New Blood (27 page)

“What magic can you do?” Tomlinson offered her
a seat on one of the armless ladies' chairs near the high wingback chairs where the men had been sitting.

Cranshaw burst out again. “You cannot possibly be considering—”

“Shut up, Nigel,” Tomlinson said.

Jax took the opportunity to assist his sorceress into the seat. It took a moment to adjust the hoops. Amanusa had been practicing, but neither of them had much experience with the things and they were blasted hard to sit with. Women's fashions made no sense.

“I have a solid knowledge of the workings of sorcery and can work a number of varieties of spells with it,” she said when everyone was seated—Cranshaw sprawled again, sulking. Jax stood properly at her elbow. “I can heal serious wounds. I can cast illusions and protective shields, against physical intrusion as well as magical attack. And I can answer the cry of innocent blood for justice.”

“You don't believe—”

“
Shut up,
Nigel.” It was the conjurer, Carteret, who said it this time.

In the commotion created by that little disagreement, Amanusa whispered the words to turn their eyes away from Jax, and he felt the magic prickle against his skin. They'd agreed that the invisibility spell would be the best for their purposes, since it was unlikely anyone would agree to be injured for her to heal, and they had no innocents handy needing justice. Before leaving their room, Jax had tucked a smear of his own blood in his hairline for Amanusa to call. Better his blood than hers. He didn't like seeing her skin pierced.

“I admit,” Amanusa said when Cranshaw had subsided again, “that my control is not yet perfect, especially when dealing with the blood of innocents shed in horrific crimes. But I am improving with every day that passes.”

“Can you demonstrate, Miss . . . Whitcomb, is it?” Sir William gave her a frosty smile.

Amanusa smiled sweetly back at him. Jax shivered at the ice beneath its surface. “I already am, sir. Do you see my servant, Jax, in this room?”

“You have no servant,” Cranshaw snapped. “What is this nonsense?”

Tomlinson frowned. Carteret's eyebrows climbed his forehead. “I seem to recall—” the conjurer drawled. “Wasn't there someone—?”

“A man came in with 'er,” Tomlinson said. “ 'E introduced her, said she was a blood sorceress an' then 'e . . .”

Sir William leaned forward, squinting at the place where Jax stood. Jax moved to Amanusa's other side, but the older gentleman's eyes did not track him.

“I see 'im.” Tomlinson pointed straight at Jax. “There. I saw 'im move.”

“You're barking mad.” Cranshaw sprawled again. “She never had a servant.”

Sir William frowned, following Tomlinson's finger toward Jax's new position. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I'm sure. He's there.” Tomlinson narrowed his eyes, peering through his lashes. “He's kind o' shivery-shiny. Like mirrors an' chameleon-colors mixed together. He's hard to see, but he's there.”

“Yes.” Carteret squinted at Jax. “I can see him now.”

Amanusa snipped the spell with a flick of her fingers and Jax returned to visibility.

“I thought you were a stronger magician than that, Nigel,” Carteret drawled, leaning back in his chair. “You completely forgot the man's existence.”

The blond wizard flushed red, all the way to his thinning scalp. “Smoke and mirrors,” he snarled, but his denial felt weak to Jax.

Tomlinson sniffed. “Don't smell no smoke. Not even from the fireplace. An' I don't see any mirrors. I vote we admit 'er to the council.”

“Absolutely not!” Cranshaw exploded with venom once more.

Jax moved aside, away from the barrier of his sorceress's hoops, ready for potential attack.

“Apart from the issue of blood sorcery—which is not so easily set aside as you might suppose,” Cranshaw was saying. “There is the inescapable fact of her sex. She is a woman!”

“Yeah. So?” Tomlinson seemed unconcerned.

“The practice of magic is not a feminine pursuit. Women cannot be,
must
not be, admitted to the council. They have no place in the Council Hall.”

“Women helped build that precious Council Hall of yours,” Tomlinson retorted. “They were part and parcel of the council from the day it was started until so many were burnt in the witch hunts that killed Yvaine. Same history you was quotin' just now, Nigel. The council agreed not to take women as apprentices for a while. 'Til it was safe for 'em. 'Til they weren't so likely to be burnt.”

The Cockney alchemist looked from one man to the next, intent on his audience. “I ain't 'eard of
anybody bein' burned as a witch lately, 'ave you? Not in a 'undred years or better. I think it's past time we brought 'em back. We need women's magic. I think we need more than just one sorceress, but if she's all we got, I think we'd be idiots to turn her aside.”

“She is evil,” Cranshaw hissed.

“Oh for—” Tomlinson shut his teeth on oaths even Jax could see wanted out.

“Control yourself, man,” Sir William snapped. “You cannot go about making such accusations without any proof, on the basis of mere prejudice.”

“Are you all mad? She practices blood sorcery. Blood sorcery is evil, therefore
she
is evil.”

“Who says?” Tomlinson took up Amanusa's cause. Jax wished he knew why. Because he believed in her? Or because he thought it would give him the chance to bed her? Jax stifled the incipient jealousy he had no right to feel. An alchemist was a far better match for a sorceress.

“Why would raising magic through blood be any more or less evil than conjuring spirits of the dead?” Tomlinson demanded. “Magic's magic. It's all in how it's used as to whether it's evil or not. Why d'you think we got Inquisitors and Briganti and Massileans and such? To catch the folk wot use it wrong. Sayin' it's evil just 'cause of the kind of magic it is, is the same thinkin' that got Yvaine and all those wizards and conjurers killed along with 'er.”

“Where does the blood come from?” Cranshaw's eyes showed white all around, his voice hoarse with terror.

“Women bleed every month, Mr. Cranshaw,”
Amanusa said, matter-of-factly. “Does that frighten you? Is that evil?”

Cranshaw blanched. Sir William looked shocked. Carteret grinned and Tomlinson burst out laughing. Jax smothered his own grin. He had been gone from polite society a long time, but he was fairly certain such things weren't discussed in mixed company even in these modern days.

Amanusa didn't back down. “I realize it is most indelicate of me to speak of such things with men present, but I have it on good authority that this is why women have their affinity for blood magic. More than that, I cannot say. There are things held secret by your own disciplines to be known only to those who practice those arts.”

“By God,” Tomlinson murmured, staring at Cranshaw. “I think you might be right. I think the man is afraid of women.”

“Preposterous.” Cranshaw flung himself to his feet. “I will not stay and listen to any more of this lunacy. I am unalterably opposed to the admission of this or any other woman to the ranks of magicians. I vote nay, and I will never cease my opposition.”

He stormed from the room, the other occupants carefully not watching him go, staring mostly at the carpet until the door boomed shut behind him.

“Well, I vote aye,” Tomlinson said then, into the quiet. “That's one for and one against. Makes you the tiebreaker, Grey. What do you say?”

As everyone's eyes turned to the aristocratic conjurer, his air of languid ennui dropped slowly away until he sat straight in his chair, the hard planes of his
narrow face making him seem almost a different man entirely. “I also say aye. Admit her.

“I agree with Harry,” Carteret went on. “Until we know what caused these dead zones and how to stop them, how to restore life to them, we cannot afford to exclude any possibility. Sorcery has been lost for two hundred years. Who knows how long the dead zones have been growing to become what they are today? Perhaps it was the loss of sorcery that enabled them to grow.”

Jax scarcely dared hope as all eyes turned to Sir William. As head of the council, he didn't vote except to break a tie, but he could still affect decisions, especially decisions like this, made outside a full council session.

“I don't know.” Sir William took a deep breath and puffed it out again, setting his mustache to fluttering. “Two to one. But Cranshaw has a point. Not about sorcery being inherently evil, but about plunging recklessly into things. Until we can return to England and compare this man with the painting, until the full council can meet to approve membership, we must be cautious.”

Tomlinson leaned forward, propping an elbow on his expensively clad knee. “Billy—Sir William—we
need
the magic. 'Ere we been moanin' an' groanin' for fifty years or better 'cause we lost sorcery, 'cause there ain't been no sorceress for so long, an' now we got one come to us out of nowhere, out of the wilds of the east, and
you don't know
?” His voice rose to a near roar.

“Was it all just words?” Tomlinson dropped his volume again, this time to a near whisper. “As long as there was no chance of anybody turnin' up who
could do it, you could go ahead an' wish for it, but now she's here, you changed your mind? Are you that afraid of change, Billy?”

Sir William wouldn't meet the alchemist's eyes, staring stubbornly at the carpet.

“Or is it that if you admit Miss Whitcomb, it'll be that much harder to argue against your goddaughter learning magic?” Tomlinson said gently. “It's poor thinking, either way.”

Jax silently cursed fate. If they'd got caught up in the midst of a domestic quarrel, it couldn't help their cause.

Sir William pursed his lips, pressed them together, worked his jaw, all the while staring between his boots. “Provisional,” he said finally. “Miss Whitcomb is granted provisional membership in the Council of Magicians for Great Britain, awaiting confirmation by the plenary council, and proof of her apprenticeship to Yvaine of Braedun.”

He stood and raked his gaze across the others. “As Yvaine was a member of the council, we cannot deny membership to her apprentice. If Miss Whitcomb is indeed Yvaine's apprentice. Which has not yet been proven to my satisfaction. If she is found to be otherwise, then her petition to join will of course be denied.”

Sir William left the room and Tomlinson jumped to his feet, cursing, followed promptly by an apology for his language. “If he thinks he'll get around me that way, he's wrong. I'll take both of you as my apprentices if I 'ave to.”

“Oh, no fair, Harry,” Carteret protested, putting on his air of boredom again as he returned to his slouch.
“You can't have all the lady magicians as your apprentices.”

“Stubble it, Grey,” Tomlinson snarled. “It's about magic an' nothin' else, an' you know it.” He pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket and flipped it open. “Afternoon session of the conclave's set to start up at three. We got just enough time to corner Sir Billy and convince him to present Miss Whitcomb to the lot of 'em.”

Carteret's face slowly filled with an unholy glee. “Oh goody,” he drawled. “Fireworks.”

Sir William reluctantly agreed to accompany them and present Amanusa to the conclave. The potential restoration of sorcery was a matter of vital interest to the group. Nigel Cranshaw was nowhere to be found, which made more than Jax wonder what he might be doing.

The session had already started when the party arrived at the French
Chambre de Conseil,
their council hall where the conclave was meeting. As Tomlinson held the door for Amanusa, an usher leaped halfway across the lobby to throw himself into the breach and bar her way.

“Magicians only,
monsieur,
” he gasped, hands raised as if to block even Amanusa's sight of the proceedings.

“This is a magician,” Tomlinson said. “Miss Amanusa Whitcomb. Sorceress. Practitioner of—”

“La sorcellerie du sang,”
Carteret filled in.
“Elle est une sorcire.”

The man blanched, but stood his ground.
“Impossible.”

“She is a member of the British council. You're required
to admit all members of a national council, aren't you?” Tomlinson insisted.

Throughout the lobby, and even in the back of the hall itself, heads were turning, people—men—stopping what they were doing to watch the goings on. Amanusa wanted to shrink away, to hide and quiver and say, “Never mind. It's too much bother.” So much notice had always been dangerous. She wanted to cower—but she wouldn't. She couldn't.

Jax had said it. She was a blood sorceress. She couldn't unlearn the knowledge she'd been given. Nor did she want to. She wanted to learn more. She wanted to use this power to prevent others from suffering as she had—or to give them justice if all else failed.

Mr. Tomlinson seemed to think her magic could help in the magicians' fight against the magical vacuum, the dead zones. She already knew her magic could help the weak and powerless find justice. She refused to throw it all away because it was proving difficult to reach her goal. She had survived the outlaw camp. She had beaten them. She could survive this. And she would win.

“Magicians only,” the usher was saying yet again.

“An' I'm tellin' you, she is a magician.” Tomlinson was equally stubborn.

“Enough of this.” Sir William finally stepped up and identified himself. “Stand aside, man. Now. This is a matter for magicians.”

As she passed through the door, Jax faded back as if to remain outside the chamber. Amanusa grabbed his hand and hauled him along behind her. They hadn't been separated for more than a few moments
of time since his imprisonment and torture in Nagy Szeben. She would not be separated from him now, not in the midst of this crowd of powerful, potentially hostile men.