by Faith Hunter
I leaned until I could see out the door, beyond Taft’s bulk as he maneuvered my food tray inside the small space, and took in the blonde, blue-eyed woman. She had diamonds on her fingers and wrists and around her neck, and she was tall and lean, with perfect skin and that look that only money can buy—“money” meaning expensive amulets full of glamour that hid the imperfections. In her case, she was glamoured all over, from her hair, eyes, skin, and waist, to her elegant ankles. In reality, the woman likely looked totally different.
I wondered who she was faking for, but then the middle-aged man behind her said, “It’s all right, dear. He’ll get to us.”
“He’ll get to us now,” she snapped, “or I’ll see his other cheek branded too.”
Taft paled.
“It’s okay,” I said to Taft, my voice soft. “Go help her. I’m fine.”
“Thank you, Miss,” he said, and he was gone.
The moment I was alone, I sat down on the couch so I wouldn’t make the motion sickness worse, and calmed myself down. It took a while. By the time I turned to the food, it was stone cold. So was the tea. And with the glamoured woman giving Taft so much trouble, I’d never call for fresh.
Instead, I pulled out my amulets, looking for one that might contain a pre-programmed conjure to reheat the food, the sort of convenience that would be commonplace in Enclave. The stones were brilliant in mage sight, glowing red, blue, emerald, and purple-black. They were mesmerizing. I could stare at them all day. But they were obviously more than pretty. The crystalline microstructure of the stones contained power. Each amulet’s structure was different and told an experienced mage what the amulet did. To me they weren’t as obvious.
One of the simplest, a small carved soapstone cat-paw, looked like it should store and release heat. Most amulets require a spoken word or a physical gesture to activate, and I had no idea what sign or word would work. After several attempts, I placed the cat-paw on a small bit of egg and said the word, “Warm.”
The soapstone glowed red and then orange . . . and burned the egg to a crisp. “I need to learn control first,” I informed the scorched egg as I waved away charred-egg smoke. “Then I need to learn how to recharge you pretty little amulets. You’ll make my life much easier in Mineral City. And yes, Lolo, I am talking to the stones you sent me.”
More carefully, I heated the rest of breakfast and the cup of tea, and enjoyed the meal immensely.
I traveled alone in my private cabin all day, curled up on the couch with blankets, reading the Book Of Workings, and trying different conjures with the amulets—simple ones that didn’t require a mage circle. The Book itself didn’t really contain detailed, spelled-out, step-by-step conjures as much as discussions of them, hints, and other nonhelpfulness.
Through trial and error, I learned how to spark a flame with the handy-dandy cooking amulet, and how to use the black and clear agate healing stone. It looked roughly like a frog and, if I was still in Enclave, I’d take the agate to the stone-working class and get them to show me how to carve and polish it to enhance the froggy shape. Still, it was cute.
The white onyx fish likely held a sphere of protection or battle shield.
The clear quartz was used for illumination in the dark, like a flashlight or torch.
There was a pink quartz rose I had shaped and polished myself in class. Now just holding it filled me with a sense of calm and peace. I tucked it into my chest pocket.
I’d need a necklace for them all, like other Stone mages wore. But that would be foolish because then humans might discover what I was. I’d have to hide it beneath my clothes somehow.
I fingered a large cabochon of picture jasper, the lines of minerals looking like a scene as viewed from a Pre-Ap airplane—roads across a hilly desert landscape. In one corner was a greenish diffusion that looked like a desert oasis. It was beautiful and felt warm in my hand. I wasn’t very good at it yet, but I focused my mage sight on it. It lit up as if I’d pointed a lantern at it, the light fracturing through the green minerals. It was a disruptor charm, but I had no idea what it was intended to disrupt, which would make it dangerous to test. What if it disrupted the train and the cars flew off the tracks? But Lolo had given it to me, so I assumed it would reveal itself to me eventually.
Then there were two amulets I couldn’t figure out at all.
One, an onyx Arctic seal, seemed to be empty of energy, but it had a pathway to . . . somewhere inside of it.
And the last amulet was carved out of wood, which meant it had most likely come from Lolo herself. The microstructures of the wood were alien to me; I couldn’t read them to tell me what the amulet did. But it had to be something special.
After lunch, I went through the carry-on luggage Lolo had packed for me. Her gifts didn’t include salt mined from below ground, the only salt a Stone mage could use in workings. And the wood floor of the train car would have made a working circle impossible anyway. She didn’t provide any personal items from my past except my comb, brush, toothbrush, and a silk-stitched needlepoint in shades of beige and brown framed in painted wood. The needlepoint had hung above my bed for all fourteen years of my life, stitched with the prophecy given by Lolo when my twin and I were born: A Rose by any Other Name will still draw Blood. Birth prophecies were usually obscure. Mine had been interpreted to say that the rose and the thorn worked together to draw blood—that Rose and I, together, would be warriors unlike any other. Meaningless now that Rose and I were separated.
The only other thing of real interest was a small jewelry box, black velvet with a hinged lid. I opened it to find a tiny chip of teal and aqua stone, zoisite. Crammed inside the lid was a folded scrap of paper—a note in Lolo’s crabbed hand: “This here a one-time charm. Use once, then it nothing but a rock. You in danger with a conjure, you drop stone in water—any kind—and it activate. It stop all conjures except them in contact with you body. Use with care.” Lolo was canny. Some said she had second sight. More than useful, this charm was important.
She’d also packed three books for me, though I wasn’t particularly interested in reading. Two were Pre-Ap fantasy novels, and one was a mystery set in the Last War. Boring. I stared out the window instead. But by mid-afternoon I was bored beyond belief—almost bored enough to try to read a book—and wandered down the train to the dining car for tea. The car was only sparsely occupied, so I had my own table. Taft, moving quickly and economically despite his large frame, took my order and left me to the book I’d carried in, one of the novels. But I left the covers closed, sipping tea and staring out the window, surreptitiously watching the half-dozen humans in the car. Humans were not complete unknowns in Enclave, but I had never spent much time with them, as there were none living in the priestess’s home where I grew up. I saw how often the well-dressed, upper-class humans used magic. They wore it as cosmetics, as charisma enhancers, as luck inducers. Some of them fairly glowed with applied creation energy.
When the dining car emptied, I left too and returned to my cabin.
After dinner, late on that full first day of consciousness, the opal Glamour amulet that hid my mage attributes stopped working. It was sudden and shocking, and I instantly began to glow. At first I tried what had worked before, reciting the “Stone and fire, water and air” mantra over and over again, but it had no effect.
When I finally gave up on that, I turned mage sight onto the opal disc. The Glamour amulet had run out of power.
For a continuous conjure, my prime amulet should have picked up the duties of the working, automatically recharging the Glamour amulet. That’s how things worked for other neomages. But it hadn’t.
I pulled out the Book of Workings again. Things in the Book weren’t arranged in any obvious way, but after some false starts and cross-referencing I found my problem in a section on puberty. Since my gift had opened, my prime was no longer fully attuned to me. All I needed to do was to reset my prime to adult specifications through the Ceremony of Attainment, the ceremony all mages went through w
hen their gift fell upon them.
That brought me down hard. That clearly would not be happening while on the train. I’d need blood and massive amounts of stone. Stone like the huge, broken cliffs and mountains we passed. I’d need to get off the train for that. “Seraph bones,” I muttered, cursing. I wondered when that would occur to Lolo and what she would do about it.
I went through the book again and found that there was no Ceremony of Attainment in the Book of Workings. “Of course there isn’t. The one thing I need most I don’t have access to.”
Desperate, I paged back and forth through the Book of Workings, and found an entry that taught me how to recharge my amulet stones from an elemental source when they ran out of power. In an addendum, someone had written how pre-conjured amulets could be recharged from primes in an emergency. Which this was.
I had no idea if the method would work with my poorly attuned prime, but the recharge conjure seemed simple enough: Just press the empty stone against my prime and place both in contact with my body, then push power into the empty, assuming I could figure out how to do that. I didn’t even need a circle to contain the energies, as they would be in constant contact with my body. It sounded easy.
But it didn’t feel easy to me. It felt terrifying. What if the poorly attuned prime ruined the amulet? And itself? I’d heard of such things happening and the mage having to be given a brand new prime amulet. “Yeah, that door’s shut too now.”
I pulled the blanket up higher, reheated my tea, and tried to figure out what to do. Back before Enclaves had been created as safe havens in which to test our gifts, before the Book Of Workings had been compiled through decades of trial and error, neomages developing new conjures had been known to disintegrate, to burn to death, to explode. And that was before mages had prime amulets. Maybe the primes helped to prevent that. Maybe not having a fully functional prime would leave me open to all that danger.
Mages were supposed to have help in their first, most important year of settling into their gifts, of finding a niche in Enclave. I would be going it alone. I didn’t know what I’d do if my prime ran out of power before I got to my destination, but for now, I could try to transfer some creation energy from my not-quite-perfect-prime to the pre-conjured disguise amulet.
I double-checked the lock on the outer door, opened the small door to the minuscule bathroom so I could see myself in the mirror, and pulled my tunic top up, exposing my belly. I pressed the stones together above my navel, on bare skin. Not because there was anything in the entry in the Book that specified contact with bare skin or the navel, but I knew that some older mages wore their primes inside their clothes on long chains, so it seemed to make sense.
Moments later my mage attributes flickered off, then on, and then off again. And they stayed that way. Mage sight showed the prime holding steady and the opal fully charged. It was a beautiful stone, but not so valuable that it would look out of place adorning a teenaged girl.
Relieved, I washed my face and was about to change into my night clothes when I heard voices in the hallway, a woman’s shrill voice shouting, “You stupid defect! Look what you did!”
I cracked open the door. The blonde woman was standing in the corridor in her night-robe, a luxury that mage sight confirmed was mage-touched, the velvet catching the lights, glowing as it flowed across her body, emphasizing breasts and hips, hiding belly and soft underarms. She was rich, like Midas rich. None of the other humans on board wore so much magery. Most wore none. Mage magics were expensive.
On the floor near the woman were trays with empty wine bottles, lipstick-smeared glasses, china plates and bowls, and silver utensils. Somebody had been having a party.
“You stained my dress!” the woman screeched, lifting a royal blue formal gown to the lights. Her voice climbed higher, “It’s ruined.”
“No, ma’am,” Taft said, quietly, deferentially.
The woman stepped forward, her face inches from Taft. “What did you say?”
He hunched as if afraid, but his right foot slid backward, stabilizing his center of gravity; his right hand fisted behind his back, invisible to the blonde—all one motion. The reflexes of a man with plenty of martial arts training.
Then his fist opened, his muscles relaxed, and I wasn’t sure what I had seen.
“I didn’t stain your dress, ma’am. I was just taking it to be cleaned.”
Her eyes went wide and she shook the dress at Taft. “I’ll have your job and you branded again. I’ll have you stripped naked and flogged in the streets.”
“Please, ma’am. I didn’t stain your dress. It was—”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Her voice dropped into a hiss that would have done a water moccasin proud. “You despicable, flawed, aberration. You dare to call me a liar, you malformed . . . deviant.”
I pushed my door fully open and said, loudly, “Taft, thank you so much for the excellent dinner tonight! I appreciate . . .” I let my words fade away, paused, looked around wide-eyed, then asked, even more loudly, “Is this woman hitting you?” I stepped fully into the hallway. “Help! Help! There’s a woman hitting the porter! Help!”
Doors opened all along the corridor.
I continued shouting. “She’s drunk and I think she’s beating Taft!”
“I am not drunk, you—”
The door behind her opened and her tirade abruptly cut off. The middle-aged man traveling with her said, “Koren, it’s all right. Come back inside.”
“It’s not all right. Look what he did! You always say it fine, that it’s all right when it isn’t. That porter ruined my dress!”
“No, Koren,” the man said. “You dropped whiskey sauce on it at dinner. I asked Taft if he’d try to get the stain out. He was taking it away to work on it.”
Koren’s face shifted from fury to embarrassment to calculation and back to fury. She glared at me, and I dropped my shoulders to make my already small frame look smaller and opened my eyes really wide to look younger. Afraid.
Koren turned to Taft and whispered, “You fix this dress or I’ll see you lose your job.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am. Thank you, sir. I’ll try to get the sauce out of the dress.” Taft skittered down the hall, the dress in his hands.
I gave Koren my meanest look, “You’re nasty. And spiteful. And cruel. And selfish. And now your boyfriend knows how mean you really are.”
Koren turned and looked at her man friend. His eyes were downcast, embarrassed and humiliated for Koren’s behavior. “Hope your beauty glamours don’t fail. Then he’ll know how you look physically too. He’ll have the full picture of what you actually are.” The man looked up quickly, taking in his mean-spirited girlfriend, his eyes narrowing. Maybe he’d finally figured out he’d been bamboozled. I shut the door.
I slept deeply, with a sense of malicious satisfaction and woke up just after dawn with the train slowing rapidly. I gripped the hand rails on the bed. Steel screeched on steel. The car shuddered, making my jaws clack together.
The jarring, quaking, deep vibration faded as the train came to a stop.
Nearby, I heard a loud crack. I leaped from the bed, threw on yesterday’s human-ugly clothing, with the amulets still in the pockets. Barefooted, I rushed into the corridor along with most of the other occupants of the sleeper car. The woman, Koren, was standing there, dressed, her blonde hair up in a twist. Behind her the door stood open, her compartment revealed. Her traveling companion lay on the floor, head turned to the side, in a pool of blood. His chest was unmoving, his eyes open.
I heard voices shouting, “Get down! Get down on the floor!”
In an eye blink, I realized several things.
The man was dead.
Koren held a pistol. Pointed at Taft. Who was on one knee on the floor. Hands raised.
Koren was surrounded by masked men. All dressed in black. All with guns. Pointing at the people in the hallway and away from Koren. And they were the ones shouting.
Also, Taft was
armed. The outline of his gun was visible beneath his clothes, at his back. Taft was far more than he seemed.
Last, I realized that the train was being robbed.
My fingers twitched for the sword I had been learning to use. But it was safely stowed in the baggage car. I had no weapon but my wits. I figured that meant I’d be dead in seconds.
My amulets warmed up. My prime and one in my pants pocket. The disruptor jasper. Was it for guns? Oh. Wrath of angels. Lolo and her second sight.
“You.” Koren shifted her aim, pointing the gun at me. “You’ve been nothing but trouble.”
I gripped the jasper and whispered, “Guns.”
Koren pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Not a thing. “Yes,” I muttered.
From the floor, Taft struck out in a long, loose, easy, and deceptively powerful kick. His foot hit Koren’s arm. The gun flew. Bone broke with sharp crack. Taft rose from the floor, fast, in the lion stance. He spun in a complicated set of moves that incorporated parts of several advanced techniques. Hands and feet snapping out. In less than two heartbeats, the men wearing black were down, disabled, incapacitated, dead, or unconscious.
My mouth fell open. Taft knew savage chi. He was a half-breed. Half-human, half mage.
Taft stood and adjusted his white jacket. “You folks go on back in your cabins. Everything is under control here.”
A man down the corridor gasped, “You’re a . . . mule.” The last word was filled with distaste, his face pulled down into harsh lines, as if he was disgusted to have been rescued by a half-breed.
Taft’s disfigured face twisted, but before he could speak, I said, in my best little-girl voice, “And he saved our lives. Taft is a hero.” I clasped my hands in front of my chest and stared at Taft with what I hoped looked like adoring eyes. I wasn’t much of an actor, but the man who clearly hated half breeds went silent. “Our hero!” I added just in case the humans were stupid as well as racist.
Taft chuckled and raised an eyebrow at me in a look that the others couldn’t see. He turned his attention to them. “Not a hero. Just a train marshal, a Hand of the Law doing his job, and unspeakably grateful to the Most High for a misfire.” He shook his head in wonderment, completely missing my horrified expression. “Seraphic intervention. Surely an instance of seraphic intervention.”