The Deep and Shining Dark

by Juliet Kemp

  “Although,” Kia added, “perhaps I should warn you… The young man – Urso, his name is – has quite the interest in magic.” She wrinkled her nose. “I have traded some of my own ocean experiences with spirits with him – one must fulfil one’s diplomatic obligations. And he has been a good friend, a good trading partner, over the years I have been here. One is more prepared to discuss these things with friends, ne? And to forgive a friend the odd strange interest. But if you would react badly, perhaps… Well, I would not wish to insult him.”

  Jonas’ heart leapt. “He’s not a sorcerer himself, is he?” he asked, playing up the doubt Kia would expect to see.

  “No, no,” she assured him. “There are scarce any sorcerers in Marek now. I suppose one must regret any loss of life, but with an illness quite as focussed as that plague was, well, it is hard not to conclude that magic does have consequences, ne? But in any case – no, Urso has an academic interest, is all. A collector of tales.”

  And one who collected tales might have collected tales of interest to Jonas.

  “Well,” Jonas said, trying to keep his tone light. “I have been six months in Marek. I am sure I can manage not to embarrass you.”

  “Excellent,” Kia said with a smile.

  Perhaps this visit would pay off, after all, in more than just bread wraps. Reminded, he took another wrap.

  Just as he was swallowing his mouthful, a flicker hit. Three figures on a hill. He recognised Daril’s height and half-shaved head; with him, forming a loose circle, stood a man with red-brown hair, posture indolent but power fairly crackling from him, and someone else who Jonas could see only from behind. Marcia sprawled flat on grass, her head to one side and her eyes closed. Then the flicker switched location with a lurch that nearly brought Jonas’ bread wrap back up; to Reb in a small room with a scalpel, head bent down over her arm. Beckett’s tall gangly silhouette, still against a wall. Something rang in Jonas’ head, like a cracked bell, and his mental vision went entirely blank, pure white across the inside of his eyelids. The air felt different, wrong, around him. Another flicker pasted over the white, Beckett in Reb’s room, staggering and falling, Reb’s startled face, a broken bowl…

  The cityangel. There was a new cityangel. That wasn’t a flicker; it wasn’t a flash of the future. That was, Jonas knew down to his bones as undeniable truth, now.

  He was coughing on the mouthful of wrap, and Kia was on her feet, thumping his back and looking concerned.

  “Jonas? Are you all right?”

  “’M fine,” he wheezed, reaching for water. “Just – went down the wrong way. Really. Fine.”

  He should go and find Reb and Beckett and Marcia. Even if it was all too late.

  “Well. This fellow Urso is due at sixteen hours. You’re welcome to stay here until then, use the library, have a rest.”

  “No, no,” Jonas said hastily, deeply though he wished he could just stay peacefully here, just for a few hours. “Things to do. I’ll be back before then.”

  He couldn’t just leave them to it. He had to go to Reb’s.

  Kia was looking him up and down. “We’ve some spare Salinas wear, not quite the formal you had last night, but for afternoon…”

  He could be insulted by the suggestion that he couldn’t dress himself; but it saved a return to his rooms, and if he was to visit Reb and get some jobs in, before sixteen hours… And he still hadn’t asked Beckett about his flickers. Could Beckett even answer, now? What would Beckett do with themself, if there was now a cityangel again?

  “That would be helpful,” he said. “I promise, I’ll be back with time to spare.”

  He couldn’t get out of the embassy fast enough.

  k k

  Despite the hurry he’d been in leaving the embassy, as he walked over Old Bridge, Jonas’ steps began to slow. It had happened now, after all. Was it all that urgent? Was he really all that keen to go running into what would doubtless be a scene of regret and perhaps recrimination?

  He did very much want to speak to Beckett. But perhaps it would make more sense to get a job or two in on the way there.

  “Hey! Jonas!”

  He turned to find Tam running up behind him.

  “Someone asking for you over by the market.”

  He gave the address. Reb.

  “Dunno why she’d pay me to tell you to get over there rather than just give the job to me. Mind you, sorcerers – you knew she was a sorcerer, right? – always a bit weird.” He peered more closely at Jonas. “Hey, friend, you don’t look so good. Late night last night?”

  “Yeah,” Jonas said, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes.

  “Not like you, friend,” Tam said. “Never seen you drink more than one or two, hey?”

  Jonas opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t the beer, then closed it again. “Met an old friend,” he said instead, which had the advantage of being true.

  “Down in the docks?” Tam asked, nodding away. Jonas didn’t bother correcting him. “They drink hard down there, true. Hope you had a good one, anyway. You sure you’ll take this job, hey?”

  “Got to pay for the beer somehow, right?” Jonas asked, and turned away from Tam’s grin to start towards the old market.

  If Reb was asking for him, that solved the question of what he should do when. And it made sense to ask Beckett as soon as he could, now, anyway, in case Beckett’s memories of their past were about to change. Jonas shivered slightly. Three hundred years, and now, suddenly, everything different. He didn’t care to imagine how Beckett was feeling.

  Marcia opened the door when he got there. She was clad in an incongruously down-at-heel tunic and trousers, with a blanket round her shoulders. There were dark rings under her eyes.

  Jonas was about to say something about the new cityangel, then remembered that none of this lot knew about his flickers, and he had no intention of letting them know. Although if everyone had felt what he did – had they? Or was that just a sort of a flicker? He didn’t want to risk it.

  “Got a message,” he said instead. “Reb’s after me?”

  He followed Marcia into the house. Reb sat on a stool next to the fireplace. She had a cracking bruise coming up across her cheekbone, deep scratches across her right arm with some kind of unguent smeared on them, and from the splint and bandages on the table and the ginger way she was holding her arm, a broken wrist. She looked bad, but not nearly as bad as the apparently un-injured Beckett. Beckett’s face was gaunt and hollow, and there was something dark burning behind their eyes. Jonas repressed another shiver.

  “What in the seas has been going on here?” he asked, trying to sound innocent and ignorant.

  “They replaced the cityangel,” Reb said succinctly.

  “What, there’s another one now? Not Beckett?” Jonas avoided looking at Beckett. He wasn’t sure he could bear to.

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  They didn’t expect him to have noticed, obviously, which meant that that feeling of absence, of the world turning around him – that must have been a flicker. Even if it had felt different from any other flicker he’d ever had. But then, he’d never been around when something like that had happened.

  “Apparently, one wouldn’t have wanted to be halfway through doing magic at the time,” Marcia said, with a lift of her eyebrows. She came over to kneel in front of Reb, and her voice gentled. “Are you sure you don’t want a proper healer?”

  “No,” Reb said. “It’s a clean break. It’ll be fine. Just do what I told you. Splint it, bind it nice and tight, ignore me swearing.”

  Marcia looked a little doubtful but she picked up the splints and laid them carefully along Reb’s arm.

  “So – do you know who did it?” Jonas asked, trying not to think about Reb doing magic. Actual real magic. The idea made him feel a bit sick.

  “Daril. Cato. Some other sorcerer.”

  Marcia’s words were clipped and precise. She didn’t stop wrapping bandages around Reb’s arm. Reb hisse
d as Marcia pulled the bandage up to tighten it before wrapping again.

  “Some other sorcerer I didn’t know of,” Reb grumbled. “Someone who’s been hiding. And I didn’t notice.” She didn’t seem to be expecting anyone to answer.

  “How do you know?” Jonas asked Marcia.

  “I was there,” Marcia said. “Followed them from House Leandra, up to Marekhill Park, and the monument. Technically I didn’t see them, what with Cato knocking me out and all, but I saw enough. And Beckett felt it.”

  For a moment, Jonas thought of admitting that he had, too. The idea of sharing his burden – maybe they could help, if he explained properly, maybe Reb would think of something. He thrust the idea away. He couldn’t tell people. He couldn’t tell anyone. He’d always known that.

  He wandered around the room, and felt a sudden shock as he passed the inner door into Reb’s workshop. A shadow of what he’d felt at Cato’s, when Reb was performing sorcery… He swallowed. He didn’t want his flickers to mean that he could feel sorcery. He didn’t want to feel sorcery. He wanted rid of this.

  Marcia had finished binding up Reb’s arm. But it was Reb who put her good hand on Marcia’s shoulder, as if to comfort her, and Marcia leaned very slightly into her. Well. It must be a shock, to be clipped over the head by your brother, sorcerously or otherwise.

  “So then,” Jonas said. “Is that it, then? Does that mean your magic is working again, Reb? If there’s a cityangel again.”

  Beckett’s shoulders flinched, and Jonas realised he could probably have put that better, or at least more gently.

  “Haven’t tried it yet,” Reb said, scowling down at her arm, then wincing and touching the bruise on her face. “Ought to, I suppose.”

  “But I don’t understand what he wants,” Marcia said.

  “Your brother?” Jonas asked.

  “Daril,” Marcia said, her lips tightening. “This must be in aid of something. What does he want?”

  “What did he want last time?” Reb asked.

  Marcia shook her head irritably. “That was – we were children. Foolish children. Even Daril was barely twenty-one.”

  Jonas, just turned nineteen, closed his mouth on his response.

  “This time – he wouldn’t do this for, I don’t know, just for a laugh. He must want something.”

  “Can’t be money,” Reb said. “Can’t be power, not the heir of Leandra.”

  “He’s not Heir,” Marcia and Jonas both said together.

  “What?” Reb frowned.

  “He’s not Leandra-Heir,” Marcia said. “It’s been a, well, a bit of a joke for a long time. Gavin Leandra is a bitter old man, and Daril won’t dance to his tune.” Marcia snorted. “The more he shows off his independence, the more the old man baulks. Everyone’s constantly expecting him to be disinherited altogether, but it’s been going on for years now.” Her eyes were suddenly bleak, and Jonas wondered what had happened to Cato and his own House inheritance, when he left Marekhill. “He makes light of it, Daril does, in public, and,” she hesitated, “he mostly did from the start, but – I know he feels something about it.”

  “I thought he’d have it automatically,” Reb said.

  Marcia shook her head. “That’s not how it works.” She frowned. “Didn’t you know that?”

  Reb shrugged. “Can’t say I give much of a shit about Marekhill politics, truth be told. Doesn’t really matter which high-born idiot takes over from which other high-born idiot, does it?” She eyed Marcia sideways, looking a little guilty. “Saving your presence, and all that.”

  Marcia shrugged in turn. “I know enough high-born idiots, thank you. In any case. It’s not automatic. Heir is usually the eldest child, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s down to the Head. It doesn’t happen so often, if there is an eldest child, that someone else is named, but Gavin Leandra would certainly do it, if he felt it were best.” She paused, staring into space. “Power. Daril always wanted power.” She was fiddling with her bracelet. “If he were finally to believe that he’d never be Head, and he went looking for other options…”

  “Could he?” Reb asked.

  Marcia and Reb were looking at each other, wide-eyed.

  “Could he what?” Jonas asked, impatient.

  “Overthrow the Council,” Reb said.

  “He’s been talking to my generation,” Marcia said. “About the way that the Heads aren’t handing over their power. I was wondering what he was up to, but… You wouldn’t need that much, if it came down to it. Enough to swing the balance behind you. The Council have a good eye for the main chance, and then there’s the Guilds. Get them onside, get rid of a few of the older Heads, replace them with younger ones who think Daril got them their chance…”

  “But is it anything to do with Beckett?” Jonas asked. “As I recall, that’s where you and I, Reb, came in in the first place.”

  It came out blunter than he’d intended.

  “Why does Daril care who the cityangel is, you mean?” Marcia asked.

  It wasn’t quite what he’d intended, but he let that slide.

  “Can the cityangel make any political moves?” Reb asked.

  “No magic in the Council,” Marcia said, automatically, then paused. “But Daril wouldn’t give a shit about that rule, if there’s no enforcement of it.”

  “The covenant.” It was the first thing Beckett had said since Jonas arrived, and they all jumped. “The covenant prevents interference with the political rule of the city.” Beckett was looking at the floor, not at any of them.

  “So that can’t be it,” Marcia said, irritably. “Except – wait. The covenant.” A sick look was creeping over her face. “It applied to you, because you made it, with Rufus Marek and Eli Beckett, that’s what you said. So – would it apply to the new one?”

  “I do not know,” Beckett said, still without looking up.

  “Possibly not,” Reb said. “They might have put something in place when they did the ritual, of course.”

  “But it might not have been the same as before,” Marcia said. She swallowed. “It would make a lot of sense, if that’s what’s happened. Daril would be prepared to do – a lot, to get that sort of backup.” She took a deep breath. “So. Can we do anything about it?”

  Reb looked over at Marcia, her expression unreadable. “What has this done to the magic? That would be my question, first.”

  Marcia stared at her.

  “I mean – politics. Does it matter, to us, if one person or another is in charge? I’ve never noticed a damn difference. My job is magic. Looking after the magic needn’t mean looking after the Council.”

  Jonas, despite himself, was impressed at her hard-headedness.

  “But what about Beckett?” Marcia demanded. “Are you just abandoning them, too?”

  Reb looked over at Beckett.

  “I don’t know if I can do anything,” she said, after a moment, quietly. “I don’t know if what was done today can be undone.”

  “I do not know either,” Beckett said, their head bowed. “I cannot – I still cannot return to the other plane. If that is relevant. But I cannot… I do not know who I am.” Their voice was very quiet.

  “But –” Reb hesitated. “If I can do anything, without risking the city, I will. This is not right. I don’t care about the politics of it, but it is not right.”

  Marcia had a mutinous look on her face, but Reb didn’t let her start talking.

  “So. Before anything else, we need to find out whether Beckett’s place truly is taken. Whether there is a Marek cityangel again, and whether it is acting as Beckett did.”

  “Which means magic?” Jonas asked.

  “Yes,” Reb said, fingers tapping irritably against her thigh. “I’m not sure there’s much I can do alone, though.”

  Jonas shifted uncomfortably in his chair. There was no way on this earth he was about to offer to help with anything magical. He wondered if it would be better just to find a pretext to clear out right now, before he found himself enga
ging in some sorcery or other the same way he’d found himself at a posh Marekhill party. But no one else in the room seemed to be paying much attention to him, and he relaxed a little.

  “Any you can do with help?” Marcia asked Reb.

  Reb jerked upright and stared at her. “Is that an offer?”

  Marcia flushed slightly. “If needed.”

  “You said you’ve no magic.” Reb sounded suspicious.

  “And I have not,” Marcia said, her chin going up. “I assure you on my honour. But I used to help Cato.”

  “Well, thank you,” Reb started, just as the market clock chimed the hour.

  Marcia’s eyes widened, counting the chimes. “Oh no,” she said. “I must… I promised my mother. I need to go home, right away. But I promise I will return as soon as I can.”

  She dumped the blanket off her shoulders and was out of the door in seconds.

  “Well,” said Reb, after a moment, still staring after Marcia. “I suppose perhaps I shall see what I can do on my own.”

  Jonas, looking at her splinted wrist, wanted to ask if that was wise, but he didn’t want to risk being recruited to help in Marcia’s absence. What he did want to do was to talk to Beckett, and that just might be possible if Reb locked herself away to do sorcery.

  k k

  Jonas shifted on the wooden chair again. Reb had disappeared into the other room, muttering to herself, and he’d heard the sound of a bolt being thrown on the door. Did that mean she was going to try magic even without help? Jonas preferred not to think about it. Or about anything else to do with magic. In fact, he would prefer to be out of here altogether. But it was just him and Beckett, now, in the room, and this was the perfect opportunity to talk to Beckett about his flickers without anyone else overhearing.