Page 15

H er high and mightiness had to wait a few moments while Pritkin and I sorted out something to wear. My armor was a mess of caked earth, mud, and what looked like blood that had solidified and been trapped between the scales in places. I swallowed because it wasn’t mine, and stopped trying to wipe it off until I’d gotten some food and rest, but then, what to wear?

Pritkin left for a good ten minutes, leaving me clad only in the inadequate sandpaper-like towels the Circle had used even before the apocalypse because suffering was a war-mage virtue. And returned with various odds and ends, none of which fit me. We finally settled on matching gray tunics, which, for him, replaced the now tragically stained and shredded T-shirt with the pert witch, and on me was as long as a dress.

Then we went to find Bodil. It wasn’t hard, as she was right down the hall with our original group sans the witches. I was about to ask where they’d gone before I noticed: there seemed to be a party going on.

We walked into a copy of our room, except this one had a feast spread across the bed and half the floor. No, the Circle wasn’t starving, I thought, checking out a platter with only a bunch of fish bones on it because somebody had already stripped off all the flesh. But there were plenty of other options, including a big bowl of dates stuffed with nuts and glistening with honey, a stew with chickpeas, some kind of meat, and tomatoes that Alphonse was currently working on, some chicken wings with grill marks and preserved lemon that Bodil was sucking off the bone, and some little triangle pastries.

I was too busy wondering what was in the latter to look where I was going and almost stepped in another bowl, but Alphonse rescued it just in time.

“Don’t put your foot in the—what is this stuff again?” he demanded, waving around the bowl.

“Kimchi?” I guessed from the smell, but he shook his head, which was back to sleek and black since he’d had a bath, too. I guessed they hadn’t had a tunic to fit him because he was bare-chested, but he had on some gray sweatpants with a long knife he’d come up with somewhere stuck through a sash around his waist.

“You look like a pirate,” I told him and got a cocked eyebrow in return.

“Wanna know what you look like?”

Since I had avoided the mirror specifically because I didn’t want to know, I just shook my head and sat cross-legged beside him on the floor.

“Anyway, I know Kimchi, and that ain’t it.” He sniffed it again. “Something pickled, though. You want some?”

He pushed food at me. Only I wasn’t sure what kind as our group was busy hoovering up the meal, and what was left didn’t look very familiar until Pritkin handed me some hummus. It was swimming in olive oil and spices, practically begging to be sopped up, but whatever bread had been delivered with our feast had gone a long time ago.

I rescued a plate of raw veggies that was about to fall off the edge of the bedspread and used them as hummus delivery devices instead.

“I’m good,” I told Alphonse.

“Not with that shit, you aren’t,” he said. And before I could protest, a glop of something faintly gelatinous landed in the middle of my hummus. “Mutton,” he told me before I could ask. “It’s gone cold, but it’s still good. Eat it. You need the protein.”

“Hummus has protein. It’s made out of chickpeas.”

“Eat. It.”

I was about to argue when I caught a whiff, and despite the unappealing temperature, it smelled—damn. I decided I could express my dislike of being ordered around by my fanged nanny later and ate up. It was so good I practically inhaled it.

“Torshi Liteh,” Pritkin said, pushing the not-Kimchi at me. He’d settled on my other side and already helped himself to some of the stuff in the bowl. “Cooked and smashed aubergine with pickled vegetables. Some people also smoke the aubergine.”

“Aubergine?” I asked, looking at it more hopefully.

“Eggplant.”

“Oh, gimme!”

He did, and it was so wonderful that I had my face buried in my plate for a while in a food fog while the conversation ebbed and flowed around me. The whole place felt weirdly cozy, with the warm light, good smells, and a circle of friends and allies crowded around. My stomach rumbled happily as I stuffed it full, not knowing when I’d get the chance again, and I felt my body relax and almost start to purr.

Of course, that didn’t last.

“Well, I think they have a point!” That was ?subrand, who was the only one who looked like he hadn’t bathed. Despite that, he was far less muddy/sandy than he should have been, as if dirt didn’t like sticking to him, and his long fall of silver hair appeared almost pristine. His face, however, was thunderous. “It’s better than the alternative!”

“That’s a matter for debate,” Bodil said serenely. Besides a few stains on her brown leather armor, she looked much the same, with no marks on that beautiful face. The only sign that anything unusual had happened was that her many braids, which had been grouped into one Rapunzel-like plait, had been separated, probably to get the sand out. She also seemed to like the hummus and was eating through a bowl of it with the pita bread I’d been looking for earlier.

“Then let’s debate it!” ?subrand eyed my largely denuded plate. “Are you finished?”

“No.” Alphonse dumped some more meat on me, and I tore into it.

“I can listen and eat at the same time,” I said, around mouthfuls.

“As you’ve been doing for the past fifteen minutes?” the silver prince demanded with a sneer. “You haven’t heard a damned thing anyone has said!”

“I was hungry—”

“And she’ll be worse than that if we go ahead with your plan!” Enid broke in angrily.

She was wearing a plain gray tunic like me, which wasn’t much different than the slave outfit she’d had on earlier. But as with the other, she made it look like something a couturier would have envied. Her bright red hair had also been washed and was glowing under an orb of spell light set into a wall, with each strand varying slightly in color for a cascade that might have been made out of pure fire.

She looked like a Renaissance painting come to life, and I felt my face soften just from looking at her. When we first met, I’d thought she could have graced the cover of Vogue , but I realized now that I’d been wrong. Vogue wouldn’t have any idea what to do with her.

Their models looked good because of makeup, lighting, and airbrushing the final result to glossy perfection.

Enid didn’t need any of that.

Enid looked better than any airbrushed image, and she wasn’t trying. Even with the facial scarring a jealous fey woman had given her as a child, which she wasn’t wasting magic to hide as we’d all seen it anyway, and with some new abrasions on her chin, probably from fighting her way through the storm, she was stunning. And completely unfazed despite three gods chasing her, pieces of dark mage raining down all around her, and the earth swallowing her whole!

I laughed suddenly; I couldn’t help it.

“What?” Enid asked, turning from glaring at ?subrand to stare at me.

“I know how to pick allies,” was all I said, and for a wonder, I heard Bodil echo my amusement.

“Prince ?subrand is your ally, too,” she admonished mildly. “But we should discuss it.”

“Discuss what?”

“You really haven’t been listening?” Enid asked.

“I ...tend to get focused around food.” I saw it so seldom anymore.

“She’s listening now,” Alphonse said, eyeing me. And then he looked at Pritkin. “You wanna do the honors?”

“No,” Pritkin said, eating mutton stew.

“Yeah, ‘cause you know how much fun this is gonna be,” Alphonse said heavily. “I thought war mages were supposed to be brave.”

“Not a war mage anymore, and this doesn’t take bravery.” Pritkin tilted up his bowl, which appeared to be part stew, part pickled eggplant dish, part couscous, and drained it dry.

“Well, what does it take?” Alphonse demanded.

“Tell her and find out,” Pritkin said, leaning back on one elbow like a man settling in for the after-dinner entertainment.

“Tell me what?” I asked, glancing around. Only to find that everybody suddenly became really interested in their meal, even though most of the spread was now missing.

After a moment, Bodil took the hit and started filling me in. “Jonas Marsden and the others were caught during a raid at their HQ, attempting to steal power from their dark mage counterparts. The one called Caleb was taken while trying to rescue them.”

“The Circle sent one guy?” I asked, surprised. Jonas was their leader. I didn’t know why he’d been on that raid in the first place, but I thought he merited a little more consideration!

“The Circle doesn’t have many left,” was the grim reply.

“It was thought that one man might be able to go unnoticed while a larger group would only get themselves killed,” Pritkin added.

“And they picked Caleb?” Most of the mages I’d seen earlier had looked young, some of them enough so that they might have been born after the Apocalypse. Yet they sent in one of the oldest guys they had left?

“He sent himself,” Pritkin said dryly when I asked. “And he was the best choice. Almost everyone else who knew those tunnels was already inside them.”

“But he was caught—”

“He was set up ,” ?subrand put in, with an odd amount of emphasis. “Something you should—”

He broke off when Bodil shushed him.

I wondered how much longer she was going to be able to control the hot head, but she didn’t appear worried. “That is why they were having such a public execution,” she added. “To lure other Corpsmen there, in an attempt to wipe them out or decrease their numbers enough to render them toothless moving forward.”

“But we crashed the party instead,” Alphonse added. “And gave them a little more than they’d bargained for.”

“What kind of power was worth that much risk?” I asked angrily. If we hadn’t stumbled in there almost by accident, the Corps’ entire leadership might have been wiped out!

“It was the Silver Circle’s power originally,” Bodil said. “Secreted away in recesses the Dark did not know about, and which remained from early in the war.”

“They were trying to develop God-killing weapons and had stockpiled energy for the tests,” Pritkin explained.

I nodded, remembering hearing something about that.

“Did they work?” I asked because it looked like we had a lot of gods to kill.

“The initial tests were promising, but the devices took too much power. They were good for a few blasts, but after that…”

He trailed off, and I winced. I think I knew what happened after that. “So the energy was left over when HQ fell?”

“Apparently.” He looked back at Bodil because he wasn’t taking the fall for whatever was coming.

“So what does the Circle want with it now?” I asked, looking between the two of them. And somehow doubting it was for better wards.

Bodil, in turn, looked at Alphonse, who scowled, and I started getting worried.

“What is it?” I asked, staring at the round-robin involving three of the most forceful personalities I knew.

“The weapons were based on life magic, the same kind the gods use, and that us vamps need to sustain ourselves,” Alphonse finally said. “The other stuff doesn’t really impact ‘em so much; it’s like they shrug it off.”

“They manipulate the physical world,” Pritkin reminded me. “Zeus with his thunderbolts, Poseidon with the sea. Our magic appears to be much the same, just another aspect of the world that they can manipulate.”

“So it doesn’t affect them?” I said.

“It does, but not as much as life magic. That is what they live on, what they use for fuel, what makes up their very bodies. They seem vulnerable to it.”

“So, the Circle was storing up life magic.”

He nodded but didn’t elaborate.

“They wish to change the past as we are trying to do,” Enid said, looking impatiently at the rest of them. “They meant to use the energy to fuel the spells that dark mages have employed for centuries to slip back through time.”

“What?” I said blankly.

“Well, it’s better than trying to fight our way into a fortress guarded by half the damned gods on Earth!” ?subrand exploded.

He’d been all but vibrating in his corner, propped up on a chair between the bed and the wall, and scowling. He hadn’t said much, likely thinking I wouldn’t appreciate his perspective, but it seemed he’d had enough. And now he was leaning forward with those pewter eyes almost glowing with intensity.

“We’ll never get to your heir. I talked to five war mages, and they all say the same. Las Vegas is impossible! It is populated by the creatures we barely escaped from back in Stratford, hundreds of them—”

“Wait. Slow down,” I said.

He didn’t slow down.

“—which makes perfect sense! Marsden always believed you would return; he was waiting for it, pinning all his hopes on it. Do you think the gods—the ones with enough mind left to reason—are any different? They put your heir in the middle of that city as bait , knowing you would go to her if you ever came back. And here you are, ready to fall straight into their trap, just like Mage Caleb! But the Silver Circle learned from their mistake, and they have a better idea—”

“If it involves those damned spells, it isn’t a better idea!” I snapped. “Those things are deadly—”

“There! You see?” ?subrand pointed at me while looking around at the others. “I told you she is reckless—”

“ I’m reckless? Those spells blow people up!”

“—we all saw it back in Stratford. She almost got us killed! And now she would do it again, only in a fruitless quest to reach an heir who cannot even shift, or else she would have already done as we are attempting! This is folly!”

“She also rescued the leader of the light mages and a host of others while you cowered in the dark,” Enid said, because those two really did not get on.

“I was told to stay behind,” ?subrand hissed. “To wait like a woman—”

“Careful,” Bodil murmured.

“—as there were not enough cloaks for everyone, and the witches would not stay back! They did not trust her, and I am beginning to see why!”

“You see nothing,” Enid said, and would have said more, but he cut her off.

“And you—who are you to have a say in any of this? You’re no warrior! You should be in the kitchens—”

“ I’m no warrior?” An incandescent half-mermaid was across the bed and in his face faster than any of us could blink. “I was there , following them through the crowd!”

“What?” I asked again because, apparently, I’d missed more than I realized.

“She wouldn’t stay put,” Bodil said. “And it was easier to see through her eyes than yours. That cloak interfered with my link to you.”

“So you sent her in there alone?”

“I sent her nowhere. She didn’t ask,” Bodil said dryly. “I merely used the opportunity—”

“The necessity, you mean,” ?subrand said, gesturing at me. “Or she would have left us all behind!”

But Enid wasn’t done, and she bristled whenever he opened his mouth. “I was there ,” she repeated. “When the blood rained down, and the bones cracked like thunder, and the odds were impossible, just impossible, against us!” She turned shining eyes on me that I didn’t deserve, but Enid was lost in outraged admiration and didn’t notice. “I was there when she braved it all and got them out, leading us to victory—”

“Victory?” ?subrand gestured savagely around. “Does this look like victory to you?”

“It’s a step—”

“Yes, farther away from her goal, and thank the gods for it—”

“What gods?” she snarled. “The ones trying to kill us? The ones who destroyed your world and are doing the same thing here? Who would end our lives without a thought because we don’t matter to them, never did, never will?”

She turned on me again, and her face told me everything about who Enid had chosen to worship instead, which was making me feel sick and squirmy and wrong. “I’ll put my trust in Cassie. She’s gotten us this far!”

“Yes, into another hole in the ground, only at least in this one, they have some sense!” ?subrand said and savagely ate lamb at us.

I looked from him to Bodil, partly to evade Enid’s going-to-be-disappointed-any-minute-now face and partly because Bodil had been eavesdropping on the Circle since we got here; I knew she had. Which meant that her info was likely better than whatever the haughty prince had been able to get out of the local boys.

“What exactly are they planning?” I asked. “They have to know those spells end in tragedy almost every single time. They’re the ones who made the laws against using them!”

“And for good reason, it seems,” she agreed. “They have been trying this strategy for decades whenever they amassed enough power. None of the mages who volunteered to make the attempt were heard from again. It is assumed that they did not survive the process.”

“Most don’t!”

“But Marsden thinks you will be different. You are Pythia, or you were. You have made many such jumps before—”

“With the Pythian power, which I don’t currently have!”

—and while he heard from Mage Pritkin that your power no longer works, you still know the Pythian spells. You don’t have to use the dangerous ones as they have been. He thinks if they provide you with enough energy, you can make it—”

“Do they have any idea how much power the Pythian spells take?” I demanded. “It’s a lot more than anything they’re familiar with! And provide me how? Did they get their stores out of HQ?”

“No, there was no time, as you saw.”

Bodil’s serene, Nefertiti-on-tranks vibe didn’t change, yet something did. I could see it on the faces of those around me, feel it in my gut, almost taste it in the air suddenly, like an electric tingle. Whatever Jonas was planning, I wasn’t going to like it.

“Pritkin?” I looked at him.

“It’s been fifty years, Cassie,” he said quietly, pale lashes sweeping down to hide vivid green eyes. “Fifty long years and the old man has been holding on for one thing and one thing only—the chance that you would return. That’s all he can see after his days with Lady Phemonoe,” he added, talking about my predecessor, “or from his interactions with you. How easily the Pythias travel through time, as casually as anyone else might hail a cab—”

“You’re stalling,” I said, equally quietly, because Pritkin never stalled. He was one of the most forthright people I knew, so yeah. This was bad.

“No, I’m trying to make you understand how it came to this—”

“Came to what? ” I was out of patience, and yeah. My gut was definitely cramping now. “What is he planning to do, because I know he doesn’t have the power for a Pythian shift. None of them do!”

“Individually, no, but together?” He finally looked up at me, and, to his credit, he didn’t flinch. “He thinks they might. Which is why he is willing to sacrifice the remaining Corpsmen, and allow you to drain every war mage he has left to give you the power you need.

“To go home.”