Page 18

18

A bright sun beat over the Black Market. Mystery Row was quiet, or as quiet as it ever could be. Distant noises of haggling and barter and conversation, the clatter and clack of merchandise in the central bazaar. Good. Better than cries of pain or fear.

“The Chrysanthemysts haven’t spread here,” I said, shaking my hands at the wrists, trying to get the tingle of teleportation magic out of my fingers. “Not yet, at least.”

Xander shook his head. “Or maybe that was Gertrude’s plan all along. Corrupt the Palace of Briars, siphon its energy for herself.”

“Her plans , I think. She’s been playing the long game, Xander. It’s all connected. She was involved in the first blast at the Halls of Making, too. I’m sure of it. And I just hit on something at the wedding. You were the catalyst for what could have been an explosion. Who were they testing with when the arcane engine caused the first accident?”

Xander’s mouth fell open. Before he could answer, Hecate’s portal hummed and shimmered. Niko and Sedgewick stepped out, followed by Reza, their hair and clothes in disarray from the battle.

“Whoa. Okay.” I held my hands up, ushering them back toward the portal. “It’s really cool of you guys to come, but the Palace of Briars — ”

“Is going to be just fine without us,” Reza said. “Honestly, Jack. They’ve got the King of the Summer Court and a goddess of magic back there. I don’t think anyone’s going to miss us.”

He’d sobered up impressively quick for someone who was just drunkenly double-fisting petit fours not a half hour ago. Sedgewick was weaving patterns with his fingers, casting some complicated spell, his eyes shut tight. Niko was casting something complex of his own, his fingers leaving translucent lines in the air.

“Beatrice and Preston stayed to help with the wounded,” Niko said. “And we’d love to be part of the action, but Sedgewick and I are here to make sure the Black Market hasn’t been attacked either. The masters are on their way. Eleanor Grouse, too. And she’s pissed.”

Niko clapped his hands sharply. Magic cascaded from his body as glass tinkled, more of his camera drones manifesting around his shoulders. He threw his arms out and the glass drones zoomed away in all directions, speeding down the Black Market’s streets. Sedgewick finished his spell with a click of his fingers. He opened his eyes, now turned into twin spheres of flame.

“We’ll ‘see’ you boys later,” Sedgewick said with a tight smile, running off into town with Niko.

“It’s a sort of remote viewing spell,” Reza explained. “Looks creepy as hell, but it lets him sense the environment through candles he’s sold around the Black Market. Not actually see things, mind you. That would be especially creepy.”

“Like the Memory of Fire,” Xander muttered. “The spell I used to help find the source of the Fever.”

I clenched my jaw. I remembered all too well. The Fever was spreading throughout the arcane underground and no one could figure out exactly why. Xander had been infected himself, coming so close to burning out. I remembered wanting to punish whoever was responsible.

Twice now Gertrude Goodness had placed Xander’s life at risk. To think that the perpetrator had been right under our noses from the start. We gave Master Lobelia so much shit for wanting to study the Chrysanthemysts back then. If only we’d thought to suspect the master of a different guild.

The portal warbled again, its surface rippling like a pond disturbed by a pebble. Out stepped the Summer Knight, resplendent in her ceremonial armor. It had a few new nicks and gouges from the fight, but she was none the worse for wear.

“King Oberon has instructed me to assist you in any way I can. You have my blade, gentlemen.”

Xander clapped her on the shoulder. “We’ll take all the help we can get.”

We hurried onward, taking a moment to swing by the Pryde house and pick up the Gauntlet. I was far more useful in a scrap with my weapon of choice, and I could already guess that this was going to be a dangerous battle. We’d only seen a fraction of what Gertrude Goodness could do in a fight, summoning those strange desserts of hers and turning them into sentient, deadly creatures — acidic jelly, fiery chocolate cake.

Her weapons were just a parallel of who she was: soft and innocuous on the outside, deadly in truth. I didn’t know how else to describe someone who could be cruel enough to work with Queen Titania to spread the Fever and the Chrysanthemysts. And to detonate so many of those flowers in a crowded place, with the intent to harm so many vulnerable people? Pure evil.

We encountered no resistance at Mother Dough headquarters, no guild members setting up barricades, not even a hint of someone rearing for a fight. I’d almost expected for us to have to lay siege to the building. It was business as usual, bakers and guild members going about their day, the giant cottage-like HQ smelling of sugar and bread.

This was how Gertrude always operated, then, under cover of her gleaming reputation, pulling the strings from behind the scenes. You could cover anything up with the right attitude and a bright smile. That smile leered at us from every workshop, from every bakery window we passed, Gertrude’s grinning face printed on every box, every paper bag.

And that was why she was so confident about her machinations. Who would believe us when Gertrude Goodness, Mother Dough herself had such a stellar reputation? Who would ever accuse a sweet old granny of anything more sinister than accidentally using a cup of salt when the recipe called for a cup of sugar?

Even the corridor to her office was quiet. Strangest of all was the complete absence of any of her brass automatons. There was supposed to be a brass dog guarding her door at all times, wasn’t there? Brutus was nowhere in sight. Instead, hanging on a hook at approximately knee level was a sign that said “Out to lunch.”

I tested the door knob. Unlocked. I glanced at the others, nodding firmly to signal preparedness. I turned the knob and pushed the door open, unsure of what to expect. I certainly wasn’t expecting Gertrude Goodness to be sitting at her desk, hands folded, smiling in greeting.

“We missed you at the reception,” I told her, my fingers unclenched as I let my Gauntleted arm dangle by my hip. A threat, a loaded weapon.

Gertrude grinned wider and shrugged. “Oh, you know how it is. Guild business and all. You’ll find out for yourself once you become a guild master, Jackson Pryde. If you survive to become one, that is.”

I held my arm out as Xander lunged forward. He hissed through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare threaten him. We know what you did, Gertrude. This isn’t going to end well for you.”

The smile never fell from her face. “That remains to be seen. How lucky of me to receive such illustrious guests in my office. The handsome newlyweds, a high-ranking SEER officer, and the Knight of the Summer Court herself.”

Sparrowheart placed one hand on the pommel of her sword, still sheathed in its scabbard. “It was you, then. You and Titania spread the scourge of the Chrysanthemysts throughout the Summer Court. Are you aware of how many you’ve killed, Master Gertrude? How many lives you’ve ruined?”

“Queen Titania had the right attitude for it, at least at the start. We were supposed to pull the strings from the background, her spreading her Chrysanthemysts in the Verdance, me quietly scattering the seeds out here on Earth. They’re so pretty, aren’t they? Like violet sugar. Like iridescent candy sprinkles.”

Something shivered down my spine. This was the first I’d really noticed how Gertrude Goodness wasn’t completely all there. That grin, her fascination with the corrupted flowers — something inside her had fractured. No wonder we never noticed her involvement. She’d gotten so good at pretending.

“Why did you think that something this public would work?” Xander said. “You’re much too smart for that. You had nothing to gain and everything to lose.”

“Everything?” Gertrude Goodness laughed. “Surely not everything. I’ve spent decades building up Mother Dough’s reputation, both the guild and myself as its beloved figurehead. Who would the arcane underground believe, I ask you? The sweet old woman on every loaf of bread and box of doughnuts, or the newlyweds who are so famously explosive in their individual ways?”

“But it all leads back to you,” I said, carefully measuring my temper. I definitely didn’t miss that indirect hit on my parents and the blast at the Halls of Making. My fists clenched tighter. “Who else could have stuffed an entire wedding cake with explosive eggs? Who else but you could have had access?”

Gertrude blinked. “Why, your good friend Lore, of course. Lawrence Pryde. Surely you’ve heard of a rogue AI before, a sentient computer gone berserk. Didn’t your family’s second AI already do the same, partially destroying the Halls of Making? Past precedent. It’s so obvious, and so very convenient. Why did you think I allowed Lore to enter my guild in the first place?”

I didn’t think I could get any angrier. Heat and tension seized my chest. Lore was so excited to become an actual member of Mother Dough, the closest thing he’d ever come to being truly accepted as part of our community, the closest thing to personhood. And she wasn’t wrong about Whitby’s malfunction, but that was an aftereffect of the accident. We couldn’t blame him.

But everyone else would. Gertrude was right. No one would ever believe us over her.

“All this deception,” I said, steadying my breath, taking care not to erupt. “That meant everything to Lore, and you did it just to try and maim everybody at our wedding. You’ve been lying to us all this time. All of us. To what end? What have we ever done to you?”

Gertrude Goodness raised her eyebrows. “To you? Goodness gracious, dear Jackson. This has nothing to do with you. I’m quite fond of you and Xander, in fact. And Lore, and the young Belkova boy, and all the rest. But this is bigger than all of you. Much bigger. This is about the Black Market and its future.”

Xander grunted as he squeezed his fists, almost as if he’d meant to throttle her from afar. “What does that even mean? What does trying to kill us have to do with the Black Market?”

“It was never meant to kill you, you know. The arcane engine.”

The room went deathly silent. The blaze of anger in my heart turned freezing cold.

“Then why?” Xander asked, taking a slow step forward. “What else was all this chaos supposed to accomplish?”

She placed her hands on her desk, pushing as she rose from her chair. All pretense of sweetness had drained from her face. The bright smiles and twinkling eyes I’d once associated with Mother Dough weren’t there anymore. This was a different side of Gertrude Goodness all together. This was the real her.

“Don’t you find the boulevard portal so inconsistent? We’re at its mercy whether we’re waiting for it to shift destinations to buy supplies in certain cities or to sell our wares. It’s what makes the Black Market tick, is it not? How our portal offers a gateway to a different nation, a different city, inviting more merchants and more shoppers to shift in and out of the dimension as they please. For peace and for profit, yes?”

There she went again, her maddening tendency to answer questions with more questions. I would have gladly taken Hecate and her cryptic riddles over this.

“But how boring to have to wait for the portal to switch to the correct destination. What if we miss out on a chance to snap up a bulk bargain on, say, sugar? And I do mean bulk. Warehouses and warehouses of it in Brazil, for example, and how easy to bring all of that sweetness in through the portal — except, oh, the portal happens to be set to somewhere in Germany. Just an example.”

I snorted. “Sounds personal. Sounds like you want to bend the Black Market to your will, all because you missed a sweet deal.”

“Hmph. It’s far more serious than that. Now what if we could instantly select the Black Market’s destination? What if we could control the portal at will?”

Reza scoffed. “At whose will? Yours? And it would take a massive amount of power to redirect the Black Market in that way. Immense. You’d need some sort of — ”

He trailed off, but Xander picked up the thread. “An arcane engine.”

Gertrude’s eyes crinkled and twinkled when she smiled. She tapped the end of her nose. “Clever boy. Except that we could never get it to work. Not this time, and not in the past.”

“The blast,” I breathed. “The first explosion. So you were involved after all. My parents — you lied to me, Gertrude. Did they even know what they were doing for you?”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. The Prydes were bright, I’ll give you that. But who would ever believe that Gertrude Goodness would have something sinister on her mind? Not little old me.”

Gertrude seemed to shrink very slightly, her shoulders rounding, her face kinder and brighter. There was no magic at play here, only the manipulative wiles of a monster.

“You killed my parents. You killed all those artificers.”

She slammed her fist on the table. I flinched.

“Don’t be so foolish. You’re more like your parents than you think. But perhaps they weren’t in the wrong, after all. They told me that the device wasn’t quite ready to transmit so much power. It wasn’t quite ready to receive its first test subject.”

My blood ran cold. Xander’s hand closed around my wrist. I couldn’t tell if he’d done it to lend me support or to ask for it. He spoke in a small, slow voice.

“Who tested the arcane engine first?”

All expression vanished from Gertrude’s face. No sinister leer, no cheery smile. She turned her eyes on Sparrowheart, meeting her gaze.

“I had a daughter, once. You look very much like her.”

The room went deathly quiet, at least until Xander spoke again.”You’re a monster.”

Gertrude’s laughter was hollow, a bell without its clapper. “A monster? Perhaps I am. But I only ever wanted the best for the Black Market, you understand. For peace and for profit. I only wanted the best for its guilds.”

“And with you as supreme leader,” I spat. “You calling all the shots. For all your plans, where has any of this actually gotten you? My parents are dead. Your daughter, too. Where does this end?”

“It should have ended with your wedding. The Chrysanthemysts would have triggered a new spread of infection, taking root in the Court of Summer. At the Palace of Briars, too, with so many of the high fae in attendance. So much power I could have siphoned, turning the Summer Court into violet glass. That was my backup plan, another way to power the Black Market’s portal. Why stop at the world’s nations? Why not travel to other dimensions entirely? If only Titania hadn’t failed so spectacularly on her end of the bargain.”

Sparrowheart drew her sword, her blade singing as she unsheathed it. “You will not get away with this, you foul creature. By my hand or by Reza Arshad’s, you will meet justice.”

“Oh, but I will. Tell me, Reza. Do you remember my story about the Crucible?”

He frowned. “What Crucible? Don’t try to distract us now. Gertrude Goodness, I hereby place you under arrest, in the name of — ”

“My, oh, my. It appears you misremember. And wasn’t it just the other day that you and Jackson and I were here in my office discussing it?” Gertrude grinned, tapping the side of her chin. “I wonder what it was that made you forget.”

I tightened my fist. The teapot. “You laced your tea with — with something. I didn’t drink it, but that’s why Reza’s all messed up. You wanted us to forget that we came to talk to you about Giuseppe. But that means — Giuseppe. The bread.”

She tapped her nose again. “Very good, Jackson. Very clever boy. Old Giuseppe and I, why, we go way back. I’d asked him to tune the original version of the arcane engine — you know, the one that destroyed the Halls of Making? Your parents didn’t think it was prepared to channel quite so much power, so I kindly asked Giuseppe to remove the limiter. I must have underestimated the depth of my daughter’s magical essence. What a powerful mage she was. Truly, the thought of it makes a mother proud.”

Murder. Mother . Whitby’s words came screaming back in my head. All this time, he’d remembered the most crucial bits of the experiment, only the links connecting them were blown away in the blast. She had Giuseppe make tweaks to our version of the engine as well — tweaks that he promptly forgot. Tweaks that almost killed Xander.

“The bread was to make him forget,” she continued. “Scouring flour, I call it. Scrubs out the inside of the mind as well as a wire brush. All those years of feeding him successfully erased all the memories, but I’ve learned to refine the formula, turn it into liquid, as you’ve seen with my tea. And once I feed the four of you, you’ll forget all of this, too. It’ll be simple. I’ll have you apprehended for attacking me in my office. Poor, old, innocent Gertrude Goodness.”

I jabbed a finger at my temple. “You’ve truly lost it if you think any of us will agree to eat anything.”

She blinked in mock surprise. “‘Agree?’ How humorous. Who said anything about agreeing? I intend to force-feed my scouring formula to all four of you. And if you resist — well, a story about me killing you in self-defense would be just as believable.”

Something clicked. Reza had unholstered his gun. “Take her alive.”

Sparrowheart’s sword burst into flames. “I’ll take her head, thank you kindly.”

Gertrude laughed bitterly. “You’re welcome to try. I should have mentioned — Giuseppe can be forgetful, but he can be so useful when he applies himself. I had him make some modifications on other existing examples of artifice.”

Her gaze slanted ever so slowly, her eyes moving from our faces as she turned to look at her beloved Crucible.

My stomach clenched. “The oven. Everyone, get behind me!’

A flurry of metallic tentacles rushed from the back of the room, each one emanating from the accursed oven. Gods above and below — just like Lore and Whitby. Small mercy that this thing wasn’t sentient, not quite an AI. At least not that we knew of.

Reza opened fire. Sparrowheart slashed. Metal clanged as they deflected the appendages, at least a pair for each of us to deal with.

“Gladio!” Xander shouted, a sword shimmering into existence in the air above him, parrying the tentacle heading straight for his neck.

“Break!” I cried, aiming a punch directly at a tentacle, blowing it apart with a burst of arcane energy. The appendage twitched as it disintegrated into a pile of white-hot scrap metal. I pumped my fist in celebration, the Gauntlet still blazing with energy.

I should have looked out for the second tentacle.

With snapping pincers and a python grip it wrested at my arm, shredding the leather and squeezing so tight I could feel the Gauntlet’s inner workings warping, breaking. Any tighter and it would be my bones breaking next. I clenched my teeth, aching to shout another command word, except the Gauntlet was too close, pointing the wrong way. I’d only blast my own face off.

The tentacle’s pincers dug into my skin. The coil squeezed. I screamed.

“Terra!”

A boulder rocketed out of thin air, conjured into being by Xander’s magic, smashing the tentacle into several shivering pieces. My hand hung limply at my side, the Gauntlet now in useless tatters. At least I was alive.

“At least you’re safe,” Xander breathed, preparing another spell.

I mouthed my thanks, but my mouth fell completely open when my eyes followed the tentacles to their source. Was the Crucible’s grate open a minute ago? And why was the fire inside it burning white hot?

Slashing my arm desperately away from the oven, I motioned for the others to retreat. “It’s going to blow!”

“We need backup here,” Reza shouted, speaking into a panel of light glowing from the palm of his hand.

I gazed at my own hand miserably, still feeling the twinge of pain from the tentacles. But it was nothing compared to the sting of my ego. The Gauntlet. She’d broken the Gauntlet, and not just any ordinary way. She’d used something my parents created to destroy my greatest invention.

“Arma grandia,” Xander and Reza shouted in unison. Twin bubbles of red light gleamed around us, the amplified version of the Grayhaven shielding spell hardening us against total incineration.

Sparrowheart raised her forearm. Without uttering a single word a flurry of metallic leaves sprouted from her armor, doubling and doubling again until they’d formed into a radiant shield. Light as a feather, as strong as steel. The Summer Knight turned her shoulder against the oncoming flames, her shield in the shape of a gleaming golden leaf.

I had to get in on this, too. Couldn’t embarrass the artificers.

“Barrier,” I shouted, somehow forgetting that the Gauntlet was now a ruined twist of leather and exposed wire. Never mind that. I could still protect my friends. I still had my prismatic talent. If I could absorb the horrific energies of a Xander-powered arcane engine, I could survive anything.

Fire rushed in a suffocating wave from the jaws of the Crucible, like a mouth to hell itself. I could barely hear myself screaming over the dragon’s roar of the flames.

I definitely heard the shattering of our two Arma spells. I definitely felt the searing pain of arcane fire as it ran over my skin and threatened to cook my flesh.

But within moments the agony passed, a cooling sensation coursing through my body. I registered the touch of Xander’s hand against my nape. A small favor for his husband, a tiny, constant infusion of the Glacia spell.

“Thanks,” I breathed, relieved that the fire had passed.

How Gertrude’s kitchen had survived her oven’s explosion, I couldn’t guess. Enchanted to protect against fire, perhaps. But even more infuriating was how Gertrude still stood leering before us, unburnt and unharmed.

“And how the hell did you survive that?” I shouted.

“If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

She was also magically protected against fire, maybe even the other elements. It made practical sense for someone who spent half her life in the kitchen to insulate herself against extreme temperatures, perhaps electricity, too.

But there was one thing I just knew she wasn’t resistant to.

Gertrude chuckled. “And that was only the first blast, gents. Your parents truly were so talented, Jackson. Are you ready for more?”

I gritted my teeth, knowing that she was taunting me deliberately, hating that I kept falling for it every time.

“Nah,” Xander said, cool and casual. “I don’t think so.”

I didn’t quite hear the spell word he used. It sounded like he’d spoken in four voices all at once. Xander threw his arms forward, a twisting coil of elemental power blasting from his fingertips.

Jagged shards of rock blazed with ropes of fire. Wicked icicles crackled with arcs of electricity. All four elements swirled and whistled through the air, then struck the Crucible’s gaping mouth with a thunderclap that shook the room. The Crucible cracked, then split in half, the metal blackened, its fire instantly extinguished.

“No!” Gertrude screeched. “The Crucible!”

Xander’s gamble had paid off. He’d pierced the Crucible’s protection by overloading it with all the elements at the same time. But I had my own ideas about overcoming something’s protection.

Or someone’s.

A cylindrical object had rolled its way to the side of my boot. In one quick motion, I lunged for the ground. Gertrude’s eyes went huge as I leapt forward and bashed her in the head with a rolling pin.

Gertrude Goodness toppled like a tree and crashed to the floor, unconscious.

“Oh, gods,” Xander breathed. “Jack, you just killed her.”

I nudged her with my boot. “No way. Evil like her doesn’t die that easy. And anyway, you’d think she would have cast her own kind of shielding spell.”

Sparrowheart scoffed. “She should consider herself lucky. I had every intention of taking her head off her shoulders.”

“Okay, everyone.” Reza raised his hands, positioning himself between the three of us and Gertrude’s body. “We’re not chopping a guild master’s head off today. My people will take it from here.”

“That’s if they ever get here. Fight’s over. Good job, SEER.” I threw my hands up in frustration, then winced from the sting of my hand. My poor Gauntlet. But that was fine. I was an artificer. The Gauntlet, I could fix.

Sounds of distress echoed down the corridor to Gertrude’s office. Someone in guild headquarters had finally noticed the commotion. I dropped my rolling pin. It clattered and rolled somewhere under a cabinet.

Let the guild members come and find their master passed out on the floor. We had SEER, the Summer Court, and justice on our side. I wrapped my arm around Xander’s shoulder and pressed a sweaty kiss against his cheek.

The first person through the door was not, in fact, a Mother Dough member, but a small brass bulldog. Brutus waddled in, a paper bag gripped between his teeth. The remains of his lunch, perhaps, a literal doggie bag. His jaw fell, and so did the doggie bag.

“What the hell happened in here?”