Magic on the Line

by Devon Monk

  “We’re just dandy—can’t you tell?” Shame finally said.

  “Do we have a plan?” I asked. I looked at Victor, who rolled his head to one side and looked over at me like he had just noticed I’d walked in.

  “Plan? No. We do not.”

  Whoa. Okay, he wasn’t angry. He was scorching mad. But his anger didn’t seem aimed at Zayvion. That was something at least.

  There was no time to be guessing about who had hurt feelings about whom. Someone needed to call some shots. Looked like that someone was me.

  “We need to trigger the filters on the cisterns,” I said in full lecture mode that sounded so much like my father it made me want to gargle and spit. “Grant has a map of some of the tunnels. Does anyone know if any of the tunnels come out near a cistern?”

  Nothing. Maeve shook her head.

  I have a map of all the tunnels, Dad said. And I know where all the cisterns are built. I can lead you to them.

  “Well, Dad says he knows all the tunnels and where the cisterns are.”

  Again the nods. I had never seen any of them so silent.

  We’d been through battles, betrayals, death. We could get through this too.

  “Can everyone use magic?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Zayvion said. “Except you.”

  “Right, so I’m not going to be any good to us during the actual work. Dad said it takes one user from each discipline to trigger the filters. Shame, you’ll be Death magic, Maeve, Blood. Zay, Victor, Hayden, which of you wants to take Faith, Life, and Flux?”

  They were all Closers, and Faith magic would be their strength. I was just hoping they had done some cross-training in the other disciplines.

  Victor cleared his throat. “I can handle Life. Zayvion, you should take Faith. You’ll have a steadier hand than me right now. And Hayden, you can cast Flux, can’t you?”

  “It’s been a few years, but yes,” the big man said. “What spells are we using and where?”

  “Good question,” I said. “We can’t hit every cistern. We’ll have to hit the one that will do the most good. And quickly. Bartholomew is already looking for us—well, for me. Thoughts?”

  “Why don’t you ask your da?” Shame said. “I’m sure the old bastard has plenty of good ideas.”

  “There has to be a central cistern that can affect the largest area of the city,” I said. Then, Dad? Any ideas?

  He was quick to answer. The mid cistern holds nearly half of all the magic used in Portland.

  Can we get there through the tunnels? I asked.

  He paused a moment, calculating. Yes. To the right at the next junction.

  “Dad said the mid cistern holds half the magic in the city. We can get to it through the tunnels.”

  I grabbed one of the lanterns and started walking.

  I heard them all get to their feet. Then the swing of lantern light against the walls and ceiling told me they were following. Good.

  “So,” Shame said, coming up beside me. “Losing all your money puts you in a bossy mood, doesn’t it?”

  “People dying puts me in a bossy mood,” I said.

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  I shook my head. “Dad knows. He thinks the mid cistern will do the most good.”

  “Sure, but that’s miles from here.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t know how well Mum will hold up on a hike. Victor either, since the Unclosing.”

  “I could tell them to stay behind,” I said.

  “They wouldn’t listen,” he said.

  We were quiet for a bit, only the sound of our muffled footsteps interrupting the silence. Even though we were under the city, I didn’t hear any city noise at all.

  “So did your da tell you anything else about the filters?” Shame asked.

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should ask him what spells we’ll have to work.”

  Dad? I asked.

  He pressed at my lips and it felt like a person putting their finger on my mouth as if to hush me. Weird. But I knew what he was asking. To let him use my mouth to speak.

  No, I said. You tell me, I’ll tell them.

  I was so not going to let him use my body if I could help it.

  Something as intricate as the filtering system can’t just be explained in a single sentence.

  But instead of going over it word by word, he sort of opened his memory for me. The knowledge of what the filters were made out of, the tests that had been run, the failures, the adjustments and redesigns until he had incorporated the correct material and spells to hold magic latent, but fresh for the using—it all flooded through me.

  “It’s kind of complicated,” I said, sorting the information. “The trigger actually sets off receptive spells in the other cisterns, so triggering one should trigger the others. All the receptive spells are worked in the lead, glass, and iron of the lines. The magic in those spells is latent, like the disks. I think triggering the filter is a one-shot thing.”

  It is. Unless someone knows how to recharge the spells, Dad said.

  “Spells are Unlock, Cleanse, Element, Ground, and Flow.” I thought about it. I only knew half of those. “Does everyone know those spells?”

  “Say them again,” Zayvion said from the farthest back in the tunnel.

  I repeated the list.

  “We know them,” Hayden said.

  I took the right, and another left. We’d been walking maybe fifteen minutes.

  “So why isn’t Terric here?” I asked Shame.

  “We couldn’t contact him,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not dead,” Shame said, even though that wasn’t what I had assumed. “I’d know. He’s either gone turncoat and is Bartholomew’s boot licker, or he’s . . . unconscious.”

  “Can you feel him?” I asked.

  He was quiet for a little while. “Only that he’s not dead. Maybe he took off. Left town. I’d do it if I were in his shoes.”

  This is it, Dad said. Allie, stop.

  I stopped. The tunnel opened up a little to maybe half again as wide. It felt like I could breathe here, which was a nice change.

  There’s a Gate spell in the ceiling, Dad said.

  I looked up. “Holy shit.”

  Everyone held up their lanterns, and simultaneously pulled on their favorite spells and weapons.

  In the wash of lantern light, the brick walls arched up into a grayish ceiling. Carved into that stone was a glyph.

  “Gate,” Zayvion said, coming to look more closely at it. “But it’s not finished. There.” He pointed at a line on the outside curve that looked like someone had cut it in half.

  “Will it work?” I asked.

  Zayvion shook his head. “Hell if I know.”

  Victor walked over to it, and so did Hayden. I stepped back and let the experts get a good look. Didn’t look like any of the experts had ever seen something like this.

  You carved a Gate into the Shanghai tunnels? I asked Dad.

  Yes.

  Does it work? How does it work? Where does it go?

  Yes. Blood magic. To the cistern.

  “It takes Blood magic,” I said.

  “Let me see.” Maeve walked over, her limp still fairly pronounced, but not as bad as I had feared. She walked directly under the spell, then turned a circle.

  “Blood magic will seal the glyph, pull the magic from the networks into it, and open the gate,” she said. “Do you know where it leads, Allie?”

  “Dad says it leads to the cistern.”

  Zay nodded. “It’s in the correct alignment.”

  “Can you open it, Zay?” I asked.

  He nodded again. He pulled a knife out of his belt and opened his left hand.

  It has to be your blood, Allison, Dad said.

  “Wait,” I said. “Why?”

  “Why what?” Zayvion asked.

  “Sorry. It gets confusing whether I should be talking to Dad or talking out loud. He said it has to be my blood.”
>
  Because I coded it with my blood, he said. It has to be Beckstrom blood that triggers it, or it won’t work.

  “Beckstrom blood,” I said, walking forward and offering my left hand.

  Zayvion studied my face. “Are you sure?” he asked so quietly I didn’t even think the others could hear him.

  I nodded. “Let’s get this done.”

  Zayvion put his left arm around my waist, maybe so he could hold me up if I decided to pass out from magic being used with my blood.

  Dad shifted in my head, curious, and wanting a front-row seat to see exactly what would happen.

  I braced my feet and hips so if I did fall, it would be into Zay. “Do it,” I said.

  Zay’s knife was small and razor sharp. The pain was quick, hot, and then only a sweet aching focus of sensation remained. Zayvion chanted, catching up my blood and balancing it in the grooves of the knife blade as he carved out the glyph for opening the Gate.

  The sweet, sweet smell of cherries filled my nose, my mouth, my throat as Zayvion’s voice poured into me, thrumming. My blood warmed and raced a hot pulse, faster and faster until I was hot, dizzy. I was stretched, caught, drawn out. My nerves followed every stroke, every word, every line of magic Zayvion drew with the point of the knife. And when he set magic free to pour through the glyph, I followed with it.

  Everything went white . . . and then the darkness crashed down around me like a wave.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Allie?” Zay called. I opened my eyes.

  “Stay with me.” His eyes were pure gold, the pupil gone bronze. He held me tightly against him, both arms wrapped around me to keep me on my feet. I was so hypersensitive to magic, I could feel the drops of blood, my blood, falling off the knife he still had clenched in his hand against the small of my back where the gun was safely tucked in my pants.

  The cut Zayvion had left on my hand echoed sweet discomfort with each pulse of my heart and a deep, primal part of me wanted him to do it again. There was a reason Blood magic was addictive.

  “I’m here.” I smiled, or tried to. “Still here. Did we make it?”

  He nodded and released me carefully as if expecting I’d fall if he weren’t touching some part of me.

  But I was good with pain. I knew how to compartmentalize it, knew how to deal with it. Only after Zay let me go did I realize it wasn’t just me hurting. He was hurting too.

  And I knew why. Since he was no longer a part of the Authority, he had to Proxy his own pain when he used magic. Oh, I suppose he could still Proxy the price of using magic, but Bartholomew was smart enough to have some sort of trace that could track that price back to Zay.

  And since Zayvion was a deserter who had very much gone against orders, that meant we were all on our own as far as casting magic. As much pain as we each could endure would be as much magic as we could use.

  Fair enough. That’s how Hounds used magic every day.

  I took stock of our surroundings. We were in a warehouse with hard electric light pouring down from the tall ceiling. It was so well lit, it took me a second to figure out that we were still underground. And in the center of the room was the cistern.

  It didn’t look like a tree. It looked like a huge ball, about one story tall and wide, with carvings worked in iron and lead and glass surrounding it to create a truly stunning piece of art. Spinning from the top of it in an almost joyous arc of metal were glyphwork pipes—very similar to the Beckstrom storm rods. These pipes fitted into the walls and ceiling, and the light caught against them in corners and edges, sparking metallic tones like beveled jewels.

  It was beautiful.

  I felt like I was standing in the middle of a sculptor’s lifetime masterpiece.

  Thank you, Dad said quietly in my mind.

  So how do we do this? I asked.

  Allison, he began as if knowing I would not want to hear what he was going to say. It would be easiest if you let me speak through you. I could give the information once, and it would be done.

  “Well, Beckstrom?” Shame asked. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to let Dad tell you.”

  Dad moved forward and took what felt like the passenger’s side of my brain. Even though he had enough reach to speak, I could still talk if I wanted to. It was strange. But kind of nice compared to most of the other times I’d willingly shared my body with him.

  “You will all need to stand a safe distance away. Here.” He nudged me and I pointed to a metal platform that was about ten steps off the ground and to our left. “The pipes run through every inch of this room, and I do not know when they were last tested for weaknesses. The platform is Warded and set as a null. It is the safest place in the room to use magic.”

  Everyone walked over to the platform and took the steps up to it.

  I followed and stood behind them. There was room for twenty or more people on the platform.

  “The filter shouldn’t be difficult to trigger,” he continued. “You can stand a distance from each other, and cast your spell: Unlock, Cleanse, Element, Ground, and Flow. As each of those spells is cast and maintained, the cistern will open and reveal a control panel. Once that happens, Allison will be able to manually trigger the filters.”

  “What?” I said. “Wait. It’s me, Allie. So there’s a switch that has to be flipped by hand? That’s it?”

  “What did you expect?” he answered through my mouth. “Magic?”

  Okay, I was not going to get into an argument with my own mouth.

  “Where’s the switch?” Zayvion asked.

  “On the cistern,” he answered. “At the base. Allison will be able to see it clearly.”

  “No,” Zay said. “I’ll do it. You—she won’t stay conscious with that much magic being used.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Hold on, it’s me, Allie, again. I’ll be fine, Zay. If the cistern is working right, the only magic I’ll feel is the spells you each cast, and mostly I’ll just smell them unless you throw them at me. The cistern holds magic, it isn’t made of magic.”

  “And how are you going to fight off the Veiled if they come crawling up out of it?” he asked.

  Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “What do the Veiled have to do with this?” Victor asked.

  “The tainted magic drew them up through the other cistern,” Zayvion said. “We trigger the cistern and it’s very likely we’ll have a room full of mutated Veiled who soak up defensive spells.”

  “We can do this fast,” I said. “Out at the other cistern you were trying to open it up to look at the magic it contained. All we’re doing here is opening the control panel, not opening the actual cistern.”

  “So,” Shame said, “your da didn’t think maybe a key or a code would have been enough to get into this thing? He had to have five different magic users with five different spells to open up a fuse box? Overkill much?”

  “The control panel does more than just trigger the filters,” Dad said. “It is how any and all changes to the system are made. Each cistern has such a device, and there is a master. They all take the same five disciplines to open. It is a way of limiting who and how the magic throughout the entire city can be accessed.”

  “All right, fine,” Shame said. “Enough with the history lesson. Let’s get this shit done.” He dug a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

  Dad rankled at that. He very much did not like being told what to do by Shame. I was pretty sure Shame knew that.

  “This is Allie,” I said, trying to head off a fight between Dad and Shame. “Everyone know what to do?” They nodded and stepped apart far enough that each of them had room to cast without their spells colliding.

  “Then let’s begin,” I said.

  There was a moment of silence as they each cleared their mind of distraction. For the first time since I’d been in the Authority, I watched them all draw a Disbursement for pain. All of them except Shame chose a long, slow burn of pain instead of the short, fast, hard pain I always opted
for. Slow burn didn’t work for Hounds. You’d forget how many types of pain you were enduring over the months, take pain meds to cut the worst of it, and pretty soon you’d cast one spell too many, take one pill too many and you’d be dead.

  And then they cast.

  It was beautiful.

  Hayden sliced lines through the air with the edge of his hand, sending out a mercury symbol that pulsed with sparks of gold. Maeve drew just a drop of blood from her pinky, and even though her hand trembled, her casting was strong and true, spooling magic and blood.

  Victor, who was one of the most precise magic casters I’d ever seen, fumbled with the spell, canceled it, and cast again, his face a mask of concentration, his hands moving as if he expected magic to burn. But his spell was true, and magic flooded the glyph, liquid, strong.

  Shame sucked the heat out of his cigarette, drawing the energy from the burning tobacco, and poured that energy into the first knotted ropes of his spell. He exhaled smoke, and drew the smoke in with his fingers toward his heart, toward the crystal embedded in his chest, and withdrew the soft pink-white energy from the crystal outward, binding, wrapping, and cinching the spell tight.

  Zayvion burned with silver and black fire as he worked magic, calm, confident. He cut a spell into the air, and magic leaped at his command to fill it.

  Lines, ribbons, fire, smoke, light, and ebony darkness formed from the fingertips of each user and twisted into a stunning expression of art and power. Each spell reached out, growing until it wrapped around the cistern. The metal and glass storage and pipes hummed like plucked strings, creating one harmonic chord.

  I only wished it smelled as nice as it looked.

  Now, Allison, Dad said. The control panel.

  I jogged to the cistern. The control panel seemed to appear in front of it. I knew it hadn’t appeared, but the five spells had somehow uncloaked it. Impressive since I hadn’t even seen the cloaking spell.

  No buttons, no switches. There were finely wrought glyphs worked in lead, iron, and glass. I’d never seen any of those glyphs in my life.

  “Which one?” I asked, probably out loud, though I couldn’t hear my voice over the sustained note that filled the room and seemed to be growing larger and larger as Zay and the others directed more and more magic into their spells. There was no way this was going to go unnoticed.