New Blood (19 page)

The way Jax stared made Amanusa uncomfortable. “Then I suppose what you said is true. The magic works better when the sorceress understands what she's saying.”

“It also means you'd better be very careful of what you
do
say, when you're bleeding. Or I am.”

Dear Lord in heaven, he was right. Who knew what she might do? “Then it's a good thing I'm not particularly chatty, isn't it? I'll keep my mouth shut when I bleed myself.” She summoned up a smile, felt it trickle onto her face. “Let's see what's happening inside you, shall we?”

She gathered the magic, spoke the words he'd given her, and
reached
for the magic inside Jax. His internal organs were as battered and bruised as his outsides, or nearly so. The blows had to go through skin and muscle to reach his inside parts, but the organs were more delicate. Amanusa wished she knew more about the body and how it worked so she could understand what she saw. The magic told her there was damage, but nothing that would not heal on its own. She hoped the magic was right. Jax's pain made her chest ache.

“Ease his pain so he can sleep,” she whispered. “Assist his body in healing these injuries so that he is sooner whole.” She feared doing more. Feared even that might be too much.

When she pulled back into herself, Amanusa felt
drained of what little energy she had left. Jax lay sprawled on the seat, his battered face utterly relaxed for the first time since—since ever, she realized. The entire time she'd known him, he'd always had some worry or other weighing him down, wearing it on his face.

Amanusa put a “don't look” spell on Crow when the porter came in to make up the beds. Neither she nor Jax had eaten much, so she used the scraps to keep the bird quiet. Falling crumbs seemed to puzzle the porter a time or two, but he brushed them aside and completed his task. They would get a good night's sleep, and they would be in Budapest in time for lunch tomorrow.

 

N
OT FAR FROM
the Paris Bourse, magicians in clumps and trickles wound their way up the stairs into a boring red brick building. A woman scurried alongside one of the men, talking earnestly, her navy blue skirts bobbing at the speed of her pace.

“You
must
accept me as your apprentice, Mr. Mikkelsen,” Elinor Tavis said. “You have seen the magic I am already able to work without benefit of training. How can you deny me the opportunity to learn?”

“I
must
do no such thing, Miss Tavis,” the tall, thin Norwegian replied. “Yes, you show astonishing ability, but surely you can see how impossible it is. You are a lovely young unmarried woman. My wife would not understand—”

“I would explain it to her. I would tell her that I have absolutely no romantic interest—”

“She would not care.” Mikkelsen interrupted her
in return. “It is not
your
interest that would concern her.”

“Mister Mikkelsen!”
Elinor recoiled.

“No, no. I love my wife. I am not interested in straying. And my wife knows this. But the gossip—no one
else
would believe any woman could be interested in magic to the exclusion of everything else. And the gossip would wound her. No, Miss Tavis. It is impossible.” He headed up the stairs, leaving Elinor behind on the cobbles.

“But—how am I to learn?” she cried after him in despair.

“Poor thing,” Harry Tomlinson said as he brushed past her.

“Don't tell me you think the man should have said yes?” Nigel Cranshaw sounded utterly appalled, climbing the steps alongside Harry and Grey Carteret, the conjurer of their delegation.

“Why not?” Harry pushed open the door and they entered the clamor of the lobby outside the Great Hall where the conclave was meeting.

The lobby soared two stories and stretched across the entire front of the building, paved in black-and-white diamond-patterned marble, lit by sunlight slanting through the rows of second-story windows to reflect off the mirrors lining the opposite side. Just now, it smelled overwhelmingly of the cigar smoke twisting its way through the rays of light.

“Because, dare I say, she's a woman?” Grey sounded as if he didn't particularly care either way, save for the entertainment value of a quarrel. He handed his hat into the cloakroom as they passed it, and the others followed suit.

“So?” Harry led the way through the knots of talking, gesticulating men. “If she can do the magic, why shouldn't she learn?”

“Because she's a woman!” Nigel exclaimed. “It's unnatural. Women's constitutions are simply not made to—”

“Bollocks,” Harry interrupted. “I been lookin' at the old books, tryin' to find some cure for these dead zones. Back then, back when there weren't any dead zones, there were all kinds of women magicians. The charter says the council will accept and train
any
candidate with the talent for magic. How else did I get to be a magician?”

“Point to Harry,” Grey said cheerfully.

Nigel sneered. “But you're a man. The charter says nothing about accepting female apprentices.”

“It says nothing about the sex of apprentices at all. It just says ‘
any
'. Seems to me ‘any' means ‘
any'.
”

Nigel stared at Harry in horror. “You'll destroy civilization as we know it.”

Harry's expression went hard and grim. “No.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of the river. “Those dead zones are the death of civilization. And if we don't figure out how to stop 'em, they'll keep growin' until there's nothin' left at all. All the magic'll be gone, and so will everything else. An' if takin' on a few female wizards'll 'elp stop those damned death traps, I'm all for it.”

“Take her as
your
apprentice then,” Nigel snapped, “because I never will. Nor will any other wizard I know.” He stalked away.

Grey watched him go, a speculative expression on his face.

Harry swore and ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. “I would,” he said, “if I thought she could learn alchemy.”

“They're afraid,” Grey said, his voice unnaturally serious. “Wizardry is female magic. They're afraid they'll be surpassed if women begin taking it up again.”

“What they ought to be afraid of is those dead zones.”

“True, true.” Grey looked around. “Let's go in and claim a seat and hear what the investigators have learned.”

They'd learned a great deal, as it turned out. President Gathmann reported that dead zones all over Europe had decreased in size. The farther east the zone, the more the decrease. Of course, the farther east their inquiries ran, the more difficult it was for their investigators to travel to inspect the zones, and the fewer telegraph lines existed to send requests for information.

Conjurer's communication spells were working, but they occasionally took more time than a telegraph. Especially when the conjurer at the other end of the spell had less talent. Or wasn't listening. The conclave hoped for a report from Moscow and St. Petersburg by the next day, but so far none of their questions had turned up reports of new magic being worked.

The Hungarians were also slow in responding. The telegram had reached the council offices for the kingdom of Hungary in Budapest, but the staff there reported that all the magicians in the whole of the Austrian Empire had been called out to deal with
some sort of crisis in Transylvania. The conjurers certainly weren't paying any attention to visiting spirits. Gathmann wondered whether the crisis could have something to do with the changes in the dead zones, but no one had any way of knowing, and no one knew when the magicians might report in.

 

W
ITH EVERY HOUR
past their train's scheduled arrival in Budapest, as day faded into night, Jax's worry grew. Because with every hour that ticked away toward midnight, the Inquisition's conjurers grew stronger and their magic more powerful. Trains in Transylvania and Hungary were notorious for their failure to stick to schedule, but this seemed worse than usual. Was it deliberate? The possibilities felt ominous.

“Perhaps we should get off the train,” he suggested for what seemed the sixty-dozenth time. “The Inquisition won't expect us to arrive on foot.”

“They don't know for certain we're arriving by train either. Or if we are, which train.” Amanusa began ticking items off on her fingers. “They can't know for sure we're coming to Budapest. We might have gone the other way, into Romania or Bulgaria. To Greece, maybe. They'll have to inspect every train coming into every station. They can't have that many Inquisitors.”

“Process of elimination would have them focusing on Budapest,” Jax retorted. “The Hungarian Inquisition
can't
look for us in Romania, since it's part of the Ottoman Empire, not the Austrian—”

“They can watch at the border.”

He ignored her interruption. “And given where
they know we were, in Nagy Szeben, and that the last train out that day was bound for Budapest, it's only logical they look for us to arrive
here.
We should leave the train. Should have left it hours ago.”

“But we didn't,” Amanusa said. “We have to be almost to Budapest by now. Where do you suggest we get off?”

“It stops for water and coal. We could get off then.”

“And maybe it won't stop again before we get there. Maybe they'll think we ran back into the mountains. Maybe they're looking for us there.”

“Amanusa.”
He sighed at her. “They think we're both English. Where would we run but back to England? We need to get off the train.”

She sighed back at him, turning away to brush her fingers down Crow's feathers where he sat at the window. The bird opened an eye and complained, fluttering to the luggage rack over Jax's head to take himself out of human reach.

“Jax? I think it's too late to get off the train.” She pointed out the window where lights shone in the deep dark.

He blew out the lamp flame and the landscape outside the train became immediately more visible. Buildings. Large and close together. They had reached Budapest. He stood to look out the window, to see how much time they might still have, what they might be able to do.

The buildings they passed were great warehouses with dedicated rail sidings for freight, and rows of cheap, tightly packed houses. They were still on the
outskirts of the city then, the visible lights shining outside taverns and along the street around the businesses. They had a little time. Perhaps they could—

Pain lashed through his whole body at once, sending him crashing to the floor. Above him, on the seat, Amanusa writhed. Did the same agony touch her?

Jax didn't have breath for screams. He had to see what was wrong with his sorceress.
God,
he hurt. Worse than all the blows the captain had inflicted put together. He struggled to get his knees under him, to pull himself off the compartment floor.

Amanusa whimpered, the sound slicing through his physical pain. Jax caught her hand, by sheer luck, he was sure, since neither of them seemed to have control over their limbs.

“Are you all right?” Amanusa gasped out the question before he could.

“Are you?” He couldn't answer for himself until he knew.

“It burns,” she whimpered.

Memory locked in, Yvaine feeding him the information instead of taking him over to give it directly to Amanusa, since Amanusa had forbidden that. Yvaine was nothing if not adaptable. “Magic assault,” he croaked. “It's an attack on your magic. Take my other hand.”

“Why?” Always the questions, the resistance to touching him. But she did it, and the pain lessened a little more.

“Too much magic can do as much damage as too little. Push it into me.”

“Doesn't it burn you?” Another argument.

“Just
do it,
” Jax snapped out. But still she held back. Stubborn woman. “I'm equipped to hold it, remember? I told you this. Now give me the damned magic!”

She did as she was told, finally, shoving the excess magic into him, layering it in the channels along his bones. It made him a little dizzy—he hadn't held so much magic in more years than he wanted to remember—but it also eased the pain. Had they stripped him when they flooded her?

“It still hurts,” she whimpered when the magic stopped flowing. “Why does it still hurt? I got rid of all the extra.”

“Because the—the nerves, the vessels—whatever it is you use to hold the magic, were forced. Like wrenching a joint out of place. You can put it back, but it still hurts.”

“How could they do it? Not, ‘how could they be so cruel' but
how
—each type of magic is different, right? I can't use a spirit, or the elements or plants—”

“Well, you
could,
if you had the spells and materials. An ability to use magic is an ability to use magic, of any sort, though most magicians
lean
one direction or another. But—” Jax struggled for the words to explain what he meant. “In a magic assault, the damage is greater by forcing magic on you that is not your own inclination.”

The train jerked as it slowed. Amanusa startled, and hissed at the pain caused by the motion. Jax used her hands to pull himself off the floor, retaining possession of them as he sat beside her.

“What do we do now?” Amanusa's forehead brought out its little worried crease. “How can we fight back if we don't even know who they are?”

We.
He liked the sound of that. “There
is
a warding magic, a strong protective magic that can hold almost any solitary attack at bay.” He was hesitant about mentioning it to her, however. Especially since he hadn't mentioned it at the beginning, when he'd explained the truth about blood magic.

“What? What is it? How do I do it? How much blood does it take?”