Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (6 page)

Watching him with the baby wasn't something I could take my mind or eyes off of. Not that I'd ever thought of him as cold-hearted, even when we were fighting and he was being moody and petulant, but I had never once seen this level of warmth from him. I knew Mordon the Grouch. I knew Mordon the Worried, and Mordon the Royally Pissed-Off. But Mordon the Swooning Father was not a thing I'd ever witnessed. I wasn't sure how to respond to it. Other than to kiss him. And I so wasn't ready to exercise yet another emotion so fast on the heels of the others. So I fell back to my standard position. Planning.

“Before we go, we should give her a name.”

He raised a brow.

I rushed to explain. “People will be asking.”

“Yes, they will. I wanted to know what you had in mind. Her mother was Josephina.”

“But we've discussed saying she came from the colony, so it should be a drake name. You know those names better than I do. Maybe something that doubles as human? Denise's name is like that.”

“Sebile?”

“Not very human.”

“I think it's Saxon, actually, but I see your point. Anna?”

The baby shrieked, just the once. I put my hand on Mordon's shoulder and tried to discern a smile on the infant's face, but if anything she looked shocked that the noise had come from her own mouth.

“Anna will work.”

“Here, hold her.” Mordon passed her over before I could back out of the duty. “Her neck muscles aren't strong enough yet to move her head.”

She settled in my hands, the position feeling strange now that I'd had a few minutes to hold my hands the way I felt comfortable holding them.

Mordon continued, “Her head will flop around unless you're mindful of what you're doing. You were fine earlier, but I can't help nagging a little.”

I could kill her with my ignorance. The very thought served as a switch to instant panic. “Mordon, I don't know what I'm doing. Not a clue. And she could be mine for years. I'm not ready for this. I don't know if I can do this.”

“You've survived Death, killed monsters, and saved the Wildwoods, and you can't take care of a little orphan?” Mordon bent to whisper in my ear, his voice sending tremors down my spine. “You're not alone. No matter how long it takes, no matter what happens.”

“But this isn't your oath to fill. You didn't agree to it. To be a parent.” The word numbed my lips.

“I'm agreeing now. If need be, I'll be father and mother to her.”

“It's dangerous to be around me. The shadows, the Unwrittens, how can I bring her into that?”

“You didn't. You were chosen. And it's natural to be afraid, but don't let it undermine your strength. Now, come. There are people who may be able to shed some light on circumstances, but we must move, now.”

I took him by the crook of the arm and molded myself against his side, letting him guide me through the portal and out into Merlyn's Market.

Flying carpets filled the air, a huge portion of them with customers kneeling on them. So many carpets were going in the same places, actually, that their steady flow followed an invisible road ducking between the holes in the floating walkways. It was like watching a video of soldier ants packing off with their cargo, except the ants were flying at thirty to fifty miles an hour.

Actually, Merlyn's Market was downright terrifying today. Usually it wasn't this packed. Must be the Midsummer Festival bringing in all the crowds.

I looked around our surroundings, a bit confused. The portal had dropped us off between door 58 and 823, very much out of the ordinary place next to King's Ransom Magical Antiquities. It took me some time to identify the merchants on the floating deck. It was the Produce Deck, a place which I admittedly didn't spent a huge deal of time on.

Mordon gazed around, staring at the hideyholes between crates and watching as carpets folded up from forming staircases between the floating walkways.

“How long are we going to have to run around for?” I asked. “Is it going to always be like this?”

“Not always. But after every sighting, it would be a good idea. You do not want to let them catch up with you.”

“But they'll eventually chase us into a trap,” I said, less out of fear and more because that's what I would do if I were hunting myself. “So we'll have to be careful about creating predictable patterns.”

“I'm not bound to abandon my territory,” Mordon said, his eyes forming vertical pupils.

Before he would do more, I took his arm and snuggled against him while a flying carpet at a rapid descent dodged a flock of songbirds. “I didn't expect you would. But I would like a back-up plan.”

“Our back-up plan is that I shift into dragon form and kill them all.”

I laughed at the simplicity of it, not that it was necessarily very funny, or that he'd said it as a joke. “And if you aren't there?”

We approached the edge of the walkway and waited while a carpet unfurled itself from the deck and uncoiled to meet us. Beneath my feet, it was solid enough, a little springy. Having Anna had given me fresh worries about the possibility of it failing one day. So far there had been no incidents, though.

“If I'm not there, you shift into your dragon form and kill them. Or take flight. Whichever appeals to you at the time.”

Being on the solid wooden dock was a relief, but I didn't relax until we were in the center of the walking path lined with merchants who hooked their moveable decks up to the dock. It was sort of like the pictures of a marina, I mused, every stall like a ship. Hopeful shopkeepers called out their wares.

Merlyn's Market was an enclosed ecosystem. It might as well be called that. The only way in or out was through portals. Leif had once said that the market had started out as a standard box canyon in the middle of the desert, but I'd never have guessed that now. Permanent portals had moved in, lining the walls of the canyon with their storefronts from top to bottom, walkways going around and around. More pathways were in the center, sprawled this way and that like someone had given a child the option to draw out the floors using a game of Tetris. The top was sealed off, to keep out the weather and prying eyes. Spells held artificial lighting so the market stayed open at all times to accommodate every time zone.

“Where does the festival take place at?” I asked, wondering why the decks themselves were so dead while the carpets bustled with activity.

“All the way down, Ma'am, upon the floor,” answered a cheerful shopkeeper with fat cheeks and beady eyes. He motioned to his produce. “Rune Gourd or Turban Squash? They're fresh from the field.”

“Not today, thank you,” Mordon said, steering us toward the standing platform where taxi carpets waited for customers with bags tied to their tassels for receiving payment. It sounded like a much better idea than making our way slowly down many sets of carpet stairs, even if I wasn't fond of riding the carpets.

Mordon handled the cash. I'd gotten good at working the till, but I still triple-counted everything. Where we'd inherited the monetary system, I had no idea.

The biggest unit was a dinaire, a coin imbued with an authentication spell while it was cast. We also had sevens, which were a seventh of a dinaire. Beneath them were nobbles, thirteen nobbles made up a seventh. Lowliest of all were pennies, a hundred to the dinaire. Why we bothered with pennies when there were a total of 91 nobbles to a dinaire, I had no idea. Other than pennies had been an experiment to convert the magical community into using a standardized system—it had only made things more complex, but they stuck around anyway. Prices in the shop were usually written something like this: 1d2s11n2p. To the frustration of all too many customers, I made up most of the change with pennies, as I hadn't figured out how to do anything more complex yet.

The carpet charged us a dinaire, a seventh, and ten nobbles. Highway robbery, but today wasn't a lazy day for the taxis and so long as no one reached the limit of two dinaires it was all legal.

I almost made Mordon take Anna so I could settle in the very center of the carpet, but decided last minute I didn't want him to know how chicken I was. My position ended up being just enough off-center to not be perfectly dead center. He sat down behind me, making me scoot forward. I hadn't realized that by taking dead center, I would be robbing him of a lot of space. Still, he knew me better than I'd hoped. He took me in his arms and held me as the carpet drifted away from the deck and started its descent.

At first it was slow going, navigating through a twisting maze of folding stairways and hustling carpets with kids out for joyrides at top speed. I started to relax and even feel like maybe Anna was going to be safe in my care. Then the carpet came to a near standstill and peered down, and over the hump of its curve, I saw that the way down—straight down—was going to be clear in a second or two.

The carpet bolted like a late businessman trying to beat the train crossing before the signal bars dropped. With respect to the baby, Mordon didn't whoop and roar, but I knew he wanted to. Plunging maneuvers were among his favorites, same with rolls, and while I was all too happy to scream out delight while he was in his dragon form, I was little short of sickened. For her part, Anna seemed to be sleeping through the narrow misses with other taxis. She didn't even know of the chink of coins as their bags tapped against a walkway after cutting it a little too close. My stomach lurched into my mouth when the carpet swung up to slow down, then glided to a dignified stop on a patch of lawn which was apparently being trimmed by a pack of peacocks. Flock of peacocks. Or whatever their group-name was called. I shook as I got to my feet.

I watched as the taxi moved into the pick-up zone to rob some not-so-unsuspecting joyrider. Mordon said, “You look a little pale.”

“I've told Lilly. Things that are meant to fly have wings.”

“You're adorable,” Mordon said, and before I could take offense, he kissed me. It was the rough, breathtaking sort of kiss which took me off-guard and had to be because he'd had so many thrills today he couldn't help but to show his excitement. Seeing the way I wobbled when he let go, he tapped my arm and leaped back, anticipating a game of tag. I wasn't going to play, until he chanted,

“Catch a tiger by a toe,

Round and round we go,

Who is hunter, who is prey,

Who will lose the game today?”

I balled up a fist of air and bopped him over the back of his head, making his eyes pop wide. He stood upright, bowed half-way at me, and joined me by my side.

“Not while I'm holding a thing with a floppy neck, Drake Lord,” I said.

“If you insist.” He said it formally, but I knew he was in a cuddly mood even before he nuzzled the crook of my neck and planted moist kisses there.

“What is with this?” I tried—and failed—to be annoyed with him.

“You're brave and clever and strong and I want you to know how happy I am to be by your side. That's all.”

“So long as that's all.” I would have kissed him again, but Anna woke up, her moods as fitful as her sleep, and this time the mood was angry, or her closest approximation to it.

On every side, we were surrounded by merrymakers with smiles and revelers soaked with too much wine. Music from three folk bands could be heard strumming and pouring over the lawn. One banjo band grew louder then softer as the flying carpet they were on drifted near then away. Merlyn's Market was an endless sprawl, it seemed. So far I'd been to the cemetery and to the actual market with its many layers of floating decks and doors which changed locations on the wall on a whim.

Now we stood on the crest of a hill, one way sloping down to a duck pond populated with annoyed fowl pecking at flowers and screeching children who pursued the fowl, the other way flattening out to a very formal Victorian garden with manicured hedges and precisely placed annuals. The glimpses of the activity I saw going on within the formal gardens made the grounds a decidedly ironic choice of venue. We headed towards them.

“Where are we going?”

“To find Nest,” Mordon said.

“Agnes is here?”

“I'd be surprised if she wasn't selling some feel-goods to the crowd. She and Denise have been practicing that thing you call the Loopy Potion.”

I nodded and had to slow my pace, mindful of the lightly sleeping thing bound in a tight swaddle in my arms, feeling the too-slick grass slip beneath my feet. The traffic had bruised the lawn in paths, rendering it a pulpy mess of sludge. As soon as Mordon noticed, he took us off to the side where traction was better.