Trace of Magic (30 page)

The words hit me like fists to the gut. He really was walking away. But more than that, he was letting me have myself. It was a gift. It was completely against everything he was. He was a hard man used to protecting the people he cared about. To let me do what I needed to do—whatever that was—said he really did love me. It also meant I might have made the wrong choice.

I stood rooted to the ground as he shoved his hands into his pockets, his chin jutting as he met his brother’s angry gaze.

Touray finally gave a quiet sigh. “You’ve got my word.”

Price gave a little nod. “Good.”

His brother held out his hand. “Let’s go.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Price. He was leaving. Just like that. Was I going to let him go without a word?

I told myself to say something, anything, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. I stood there like an iron statue. A tear slipped out of the corner of one of my eyes and rolled silently down my cheek.

Price pulled a hand out of his pocket and reached to take his brother’s. All of a sudden he twisted and strode over to me. He captured my head in his hands and pressed his forehead against mine.

“Crying?” he asked raggedly. “This is what you want. Tell me now if it’s not. Because I’d just as soon not grind myself up over nothing.”

Grind himself up. Was I really doing this? I closed my eyes and gave a little nod. I couldn’t do what I needed to do and be tied to him, to them. “It’s what I want. What I need, I think.”

“Damn it. Damn you,” he whispered without any heat at all. His thumbs rubbed over my cheeks. He lifted his head, and his mask fell away, exposing a turbulent mix of longing, anger, anguish, and despair. “You’ll be safe here until the storm is over. Then get out of town.”

I shook my head, my hands pressing against his. “I’m not hiding anymore.”

His fingers curled into my scalp. “You have to. They’ll be hunting you.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“Riley—”

He broke off with a frustrated sound. “I know you want me to stay out of your life, but Savannah Morrell and the others, they won’t hold back. What they did to Josh was nothing. You
have
to hide,” he pleaded.

He pleaded.

“The genie’s out of the bottle,” I said. “Sooner or later they’ll find me. The only way to keep me and mine safe is to make sure they know better than to screw with me.”

“Without my help,” he said bitterly.

“For now,” I said. “Just . . . for now.”

He went still, searching my face. Finally he said, “You know where to find me.”

I nodded. “I’ve got your trace.”

He hesitated, then let his fingers relax, though he didn’t let go. “Time to be on my way then. I don’t suppose you’ll listen if I tell you to be careful.”

“I always try.”

He scraped his lower lip with his teeth and squeezed once more with his fingers and stepped back. Piercing cold hit the back of my neck. I jerked and stared at him. Had he tabbed me? Again?

Price lifted his brows and gave an unapologetic shrug as he backed away to his brother. He knew as well as I did that I could destroy the tab.

Warmth spread through me. Somehow he’d given me exactly what I needed. Room—and trust—to make choices for myself and do things my way, but he’d still made it clear he was staking a claim.

He looked over at Josh, and his expression morphed into stone-cold killer mode. I shivered. “Touch her again, and the last week will seem like a vacation at the beach.”

Josh’s lip curled. “I’ve got abilities now. I’m not afraid of you.”

“You don’t have to be scared. You just have to believe me. I’ve taken down people with abilities much greater than yours. You’re nothing special. So trust me when I tell you that if I hear you’ve so much as touched Riley wrong, I’ll come for you. You’ll never see me coming, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your very short life.”

“Ahem,” I said, cutting in. “Josh isn’t going to hurt me again, and if he tries, I’ll break his legs for him.”

I gave my almost brother-in-law a look that said I was absolutely serious. He had the grace to flush.

“As for you—”

“As for me?” Price taunted when I didn’t finish.

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

He gave a little bow. “As you wish.” He dropped his hand onto Touray’s shoulder, and opal light spiraled around them. A second later they were gone.

I stared at the empty spot a long moment, my chest tightening into a knot. He wasn’t coming back, and this was what I wanted. I wondered if I would believe it if I kept telling that to myself. I turned to find Cass and Maya watching me from the kitchen doorway. Maya’s face looked sorrowful, her dark eyes moist. Cass held a bottle of vodka and several shot glasses. She set them on the table and filled them up, then handed them around.

“Here’s to love,” she said with a wink at me.

I blushed.

“To joy and healing,” Maya offered.

Josh looked down at his glass and then at me. He raised it slightly. “To family. And revenge.”

I lifted my glass, considering a moment. “To getting out alive.”

“I don’t know what you’ve been up to in the last few hours,” Cass said, filling the glasses again. “But I have a feeling that last one is going to be quite a trick.”

“Thanks to my sister’s boyfriend here, I walked into the middle of a Tyet war,” I said, swallowing the shot then holding out the glass for a refill. Josh started to say something, and I waved him silent. I doubted he was going to apologize, and I didn’t need to hear any more about him wanting me dead. The new Josh didn’t seem to know how to say sorry. Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t do anything differently, except maybe not get shot. And definitely not let him use me for a punching bag.

“Turns out I’ve got skills they want, so they are going to be coming after me. Hard and fast. Even if Touray keeps his word, I’ll be busy.” My lips twisted. Busy was an understatement. I’d be fighting for my life. “But I’m tired of running and hiding, so I’m going to turn it around.”

“How?” asked Josh and Cass at the same time. Maya just settled into a chair and watched me. She was one of Touray’s tinkers. Anything I said would get back to him. Guaranteed.

I considered my words. “All my life I’ve been protecting myself, living in the shadows, just like my dad taught me. He had my whole family helping to protect me. I made nulls and hid behind them. It was a good life, a safe life.”

I looked around at the others. “Everybody’s scared of binders, makers, dreamers, and travellers, not to mention all the secondary abilities. Get on their bad side and they’ll come after you. But us tracers—we’re just bloodhounds. We can find you and we can hide you, but there’s no reason to fear us.”

I swallowed my drink. Liquid courage.

“To answer your question about how I’m going to turn it around,” I said with a lot more bravado than I actually felt, “the Tyet is going to find out that trace magic is just as dangerous as any other. I’m going to teach them to fear tracers, to fear me. I’m going to make sure they think hard before coming after me or mine ever again.”

When I was done, I was going to find Price and hope to hell he still wanted me. Gods and devils willing, I’d live happily ever after.

I just had to survive until then.

The End

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An Excerpt from Diana Pharaoh Francis’
The Cipher

(The Crosspointe Chronicles)

SOME DAYS DESERVED to be drowned at birth and everyone sent back to bed with a hot brandy, a box of chocolates, and a warm, energetic companion. Today was without question one of those days.

The cutter lurched over the chop, shimmying from side to side in a stomach-twisting quadrille. Rain pebbled the deck and sails. Water sheeted across the bow and swirled around Lucy’s feet, too great a flood for the scuppers to handle. Her socks were soaked and she could hardly feel her toes. She ought to have had her boots majicked against the weather like her cloak, but that was a bit more majick than she could take.

Cold eeled deep inside Lucy. Her insides quaked with the penetrating chill and her muscles clenched against it. She tightened her arms around her stomach, wishing she’d eaten a better breakfast and thinking longingly of her forgotten flask of tea.

A few minutes later she heard a shouted “Heave to!” Sailors scrambled up the shrouds to reef the handful of bellied sails. The men at the poles dug sharply into the churning water as the cutter heeled to starboard.

“Sorry, ma’am! Weather’s too heavy. Can’t take you all the way in to shore. We’d be swamped or bilged. Gotta put you ashore on the arm.”

The mate didn’t wait for her response, which was just as well. She ground out a string of epithets. She had plenty in store. She’d grown up on the docks among people who lived too close to the edge of life to be bothered with hoity-toity manners. Or any manners at all. She rubbed her cold fingers over her cheeks and pressed them against her mouth to stop the torrent. She was on duty. She had the reputation of the customs office to think about, not to mention her own. She didn’t need witnesses to her fears, which were entirely irrational. Knowing that did not settle her stomach or loosen the tension that shook her hands.

The deck dropped and the cutter yawed sickeningly to the side. Lucy gasped and grappled a bench for balance, her feet sliding. The sailors shouted and clung desperately to the rigging. The boat rolled to the other side. She sucked in a harsh breath, bracing against the wall, her legs spread wide. The wash of black waves sounded hungry and loud above the rush of the wind. Clamping down on the whimpers crowding her throat, she bit her lips together until she tasted blood. She jeered silently at herself, hoping everybody was too busy to notice her landlubber fear.

She straightened with an effort, clinging to the back of the bench. The cutter righted itself again and continued its lurching way. Lucy’s gaze flicked to the strand of wards glimmering like green pearls beyond the mouth of the harbor. The Pale. Their glow didn’t quiet her nausea. Just because in four hundred years the fence of tide and storm wards had never failed to keep sylveth out of the harbor, it didn’t mean that today couldn’t be different. And Lucy didn’t want to be in the water when it happened. Not that the cutter offered safety against sylveth. Nothing did.

She shivered and her throat jerked as she swallowed. She’d seen for herself what raw sylveth could do. She closed her eyes against the memory. But she couldn’t halt it any more than she could stop the storm.

The day had been fine, the black sands sparkling in the sunlight, the air redolent with spring. Ten-year-old Lucy and her family were on a picnic during one of their few summer retreats. Robert had been teasing her again. She stalked off, leaving all three of her brothers in peals of laughter. She didn’t know how far she walked. She only remembered coming around a jut and stumbling over something soft and sticky.

She had stared at it for long moments, unable to decipher what it was she was looking at. Then a hollow sound slowly filled her ears. Grains trickled past as she stood, unable to tear herself away, recognition creeping over her with insect feet.

It was sylveth spawn, born of majick. Whether it had originally been human or animal or something else entirely, there was no way to tell.

Its skin was cratered and spongy, its gray expanse dotted with weeping protuberances. A ten-foot tentacle with orange suckers all along its length protruded from one side of its jellied mass. On top was a turgid frill, fanning across the surface like tree fungus. It smelled like rotting potatoes, burnt fish and hot butter. The entire length of the creature jerked and twitched as if something inside were trying to escape. More ghastly than anything Lucy could have dreamed of—it was breathing. It might once have been a piece of ship debris, a horse, or even something as prosaic as a laundry tub. Or a sailor who’d fallen prey to a sylveth tide.

In its raw, unaltered form, sylveth wormed through the Inland Sea in silvery skeins of destructive majick. Whatever it touched it changed, and rarely for the good. The Pale was the only thing that kept Crosspointe safe from its warping. But the sylveth sent regular reminders to wash up on the beaches so that no one ever forgot the danger lurking in the sea.

When she could convince her legs to respond, Lucy had run. Ever since that day, she hated sylveth, even the worked sylveth that the majicars promised was safe enough to handle. If it wasn’t, they said, the Pale would never let it through. But there were centuries of gossip and rumor that argued otherwise. About babies turning into giant insects and tearing apart a herd of cows, about houses walking off with the families inside, about rugs transforming into rabid flying creatures and hunting farmers in their fields. Fireside tales to frighten children. Everybody knew it. Almost everybody. Lucy’s gut refused to believe it. Not that what she thought made any difference. Worked sylveth was the most valuable commodity Crosspointe had to export; it was one entire leg of the three-legged stool making up Crosspointe’s economy. Being in customs guaranteed she not only had to be near it but she had to handle it.

Lucy fingered the pendant hidden under her clothing. Even if she hadn’t been a customs inspector, she was a Rampling—and loyal down to the toenails. Before she was three minutes old, the crown majicars had put a sylveth cipher around her neck. Every Rampling got one, made of the strongest protective majick available. A shield, a badge, a brand, a collar—it couldn’t be removed, not by anyone, not even her. The only thing worse than the pendant against her skin was letting anyone else see it.

Her hand dropped to her side. In Crosspointe, it wasn’t the sylveth you had to be afraid of; it was the spells that were attached to them. She eyed the frothing waves. She hated sylveth. But somehow, unbelievably, stupidly, she still craved . . .

She didn’t dare finish the thought.

THE CREW ROWED closer to the quay, singing a rhythmic chantey in time to their strokes. The cutter bucked and pitched. Lucy watched as a seaman climbed nimbly up on the rail. He stood swaying, a line caught in his fist. The prow swung toward the quay and he tipped forward in a headlong fall. Lucy caught her breath. But the fall turned into a graceful leap. He landed easily, spinning about to snub the mooring line around a waiting bollard. As the rowers heaved against the waves, the seaman hauled in the slack.

At last the cutter jolted against the tarred hawser bumpers. The gate rail was lifted away and a plank tossed down over the last few feet. Seamen lashed it into place, though it bounced and slid loosely on the quayside. The tide was going out, making it an uphill climb from the deck. Waves broke over the gangplank and the cutter heaved away from the quay. Lucy considered the narrow bridge skeptically. It might hold a half-grown child, but she was bigger than that. Looking at the narrow bridge, she felt more like a well-grown horse.

“Hurry! Can’t hold here long!”

Lucy grimaced. She should have stayed in bed. The wind and rain slapped her face. Beneath the slender bridge, the water churned like black ink. On the other side, the seaman waited, holding out a blunt, rough hand. Two quick steps was all she had to take.

She took a firm hold on her satchel, refusing to look down. She cautiously slid her foot out on the slick wood. As she did, the cutter yawed wide. She slipped, falling hard to one knee. The captain caught her under the arm, helping her up.

“We’ll get you a safety line!” he shouted.

“Never mind!” Lucy hollered over the wind, shrugging him off. She lifted the strap of her satchel over her shoulder and thrust herself onto the gangplank. It shimmied and drooped. Her bruised knee buckled as fire flared up her thigh. She flung herself upward at the seaman, snatching at his outstretched hand. He caught her fingers, his callused grip powerful. For a moment Lucy’s feet dangled over the water and then he swung her easily up to safety. Unmindful of her dignity, she stumbled and grappled a piling, her body quivering.

He didn’t wait for thanks, but released the mooring line and sprang back aboard. The gangplank was hauled in and the cutter shoved off.

Lucy pushed herself upright, hunching into the wind and shuffling toward the harbor terminal. Her cloak fluttered up and spume fountained across the walkway, soaking her uniform surcoat and trousers. She swore again, thinking longingly of her bed.

She passed a host of vessels crowding the slips lining the quay. They were mostly cutters, tugs, and lighters in the employ of the harbor or customs. They pitched from side to side, the lanterns hanging from the riggings winking like frenzied fireflies. A group of sailors trudged past Lucy, laughing and jostling one another. They moved in that rolling gait so typical of seamen, hardly seeming aware of the storm.

Inside the anonymity of her hood, Lucy snarled at them for their calm indifference. But then, sailors spent most of their lives beyond the Pale. What was a storm compared to that?

Lucy stumbled, her throat closing. Fools.

She worked her way up the quay to the harbormaster’s terminal. Stern-faced Hornets in charcoal uniforms trimmed in saffron and emerald guarded the entry. Lucy paused long enough to show her customs badge. They nodded and waved her on.

She hesitated, turning to gaze out through the mouth of the harbor. Merstone Island rose out of the ebony water like a sleepy ghost. Beyond were the vast black waters of the Inland Sea. She had a lot of friends out there. Her chest tightened. She did her best to avoid thinking about them, else she’d chew her fingers to bits with constant worry. But in a gale like this . . .

Unwillingly, she thought of Jordan. His ship ought to be coming in soon—she’d expected him more than a sennight ago. She frowned, her jaw jutting out in defiance against her sudden fear. He was an excellent captain. Few were better. He’d been sailing since he was a boy. He was too careful, too cunning to be caught by sylveth or any of the other dangers the Inland Sea had to throw at the ships that dared its depths.

She tried to make herself believe it. But even the most brilliant captain didn’t have a chance when the sea unleashed its fury. Braken’s fury. Lightning flashed, sending jagged spears of white light across the entire sky. Her eyes closed against the knife-bright glare. Hard on its heels, thunder cracked. The air shook with the angry concussion. Lucy swallowed hard. And the sea god was pissed.

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