We Are Blood and Thunder

by Kesia Lupo

‘That makes no sense,’ Lena protested, her eyes brimming with tears but her voice strong and steady. ‘You killed people, even when they weren’t mages at all, and now you’re using magic yourself!’

  The Justice bristled, his eyes flashing, but his voice was calm – almost rehearsed – when he responded. ‘I am using magic to eradicate the evil from this city. When the work is done, I shall have no need of my little device, or the mage that powers it. It is merely a means to an end.’

  Constance aimed for the Justice’s head – a calculated attack she knew ought to hit him but not the gauntlet. But at the last moment, her arrow of purple light deviated from its course – again absorbed into the device. She had to stop herself crying out in frustration as she watched her purple magic grow red on contact with the gauntlet, a cog whirring faster at the wrist as its power was absorbed.

  Another red attack flew towards her head, but she deflected with a sweep of her cane that set her ears ringing, the metal of her left arm thrumming. She defended against another two attacks as her mind raced. The Justice was no mage. He was stealing his power. How could she turn that to her advantage?

  Everything she had fought for in the past six years was within her grasp: the girl with the butterfly was right there. Only this man stood in her way.

  If I can’t use magic, I’ll just have to use my wits.

  Yet another blinding pulse of red made her stumble against the battlements. She rolled to one side and stopped, her mind whirring. She played at defeat, raising a weak hand to her head as if recovering from a blow.

  ‘No!’ Lena cried, starting forward, but with a flick of his fingers the Justice sent her barrelling into the opposite crenellations.

  He sneered as he drew closer to Constance, his heavy boots rapping on the stone until he stood at her feet. ‘No last words?’

  She waited until he was right there, leaning over her in triumph – and then she kicked out savagely at his kneecaps. The Justice cried out, doubled over.

  The crowd roared, and Constance realised the storm cloud had moved aside so that the people below could see the duel on the battlements. She kicked again, a boot in the Justice’s face, pushed herself up and swung her cane in a huge arc she hoped would crack his traitorous skull.

  But his gauntleted hand rose, caught the cane. His face was streaked with blood – her boot had made a mess of his nose – and his icy eyes were murderous.

  Down below, an enormous thump signalled an assault on the portcullis. A battering ram.The iron bars screamed in protest.

  Constance struggled with all her strength to free her cane from the Justice’s grasp. Her eyes widened and her pulse slowed. Time stuttered and she noticed a microscopic change in the Justice’s expression – from determination to triumph.

  Thump. The second assault on the portcullis felt like a heartbeat in Constance’s ears. The crowd roared.

  A surge of red power flowed through the metal cane and into her arm. She was flung backwards several feet – landing, dazed, on her left arm with a clang. Her head beat the wall – this time for real – and her mask loosened and dropped to the stone battlements with a clatter. Her ears were ringing, a shrill, bright sound like the call of a carrion bird.

  Dimly, she heard the Justice fling her cane on to the floor and approach her a second time with heavy footsteps. She turned slowly towards him, trying to force her body into action – but it felt like she was suspended in thick, cloying water. Hatred burned on his face, a kind of hunger in his steel-blue eyes. He said nothing as he lowered his gauntleted hand towards her neck. She tried to bat him away, but her vision was blurred and her head throbbed, and her hand barely lifted before cold metal closed around her throat, pulling her on to her knees and jerking her head towards the crowd below.

  Thump. In the clarity between two drifting storm clouds, Constance watched the people manning the huge battering ram against the portcullis.

  ‘I will kill them, each and every one,’ the Justice whispered, a clear glint of fanaticism in his eyes. ‘In betraying me, they have betrayed the Ancestors.’

  The moment slowed. It felt as if she were closer to the crowd than she really was, close enough to see how ordinary faces had been transformed into ghastly masks of anger and fear, violence and righteousness. One woman had blood running down her cheeks. A child’s body lay still and crushed and forgotten. A man was clutching his arm, roughly bandaged with rags. A girl was crying as she clung to a young man’s shoulder, chanting the constant refrain: ‘Justice! Justice!’

  ‘See how they call for me? As if they know I hold their fate in my hands.’

  ‘For you? Or for real justice?’ she croaked, and her eyes were laughing at him. Self-important fool. His grip tightened.

  Constance looked back down for a last glimpse of her city as the storm cloud rumbled over, obscuring the view and muffling the chanting and shouts. And so the living fight on, she thought. They might call for justice, but Constance knew the real reason they were fighting. They were fighting to survive. The living fought simply to live. Just like her. Just like everyone.

  The Justice’s grip had grown so tight that Constance found she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Hey!’

  It was the mage, Lena, standing behind the Justice in the grey robes of Faul, her back to the storm cloud, her hair flying in a flag of darkness. The cloud wheeled around her legs like the skirts of a dancer. The Justice hesitated, turned to look over his shoulder as if startled. Perhaps, like Constance, he had been so lost in the moment that he’d forgotten there was someone else on the battlements.

  ‘Get away from her,’ Lena said.

  ‘What?’ The Justice’s gauntlet loosened slightly in surprise. Constance managed to gasp a breath, the impression of his fingers burning on her throat. What is she doing?

  ‘I said, get away from her.’ The girl’s voice was cool and commanding. Is this an attempt at a distraction? Constance reached for her magic, but the Justice held her down, and although power thrummed beneath her skin, it wasn’t strong enough to break his hold.

  He raised his head. ‘You should be back underground with the rest of your kind, cryptling. You are the worst sort of traitor.’

  The girl’s face flushed, her brown skin reddening. ‘You are the one who executes innocent people for imagined crimes. People like Vigo.’ The girl had lost control of her emotions.

  The Justice’s expression shifted in realisation. ‘Ah yes, the old mortician,’ he said. ‘But if it weren’t for you, he would never have died. You should blame yourself for his death. If he was innocent, you corrupted him. You killed him, not I.’

  ‘You’re wrong!’ Lena shouted, but Constance spied two angry tears running down her cheeks and knew the accusation had hit home.

  The Justice had noticed too. ‘Then why the tears, little girl?’ he asked mockingly.

  Lena clenched her fists, and when she spoke again her voice was calm and low once more. ‘Enough of this. Just release her. Or I’ll destroy you, I swear it.’

  The Justice laughed again, and his gauntlet tightened around Constance’s throat. She could feel the magic welling up inside it, hot as burning embers. ‘I’ll kill your mistress now, cryptling, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘She’s not my mistress,’ Lena said fiercely. ‘No one owns me. Not you. Not her. Not even the temples. Not anyone.’

  Stupid girl. Now we’re both going to die, thought Constance. Below, another huge thump sounded through the castle, echoing like thunder, and the shouts of guards suggested the portcullis was close to buckling.

  And that’s when the girl’s eyes started to flicker with blue-green electricity.

  Lena breathed in – slowly closing her eyes – and breathed out, opening her eyes again. To Constance’s surprise, a huge grey cloud emanated from the girl’s mouth – not a cloud of breath, as if it were a cold day, but a thick, roiling cloud, purplish and bruised in its depths. The storm rumbled in response. Lightning flickered around the girl, who p
laced a hand over her chest, and suddenly her body was alight, fizzing and hissing with lightning. And then something rose from her pocket, a little brass creature, wings flickering in the lightning as it circled her head. Constance’s eyes widened and she felt the Justice’s hand drop from her throat.

  She knew what she was seeing, but … This isn’t possible. And yet …

  She is the spell’s heart.

  The Justice was staggering away from Lena, holding up his gauntlet.

  And that’s when the storm cloud turned on him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Heart of the Storm

  Lena raised her hand, clenched it to a fist in a wordless command. The thunder obeyed, growling somewhere in the depths of the earth, a hungry noise from a predator’s rumbling throat. She had drawn power from the spell’s heart in the past, lodged inside her own body, but this was different. Here the power was spinning around her in a maelstrom, a hunting beast that would respond to her call alone. Lightning bunched and tangled in the air around her fist. The Justice’s eyes widened in fear as Lena flung everything towards him with a scream of rage.

  He stopped, staggered away from Constance like a drunkard. Green-blue electricity was racing across his body, and Lena could smell burning flesh, the acrid stench of scorched hair. And something else – the tug of a life towards death and a death towards life, teetering on the edge between.

  She saw the Justice trying to fight the cloud, the gauntlet sending crazed red flashes into the storm. A wraith of vapour was sucked inside the device, but it fizzed and crackled as if the power was too great for it. A couple of his red attacks blew holes in the crenellations of the battlements, others came to land in the crowd surging around the buckling gates. More red magic shot off impotently into the sky. It was all pointless; the cloud simply consumed him. The air was rent with lightning, thunder and screams, and vapour that spun in excitement at the kill.

  At last the screaming stopped and the Justice toppled over the side of the wall, down into the city he had ruled – and after another thump, the portcullis guarding the castle broke open with a bone-shattering crash.

  Lena offered Constance a hand up, but the lady supported herself against the wall instead, sitting and breathing deeply. Without her mask, her face was pale and shining with perspiration, a strand of long fair hair plastered to her cheek.

  ‘The butterfly …’ Constance gazed at the brass creature now settling in Lena’s hair. ‘The spell’s heart isn’t in the butterfly at all. It’s in you.’

  Lena dropped her hand to her side and nodded slowly.

  ‘What’s more, the heart of the spell is under your command,’ Constance breathed, as if her mind was spinning, as if she was trying to tie it all together. ‘And the storm … just then, it responded.’

  ‘If the heart is under my command, how can I stop the spell?’ Lena said, crouching down to Constance’s level. ‘Please. I need to know what’s happening … you’re the only person who understands.’

  Constance shot her a hard look, her dark blue eyes – nearly violet in the dim, stormy daylight – serious and bright. ‘It’s complicated … but yes, I can help you,’ she said finally.

  Lena’s heart fluttered with hope. ‘Emris said you wanted to destroy the spell.’

  She nodded. ‘I want it gone from Duke’s Forest. If the spell’s heart had been harboured in the butterfly, I would have destroyed it and the storm cloud would have disappeared. But if you’re in command of the heart …’ she said slowly, ‘I can show you how to take control of the storm itself.’

  ‘And if I can command the storm …’

  ‘You can make it disappear,’ Constance finished her thought. ‘You can stop it bringing the dead to life, if you wish. You will be a necromancer. And who knows what else you may be capable of?’

  ‘What do I do?’ Lena breathed. She felt the butterfly crawl through her hair, its wings gently opening.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy. There’s a ritual.’ Constance was hauling herself to her feet now. ‘We’ll have to go down below, where we won’t be disturbed.’

  ‘The crypts?’

  Constance nodded. She scooped up the cane. ‘We’ll need to go deep enough to ensure we’re left alone.’ She looked down on the people in the courtyard. ‘Things are changing in Duke’s Forest – but I don’t think they’re ready to see magic like this.’ Her eyes glinted as she replaced the brass mask over her face.

  The two women hesitated on the steps. If Constance had ever thought to gain control of the people, Lena saw at once it was not possible. Chaos has taken over already, she realised in wonderment. The courtyard was flooded with townsfolk, and some of the guards, who had either witnessed the Justice’s fall or assumed he had fled, were flinging down their weapons in surrender; others were running out towards the gardens. Very few were fighting. It was like trying to stand against the sea: the sheer number pressing through the gates was enough to overwhelm every guardsman in the castle, even if they’d all been willing to lay down their lives for … well, for what?

  ‘The storm is making it worse,’ said Constance quietly. ‘It is born of Chaos and feeds on death. Before, fear largely kept people inside, protected. But now … The more they breathe in its vapours, the more they are driven wild.’

  The dogs had apparently been released but were attacking people indiscriminately – Lena averted her eyes from a body already torn and half-devoured by a pack of the snarling creatures. The houndmaster was nowhere to be seen. The doors to the living quarters had been locked and bolted, but people were breaking in through the windows, and Lena watched as others came out carrying everything from food to candlesticks. The air was alive with screams and howls and tearing flesh and the rumble of the thunder, more thunder than ever before, as if the storm was feasting on the horror and bloodshed.

  ‘It … wants this to happen?’

  ‘Yes. And that is why we – you – have to seize control of it. The longer we leave it, the worse it will get. It will whip Duke’s Forest into a frenzy of death until it has destroyed itself. And then …’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Like I said, the spell is born of Chaos. If nobody takes possession of it, it will go wild. A storm such as this roaming the land …’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  And this thing is part of me? Lena thought, feeling the beat of the spell’s heart inside her own.

  Constance started down the steps. ‘Come. We’ll go to the great hall – there’s not much to loot in there but tapestries and floor reeds, and it’s an easy route down into the crypts.’

  What choice did Lena have? She could carry on as she was, the storm’s heart tugging inside of her like a child longing to return to its mother, remaining ignorant of how to stop it, drawing on the scrap of the spell’s power to pretend she was a true mage. Or she could die, and the spell would die with her.

  Or … she could learn to command it. She felt a thrill of excitement. It felt right. This was why the butterfly had chosen her. This was her destiny. She watched as the small metal creature landed on her hand. She stroked it as she slipped it back into her pocket, the feel of its filigree wings calming her as always. Now she would find out who she really was, and where she belonged.

  But Emris … Worry and disappointment suddenly clouded her certainty. He had been sure that the spell had to be destroyed. Would he accept her choice? Where was he? Had he survived the forest?

  ‘Lena, we have to go,’ Constance said sharply, reappearing at the top of the steps.

  Lena took a deep breath and followed her down into the fray. They skirted around the sides of the courtyard. People were flooding the castle, their faces ugly and bloodthirsty, and screams started to rise from those discovered hiding inside the buildings. When a man in rough-spun clothing tried to grab Constance around the waist, she dispatched him with a calm flick of her fingers. He lay still on the cobblestones.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Lena asked, chilled by how easy
it had looked.

  Constance shrugged. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’

  Nobody else noticed the two shadowy figures as they slid round the side towards the hall, up the broad steps to the door.

  Lena hesitated at the top when she heard a particularly heart-wrenching cry from an upstairs window nearby – it sounded like a child – but Constance pulled her through the doorway, her hand curiously hard and cold beneath its velvet glove. ‘Come on. You already know how we can help all of them.’ Her voice was hard too.

  Doesn’t she care about her people at all?

  Lena had never felt much affection for the citizens of Duke’s Forest, who had forced her to live in the dark … But they were still people. She tried not to think about what was happening.

  Constance led her into the great hall. Some had already passed through here, and the bodies of two black-clad guards and one woman dressed in plain brown skirts lay among the bloodied floor reeds. The smell of death soaked the air, stale and metallic. She tapped her cane on the floor and the trapdoors to the crypts burst open with a bang.

  ‘Constance!’ a young man’s voice called.

  The two women turned. Lena recognised the man on the hall’s threshold, and he recognised her too, she realised, his eyes widening fractionally. He was the Duke’s son – the late Duchess’s son. The son who had watched in horror and grief as his dead mother had grabbed her arm. He had wept silently over the body as Lena was escorted from the funeral. She saw that his longsword was drawn but clean.

  ‘Winton,’ Constance replied after a moment’s awkward hesitation. ‘What are you doing here? Are you all right?’

  ‘Dr Thorn and Lord Irvine are in your apartments, guarded by Irvine’s remaining men and Barbarus. But I heard the portcullis give and thought I should be with you, to keep you safe.’

  ‘Thank you, Brother,’ Constance said, her voice clipped. ‘But the Justice is dead, and Lena and I must destroy the storm spell. I would rather you returned to Lord Irvine.’

  ‘The Justice is dead?’ Winton’s eyes shone. ‘Thank the Ancestors.’ He stepped forward. ‘Let me come with you, Sister, to end this once and for all. I don’t want to leave you again – I want to help if I can. We have to stop what is happening out there.’