New Blood (23 page)

“I know I am not the sort of wife a man dreams
of.” She had to fill the stretched silence with something besides the splash of the paddle wheel and the thump of his pulse. “I'm too tall and too pale and not at all dainty. I'm old. Twenty-seven. I'm not untouched—but you know that. And then there is that whole sorceress-servant-binding matter. But if we do get you free of the binding, and if you don't want to be bound any other way—being divorced is no more of a scandal than being a sorceress.”

Jax still didn't react in any way. She wasn't sure he breathed. His heart still beat, though, and his arms still held her, so he hadn't fainted or died of shock.

Amanusa pulled back to look at him, to read what she could in his face. But it held absolutely nothing. Even his eyes were impossible to read. “What do you think?” She had to know.

He blinked and seemed to come alive. “Amanusa, I—I don't know what to say.” He slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms to her elbows. That reassured her, that he kept his hold. “I—it's not necessary.”

“Actually, it is.” She set both her hands on his chest, on the gold brocade waistcoat that looked so well on him. She savored the feel of the lean muscle beneath. That wasn't wrong, was it? “I promised my mother. I promised
myself,
back when I left the outlaw camp and went to live on my own in the cottage, I promised that I would never have sex with another man unless he was my husband.”

She bit her lip, the tiny pain helping her deal with the things hidden in memory. “I knew no man would ever want to marry me, so I was safe.” She adjusted his collar which didn't need adjusting. “I see I was right.”

“Amanusa.” Jax captured her hands, held them over his heart. “It's not that I wouldn't be delighted to be honored in such a way. But I am your servant. I am not your equal. You should find someone who is. Someone you can love.”

She couldn't meet his eyes, not after exposing herself this way. She lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a listless shrug. “I don't think I can love. I don't know that I want to.” She pulled a hand from his grasp and fussed with his collar and tie again. “I trust you, though. That's more important to me than love. Besides, we've been traveling as husband and wife. Why not make it true?”

Jax took a deep breath and let it sigh out through his nose. “I don't see any need to decide things now. Let's get to Scotland, to the tower. If you still want to marry, once things are sorted, then ask me again.”

It had been hard enough to ask him once, and he wanted her to do it
again
? No wonder women made the men do it. “If I ask you again, will you say yes?”

A smile quivered at his lips. “Yes, Amanusa. I will.” He held up his hand to stop whatever she might have intended to say. “But you can't ask again until we reach Scotland.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don't want to wait until Scotland. Vienna. I'll wait until Vienna.”

His smile had become a grin. “That anxious to possess my lily-white flesh, are you?”

She couldn't help laughing as she shoved herself out of his arms. “You're such a joker. I'm laughing so hard. Ha. Ha.”

“You did laugh. I heard it.” His smile faded from his mouth, but kept up residence in his eyes. “Paris
then. When we reach Paris, if you still want it, you can ask me there. But I don't want you to take such a drastic step for fear of the Inquisition. I want you to do it for the right reasons. Or at least because of your promise to your mother.”

“You don't think that's the right reason?”

He touched her cheek lightly with a fingertip. “There are many reasons to marry, Amanusa, most of them good and sensible. But only one is right.”

She understood what he was trying to say, but she didn't agree. When Jax offered his arm, she took it and strolled with him along the port side walkway back to their cabin. It was settled—as far as she was concerned, anyway.

The next morning, when they were still ten or so miles out of Vienna, Amanusa lured Jax to their cabin for a kiss and a reinforcement of the protective magic spell. This time, perhaps because she felt safe in the cabin, she was able to focus on the kiss, rather than her fears. She was all too aware that it was
Jax
kissing her. It was Jax who captured her face between his hands, Jax who opened himself for her tongue's timid exploration, Jax who whispered lovely things she couldn't remember after the magic swelled. Jax made the magic possible.

Vienna was stuffed full of Inquisitors, both the regularly employed and recently drafted types. Not one of them took a second look at either Amanusa or Jax. If the Inquisition had set up a magical ambush around the city, they sailed right through it unnoticed and untouched.

Kazaryk must have remained in Budapest. Surely he had. Hungary was part of the Austrian Empire,
but the Hungarian Inquisition—any Hungarian institution—was not considered the equal of its corresponding Austrian organization. Perhaps the Austrians thought Kazaryk's news a product of hysteria. Amanusa could only hope.

Her hair had lost the last of the pink tint by this time, and Jax's bruises had healed, except for a bit of yellow discoloration under his eyes. They didn't look like anyone the Inquisition might be looking for. So they exited the boat, caught a cab straight to the station, and boarded the first train bound for Paris.

 

I
N PARIS, HARRY
Tomlinson stood at the edge of the dead zone, scowling at a few inches of wilted weeds. “It's growing again,” he snarled.

“So I see.” Grey Carteret poked at the dying greenery with his walking stick, careful not to put any of his person over the boundary. “Damn.”

Then he shrugged, as if realizing his foul word didn't fit his care-for-nothing persona. “Easy come, easy go.”

“If I thought you meant that, I'd knock your block off.” Harry propped his fists on his hips. “Why can't they figure out what made it shrink? If we knew why it happened to start with, we'd know how to do it again. An' wot about those machines? Are they doin' this? What do they 'ave to do with—with anything?”

Grey shook his head. “Maybe it's the woman. Miss Tavis. Maybe she's working the magic.”

Harry lifted his head and turned it to stare at Grey, long enough to make the conjurer fidget. “I know you said that just to stir me up. But I'm thinkin' you might be right. I'm thinkin' I might just go look Miss Elinor
Tavis up, an' if she ain't got a wizard to apprentice her yet, I'll offer. She can study wizardry if she don't take to alchemy.”

Grey's air of ennui faded into a fierce grin. “Oh, that will stir up fireworks. Sir Billy won't like that at all. A mongrel out of Seven Dials spending time alone with his goddaughter.” He laughed. “Oh, what a show it will be.”

“Her maid can sit in on lessons.” Harry scowled more. “It's not like I'm interested in
her.
Just—can she do magic? Can she stop these dead patches?”

The other man still chortled in slightly malicious glee. “You know that. I know that. And likely Miss Tavis knows it, too. She's not exactly a diamond of the ton. But Harry, nobody will
care.
The gossip will be too delicious to bother with the truth.”

“I don't give a flying goose-and-duck for gossip.” The alchemist stalked away from the dead and dying street. “An' if Miss Tavis really wants to learn, neither will she.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Grey followed, covering ground quickly while seeming merely to stroll.

“To find Miss Tavis. No use wastin' time.”

“What makes you think she'll agree? She wants to be a wizard, not an alchemist. You can't share wizard's guild secrets with her.”

“Maybe not. Maybe we can figure out a way 'round that later. Maybe she won't agree to it. But it's a chance I'm offerin'. An' if she's smart, if the
magic
is wot she really wants, she'll take it.”

 

T
HE TRAIN CHUGGED
its way along the banks of the Danube through eastern Austria toward the Kingdom
of Bavaria. Amanusa passed some of the time with sleeping, and with coaxing Crow back into his cage for porter's visits, but mostly she spent it learning magic from Jax. On the train, with the threat of the Imperial Inquisition rapidly retreating, she allowed Yvaine to emerge and dictate information, which Amanusa wrote down in the notebooks Jax produced for her.

Later, when Jax recovered from his fainting spell and bloody nose, she practiced it. Amanusa hoped that if she could leach all of Yvaine's old blood from him, he would be easier to free from Yvaine's old bindings.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle at the Bavarian border. They had to hide Crow and his cage with a bit of “don't-look” magic. Crow wasn't happy about being in the cage. Amanusa threatened to tie his beak closed if he didn't stop complaining. She was only mildly shocked when the bird seemed to understand and kept quiet during the “special exit customs” inspection.

The lone Inquisitor at the border was young and untried. It didn't take much magic to shield themselves from his inquiry. A bare hour after the halt, the train puffed on its way again. It wasn't until after they crossed from Bavaria into the Kingdom of Wurtemburg that things began to go wrong again.

T
HE TRAIN HAD
just started up again after its stop in Stuttgart. Crow flew back in through the window after his brief constitutional, and Amanusa called the porter in to make up Jax's bed early. He'd been feeling ill all evening, looking far paler than usual—a pasty-gray sort of pale, rather than his healthy pinkish-pale—and it worried her. She sat up beside him for a while, to be sure he didn't get any worse.

Once they got out of the city into the countryside again, he seemed to improve. His face gained color and he breathed a bit easier in his restless sleep. Amanusa had her own bed made up and got in, determined to get some sleep. If Jax did get worse, she would need to be rested to help him. He was hers. It was her responsibility to look after him.

Crow's cawing woke her. She'd been trapped in a dream, at a party filled with glittering society, while her stomach churned violently and she had nowhere to escape to be sick. But when she woke, the nausea remained. It had shaped her dream.

Amanusa flipped onto her back, which made her stomach roll up to her throat and back down again. Where was the basin? Could she find it in time? Crow fluttered onto her bed and pecked at her hand with a harsh caw. She pushed him away as she curled onto her side around her aching belly. Crow came back and pecked her again, then flew across to perch on Jax's shoulder where he lay on his side facing her. Crow cawed at her.

“Leave me alone,” she moaned. “I feel terrible.”

The nasty bird refused, returning to her bed for another peck and caw before flying back to caw at Jax.

“Leave poor Jax alone too. whatever ailment he's given me, he's had it longer.” Amanusa opened her eyes to peer at Jax in the dim moonlight filtering through sooty windows.

Crow pecked at the hand lying on the pillow beside Jax's face. Jax didn't stir.

He should have. Crow's sharp beak
hurt.

“Jax?” Amanusa rolled to the edge of her bunk, reaching across the narrow aisle to brush her fingers down his arm. That wouldn't wake him if the bird peck hadn't.

She sat up, holding her head so it wouldn't fall off, hoping her stomach would stay where it belonged. “Jax, wake up.”

She shook him hard, but he didn't wake. He toppled limply from his side to his back, like a broken doll. Like a corpse.

“Jax!” She snatched up his hand, forgetting her nausea and aching head.

He took a gasping breath, coughed, and breathed in again. Dear heaven, hadn't he been breathing?

Alarmed, Amanusa crawled across to his bunk, pushing him against the compartment wall to make room for her, maintaining her grip on his hand. She brushed his hair back and laid her hand on his forehead. He felt cool, not feverish. Chilled.

Seemingly satisfied, Crow hopped off the bunk onto the top of his cage and began to preen his feathers.

“Thank you, Crow.” Amanusa's gratitude was heart felt.

She let go of Jax to drag the blanket off her bunk and the nausea slammed into her afresh. It had gone away when she touched him, but when she let go . . . She wrapped her hand around his again. Jax's chest rose as he drew in another breath. Did he breathe only when she touched him? She didn't want to test the theory.

Maintaining her grip on Jax, Amanusa spread her blanket over his. Doing the job mostly one-handed made it more difficult, but she needed to get him warm without letting go. She needed him to wake up.

Amanusa lay down atop the blankets in the tiny space at the edge of his bunk and laid her hand along his face. “Jax?”

She tucked his hand against her cheek and held it there as she slid her other hand down to the strong column of his neck. “Jax, I need you to wake up and tell me what this is. Is it Inquisitors again? Could they have followed us out of Austria?”

She shook him, more gently than her fear wanted.
“Jax.”

“ ‘M'nusa.” Her name was slurred, but he said it. “Cold.”

“I know. I'm trying to warm you.”

He shivered—more of a shudder, really—and Amanusa snuggled closer, knees bumping his. “Talk to me, Jax.”

She pushed his hair back off his forehead, and it flopped back down as she put her arm around him, over the blankets, trying to rub warmth back into him. Air whistled in his chest, a wheezy sound, as if he couldn't drag enough in.

“Jax!” She cupped his cheek, touched his throat, and the wheezing stopped.

Skin-to-skin.
If she touched his bare skin with her bare hand, he could breathe.

Amanusa's fears stared her in the face. Either she trusted Jax or she didn't. Either she was afraid, or she wasn't. So.