Chapter 7 #3
It was an odd thing to say, and my brow furrowed.
“Cameron is here to ascertain that the shadows taking refuge in the grotto aren’t responsible for cracking the new vault.
” Annoyed and a little worried, I turned my frown to Cameron.
“You agreed to not say anything,” I added.
“Shut up or I’ll let her drive you insane. ”
I wouldn’t, obviously, but it gave them both pause as I called their respective bluffs.
Aasta had halted Darrell’s image at the edge of the stage’s drop-off.
It felt too close to me, but I didn’t want to retreat and look nervous, even if I was.
“Those who lie fear the most to be lied to,” the shadow said, and Cameron flushed.
“Tell her you didn’t damage the vault and we will leave,” I muttered, and Aasta scoffed.
Head bowed, she laboriously worked her way down to sit with her feet dangling over the edge. The shadow was drawing heavily upon Darrell’s memory, and it hurt. “You already know who broke the vault. The same who broke us.”
Broke us? I thought, and Pluck’s thoughts fizzed nervously. She knew about Thoth and Marty? How? Maybe that was where the other memorial shadows were—looking for her.
“This means nothing,” Cameron said under her breath. “She’ll say anything to exonerate herself and the rest of them. The only faction to benefit from no vaults are shadows. End of investigation.”
Aasta waved Darrell’s hand flippantly, as if swatting flies.
“Shadows do not benefit from dross in the streets. It’s why we agreed to constructing a storage vault.
One with a shadow release valve. Balance takes time to find, and no one wants to wallow in filth for a thousand years until we do.
” Darrell’s eyes glittered green as they met mine, and Pluck hazed, his guilt and anger drifting through me.
“Did the new vault have such a shadow release valve?”
Cameron cleared her throat. “Until we find out who damaged the vault, the modifications to existing containment systems are on hold. And seeing as no mage in their right mind would damage it—”
“It was not us!” Aasta shouted, her raspy voice coming back hard from the low ceiling as she swung her legs up onto the stage and worked herself up onto her knees. “You, Grady’s Mistake, are a fool yeth! Looking for a reason to destroy the thing that can pull you from the brink because it is easy.”
“I am not a mistake. I represent—”
“Nothing I care about.” Darrell’s image stood, her beaded hem shaking as she extended her arm. “Perhaps I should show you the truth of my innocence, mad though it will leave you. Take my hand and die from the truth, Grady’s Mistake.”
“Enough!” I exclaimed, and Cameron spun to me, her expression a worrisome mix of anger and fear. No one but a weaver could survive a shadow in their mind, and Cameron knew it. “You are both acting like fool yeths!”
“You smell of Thoth, and you dare come down here and accuse us of destroying the chance of finding the balance?” Aasta said, finding Darrell’s temper and patterning her own voice upon it. “You look for a malefactor. You have seen him. He is before you.”
My breath caught. Beside me, Pluck hazed to a puddle of black, a single tendril coiled about my ankle. Damn it, I had wanted to keep this quiet. Or at least from the university.
“Ah, who is Thoth?” Cameron asked, voice honey-sweet, and I warmed with embarrassment and anger. The embarrassment was me, the anger Pluck.
Tell Aasta that admitting one of us is a homicidal malefactor will not help us, Pluck practically whined in my mind.
I took a breath, catching it when Aasta slid from the stage to the orchestra pit.
As one, Cameron and I started a slow retreat.
“Thoth is an abomination.” Aasta twitched Darrell’s beaded skirt, channeling my mentor right down to the furrow of her brow.
“His goal is to pit mage against weaver and shadow. He ruined himself trying to find a weaver, and so now he deems us deluded for doing so and strives to save us from ourselves. He can’t kill our weavers, so he convinces others to do it for him.
” Aasta’s lips twitched. “There will be no more weaver/shadow pairs. None of us will risk it. It’s over before it is begun. ”
“Wait. Thoth is a shadow?” Cameron’s eyes widened. “The one who followed Marty here?”
Shadow spit, Aasta was laying it all out there, and I scrambled for an answer that wouldn’t start a campus-wide shadow hunt.
“You stink of him, Kahu.” Aasta paced forward, and I continued to back up, careful to keep Cameron behind me. “Find a form that can speak,” she demanded, and Pluck hazed to a fine, glowing mist. “I want to hear from your lips how you managed to stay alive when he found you.”
Alive? “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I put out a hand to stop Aasta when my calves hit the dusty chairs. My stick tipped over, hitting the filthy carpet with a dull thunk. Never taking my eyes from her, I felt around until I found it and picked it up. “We need to slow down.”
Pluck’s ears went flat. Tell her to shut up, fizzed through me, the icy bubbles of his thought giving me a headache.
Cameron’s lips parted in understanding. “If Thoth wants all weavers dead, why protect him?”
Aasta was glaring at me in disgust, dark matter hazing over the image of my mentor like a poisonous fog.
“No one is protecting Thoth.” Darrell’s beaded hair clinked to sound like dry bones as she turned her cold gaze to Pluck.
“Take a speaking form and explain how you survived him. I know you can manage it, Kahu!”
Ears flat, Pluck paced a circle around me, wisps of himself pulling free until I was surrounded by him.
His thoughts frothed in mine too fast to be realized, but I could feel his regret, and my fingertips dabbling in his haze became blue from cold.
Distract her. Remind her Marty is unbound, he fizzed. Tell her the girl needs protection.
“Marty is still unbound. She’s vulnerable,” I blurted, and Aasta made my mentor’s eyes wide in an agonizing hope.
“You don’t think I know that?” Aasta rasped. “No one dares to contact her lest Thoth deem her a threat. If she is tuned, he will kill her.”
Tuned? I thought, nodding. She meant bonded, and though the usage was new, the idea was not. It sort of made sense, seeing as shadows tuned moldavite to better hold energy. Perhaps it was the same with minds.
Cameron’s brow furrowed in frustration that no one was answering her. “You’re telling me this Thoth cracked the vault?”
Pluck wound his way up my dad’s long-stick, chilling my grip until he perched at the top like a snake. The truth was out, and Pluck reluctantly bobbed his hooded head.
“Probably?” I said, wincing at Cameron’s elation. “Yes, he followed Marty here. He didn’t admit to the sabotage, but he does have a history of setting mage against weaver.” I took a slow breath. “Blaming the memorial shadows for the destruction would do it.”
“And you’re protecting him.” Cameron’s jaw clenched. “Because he’s a shadow.”
“No, I’m protecting everyone else,” I said as Pluck’s frustrated anger simmered in me. “What do you think will happen if it gets out that a shadow cracked the new vault?”
Cameron glanced at Aasta. The shadow had gone silent, head bowed in a nameless grief. “It will be caught and dealt with.”
My gut hurt, and I shook my head. Pluck had been right.
No wonder the shadows were hiding. “Who will catch him? Mages? Not likely. It will be up to the sweepers, and even then it’s dangerous.
One touch could leave them comatose or worse.
But knowing how pigheaded mages are, you will insist on trying, getting yourselves hurt and whipping up anti-shadow sentiment until a bounty is placed on all of them.
The memorial shadows are not to blame, so back off and let Pluck and me take care of it. ”
Cameron reached for her lodestone, a faint glow peeping between her fingers. “And in the meantime, he destroys every vault in St. Unoc?”
“He doesn’t care about vaults,” Aasta muttered. “Cracking them is the fastest way to set mage against weaver and shadow. He’s trying to prevent the balance.”
Frustrated, I thumped the butt of my staff onto the musty carpet.
Jolted, Pluck phased solid for an instant, his green eyes thick with annoyance.
Sorry. “Marshal, why do you think Aasta is the only shadow here? They’re gone.
Hiding because they’ve seen this before.
Aasta is the only one brave enough to risk being put in a bottle. ”
Aasta jerked, pain crossing my mentor’s face until a curtain of beaded hair hid it.
She’s here because of her guilt-driven death wish, Pluck fizzed angrily. Fear rules her, and because of it, she lost everything.
But they had all lost everything, and dread flickered within Aasta’s green eyes.
“You think you can snare Thoth alone, weaver Petra Grady? Perhaps, but keeping his foul plan from the mages will require you to take the blame of his actions on yourself. Thoth is not called ‘the mind eater’ for nothing.”
The memory of Pluck and Thoth twined in a self-destructive tangle flashed through me. If I hadn’t been there to break them apart…
Aasta’s half-lidded gaze came to mine, the beads in Darrell’s hair clinking.
“Thoth will destroy you through your own desire for change,” she intoned, and I couldn’t tell if she was angry, selfish, or jealous.
“As he destroys all things. We gathered here in the hope of finding weavers; Thoth will never leave until we abandon it.” Aasta twisted Darrell’s lips into a sour expression.
“That’s why they have fled. Marty is untuned, but no one will risk the heartache of her dying to defend the one who bonds with her. ”
Pluck made a doggy huff. Remind her we are wise to him now. It was a hard, icy statement, and I winced when a soft headache started. Thoth will have no sway with me. I know his every trick, have felt his every burn. When we meet again, it will not be me who suffers.
But Pluck was my responsibility, just as much as I was his, and I couldn’t help but feel this was a mistake.
Sensing it, Pluck bristled, spikes of cold stabbing into my hand.
If I wasn’t able to withstand him, why did he flee?
Aasta is right about only one thing. He followed Marty here to find you.
Through his own failings, Thoth has acquired the ability to possess both magic user and mundane without destroying their minds, but an experienced weaver has the field strength to keep him out of their thoughts, and he knows it.
I am a threat? I thought as Pluck’s thoughts became gritty in mine, ruinous.
All we have to do is lure him to a place of our choosing and snare him. Cameron knows the truth. She won’t let you take the blame.
That a shadow could enter someone’s mind and possess them without leaving them comatose or clinically insane didn’t seem like an improvement.
Lure him with what? Me? The only other thing he might want is another vault, I thought, then jerked when a new idea surfaced.
There was a small vault under the records building.
No one knew about it apart from the older sweepers and Spinners.
If we made it public knowledge, Thoth might try to break it.
Prepared, we could catch him. Stuff him into it maybe, like a big bottle.
Add a shot at me to the mix, and it would be irresistible.
I have to talk to Ryan, I thought as I reached for my phone, and Pluck’s anger vanished as my plan spilled into his mind as if it were his own. His doubt filled me…and then a tiny sliver of hope. Mine? Pluck’s? It didn’t matter. We both felt it.
“Marshal, you have your answer. It wasn’t them. I have to go.”
The woman jerked from me as I reached for her elbow. “I’m not done.”
“They didn’t do it,” I said, pointing my chin at Aasta staring at us with wide, questioning eyes, and Pluck evaporated into nothing, his chill presence winding into a sparking haze that dove for my pocket.
The time in the dark had done him good. “And I think I have a way to catch Thoth without turning this into a shadow massacre.”
Suspicious, the marshal rubbed her hand, hiding her lodestone ring. “How?”
Wanting to talk to Ryan first, I glanced at the stairway, and Cameron’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. Whatever. “Aasta, thank you for forgiving my mistake.”
The shadow-rez waved me off, the swatting-at-flies motion reminding me so much of Darrell that it hurt. “Goodbye, weaver Petra Grady and Petra Grady’s mistake,” she intoned, even as her outline hazed.
Cameron lifted her chin. “My name is Marshal Cameron Owens.”
Aasta’s knotted throw misted at the edges. “Survive Thoth, and perhaps you will deserve a name, mage. But I think he will eat your thoughts, too. You know too much.”
Cameron took a breath to protest, but the shadow within Darrell’s rez seemed to spill out into nothing.
As if a switch had been thrown, the rez was empty.
Soulless eyes filming up as the ghost began to silently weep, a great gash in her forehead trickling blood into her eyes.
The shadow was gone, and the rez was now just a rez.
“Go,” the rez moaned, slumping against the wall of the stage. “I’m sorry. Tell everyone I’m sorry.”
I started for the stairs, the butt of my staff thumping.
Behind me, Darrell’s rez lost all definition and vanished.
After a moment, Cameron began to follow.
“You want to fix the vault and catch Thoth when he comes to break it again?” she guessed.
“I can’t get that past my people. We need that vault working, not as a million-dollar shadow prison. ”
Damn, the woman was smart, and I winced at the harsh squeak as I pulled the stairwell door open. “Agreed. Good thing I have a smaller one available right this moment.”
The marshal was fast behind me, and I jumped when the door slammed loud after her. “The university has an unregistered vault? Seriously?”
“It’s not unregistered. It’s too small to be of any use. It’s likely no one remembers it’s there.” The stairway was ugly with a remembered panic of fleeing survivors, and I kept my gaze on the top, eager to be out of it. “I just hope it’s empty. Thoth might not risk breaking one that’s full.”
She was silent for all of three steps. “You don’t have any control over them, do you.”
Maybe now she would believe me, and I pushed open the door, wincing as the light from the low sun poured in. “No more than anyone has over the night.”