First Magic Page 8

  I found it disturbingly easy to withhold sympathy. “You have no magic.”

  “No. So why do you?”

  “It’s a mystery to everyone.” I kicked a heel against the room’s baseboard. “When I received your letter, I made a major mistake. You coded in a message. You told me to remember what you always said and claimed it was to tough it out. But really, you always said to ‘take the right path’ even when it was harder.”

  I gave a soft, scoffing laugh. I mocked myself and my naivety. “I’m blessed. Not because of magic or because I survived the apocalypse, but because so many people love me and I love them. Yet I still fell for wanting to love you, to believe that you fought to come home to me.”

  His head jerked up. His dark eyes were older, but so similar to what I saw in the mirror. “I did.”

  “I believe you fought your way back to America. You did whatever it took to get home. But home never meant me, and for me, home doesn’t mean you anymore. If it ever did.” I shook my head, annoyed with becoming distracted, again, by personal issues. “The thing was, when you coded in the warning to me to choose the right path, you weren’t hiding that message from the militia, which was what I thought. I believed that they’d taken you hostage. Instead, you hid the message from the Faerene. You wanted me to choose your ‘right path’, the militia rather than the Faerene. That’s why someone added ‘Be ready’ as a postscript. The militia wanted me ready to run to you, via them.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  I sighed. “The militia will get some valuable intelligence out of the situation, anyway. Nils rescuing you demonstrated that the Faerene care for me. They saved my father. They let me tell him about my life in Justice and how I came to be here. I confided in my father, only to realize too late that you’re here as a militia spy, instead.”

  “I care about you, Amy.” He spoke slowly, either for emphasis or because he was picking his words scrupulously, afraid that the Faerene might be monitoring our conversation for lies. “But the fact that you have magic makes you important beyond our relationship. Humanity needs magic to draw equal with the Faerene.”

  Silence fell between us. I let it stretch out.

  “Ask the Faerene to let you go,” he entreated. “Come with me. You can stay in contact with the Faerene. Whatever this tie is with Ivan—”

  I corrected him automatically. “Istvan.”

  “Your oath to Istvan won’t be broken by you living among your own kind. We need to learn about your magic, Amy. We need to wake it in ourselves.”

  And if learning about my magic meant torturing me? I looked at the scar in his right palm that he rubbed with his thumb. What would a man sacrifice for power and revenge?

  “The right path can be hard,” Sean said. “But you’re strong enough to survive it.”

  Chapter 6

  Istvan had anticipated a dawn hunting trip, alone.

  Nora, however, had other ideas, and translocated in, joining him on his flight north from Atlanta along the Chattahoochee River. The golden griffin stayed silent for the first few minutes.

  Flying with another griffin was different to sharing the skies with anyone else. It brought with it memories of life in the Arani clan, of growing up and going on hunting flights with his siblings and cousins. It also stirred up instincts.

  As much as Istvan considered himself a confirmed bachelor, flying beside a female on a morning hunt aroused his predatory drive. In the old days of feuds and battle, his clan had bred warriors, and he was a throwback to those times in size and violent reflexes. He’d chosen a more intellectual path, and channeled his driving need for challenges into serving justice.

  Sometimes, though, even he lapsed.

  Still, Nora appreciated a half-share in the deer that he offered her three minutes later. She tore in greedily until the hot blood on her beak was as crimson as the red feathers that grew among her golden plumage. Her eyes gleamed with pleasure.

  Istvan concentrated on eating and not preening, as the smug feral nature locked inside his bones urged him to. He’d brought the buck down in a precisely executed dive-and-strike before he’d been able to strangle his instinct to demonstrate his hunting prowess to a female.

  It wasn’t as if they were courting.

  “Are you here to discuss the militia?” he asked.

  “Nope.” The female was annoyingly chirpy for this early in the day. “I’m not here to discuss work at all. Or to let you discuss it.” She tore off another strip of flesh. “Split the liver?”

  “You have it.” He nudged it toward her with the tip of his beak.

  She gobbled it down. “Delicious.”

  “So why are you here? I have a number of issues to address before court at ten.”

  Rather than use a cleansing spell, she wiped her beak on the grass, as casual as a fledgling. “It’s been an eventful few days for you. I’m here as a friend.”

  He eyed her with deep suspicion. “Do you want to talk about feelings?”

  “With you?” She hooted.

  He scratched at the ground. His question wasn’t that amusing.

  She flicked him with a wing. “Don’t get grumpy. I’m simply here. Even you need downtime occasionally. Time to simply be.”

  “Be what? I hate psychobabble.”

  “Grum-pee!” She screeched it triumphantly.

  He whacked her with a wing before he thought about it.

  She fell to her side, wings tucked carefully, before rolling into a crouch and slightly flaring those beautiful golden wings.

  Belatedly, he recognized what she was doing. She’d joined him this morning to purposely reconnect him with his griffin instincts. Fledglings played like this.

  She wove her beak, left, right, left, in an invitation to parry.

  This couldn’t be a rough and tumble game. He was too large.

  However, when he crouched down, silently agreeing to play, her rump wriggled with excitement and her tail lashed the grass. Nora clearly didn’t perceive herself as outmatched. She pounced.

  Twenty minutes later she was breathless and he was barely warmed up.

  “You need an exercise regime,” he told her unwisely. Accurately, but unwisely.

  Her right back paw gestured what he could do with that suggestion.

  He rumbled a laugh.

  She opened her eyes.

  “You were right,” he said. “I have been neglecting my griffin.”

  Each of the peoples who made up the Faerene possessed unique attributes. Sentience wasn’t monolithic in how it experienced the world. Physical form did matter in so far as it shaped how an individual perceived the world. Socialization impacted perception, too. Reality was filtered and interpreted in the brain, after all.

  “Uncle Jakub extends you an open invitation to fly with the Cielo clan.”

  “That is kind of him. Please, thank him and your clan.”

  Nora whistled a sigh. “So formal. The family are in the Andes near where the Amazon River begins.”

  “I do appreciate the invitation.” He grasped that it was kindly meant. None of his own clan had joined the Migration and although there were griffins in North America, the fact that he was magistrate set him at a distance from them.

  Nora shook herself. She preened her feathers with an abstracted air. Her earlier playfulness had abandoned her. “I enjoyed this. Thank you for breakfast.”

  “Thank you for joining me.”

  She dipped her head. “My work still requires me to monitor Amy.”

  His muscles tensed. Nora took her work as seriously as he did his. She oversaw research into the human mages that none of the preparation for the Migration had foreseen. Of those who’d become familiars, Amy and Chen alone retained their magic; and only Amy’s magic had increased. It made her an object of both fascination and concern to the Fae Council, and Nora was their scientist.

  “I am glad you are protective of her, Istvan.”

  He stared at the remains of the deer carcass. “Have you had a r
eport on her father’s appearance and the human militia’s involvement in the suicides in Memphis?”

  Golden feathers fluttered with Nora’s deep exhalation. “Yes.”

  “The humans want magic,” Istvan said.

  “Understandably. They have lost the technologies that made them feel emperors of the world.” Her tone mingled sympathy and scorn.

  The same tangle of emotions sat in his chest. Humans had brought Earth to the brink of disaster, unwittingly tearing open the shield around the world and giving the Kstvm the opportunity to invade. It had cost Istvan much to hold back the aliens and seal the Rift. And yet, humanity had lost a catastrophic amount as a result of their linear progress and its destructive drilling through the shield.

  Sympathy and scorn. Amy’s hope that the Faerene and humanity could merge into a single society in a single human lifetime seemed forlorn. “I’ve promised to teach Amy the basics of magic, such as fledglings learn.”

  “I would be interested in a report on her progress. It needn’t be formal. Istvan…”

  After waiting unavailingly for her to continue, he simply agreed to inform Nora of Amy’s handling of fledgling magic lessons.

  “I’m jealous of her,” Nora said abruptly.

  Istvan nearly fell off his perch. Not that he was on a perch; just that of all the things he might have suspected of Nora’s professional scientific fascination with Amy as a human mage, personal jealousy hadn’t factored in. “What do you have to be jealous of? You’re perfect.”

  The feathers of her throat rippled. “That’s the first compliment you’ve ever given me. Do you not notice how much Amy has changed you?”

  He paced uncertainly. “The familiar bond has not altered my magic.”

  She clacked her beak. “Do not be obtuse.” He halted. She clamped her wings tight to her sides. “I apologize. That was unnecessarily rude. My colleagues, the Fae Council, and even myself have also suffered from this magic-fixation that blinded us to the truth. Amy and Chen differ from the other human familiars not by their magic, but by their openness. For Chen, his trust is solely to his Faerene partner.” The goblin healer, Viola.

  “The other human mages who managed to bond as familiars were, nonetheless, traumatized from the trial, and particularly, from the vigil. We returned them to their homes and families, and monitored them closely. If they’d demonstrated the slightest willingness to connect with their Faerene partner, we’d have facilitated it. But they never did. They curled up tight, locking themselves away from us.”

  “Locking away their magic,” Istvan assumed.

  But he assumed wrongly.

  “Their magic is gone, Istvan. We recorded it decreasing. They didn’t lock it away. The vow that created the familiar bond erased it. The conflict between their hearts and their fears was too destructive.”

  Istvan recalled the simple ceremony, one resurrected from ancient times on Elysium. Familiars had faded into a mythical past on the Faerene home world. But the vow had been alive and powerful when he and Amy recited it at the conclusion of the human familiar trials.

  She’d repeated the oath. “The magic that flows through me I gift to your service.”

  And he’d responded, “I accept your service and will honor it.”

  “Amy opened her heart to you.” Nora sat neatly, tail coiled around her right hind paw. “Her courage is remarkable. People commented on it at her wedding. Her openness to the Faerene people. I am jealous of her ability to risk, no, to entrust her vulnerability to you.”

  Nora tilted her head. “Although she did have some encouragement from you. At the familiar trials, after the vigil, you sheltered her under your wing. You and Rory, and Tineke, responded to Amy’s bravery. Each time she risked something of herself, gave of herself, you respected and protected her gift. Amy was lucky in whom she trusted.”

  Istvan wanted to bring the discussion down to specifics and current events. His uncertainty as to where Nora would otherwise lead it made him uncomfortable. The tip of his tail flicked back and forth. “It’s surprising Amy can trust anyone after her father.”

  “You have that in common. Your family damaged you.”

  He put his paw down. “We are not discussing my feelings.”

  “Did you know that Szimon once offered to tumble me?”

  “No!”

  She dipped her head. “It was fashionable a century ago to take a tumble with Szimon. He was newly recognized as heir apparent for the Arani clan.”

  “He paints his claws,” Istvan interjected, disgusted. But also bewildered by the nausea and sour anger in his gut. It wasn’t as if his oldest brother’s profligate behavior came as news to him.

  Nora ruffled her feathers, laughing unhappily. “Szimon does worse than that. But no, I refused him. I was young and idealistic. I wanted a hero, not a leader of society. I…I would be angry if someone criticized the Cielo clan, and yet, I’m going to commit that affront to your loyalty. I despise what the Arani clan has become, Istvan. They praise and emulate Szimon and your father for their ostentatious displays of power.”

  He’d come to terms long ago with the divergence in his family’s desires and his own. “Their values are different to ours.”

  “When I refused Szimon, he languished after me. It was a terribly effective method of mocking me, and of focusing the malice of his admirers on me. I ended up transferring my university enrolment to Avalonia. When you are tormented, you study every aspect of your tormenter. Szimon reinforces his social status every day. He is mannered and devious, as subtle as a serpent.”

  Wings spreading, Istvan rumbled a warning. “He is my brother.”

  “Yes, and he defined himself against you every day of your life.”

  Istvan blinked, the posturing of his wings and tension in his body punctured by surprise.

  Nora wasn’t finished rocking his world. “And in that, Szimon followed your father’s example. You are a true Arani. Your ancient warrior bloodline finds full expression in your body and spirit. You were born for battle. But your family, who are more moral-less moggies than griffins, resent how glaringly you show up their flaws, and so, they taught you that you were at fault. They taught you to fear your strength.”

  She dug her claws into the dirt. As difficult as her analysis was for Istvan to listen to, it was also costing Nora. But she stood her ground to finish what she had started. “I’m in awe that you fought free of their opinions and subtle influence enough to find work suited to you and satisfying. But in your private life, they succeeded. When you are not Magistrate Istvan, but simply Istvan, you fear your own strength. The Aranis lied to you, Istvan. They trained you to believe that warriors are too dangerous to live freely, to love wholeheartedly.”

  She shook one front paw free of dirt. Then the next. “I am jealous of Amy because she slid past all your defenses, all your false fears, to be the person you dare to love. Even Piros, your closest friend, you only risk allowing close because you believe that the Red Drake is powerful enough in his own right to survive you.”

  “I consider you a friend, Nora. I’m sorry that Szimon hurt you. I didn’t know.”

  “Szimon doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, no. He’s in a different world.” Istvan tried to pick a path through this baffling conversation. Why in the blue heavens was she analyzing him or his family? He was a bit affronted, but mostly confused. And he didn’t pick his friends according to their power level. “Have I offended you in some manner?”

  “No.” Golden feathers and skin rippled. She trembled.

  Concerned, he paced forward.

  She retreated and turned aside. “I can be as brave as Amy.” She took a deep breath and the shivering ceased. “I don’t merely respect you, Istvan. I’m in love with you.” She took two running steps and leapt into the air, translocating immediately.

  Leaving Istvan to stare at empty sky.

  Nora loves me. Dragon fire followed by a swift kick to the chest would have stunned him less.

 
; He looked around the clearing, but there were no answers here. Only the echo of her words.

  It never even occurred to him to chase after Nora. When he leapt into the air it was to return to his magisterial duties. Those made sense.

  Within a short distance, he coughed at the smoke drifting up from chimneys. The humans of Atlanta were awake.

  Reminded of practical matters, Istvan checked his appearance. Fortunately, he’d automatically cast a glamour as he took flight. The humans couldn’t see him, even if they looked up, which meant he hadn’t broken any Faerene laws of hidden coexistence with humans.

  Faerene Atlanta, within the footprint of human Atlanta, was one of the Faerene settlements that hid from its neighbors. It had to. The Faerene had learned from other migrations, on other worlds, the dangers of being too available to the indigenous sentient population. Damaged by a rift and the cost of closing it, a world’s indigenous sentients were at risk of becoming dependent and subservient to the newly arrived Faerene.

  For humanity’s long term equality, the Faerene had to hold to the rules now. Faerene settlements that were coexistent with human ones, that is, near-neighbors, had to conceal themselves. Otherwise the humans would devolve to begging on their doorstep.

  It was one of the major issues Justice’s town leaders grappled with. Since no human settlement existed immediately adjacent to Justice, the town had the option to remain visible to humans. But they also had the option to vanish behind glamours.

  The militia couldn’t begin to imagine the generosity of Justice in holding negotiations with them, and hence, precisely how offensive endangering those negotiations was to the Faerene directly involved and to everyone watching.

  Istvan landed in Faerene Atlanta outside its town hall, which currently served as a court house. The magisterial court circuit would move on, today. He’d hear a final case at ten o’clock, and after a late lunch he and his clerks and guards would head for their next stop in the Great Smoky Mountains to the north. The Faerene of Atlanta needed to heal their society and choose their path forward without his disturbing presence.