Chapter 26 #3
His expression sour, Pluck leaned past me to take my hand and put it in Benedict’s. Again, fizzed through me, and I exhaled once more, using a single thread of dark matter to cast out and find…Benny.
Again Benedict started, his hand in mine spasming.
“Shadow spit,” he whispered, and his light went out as he stared into the water.
“Is that dross down there?” His gaze came to me, flicking to Pluck and back.
“It’s beautiful.” He looked at the ceiling and the rippling reflection.
“I—I’m seeing…” he stammered, and then his attention fell to me.
“Is this what the world looks like to you? My God. I’m blind. ”
I winced, embarrassed that I had made him feel less. “No, you’re not.”
Brow furrowed, Benedict looked at our joined hands before turning his attention to Pluck, the shadow decidedly listless as he threw pebbles into the water. “How?”
Pluck rolled a pebble between two fingers, and the rock vanished behind a swirl of black. “It’s a shadow skill,” he said softly.
Benedict’s grip on my fingers tightened, and the shadow chuckled darkly.
“Relax, favored mage,” he said, then flicked the rock.
“Our Petra is not a shadow. But she’s not a weaver, either.
Since Thoth damaged her, she’s begun to use her other senses, like a blind man.
If it helps, you can think of her as an etherologist.”
“Manipulating ether is a mage skill,” Benedict said.
The stone Pluck threw hit the water with an ungraceful sploot. “She’s not a mage.”
“But dross is breaking on her like she is one.” Benedict’s gaze lifted from our twined fingers. “You have lost the ability to fix dross inert. If that’s not a mage—”
I shook my head. “I’m not a mage. I don’t know what I am.”
“I do,” a familiar raspy voice rang out, and both Benedict and I jumped, spinning to see Darrell standing between us and the way out. The beads on her tightly coiled locks clinked faintly like a lost memory, but it wasn’t Darrell, it was Aasta.
“Shadow spit,” I swore, shifting to include the shadow. “We need to put a bell on you.”
Benedict’s fingers reluctantly slipped from mine. “Aasta,” he said in respect, but the vision of my old mentor ignored him.
“I see you found your war uniform,” the shadow said sourly to Pluck, and he grimaced.
“You have seen this before? What is she?” Pluck asked, and my breath caught.
Aasta pointed a finger at me. “She gave sight to a mage, but she’s not shadow. She can’t turn dross inert, so she’s not a sweeper. Dross breaks on her—she is no weaver.”
“We know what she isn’t,” Benedict complained, and I twined my fingers in his again.
“She got you into a form that can verbalize,” Aasta continued. “Making her capable of miracles. She’s something new. New might be able to catch Thoth. Let me…”
I pulled away as she reached for me. “No.” I didn’t want her to touch me, and both Pluck and Benedict stiffened in warning.
Aasta’s hand dropped, and she twisted my mentor’s face into a familiar expression of annoyance.
“We can’t even try until we secure five balanced sticks,” Benedict said. “Without access to Professor Brown’s lab, it will take at least a week to make them. We can’t hide down here for a week.”
Well, Pluck could, but the rest of us?
“You don’t have a week.” Aasta’s gaze went to the opening at the ceiling. “Thoth is making you dance on his string, take the blame for his actions. The more you delay, the better his manipulation.”
They are here, Pluck said suddenly, and I followed his gaze to the rockslide.
The sounds so faint I wondered if I was perceiving their voices through Pluck, I heard Cameron and Lev arguing. “They’re back,” I said, and Benedict’s shoulders pulled out of their worried slump.
“We should probably get up there.” Benedict stood and extended a hand to help me up. Pluck evaporated, flowing like a snake over and up the rubble to vanish after Aasta. Not a single rock shifted under either of them.
“Go on ahead,” I said somewhat sarcastically. “We’ll catch up.”
Benedict chuckled as we followed, carefully picking our way through the chunks of concrete. “Is everything okay with Pluck?” he said softly. “He looks a little depressed.”
“He is.” I let go of Benedict so I could half crawl, half walk up the fallen concrete. “I, ah, found out the reason he doesn’t take a human form often.”
Benedict’s eyebrows were high when I reached the opening and turned. He was right behind me. “Which is?” he prompted.
“He went to war in it.” It was a gross simplification, but a distant agreement fizzed through me and I felt better.
“Oh.”
I was first through, and I waited, listening to Lev and Cameron argue as Benedict wedged his wider shoulders past the opening to stand beside me. Together, we half slid, half walked down the crumbling pile until we found solid ground again.
“They’re at it already,” Benedict said as we followed the beckoning light until we reached the front stage.
Herm saw us immediately, the older man giving Marty a comforting pat on the shoulder before leaving her sitting in the front row to make his arthritic-slow way to the stage’s stairs.
Her amulet felt heavy in my pocket, and I gave her a distant smile, wondering at her worried expression.
That is, until I noticed Pluck lurking under her chair… almost as if in…protection?
Aasta was nowhere to be seen, but Darrell’s rez lurked among the chairs by the ceiling, the soft, mindless litany making eerie hisses of memory against the dusty walls.
“Then we find her,” Lev said, his back to us. “And beat the truth out of her.”
My eyes shot to Marty. No wonder Pluck is underneath her.
“Is that your answer to everything?” Cameron said. Next to her on the stage was a small military task bag. She’d changed, too, looking sharp in black jeans and a leather jacket. “Beat it out of her? No wonder you washed out.”
Herm looked embarrassed as he gave me a quick hug. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here,” I said. “Is Professor Brown okay?”
“Fine.” Herm’s wrinkles slid into each other as he frowned. “The university is watching him, but he’s pleading the Fifth as to you being in his lab. He’ll be okay.” Herm gave Benedict a nod in greeting. “Well done for evading Dana. Both of you.”
But it didn’t feel well-done, apart from our goose being cooked.
“I didn’t wash out.” Lev dropped a worn knapsack noisily on the stage. “I chose not to be the courts’ dumb muscle.”
Fist on her hip, Cameron furrowed her brow. “I don’t like the way you said that.”
Herm ran a hand over his head in exasperation. “Can you two romance each other later? That stick is still at Dana’s apartment. We need to decide if it’s worth another go.”
“Oh!” Lev’s face reddened as he looked at the woman sitting meekly in the first row of chairs. “That’s right. Marty.” His eyes narrowed. “You set us up, you little liar.”
“I didn’t set you up.” Marty stiffened when Lev strode forward, his intent clear.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Cameron jerked the man to a halt. “It wasn’t her.”
“Why? Because she said so? Seriously?” Lev reached for his lodestone.
“It wasn’t me.” Marty cringed, starting when she realized Pluck was under her.
“Knock it off, Lev!” I shouted, immediately regretting it. Voices carried, and anyone might be in the garden. “Marty didn’t give us away. Pluck was with her when Dana showed.”
Lev jerked out of Cameron’s grip, his expression livid. “You’re both siding with her?” he said, making the last word an insult. “Help me out here, Herm.”
Herm chuckled. “Dana has her people out with the sweepers collecting dross. Anyone could have seen us going into the building,” he said, and Lev glowered.
“I’m not siding with anyone,” Cameron said with a huff. “But you will not browbeat Marty because she’s an easy target. Ben says she was being held prisoner as much as Pluck.”
Stymied, Lev dropped back a step. He looked mean in his frustration, but I was starting to understand Pluck’s self-recrimination. This wasn’t Lev, or rather, it wasn’t the man that Lev wanted to be. This was what anger had pushed him into—and he would regret it. Like Pluck.
“Are you and Pluck okay?” Herm said, startling me out of my thoughts when he touched my elbow. Cameron and Lev had begun to argue again, and I leaned against the side of the stage.
“More or less,” I said, not having any hurts to catalog. “Pluck is depressed. Dana had him in a bottle. Benedict and I got him out.”
“No!” Herm said, aghast as he found Pluck under Marty’s chair, and a green haze lifted and fell from the shadow as if in agreement.
“He thinks he overreacted to Marty running away. Personally, I think he exhibited an enormous amount of restraint. They had guns, and I had her amulet.”
But Pluck’s fizzing in me was faint, as if he’d closed himself off again.
“I’m glad she’s unhurt,” Herm said, and I flicked an annoyed glance at Lev and Cameron arguing. “This probably doesn’t help,” he added.
“This is a waste of time,” Lev said loudly. “Cameron, do your Vulcan thing and find out if Marty is lying.”
“Seriously, Lev?” Clearly not liking his callousness, Cameron gave Marty a weak smile. “We can make a new stick.”
Herm ran a nervous hand over his chin. “If we had access to a lab and materials. Lev, doesn’t the militia have some sort of workshop we can tap into?”
“Ah, I’m not comfortable going to the militia,” Benedict said, and both Lev and Cameron looked up, their argument forgotten.
I pushed off from the side of the stage as their voices twined together in persuasion, Lev and Cameron finding common ground in arguing with Benedict.
The sun was giving me a headache, and I went to sit with Marty in a show of support.
So she tried to run away. So what? The woman had been thrown into the deep end of the pool with a leaky air float.
That didn’t make her a pariah. It made her human.