First Magic Page 6

  “But first they get to carry things.” The gleam of humor in Digger’s eyes died as he studied me. “How’s your dad?”

  I folded my arms, hugging myself.

  Jarod swore.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said hurriedly. “Dad’s safe. Nils brought him to the magistrate hall. It’s just…Dad’s having some trouble accepting everything.”

  Digger and Jarod nodded soberly.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Digger said. “Once everyone’s here and settled.”

  “Settled-ish,” Jarod said. “We’ll be hanging curtains for days.” With that good-humored grumble, he dashed off.

  Through the window we saw him jump back through the portal.

  “He’ll tell the others not to ask about your dad,” Digger said quietly. “Not till we’re alone.” He shot a quick, sideways glance at Lajos. “We’re not excluding you, just the unknowns.” He raised his voice back to its usual volume. “I’ll stay here and lend a hand getting everything in place. You decide the bedrooms.”

  Lajos surprised me by climbing the stairs with me. Stella’s suite on the first floor was obvious. Then there were four more bedrooms here to be assigned, plus two bathrooms and a study. A further two bedrooms and a bathroom were tucked into the attic, plus storage space. Everything was light and airy and big. It wasn’t quite a mansion, but it was far more than a farmhouse.

  “Even with magic, it’s amazing that you and Tineke did all this overnight.” The attic bedrooms both had window seats with storage beneath. The wood was smooth, oak to match the floorboards.

  “We enjoyed it.”

  I nodded. Good memories could come from hard work, especially work shared with someone important to you.

  “I’m a herb grower, not a psychiatrist these days.” Lajos stared out the window. “But if you ever wonder what’s wrong with your relationship with your father, Digger gives you the answer.”

  There were superficial similarities between the two men. Both were sinewy, tanned, their black hair silvering. Sean was a few years older. Digger was tougher. He was a warrior. Sean was…

  “I don’t know who Dad is.”

  “All that matters is who you are, and that person is someone Digger respects and values as a daughter.” Lajos was telling me that anything missing in my relationship with my father wasn’t my fault. Footsteps and voices sounded on the stairs. “Go on and direct traffic.”

  I dived into the work, but couldn’t forget the problem that Lajos had posed me, whether he’d meant to or not: who was Sean?

  He’d never defined himself by his role as my parent. Possibly not, in the past, pre-divorce, as a husband either. He’d been a lawyer. He’d loved sailing.

  A lawyer.

  I directed a cupboard with a missing door up to the spare bedroom in the attic. My adopted family really were emptying the Apfall Hills farmhouse.

  Sean was a lawyer. But what that really made him was a negotiator.

  I found the missing cupboard door on the porch and ran with it up the stairs to the attic. I might have younger legs than some of the others, but with all these stairs I was feeling the morning’s efforts.

  I also fretted at the problem of my father’s identity and our relationship.

  Digger defined winning as protecting those he loved, and he would, and had, killed to do so. As a serving soldier, that had meant defending his country. As a civilian in the apocalypse, it had meant protecting his adopted family and town.

  Sean defined winning as learning every bit of the game board, and manipulating others into doing what he wanted.

  I collapsed onto a window seat as the reality of how I saw my father sank in. He believed in doing the right thing. I believed he was a good man. But he preferred that people in his world did as he thought best.

  I had spent my childhood striving for his approval.

  What would happen when he realized that his sole route to power—to manipulating people and events—in Faerene society was through me?

  I rose slowly, stiffly, like someone forty years older. Had Sean already realized that he had to control me to influence others?

  Chapter 5

  By four o’clock my family’s move into their new home was complete. We still had to unpack personal belongings, hang curtains, clean the floors of the dirt tracked in, and generally relax and breathe, but the helpers Oscar had organized were gone.

  Peggy had been the last to depart, leaving behind two large casseroles that were staying warm in the oven.

  Stella sat nearest the woodstove. With doors and windows shut, the kitchen would warm up fast. She’d hung away her coat in her room and was comfortably herself in a bright purple cardigan, yellow turtleneck sweater and orange tartan skirt.

  We were taking a break together before Mike, Craig and Jarod returned to sorting out the barn and checking on the animals. The three dogs were inside with us, each leaning up against a person for reassurance after the move. There had been a lot of werewolves around and other strange-to-the-dogs scents.

  After our coffee break, Stella would organize her room, while Niamh and I made up the other beds and got the kitchen ready to go.

  Digger intended to visit Sean. Rory promised to walk him across to the hall, and probably to brief him on the situation with the militia. Then they’d both return for dinner.

  Stella had insisted that Rory and I were to share in the first family dinner in the house, and Rory had kissed her cheek in thanks.

  Through the window I could see Tineke’s cottage and the smoke curling up from its red brick chimney. She and Lajos had retreated there, after each had separately finished keying the wards on the house and her farm to recognize my family.

  “We made the right decision coming here,” Craig said. He’d evidently been stewing over some thought. “When we were nearly done at the farm Angus made it as far as the fence line and signaled me over to ask if we were leaving.” Craig bit into a third oatmeal cookie. He spoke with his mouth full. “They watched us all day, then at the end, he asked what we intended to do with the house. I told him what we agreed. Salvage rights applied to it, same as to any property in Apfall Hill empty due to death or departure.”

  He glanced at Stella, and away. Craig wasn’t as demonstrative as Jarod, but he loved her, too. “Angus didn’t even wish us well.”

  Stella sighed. Angus had been her neighbor, and a good neighbor, for years.

  “Irene changed things,” Mike said. “After she lost Rob, she wanted to blame someone and to protect her boys.”

  Rob and Irene were the schoolteacher couple whom Angus had accepted into his house, along with their three teenage sons, at the beginning of the apocalypse.

  “Amy saved her boys from the fever that took Rob,” Niamh said. “Irene just wants power. That’s why she lobbied to host the patrol at Angus’s farm when people claimed they were too scared of the Faerene to visit us any longer.”

  For sticking by me, my family had suffered disillusionment in people they’d counted as friends.

  Rory tapped the arm-guard on his left wrist. He tapped it again a few seconds later, and walked outside. The arm-guard was a magical construct that kept him in contact with the magistrate hall and guards.

  Around the table, annoyance and disappointment at the attitude of our former neighbors transformed into curiosity and worry.

  Niamh grabbed up empty mugs to carry them to the sink. “Amy, we’re fine here if you need to go with Rory.”

  “I don’t think I want any more problems,” I said honestly.

  Jarod gave me a quick shoulder rub.

  We looked at Rory when he returned.

  “A problem outside of town,” he said briefly. “But we’ll have to skip dinner. I’m sorry.” He bowed his head slightly to Stella in both apology and respect before he looked at Digger. “If you’re up for talking with Sean…? Amy and I need to leave, now.”

  Digger must have been an excellent soldier. He asked no questions of the commanding officer—Rory—as we hurr
ied along.

  I was learning about being an equally excellent wife and stayed silent as well.

  By the frown between Rory’s dark brown eyebrows, the news had been both urgent and bad, and that we were hurrying back to the hall meant that it required a response from him and maybe from me.

  He gave his shoulders a shake and began talking. “The message was from Urwin. I spoke with Sorcha. We think the militia have made their opening move. In surveilling the militia camp, Sorcha learned little of immediate impact. They likely expect to be watched, so they speak minimally and on unimportant subjects. We’re not sure if and how they will try to contact Amy. Sorcha thinks they might be counting on us sending you as part of the team to question them.”

  His hazel eyes had darkened with emotion and his wolf. Whatever the militia was suspected of instigating, it hurt him to tell me. “Three men and two women, all humans, cut their own throats or stomachs a few minutes ago outside the seethe house in Memphis. The timing matches an order from General Dabiri being passed on. The vampires of Memphis are our nearest Faerene neighbors likely to be known to humans.”

  “Which makes them a target.” I felt the phantom chill of steel at my throat and stomach. It was all imagination. Just as it was horrifyingly impossible not to think of how the hot flood of blood would mix with agony. “Did the vampires save any?”

  “No. The cuts were…determined.”

  “Suicide bombers,” Digger said.

  Rory glanced over my head at him. “They only hurt themselves.”

  “Did they?” Dark skepticism threaded Digger’s voice. “You look like you’re hurting. Angry, but hurting. Amy’s hurting.”

  I pressed a hand to my mouth. “Sean said, ‘They have to face what they did to us.’ Could this be what he meant? Death on Faerene doorsteps?”

  We crossed the bridge in silence.

  People approached us, took in our expressions, and veered away. Murmuring rippled out around us. The news of the suicides in Memphis was spreading.

  Emil, a vampire night clerk at the magistrate hall, would be concerned for his fellow seethe members. I needed to check on him. His self-effacing manner meant that people overlooked him.

  “They were suicide bombers,” Digger said. He strode along, seemingly confident among the Faerene. Not only confident that they would accept him and our family, but confident that he could fit in.

  The difference to Sean hurt.

  It wasn’t that Digger swaggered or claimed attention. In fact, it was the opposite. He adapted. With him, ego never got in the way of getting the job done, and his job was always about protecting us. “You have to remember how little we, humans, know about the Faerene. The militia will be working off human stories. If they set this up, they were thinking about blood and vampires. They probably hoped to trigger the vampires into a blood-fueled rampage.”

  “Vampires don’t—” Rory swore under his breath. “It’s not the truth that matters, is it? It’s what humans believe that will shape their actions. Which is true of everyone. Digger, you can talk with Sean if you want to, but someone will be listening.” Because Sean had said that the Faerene should be forced to face what they’d done to humanity. To what extent was he the militia’s man?

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  The magistrate hall loomed ahead of us. Rory skirted around it to take Digger directly to the guard quarters and Sean.

  Yana and Berre met us.

  A fraction of Digger’s tension relaxed.

  A whole lot of mine did. Then tightened back up as Sorcha approached.

  “Rory, Bataar wants to talk with you and Amy.” She continued after his sharp nod of agreement. “He’s at his forge.”

  I didn’t want to face Sean at the moment, so we left Digger to make his own introductions. Bataar’s forge was at the north-eastern corner of Justice. With the evening hour the pace of life in the town changed. Shops shuttered and lamps lit in house windows. Savory aromas hinted at dinner plans.

  Bataar stood at a counter, sharpening knife blades. He worked in the shadows, the forge cold and no lamps lit. “Evening.” He put aside the current blade and wiped his hands on a rag. “Five people dead.”

  “By their own hands,” Rory said.

  The centaur blacksmith gestured us outside to sit on a wooden bench. “Some might argue that the five people dead in Memphis are a human problem, or one for the Memphis seethe to address. However, the timing convinces me that I am justified to involve myself as mayor of Justice.”

  “I agree,” Rory said.

  Our arms, hips and thighs touched. The bench was long enough to accommodate four people. Bataar had installed it for people waiting to speak with him in his role as mayor. Inside the forge was for work, not talk.

  Looking across the town to the river, the first stars shone brightly overhead; so different to their distant, smogged appearance pre-apocalypse.

  The issues we faced were so difficult because although local they had wider and longer term consequences. They contributed to shaping the foundations of human-Faerene interactions.

  Bataar untied the leather apron that protected his chest and which had been specifically designed for his centaur body. “If the militia are involved, as we suspect, then they’ll expect a response from us. Sorcha visited them earlier to ask about Amy’s father. They said that he was safe and that they were willing to discuss with Amy reuniting the two of them.”

  He hung the apron on a hook near the front of the forge.

  My muscles ached from a busy day. I craved a hot bath, hot dinner and hot night with my new husband. Instead, I asked if Sorcha had questioned the militia regarding the “Be ready” postscript added to Sean’s letter.

  Bataar snorted. “General Dabiri responded that it meant they were willing to talk with you at any time.”

  I almost snorted, too.

  Bataar continued. “Sorcha says that the general’s expression and body language dared her to challenge him on his obvious lie. Given that your father is safe, she recommended leaving the militia to stew for a few days with no contact. However, the five deaths in Memphis change the nature of the case. I will now deal with this matter, personally. I have spoken with the master of the Memphis seethe and he has agreed that the militia’s actions affect Justice’s negotiations with them, and so, are my problem. I have officially raised the hostile negotiation liberties status from espionage to entrapment.”

  He paused. “Amy, that is simply a legal means of saying that we will use trickery rather than force to compel their revelation of their real purpose and bargaining strength. In these circumstances, that means learning what resources they possess, including support among humans, and what they hope to achieve. I would prefer to avoid escalating the case to the degree where force is permitted.”

  “Me, too,” I said fervently.

  “All right.” Our blacksmithing, legal-trained mayor looked from me to Rory and back. “Amy, I invite you to accompany me to the militia camp, now. I will ask General Dabiri if he knows anything about an incident in Memphis. You will be there to trigger whatever it is they want to use you for.”

  I winced.

  Bataar raised a placatory hand. “Rory, I’m assuming you’ll want to be there. Can you do so invisibly?”

  “Yes.” He’d held the portal open for hours today, but neither Bataar nor I questioned Rory’s judgement on what more he could do. My husband was a scarily powerful magician.

  Well, not scary to me.

  And Bataar seemed unruffled. “I have hired us dragon messengers. They’ll carry us in and wait for us.”

  “Can they launch from the roof of the magistrate hall?” Rory asked.

  Bataar nodded. “I’ll grab my gear and make arrangements for thirty minutes from now.”

  That meant hustling, but I managed ten minutes in our room to freshen up and pull on my enchanted coat. Rory had designed it to protect me when he wasn’t around.

  He wore his own coat and a grim expression.

 
; I wasn’t scared for myself, but for all the ways the militia could make a bad situation worse.

  Two dragons waited on the roof for us.

  After brief introductions, I climbed onto the back of the green one and secured myself to the harness.

  Rory and Bataar simply stood at the edge of the roof in front of the green and blue dragons respectively. Rory had warned me, so I managed to swallow my scream when the green dragon snatched up Rory in her claws as she launched into the night sky.

  The massive blue dragon did the same with Bataar.

  Twenty miles passed in a couple of minutes. The blue dragon released Bataar first, setting him down at a trot.

  Rory landed in a combat drop a few seconds before the green dragon touched down.

  The enchantments woven into my coat enabled me to see the truth of Rory’s presence through the camouflage spell that made him indiscernible to lesser magicians and those, like the human militia, who lacked magic completely. If I turned up the collar of my coat, a similar camouflage spell would hide me.

  I unbuckled myself from the harness and climbed down, murmuring my thanks, to join Bataar and Rory. I reminded myself to act as if Rory wasn’t there.

  The sentries had sighted the dragons. The militia camp stirred to alertness.

  Two men strode forward to meet Bataar and me.

  I recognized General Dabiri and Colonel Smith from the original town hall meeting in Justice. The colonel was significantly taller than his superior, and the moonlight bleached his fair hair, cropped short, to silver.

  “Mayor Bataar, welcome. Will your dragons be joining us?” General Dabiri sought to assert his authority.

  Whether the “your” was an intentional insult or not, Bataar sidestepped it. The dragons were their own people, not livestock. “No. However, Amy Hope Fang has joined me. You passed on a letter from her father, Sean Carlton.”

  Bataar’s introduction was the first time I’d been introduced by my pack allegiance. It felt right, and I enjoyed the happy shiver down my spine. I almost oops’d and glanced at Rory to share the moment.

  “Amy Hope Fang?” Smith repeated interrogatively.