Stonecast (26 page)

“And his followers,” I said. “I’m sick of living in fear.”

“Don’t worry,” Marshall said. “I’ve got plenty enough to go around for all of us.”

“You should be scared,” Alexandra said, going to the table. She reached into her coat pocket, threw her notebook down next to a stack of books and mixing vats. “This isn’t going to be easy, but if we play this smart, we can end this . . . tonight. Putting Devon out of his misery was difficult. But Kejetan and his men?” She pointed to the empty containers that Aurora and Marshall had brought with them. “We’re going to have to do a lot of alchemy first.”

Alexandra

T
he calm of the ocean all around me should have been soothing. Given the plan fixing itself in my brain, however, I found that the silence only creeped me out.

Stanis stood a silent sentinel at the bow of the small boat, his eyes fixed on the dark horizon where the shape of the distant but familiar freighter steadily grew larger at our approach.

I shivered and pulled out my notebook to go over the spells Caleb and I had worked out.

“This quiet is killing me,” I said to him. This far out at sea, away from the city and other ships . . . Then it struck me. Something about how the boat was moving seemed . . . off. I turned to look at the back of the boat, where Marshall and Rory were. “You’re not actually running the motor engines, are you?”

He smiled. “I don’t have to,” he said. “The biggest problem with working for the Servants of Ruthenia was their having a floating home—the freighter. It’s never in one place at the same time.”

Rory laughed from where she stood by several air tanks and stacks of bucket-sized containers. Her pole arm rested against the boat’s wheelhouse as she pounded the palm of her hand around the lid of one of the containers, securing it.

“Of course their ship is always on the move,” she said. “Those Ruthenians wouldn’t dare return to their docks. Not after the trouble we caused for them last fall.”

“Trouble?” Caleb said with a smile. “Do tell.”

“We had tracked them to a slip out in Brooklyn,” I said. “Rory might have gotten a little . . . kicky . . . with some of them.”

“And,” Marshall spoke up from where he was looking over the back of the boat at the silent engine, “I got a few of them myself.”

“You?” Caleb asked, unable to stifle his laugh. “Rory’s a dancer with a pole arm. What’s you’re weapon of choice?”

“I . . .” Marshall looked defensive, but it fell away and his voice went quiet. “I hit a bunch of them with books I was throwing, thank you very much. I even drew blood. Those corners can be pointy and lethal at high speeds, you know.”

Caleb’s face was full of suspicious doubt.

“It was actually quiet impressive,” I whispered, leaning in to him.

Marshall went back to peering over the side of the boat. “So if you’re not running the engine, and you don’t know where to go,” he said, “how is this boat taking us there?”

Caleb lowered his notebook. “Kejetan’s freighter is never in the same place twice, so in order for me to get there, I had to get creative. I’m friendly with a few of the Village witches who owe me a favor or two after a job I did for them, so I incorporated some of what they could teach me into creating an arcane binding that’s also alchemical.”

“Like when Alexander bound Stanis to my family?” I asked, looking at the front of the ship to the stone-still gargoyle in question. “He set up rules when he created him. I set up a few simple ones to keep Bricksley from destroying the house when I’m gone, but that’s about all I really grasp of binding. So tell me, how the hell do you set rules to bind a
boat
?”

Caleb shook his head. “This kind of binding is sort of the same idea,” he said, “but a different principle. Think of it like the relationship of a magnet and a piece of steel. Drawn together like that, with this boat acting as a magnet being pulled to the ship. Except to make it work in the witches’ case, I needed
this
boat and the freighter to share something in common. They call it sympathetic magic.”

I thought it over for a second, but it didn’t make sense. “How do you make the two objects sympathetic?”

Alexander pulled off his coat and started rolling up his right sleeve.

“Oh no,” I said with dawning realization. “You didn’t.”

Caleb pulled the sleeve all the way up to his elbow, revealing a relatively fresh scar running across his inner arm near his elbow joint.

“A bit of blood magic,” he said. “I bound myself in blood to both of the ships.”

Marshall had stopped looking over the railing and came up to us, his face pale. I was pretty sure it wasn’t due to seasickness.

“And how does
that
work?” he asked.

“Lexi here isn’t the only artist,” Caleb said, pushing his sleeve back down over the scar. “I do a little painting myself. I mixed my blood with some seaworthy paint and coated the bow of this boat with it. I did the same with a small section of the freighter, too. So when I step on board this small craft, I drink a little something down, my connection to both ships snaps to, and
voila
! We’re under way.”

“Blood magic,” Stanis said from behind me, suddenly so close that I jumped. I hadn’t heard him join us, but his voice was practically in my ear now. “The work of necromancers. Dark work.”

Caleb hesitated, then gave a reluctant nod. “Maybe several hundred years ago, sure, but don’t forget . . . magic has changed with the times. Yes, a lot of it has been lost to legend or locked away by men who thought it too great a power for the world to know—”

“Like Alexander,” I said.

“Yes,” Caleb said. “But the magic that
has
remained has been adapted. ‘Blood magic: not just for necromancers anymore!’”

Marshall’s eyes narrowed. “So let me get this straight: You willingly cut yourself, drained your blood, then painted two separate ships with it?”

Caleb nodded.

“There has
got
to be some kind of great alchemical insurance coverage out there,” Marshall said.

“Not as such, no,” Caleb admitted, “but given what Kejetan
had
been paying me, I would have considered maybe sacrificing a complete limb.”

“It is amazing the trust one criminal puts in another,” Stanis said, frustration oozing out in every word. “Once my father was done with you, your life would have been forfeit even before you betrayed him by joining in Alexandra’s cause.”

“Hey!” Rory said, stamping her pole arm on the deck of the ship. “It’s
all
our cause.”

“That it may be,” Stanis said, not looking away from Caleb, “but this human sullies himself with such darkness. Alexander would not have approved of such arcana.”

I stepped back, finding pain in Stanis’s words. Hearing his opinion of how my great-great-grandfather might have reacted—especially when it was contrary to my own feelings about Caleb—struck a nerve.

“I understand your concern,” I said. “However Caleb has worked this, it
is
working. This gets us to Kejetan and his followers. We’re going to stick with our plan. Okay?”

Silent nods came from everyone except the gargoyle. “Stanis?”

“As you wish,” he said, turning back to the bow of the ship.

I looked to the horizon, surprised to see the freighter less than half a mile away, already looming menacingly higher than our tiny boat.

With our craft being the David to its Goliath, the stark reality of our situation sunk in.

Kejetan’s floating homeland was a singular island on an empty sea. There was no shore in sight, only the distant lights of New York somewhere off in the fog behind us. We wouldn’t have to worry about innocent bystanders out here, but if we failed, there was no one to hear our cries for help, either.

Judging by the drumming in my chest, my heart was already opting for panic, but I tried to calm it, telling myself to focus.

“This can work,” I said, for my own reassurance more than anyone else’s. “If everyone does their part.” Our boat was angling in toward a small dock that rose and fell with the waterline, the side halfway up the ship marked with a dark circle that could only have been Caleb’s blood.

“Don’t head for that landing zone,” I said. “We need to board somewhere with cover, and I suspect there might be people watching the docking section. I know I would be if it were my ship.”

“Right,” Caleb said. He turned away from the freighter for a second, shaking himself to break his focus. It seemed to kill the connection to both ships as we fell into a drift. Caleb turned back around, and our small boat curved off its course, the sensation of being pulled by some sort of tractor beam now gone.

“You
do
have oars around here somewhere?” I asked, and started to look among all the cluttered tanks and buckets we had brought with us.

“
Somewhere
around here,” he said, joining in as he picked his way among the cargo nearest him.

“Allow me,” Stanis spoke up, once again perched on the very bow of the boat itself. He pushed his wings up and over the front of the boat, dipping them into the water on either side. The stoneskin membrane of his batlike wings worked as massive oars, propelling us forward and keeping us parallel to the ship.

My eyes searched the deck high above us for a good place to board, and when the familiar sight of multicolored cargo containers caught them, I pointed below where they were stacked.

“There,” I said.

Stanis corrected our course with his left wing, bringing us in at the spot, while Caleb moved up next to him at the bow. Caleb’s eyes searched the side of the ship while he squatted and hefted a massive wrap of chain in his arms. Once he had found what he was looking for, Caleb maneuvered past Stanis and secured the chain through a metal loop on the side of the freighter.

“Don’t want to have our only means of escape drift away, now, do we?” Caleb said as he walked back to me.

I nodded. “Ready, everyone?” I asked, trying to whisper with as much authority as I could.

“As ready as I suppose we can be,” Rory said, sliding her collapsed-down pole arm into the artist’s tube across her back. She slapped her hand on the large, steel pump canisters sitting between her and Marshall.

“Suit up,” I told them, then turned back around to Stanis. “We need all this equipment up on deck, out of sight.”

He nodded, grabbing several containers at once before leaping straight up into the air, pumping his wings with ferocity. In a second, he was gone into the night sky.

Everyone on the deck set themselves in motion. Marshall helped Rory strap one of the large canisters to her back before pulling on one of his own.

I consulted my notebook once again as I went over my spell modifications for the evening, laughing when I saw Caleb standing across from me in a mirror image, holding his own notebook. His eyes met mine, and the two of us both embraced the lightness of the moment and held on to it in silence as the last tranquil seconds of our night ticked away.

“Promise me no blood magic tonight, okay?” I asked, only half joking. “I don’t need you bleeding out in the middle of all this.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Blood magic’s really not my thing. When I bound these two ships together, trying to get blood out of these veins was near impossible. Had a little trouble even breaking my skin, and that was with a witch-sanctioned sacrificial dagger. Apparently, there
are
some good side effects to all this self-alchemy.”

I laughed. “All kidding aside,” I said, composing myself. “I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Caleb reminded me, stepping closer. “You’ve got your big, bad, bat man there, Marshall, Rory . . .”

“And you,” I said, finding it hard not to smile, unable to stop myself from stepping closer to him. This was more than just the comfort of having a fellow alchemist to talk to.

The deck shook as Stanis came down hard next to us, and I stumbled forward . . . into Caleb’s arms, naturally. I went to push myself back to standing, but Caleb’s arms held me in place for a few seconds longer before releasing me.

Stanis couldn’t have landed more than a few inches from us, and given his posture—wings spread out behind him—it had been no accident. Was the gargoyle actually peacocking?

I wasn’t entirely sure, but now was not the time to call him out on it. Of course, it
also
wasn’t the time for me to be locking eyes with my fellow alchemist, either, but I decided to let that one slide.

I looked up into Stanis’s stoic face.

“Those were the last of the supplies,” he said, his voice plain, betraying no hint of any emotions he might be feeling.

I looked back at the mostly empty deck of our small craft.

“Good,” I said, turning away with only the slightest twinge of guilt. I instead looked up the long expanse of the side of the ship. “Now for us.”

“As you wish,” Stanis said.

One by one, Stanis flew each of us up to the edge of the deck, dropping us behind the empty shipping containers where our piled-up supplies lay before finally landing there himself.

Something didn’t feel quite right. I looked around and did a quick head count, coming up one short.

“Where’s Caleb?” I asked.

Stanis stood still and silent. I walked up to him. He didn’t answer, so I brushed past him to look back over the railing. Caleb stood on the tiny deck of the transport boat staring up at me, confused but waving.

“Stanis!” I whispered. “Get . . . him.”

“We do not need him,” he said, stoic as ever. “He has done his part in bringing us here.”

“And he has
more
to do for us,” I said. “Just get him.”

Stanis said nothing more but simply turned and leapt over the railing, swirling down to the small craft below in ever-growing circles. The gargoyle was not gentle scooping up Caleb, and an audible
oof
escaped Caleb’s lips as Stanis grabbed ahold of him. Their return flight was a fast, straight shot inches away from the side of the ship. Stanis shot past, dropping Caleb in front of me from high enough that the alchemist’s legs buckled under him as he absorbed the shock of the landing. He stumbled, then righted himself as he smoothed his coat down.