by Lucia Ashta
I had the feeling he’d been wondering this for a lot longer than the time since the Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy banded.
The fallen sorcerer lay crumpled in a heap. Mordecai began to search his body—somewhat roughly, I thought. It was obvious he was fighting intense emotion. His light eyes shone, and his chest shook.
He looked like a different man than the one who’d fought so competently. He’d fought—and won—when the odds were against him. Now he looked old and tired, as if this was just the thing to push him over a long-waiting edge, as if he were ready to give up.
I didn’t understand why, but that terrified me. We need men like him in the world. The thought surprised me, but I instantly realized it was true. Mordecai was one of the good guys. As much as the SMS might just be a bunch of confused and misguided magicians, they believed the ends justified the means, no matter what the cost. Their Machiavellian morality was a problem when they were willing to take out anyone who stood in the way of what they wanted.
Mordecai finished patting down the man, who wore riding britches instead of the robes some of the others wore, and moved to the next body.
I moved to look at the man he’d just searched. In his final rest he looked... kind. He’d probably been someone’s crinkly-eyed uncle or treasured son. I gulped.
“Come on, girl. Get to it,” Mordecai snapped. “The bodies won’t search themselves.”
But then Mordecai met my tear-filled eyes and his shoulders dropped their edge. He sighed; the hairs of his burly mustache fluttered.
He sat right next to the body he’d already been reaching for and patted the hard surface of the roof. It was an obvious invitation to sit, but I still questioned it. He’d just told me to search, not sit; but I sat anyway.
“You saved my life,” he said, and Marcelo and Brave stopped searching to look over at us. Sir Lancelot, less subtle, flew over from the crenelated edge to land in front of us. His large, yellow eyes seemed to miss nothing as they studied me.
I looked back at Mordecai, wondering what to say. Nothing came, so I simply nodded.
“You’ve never killed anyone before.”
It wasn’t a question; he knew. Maybe my terror at the life I’d taken was etched across my face as evidently as his own emotions. I shook my head. Of course I hadn’t killed anybody before. I was a sixteen-year-old girl. Almost seventeen, I reminded myself. My birthday was right around the corner. As things were going, no one would know it nor would anyone be in the mood to celebrate it. I tried hard not to feel sorry for myself, but I didn’t do a very good job of it.
Nando, my brother, my protector, was gone. Kidnapped. Stolen. Taken by fanatical sorcerers bent on destruction.
As if the wizened man read my thoughts, he said, “We’ll find your brother, and we’ll bring him back here safely.”
I nodded again, unable to speak over the knot of fear blocking my throat.
Mordecai patted my knee with his hand. Dazed, I followed its motions, noticing how much its veins bulged.
“I didn’t come get you from your uncle’s house to put you in harm’s way.”
That’s exactly what he’d done though, wasn’t it? He hadn’t intended to put us in harm, sure, but he’d at the very least suspected it might happen; he had to have.
It seemed as if, once more, he got the gist of my thoughts. His voice lowered to a raspy whisper. “I never thought this would happen, or I wouldn’t have come to get you.”
I found my voice... and my courage. “Wouldn’t you have come anyway? Even if you knew? According to all you’ve said, this fight is that important.”
He looked from me to Sir Lancelot, and then to Marcelo and Brave, who continued searching the bodies. There were so many of them.... A dozen perhaps, including the one I killed? I refused to count, that would just make it much more terrible.
Finally, he spoke again. “The fight is of utmost importance, not just for the magical world, but for all people.”
He stared ahead for so long that I joined him. When his voice returned, it seemed as if he were leagues away instead of right beside me. “But just because the fight is important doesn’t mean we won’t fight with everything we have to recover your brother... or my brother.”
We didn’t really know that the SMS had taken Albacus captive. After all, he was a ghost, and therefore, theoretically uncapturable. I also didn’t point out that while his brother was dead, mine was very much alive. If my intuition was correct, he would have woken this morning. Now he’d been taken before I even got to see his smile, before any reassurance of his well-being after being hit by a killing spell.
But as much as I might not understand magic yet, I certainly understood family. I missed my parents and other brothers every single day. They’d been gone a year, during which I felt their absence more keenly with each passing day.
To Mordecai it didn’t matter that his brother was dead, Albacus was still his brother. I imagined I’d feel exactly the same way.
I patted his knee as he had mine, realizing how inappropriate it was to pat my elder only after I’d done it. I quickly pulled my hand away before he might think me patronizing, but he looked as if he hadn’t even registered that I’d touched him.
“Then let’s find my brother and yours,” I said. “What’s the plan?” I hoped very much that he had one, because if Nando’s rescue was up to me, we were in a heaping, boiling pot of trouble.
Mordecai’s eyes sharpened and I realized I’d misread him. Mordecai wasn’t allowing emotion to sweep him up as it did me. He’d been calculating all along. I’d seen him through my own filters.
He stood and turned to offer me a hand up. I took it, surprised at the amount of strength with which he helped me up.
“For now, we allow the others to work on recovering your brother. In the meantime, we prepare for you to begin your studies, and to recruit more students based on the messages of the runes.”
“No, I have to go after my brother.” I barely noticed my insubordination. “I can’t just leave him out there, kidnapped and alone.”
“You have no choice. Arianne, Gustave, Clara, and Mina are a formidable team. Besides, don’t forget, they have Humbert, Sylvia, and Mathieu there to help them too.”
“Wait, who’s Mina?”
“Mina is Gertrude as a cat.”
Brave said, “She doesn’t like to be called Mina, remember?”
“Yes, child, I remember. And who can blame her? I wouldn’t want to be referred to by the name Count Washur gave me either. I’ll try not to do it again.”
“No one wants to be called by the name he gave them.” Brave’s jaw twitched before he returned to emptying out pockets hidden inside robes.
There was more going on than I was aware of, that was obvious, so I focused on what I could. “There were a lot of sorcerers who retreated, and who knows how many there will be wherever they’re headed. Wouldn’t it be better to join them and offer them assistance?”
“No, child. We have no way to fly after them. Besides, they’ll call us if they need us.”
“How?”
But Mordecai was finished answering my questions. He was staring at Marcelo, who was turning, this way and that, something that looked very much like a normal pocket watch, letting the light hit it in all directions.
“What is it, son?” Mordecai’s voice was sharp. He hurried to Marcelo’s side. “Did you find something?”
“I think I might have. I’m just not sure exactly what.”
Chapter 7
Mordecai and Marcelo hunched over the pocket watch, leaving an opening for Sir Lancelot to enter their huddle, which surprised me. Brave peered at them curiously, but continued searching the bodies. I moved over to where Marcelo and Mordecai sat, but couldn’t get close enough to see what was so interesting about what looked to be a completely ordinary pocket watch.
They examined it carefully, murmuring as the light of the rising sun illuminated this or the other.
“This is really quit
e remarkable, my son. I’m so glad you noticed it. Had you not been looking so closely, we might have overlooked it completely,” Mordecai said. “What a travesty that would have been!”
I inched forward, trying to get a vantage point into their circle.
“So you think there’s a chance it is what I think it is?” Marcelo asked.
“Hm, yes, I think so. Certainly, this object is magically possessed. Of that, I have no doubt, even though its effects are quite subtle. The spell is concealed quite expertly, truly. You could almost mistake the sign of the spell for the light hitting the watch.”
“But a spell affects it.”
“For sure one does.”
“It doesn’t even keep time precisely.”
“Oh, that’s fascinating. The magic affected its natural function.” Mordecai scrambled within his robes until he emerged with his own pocket watch. “What time does it say it is?”
“Ten till six.”
“How interesting. Mine says ten after six. What do you think of it, Sir Lancelot? Have you seen anything like it before?”
The owl moved closer to the watch. I scooted right behind Marcelo, hoping no one would mind. They wanted me to be learning about magic, right?
“Would you mind, Lord Bundry?”
“Not in the least. Please, by all means.”
What was going on? Oh. Sir Lancelot hopped onto Marcelo’s knee to peer at the watch from directly above it. Finally, I could see!
The pygmy owl titled his head to one side, then the other. “Oh my. This is most interesting, you were right.” He put his wings to his sides in a very human gesture, as if he were a little man putting his hands akimbo to his hips. “This watch is imbued with a very powerful spell, one especially powerful for its ability to conceal itself. Why, it’s almost invisible to the sight!”
Then Sir Lancelot turned his head two-hundred-seventy degrees, and his resemblance to a very petite human was lost. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, but it does remind me of the enchanted keys of this one sorcerer, Lucas Lapanto was his name. He lived in the sixteenth century.”
Sixteenth century? My brain bugged out. Was Sir Lancelot implying he was around to see these enchanted keys? No, certainly not. I didn’t know offhand how long owls lived, but I knew they didn’t live several centuries.
“The enchanted keys looked like ordinary keys, even upon close inspection.”
“Did you have the chance to inspect them yourself?” Marcelo asked.
“I did indeed, though from my painting, of course; but they were close enough that I can be sure. Lucas Lapanto, though not a very fine specimen of a man, was a fine wizard. He was very proud of his work and wanted to show it off to one of your ancestors, Lord Mordecai.”
“Which one?” Mordecai asked, but I was still processing. From his painting? What on earth was going on?
“Ellery.”
“That grizzled old fool?”
“Lord Mordecai, you know as well as I that he might have been grizzled, and he might have been old, but he was no fool.”
“You’re right, Sir Lancelot, of course you are. I just never liked the old coot.”
“Not many did.”
“The keys?” Marcelo prompted. “What did they do?”
“Well, that’s what’s most fascinating, even more than how difficult it was to spot the magic attached to them. And it was nearly impossible to discern the spell. Ellery tried, but didn’t manage it, to the great pleasure of Lucas Lapanto, as you can imagine.”
Mordecai’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead and he whistled.
“That’s right,” Sir Lancelot said. “You can imagine how good the spell was if Ellery couldn’t crack it.”
“I didn’t like him, but I won’t deny he knew what he was doing. He was as good as they came.”
“No better than you,” Sir Lancelot said. He appeared completely earnest, and I wondered for a brief moment how powerful Mordecai really was until something even crazier hit me. Is Mordecai implying that he was around when Ellery was in the sixteenth century? Surely not....
“So this Ellery couldn’t figure out what the spell attached to the keys could do,” Marcelo said, redirecting the owl. “But you do know, right?”
“Oh, my dear Lord Bundry, of course I do. You don’t actually think that I would allow a great mystery of magic to pass right before me and not study it. Besides, after Lucas Lapanto left, Ellery and I had a long talk about the objects. He was as fascinated by them as I was, and he always did enjoy a good, long talk... as long as it was about magic. Anyway, I digress.” Apparently, he does a lot of that. But I liked the owl very much already despite his loquaciousness.
“These enchanted keys were keyed”—he winked then, he actually winked!—“to whatever rooms they opened.” Sir Lancelot paused as if waiting for us all to be amazed at that. I had no idea what keys that were ‘keyed’ to the rooms they opened might mean.
“Keyed how?” Mordecai asked.
Sir Lancelot huffed, a mixture of excitement and impatience that the two wizards weren’t getting it yet. “Keyed in that whatever happened in that room registered through the key.”
The little owl allowed his statement to hang in the air for several beats.
Of course, I wasn’t following, but I hadn’t followed hardly anything since Mordecai knocked on Uncle’s door. I had the feeling I’d be using lots—and lots—of patience in my time at the Acquaine estate.
I watched as understanding dawned on the wizards’ faces. “You mean...” Marcelo said, but Mordecai interrupted. “You mean that everything that occurred within the room was transmitted to this Lucas Lapanto?”
Sir Lancelot beamed, grinning a wide owl smile that made him look a bit maniacal. “Indeed that’s exactly what I mean. Lucas Lapanto was abreast of every single thing that happened within those rooms.”
Marcelo’s eyes widened. “Which means that if the same magic attaches to this watch, the SMS might be listening to us right this minute.”
Sir Lancelot squeaked. “Oh, that’s very true. If they happen to be listening at this moment, then they’ll hear everything we’re saying. Assuming I’m right, of course, and that this is the same magic as Lucas Lapanto’s.”
“You’re always right,” Marcelo said, sounding unhappy about it, only because it meant our conversation wasn’t private.
Sir Lancelot nodded and gulped, his eyes staring at the watch as if it were infected with the Black Death. “Indeed, I almost always am.”
“What should we do?” Marcelo whispered.
“We play their game,” Mordecai whispered back. “We hope they didn’t hear any of this since they’re probably still fleeing, especially with Humbert in pursuit, and we plant the information we want them to have.”
Mordecai pressed a finger to his lips and made eye contact with all of us, including me. “Continue the search,” he said, pointing to the pocket watch Marcelo now held far away from his body. “Find anything suspicious.” He raised his eyebrows again, making his message clear. We were to search especially for any more pocket watches, or any other item that might hold a similar magic.
Marcelo and Mordecai resumed the search, going through the clothes of those they’d searched before. I stood to contribute. Now that I better understood what we were looking for, I could help, especially if I pretended these weren’t dead bodies but... scarecrows? Anything but a dead man or woman who’d been alive not long ago.
I bent over a woman, thinking as another female maybe I could lend her more dignity in death, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped a foot, clutched my hand to my heart, and turned to glare at Brave. “You almost frightened me to death!”
“Sorry.” He held out Nando’s sword, clean of blood and gore, offering me its hilt.
“Thank you.” I didn’t really want the sword back; I hadn’t wanted it in the first place. But I was glad he’d had the forethought to clean it before returning it to me.
I received the sword and
held it aloft as if it were something completely foreign to me. My father trained all my brothers with the blade, even my mother knew how to handle a sword, so I wasn’t unfamiliar with the weapon. But I had never... killed with it.
“If we have the chance with our studies, I can teach you how to use it if you’d like.” Brave’s tentative tone lulled me out of my memories.
Do I want to learn how to use the sword? No, no I don’t. Do I have to? I sighed. I knew the right answer. “That would be good, thank you, Brave.”
He smiled. He looked so similar to Marcelo, yet there were distinct differences between nephew and uncle. Brave’s face was a bit rounder, softer; he was still transitioning fully into manhood. And his eyes were a different blue than Marcelo’s, more like a stormy ocean than a dark sky.
“Do you think we’ll ever get to our studies?” I asked him. After all, I was supposed to be at the Magical Arts Academy. I had yet to sit in a single lesson.
“I do, sooner than you think. Those two don’t give up.” He indicated Mordecai and Marcelo with his chin.
No, it didn’t look like they were giving up. With my brother kidnapped, that was a very good thing.
“You’ll be studying too?” I asked Brave, who’d already turned to finish searching the bodies for suspicious magically-charged objects.
“Yes,” he said over his shoulder.
“It seems to me that you already know quite a bit about magic.”
“I know enough to hold my own, but I don’t know enough for me.”
I nodded. I understood that.
“Besides, in the world of magic, there’s always more to learn. No matter how far along you are, there’s always more.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
“Like Mordecai, he’s been alive for, what is it now? Three hundred and eighteen years, I think, and he’s still always studying.”
I blinked and my brain skipped a beat. By the time I was ready to pepper Brave with questions, he was already hunched over a dead sorcerer, and I decided to let him be.
Numb, I placed Nando’s sword on the ground next to me with care, making a mental note to find its sheath before I damaged the blade’s edge, and started patting down the woman, who looked inoffensive now that she was dead.