Page 54 of Fortress of Ambrose (House of Marionne #3)

Forty-Three

Quell

I skip breakfast the next morning and find Dexler, who is repairing a section of crumbled wall with a Shifter ring on her finger. Yani is there as well, helping remove debris. She’s supposed to be with Willam…

“There you are,” Dexler says. “I hope you slept well?”

“I slept fine. She’s helping?” I point at Yani.

“Yes, she’s been a huge help. I needed a hand, and the tall, gangly fellow told me she said she could. Thank you.”

I watch Yani restore a threshold over a session room door. She’s covered in sweat and dust. She descends a ladder and moves down the wall to repair another hole.

Dexler watches me, watching her. “It’s alright that she lends a hand, isn’t it? She’s so skilled with Shifting magic.”

“Yes, of course. Also, there is a wall down in the Headmistress’s suite, by the way.”

“Oh yes, I was going to ask if you knew if anyone else here has any Shifter magic. Or Cultivating. I have extra rings.” Dexler speaks with confidence, but the way she holds her shawl around herself says how uncomfortable she finds this arrangement.

First I return with a handful of safe house members. Then I return with a whole lot of them.

“Some of them might have magic. Zecky did, so I am sure.”

Dexler’s eyes darted. “Would you perhaps talk to them? Maybe ask. I don’t get that they like me very much.”

“I’m sure that’s not it. This is all just new.” I pat her shoulder, but she doesn’t appear moved. “I was headed outside to inspect the roses to enhance our defenses. But sure, I can take a moment.”

Dexler leads me to a lounge not far from the dorm wings, where she gathers everyone.

I spot several familiar faces and some I don’t think I’ve ever seen.

Neither Willam nor Knox is here, and that doesn’t give me a good feeling.

The chatter quiets when I stand to speak, and it feels odd having so many attentive eyes on me at once.

“By a show of hands, who can access some kind of magic?”

About half the crowd’s hands rise. “That’s two dozen, at least,” I tell Dexler.

“And you’re sure about this?”

“I know it’s a bit different, Maezre. But they’re here to help.”

“Drawing on toushana count?” someone asks, and Dexler tenses.

“It all counts.”

More hands rise. “Sort them into groups by the type of magic they can access. Shifters will be the most useful, I assume. There’s lots of repair work to be done.” I look for relief in her expression and find some. “I really should get to the gates.”

Dexler waves her hands, directing the crowd to separate their lines so it’s clearer who can do what. Then she hands each a sheet of paper to document their names. Dimara, the twins, and Kedd haven’t moved.

“So what, we’re useless, then?” Dimara says, still sitting across the lounge, nowhere near the lines.

“The landscaping is a nightmare outside,” Jordan’s voice says behind me. “I’ll get you a rake.”

The twins are thrilled, bouncing up from their seats. But Kedd isn’t amused. Dimara sneers, considering her next retort.

“You’re good at cooking, aren’t you? That doesn’t require magic. You can help there.”

“You think I want to be your chef?” She scoffs.

“That’s not what she means, and you know it,” Kedd says, excusing himself with the twins. “I’m going to talk to Willam.”

Dimara drags herself to the line for those without any known magic. Or those who have signs of magic but haven’t yet emerged.

“Have you seen Ube?” Jordan asks. The fellow who stepped up to Jordan’s side at Zecky’s safe house. I did see his face in the crowd. I spot him and his sister, who looks so much like him, in the Shifter line. “He’s a Healer, right?”

“Think so. He and his sister were the only two Zecky brought into my exam room.” He flags him over.

While we’re alone, I turn to him and say, “You left me last night.”

“No, I stayed until morning.”

“Beside me?”

“On the chaise. That counts.”

“Hardly. I’m working on defenses around the estate today,” I tell him.

“I’m getting the extraction team set up.”

“Dinner?”

He adjusts his coat. “Uh, can’t. Not tonight.”

But before I can ask why, Ube joins us.

“You asked for me, sir?”

“I have questions about the extraction procedure. Should we bring your sister?” Jordan asks, as they depart. I’m on their heels when a shoving scuffle breaks out in the non-magical lines. I loosen my clenched fists and step in to break it up.

“What exactly is the problem?” I ask.

“She was trying to get ahead of me in line,” a young fellow from Zecky’s house says.

“He’s lying,” Dimara says. “She said order by first name, and because I know the alphabet, I stepped in front of him.”

“She never said that!”

Dexler tugs at her pearls. “If it’s not this, it’s something else. All night, spats about one thing or another. Willam’s house doesn’t care for Zecky’s. They seem to have very different ideas about coming here.” Fatigue lines Dexler’s eyes.

I scope the room and spot at least three other irritated exchanges about to implode.

There are children climbing the grand piano in the hall outside the lounge and another sticking a bauble from the fireplace mantel in their pocket.

“They have too much time on their hands. They need things to do. Come up with things for them to do. Please.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I don’t know, Maezre. I’m sure you can think of something. You worked so closely with my grandmother for all those years.”

“But I never worked from that perspective, ma’am. I did what I was asked. I’m no Headmistress.”

Her stare burns my skin. “I’m confident you will think of something.

” I set a hand on her shoulder, hoping she knows how much I appreciate her help and how it allows me to focus on keeping magic safe.

“Willam and Knox should be able to help figure out how to keep them occupied. I’ll ask them to find you. ”

Dexler curtsies, and I am finally out of there.

The rose garden is an empty field of dirt. It feels like part of the estate is missing. Something should be planted there. I’ll mention that to Dexler, too. When I make it to the perimeter of the estate, to the outer gate, the roses greet me, blooming wider as they turn in my direction.

I run my fingers across them, pulling at a thread of cold.

Toushana grazes the petals’ tips, and they swell in size.

I blink. It’s the first time I’ve seen my destructive magic do something constructive.

I try releasing more magic. The flower expands, growing unnaturally large, twice the size of my hand, before its petals wither and die, crumbling to ash.

Toushana somehow gives these roses life and kills them.

Odd. The gate dents my periphery, and the sharp spindles run along the edge of the property like spears.

The rose is thorny and sharp, but could other things take on toushana constructively without being destroyed?

The iron spindles of the gate are grimy to the touch.

I stream dark magic to it, fog wrapping around the iron.

And it snaps in half, creating a hole in the gate. One spindle dissolving into ash touches the one beside it, and it crumbles, too. I run toward it with my bare hands, trying to find some way to stop it. But by the time the magic fizzles out, it’s destroyed several feet of the gate.

I claw my skin. I came down here to strengthen our defenses, not destroy them.

The roses.

An idea strikes me, and I scramble to grab the vines of roses now dangling on the ground across where the gate used to be.

If I can multiply them, maybe I can disguise the gap in the gate until I can find a Retentor or Shifter to repair it.

The roses are delicate in my hands. I cup a bloom in my palm and smooth dark wisps of magic across it.

The bloom grows, and the cinch in my chest untwists.

I fill it with enough magic until it’s nearly twice its size.

Then I stop. I don’t want to push my luck this time.

I repeat the process with the thorns, touching them carefully; they grow in size and sharpness, lengthening to deadly tips.

It takes a long while, but once I finish, a tangle of black roses, as thick as the gate, hangs between the broken edges of the gate’s frame.

It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

I need to know more about how the roses work and if there are other ways to use dark magic to help. When I turn to hurry back into the estate, a curtain in an upstairs window flutters.

Someone has been watching me.