New Blood (52 page)

“Could we have tea?” Amanusa asked as she stumbled down the stairs in Mikoyan's wake, his hand tight around her arm, as the mystery man faded away ahead of them. “Perhaps some croissants or brioche? Something to break our night's fast? Or, if there is anything in the kitchen, I could cook something.”

“Why should you lower yourself to a womanly task?” Mikoyan shook her as he spoke.

Amanusa sighed. “I did not realize reading a person's mind was a part of alchemical magic. If you already know everything about me, about what I think and how I truly feel, why don't you go ahead and break the bond yourself?”

Mikoyan growled and she remembered she didn't want to antagonize these men any worse. “My husband is in poor condition because of all you put him through. A little food will help him endure what lies ahead. And I haven't eaten since—”

She thought back. She'd eaten breakfast yesterday when Elinor insisted, but hadn't been able to choke down any of the food brought to her during the search. “It has been awhile. Food will help me properly perform the magic.”

They reached the ground floor and she stumbled again from Mikoyan's jerking her about.

“Sorcery—blood magic—is more closely tied to the condition of one's body than other magics,” Amanusa said. “If I am hungry, the magic is hungry.”

She hadn't noticed so close a correlation, in truth, but she wanted Jax fed. It would help him.

“I'm starved,” Jax said, sounding a bit more like his cheeky self. “This lot hasn't fed me since I got here.”

“Then I'd say it was time.” Amanusa scowled at Mikoyan. “Or did you intend to starve him, rather than magic him to death?”

The alchemist growled again, but he reached into his pocket for a handful of coins. “Paolo, go buy bread. And coffee with cream. Maybe some sausages. Go. And hurry back.”

Paolo, the third young man, an alchemist like Mikoyan, took the coins and ran upstairs. Mikoyan shoved Amanusa roughly into a large chair while the others eased Jax down on the sofa pushed against the far wall. A few moments later, clad in jacket and a shirt he was still tucking in, Paolo dashed back downstairs and out the door.

“What instruments do you need to work this magic? To unbind him?” Mikoyan paced the room, stopping to peer out through the front window every time he passed it.

Amanusa reached into her pocket for the lancet, but it wasn't there. How could she have remembered the translation stone, but forgotten her lancet? “I will need a knife,” she said. “Very sharp. The sharper the better.”

“Will a razor do?” Esteban asked. The other magicians turned their horrified eyes from Amanusa to him, apparently appalled by the mere thought of bloodletting. Though the idea of killing one or both of them didn't seem to disturb.

“Do not trust her.” The man still stood in the shadows of the hallway, keeping his face hidden. Because
she might recognize him? Or because he wished to ensure she never would? “She is evil to the core.”

“You know nothing about me,” Amanusa said, “and a knife. With a razor, it is too easy to slip and cut too deep. And before you flap and moan about the evil, wicked sorceress getting her hands on a sharp object, Jax will use the knife on his own flesh. He knows how deep to cut. We will also need rags, to catch the blood, and a fire to burn them afterward.”

She would call her blood from him, but would she be able to keep that part of him that flowed through her? She didn't want to give it up, but she would if it proved necessary to break the bond. Did it actually have to be broken? “How will you know the binding is gone?”

“We can tell,” Mikoyan snarled.

“The binding is similar to that binding spirit or animal familiars,” Esteban volunteered. “Any wizard or conjurer has spells to sense the familiars of others.”

“Good.” Amanusa nodded, satisfied. She settled back in her chair to watch Jax, who was watching her, silently pleading from across the room for her not to do this thing.

“Good, why?” Mikoyan stalked toward her, suspicion in every line of his body.

“Because you will know it is done and there will be an end to it. You won't keep trying and trying endlessly.” Amanusa never took her eyes from Jax.

“Paolo is back.” Oleg opened the door to admit the young alchemist. He carried café-au-lait in a thick stoneware carafe and brioche in a knotted napkin.
The sausages in their paper wrapping were stuffed in his pocket.

Esteban brought cups for the coffee and poured while Paolo passed around the food. Amanusa took only bread and coffee.
I will eat,
she whispered to Jax's thoughts,
if you will eat also.

What if the breaking of the bond leaves me a three-hundred-seventy-year-old corpse?
Jax took sausage and bread and coffee.

It won't. The condition of your body isn't tied to the magic. The magic has kept you young, but it has done it by sweeping the symptoms of age from your body
. She'd looked, when she was inspecting what they had done to him. The breaking of their bond shouldn't in itself kill him, though he would begin to age normally again. The dead zones would still likely have their deadly affect on him, but outside the zones, he ought to be fine.

When we are free of them . . .
His thoughts were fierce, insistent.
You must bind us again. I am your husband, and I will not be less than I am now.

As you will it.
It was easy to be the submissive wife when her wishes coincided with her husband's.

“Have you eaten enough?” Mikoyan's voice overflowed with sarcastic hospitality. “Are we finally ready?”

“I have a knife.” Esteban came from the back of the house carrying a long, thin boning knife. “It was the sharpest in the kitchen. I sharpened it—”

“Take it to Jax.” Amanusa waved him away as he brought it in her direction, perhaps for inspection. “He's the one who will use it.” If she had to rid herself of his blood, she would use the cut on her already
swollen lip. “You don't want me near the knife, nor do I wish to be.”

Esteban and Mikoyan gave her an odd look. Oleg sneered. “She is afraid of it.”

Amanusa ignored him, focusing all her attention on Jax.
As I pull my blood from you, I will withdraw all the magic and build shields around both of us. I'm afraid to leave any magic behind—magic bound you after Yvaine's death.

Magic and Yvaine's blood.

Can I call her blood out as well?

I don't know.
Jax took the knife from Esteban, Oleg and Paolo hovering, ready to grab him if he showed signs of aggression. Jax brushed his thumb across the edge.
It will cost you the knowledge that remains.

He spoke aloud. “The blade will do.”

There isn't much left. And we have her books, back in the tower. I'll try to call her blood.

Jax set the knife aside and looked up at her as he rolled up his left sleeve. The magicians hissed and recoiled as they saw the faint white lines of scars up his forearm.

“What?” the hidden man asked. “What is it?”
And when the shields are built, and I am no longer bound, then what?
Jax held her gaze.

She felt his love and worry swell and flow toward her.
I don't know,
she replied honestly. The only way she could.

“His arm is scarred from elbow to wrist,” Oleg croaked. “Scars of bloodletting.”

I hadn't thought that far.
Amanusa bit her lip, looking helplessly back at Jax.
All I could think about was getting you free, however I had to do it.

Jax shook his head at her, a rueful smile on his lips.
So the rest of the plan is mine?

Like when you carried me down the mountain.
She smiled back at him.
I work the magic and mess things up. You get me out of it. We're a team.

So we are.

S
TOP GAWKING OVER
old scars and free him so he suffers no more,” Mikoyan snapped. “Are wards set and secure?”

“Yes, Master Mikoyan.” Paolo dipped his head in a tiny bow.

Mikoyan and Paolo now moved close to Amanusa, leaving the others guarding Jax. “We will be monitoring the magic,” the master alchemist said. “At the first sign you are turning it toward one of us, we will kill you.”

Do not do anything foolish, Amanusa,
Jax said.
If you live, I swear to live with you.

Then I will have to be sure to survive this.
She smiled at him as she sat up straight in the chair. “I am ready.”

Jax took a deep breath. He picked up the knife, set it against the palm of his left hand, and caught Amanusa's gaze. “I love you,” he said. “No matter what happens, I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She sent her love pouring into him and let his pour into her, marveling that there could be so much.

“This is my blood,” he said. “Spilled by my will.” He took another breath, and as he let it out, he sliced across his palm from one fleshy pad to the other.

At the same instant, Amanusa
reached
across the room with her magic, her lips moving only slightly as she repeated the words to call Yvaine's blood from Jax's veins. Old blood first.

It welled up in a sullen line, thick and dark and reluctant to answer her call, oozing across his palm to the little-finger side, where it dripped onto the pile of napkins in Jax's lap.
Depart from my husband Jax, you old besom,
Amanusa thought at the last remnants of Yvaine.
We don't want you here. You are not our blood.

Finally, the dark, almost black droplets stopped seeping from the cut in Jax's hand, and Amanusa sagged in her chair. “Blot that, please, love.” Her voice was raspy with the strain.

“You're not done,” the shadowed man hissed. “He is not yet free.”

“Old bonds have to be broken first,” Jax said, wiping away the last of Yvaine's blood with the topmost napkin. He tossed it over his shoulder, Oleg jumping to get away without it touching him. “Get her a glass of water.”

Oleg sneered. He was so predictable. “She is only a—”

“Get my wife some water,
now.
” The authority in Jax's voice made Amanusa shiver. Not in fear, in . . . pleasure? Desire? She didn't like it when other men gave orders, demanded obedience. But when Jax did it, it gave her a little thrill. Because he did it on her behalf?

Esteban returned from somewhere with a glass of water, and Amanusa sipped, grateful. She smiled her thanks at him as he returned to guarding Jax. She set the glass on the floor beside her chair, since there were no side tables. Time to finish this.

Blood of my blood.
She spoke the words to herself, to Jax, through the bonds that tied them together.
Return to me.
She caught up the magic with the blood, pulling it out of him and piling it around him in the thickest shield she could make.

Bright red blood, new blood, poured from the shallow slice across his palm, and dripped to the napkins below, staining them scarlet. Had he taken so much? She didn't know what she was doing. What if she bled him dry? What if she couldn't break the blood bond at all?

“Love you,” Jax murmured. “Live.” Was he so weak already?

She wouldn't live without him. She might survive—though that was in doubt—but she wouldn't actually live. They both had to get through this intact. Perhaps she couldn't pull only her own blood from Jax because she was holding on to his blood.

With a whimper, she hunted inside herself for those flavors of
Jax
and drove them out. Blood began to trickle down her chin from her split lip, out her nose.

Jax cried out, started up from the sofa, but Oleg shoved him back down. Esteban looked from Jax to Amanusa, then gently pulled a napkin from the bottom edge of Jax's pile, one not too stained, and tossed it to Paolo. “For the blood.” Esteban gestured at his own nose and mouth, then at Amanusa.

Paolo dropped the napkin in Amanusa's lap, and she used it to blot away Jax's blood, feeling as if she wanted to weep. She hadn't taken much from him, but it had been enough. Now that she cast it away, the bleeding from the cut across his hand slowed.

Now what? She still felt a faint, ghostly bond between them. There was evidently something more that had to be done, though they no longer shared blood. A sob escaped her.

“I love you, Amanusa,” Jax said. “That hasn't changed. I am still your husband. They cannot force us to divorce.”

The faint bond throbbed, grew brighter with magic.
No.
That wasn't what had to happen. All ties had to be broken. There could be nothing between them in order for him to be safe.

Amanusa stood. “I cast you aside,” she said, making her voice hard and cold, so it wouldn't choke halfway out. “John Greyson, I renounce you. You are no longer my servant. You are not my familiar. You are nothing to me. I do not have any part of you and you have no part of me. You are no longer blood of my blood. Your heart is not mine and mine does not beat with yours. All bonds between us are severed.”

She reached out with her hands to grasp the faint ribbon of glorious magic shimmering between them, and she ripped it in two.

With a cry of anguish she collapsed onto the chair, Jax's shout echoing with hers. The pain of loss and loneliness ground through her. God, it hurt. How could it hurt so much? Not physically, though it seeped into the physical, making her chest ache
along with her weeping heart, with the emotions that had been torn apart.

“Amanusa—”
Jax's desperate groan made the anguish cut deeper. She could see the magic reaching toward her, groping, begging her to grab hold.

“I won't.” She stuffed all the pain down deep inside, where she'd kept so much before, hiding it away where he couldn't see it, wouldn't suspect the truth. “I don't love you. The conjurer was right. I lied.”