New Blood

by Gail Dayton

  Conversation faded as the carriage rumbled on for a considerable length of time. Finally it rattled to a halt and Harry peered out the window. “Yeah, we’re here.”

  He opened the door and climbed out, the other men following. Jax let Harry hand Elinor out, but stepped in to assist Amanusa’s exit. As if making his claim on her clear. Amanusa rather liked that. He might be a once-upon-a-time earl, but she was a sorceress. Surely that balanced things out. She wouldn’t insist he marry her if he truly did not want to, but she did not want to marry anyone else. And she had other things to fret about now.

  Amanusa laid her hand in the crook of Jax’s arm. He hefted the case holding the machine, which had traveled in the luggage boot, and followed Harry and Elinor into the building, Grey bringing up the rear. The building was the only substantial construction in the area, solid brick rising three stories in the air amidst ramshackle warehouses lining a different part of the Seine than Amanusa had so far seen.

  “The city wouldn’t let us work near the Chambre,” Harry said as they mounted the stairs inside the building. “On account o’ th’ smells. An’ the occasional boom. Same reason why the French council wouldn’t let us have a laboratory in their chateau. The conclave had to buy this building because no one would lease us space. Can’t lease out the rest of the space neither. Either. Except maybe to other magicians.”

  He tapped on a wall as they passed. “Might make good personal workshop space. For those that don’t need more privacy.” Harry seemed to be making an effort to control his accent and correct his grammar. At the top of the building, Harry opened the door into a large open space broken by columns and tables holding all the accoutrements of all the great magics. Save for sorcery, of course. Men sat and stood around the tables, mixing, peering, sniffing, tapping—working magic.

  Chapter 17

  “We got a machine,” Harry called out, and a dozen heads popped up to stare.

  One of the men cheered and the others joined in as they quickly gathered around the table where Jax set the case. “Where did you get it?” asked a short, balding man with black hair that stood out in tufts over his ears. “When?”

  “Someone gave it to me,” Amanusa said. “In Transylvania, about three months ago.”

  All eyes turned on Amanusa. The intense scrutiny was a bit unnerving, but she detected no hostility in it.

  “What are you about, Harry?” another man demanded, this one tall, dark, and Latin-looking. “Bringing women to this place. It is not safe.”

  “ ‘S’okay. This one’s my apprentice. Miss Elinor Tavis.” Harry tugged Elinor forward and she bobbed her head at them. “She’s studying wizardry, not alchemy, because no wizard would apprentice her. Mikkelsen.” He scowled at another tall man, this one slender and blond.

  “I could not, Tomlinson,” Mikkelsen retorted. “You are a single man and more able to than I.”

  “Yeah, well—” Harry kept scowling. “Teach ‘er wot you can while we’re ‘ere.”

  “She does not need much teaching. She is quite accomplished in the magic already.” Mikkelsen bowed to Elinor, who was blushing again. “I will, however, be happy to share what I know.”

  “Guild stuff, Stein.”

  “Ja, ja. I said I would do it.”

  Amanusa watched them, trying to read the nuances and failing. It was none of her business.

  “And who is this beautiful lady?” The Latin fellow had somehow captured Amanusa’s hand while she wasn’t looking and was bowing over it, pressing his lips to it. He started to turn it over, as if to kiss her palm, and she snatched it back, wrapping both her hands securely around Jax’s arm.

  “This, gentlemen—” Harry raised his voice, filled it with portent. “This is the new sorceress. Amanusa Whitcomb. Blood magic is with us again.”

  Silence fell as everyone stared at her. Then someone—perhaps the same man who’d done it before—cheered, and they all burst out in huzzahs.

  Amanusa flinched at the first shout. When she realized the shouting was friendly—delighted, in fact—her throat tightened with tears. This was the first positive reaction to the news of her magic that she’d received, and it caught her off guard. Hostility, rejection she was used to. Acceptance—delight—was something new.

  “Back away, Tonio.” The balding man with the fluffy hair shoved the Latin man out of his way and pulled the machine case in front of him. “Let’s see what they’ve brought us.” He flipped the latches on the case, but couldn’t open it.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Amanusa squeezed through to the table, pulling off her “proper lady” gloves as she did. “I’d forgotten. I had to seal it up. The machine was quite harmful to my…my fiance, and I had to wrap magic around it to keep it from hurting him.”

  “Fiance?” Tonio, who apparently fancied himself a great lover, looked disappointed for half a moment. Then he moved closer to Elinor and smiled at her.

  “Jax Greyson.” Jax offered his hand to the man examining the machine. “I am also Amanusa’s blood servant, as I was for Yvaine before her. Which means I’m held together with magic. That machine doesn’t like magic.”

  “Pyotr Strelitsky.” The alchemist shook Jax’s hand, never taking his eyes off the case and what Amanusa did to it.

  “Blood of my blood,” she murmured under her breath where no one could hear. She caught hold of the magic with something that wasn’t her hand, but could be manipulated the same way. She pulled the magic tight as she licked her thumb and rubbed it over the smears of blood on the three unhinged sides.

  “Your task is done,” she whispered, and felt the seals dissolve. The magic dissipated.

  Amanusa flipped the top open and winced at what she saw inside. Several of the spokes were corroded almost completely away, and the central shell had holes eaten through it to expose complicated inner workings, which also showed signs of corrosion. She pulled it out of the box, blackened bits flaking away as she did.

  “Apparently,” she said, “magic dislikes it as much as it dislikes magic. It seems my protective warding caused it some damage.”

  “This is good to know. So we know that magic does have an effect on these things, on the dead zones. It is not immune.” Strelitsky took the machine from her and held it at eye level to inspect it. But he had only a moment or two to peer into its insides before his eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed.

  The machine clunked to the floor, magicians skittering out of its way as it rolled lopsidedly off a few feet. Tonio dropped to his knees beside the felled alchemist and ripped the man’s shirt open to put his ear to Strelitsky’s chest and listen. “He is still alive.”

  Tonio straightened and pointed at one of the gathered men. “Pascal, get the bag. Now.”

  The very young man ran to do as he was told. One of the other magicians shoved the machine farther out of the way with the toe of his shoe and Elinor picked it up by a spoke and set it back on the table.

  “Can I help?” Amanusa hovered near the wizard as he rummaged through the colored glass bottles in the case his apprentice brought.

  “We want to keep him alive,” Tonio muttered, preoccupied. “Not kill him.”

  Amanusa recoiled at the verbal blow, though she quickly understood it came from ignorance rather than malice. “Blood magic has its healing arts,” she said evenly as the wizard marked Strelitsky’s bare, hairy chest with herbal oils. “May I add my magic to your dosing?”

  Tonio looked up at her, his gaze sharp enough to bore holes, all trace of the Latin lover gone. “His heart scarcely beats. I do not know if I can strengthen it. I do not know if I can get my ‘dosing’ down him. If you believe you can help him, and you swear to do no harm, then by all means.” He gestured with the blue bottle in his hand. “Join me.”

  “Measure your medicine.” Amanusa knelt on the other side of Strelitsky. “I will administer the dose.”

  It was awkward lancing a finger one-handed inside her pocket. The power residing in the sorcerer’s blood had been a guild secret of
sorcery since it began. Amanusa understood why, once Jax pointed it out to her. If others knew the true source of the magic, they could be tempted to appropriate that power by appropriating the sorcerer’s blood.

  And while innocent blood cried out for justice, if the sorceress was dead and all her blood spilled out through the gash in her throat, she couldn’t work magic with her own innocent blood. Ignorant and greedy people too often couldn’t resist killing the goose for the gold.

  These men could perhaps be trusted, but all the great magics had secrets held within their own guilds. This was the greatest secret of sorcery. Amanusa would keep it.

  Tonio handed her the tiny cup with his potion in it. Amanusa smeared a generous drop of blood along the lip of the cup where the medicine would sweep it up as she poured it into Strelitsky’s mouth. Much of it dribbled out again, but enough slid down his throat in a choked, reflexive swallow.

  As she held her magic quiescent, waiting for the proper moment, she could sense the magic Tonio had brewed into his potion. It was different from her workings, the magic instilled when the potion was created rather than at the moment of its use.

  “Do you draw no blood?” the wizard asked, checking Strelitsky’s feeble pulse again.

  “All the blood I need is inside Mr. Strelitsky,” Amanusa said with complete honesty. “And that is where it will stay for now. When it is time, I will take only a very little. A drop. No more.”

  The alchemist’s color was improving, from pasty to pale. The potion was working. Time for Amanusa to go to work as well. She woke her magic inside the odd little man. It was dim and blurred, hard to see, and uncomfortable. Nothing like the crystal clarity and sense of belonging she had when wandering through Jax’s bloodstream.

  Images from Strelitsky’s memories kept impinging on Amanusa’s awareness. Plump-cheeked little girls and an equally plump-cheeked wife. Cluttered workrooms. Spell formulas. Amanusa shoved them aside as best she could, trying to keep them out of the way without harming them. He would need those spells again, and losing any memory of one’s family was a tragedy. She didn’t need to sift his memory. Amanusa’s purpose was purely physical.

  The potion was a stimulant, something to give Strelitsky back the strength and energy the machine had stolen. Amanusa linked with Tonio’s magic, adding life magic to life magic. Then she willed the magic to show her Strelitsky’s heart.

  It stuttered, lacking any rhythm, as if it had forgotten how to beat. Amanusa pulled up the magic—the wizard’s and her own—and listened for the beating of her own heart. She called it into the magic—carefully, for she’d learned to heed Jax’s warnings—and shared it with the stricken alchemist. Strelitsky’s heart began to beat more soundly, but it needed more.

  Her own heart faltered for a moment and she heard a faint, faraway cry. Her name? She was cold, so cold. So tired.

  Then warmth surrounded her, seeping into the cold. Strength followed, settling in behind her, beneath her, supports holding her up. Another heart beat with hers, the rhythmic thump-thump singing to her of life and of possibilities.

  She drank it in and shared it out again, calling up those memories she’d pushed away, giving Mr. Strelitsky back his own possibilities. The magic in the wizard’s potion swirled around her, enhancing what she did, adding the warmth of sun-kissed leaves, the stubbornness of roots digging deep into the soil. The alchemist’s heart seemed to listen and remember, slowly echoing the rhythm Amanusa shared, stronger and stronger with every beat.

  Carefully, Amanusa withdrew, ready to jump in again if the weakened heart faltered, but it continued to beat steadily. Back in her own body again, her eyes fluttered open. Jax knelt behind her. She seemed to have collapsed into him. Onto him. Both.

  She reached for the lancet in her pocket, but couldn’t seem to make her arms—or anything else—move. Jax understood her intent and brought the lancet out for her.

  “Over his heart?” He held the lancet poised over Strelitsky, waiting for her assent.

  Her voice didn’t want to work either, but she managed to force a yes-shaped sound from it. Jax scored Mr. Strelitsky’s chest and Amanusa called back the blood she’d sent into the alchemist. Jax used the side of the lancet’s tip to scoop up the droplets of blood that oozed from the tiny wound and brought them to Amanusa’s lips.

  It seemed a bit barbaric to lick up the blood under the fascinated and slightly horrified gazes of the other magicians. Amanusa did it anyway. This was sorcery. If it was barbaric, so be it. Perhaps the world needed to be a little less civilized.

  Only when she had licked up the last traces of the blood—her own, but none of them knew that—did Tonio the wizard reach across their patient to check Amanusa’s pulse. Of course he’d been monitoring Strelitsky in the interim, but he still waited until the barbarity was done to check on her well-being. “How do you feel, Miss Whitcomb?”

  Twining her fingers with Jax’s, Amanusa found voice enough to answer. “Weary, but improving.”

  Tonio rose higher on his knees, asking permission before lifting her eyelids to peer into her eyes. “I did not realize a sorceress shared her own life essence in a healing, or I would not have permitted it.”

  “I didn’t share my ‘essence.’ I shared—” Amanusa looked up at Jax for inspiration, an aid to recall what he and Yvaine had told her on the long train trip. . “Knowledge is perhaps the best way to put it. Your magic gave back much of the strength he lost, but his heart needed to be shown how to beat properly again.”

  She sighed, pressing her palm flat against Jax’s palm, increasing the contact. “Instead, he almost made my heart forget what it knew. Fortunately, Jax was here to help me.”

  She twisted in his embrace to look him in the eye. “And I promise I will not try new magic without you ever again.”

  The new Jax, the one with the hard edges and stern eyes, looked back at her. “Swear it. Never again.”

  A little thrill went through her at his tone. She raised a hand in pledge. “I swear.”

  “Do you mean to say this was your first time to attempt such healing?” Tonio demanded, aghast.

  Embarrassed by the admission, Amanusa bit her lip as she nodded. “There has to be a first time sometime, and I did help him. I’ve practiced on Jax dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. He’s healthy as a horse, but that means I know what the internal organs should look like and how they’re supposed to work.”

  She paused to look up at all the appalled magicians staring back at her. “It isn’t as if I have a master sorcerer to stand over my shoulder watching everything I do. I’m the only one there is right now, and yes, I’m still learning. Sorry if that offends you, but I’m all there is. And I do have Jax.”

  “What I’ve been wantin’ to know—” Harry Tomlinson spoke up, “is just what part a blood servant plays in sorcery. How does he help you? Why do you need one?”

  She struggled to stand, feeling very much at a disadvantage sitting sprawled on the floor while most of the others stood over her. Jax rose, helping her to her feet as he did. Holding tight to his hand clasped with hers, Amanusa put her other over the hand he’d set at her waist, keeping it there.

  At that moment, the fallen warrior in this bizarre fight against the dead zones and their creatures groaned, his eyelids fluttering. Tonio organized a litter party to bear Strelitsky to one of the cots set up for magicians who needed to rest before plunging back into the fray. “Wait for my return,” the wizard ordered. “I want to hear our sorcerer’s answers.”

  “I want to hear too,” Strelitsky complained in a feeble voice. “What will I hear?”

  “We could come with you…” Amanusa looked to Tonio for permission. She didn’t want to interfere with Strelitsky’s recovery.

  Tonio checked his patient’s pulse, peered at his eyes, and did several other tests Amanusa didn’t recognize before agreeing to the plan. The bearers gathered Strelitsky up and everyone trooped off to the back of the room.

  Elinor moved up to walk alongside Am
anusa and Jax. “Antonio Rosato is one of the most famous wizards in Europe. He is also a medical doctor,” she murmured.

  “Why aren’t you apprenticed to him instead of Harry?”

  “Because one of the things he is famous for is the number of his love affairs. He has left broken hearts scattered in his wake from St. Petersburg to St. Lo.” Elinor’s voice held more amusement than condemnation, but both were there. “I am sure he would gladly take me as apprentice, but I would learn absolutely nothing, for Dottore Rosato would spend all his time attempting to seduce me, and when he tired of the attempt—or tired of me after success, since I am only human after all and he is a very handsome man—”

  “Is he?” Amanusa shot Tonio a second glance. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “You wouldn’t. But when it ended badly, I would be tossed out on my ear without a reputation, without the knowledge I want, and without any entree into the circle of magicians. With Mr. Tomlinson as my master, I will at least have knowledge, through access to the council library, as recompense for my reputation’s loss. For all that he sprang from the gutters of Seven Dials, Harry Tomlinson is an honorable man in his own fashion.”

  Amanusa had thought so as well. She was glad to have her judgment confirmed by so sensible a woman as Elinor seemed.

  When Dr. Rosato had his patient settled as comfortably as possible on a camp cot, all eyes returned to Amanusa once again.

  “We’re not askin’ for guild secrets, mind,” Harry said. “But seein’ as we ain’t—haven’t had any sorcery around for so long, we’re all a mite curious. So, how does a blood servant help you?”

  “I am bound to my sorceress by blood and magic.” Jax spoke up before Amanusa had a chance to open her mouth. He didn’t know what she might say, how much she might reveal. They would accept his word. He was the servant, after all. “I am her magical reflection, if you will, able to reflect her power back into her. A source of strength, much like a familiar.”

  “A source of blood?” one of the younger men asked.