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“It bothers me,” Henry went on. “Not havin’ any blood sorcerers.”

  “And a good thing we don’t, if you ask me,” Nigel put in.

  “I didn’t,” Henry muttered.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Sir William said. “But the issue is moot. When Yvaine died without having taken an apprentice, the magic was lost. We have the books, but they do us no good.”

  “It should remain lost, as far as I’m concerned,” Nigel said.

  “Why? Because it’s women’s magic?” Henry leaned forward to glare past Sir William at the other man as they walked. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s evil magic. Hence its affinity for women. Women are the weaker sex. A woman is inherently less able—”

  Henry snorted, turning away. “What about Yvaine’s workshop? Maybe there’s something there wot can ‘elp us with the books. Ain’t anybody looked inside it?”

  “No one knows where to look,” Sir William said. “There were rumors, years ago, that Yvaine had a tower somewhere over the border in Scotland, but no one knew where. We did look, but those were turbulent years. Dangerous for all magicians.”

  “Others besides magicians searched.” Nigel gave the others a significant look. “Criminals. Murderers. Thugs. Those who wanted the power, or the gold.”

  “For all our looking, no one’s ever been able to find it. I believe the tower is a myth, spread by fools who know no better.” Sir William shook himself and looked around, his expression determinedly cheerful. “What pleasant avenues Paris has. Broad enough for three carriages to pass with ease.”

  “You can thank Napoleon Junior.” Henry’s voice held cynicism. “Since the ‘Forty-eight, those years back, he’s been tearin’ down the city and rebuildin’ the streets too wide to be barricaded.”

  “Damned proletarian,” Nigel muttered at Henry.

  “Bloody bourgeois,” Henry muttered back.

  “Boys, boys.” Sir William sighed. “A truce, if you will. We have larger problems to solve. The world is dying in patches. We magicians are the only ones who might be able to do anything about it. And so far, we’ve no idea what that might be.”

  Chapter 6

  “They believe we are lovers,” Jax said when he followed Amanusa into the tent that night, before the sky had grown completely’ dark. “Strange, twisted lovers.”

  “Let them think what they like. We know what is truth.” Amanusa took out the pins holding her braid to her head and let it fall down her back, massaging her sore scalp. She didn’t wear her hair loose in this place. She didn’t know why her hair made these men act like idiots, but it did, so she pinned it up.

  “I should sleep outside the tent.” Jax got his bedroll from beneath her cot. “Teo would cause less trouble that way.”

  “Perhaps if you had slept outside from the first. But if you changed now, he would think I tossed you out to let him in.” She was tired of this conversation. Jax brought it up every night. She flicked a hand at the dying patch of grass just by the tent flap and he spread the tarp in his spot.

  “Tell me about the justice magic,” she said, unable to wait any longer. “Tell me what you know first, Jax, then call Yvaine.”

  “As you will it, my sorceress.” Jax sat crosslegged on his mat and rested his hands on his knees.

  Amanusa did not like it when he called her that, but he was her servant, and she was a sorceress. According to Jax, at any rate. She did not feel much like one.

  “The magic requires the blood of the sorceress,” he began. “A few drops are enough to search dozens of people for the truth. If you have some of the blood of the victim—dried on a cloth, perhaps—it can add much to the magic, but it is not absolutely necessary.”

  The instruction went on, late into the night. Amanusa had to light a second candle as she wrote furiously in the notebook she always carried for her medical observations, trying to get everything down. After the first time, she tried not to ask Yvaine to repeat anything, for it made Jax stutter and twitch. Asking him—her—them to slow down didn’t seem to bother him-them, so she was able to keep up better once she figured that out.

  Finally, Jax’s eyes—brown at the moment—rolled up into his head and he crumpled to his side. Amanusa sprang up to stretch him out on his pallet. She turned him onto his side when he coughed up a bloody spray.

  Was it Yvaine’s old, used-up blood he expelled when he collapsed like this? Would he be ready to act by morning, or would he still be unconscious?

  She blew out her candle and crawled beneath her own blankets. She wouldn’t sleep, not for ages yet, with all the new knowledge crawling around in her mind. But she would try anyway.

  “Good night, witch-woman,” Teo’s voice called out from the main camp, sending a shiver skittering down her spine.

  Tomorrow. She would use the magic tomorrow. She would have her justice, and then she would leave this hated place. If not for her thirst for justice, she’d have left long ago.

  Now she had the chance for everything she’d ever dreamed. Justice first, then she could grasp the bright world of magic Jax offered.

  ———

  Despite his collapse, Jax was up before her, crawling into the tent with the ewer and basin of hot water when she woke.

  “I want to do it today,” Amanusa said before he got out again. “I want you to take the blood and put it in the porridge pot, and in the tea kettle. Those who don’t eat porridge drink tea, and those who don’t drink tea…”

  “Yes, Miss Whitcomb.” Jax waited, bent over in the doorway.

  “Can you do it without anyone noticing?”

  “Of course. Yvaine often had me deliver the blood to the vessel.”

  “Don’t stand there blocking the light,” she snapped, irritated for no reason and annoyed because of it. “Come in or go out, but don’t stand in the doorway.”

  “Of course, Miss Whitcomb.” He left the tent.

  “No, come back.”

  Obedient as always, he returned and waited for her command. Amanusa wished she knew what to ask of him.

  “You think I’m wrong, don’t you?” She didn’t know she was going to say it until the words were out. “You don’t think I should do it.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes. Yes, it does. I want to know. Why do you think I shouldn’t have my justice?”

  “I don’t think that! Not at all. You deserve justice for what they’ve done. Of course you do.” Jax went to his knees beside her cot and caught her hand. “But… magic is a wild thing, easy to stir up and difficult to control. This magic is wilder than most and I am afraid for you. I worry that you are not strong enough yet to control it.”

  “You said you think I have the strength.”

  “I know I said it, and I believe it.” His smile was crooked, his eyes clear and pure blue-green. “But I can’t help worrying.”

  A chuckle escaped Amanusa. “Try not to. I’m worrying enough for both of us.”

  “Then I shall have faith. Give me the blood to carry.” He held out his hand, palm up.

  Instantly, Amanusa sobered. She reached into her pocket for the cloth she’d kept with her over the last dozen years. “Get the scissors from my kit.”

  She spread the stained, stiffened rag over her lap and took the sharp, narrow scissors from Jax. “This spot,” she said as she snipped a few threads from it to fall into her servant’s hand, “holds my mother’s blood, wiped from her brow after they beat her. And this—” More threads fell. “This, my brother coughed into the handkerchief when he was broken inside. Blood of my blood. Blood of victims crying out for justice.”

  Amanusa thrust her forefinger into the opening of the lancet laid ready beside her and plunged the point deep into the pad of her left thumb. She welcomed the pain as it mingled somehow with the unhealed grief of her loss. She stirred it into the magic that rose with the welling blood and let it drip onto the threads in Jax’s palm. Two drops, three, then four, and the wound began to seal shut. She sque
ezed out one more, then pressed her forefinger over the puncture.

  A harsh caw startled her, brought her head jerking around to see Crow hopping up onto the little table. He cocked his head and turned a bright, beady eye on their activity. His presence somehow reassured Amanusa.

  Jax laid a small strip of thin paper over the blood in his hand. It soaked the blood up almost instantly. He blew on it, drying it somewhat, then divided it carefully in two. “When I drop it in,” he said, “it will dissolve so quickly no one will see it.”

  “Boiling won’t hurt it? Won’t weaken the magic?” Amanusa tried not to worry, but it was difficult. Even under Crow’s watchful eye.

  “It’s magic.” His smile was gentle, reassuring.

  “Where did you get the paper? What is it?”

  “Rice paper. Very absorbent. I always keep a few strips handy. Never know when you might need it.” He pulled another strip from his waistcoat pocket to show her, then put it back. “I’d better go tend to this.” He held up his squares of blood-soaked paper. “And let you tend to your washing up.”

  With that, he ducked out of the tent.

  Amanusa didn’t want to wash. She wanted to dog his every step. But she didn’t dare hover. The outlaws didn’t like her coming near their food, even if they were beginning to forget what she’d done to them the last time.

  She washed quickly and hurried into her plain brown dress, then crossed to the hospital tent to check on Costel’s progress while watching Jax’s.

  He stood at the fire where breakfast cooked. Had he already tossed in the papers? Amanusa watched as closely as she dared, but saw nothing. Since she was supposed to see nothing, matters ought to be going as they should. Her nerves were still on edge.

  Finally, Jax came shuffling back with her bowl of porridge and cup of tea.

  “Is it in there?” Amanusa took the dishes from him, not sure how she felt about breakfasting on the bespelled food.

  “No. The blood went in after I dipped out your food.”

  Amanusa took a bite. It had no magic in it, according to Jax, but she could detect a faint hum of magic. “I can taste it. The magic. Or, I taste something.”

  Jax cocked his head. “Truly? There is no blood, I swear it. Could you be…” He gestured, as if scooping something toward himself. “Gathering it?”

  Amanusa shook her head. “No. Just eating breakfast. But I sense the magic even so. It… makes my teeth hum.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why?” Now she was worried. Just a bit.

  He smiled as he shook his head. “Nothing to fret over. Yvaine couldn’t sense magic that way. Not unless she was actually gathering the magic to judge. I think that you, as a beginner, are more powerful than Yvaine ever was.” His smile changed, went wry, wise. “As I said. Interesting.”

  Footsteps neared, Miruna returning from washing her dishes and Costel’s in the stream. Jax rearranged his features into dullness and stared off into the distance. Amanusa sighed and finished her boring meal. No more interesting conversations until nightfall. Of . course, she intended to trigger the magic before then, so maybe she wouldn’t have to wait. But other things needed to be done first.

  “Jax.” She handed him her empty bowl and cup, raising her voice to an ordinary volume. “After you do the dishes, fetch the medicines I’ll need for sick call.” She moved closer, laying a hand on his arm to hold him as she gave quieter instruction. “Be ready to go. I want to take the box with the machine. Anything else can be replaced, but the machine should go with us.”

  “Yes, Miss.” Jax bobbed his head.

  She was tidying away after sick call when Jax entered the hospital tent. He met her gaze briefly with a subtle nod, and hunched over to shuffle out again, in the direction of the fire. Everything was ready for their departure.

  “For once, I have caught you alone.” Teo’s voice preceded his grip on her arm by mere seconds.

  “What are you doing?” Amanusa cursed her distraction as she tried to free herself. “This is the hospital tent. It’s off limits.”

  “Off limits to who? Not to me.”

  Frantic, Amanusa searched her surroundings for help—Szabo, Jax, anyone who might… Gavril held Jax prisoner, a knife at his throat. Szabo was nowhere to be seen—the coward. The liar.

  He had set this up deliberately, hoping to keep her in the camp. He’d taken himself off so he could claim later to have known nothing about what Teo planned. The cheat.

  “I will kill you,” Amanusa snarled. “I will kill you first, and then I will kill Szabo.”

  Teo laughed. “Who will be killing who? I think you are in no position to be making threats, pretty one.”

  He slammed his fist into Amanusa’s face. Jax roared. She could feel him fighting to break free of Gavril’s grip, feel the bodies pile onto him, the blades prick his skin. Blood welled.

  “No,” she cried. “Jax, don’t fight them! I will handle this.” She licked the blood from her split and swelling lip, fighting down the terror that pushed at the edges of her mind. She was a sorceress now. He would not rape her. Not this time.

  Teo hit her again. “You will handle me? See how you handle this.” He grabbed his crotch, thrusting his ugly arousal at her. “I knew he was no idiot. I knew you would not take such a man to your bed. I saw you talking to him. I heard him. And I showed Szabo how you made a fool of him.”

  Amanusa spat at him, bloody foam spattering his face and neck. “Blood of my blood,” she cried.

  At her words, a scouring wind of magic swept the camp, springing from nowhere, from the blood everyone had ingested.

  Teo shuddered and looked around, his eyes rolling in all directions, whites showing. “What was that? What are you doing?”

  “Blood of your victims!” Amanusa’s voice echoed with the power she gathered in.

  Teo raised his hand, clenched it into a fist.

  Amanusa laughed. “Do it! Hit me again. Give me more blood for my magic.”

  Only then did he release her and back away, horror coating every line of his face and body. “Who are you? What are you?”

  “I am Amanusa.” She spread her arms wide, exulting in the torrent of magic pouring through her. “I am the blood sorceress, and I call for justice!”

  She heard Jax cry out in the instant before she burst into a thousand bits—or perhaps only half a hundred. However many had tasted the blood in the food. She saw through scores of eyes, screamed with a multitude of throats, weighed the beating of myriad throats.

  Cruelty after cruelty displayed itself to her, and through her to everyone in the magic, from petty bullying to horrible scenes of torture. The agonies of her mother, her brother, herself—pain she had locked away long ago—replayed. The indignity, humiliation, and desperate helplessness felt once again as real and vivid as when it happened. She relived all of it in moments, as if she had endured all of it herself.

  She screamed, hundreds of voices echoing her pain, living it with her. She had to make it stop, had to make them pay. Had to make sure they could never hurt anyone ever again.

  “Blood of my blood,” she whispered again through swollen lips. “Justice…”

  The screaming stopped. A few whimpers sounded before the magic slammed into her like a sledgehammer blow, and everything went black.

  ———

  Dear god in heaven, what had his sorceress done? Jax struggled from beneath the pile of limp bodies and staggered to his sorceress where he dropped to his knees. Her pulse still throbbed in her neck, thank God. What had she been thinking, to let the magic run free like that?

  The quiet, after all the screaming, sent a chill up his spine. Were they all dead?

  Jax reached across Miss Whitcomb to Teo’s ankle for the pulse behind the bone. He was dead, to no one’s surprise. So, Jax suspected, were those who’d held him prisoner, taken him to the ground when he’d fought. If they were so wicked as to be willing to take part in this assault on his sorceress, their pasts were likely black with
similar sins. Sins for which such wild magic would claim repayment.

  A feminine moan sounded from the other side of the hospital tent’s shelter. Miruna lived. Apparently the magic hadn’t taken too much offense at her minor cruelties. If her Costel hadn’t survived, though…

  Jax needed to get his sorceress out of this place. He crawled to his feet and heaved her up over his shoulder, grunting at the effort. His new mistress was not the small woman his old one was. He didn’t mind in the least.

  Still, he was grateful he’d hidden the warded machine box some distance across the stream, on the way to her cottage. Everything else would have to be abandoned if he had to carry both the box and Miss Whitcomb out of the mountains.

  He wished he knew a more direct route to the railhead, so they wouldn’t have to return to the cottage. The outlaws—if any survived—would look there first. Perhaps Miss Whitcomb would wake soon. He doubted it, though. That had been powerful magic whistling past his ears. Good thing he’d eaten his breakfast before he bespelled the porridge pot.

  Jax had collected the box with its frightening contents and shouldered his sorceress’s unconscious body again when the first wails rose quavering from the camp. Faded by distance, the cries bounced around the mountainsides and shivered down his spine. Blood sorcery had earned its fearful reputation this day.

  Some of sorcery’s reputation was indeed well deserved, but the righteous had no need to fear it. Murderers and other criminals would now once again tremble in fear, as they should. He only hoped Miss Whitcomb had not paid too high a price.

  He hurried down the mountain as fast as his burdens would allow. Not nearly fast enough, he feared. Miss Whitcomb’s continued unconsciousness worried him. She could not possibly be comfortable, tossed over his shoulder with her arms dangling down his back. But she did not wake.

  Every step felt as if his spine compressed another fraction. He’d be several inches shorter by the bottom of the mountain at this rate. And his left arm, the one carrying the converted medicine case, would be . several inches longer. For the rest of his life, he’d lean to one side as he walked.