Chapter 25 #2
“Not immediately. It took rather more maneuvering than that.” Calista snorted softly. “But eventually, yes. And I helped found the l’mauvas, which gave me all the clout and credibility I needed. I even fostered a dalliance with old Sirus Breckenstock. You remember him, don’t you?”
Nigel felt all the blood drain from his face.
He did know that name. And, hearing it spoken, he found himself cast back to that dark period of time following Jastira’s fall: a time of imprisonment and finger-screws and other forms of torturous interrogation.
The bilious face of old Breckenstock featured prominently in all the worst of those memories—a man determined to wrest the secret of Garden from Nigel’s lips at whatever cost.
“Yes,” Nigel whispered. He nodded, his head suddenly heavy between his shoulders.
Calista leaned toward him again, placing her lips close to his ear.
“He whispered your name to me on his pillow one night. Told me something of the doings in the dungeons of Ironclad Fortress. Told me how you wouldn’t break, but how everyone knew you kept the secret of your father’s Great Work.
Somewhere. Somehow.” She allowed her lower lip to brush his earlobe briefly before drawing back a little ways and looking at him hard with her cold gaze.
“Did you know I am the one who talked Breckenstock into releasing you?”
His eyeballs swiveled sharply in their sockets. “What?”
She batted her lashes like a consummate flirt, even as her voice darkened.
“You didn’t really think they would have just let the Grimshade Lord go with nothing but a heptagram tattoo and a warning to do better.
You were scheduled for execution, Grimm.
Drawing and quartering is such a medieval way to die, but still perfectly legal when it comes to Dark Sorcerers gone bad.
” She settled back in her seat, her body languid, her eyes sharp.
“I spared your life. I convinced Breckenstock that you were nothing more than a patsy in Jastira’s schemes.
I even convinced him that the Infinite Dynamo was probably her work, not yours, that you were always such a weak little mage and could never have concocted a spell of such tremendous—”
Nigel stood upright, his feet coming down hard from the barstool.
A black cloud welled up from deep inside him, the darkest sorcerer-self rising up in a billowing storm of fury.
“The Infinite Dynamo was mine,” he snarled.
“Jastira never dreamed of harnessing power like that! Not until I came along and showed her the way.”
Calista grinned. “No need to get in a fuss, Grimm. Remember, if the Authorities of Plym had believed all that, you would be gruesomely dead long ago.”
It was unreasonable—he knew it. But the truth was, part of him would rather be dead than have the validity of his work so utterly discounted.
He had been well on his way to making his name and his discoveries the greatest of the age, the greatest of all ages, perhaps.
All sorcery and sorcerous studies which came after would have been entirely based on his research, his findings, his discoveries.
The magnificent tome he had been in the middle of writing—The Grimm Theory—should have become the basis of a whole new school of academic research.
Ah! He could see it, how it would all play out!
Universities named in his honor, apostles devoted to his every word like he was some sort of demigod.
History itself would pivot on the point of his very existence.
In the end, he would have eclipsed Jastira herself.
She had been so fixated on the idea of immortality, but Nigel hadn’t cared about any of that.
This was the true immortality he craved.
And it had been so, so, so close. So nearly within his grasp, only to be stripped away from him at the last, when he could have . . . he might have . . .
His mind shuddered to a sudden stop. The next moment, it filled with a flare of memory so potent, so powerful, Nigel gasped out loud: memory of a small, too-thin body wrapped close in his arms. Weeping into his chest.
Luna.
What had his ambition cost her? Indirectly, perhaps, and yet so profoundly.
Her life, her world, was utterly turned upside down, all because of his choices, his decisions.
And not her world alone. Though Jastira carried most of the blame, Nigel had walked hand-in-hand with her every step of the way, leaving destruction in their wake as they pursued their dark plans, each fueling the fire of the other’s ambition.
Luna was one of only hundreds of thousands of people whose lives he had torn apart.
If anyone had asked, Nigel would have told them his goals were entirely altruistic. The Infinite Dynamo, after all, once stabilized and replicated, would benefit humanity for ages to come.
But it was the pursuit of glory alone which had driven him ever deeper, ever darker.
He drew a slow breath, closing his eyes. Then he said, “You should have used your influence to get a better gift from your lover, Calista. My life isn’t worth much. To anyone.”
“No,” she agreed coldly, “it isn’t. But your garden is.”
“Garden was destroyed in the altercation with Jastira.”
“Your brother seems to think otherwise.”
“My brother is an idiot.”
“Granted. But he’s proven a valuable source of information, even from Phrigidos.
He mentioned your flower shop, as you know.
He mentioned as well something about your .
. . shop girl.” Calista tilted her face back, eyeing the thaumatic lamps hanging overhead, and tapped her chin thoughtfully.
“Now, what was her name? Luna, was it? Luna Talbot.”
Nigel’s eyes flared open. He stared into Calista’s hard face, into those reptilian eyes framed in dark mascara. But that was a mistake. Because he could not read her face, but somehow he knew that she was reading far too much in his.
With a sudden wrench, he turned on heel and staggered away from the bar, through the haze of cigarette smoke and tinny jazz.
He found the door and staggered out onto the sidewalk.
“Damn!” he cursed bitterly as the cold air bit into his unprotected hide.
He really shouldn’t have left his overcoat in the Rowdy House. Too late for regrets now, however.
He turned his head, looking up and down the road, his pulse quick in his throat.
He knew what was coming. How could he not?
He also knew he was completely unprotected.
Gods, what had possessed him to make that Sovereign Troth?
He should never have done it, not in a million lifetimes.
He should have found some other way—any other way—of convincing Luna to trust him again.
Only there had been no other way. And she should never have trusted him to begin with.
She should have run from him on that very first day, the moment she tasted that gods-awful tea!
She should have run fast and far and never once looked back.
But she didn’t. She stayed. With him. Gave him her friendship. Gave him her trust. Even when he’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
He could not let her down now.
Nigel picked a direction and started walking. It hardly mattered which direction he chose. Already he saw the dark things swarming, just on the edge of his vision. Simulacrums—wafting, terrifying, and oh! so many.
Calista’s footsteps sounded on the sidewalk behind him. “Grimm!” she called out.
He turned, looked back at her. She stood beneath a street light, wrapped in her fancy fur-collared coat once more. She studied him curiously, her head tilted to one side, her eyes narrow. “You’re not the sorcerer you once were, are you?” she said.
The simulacrums drew in fast. And he knew what it was that confused their mistress.
The Grimshade Lord should have blasted them all with Dire spells by now, disintegrating them to little motes of anti-glitter.
It wouldn’t matter if the clever Mrs. Anguish had built an army of them!
Nothing that fragile could take out any halfway-decent Dark Sorcerer.
But even the Greatest Sorcerer of the Age couldn’t do much with his magic bound.
Nigel lifted his chin, meeting her gaze without flinching. “Your work is sloppy, Mrs. Anguish,” he said. “No one would mistake these things for anything but a misjudged application of spell-matter.”
“Maybe,” she acknowledged with a little smile. “They serve the purpose rather well though, don’t you think?”
With that, she snapped her fingers.
And the simulacrums swarmed Nigel in a mass of darkness, tattered rags, and savage, gnashing teeth.