A Study In Ashes Part 30

Holmes grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the dairy barn. Snapped back to herself, she heard the thunder of the guards' heavy boots. A shot fired, alerting the others who were watching the yard. Deep, angry shouts filled the night.

Part of Evelina was aware that this was a problem, that she needed to get to cover so Holmes could use his rifle and protect them both. But the rest of her was still drunk with magic. The guardsmen were nothing; she'd already proven that. She swept her arm, using the ambient power to knock their pursuers flat to the ground. With an oath, Holmes grabbed her by the scruff and dragged her away before the men got up again. Shots whizzed past them, and Holmes turned to fire, but she barely noticed, because the magic of the others had entranced her again.

Evelina flickered in and out of awareness, feeling her feet run and her hands dig into the cold earth as she scrambled across the ruins and up the hill-but her consciousness strained to join the spell. They're raising the devas. I need to help them. She wondered what the spirits in these parts would do. Folk magic depended on the devas agreeing to help, but the moors might not be easy to convince.

Whenever she lagged, her uncle pushed her on. Holmes wouldn't let her rest until they'd reached the cairn at the top of the hill. She knew he'd chosen it as a good place to shoot from, but she could feel the ancient power radiating from the stones. It had been a place of worship for the first men who walked these lands, and old magic clung to it still. Holmes shoved her down and she went to her hands and knees, her awareness digging deep into the roots of the rock.

Below, she could see a few dozen devas had answered the call and were flickering over the laboratory buildings. The guards milled about in confusion, unable to pursue Evelina and Holmes, and unable to tell that it was a cloud of tiny spirits that turned them back every time they tried. But that wasn't enough to cleanse the labs from the face of the earth.

And then Evelina understood why they needed the dark magic-and it wasn't just so she could reconnoiter the cells. Dark magic led to death magic, and right then they needed the power of the dead. She dove deep into the land, calling for the presence of those first men who had left behind the cairns and barrows, the stone circles, and the huts that dotted the untamed land. Energy lingered there like the notes of half-remembered song, more a mood than a memory, but her summons roused it from sleep.

And it came, rising like a gray cloud in her mind's eye, sinuous as mist. It was made of voices too far away to hear clearly, s.n.a.t.c.hes of firelight and stories no one recalled. It was what was left of the daily hopes and fears of vanished people. The fog of memory clung close to the land and roiled down the webwork of magic, beyond the gunpowder mill and the guards in the yard to surround the building like a smothering cloak. Evelina rose to her knees to see it shimmering silver in the moonlight, hiding the atrocities in the laboratory like a sheet thrown over one of its victims.

And then her power flexed, a visceral twist of anger, and the cloak squeezed. The other magic users, their power linked to hers by the web, moved with her like the fingers of a giant fist.

The building split with a huge cracking noise, as if a giant egg had smashed. Whatever spells had been guarding it-the magic wrung out of those pract.i.tioners too frightened to fight-gave way like wet paper. And then the devas rushed into the breach. In the s.p.a.ce between one breath and the next, flames erupted from the roof.

A frantic lowing of cows rose up, but the barn was too far away to catch fire. The living humans-those who could run-fled. Or tried to. The devas of the moors, working by a code only they understood, only let every third man free of the flames. The pitiable creatures in the cells perished, their lives no more than sparks in an updraft, too spent to even stir Evelina's hunger.

Except one. Evelina gasped as something bounded from the flames. It ran on all fours and was larger than a calf, but it moved with the easy glide of a hunter. Was that the creature behind the door? Its eyes flashed red in the firelight, throwing sparks into the blackness. It was only visible for an instant, an outline against the flames, and then the magic twisted again. The creature disappeared from view, as if somehow the dark spirits of the moor had swallowed it whole. Evelina shook her head, trying to clear it. Whether the devas had caught the creature or it had escaped was impossible to tell, and Evelina was too exhausted to pursue it right then.

Lying atop the cairn, Holmes watched it all without twitching a muscle. Evelina studied his face. There was much in the spirit realm that he couldn't see, but the resulting destruction was plain. And apparently fascinating. He was watching, cataloguing, and filing away every detail, barely taking time out to breathe.

He dealt in fact, not magic. He'd done his job protecting her, and no doubt he'd helped destroy the laboratories because they contravened his sense of justice. For him, the adventure was-if not simple-at least plain in its objectives and result.

Not so for her. She shifted her gaze from her uncle to the wreckage below. She'd felt the wrench that had cracked the building. Her power still rang with it like a vibrating bell, thrilling her with victory and whispering of what chaos might come next. More. This is only a taste.

The thought appalled her, and she couldn't watch another moment. Evelina got to her feet in silence, not wanting to disturb the mesmerized Holmes. She needed to turn away, to put some distance between herself and the destruction she had wrought. She needed control.

"We must locate Madam Thala.s.sa," Holmes said.

Evelina could feel the woman's magic, as bright as her own was dark. "I know exactly where she is."

"She will take you to a safe place. It's been arranged. When the search for you has died down, I will come fetch you." He started to rise.

"In a minute," she said quickly. "Let me rest."

He subsided, returning his attention to the scene below. She will take me to a safe place? Evelina wasn't sure there was such a thing. Not until it was possible to run away from herself.

I shot a man. And then I ate him. The notion made her insides swirl dangerously, and she desperately wanted the solace of darkness and open air. She walked a little distance across the stony top of the hill, and then a little more-away from every other presence. It was too dark to go far, but the moon above and the glow of the fire reduced the chances of breaking her neck. She could still see Holmes, the white of his shirt a smudge where he lay. Then she began reeling in her senses, shutting off the connection between herself and the magic, herself and the earth, herself and anything beyond the privacy of her own mind. Evelina wiped her brow on her sleeve, the solitude making her feel a tiny bit better.

I am in control. She repeated it to herself a dozen times, blocking even the rustle of the nighttime insects from her perception. It felt good, like pulling the covers over her head and falling into a deep sleep. The vibrating inside her stopped, the excitement unwinding like a spring slowly robbed of tension. She loosened her bracelets, dusting away the remains of the salt. It was spent now, though her skin was raw where it had touched her.

But then something stirred behind her, just loud enough that it broke through her shield. A sour-smelling hand clamped over her mouth and a knife p.r.i.c.ked against her throat, tickling her just below the ear. "Well done, kitten."

She knew the voice all too well. Rage seared white hot, making her struggle until the knife dug in, p.r.i.c.king through skin.

"Oh no, you don't," whispered Magnus. "If you ever had any doubt that you were mine, just think about this night's work. I felt you leave your hiding place like a ripple on a pond, but I would have had to be deaf and blind to miss you here."

Evelina growled from behind his stifling fingers.

"Oh, come now. You'd never have put on such a show unless you wanted me to catch you. Surely you didn't think I would leave you forever?"

He pressed his lips close to her ear. "I'm sure by now you've learned I cannot die."

Southwest Coast, October 5, 1889.

SIABARTHA CASTLE.

7:25 a.m. Sat.u.r.day.

WIND WHIPPED THROUGH EVELINA'S HAIR AS SHE RAISED her head above the rim of the basket of Magnus's balloon. Above, the black silk globe rose like a storm cloud, captured in a net of silver rope. Below, the southern coast spread in jagged beauty, the green fingers of land lost among mists of salt and spray. They'd flown through the night and now morning spread with grim purpose beneath a steel-gray sky.

Fear slammed her, making her knuckles white on the wicker rim. It wasn't the height, but the fact that she had no idea where they were going-or how she would ever get back. "Where are we?"

"Tintagel is that way," Magnus remarked with a wave of one gloved hand. "All crashing waves and Arthurian claptrap. The property values on places like that are astronomical and for what? Useless unless you want to attract day trippers."

He raised his voice to be heard over the wind, the quartet of steam-driven propellers, and the rush of the pumps converting aether distillate into the lifting gas that kept the balloon afloat. And somewhere in all that machinery was a navigation system that had kept the craft on course despite the dark. The black balloon was clearly designed for nocturnal journeys-and with Magnus that meant nothing good.

Evelina fell back into a slump at the bottom of the basket and buried her face in her hands. A new chain rattled where Magnus had strung her bracelets together, turning them into handcuffs. She'd had to turn the key in the bracelets a few hours ago when she'd felt the first tingles of pain that signaled their reactivation. It hadn't been a dignified operation with her hands bound together and the key on a chain around her neck, and in the end Magnus had been obliged to help her-one captor a.s.sisting with the bonds of her other.

Vertigo a.s.saulted Evelina, a mix of fatigue and the pure insanity of her predicament. It was too much after what she'd seen the night before. It was too much ever, because it was Magnus.

"Oh, come now, kitten. Surely this is better than returning to the Gold King's thrall. I heard what you did for your pirate, sacrificing your freedom for the Red Jack. Very touching, if somewhat pointless."

That made her lift her head to glare. She was about to protest that Nick had lived, despite everything, but stopped herself just in time. Magnus had baited a trap for Nick once; she wasn't going to help him do it again. The longer he believed Nick dead, the better. "I made my choice and you weren't it."

"No," Magnus said with a flash of irritation. "And that poses a logistical problem for me. I was prepared to wait for you to come to your senses, but things became a little more urgent now that Serafina is gone."

Serafina, the insane, murderous star of his automaton ballet. Anna's vessel. Even the memory of her reawakened the pain of her knife sliding through Evelina's body. "Gone? Truly gone? Or is she as hard to kill as you are?"

"Alas, she was completely destroyed, as were all of my creations. Otherwise," Magnus said with a twist of a smile, "I would have far less need of you."

What does that mean? she wondered. And what does he know about Anna? But Magnus had busied himself with the pumps, adjusting the dial on the silver canisters lashed upright in the middle of the basket. That was the difficulty of being spirited away by air. Killing one's abductor wasn't a good response, unless one knew how to fly the wretched contraption-which she didn't.

"I see from the burns beneath your bracelets that you were playing with dangerous chemicals. What was it?" he asked in that professorial voice he had used so often as her teacher.

Instinctively, she cradled her hands against her chest and wondered how to respond. Was it better to pretend to be his student again? Or was it time now to make it plain that she was done listening to him? She compromised. "I overbalanced the dampening fields in the laboratories."

"Using an elemental salt, no doubt? Clever, but very dangerous. Most of the available substances are utterly toxic. Next time, use a few drops of your blood to activate it, and don't touch the stuff with your bare skin." He flashed a derisive smile. "And if it's salt of sorrows, don't even breathe near it. If that was what you used, be glad you didn't have more than a pinch."

Somehow, he knew exactly what she'd done. Evelina crouched against the wicker of the basket, misery welling up inside her. Magnus was worse than the bracelets. They only reacted to what she did. The sorcerer detected where she'd been and half the time what she was thinking.

The balloon began to dip, drifting downward. Gripping the woven wicker rim above her, Evelina ventured another peek at the ground. The cold sea wind raked her face, blurring her vision with tears. Magnus was wearing goggles, she was not.

But she could see well enough to feel a swell of panic. Spears of dark rock thrust out of the water, their bases disappearing into a churn of waves. A scatter of whitewashed houses clung to the base of the cliffs, seeming to huddle for shelter from the open water beyond. There was no sheltering cove here, no harbor or breakwater to spare the sh.o.r.e. There was only a finger of barren land thrusting into the sea and at its crest, a castle of bare black stone.

"Was it going for a song?" Evelina asked dryly. "Not many day trippers here, I suspect."

Magnus laughed. Whatever his legion of other faults-including a gruesome sort of insanity-he did have a sense of humor. "Ah, no, this is an old pied-a-terre from former days. I had been living in the Black Kingdom, but grew tired of endless caves. At least this place has windows. It may be inconvenient and drafty as anything, but it's wonderfully private. We'll be quite cozy here until this nonsense with the Steam Council blows over. We can catch up on your lessons."

Evelina cursed under her breath, yanking in futile frustration at the chain that bound her hands. Magnus's instruction had proven a double-edged sword. He was the only creature she knew who could teach her about her own power, but at the same time he had used her curiosity against her, cursing her with a sorcerer's hunger. The more time she spent around Magnus, the less she could count on remaining Evelina Cooper. That, more than anything else, spurred an overwhelming motivation to get away.

Magnus deftly adjusted a lever that angled the propellers a degree. The balloon shifted slightly west, rotating lazily until it caught the wind. They were close to the castle now. The style of it was ancient-a misshapen tower of dull black stone surrounded by a high wall on three sides. But the most striking feature was the front edge of the tower, for it thrust out over the cliff, leaving a sheer drop to the thrashing ocean below.

The basket cleared the edge of the wall, and Evelina could see the details of a bailey-an enclosed yard where once there might have been stables, blacksmiths, chicken coops, and all the other necessaries that made up a community. Now the auxiliary buildings were deserted, the wood crumbling and bleached gray by the chill salt air. There were a handful of servants standing by to a.s.sist with the balloon, but they looked like they wanted to bolt at the first opportunity. This is the absolute end of the earth. And from what she could see, it hadn't ended well.

Magnus turned the pumps down another notch, and opened a vent to let the aether escape. The balloon began to subside onto the ground with a graceful sigh. Then he tossed a series of ropes over the edge of the basket and the waiting men caught them, hauling the craft down until Evelina felt the bottom b.u.mp the ground.

"There you are, kitten, welcome to Siabartha."

She schooled her face, pretending not to recognize the name. It was a word in the old tongue, and something to do with the netherworld. Trust Magnus to go for the traditionally sinister. There was no way she was giving him the satisfaction of seeing her spooked any more than he already had.

She stayed put while Magnus swung his long legs over the edge of the basket, a superst.i.tious dread taking her. She didn't want to set foot in his castle, as if stepping there meant that she could never leave. But he held out his gloved hand, and, bound as she was, she had no choice but to take it and let him help her over the edge. And yet even his touch made her shudder.

"This way," he said gallantly, taking her elbow to escort her toward the castle. "Once you've earned the privilege, you may feel free to roam the grounds as you please. The views are better from the tower, but there is no subst.i.tute for a walk in the fresh air."

Evelina looked around at the dingy stone and scruffy gra.s.s. The most interesting feature was an old well that looked as if it was still in use. "And outside the walls?"

"Not much to see for a good fifty miles, although there is a certain charm about the place in spring."

"In other words, no need for locks when there is no place to go."

He gave her a tight smile. "For now you will be escorted. The balloon and stables are off limits and you will find them guarded by spells. But when you learn what I wish, you will have the power to leave. I've been patient with you in the past, but now it's time you understand that when you do as you're told, we both get what we want."

I don't do what I'm told. Not by you. "I want to go home."

"And so you shall, when I deem you ready."

That statement horrified her worse than anything else. Who will I be by then? A mad thing, like your dancing doll?

He signaled to one of the servants to open the arched, iron-bound door of the castle. From the way the man dug in his heels, the door was as heavy as it looked. Magnus strode in, grabbing a torch from its holder near the door. Evelina trailed after, agape.

It was a great hall, straight out of Ivanhoe, with high beams and a vast oak table dominating the room. Iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling on chains, ancient wax clinging to the black metal. Shields hung against the wall, though a few had toppled to the floor, but the dust was so thick Evelina couldn't see the faded designs painted there.

"It's been a while since I entertained," Magnus said dryly. "It's intolerably cold down here and impossible to heat. We live upstairs."

With that, he led her through the hall and up a long, winding staircase that reminded her of the church tower she'd climbed with Nick. Arrow slits pierced the stone walls at every turn, letting in light and a brisk ocean breeze. It was almost colder here than it had been in the balloon, as if the black stone had soaked up the cold for centuries, never letting any of it go.

Evelina was feeling her muscles by the time Magnus stopped at a landing near the top of the tower. Three doors cl.u.s.tered there. "My rooms, your room, our workroom," he said, indicating each in turn.

Frozen through, Evelina grasped the handle of the door meant to be hers, and tried it. It opened easily, and she looked in. The first thing she saw was a fire. It drew her forward like a magnet and she crouched before it, holding out her frigid hands.

Magnus followed after her. "I hope you like your accommodations."

Evelina cast a glance around the room. It had a certain medieval splendor, with a velvet-draped canopy over the bed, tapestries along the walls, and a scatter of bra.s.s-bound chests. At least it looked clean.

"There are fresh clothes in the chests, as well as everything you will require for your studies. There is the workroom, of course, but I thought you might prefer a few things here to practice with. Your meals and hot water will be brought to you."

"Very thoughtful." Thawed enough to tear herself away from the fire's warmth, she rose and held out her hands. "Are you going to keep me bound?"

Magnus flicked his fingers and the chain fell away, clanking at the floor near Evelina's feet. "No need now that we're here."

They studied each other in silence for a moment, the air tense between them. He'd won her trust once, but it wouldn't happen again. And yet they'd shared magic together. That created a familiarity that would never be brushed aside.

"How did you survive the air battle?" she asked.

"I'm very hard to kill."

He'd died once before, that she knew of. That had left him looking older. Now he looked ill, the aquiline face thinner, his olive complexion pasty. And while certain things were the same-he was still the tall, slender, and elegant figure she remembered-not everything remained. Where there had been a few silver hairs at his temples, his dark hair and goatee were now salted with white. His depthless eyes were still intense, but they were lined and circled where the flesh had sunk against his skull. This time, it had been harder to come back. And there was something wrong-she wanted to use the word unstable-about his face. It was as if whatever measures he'd taken hadn't quite worked. Worst of all, he didn't smell quite right.

"How do you do it?" she asked, her voice gone hoa.r.s.e with cold and revulsion. "Death magic?"

"Yes."

Surprise arrowed through her. He'd always danced around the question of his sorcery before. "That's blunt."

"I've given up being coy with you. You saw what Serafina was to me."

Evelina nodded. The mad doll had sucked the life out of her admirers and then fed it to Magnus. It had left the automaton-who was at least in part Anna-hungry, confused, and ultimately homicidal. "She did your hunting for you."

"I thought to free myself of the burden. After you have lived as long as I have, stalking the unwary becomes a ch.o.r.e."

Outrage twisted through her, drawing a strangled sound from her throat. How like Magnus, to reduce everything to its amus.e.m.e.nt value. "Don't your victims deserve personal attention? Or is that just a bourgeois shopkeeper's view?"

"Such sharp little claws." Then he gave a short, mirthless laugh. "But perhaps you're right. Perhaps the universe in its infinite wisdom is punishing me for my neglect, for in creating Serafina, I made a tactical error. I put too much of myself in her."

He had split off a piece of his own life force to make Serafina live, but she wasn't sure that was what he meant. "How so?"

"Now I discover I seem to have sacrificed much of my ability to feed. Not something I antic.i.p.ated, let me a.s.sure you. And in my weakness I can't breathe life into another such child of my genius. I have restored myself as best I can, but I must solve this conundrum immediately."

"How?" she asked, but the word had barely left her lips before his eyes told her the answer.

"My dear Evelina, that's where you shall play a role. You, my little cat, will learn to bring me my prey."

And like that, her hunger woke, a flare of yellow eyes in the dark privacy of her soul. Eagerness and disgust hit her with a hurricane's force. She remembered the taste of the guard's life sliding inside her. She flinched as if Magnus had slapped her. "Dear G.o.d."

"It is a small service, given the immense amount that I've shared with you. That I will share with you in our time together."

"No!" She pushed him away with both hands and kicked the chain at her feet into the fire. "You may think you have me, but I will fight you for every inch."

Magnus staggered back a step, the angry flare of his eyes giving the lie to his amused smile. "You need not stay forever. Just long enough to allow me to make a new little helper of my own."