Thief of Light

by Denise Rossetti

  A great golden bear of a man, glowing with confidence and strength and health. But just a man, no more. Funny, she could imagine him working the land, those massive shoulders flexing as he tossed bales or whatever it was farmers did, mud caking his big boots. There were shadows beneath those bright eyes. The singer was tired, but still exalted by the performance, riding high on the applause, the approval. She could see the shine of it all over him. Ah well, she’d allow him his professional pride. He deserved it.

  Her equilibrium restored, Prue blew out a breath, smiling a little. Nonetheless, she wasn’t inclined to add to Erik’s high opinion of himself. Every woman at the reception was more than prepared to do that in her stead. Life with men and women whose livelihood depended on their charm and physical beauty had taught her all there was to know about self-absorption. He was undoubtedly more than a little spoiled, Erik the Golden.

  Charmers might be a waste of time, but business wasn’t. Over there, gathered around a decidedly gothic wishing well, were three merchants Prue dealt with on a regular basis. An excellent opportunity. The temperamental artist responsible for The Garden’s famous gourmet cuisine was dissatisfied with the quality of the fresh produce in his kitchen. Sometimes he threw objects. Sharp ones.

  Prue’s heart lightened. A problem she could fix right now. Unobtrusively, she detached herself from Rose’s side and drifted toward the merchants, happily preoccupied with the coming battle of wits. But as she did so, the tide of conversation ebbed and the men strolled away to reveal two Purists, absorbed in a serious, low-voiced discussion. The dignified, dark-skinned Bartelm Prue knew by sight and reputation, the most senior wizard in the Enclave. The other, a crone who appeared to be older than Time, was not familiar.

  “Imagination,” Bartelm was saying as Prue approached. “Nori, this is foolish. I’ve never—” His head jerked up and his gaze collided with Prue’s. For an instant, his eyes went wide, then his lips tightened and he gave a short, curt nod.

  “Good evening,” he said. “Mistress . . . ?” A snowy brow rose.

  “Prue McGuire.” Prue offered her hand. “Financial manager of The Garden.”

  The wizard took a half pace backward, leaving Prue’s hand to dangle unwanted on the end of her arm, but after an instant, he recovered himself and extended his fingertips, the merest disdainful brush.

  It was so breathtakingly rude Prue could feel the heat rise in her cheeks, her eyes narrowing with irritation and hurt. But before she could speak, Purist Nori said in her creaky voice, “I’m sorry, Mistress McGuire, but it’s difficult for us.”

  “Difficult?”

  “To touch,” said the old woman, more gently.

  “I don’t understand. You were presented to the queen.” More than a little puzzled, Prue turned to Bartelm. “You kissed her hand, Purist. I watched you do it.”

  Bartelm’s dark eyes studied her, uncomfortably keen. Eventually, he said, “We are so old, Nori and I, that Magick is pretty well all that holds us together. Do you believe in Magick, Mistress McGuire?” He stroked his grizzled beard.

  “Do I—?” Prue stared, bemused. “Magick isn’t part of my life. I don’t think about it much, to be honest.”

  Old Nori folded arthritic hands on the head of her cane. The papery skin of her cheeks wrinkled as she smiled. “So busy,” she murmured. “Always working, always doing.”

  “I’m a practical person,” said Prue, rather nettled. “I have a business to run. I don’t believe in things I can’t see, and I certainly don’t have time for dreaming, for nonsense like—” She broke off, folding her lips tightly together.

  Merciful Sister, when would she learn to keep her mouth shut? She’d just insulted one of the most powerful wizards in the Enclave. Prue cast a sidelong glance at old Purist Nori. Not to mention the wisest.

  She wouldn’t blame them if they turned her into a scuttleroach—not that she believed they could. Her imagination supplied the image of a very surprised scuttleroach with a Prue face, waving its feelers in a frantic semaphore from the floor.

  Godsdammit, laughing would only make it worse! Prue bit her lip.

  “So I see.” Bartelm’s voice was very dry. “That must be why your barriers are so strong.”

  “Barriers? Purist, what—?”

  “I’ve never seen an untutored shield like it,” said old Nori. “Have you, Bartelm?”

  “What, exactly, are you talking about?” said Prue through gritted teeth.

  “You have a natural resistance to Magick, Mistress.” The old man’s dark lips curved very slightly. “Nonetheless, Magick believes in you, even if you don’t reciprocate. Now, if you will excuse us . . .”

  “Of course.” Prue gave the Purists a polite nod. Gods, Bartelm couldn’t wait to get away from her! Then she looked more closely at Purist Nori. The old witch was swaying, her gnarled fingers clenched on the head of the cane. Instinctively, Prue leaped forward, putting her hand under the old woman’s elbow. “Let me help—”

  “No!” The word emerged as a near screech. Nori scuttled backward with remarkable rapidity. Her sunken chest rose and fell like a frightened bird’s. “I’m fine.” She gave a travesty of a smile, her lips bloodless with what looked like shock. “Bartelm,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Yes.” The wizard slipped his arm around the old woman’s skinny waist. “Good-bye, Mistress McGuire. I doubt we’ll meet again.” Without further ado, the two Purists hobbled away. They didn’t look back.

  Prue’s brows drew down, her heart fluttering in her chest. That was . . . downright peculiar.

  From behind, Rose’s distinctive throaty laugh rang out. “Ask her yourself,” she said. Prue stiffened. She knew that tone. What mischief was her partner up to now?

  A moment later, two big warm hands enveloped hers, and a wine cup was pressed into her palms. “Here,” said a deep, calm voice. “You look like you need it.”

  Prue looked straight into a chest a mile wide, clad in fine linen. Not for the first time, she wished the gods had seen fit to grace her with a tall, statuesque frame like Rose. She had to lift her gaze to meet his guileless eyes.

  “Talking with wizards is a chancy business,” said Erik the Golden. “Requires alcoholic support.” Those sea blue eyes were dancing, though his mouth was grave. How did he do that?

  “Thank you,” Prue said politely, and sipped.

  Inwardly, she sighed, cursing Rose. Best get it over with, she thought. Godsdammit.

  “What did you want to ask me?”

  Erik smiled. “I’d like to visit with you, Mistress Prue, spend some time.” The smile became a trifle feral, his teeth very white. “As soon as possible. Tonight.”

  Prue set her jaw. Rose and her devious sense of humor! Killing was too good for her.

  “Make another choice,” she said, flapping a vague hand at Rose and the courtesans practicing their small talk. “There’s no lack of variety. Or beauty.”

  “I’ve made my choice.”

  “Unmake it.”

  “No.”

  They stared at each other. Prue’s fingers tightened on the wine cup. His lips were beautifully shaped, a generous mouth, rich with promise. The mouth of a man who understood pleasure, the giving and receiving of it. A woman could lose her soul to a man with a mouth like that.

  “Rose has a strange sense of humor. She misled you, Master Thorensen. I am not a courtesan. Therefore, I am not available for, ah, visiting.”

  The singer didn’t miss a beat. “Doesn’t matter.” He favored her with a slow, sweet smile. “And call me Erik.”

  “Master Thorensen—”

  “Erik.”

  “All right then. Erik.” Prue breathed hard through her nose. “I’m a busy woman, I don’t have time to argue with—”

  “Good.” He set his hands around her waist and boosted her up to sit on the coping of the wishing well, his body screening her from the thinning crowd. The wine in her cup barely sloshed. The movement put them eye to eye.

  P
rue gasped. His fingers tightened on her waist, holding her steady, burning through the fabric of her gown.

  “You enjoyed the song, Mistress Prue. I saw your face.”

  “Well, of course I did,” she said crossly. “You’re very good, and what’s more, you know it. Take your hands off me.”

  Unperturbed, he said, “I know my worth, like any craftsman worthy of the hire. But you changed your mind about me, Mistress. I saw you do it.” He released her, only to take the cup from her slack fingers and set it aside. “That doesn’t happen to me . . . often.”

  “You’re crowding me.” Prue had the sensation of sinking, as if that blue gaze were a bottomless lake, the water closing over her head, so that she drowned by inches in slow, dreamy eddies.

  Desperately, she tried to picture a scuttleroach with a blond mop and the bluest of blue eyes, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

  “My apologies.” He moved back the merest fraction. “You’ve taken me in dislike, sweet Prue.” One corner of that sinful mouth tucked up. “I’m desolated.”

  “For the Sister’s sake, I don’t have time for games. I have a business to run, a life to live.”

  “No fun? No light and shadow? No one to love?”

  “I am perfectly happy. Thank you for your concern.”

  “You’re a challenge, Mistress Prue.” A fingertip brushed her cheek, feather light, and the sensation made the side of her face tingle, her lips quiver. “You have a dimple. Right . . . here. Just the one.” His eyes blazed into hers like the blue at a fire’s core. An infinitesimal pause and his chest expanded under the linen of his shirt. “Let me kiss it.” The timbre of his voice thrummed in the air between them.

  Gods, the sheer command in that voice, the richness of it, the rightness!

  Automatically, Prue tilted her head to one side, offering her cheek. Then she blinked. What the—? She stared, dumbfounded. “Are you mad? No.”

  Under her astonished gaze, the blood drained from Erik’s face. “Fuck,” he whispered. One hand crept up to touch some small object he wore on a chain under his shirt. He shook his head, like a man emerging from deep water. “I didn’t mean it, Prue. Forget I said it.”

  “Yes, you did mean it, but forgetting’s not a problem. Happy to oblige.” Prue hopped off the wishing well, but in her haste, she stumbled, her flailing hand clutching at Erik’s sleeve.

  Immediately, he had her secure, held tight against his magnificent chest, his arms banded around her, his nose buried in her hair. She had to be imagining the trembles that rippled through his big frame. Or perhaps she was the one shaking deep inside.

  Pulling back, he grinned at her, and the strange moment passed as if it had never been. But Erik the Golden had spent his life onstage. Now his face expressed no more than pleasant amusement spiced with a wary masculine interest, though he was still very pale.

  “You smell wonderful,” he murmured. “What’s the perfume?”

  “Soap.” Prue’s voice cracked a little. “Let me go.”

  “Of course.” Erik steadied her and stepped back. He bowed, surprisingly graceful for such a big man. “Good evening, Mistress Prue. We’ll meet again.”

  Turning, he sauntered away into the crowd, leaving her to stare at the powerful muscles of his buttocks flexing under the cream breeches, the long legs encased in supple black leather all the way to midthigh.

  Godsdammit!

  Prue snatched up the wine cup and drained it in a single reckless draught. Then she slammed it down so hard the wishing well rang with the impact. Ignoring it, she set her jaw and went in search of Rose.

  It took an age to move through his guests and admirers, nodding and smiling, accepting compliments with grace, signing programs. Reaching the sanctuary of his dressing room, Erik ripped the door open, marched straight up to the far wall and slapped both palms against it with stinging force.

  What the fuck was wrong with him? What had happened to his so-called ironclad discipline?

  Fucking unbelievable. Years of grim control gone in a single instant. A softly rounded woman with hard, aquamarine eyes and a sweet, vulnerable mouth, and he’d crumbled, the Voice spilling him out of him on a tide of sheer want. A man who could command anything of anyone.

  Erik the Golden sank into the chair in front of the mirror and regarded his reflection with horror. Pale and rigid, his eyes blue and glassy, but only those who knew him well would know he’d looked into hell and seen himself looking back. With a curse, he used his sleeve to wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.

  Unbidden and unwelcome, Inga’s pale face swam out of memory before he could prevent it, her wheat gold hair stained dark with water, tangled with the bright slime of aquatic weeds . . .

  Dropping his head into his hands, Erik tried to get his scattered thoughts in order. What, in the gods’ names, had he just done?

  He couldn’t believe it. He’d blurted out the command as if he were still the thoughtless, arrogant lad he’d been so long ago. He’d used the Voice to compel Mistress Prue McGuire.

  Let me kiss it.

  Shit. The only saving grace was that it hadn’t worked.

  Erik’s thoughts shuddered to a halt.

  It hadn’t worked.

  5

  The Necromancer turned his key in the well-oiled lock and slipped into the vaulted, shadowed space of his own entrance hall. The sweetish smell of furniture polish assaulted his nose. Of his efficient, unobtrusive staff, only Nasake lived in, a man so deep in the Necromancer’s thrall he no longer had a will of his own. It was simpler that way.

  Alone in the dark, he bent to massage his aching knee, cursing as the movement put an unwelcome strain on his lower back. The chairs in the Cabal Chamber weren’t made for a man his size and shape. Not surprisingly, the exercise of death Magick wasn’t particularly conducive to glowing good health. The body he’d been born with was wearing out.

  Another problem to be solved, another opportunity to be seized. He’d have to give it some thought.

  The palazzo was so quiet, he could have been the only other living soul within it, but he knew for a fact that wasn’t true—on two counts.

  Firstly, he didn’t have a soul, not within the strict definition of the term. In fact, it could even be said he was no longer alive—within the strict definition of the term.

  Beneath his feet, in the special chambers he’d had constructed for her in the basement, the Technomage Primus of Sybaris was still awake and working. He could sense the glowing ember of her life, the warmth of it like a match struck and held aloft in the inky darkness. He could choose to cup it in his palms to feel the heat—or he might snuff it out entirely.

  The Necromancer sighed, knowing he should go down but conscious of a certain, irritating reluctance. The woman was useful and he couldn’t doubt her brains and drive, but, by Shaitan, she tried his patience! How could someone so intelligent be so obtuse? In her first few days at the palazzo, he’d had to discipline her numerous times. He enjoyed the process for its own sake, as he always did. Every creature’s pain was unique, but there was a special flavor to human hurt, somehow bright and metallic and sparkling. But still . . .

  For the first month, he’d maintained a vast, spectral presence, dark and eyeless beneath a hooded cloak, the way he’d first manifested before her. She’d been so proud then, so armored in her power as the Technomage Primus of Sybaris. At her core, she’d always despise the Magick she wished to master. She thought if she could measure it, dismantle it and put it back together, it would be hers to wield as a weapon. Foolish woman.

  His mouth twisted with satisfaction. He’d taught her a little since then, though she was remarkably stubborn, the habits of command deeply ingrained. Now she knew if she patronized him, in even the most oblique way, unimaginable pain arrived right on the heels of her indiscretion. But though the Primus had grown wary of his temper, she was still utterly convinced of her own superiority.

  Deep in thought, he walked across his study and pushed aside a set of
bookcases. It wasn’t like him to entertain doubts, but he wondered if he should recalculate. Perhaps he’d been careless, allowing her to see the body he wore, but manifesting as a dark god grew tiring after a time, and he’d slipped, grown lazy. Not that it mattered, of course, because the Primus was as good as dead. He passed a hand over the small door he’d revealed and the runes on its surface twisted into being, glowing a vicious shade of acid green, spiced with the clotted reek of old blood.

  It was a powerful spell, its intricate coils a trap for a hungry demon. Creating the Doorkeeper had cost the Necromancer the lives of a small, dusky-skinned child and a blue, aquatic creature called a seelie, and he himself had been drained, weak and pale for a day after. The child was no matter—slum dwellers bred fast. Sacrificing the seelie had been the true price.

  They were so rare, the seelies of Caracole, their deaths inexpressibly sweet to his palate. His loins clenched as he thought of it, the sensation like the sexual fervor he dimly remembered, but—oh gods!—infinitely better.

  “Silly as a seelie.” That’s what the city folk said of the stupid or the slow, the little creatures long faded to the status of legend, the stuff of old, half-forgotten stories.

  But they weren’t myth; they were oh-so-delightfully real.

  The Necromancer nodded pleasantly at the Doorkeeper’s horned face, even as it snarled and bared its fangs. “A good evening to you too,” he murmured, starting down the long stairs.

  The Technomage was seated at her console, but her head jerked around as the door opened and her stylus clattered to the desk. The Necromancer smiled. “Good evening, my dear,” he said, because he knew it galled her to be so addressed.

  “I got another one,” she said curtly, rising to pull the cover off a large tank at the far end of the long room. “Finally.”

  Saliva pooled in his mouth and it was a moment before he could speak. It had been so long. “You mean Nasake got it.”

  “No.” Something sparked in her rather prominent blue gray eyes. “I was bored, so I made a number of modifications to your trap. All Nasake did was pull it up from the canal. He’s as dumb as a beast, that man. I don’t know why you keep him on.”