by Juliet Kemp
The Reader, barely audible over the uproar, made the formal declaration of no further motions and dismissed the session. Slowly, Marcia got to her feet, looking around her, trying to read faces.
Kilzan-Head walked briskly across the Chamber floor towards Warden Hagadath, and showily shook their hand, nodding to the other Wardens. Marcia watched, tense. Athitol-Head followed. She looked furious, but she shook Warden Hagadath’s hand anyway, and Marcia let out a breath. That was enough. That would swing it. Six Houses openly acquiescing. The other seven could stand against, but only at heavy commercial and political cost, especially given that the Ayes hadn’t cut along the traditional block lines. Fereno and Leandra had voted together, to start with; and neither Athitol nor Tigero were connected with either of them.
Pedeli-Head turned round from the seat in front. “I am far from sure, Fereno-Heir,” she said, icily, “that this is a wise move. Nor one that your mother would approve.”
“I think it is wise,” Marcia said, politely, choosing to ignore the second part of that. It wasn’t for her to affirm that House Fereno stood together; that would only look weak. “I think we strengthen Marek this way, that we will open new doors to new ideas that will make our city stronger.”
“Well. Well. We shall see, I suppose. In any case – I cannot but agree with you about Teren.” They frowned. “Our independence, here… well. Yes. She went much too far.” They nodded, and moved away towards the door.
Marcia watched them go, unsure of how to feel.
“How dare you.”
Marcia spun round to see Selene behind her, face flushed with anger.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Deliberately breaking the bonds between Marek and Teren? You will regret it, I guarantee it. When Teren magic comes here, when I find that sorcerer… You will regret it.”
She swept away, and Marcia watched her go, cold dread suddenly pooling in the pit of her stomach. It might just be hot air, Selene furious and saying things to scare her. But there was something in what she’d said, something that tugged at a strand in Marcia’s memory…
She had to go talk to Reb. Right now.
TWENTY-THREE
Jonas opened his eyes, blinking up at the sky above him, dark clouds piling up against afternoon-blue, and for a moment had no idea where he was. Cold roof-tiles under his head. His feet wedged against – more tiles? Warmer than he ought to be for the chill in the air. He sat up and rubbed at the sore place on his head, then looked around and recognised the tall peak of the main Guildhall roof. Everything clicked back into place like a series of dominoes falling. On the Guildhall roof. Chasing flickers, because he was a damn idiot. Thank goodness he’d been smart enough to move down here. He could have come off far worse for it.
He’d been floored by flickers before, but never that badly. He shut his eyes again, still rubbing at his head, and reached for the memory of it before it could escape. A tall figure, someone Jonas didn’t recognise, but they had long hair braided right down their back. What overwhelmed the flicker, what had Jonas shivering just as he experienced the memory again, was the shadow that fell across them, growing as he watched. Usually Jonas’ flickers were fairly concrete – he saw real people, doing real things. This might be like that, too; but it felt like something else. The feel of the shadow was larger than its look, as though it were falling not just over this one person but across the whole of the city. And though there was, unusually, no background to the flicker, he was certain that it was Marek.
What was the shadow? It was the one he’d seen before, in that flicker of catastrophic dread from Marek Square. His image of it was still shapeless, yet it felt like it had more arms than it should, and more teeth. He shivered.
So, on the bright side, the experiment had worked. Kind of. Fine, he might have nearly knocked himself out. But he’d taken an existing flicker, and he’d obtained more information about it, through the same means as he used for sorcery. Not as much as he might have liked – he still didn’t know what that shadow was – but he would know the person he’d seen, if he saw them again. At least, from that angle.
He rubbed his hands over his face. He had to tell Cato. This was important. He couldn’t doubt that any more; couldn’t push it away again. He had to tell someone. And Cato took him seriously, albeit in his own special way. Cato would listen.
Jonas held his hand out to be sure it had stopped shaking, then climbed back out of his protective roof-dip, back up to the roof-ridge of the Guildhall. How long had he been out for? The sun had dipped from its noon height, though he wasn’t sure quite how far. Still mid-afternoon, sometime. He couldn’t read the Guildhall clock from up here, owing as how it was underneath him. It couldn’t have been all that long, surely. He hoped. He shivered again. His warmth charm was wearing off, but he didn’t know how long it was supposed to have lasted.
It didn’t matter. He just needed to go and find Cato, whatever the time was. If he was going to do this, he should get on with it.
It didn’t take him long to get over to Cato’s. Through the door, up the stairs, and he paused just outside Cato’s door with its red C, frowning a little. He could hear voices inside. If Cato had a client, he’d likely not be thrilled to be interrupted. But then, nor would he be thrilled to find Jonas skulking outside the door when the client left, and some of Cato’s clients might take that particularly badly. He rubbed his tongue against his teeth a couple of times, and knocked.
The door swung open with no one behind it. Jonas had been intimidated by that trick the first time he’d come here. Now he just stepped forwards. Cato was lounging on the bed; a tall figure was behind him, outlined against the light from the window, looking out at the city. Presumably this was the client.
“Jonas? What are you here for? I wasn’t expecting you today.” Cato was frowning at him.
“Yeah, well.” Jonas took a deep breath. “I had…” Now he was here, the words were hard to get out, and he didn’t want to talk about this in front of some stranger, either. “I needed to talk to you about something. Urgently.”
The figure in the window turned round and moved slightly away from the window, and Jonas got a good look at them. What he had thought was short hair was long, with a braid thrown forwards over their shoulder, and that face…
Jonas took a step backwards. He couldn’t think properly. Whoever it was stood now next to the window, the window’s edge throwing its shadow across them, just like his flicker. But that shadow had been bigger, darker, more significant…
“Oh, right,” Cato said. “This is Tait. They’re from Teren. Also a sorcerer, but here to find out a bit more about Mareker magic.”
A friend of Cato’s? From Teren? The shadow moved again, across Tait, and Jonas bit back on a scream. He was being completely irrational, but he couldn’t think of what he could say next.
“Jonas?” Cato asked, frowning. “Is something wrong?”
“I think it’s me,” Tait said. Their voice was soft, and their whole demeanour was unthreatening, but that shadow that wasn’t there, that had nothing to do with the sunlight and the window, it was looming over them, getting darker…
“You’re bringing danger,” Jonas blurted out. “I… I saw it.”
A number of expressions flickered across Cato’s face, too fast for Jonas to read, before Cato leant forward, his face serious. “A flicker?”
Jonas nodded. His legs felt wobbly, and he couldn’t look at Tait any more. His head throbbed.
“Let him sit down,” Tait said, and moved towards Jonas, who shied away without even meaning to. Tait stopped dead.
“Honestly, Jonas,” Cato said, exasperated. “I don’t know what you’ve seen, and I don’t know how reliable it is anyway, but Tait isn’t a threat to you, for fuck’s sake.”
Tait moved back again, hands spread open, unthreatening, their eyes on Jonas. “Whatever’s going on here, he’s distraught and scared. Get him sitting down.”
Cato, scowling, gestured the stool across
to Jonas, before throwing himself back on the bed.
“Right. You’ve seen something, and Tait was in it? I don’t think…”
“It could be true,” Tait said, quietly. “Couldn’t it.”
Cato bit his lip and stopped talking.
Jonas swallowed. “Normally I get something – specific. A place, a moment, even if I don’t recognise it ’til I get there. This was – like that; Tait in the shadow there. But it was more than that, too. The shadow grew, it wasn’t just a shadow, it was something… It was over Marek, the whole of Marek. It’s bigger than one person, but.” He stopped, made himself look at Tait, quickly, before he looked away again. “But it’s attached to you. It’s not your shadow, it’s the wrong shape, and it has…” teeth, it had teeth, but he couldn’t say it. “It’s attached to you,” he said again, instead.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tait hunching into themself.
“No one person can risk the whole of Marek,” Cato said, bracingly, then turned to look at Tait, and blinked. “Tait?”
“It’s the demon,” Tait said. Jonas glanced at them again. Their arms were wrapped around themself, and they were staring at the floor.
“You banished it,” Cato said. “It’s gone.”
“But maybe I didn’t,” Tait said, miserably. “The Lieutenant said… maybe she’s right.”
“I didn’t trust her,” Cato said.
“The Academy…” Tait said, then stopped.
“Right,” Cato said. “The Academy. How about you tell me about the Academy, then. Inasmuch as I thought about Teren sorcerers at all, I thought they worked alone.”
“It’s new,” Tait said. “They’ve been… recruiting. Students.” He looked at Cato. “That’s new. It used to be, you’d have to go seek someone out, if you wanted to learn. And not that many people did. But they came into the university and the colleges, and they looked for people.”
“They recruited you?” Cato asked.
Tait shrugged a shoulder. “They made it sound good. And they paid. I was running out of money anyway, I was going to have to leave the university. They housed you and they paid and they said you’d learn to do magic, for the good of Teren.”
“Mmm,” Cato said, his tone very neutral.
“Blood magic, fine,” Tait said. “They were a bit unhappy that I wouldn’t use animals. But even with my own blood, I’m strong. They told me that, too. And then, there was the demon.”
“Just the one?” Cato asked.
“You train a lot before you do it,” Tait said. “And I didn’t… well, anyway. You summon it and you bind it.”
“It’s a lot easier to negotiate with a spirit, you know,” Cato said. “Why didn’t you try that first?”
“Negotiate?” Tait said blankly. “You… you have to bind it, to keep it safe.”
“No you don’t. But fine, that’s what you were told. And then what?”
“They wanted me to use it.”
“Ye-es?”
“On people. There was… a demonstration. Students. I knew some of them. I… I said I wouldn’t, and they said I would, and I banished the demon before they could make me. And then I ran away.” Tait’s voice broke. “I banished it! I did!”
“Right,” Cato said. “Your so-called tutors at the Academy wanted you to bind a demon and use it against your fellow citizens. Well, fuck them, then. You did the right thing. You banished it, end of story.”
“But there’s something attached to them,” Jonas said. He felt that Cato was perhaps missing the point.
“See?” Tait said. “I must have made a mistake. Like the Lieutenant said.”
“Or something else has happened,” Cato said. He was chewing at a fingernail. Cato didn’t normally have tells. “Jonas isn’t seeing a demon. He’s seeing a shadow. That could mean quite a lot of things, and none of them necessarily your fault. Right? Teren is definitely after you in some way. Maybe the shadow… it needn’t be the demon, Tait. It could just be Teren putting the screws on Marek over this matter. The shadow of the Academy, kind of thing.”
“But if there’s someone chasing me… if the Academy are bringing danger, and it’s down to me… I should go,” Tait said.
Cato shook his head. “No you shouldn’t. You’re in Marek, now, remember? I don’t care what the Academy are up to. Their power is in binding spirits, right? Which means you’re safe. Other spirits are not welcome, here. We have our own.”
There was a crack in the air, and Beckett stepped into the room, from nowhere. All three of them swore. Jonas nearly fell off his stool as he cringed backwards; Tait was pressed against the wall. Beckett’s thin face was blazing with rage.
“Who has brought this thing to my city? Who?”
A wash of relief overwhelmed Jonas’ shock and fear. A shadow, a demon; whatever it was and whether or not it was Tait’s fault, regardless of any fast words Cato might bring to this, Beckett wasn’t going to tolerate someone putting Marek at risk. And if Beckett got rid of the shadow, Jonas didn’t much care how he did it.
k k
“Right. Hang on. Let’s all slow down a bit here,” Cato said, attempting to regain some control of the situation.
He felt out of his depth, which was both an uncommon, and a deeply uncomfortable, experience for him. This was his room. He was supposed to be in charge. He was supposed to know what was going on.
He had a horrible feeling that he did know what was going on. He just didn’t like it.
Beckett, over by the door, was nearly shooting sparks out of their fingertips; and at the best of times Beckett took up more space and light in a room than they should. Cato really hated Beckett’s new-found habit of just appearing out of nowhere, but there was sod all he could do about it.
Jonas was clearly scared out of his wits, and Cato felt obliged to take Jonas’ flickers seriously. And given what Tait had said, and what that Teren woman Selene had said, he was coming to some uncomfortable conclusions, which Beckett’s arrival merely underlined.
Tait was hunched into themself, next to the window, with their back against the wall. Cato fought a strong urge to get them to sit down next to him and be reassured. It didn’t look like reassurance was on the cards right now.
“How about everyone just calm down a bit, and let’s start this from the top,” Cato said, doing his best to be soothing, with no idea whether he was succeeding. Soothing was hardly his forte. “Jonas, you’ve seen – foreseen – something alarming involving Tait here and Marek. Beckett, you say there’s something – a demon, I’m going to assume – coming to Marek? How can that even happen?”
“Because I summoned it,” Tait said, wearily.
“Because they summoned it.” Beckett’s voice had risen. Threads of magic pulled and twisted through the air, moving towards Beckett.
“That’s the shadow I saw, then,” Jonas said. He sounded either resigned, or so far past scared that he’d run out of emotions.
“You didn’t summon it in Marek,” Cato corrected, speaking clearly and with as much conviction as he could muster. “Because that wouldn’t work.” Or, Beckett would have known a lot more immediately than that, and reacted a lot more strongly. Not that the cityangel wasn’t quite pissed off right now.
“Reb said you summon spirits,” Jonas said.
“I don’t summon them as such, and also I am not in Marek, technically, when I do it,” Cato said, casting a nervous glance over at Beckett, who didn’t react. “We are straying from the point. Tait summoned and bound a demon, in Teren, yes, fine. But they banished it.” He turned back to Tait. “That’s what you remember, isn’t it?”
“Obviously I didn’t actually do it.” Tait’s voice was a tiny thread of sound.
Cato shook his head. “No. I don’t buy that. You’re not stupid, Tait. And you’re evidently a strong sorcerer. The demon-bear, remember? You wouldn’t have just… not noticed a failed banishing.”
“You don’t know anything about Teren magic,” Tait said. “How would yo
u know?”
Cato fought back the impulse to scream. Did Tait have some kind of death-wish?
“No, indeed, I don’t go around binding spirits,” he agreed affably. “As previously discussed. I negotiate with them instead. And from time to time, I have made an agreement.” Not often, because it was easier just to store power, but he had done it when the need arose. “Which is, I believe, analogous to a binding, just agreed rather than imposed. I know the drag of an active agreement. You can feel the thing, all the time. I can’t believe a forced binding would be any less obvious. You would know.” He paused. “Also, by your own account, you were trotting up and down the damn mountains a fortnight or more before you came here. If you’d just bungled the banishment, you’d be eaten by now.”
“And yet it is here,” Beckett said. Tait, who had been looking a little bit reassured, sagged again.
“Hang on, wait. Here, as in, here in Marek?” Cato asked, startled. More than startled. Beckett had said coming to, he was sure of it. If this spirit had found its way past Beckett’s boundaries… but surely Beckett wasn’t furious enough for that…
“Not in Marek,” Beckett said, almost impatient, and Cato’s stomach somersaulted in relief. “Outside. But I cannot dismiss it. Or overcome it. It is attached to this plane.”
“Just because it’s attached to this plane doesn’t mean it’s attached to Tait,” Cato said, then turned to Tait. “Because I’ll tell you what my working theory is, and that’s that the Academy want you back, and failing that, they want you dead.”
“Why?” Tait said. “Why would they bother?”
Cato shrugged. “You’re middling strong, which might make it worth it, depending on who else they have available. But in all honesty, given what you’ve said about what they’re up to and why you ran away, I think this is more about demonstrating that you can’t run. Do you think you’re the only one who wouldn’t have wanted to use a demon on your fellow citizens? What about the other students?”
“Some of them wouldn’t care,” Tait said. “Some of them would be happy to. But… some wouldn’t, if they thought there was another option.”