barnes said, his mustache twitching again.

  “Wait, so if he was escaping, then why is he covered in a binding spell?”

  “Cause he was kidnapped,” Barnes said.

  “Right, but why kidnap the guy and spend a whole lot of money doing it when you could spend a lot less just to hire him? I'm positive he was not concerned about morality.”

  Nobody had an answer.

  “So, any clue who could translate these? Or be able to narrow down our list of two-to-three hundred suspects?” I asked at last.

  Mordon cocked his head, the barest hint of a smile on one corner of his mouth. “Your lover in Selestiani.”

  I groaned. “Oh, good grief, don't foist me off on Valerin. I really do think he's smitten, poor man.”

  “Mordon has a point,” Leif said. “Julius Septimus would be able to answer your questions, if Valerin can't.”

  “And Julius could ask the First Order if need be,” I said. I had to admit it, this idea made sense. “Why am I the one everyone wants to be friends with? I'd rather not do the asking.”

  “Grow up,” Leif said.

  “You grow up.”

  He grinned, the expression a bit surprising given all his due seriousness. Then that happiness faded, and I felt a jolt in the pit of my stomach as he checked to see that the others had drifted off in Mordon’s direction.

  “Can I speak with you for a few minutes?” Leif asked.

  “Sure, if you want.”

  Leif sat close to me and spoke softer than he usually did.

  “The Market is changing.” Leif rubbed his bald head, bringing my attention to the way he paused when his fingers touched his ears. “I think I will be in the middle of it.”

  “Why? Just because you are part of the judicial system doesn’t mean you can’t avoid it,” I said while deadheading an indoor cyclamen. “Unless you want to be in the middle?”

  “Have you ever read up on my rulings?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone knows me as the moderator. When I take a firm stand, it is with strong evidence, not wild speculation. They trust me to do what’s right.” He stopped to retrieve something from his pocket. A pendant. I rolled it over in my hands. It was a pastel purple vial about two inches long with a decorative note inside it. It said in a grungy typewriter style Drink Me.

  Leif explained, “I want you to add that to your charm necklace.”

  I moved my hair out of the way to reach the clasp. “Alright. Since you got it already.” The miniature bottle slid into place alongside my other rings and trinkets. “But what is the reason behind this gift?” It weighed on my neck, as if heavier than it really was.

  “What makes you think I didn’t just come across something pretty for my almost-sister?” he asked while rubbing his scalp again. If anything, he appeared even more distressed now than he had a second ago. I wondered why.

  “Leif, stop toying with me and spit it out already.”

  With visible effort, he placed his hands in his lap in a clear bid to keep himself clam. He reached for his shoe, hesitated, and thought the better of it as voices of the others grew louder. What did he want to keep secret from them?

  He said, “It’s a Message in the Bottle. Hardly original, but often used for lovers to send short notes. Remember that if you’re questioned about it.”

  His words tickled my spine and made a tiny shiver run across my skin. Something was definitely wrong with this picture. Leif and I had never shared any kind of chemistry between us, and the expression he had now was detachment. Cool, liquid, as if he’d been singled out for questioning by a Constable and was determined to not give anything away.

  “I have its mate in the hollow of my boot heel. To send a message without any fire, write on the back of Drink Me. Once it is in the bottle and he bottle is stoppered, the message will disappear from your paper and appear on mine. It’s a Carbon Paper enchantment. I can do likewise. It’ll be erased once the paper is returned to the bottle.”

  What! He knew about these things long ago and only now was bringing it to my attention?
My blood sizzled in my ears and I had to resist the urge to snap at him. With a tense voice, I said, “This would have come in handy back when we first knew I couldn’t burn messages.”

  “It’s taken me this long to find one. Demand is high. They’re all the rage with moonstruck tweens, and the people who make them are swamped. The knock-offs stop working unexpectedly, and sometimes go to the wrong bottle.”

  Fair enough, I supposed. “Why do you seem so secretive, then?”

  “Because these bottles are untraceable. Once a message is gone, it’s gone. If one bottle is lost, the other is useless. There’s no way to find it. There’s no telling where the mate is or who has it. It’s sold for lovers, but it also makes the perfect way to send and receive intelligence.”

  Intelligence, as in spying. That Leif wanted to start a spy network should not have come as a surprise, but I wondered if that was what he really meant or if I was just getting too enthusiastic with my imagination.

  The others drew closer still, stopping to comment on how I was going to ever replace my stash of dried mugwort. Leif stood, dusted off his trousers even though there was nothing on them.

  “Do you understand?”

  Oh, I understood. Leif was going to get into the thick of Cole’s new government, was going to find information, gather evidence to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Commandant Cole was covering up something, or that he was corrupt. My heart squeezed at the thought.

  “Do you understand?”

  “There’s nothing I can say to stop you?”

  Leif shook his head; his fists were shaking.

  “What is it?”

  “Say you’ll be there. That you’ll do this.”

  My mouth went dry, but what else could I say? He was a second brother to me, and I owed him.

  “I’ll be there. But do take care of yourself.”

  “You as well.”

  Leif returned my grin. Then it faded. “Fera, I think we should let him rest. There's something else we must discuss.”

  “Oh?” I didn't like that tone. It was very foreboding.