by Juliet Kemp
He hadn’t had the ability himself. But he knew people, and they knew people… And he brought together a collection of people across the city with dribs and drabs of power, and one or two with more than that. (And how many of them, Marcia wondered now, were dead or injured from the plague?) Marcia herself had no ability at all, but she’d been there anyway. She’d just wanted to be involved, to be with Daril…
Remembering, she bit the inside of her lip hard, again. She’d been so stupid, so careless.
She remembered the ring of them, holding hands on the roof at House Leandra, the full moon shining down. She remembered the crackle of the air as they began the ritual. She remembered the cringing terror as the demon appeared, staring hungrily round and pushing at its bounds. She remembered seeing Daril trying to greet it, trying to bargain with it, and realising cold in her belly that it was ignoring him. That it was waiting for something. She remembered seeing them all sweating and shaking, as they fought to hold the spell together. She remembered the moment when she realised that they couldn’t.
And then she remembered Reb, landing on the roof at a run – where had she even come from? – with an older man behind her, shouting something at the demon. Then it was a blur of this and that, of the older man tackling the demon while Reb herded the rest of them downstairs. She’d missed Marcia, huddled in terror behind a chimney-stack. Reb had turned just in time to lasso the demon back from the old man, but not before it had crunched through one of his arms. Marcia had pulled herself together enough to crawl across the roof to the old man, trying to staunch the flow of blood, as Reb battled the demon back. Reb succeeded. Marcia didn’t. The demon vanished, back to the other plane, Marcia assumed. The old man had died right there on the roof.
Marcia remembered Daril and Reb facing one another, wild-eyed. Neither of them had spared a glance for her, and, sobbing, she’d run for the door to the stairs, run through the house like the demon was still after her, down the street and back to her own House.
Cato had known, of course. Her mother had thought only that she’d had a bad end to a love affair. And that was true enough. Daril had sent a note; Marcia had burnt it unread, and then there were no more notes. Cato had been casually present whenever she needed him, cracking jokes and refusing to take anything seriously, letting her cry on his shoulder for hours at a time. Cato couldn’t be working with Daril now. He would remember that. He would remember how much Marcia hated Daril, and how much Cato hated him on her behalf. He couldn’t be doing this.
Cato had patiently supported her through dealing with the aftermath of the whole thing; then, just as she was emerging from her haze of curled-up misery, Cato had told Madeleine about his magic, and Madeleine had forbidden him from touching it again. And then Marcia was biting back more tears in Cato’s room as he stuffed possessions into a bag, his face set and pale.
Madeleine had disowned him, formally, when she found out. Cato had shrugged and said he didn’t care, when Marcia told him. He was settled down in the squats by then. She worried for him, but he shrugged and told her he’d be fine. Which, right enough, he had been, even through the plague. She’d nursed him through that, running backwards and forwards between the squats and House Fereno, consumed by an anxiety she couldn’t speak of to her mother while Madeleine watched her with anxious eyes and didn’t ask. He’d been fine. Neither of them knew how, and neither of them wanted to talk about it afterwards – why Cato, when so many others died? But he’d survived.
He was her brother. They’d always been there for one another, one way or another. For certain, they were less close now than they had been back then; it was ten years since they’d shared a roof, and in those ten years, Cato had created a niche for himself in the city’s underworld and half-world. Marcia had become Fereno-Heir and spent her time dealing with the Council. But they were still there for one another. She trusted Cato. Reb couldn’t be right.
She couldn’t – she wouldn’t – believe that he was doing this voluntarily, whatever it was that Daril was doing. Whatever Reb might say. Maybe he had been talking to a spirit, as she said. But Reb didn’t know anything more than that. It might have been a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Or if it wasn’t, it might have been that Daril was forcing him, once they were in private.
He was her brother. Marcia couldn’t – wouldn’t – let anything happen to Cato. If Reb wasn’t going to help, she would damn well do it herself. She couldn’t live with herself if she just let this go.
EIGHT
Reb stared at the door Marcia had just slammed. It reverberated slightly in its frame.
“Well then.”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She sighed and sat down again in the armchair. Its familiar sag comforted her.
“He is her brother,” Beckett said. They were still standing by the wall. Reb hadn’t yet seen Beckett sit down in an actual seat.
“And what would you know of human emotional ties?” Reb demanded, narrowing her eyes.
“Spirits have ties too, even if they are not human ones. And I have watched over Marek for three hundred years. Marek’s humans have many emotional ties. It would hardly be possible for me to remain entirely ignorant of them. Blood ties are often among the strongest. And stronger still, sometimes, in another way, when they break.”
Reb’s parents were long dead, and she’d never had any siblings, but – yes, Beckett’s words rang true. Marcia’s bond with Cato might not have broken, but even Reb knew that Cato’s mother had disowned him, though she’d long forgotten which of the Houses it was he’d come from. He’d flaunted the fact, for a while, when he first chose sorcery over the status of his birth. He’d claimed it as a badge of his commitment, aimed it at those who looked to treat him as a child still. He’d been barely sixteen. So Marcia was the only link remaining between Cato and the rest of their family. Was she trying to make up for that?
Beckett was still standing patiently by the wall. They moved less than a regular human would; they didn’t fidget or sigh.
“Your kind have emotions, then?” Reb asked.
Beckett took a long moment to answer. “Yes,” they said. “Emotions, and ties to one another. But not perhaps in the way that you know them. We –” They gestured in frustration as they visibly sought for words. “I do not think I can explain.”
“Never mind,” Reb said. “I was just curious. We would probably be better addressing ourselves to the problem in hand.”
“Which is?” Beckett asked politely.
“Marek has no cityangel. Magic isn’t working properly.” Reb hesitated. “I know lots of sorcerer lore about how and why magic works, and what the cityangel does with it. But some of it’s contradictory, and some of it’s unlikely. You’re a more reliable source. How does it, how did it, work?”
Beckett’s eyes were unfocussed. They seemed to be looking off at something in the distance. “I made a deal with Rufus Marek and Eli Beckett, when they first came to Marek and stopped on what is now Marekhill, and recognised it as a suitable trading location. Power for power.”
“Power for power?”
“Humans have power, simply by existing, but only rarely can you use it. Can, or do? I have never been sure. My kind can only access it, as a rule, in certain situations, by making certain limited agreements. Or by – doing other things. Things most of us prefer not to do. The deal gave me access to a city’s worth of human life-power, and in exchange I am,” Beckett hesitated, then corrected themself, their voice dropping a little, “that is, I was, bound to the city. It seemed fair to all of us.”
“So, what, you’re draining us?” Reb asked, and resisted the urge to back away.
Beckett shook their head. “Humans – you expend power anyway, all the time, simply by existing. This merely means I collect it – I collected it – rather than it drifting away.”
“Life-magic,” Reb said, slowly. “Blood-magic, but without the blood.”
“Indeed,” Beckett agreed. “Humans can access their own power
with blood, or they can make individual deals with one such as myself. Or one of my kind can use human power,” they hesitated, “more directly.”
“Demons,” Reb said.
Beckett frowned at her in curiosity.
“Spirits who use human power without permission. Which generally means human blood. We call them demons.”
“But they are merely the same kind as I, but acting in a particular way,” Beckett said. “They need no separate word.”
Reb shrugged. “Maybe so. But that’s what we call them. Or those who are prepared to deal with a human offering the blood of others.”
Beckett nodded slowly. “I see.”
“So,” Reb said. “The cityangel – you – is indeed what allows Marek magic to work. What made us a city of sorcerers, without the blood of sorcery elsewhere.” A city, once, before the plague. Before there were only her and Cato left. “Why didn’t you help?” It burst out of her, unintended.
“Help?” Beckett asked.
“If you’re bound to Marek. If you were all about mediating magic here. Why did you just let so many of us die, in the plague.”
Beckett looked down at their hands. “I could not help,” they said softly. “I cannot – I have power, I can help Marek be stable, I can pour that power to you again, but I could not interfere in the way you mean.” They looked up again. “I tried. When I realised. I did try. For myself, not only when asked. I tried.” An aching loss was in their voice, a loss that echoed the ache in Reb’s own heart.
Reb remembered asking, remembered spell after spell, remembered finally breaking her word to Zareth and spilling her blood into her bowl, and none of it, nothing she did, working.
She swallowed. “Well. Let’s – I don’t want to talk about it any more.” She looked away, tried to find her way back to the now. “So. Someone removed you, and now Marek magic isn’t working. Did they know that would happen? Is that what they wanted?”
“I do not know,” Beckett said. “Perhaps. But perhaps they sought only to remake the deal I made with Marek and Beckett. Perhaps they expected only to summon me, not to unbind me. Or to unbind me and rebind me, and were as surprised as I was by my fall. Or perhaps they had another candidate in mind. Perhaps they assumed another candidate would appear.” They pursed their lips, the first truly human expression Reb had seen on their face. “In truth, I might have expected that too. There is surely,” they gestured, shaping something in front of them, “a hole, where I once was. A hole of power.”
“So if they were expecting something like that, it didn’t work,” Reb said. “Which might explain why Cato is now involved.”
“You are assuming then that Daril b’Leandra is indeed responsible, and that Cato and he are connected.”
Reb shrugged. “Something magical goes wrong. Daril is on Cato’s doorstep the next day. Not a huge stretch to connect the two, given how few sorcerers there are around now, and that Cato is the one, of the two of us, who is known to deal with spirits, and whose morals are more flexible. Especially if Daril told Marcia, or at least strongly implied, that Cato is with him now.” She frowned. “Though – if we have the timing right, there must be at least one other sorcerer, somewhere in Marek, and I missed them. Someone must have unbound you.” Which was a thought both alarming and very slightly hopeful. Might she have missed others? But then, how could she have missed even one? How had she not been paying attention? “Daril has no magical talent. He must be working with someone who does, someone strong enough to break the bond, but someone who for whatever reason could not fill it again, and now wants backup. Enter Cato.” She nodded slowly to herself. “Daril having an intense interest in power – well, his House is among the highest in the city, so it doesn’t entirely make sense, but he has form for such things, and it’s not like greed is unfamiliar.”
There was a silence between them.
Did Daril and Cato even intend to solve the problem? Daril must have done this for a reason. Would he even want to replace the cityangel? Was his aim simply to destroy Marek’s magic altogether?
If Marek’s magic were truly gone, what would it mean for the city? Or for her? Could she, would she have to, just… stop? No longer be a sorcerer? The idea grated inside her like broken glass. But perhaps she’d brought this on herself. She’d let herself slide into the small magics of the day-to-day; she’d stopped thinking about Marek’s magic as a whole. She’d stopped thinking, if she was honest, about the reality of the cityangel, or about her responsibilities.
And now it was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it but wait to see if someone else – someone she didn’t even start to trust – could fix it.
Or she could return to the old ways.
The thought came from nowhere, and it stunned her for a moment. The old ways; the ways that still operated everywhere that wasn’t Marek. The blood magic she’d abandoned when she came here. Hope leapt inside her. Maybe, after all, she could change this, right now. Could restore Beckett, and make it all right again. Could make it not matter that she’d stopped watching over Marek’s magic, that she’d let this thing happen in the first place.
If – if – she was prepared to let herself use blood magic again. She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat. She’d promised herself. She’d promised Zareth, too, long ago, when she came to Marek, and he agreed to teach her. But if ever there was a reason sufficient to break that vow (again… but she did her damnedest never to think of anything that had happened during the plague), surely, this was it. And after all, what were the alternatives, now? If she could fix it, if there was even a possibility that she could fix it, how could she not take it?
“Well.” She tried to sound decisive, certain, but her voice was shaking just a little. “I don’t think I want to wait around and see who Daril and Cato and whoever else Daril has persuaded to join him recruit to fill the gap. If they intend to do that at all. So I suggest we fix it.”
“You can put me back?” Beckett said with evident surprise.
“I can try,” Reb corrected them.
She unbolted the workroom door and let Beckett follow her in. Her skin was tingling slightly as she took down the small leather case. She was doing this to restore her city’s magic. That made it right. It would make up for her mistakes.
“Regular Marek-magic doesn’t work, because that relies on you to mediate it. And we hardly want to bring another spirit into this affair, do we now? But what doesn’t rely on you, or anyone else, to mediate it, is blood-magic.” She opened the case. “Let’s go.”
k k
Marcia stopped at House Fereno for long enough to dig out a plain, nondescript tunic and wide trousers that she would never normally dream of wearing in public. With a scarf over her hair, at least she wouldn’t be obvious from a distance. She couldn’t really hope for more than that; either Cato or Daril would be certain to recognise her if they got a good look at her face, and covering it properly would look absurdly suspicious.
She walked briskly down the street towards House Leandra at the other end. There was a slight wind blowing, ruffling her scarf. She could do this. She just had to get in. Even in a half-shut House like Leandra, run by someone as parsimonious as Gavin Leandra, there were always people in and out. People came to the back doors even if they weren’t visiting at the front.
There were alleyways between each of the Houses, wide enough to allow access round to the back, for anyone not wishing, or not suitable, to come to the main formal entrance. Coming up to the corner of the House just before House Leandra, she slowed a little, bracing herself and rehearsing her strategy, envisaging herself turning the corner and walking down towards their back gate.
It was just as well that she’d slowed down; she heard someone talking, just around the corner, coming closer from the alleyway towards the main street. She couldn’t hear the words, but she could never have mistaken Daril’s voice, sharp and excited. She span round to her left, and stepped over to the kerb, as if she were about to cross the street,
a second or so before she and Daril would have come face to face.
k
Beckett hadn’t reacted to Reb’s declaration, not in any way. Reb wasn’t sure if she’d expected them to.
But they didn’t stop her when she opened the case. Reb didn’t usually allow other people in her workroom. But Beckett should be here for this. In fact, would probably need to be, unless she wanted to take their blood in the other room.
She bolted the door again behind them. You couldn’t risk anyone coming in in the middle of any kind of sorcery; still less in the middle of this particular ritual. Blood magic wasn’t just risky for the caster; it was illegal in Marek, and highly restricted in Teren, and everywhere around the Oval Sea where it wasn’t banned outright.
Outside of Marek, it was also one of the few ways to access anything like real sorcery. That was where Reb had started off, out in the mountains of Teren, before she’d saved enough money to make her way to Marek, and the promise of Marek’s sorcery. She’d looked for a teacher, and found Zareth, and Zareth had made her promise not to touch blood magic again.
But Zareth was dead now, and so was anyone else who would have told her not to do this.
k
Under the guise of checking for traffic along the road – there was a heavy delivery cart coming up the street – Marcia turned round enough to look at Daril and whoever he was talking to. She could see only their backs now, but her heart lurched, then lurched again. Cato was behind him. Even in a hooded cloak, she knew his gait, his slight limp, that one holdover from the wretched plague.
They weren’t looking back; as far as she could tell, they hadn’t spotted her. The street was busy enough here that one more person wouldn’t stand out in the crowd. She stepped back from the kerb, and began to trail them, far enough back that she didn’t think she would be obvious. Either of them would probably recognise her if they turned around and she was close, even dressed like this. Cato most certainly would. Though, it was Cato, her brother, and she was here to help him. Would it matter if he saw her?