by Faith Hunter
Shamus nodded. “Check the weather, just like every businessman who depends on people being out and about. Bad weather, we get less customers, so we make less bread. Why you asking?”
“Your bakery is across the street from Thorn’s Gems. This morning when you looked out, were lights on above the shop?”
Shamus scratched his bony chin. “Reckon they were.”
“And could you see in the windows?”
“No, can’t see in from the street, what with the porch over the walkway. But come to think of it, there might coulda been some shadows moving. Why?”
“The witness lies. Thorn St. Croix and I were practicing savage-chi and savage-blade from before dawn until eight o’clock. You saw the evidence of that movement in her windows yourself proving she was at home, not in the witness’ bed.”
Shamus stared from Audric to me to the man on the witness seat. When he spoke, his voice was too low to carry off the dais. “Eugene. You want to reconsider your accusation?”
Red-faced and uncertain, Eugene pulled on his collar as if it was too tight. “Well, maybe it wasn’t this morning.”
“Some sweet young thing crawls in your bed and you don’t remember when? I don’t think so. Recant, or I’ll think you need some time to reflect. Maybe a long time to reflect.”
Eugene’s breathing had sped up and a slight sheen of sweat beaded his face. When he looked at me, something malevolent swam in the depths of his eyes. “She’s a mage. Mages are all whores.” Voice filled with revulsion, he said, “She’s evil. She’s a temptress.”
“But she didn’t come to your bed?” Shamus, the chairman and chief judge, clarified.
“No. I guess she didn’t. But she tempts a man. Just having her in this town is a cause for immoral thoughts for every man and boy. She’s a wh—”
The gavel banged as Shamus cut him off, his face darkening, his dark-skinned knuckles pale on the wooden hammer. “That’s enough. Guards, escort him to the jail.” Two bailiffs lifted the witness by his arms and shuffled him off the stage. “Maybe a few days in a cell will convince you of the error of bearing false witness to this court, Eugene. And you’re lucky the seraphs didn’t strike you dead for lying.”
“Well, I got something to say,” a voice called from the back of the room.
“The court recognizes Derek Culpepper,” Shamus said. “Come on up, son. And to prevent any conflict of interest or unethical proceedings, I’m sure the elder Culpepper will agree to remain impartial, and not vote his opinion on any evidence brought before this bench by his son. Elder?”
The elder didn’t look as if he thought that was a good idea at all, but a quick glance at the camera convinced him of the futility of argument. Culpepper jerked his head with ill grace as his son bounded up the stairs to the witness stand. Derek was a flamboyant businessman, partial to vivid-colored clothing, a man with more money than taste. Today he was dressed in a gray wool suit with a tiny yellow pin-stripe, a cranberry-toned overcoat, and a purple shirt. His tie was a bright spring green. And his shoes were orange leather. It nearly hurt to look at him.
Holding to both chair arms, I opened a skim and my sight together. The world reeled and tottered like a top around me. Gorge rose in the back of my throat. The otherness of the blended scan stole my breath, but I saw what I needed to see. I released both senses.
As Derek took the witness seat and was sworn in, I lifted a finger, attracting Audric’s attention. When the big man bent almost in two, I said into his ear, “Get him to say if he hates mages. And if he does, make him empty his pockets.”
Audric turned a curious eye to me, but I offered no explanation.
Derek accused me of inviting him to my loft, drugging, and then seducing him. I didn’t bother to hide my grin at his words. Even if I’d been in heat, a condition that had been known to cause mages to mate with a reckless lack of inhibition, even across species, I’d have had better taste than to choose Derek. A couple of women in the crowd must have agreed, because a titter rippled through them at my smile.
I didn’t bother to listen to the dates and times Derek offered, occasions when I had my lascivious way with him. I just stared at his left overcoat pocket, waiting. When he finally fell silent, Audric said, “Are mages and their conjures a danger to the human population?”
“Yes. They should be wiped from the face of the earth. The Mage War was proof of that. The US military tried to destroy them, over eighty years ago, and would have if they hadn’t been attacked by magic and annihilated.” The crowd murmured uneasily and I could feel the weight of human eyes. “The nuclear weapon that was aimed at the mages would have left the Earth a clean and chaste place, worthy of the Most High. Now, because they’re still here, still polluting the face of the world that the Lord hath made, God the Victorious won’t come and finish the cleansing that was the apocalypse.”
That was a new one. I’d heard all sorts of reasons for killing mages, but never a claim that mages were keeping the Most High from coming to earth.
It was an accusation I couldn’t answer, an allegation that was pure prejudice. The end of the world hadn’t been exactly what the ancient prophets had been expecting. There had been seraphs, winged beings with swords who appeared in every major city in the world. There had been plagues and wars and rumors of wars. Most of the population had died.
But to the consternation of Christians and Jews, there hadn’t yet been a rapture or a messianic appearance. The Muslims had been devastated to discover that other religious believers had survived too. Only nine hundred people in Utah had lived through the plagues. The Hindu messiah, the Kalki Avatar, hadn’t come. Most telling, the Most High had not yet appeared, though smart people never said so aloud. People with big mouths had been known to drop dead when making that observation. Derek Culpepper, gloating and satisfied, left the dais.
An accused had the right to speak, and because Derek hadn’t asked a question, I didn’t have to answer one. I could, however, speak to the prejudice, and to the fatal altercation between a handful of mages and an entire army. The Mage War was taught to every mage child from the cradle up. It wasn’t taught quite the same way in human schools. Truth, the tourmaline ring whispered. Use only truth.
Chapter 7
Truth? How much truth? I stood, smoothing my skirt, drawing attention to the strange clothing, so different from the severe dress of the orthodox; to my skin and scars, both radiant; to my jewelry, which was ostentatious, and not a style humans would wear. It wouldn’t hurt to remind them I was a mage, with weapons hanging around my neck. And that I had never used them against the town. I allowed myself to be sworn in.
In the singsong voice used by mage storytellers, I started speaking. “In the Beginning of the End of the World, came seraphs bearing the judgment of the Almighty, and the plagues they brought that punished the humans. War followed the plagues. Few survived.
“Darkness came, the Darkness that was of the spirit and the flesh. The handful of living descended into anarchy and violence or chose sides, joining the seraphs fighting the Dark, or joined the Darkness and the lures they offered. Evil walked the earth, stalking humans, killing, eating them. Darkness that raped and pillaged and kidnapped and bred with human captives to create new demons to cavort with the old. In all, nearly six billion died.”
I heard the crowd muttering, and I knew what they were saying—that mages were the result of Darkness raping human women and getting them with child, false accusation based on prejudice. I drew on the tourmaline to amplify my voice, and slowly walked toward the edge of the dais so all of them could see me. With each firm step I let my boots ring like a drum on the wood floor of the platform, and made my skirt bells chime, the speaker becoming part of the storytelling art. In Enclave, mages lived for the story, and I wanted the humans to hear the neomage version of the end of the world. Wanted them to hear the truth. “And during the End of the World, neomages were born.” I told them of the human babies born during the time of the plagues, infected or de
ad at birth. Malformed, genetically damaged.
“Nine months after the first plague, at the end of the final plague, a few hundred thousand human women survivors, those who had been in the first trimester of pregnancy at the Beginning of the End, gave birth all around the world. These children were viable offspring, beautiful children. Children of human fathers and mothers. But they were not human themselves. Conceived just before the first plague, carried successfully through all three plagues, the pestilence and disease had twisted their DNA into something different. Something new. Something never prophesied in all the years of human existence.” I reached the edge of the dais. The TV camera was positioned at an angle to catch the crosshatch of scars on my cheek and the solid glow of scars on my left hand. I put it from my mind.
“The Last War was decades long and hard. The ice age began. When the first neomages came into puberty, in the fourteenth and fifteenth years of the war, their talents and gifts erupted. These children of man had no power of their own, but could use the power in the world around them, the leftover energies of creation. They could see these energies in the rain and storms, in the heavens, in the wind and the sea, in growing things and in the earth, in rocks and minerals. And they began to experiment with the power that was theirs to use.
“It wasn’t illusion or trickery, it wasn’t magic, not in the way of fairy tales or dark fantasy. It wasn’t religion or sorcery. It was the unused energy of the Most High, the residue of creation. But the mages had no training. No one to guide them. By accident, some released wild energies—what, for lack of a better word, they called wild-magic. Mages died. Humans died. Humans they loved. Pain and anguish rang through the world.”
I arched my neck and looked high at a round, stained-glass window. I raised my arms as I had seen the priestess do in telling the story of the Beginning of the End. “And humans feared.” My voice rang off the walls of the old church. “They killed us by the tens, by the hundreds. Perhaps by the thousands. Small bands of neomages gathered in every part of the globe, despairing, frightened, untrained. In Louisiana, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a small group of teenage mages gathered, sharing their newfound power. Attacked, hunted, trapped, they stood before an army of humans.”
I looked down, dropping one arm in a sweeping wave, not saying “humans like you,” but the gesture implying it. My glowing neomage eyes picked out the faces in the crowd. European, Cherokee, African, and Asian genetic backgrounds were all visible, all human, all facing a boogeyman, a nightmare, just as in the Mage War. The crowd had fallen silent, staring at the apparition who stood above them, a pagan wild child, a wisp of a woman, so much smaller than they, so much weaker. Wielding power they had never known.
And I spoke the story that humans denied, repudiated, claiming a revisionist history that protected them from the truth of what their forebears did, or tried to do. “Some of the humans were parents, fighting their own progeny. They bombarded the small band of teens with rockets and mortars. The children of man devised shields and weapons,” I chanted. “But the neomages knew not how to manipulate the energies they could see and taste and feel in the world around them. With a single gesture, the human general ordered the ultimate weapon dropped, the nuclear bomb intended to destroy the neomages. And the mages called on the seraphs.”
The crowd gave a collective gasp. From the back of the church, a voice thundered, “Seraphs and God the Victorious don’t hear soulless mages. They’re not human! They’re animals!” I found him at the doors. It was Tobitt, the young acolyte guard who had sworn in the witnesses. He was holding a gun in both hands, out from his body, pointed at me.
Without thinking, I called on the white onyx fish that held my sphere of shielding. I didn’t snap it into place, as it would be like building a wall between the assembly and me. But I got it ready. And I watched Tobitt’s eyes as I spoke.
“They don’t hear Godless, heathen whores!” someone else called.
“The Most High don’t see no mages,” another said. “That’s why they’re in prisons!”
Watching Tobitt, I whispered, “Neomage children, the teenage children of humans, called on the High Host of the Seraphim, and upon the Most High. ‘Mage in battle, mage in dire, seraphs, come with holy fire.’ It was a child’s nursery rhyme, chanted by innocents filled with fear. And the seraphs came.” I raised my voice. “A dozen of the Holy Ones appeared in the air above the battlefield. One reached out his wings and caught the bomb as it plummeted. Another took the bomb and departed with it. It did not detonate. But the neomages had built up power while defending themselves. Much power. My ancestors were foolish, afraid and untaught, facing an army of well-armed, angry, frightened humans. They didn’t know what to do with so much gathered might, or how to control it.
“In their inexperience, they released the power. And the human army fell. Thousands died. By accident, not by intent. And the children of man screamed and mourned even as they tried to draw back the might that escaped from them. But there was no tool on earth or with the seraphim, to pull back so much power once released. And the energies rained down on the human army, on their own fathers and mothers.” I shared a small, sad smile. “A great anguish went up to the Most High with the souls of the human dead.”
The mage account listed all the names of loved ones they had killed that day. I mentioned only the best-known one. “General Bascomb, the human who ordered the nuclear bomb dropped, was the biological father of one of the mages he battled. Bascomb died that day. His son was orphaned. His son grieved.”
The church full of people had fallen silent again. Tobitt’s gun wavered from me, dropping to dangle, pointing at the floor. Truth, the sigil had suggested. Well, here it was. Truth that the human and neomage communities had never shared.
“In punishment, the seraphs gathered the mages they had saved, forcing them into the first Enclave, the shielded haven now universally called the New Orleans Enclave. All around the globe, seraphs collected embattled neomages and established Enclaves, where the few still alive could work and study their gifts in safety. Where they were imprisoned. Nearly one hundred years have passed, and still we are captives. We may not depart without seraphic approval, visas, and scrutiny by the Administration of the ArchSeraph.”
I looked around the hall. There was a lot I hadn’t said. I hadn’t mentioned that proximity to each other set neomages and seraphs into heat. Only recently had the Most High and the High Council of the Seraphim produced the sigils that controlled mage-heat for a few hours at a time. All that I kept to myself. “Even today, we mourn those we killed. Even now, we do penance for the death of humans, the death of our parents, in the Mage War.” This was truth untaught in human schools. Truth that might disarm the angry and contain the vitriol.
“To atone, we help where we can, where asked. We accept payment, yes, as each of you accept payment for services and goods. Yes, we have power, but it’s sealed inside the Enclaves with us, so it won’t harm humans by intent or accident ever again.”
I looked at Tobitt. Orthodox, weaned on mage hate, taught by elders focused on cementing their own political power. “You’re right. We have no souls. When our spark of life is extinguished, we die forever. There’s no afterlife for us. Don’t fear us; pity us. We’re empty vessels. We are the unforeseen.”
“So how did the seraphs hear the mages?” Tobitt asked, curious at last.
I shrugged. Bells rang softly, a funeral cadence. “We think it was innocence that called to them. Since that time, seraphs always hear the call of mages in dire. It’s their pact with us, though to call the capricious and volatile seraphs is always a danger to nearby humans.”
Audric touched my shoulder and gestured to the chair set aside for the accused. I walked back across the small stage, my boots and bells loud in the quiet church. When I was seated, my champard asked, “Are there more accusations?”
Derek Culpepper raced up the stairs to the dais and shouted to the crowd. I had forgotten him and was almost surprised when
he spoke, his face filled with rage, a finger pointed accusingly at me. “Don’t listen to her wiles. Can’t you see she’s trying to seduce you with words? She’s spelling you all right now!” When no one agreed, he said, “They take our money and make us dependent on their trinkets. We’re humans, the highest creation of the Most High, beneath the seraphs. We don’t need mages or their conjures or amulets. They’re immoral and depraved.”
“Is there no good to be had from mages?” Audric asked. “No good at all from the conjures and amulets that humans buy and use?”
“No!” Derek shouted.
“Then the accused requests that you empty your pockets,” Audric said.
Derek paled and clenched his hands. Shocked, he looked to his father, and I followed the glance. The elder raised his eyebrows. Derek turned to me, taking in my small smile. I didn’t know what kind of amulet he habitually carried, but I’d seen him worrying it during a previous town meeting, his fingers caressing it like a lifeline. He opened his mouth and snapped it shut, a crafty glint in his eyes.
“She spelled me with it,” he said.
I didn’t know exactly what kind of amulet he carried, but to my mage-sight it glowed a yellow-green of earth-magery, the gift of life and all things growing. It had been quite powerful the first time I noted it on him. I breathed deeply and caught the scent of the conjure. It smelled warm and verdant, like sunlight on spring leaves.
“Show us,” Audric commanded.
Derek’s triumph grew. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the amulet. He held it between thumb and forefinger so the crowd could see. The audience sucked in a collective breath, swept back from the truth of the Mage War story into habitual, ingrained fear. Ignoring them, I studied the amulet from my seat, smelling oak and age and the working of a powerful mage. The amulet was made from the root of a live oak, a thin disc about two and a half inches around and a quarter inch thick, like a large coin, carved through with symbols. To my mage-sight, its energies weren’t beautiful, but it was powerful. The fact that it glowed with power was significant. It had been recently charged.