Hunted by Magic: a New Adult Fantasy Novel (The Baine Chronicles Book 3)

by Jasmine Walt

  Faint conversation drifted to my ears, and though the front door of the shop was too far away for me to make out the words, the cadence of the visitor’s tone was familiar. It took me a second to figure out who it was.

  “Fenris!” I exclaimed, and in the next second I was through the door, bounding down the stairs.

  “Sunaya!” Elania called after me, but I burst into the front of the shop, eager to see my friend. I’d felt bad about leaving the Palace before meeting up with him again, especially since the Council seemed to have it in for him nearly as much as they did for me. Thankfully, he looked like he was in one piece, standing next to Comenius in the front of the shop, dressed in his customary dark tunic and leggings.

  “Good morning –” Fenris began, then let out a small “oomph” as I wrapped my arms around him and crushed him tight to me.

  “Good morning my ass,” I chided as I squeezed him. “We both know this is a shitty morning. But I’m glad to see you. I was worried the Council mages had gotten to you or something.”

  “As was I about you.” Fenris had frozen when I hugged him, but only momentarily, and his strong arms wrapped around me as he hugged me back. “I’m relieved you made it safely out of the Palace.”

  “Let’s head upstairs,” Comenius said, double-checking the lock on the front door. “We can catch up in my living room and finish breakfast.”

  I checked my watch as we headed up the stairs, and frowned. “Isn’t it time for you to open the shop soon?”

  “I already called my employees last night and gave them the day off,” Comenius explained. “Word of the Chief Mage’s disappearance is spreading throughout the city, and panic along with it, so I decided not to open my doors today. Elania and I have already reinforced the protection spells outside our shops, as have many of the other shop owners.”

  “Fair enough,” I said as we walked back into the apartment. We rejoined Elania at the table, Fenris seating himself next to me, and though I was glad to see him safe, I was also perturbed at the prospect that unrest was spreading throughout the city while I was cooped up and powerless to do anything about it.

  “Despite living in the Palace all this time, I too was slated for arrest,” Fenris said with a tinge of bitterness. He accepted the cup of tea Elania handed him and selected a cookie from the platter. “I had to slip out of the Palace in disguise. All shifters are in danger just now, as well as anyone else suspected of sympathizing with the Resistance.”

  “Shifters?” I demanded, scowling. “Why shifters? Humans are just as big a part of the Resistance.”

  “Yes, but the shifter population is smaller and easier to target,” Fenris pointed out. “Not to mention that there are still a number of mages who think that shifters should have remained slaves to the mages, as they were originally created to be.”

  I hissed at that – we were born out of magical experiments done with humans and animals, originally bred to be a kind of warrior race, and many of the mages still thought they owned us. If not for the Uprising, where our ancestors had revolted, as well as the assistance of mages who thought our subjugation unfair, we would still be slaves today.

  “I should call Lakin, then,” I said, hopping up out of my chair to get to the phone in Comenius’s kitchen. “Make sure he’s okay.”

  “You might not be able to reach him,” Fenris warned as I picked up the phone. “He’s probably got his hands full.”

  The phone rang for several seconds before it connected. “Inspector Lakin,” a slightly breathless male voice answered, and relief swept over me.

  “Boon,” I said, using his first name despite my better judgment – I knew Lakin had feelings for me, so I usually did my best to keep him at arm’s length. At this second, though, I was too happy to hear his voice to care about that. “How are things?”

  “Crazy,” he said, sounding distracted. I heard some rustling in the background, like he was looking for something. “There are mages here, both from the Enforcers Guild and the Mages Guild, stalking the streets of Shiftertown with warrants and looking for any excuse to snatch our people off the streets and throw them in jail. My deputies and I have mostly been trying to protect the residents and get people to safety before they are taken.”

  “By Magorah,” I muttered, gripping the receiver tightly. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Not really,” Lakin said dryly. “They’re looking for you too, and between your bad rep and the bounty on your head, you’d be caught the second you set foot here.”

  I gritted my teeth again. Ever since my heritage as a half-mage had become public knowledge, the Shiftertown community regarded me with scorn and hatred. This largely had to do with the fact that most shifters disliked mages in general, so they viewed my half-mage status with a combination of disgust and jealousy, imagining that I enjoyed all kinds of unfair privileges as the Chief Mage’s apprentice.

  “Well I’m going to bring the Chief Mage home,” I said after a moment. “So that should help with your situation.”

  “All by yourself?” Lakin demanded. “I can’t imagine you’re going with the official search party, since they’ve got a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Fenris is coming with me, and maybe Annia if I can convince her. But I’m going either way.”

  “How are you even going to find him? You don’t have the kind of resources the Mages Guild does. You might be better off –”

  “If you say ‘keeping your head down’ I’m going to reach into the phone and rip your throat out,” I growled.

  There was a moment of silence. “You can’t actually do that, can you?” Lakin finally asked in a pained voice.

  “I think we’d both rather not find out.” I let out a small sigh. Of course I couldn’t do that – I didn’t even know if such a thing was possible. But for all that Lakin liked me, he was afraid of my magic, and in instances like this it showed. “My talents would be of better use doing something like, say, rescuing the Chief Mage.”

  “I would come with you, but Shiftertown is my first priority.”

  “I know, and I’m not expecting you to.” Somebody needed to make sure the shifters stayed safe, and there was no one more qualified than Lakin for the job. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’ll be fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” Lakin paused. “You’ll let me know when you leave? And when you come back?”

  “No guarantees,” I warned. “But I’ll try to keep you updated.”

  “Good enough.” There was a weary sigh on the other end of the line. “Stay safe, okay, Sunaya?”

  “You too.”

  I hung up the phone, and then the doorbell rang again.

  “This time it has to be Annia,” Comenius said as he hurried to answer the door.

  A moment later, he walked back in with Annia, whose expression was downright thunderous. She had my travel pack slung over her leather-clad shoulder, and she tossed it to me underhand as she kicked the door closed behind her.

  “This is officially the worst day ever,” she growled.

  “For reasons other than the obvious?” I asked cautiously as I caught the pack. Damn, but it was heavy – she must have stuffed it to the gills. Annia might look slender and willowy, but she kept in good shape and was amazingly strong.

  “Yes.” Annia snatched up a cookie and glared at it. “Somebody fucking snuck into the holding cells under the Enforcer Headquarters and slit Danrian’s throat.”

  “What!” I jumped to my feet, and my pack slid to the ground with a loud thump. “You’ve got to be kidding. Danrian’s dead?” Warin Danrian was the local manager of Sandin National Bank. He’d been running an illegal fighting ring called the Shifter Royale in which he forced shifters who were indebted to Sandin to fight in the ring. He’d also nearly killed me by injecting a fatal dose of silver-laced drugs into my bloodstream.

  “As a doornail.” Annia bit into the cookie with a vicious intensity, her dark eyes burning. “It happened while I was at th
e Palace with you.”

  “Fuck.” I shoved my hands into my curly hair, fingernails scraping against my scalp. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t let him get the better of me –”

  “It’s not your fault.” Annia’s voice was firm. “I would have eventually left the Enforcers Guild for some other reason – the assassin was probably waiting until I did to strike. Maybe I’d have gotten more information out of him, maybe not. But either way, somebody wanted to silence Danrian, and that was going to happen no matter what we did.”

  “It’s that damned Benefactor.” I sat back down on the couch, taking slow breaths to calm my racing heart. Working myself up into a rage wasn’t productive. “Danrian said he was working with the Benefactor on a larger scheme that was coming to fruition soon. His confederates wouldn’t have wanted Danrian to spill the beans right when they were about to make their move.”

  “Did they mean the attack on Iannis’s dirigible?” Fenris demanded, his yellow eyes narrowed. “Or something else, something more?”

  “If there is something larger afoot, I have a feeling we’re going to find out very soon,” Comenius said, brows furrowed.

  An uneasy silence descended on the room, and we all looked at each other, not knowing what to say. What if some other catastrophe hit Solantha while I was gone? Of course, Comenius and Elania were more than capable of handling themselves, but what about Noria? And so many of the other citizens who were just normal people trying to live their lives?

  “By the way,” Annia said, breaking the silence, “I tried to pack everything you need in there, but if you have to go back to your apartment for anything, I’d be very careful. I had to do some serious sneaking to get into your place.”

  “Let me guess,” I sighed, sitting down on the sofa so I could open up the pack and riffle through it. Inside were several days of clothes and toiletries, a set of knives, and a pack of jerky, amongst other things. Annia knew me too well. “My apartment is being watched?”

  “You got it.” Annia plopped down in the chair I’d vacated and popped another cookie into her mouth. “Half of the Enforcers Guild is camped outside your place, and the other half is running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. The Courier is blaming the Mages Guild for the Chief Mage’s disappearance, and the public is fighting back so hard against all these heavy-handed arrests that several Enforcers have been badly wounded or killed. Many Enforcers are refusing to cooperate with the Mages Guild’s orders, and I can’t blame them. Everyone’s gone bat-shit crazy.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered, dragging my nails across my scalp. “We have to get the Chief Mage back before the city devolves into a war zone.”

  “I’m all for that,” Annia said around a mouthful of cookie. She swallowed before adding, “Especially now that I can’t do anything more with the Shifter Royale case. Plus, I’ll get to cash in on that reward they’re offering. So what’s the plan?”

  “We don’t have much of a plan,” I admitted with a sigh. “Elania cast a spell to pinpoint the Chief Mage’s location a little better, and we’ve determined he’s somewhere in the southern half of Mexia. But that’s about it.”

  “That’s a good thousand miles away,” Fenris said, his brow furrowing. “It would take several days to get there even on steambikes. The coal and water charms powering them would likely buckle under the constant stress, and that’s not even factoring in the rough terrain we’d have to traverse as we pass through uncivilized territory.”

  “Yeah, and there’s also the fact that my bike is still in Durain somewhere.” I blew out a breath in frustration. I really wanted it back, but the priority was to find Iannis right now, and searching for my steambike wouldn’t help. “I can travel pretty fast in panther form too, but not fast enough over such long distances.”

  “What we need is an airship,” Fenris said. “And a pilot to man one.”

  “I can do the piloting,” Annia offered, “so if you’ve got the funds to procure a ship we should be good to go.”

  I arched a brow. “Since when are you able to pilot an airship?”

  Annia grinned. “I dated a freighter captain during my college days, and I spent a lot of time with him aboard his ship between breaks.”

  “Spending a few months aboard the ship doesn’t necessarily qualify one as a pilot,” Fenris pointed out, sounding skeptical. “Are you sure you can manage this?”

  “Hey, give me some credit!” Annia sounded a bit miffed. “I didn’t just spend time watching him pilot the ship – I made him teach me, and I was pretty close to getting my pilot’s license when we broke up. I wouldn’t offer to pilot the ship if I thought I was going to get us killed.”

  Unfortunately, it turned out that Annia’s offer was useless, because despite calling around at all the likely places, we simply couldn’t find any kind of airship. The few ones available to rent had already been snatched up by wealthy families looking to get out of Solantha before the shit hit the fan, and we didn’t know anyone we could ask to borrow a ship from.

  “Well this sucks,” I said as I slammed the phone down on the receiver again. “How the fuck are we supposed to get to the Chief Mage if we can’t get an airship?”

  “I’m not sure,” Fenris admitted, looking just as put out. “Right now we might have better chances of finding a dragon to take us than an actual airship.”

  “Since dragons don’t exist, I find that really depressing.”

  “Actually,” Annia said, holding up a finger in thought. “I might have an idea of where we might be able to get an airship. Or at least something like it.”

  “Oh yeah?” Hope blossomed in my chest. “Where?”

  Annia winked. “Only our favorite little redhead, of course.”

  5

  “I am not letting you guys borrow my balloon,” Noria insisted, arms crossed over her chest as she scowled at us. Elnos stood behind her, dressed in a pair of patched robes streaked with grime – the two of them had been wrestling with some kind of large, mechanical device before we’d walked into the workshop space they rented at the Academy.

  “Why the hell not?” I demanded, gesturing at said balloon. It took up the entire left half of the workshop space, and resembled a giant wicker basket with a strange blanket hanging off it that was bolted to some metallic contraption, presumably something from which to burn coal. “It doesn’t look like you’re using it, and we need it.”

  “Our magitech balloon is highly experimental, and not ready,” Elnos protested, stepping forward to take control of the conversation. He spread his hands imploringly, as if trying to make us see reason. “We’ve never taken it farther than the bay, and we’re still tweaking some of the mechanism. We have no idea if it would survive a trip all the way out to Mexia.”

  “Besides,” Noria added, tossing her head, “I’m really not interested in helping the Mages Guild. With the Chief Mage gone, maybe the Resistance can finally get something done around here.”

  “Noria!” Annia snapped. “Without the Chief Mage to rein everyone in, all we’re going to accomplish is turning Solantha into a messy battleground.”

  “So?” Noria lifted her chin. “You have to fight a few battles in order to win a war. Fighting for freedom means you have to be willing to suffer casualties.”

  “Fine,” I said through gritted teeth, “but that doesn’t mean the Chief Mage has to be one of those casualties.”

  Noria turned her scornful gaze on me. “You know, you’ve really changed, Naya. Just a few months ago, you wouldn’t have lifted a single finger to help the Chief Mage or his band of entitled cronies.”

  “That was before the Chief Mage saved my life,” I said evenly.

  “Alright,” Annia said before we could take the argument further. “Politics aside, you owe me a crapload of favors, Noria, and it’s time for me to cash in now.”

  Noria paled. “You can’t be serious. This is what you’re calling in that favor for?”

  “Damn straight. I want that bounty, and Naya w
ants the Chief Mage. We’re killing two birds with one stone, and you’re going to help us by giving me that balloon.”

  “And just how are you going to steer it?” Noria demanded. “We haven’t perfected the steering mechanism yet; it still requires a mage to pilot.” Her eyes shifted toward me. “Preferably one who knows what she’s doing.”

  I hesitated, but to my surprise Fenris spoke up. “I’m sure we won’t have a problem figuring it out. Elnos, you can show us the basics, can’t you? Between Sunaya and myself we should be able to keep it going long enough to get us to our destination.”

  “Sure,” Elnos agreed, ignoring Noria’s death glare. A mage himself, he was the strange exception in Noria’s life, but only because he believed that magic should be equally accessible to all. Hence why they worked together experimenting with magitech – devices that were powered by both magic and technology. “I’ve no problem teaching you the basics. We don’t want them to die, after all, now do we?” He arched his brows at Noria.

  “Of course not.” Noria huffed out a breath, crossing her arms again as she pinned Annia with a gimlet stare. “But after this, you and I are square. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  After a brief lesson from Elnos on how to handle the balloon, we set out to gather supplies. Since Fenris couldn’t get back into the Palace to retrieve anything, he and I had to go shopping for travel gear as well as camping supplies for all of us.

  “This trip would be much simpler if we weren’t bringing your friend Annia along,” Fenris grumbled as he plucked a bedroll off the shelf of the only camping store that was even open today. I’d spelled us to look like a couple of human students so that we wouldn’t draw attention. “She’s just a human. If something happens to that balloon and we end up stranded somewhere, she’s sure to be a hindrance.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed as I inspected the spoons of one of the mess kits I’d put into our shopping basket. There was a tiny nick on the edge of the implement, and I turned back to the shelf I’d grabbed it from so I could replace it. “But Annia’s a damn good Enforcer, and I could use someone with fighting experience at my back.”