23 #2
Felix stepped into the darkened room beyond. Rough magic scraped like thorns across his skin. The stench of smoke and copper hit his nostrils. A sound like a far-off scream announced their entry, and a wiry man looked up from behind the counter.
“Evening, ladies,” he said in a voice like a creaking door hinge. It was morning in the world above, but fair was fair; there’d be no keeping track of it in that appalling gloom.
Felix glanced around. It looked like an arcani’s parlor, or whatever passed for one on the grayside.
Globes and vials burned like demons’ eyes against the dark.
Black spellwork attachments gleamed malevolently on the counter, and bottled curses rattled from the display cases.
Some of them were chained and bolted down, sending out waves of chill despair or scorching hatred that he could feel from ten feet away.
Cassia slouched to the far left corner, where she peered across a row of small black discs.
Felix hung back, keeping to the thickest edges of the gloom.
He traced a hand over a countertop, then stopped abruptly at a rack of black steel stakes.
He knew those things from his military days.
One good stab through the skull would erase a soldier’s battle memories when they grew too much to stand.
No doubt the grayside equivalent erased a few other things besides.
“There. That ought to be compatible,” said Cassia, her finger pausing halfway down the row of discs.
“Beautiful equipage, that,” creaked the hinge. “A team of four, fit for Imperatrix Circle. Planning a jaunt, are we, ladies?”
“It’s not for us,” said Myria. “What about that one? Cheaper.”
“Oh, you don’t want to go for the cheap ones, miss,” the proprietor said with a wheezing laugh. “Never know when they might blink out. Come to the counter, ladies, come. I’ll show you the best of them.”
He drew a lacquered black box from beneath the counter, and Myria and Cassia moved to look.
“Stole these from the last gala night at Cantium Tower,” he said. “Here. Took this one off a Cordilon Excelsis.”
Cassia reached for the box, but a curse snapped across her hand before she could touch it.
She flinched back with muttered obscenity, cradling her fingers.
The man chuckled and leaned low, stroking down the hinge to lift the locks.
Then he rose to offer them the box, and blanched.
It took Felix a moment to see why. When he did, his stomach plunged.
Cassia’s face had vanished. Her curling hair sprang out around a formless blackness that roiled and surged like the Hjelvak ocean. The proprietor’s mouth fell open. He looked in wild alarm down at his box, then back to Cassia.
“Mercurial,” he murmured. “Wait a moment. You.” His gaze moved across her hair, then dropped to her knuckles. “You.”
He grinned, showing rather fewer teeth than nature normally gave a man. Threads of yellow arcana jumped between his fingertips.
Lightning snapped through Felix’s body. He forced himself to hold still, remembering Myria’s orders.
“Something the matter, sir?” she asked ingenuously, patting Cassia on the shoulder.
“Turn tail, miss. This one’s mine.”
“Oh, don’t mind her,” said Myria. “Some prefect cut her with an arcanic javelin last week. She’s been having trouble ever since. Dropping her face every time someone lets off a firecrack—”
The man clicked his fingers. A bolt cracked from his gauntlet and knocked Myria flat, then split across her skin like rainwater. A second spell froze Cassia in place.
That’s enough.
Felix crossed the floor in three quick strides. The man raised his hands for a third curse, but Felix let his sleeves fall to reveal his bare wrists. He smiled, stepping past the half-stunned Myria. The man faltered as Felix came to a lazy halt before the counter.
“If you think you can threaten me on my own property—”
“If you imagine you can threaten my companions,” Felix interrupted, “then we’re bound for a disagreement.”
“Turn tail, arcani,” the man spat. Yellow bolts began to dance across his hands. “Fancy freehand work can’t outdo me in my own shop.”
Felix only smiled. There was something exhilarating about holding a man hostage with an empty weapon.
“Of course,” he said. “Perhaps we can resolve it like gentlemen.”
But then Myria stirred behind him, and the proprietor threw out a hand. Felix moved by instinct. His flat-handed blow met the graysider’s nose and sent him reeling back into the wall.
Adrenaline gave him wings. He vaulted the counter and kicked the man full in the chest. The graysider bounced off the brick a second time, then staggered into Felix’s waiting hold. He seized the sorry fellow by the collar and slammed his forehead hard into the counter.
“Owing to certain deficiencies on your part, though, my hopes aren’t high,” he added.
The graysider slumped with a groan. His head rolled sideways. Felix seized the man’s gauntlets and snapped the spellwork attachments closed. The binding curse rolled off Cassia’s skin.
“Blimey,” she muttered, rubbing her formless face. “I thought they only taught you the poncy work in the academy.”
“That was from the mess hall,” he said. “Myria, there’s a row of black spikes at the back, about three inches long. There should be a hammer nearby. Would you bring them?”
Myria scrambled up and dashed to fetch them. He plucked one from the rack, heaved the man onto the counter and set the spike to his forehead. Myria started as he raised the hammer.
“You can’t—”
“They’re mementori tools,” he said, then struck. Instead of splitting the man’s skull, the spike slid through his skin like butter. The surface heated as the spellwork wicked away an hour’s worth of memories. Sometimes, he had to admit, therical tools had their uses.
Once the spike had filled to the brim, he wrenched it out with an unpleasant sucking noise.
“There. Might as well take your pick of the goods,” he said. “Enjoy.”
They ran a healing spell across the proprietor’s head and set him down beside a bottle of Tyrant’s Rum. With any luck, he’d write the story of the missing hour for himself. Even so, Felix didn’t tread easily until they’d left the silver lining far behind.
The suite at the Claritas ensconced him in blessed reality. Thank goodness; the texture of the world was right again. Felix flung off his grimy brown coat and turned to the kitchen.
“Well, I won’t return there in haste,” he said. “Coffee?”
“Wouldn’t say no,” said Myria.
He pressed the lever for the kettle, and it burst to an instant boil with a flare of arcana. Arcanic kettles, really . . .
“Bizarre place, that,” he went on. “You grew up there?”
“More . . . flitted in and out of it,” she said, turning to her dressing table. “Hadria kept us away from there as much as she could.”
“Hadria. She was your teacher, wasn’t she?” Felix asked, softening his voice. Myria gave a short nod. Without a word, she took a seat before the mirror and began to remove her grim disguise.
Felix set about grinding the coffee. As he worked, his mind churned with the image of Cassia’s face collapsing into seething darkness. That hadn’t been the effect of the curse; that’d only snapped her control. Her arcana had been damaged.
Then Vixius turns up with Evander’s face, just weeks after the Elysius theft . . .
“He attacked Cassia too, didn’t he?” Felix asked. “He took her powers.”
“He’s a first-rate scumbag,” Myria replied. “For the purposes of the game, that’s all you need to know.”
The devil it is, he thought, watching her from the corner of his eye.
She’d said that Vixius had closed the silver lining.
If he was right, that place was made of pockets of Carintheum’s arcanic fabric, leaking through the gaps.
It was arcanic draining—arcanic transference, pulling power from one place to another.
Draining power, stealing power . . . same principle. That’d take enormous force, though. Far more than you could wield by hand. Some kind of therical machine?
“Myria, do you suppose—”
“You did a fine job down there, by the way,” she said suddenly, beginning at the same time he did.
“It’s about time I did something useful.”
“Now, now. You’ll be a great help in a few days’ time.”
“So you say. You’ve yet to explain how.”
“New wife, remember?” said Myria, wiping the dull powders from her face. Felix shook his head in half-amused despair. Then, finishing with the coffee, he moved to her side with a cup. She took it with a smile—and an oddly sincere one, at that.
“I mean it, though, old boy,” she said. “You stepped right between me and that arcani. Unarmed. Didn’t even pause.”
Stop changing the subject.
“It was nothing,” he said, “but I still—”
“And that’s just it,” she interrupted. “Nothing. That sort of thing’s just . . . written into you. Decency, I suppose. Not an affliction I’m familiar with.”
He paused, unsure of what to say. It was nothing his comrades hadn’t done for him a dozen times. An uncomfortable sensation dropped into his stomach.
Perhaps no one’s ever done a thing like that for her. The devil’s rules, she said. Is that it? Trust no one? Help no one? Pantheon above, what a miserable life.
“Well, I don’t want you dead,” he said at last.
Well done, a voice sighed in his head. Nonetheless, Myria grinned into her coffee.
“Time remains. But, ah . . . while you’re here, there’s something else. Wasn’t certain I should mention it, but given the circumstances . . .” She trailed off with uncharacteristic hesitance. Curiosity pounced on him at once.
“What is it?”
“Lysander told me he examined your arcanic faculties,” she said in a measured voice. “He didn’t want to leap to conclusions there and then, but . . . well, I’ll be blunt. He was afraid you’d scuppered your own chances by lying to the surgeons about what happened to your powers.”
Somewhere in the clockwork of his mind, a bolt fell loose.
“I didn’t lie to them,” he said by automation. Myria fixed him with a shrewd gaze.