Magical Intelligence, page 10
In answer to Myra’s unspoken question—likely he had simply read her face—Aidan worked a small shrug into his motions. “Like Silas Addair’s compound to combat the effects of Violectric Dampening, we adopted some of our British brethren’s practices for training and education. What with our singularly shorter history, the fledgling agency in the States was looking for an easy way to keep pace with the grandfather spies across the pond.”
Myra and Benjamin snorted their laughter together.
Quite possibly the first and only thing I’ve managed to do in unison during the lesson.
“Less rabbiting, if you please,” Robert’s complaint rolled into the conversation, a quiet roadblock against further chatter. By the time the short program had concluded, Myra found herself bedewed with perspiration. A glance to her companions informed her that, in this, she was not alone.
Robert rescued her with an explanation at long last. “To be an agent of the Crown—” Aidan pointedly cleared his throat. Robert ignored the protest, continuing, “One must tend to body as well as mind. Magic is, in many ways, a physical art. Mobility, ease of movement in combat, strength, agility . . . these are not far removed from what one employs in use of the gifts. Quick thinking, right judgment—these skills do not necessarily come naturally and must be nurtured, cultivated until an agent mage can act with precision and moral surety.”
Moving off to a side door leading to a small closet, Robert left the team to their own devices for a brief moment. It gave Myra a chance to collect herself and steady her breath.
And she needed it. Robert returned to the small group bearing long staves, and Myra felt her heart do a flip-flop, performing the anticipated gymnastics early.
Distributing the weapons amongst his pupils, Robert gave Aidan and Benjamin a long, hard look. Myra watched, mesmerized, as the two wizards took to the next portion of the lesson with relish. While each blocked and parried with practiced ease, she believed that each would love to land a blow upon the other.
Robert turned back to Myra. “Don’t worry, my dear. I won’t be asking you to guess at movements at this stage. And if this is too advanced, we can always just—”
“How goes the lesson?” James stood in the doorway to the drawing room. He had an eyebrow raised at Robert, a silent challenge to him for having almost softened the next drill for Myra’s sake.
Myra solved the problem by grabbing a stave for herself and adopting the stance she had seen Benjamin strike before engaging Aidan. “It’s going great. Honestly, it feels good to move about a bit.”
And it did.
Robert made as if to toss his own stave to James, prompting more frantic leaps from Myra’s heart. James was to be her sparring partner? James?
“No thanks. I’m not staying. ’Twould throw the numbers off.” James held up a restraining hand. Robert kept his weapon and motioned for Myra to wait for him. The room rang with the crack of wood against wood, punctuated with the hard rush of heavy breathing. It served to mask most of Robert’s hushed doorway conversation with James.
Still, Myra managed to catch a few fleeting bits. Something about Laurel and her inability to participate in the goings on in the drawing room. James’ resulting anxiety. When Myra’s eavesdropping concluded with Robert’s asking, “Would you like my family’s physician to see to Laurie?” she stopped up her ears altogether, feeling a tremor of fear quake through her. Laurel was ill? How much so? Was it the Dampening?
Gripping her sparring staff, Myra tried to mirror Aidan’s motions as best she could from her position as spectator. She swiped ineffectively at the air and wondered if she looked as uncoordinated as she felt. Such forceful displays were unseemly for young women of her age. And yet, even with no combatant of her own, Myra felt a rush of exhilaration. The sensation of homecoming was stronger than ever; companionship and kinship—
* * *
I lay flat on my back in the cold, dark alleyway, gasping for breath as unforgiving hands clutched at my throat. Robbed of my ability to scream, I could only struggle ineffectively under the crushing weight of my attacker.
My wrist, the one which held my wooden stave, was bent at an odd angle. Broken. Useless and screaming with pain, the shattered bones let go the only weapon I had.
My assailant leaned close, burning me with eyes that glowed like coals within a hood of black. My lungs spasmed once, twice, as the fingers at my throat, thin and hard as bone, found greater purchase and squeezed.
A chuckle like a death rattle rose in the throat of he who murdered me. Recognition blossomed through the stars clouding my fading vision. My wand! I had a weapon still, one even the enemy could not escape, one I hardly dare use.
Instinct drove the words as I found my magic—
* * *
“Stop her. Don’t let her speak!”
A gentle but restraining hand moved from Myra’s arm to her mouth, stopping the garbled words from pouring from her lips. Greedily gulping in the oh-so-sweet air of the Grafford House drawing room, she lay on her back, willing herself into calm submission.
Another vision. Ill-timed and too horrible to think on.
Myra trembled as Aidan’s hand moved from over her mouth, freeing her as he helped her to a seated position. With shock, she noticed that her right wrist was not, in fact, broken, though her other hand had drawn her wand. The worried faces of Robert, James, and Aidan crowded around her, asking their questions without words.
“I’m fine,” Myra croaked, arcing her neck to look for the conspicuously-absent Benjamin. Aghast, he sat far to the side.
As well he ought, considering the monster that I am. Myra let go the futile buoy holding her soul so that she might drown in her self-loathing. A doctor. Grafford House had its own doctor. I’ll have to run. Again.
“Is she—?” Benjamin stirred, his face still a mask of fear and anguish.
“Out. Out with you.” Robert turned to the other mage with a suddenness and fury belied by his usual taciturn state. “Now.”
Benjamin fled without so much as a backwards glance.
“Damn it, Robert.” Shaking his head, James stood and followed the other mage from the room.
Looking from Aidan to Robert, Myra tested how far out of their good graces she had actually fallen. “I’m sorry.”
“Hush now.” Aidan leaned in close once more, patting her hand awkwardly. “You tumbled flat out on us. Gave quite the scare. Not hurt are you?”
Myra shook her head.
“One of your Empathic fits, yes?” Robert’s brow was still dark with anger. “I never ought to have let young Ben—”
Myra caught on at last. “Wait. It was Ben’s gift that I . . . ?”
Good lord! With what sort of memories does he wrestle? A new chill struck Myra, and she began to tremble again.
“Come. Let us get you some tea, my dear.” Robert helped Myra to stand and did not let go her hand as they exited the room. Warm and reassuring as was his wont, he escorted her to the library, Aidan walking ahead a few paces and fretting.
Chapter Twelve
Maybe it’s magic tea. A mug of steaming comfort had been pressed into Myra’s hands. Aidan and Robert sat in armchairs to either side of her. Honor guard. Insurance against another of her fits. Both men sipped in silence, each absorbing his version of events.
James had made it to the library before them, hauling in the promised tea service. How he had known was a mystery to Myra. Ben was notably absent, and James had immediately gestured to the small feast he had laid out before them. “Eat up, Myra. We’ve decided to have our main meal in the library today. Cosier. Good for rattled nerves.”
Myra was unsure if the words were meant to carry mild reproof, but habit had the words ready on her lips, “I’m sorry.”
The answer came in the form of a teacup, accompanying plate of victuals, and hard-to-read grunt. As such, Myra—and the rest—had not yet endeavored to move the conversation forward.
Uneasy embarrassment thickened the quiet air of the library.
Myra picked at her food, knowing she was being rude but fearful of what might happen if she attempted to force anything into her churning stomach.
“Like all wizards of his age, Benjamin is a lesser mage,” James began the laborious process of cutting through the tension. “But, unlike Laurie, Aidan, and yourself, Myra, he has at least two major gifts.”
Robert flicked his eyes towards James, daring him to continue.
Aidan looked positively furious. “You truly hadn’t told her yet?”
“I had warned her. I had warned him. I thought it sufficient.” James managed to sound as though he shouted back in spite of his having kept his voice even and low.
“He’s a Necromancer.” Myra blinked in surprise. She had pulled the information from Benjamin during her . . . Her what? Reliving of his memories?
James nodded. “Combine that with his Thymesis and—”
“And there’s no way on this earth that you should ever have let Moira near him without the proper precautions!” Aidan jumped to his feet, reaching for Myra’s hand. “Come. We’re going.”
“No. You’re really not.” Laurel stood blocking the doorway. Ben fretted in the darkness behind her.
“Sit down, Aidan,” Myra breathed. It was all coming together in her dizzy head. She fixed distant eyes on M.I.’s Necromancer, grounding herself. “That’s why you don’t go outside. Too dangerous.”
Aidan did not sit but moved off to the side, passive if grumbling. That he had his wand at the ready, tucked up under one crossed arm, did not escape Myra’s notice.
“Go on. Tell me of Benjamin.” Already Myra could feel her heart swelling with empathy for her fellow mage. She again flicked her eyes to the hallway, a silent invitation, but already Laurel and Ben had vanished off into another part of the house.
“To say that our Mr. Egrett had a troubled youth would be to greatly dissemble the facts.” Robert eased himself forward in his chair so that he could better address Myra. “Both his powers surfaced around the point of Emergere—a wizard’s coming into his or her powers—”
“Five or six years of age. Give or take,” James volunteered from his perch near the fireplace.
Robert frowned at the interruption. “As I was saying, he came into his own on both the Thymesis and Necromancy. We know this because he could remember it all with perfect clarity after we found him. Oh, damn, I just fixed that!”
This last was to the fireplace which had begun to smoke into the room. Robert heaved himself to his feet and began his unhurried shuffle towards the hearth.
“They don’t even know where we are. Why don’t we just let that one be, Robert?” James approached, waving thin tendrils of smoke with an offended hand.
“Safety is safety, my boy,” Robert grunted as he knelt. “My house. My rules. You know as well as I that it’s only a matter of time until the other side catches on and stops focusing on the web to watch the spider. And with silence from Julius, we’ve no promise that the Department is still looking out for us.”
“Out of courtesy for your service to the Crown.” Aidan curled his lip.
“Stephen’s actions change nothing. He acted alone.”
“He burned my team with his acting alone. And you can’t believe that your Department doesn’t know you’ve taken me in amongst your numbers.”
“We’re safe, Agent McIntyre.”
“Safe.” Aidan’s eyes flicked to Myra. “Looks that way to me.”
James dismissed the bickering, coming over to Myra to finish his lecture. He smiled at her, and for once, his voice was the softest in the room. “Where were we?”
“Benjamin’s Emergere.” Myra surprised herself at how easily the words rolled off her tongue.
James nodded, picking up Robert’s dropped thread. “Normally, the abilities of a young mage flicker and die without the aid of Addair’s cure for the Violectric Dampening. We can only oversee so much, and as the ords don’t know of us, we often simply don’t know of a wizard’s emergence until it is too late to reverse the damage. In Ben’s case, because of his specific gifts, we were able to find him in time to preserve his powers.”
“I resurrected a man.” Ben’s voice startled Myra—and everyone else, it would seem—as he walked into the room unannounced. “And I was six.”
“Needless to say, M.I. was quick to cover up the repercussions from the incident. And Benjamin stayed with me from then on,” Robert finished. He shot Benjamin a glare as the young man moved further into the room to stand toe to toe with James.
“Laurie fixed it up good this time and suggested I refrain from sparring for the time being.” Ben opened his hand to M.I.’s leader. From her vantage point, Myra could not see much of the bauble but could only tell that it glinted in the firelight like a gemstone. “There will be no more lapses, I can promise you.”
James jerked his head, an indication that Benjamin’s apologies were misdirected.
Myra sucked in her breath as Ben turned to face her, his eyes dulled by misery.
“Don’t,” she stopped his words with one of her own. “Please. Don’t apologize for magic that you cannot help, for horrors lived that few can scarce imagine. Now I know what I know, and we know what we know. And with that, we can be more careful than simply avoiding things we don’t understand and . . . and . . .”
Myra hadn’t realized she was crying until a thickness in her throat stopped the rest of her words, and hot tears splashed down onto her splayed hands. “This magic. You could go mad from it, couldn’t you?”
Benjamin smiled his winningest smile, though this time it came forced. “That you could. But only if we let it. The thing with magic is, for all the trouble it makes, it usually also presents a solution. So . . . Thales? Whether you want them or not . . . my apologies?”
Myra eyed the hand held out to her in friendship, wondering at what point in its lifetime that it had been broken. Thrusting the memory from her, she reached out a trusting hand of her own. The handshake sealed the pact. Aidan gave witness by rising to his feet and storming off to join James by the fireplace.
“Well, then,” Robert provided his all-purpose and tension-breaking useless statement to the mix, rattling the tea tray as he reached for another scone.
The newfound peace, so much as Robert’s actions, allowed Myra to realize at last how hungry she actually had become. The same heart that had cursed the magical machinations of the Grafford House kitchen now gave thanks for its bounty. Pastries and cold cuts disappeared from her plate within moments.
Newly freed from the double burdens of guilt and James’ restrictions, Benjamin perched on the chair next to Myra—the seat that Aidan had abandoned in his huff. Insult to injury. The American agent buried his ire in conversation with Laurel, who had reappeared moments after Ben.
Myra reached for an egg, peeling it absently as she tried to absorb the events of the day, discoveries both exhilarating and frightening. Never a dull moment with these people, I’m betting.
Flake, flake, flake, bits of shell fell to Myra’s plate like broken hailstones. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ben lunge forward towards her.
“Griggs delivered.”
Two words and Ben had command of the entire M.I. team. Laurel’s quick hands had a cloak winging its way to her waiting shoulders per the silent instructions of her wand. James was arming himself to the teeth. And Robert . . .
Even considering the earlier events of the day, Myra had never seen him move so quickly. The man was not only on his feet in an eye-blink, but had acquired hat and cane and was already halfway to the door before Benjamin could finish a curt nod of acknowledgment. And while the dim of the library may have been partly to blame for Myra’s impression, it seemed to her that the memory of dark clouds hung about Robert Grafford’s head, and his fingers glittered with the bright hope of lightning.
All this Myra noted as Benjamin snatched at, not the egg within Myra’s hand, but the hand itself. Blushing, she could only sit and fight the ripples of illicit thrill bubbling up from her chest as Ben gently turned her entrapped fingers so that he could better view his discovery in the firelight.
“Looks like one of Brackenbury’s new teams does know how to do their job. They’ve been on and off tracking two outliers—”
“Wizards? Ords?” Laurel broke in.
“Doesn’t say. But they mean to close in. So we will have support regardless of who the enemy turns out to be.” Benjamin eyed the strange charcoal-gray marks that marched around the upper crown of the boiled egg.
Myra couldn’t make heads nor tails of it all and concluded the message must have been written in some sort of language of magic. No matter, for Benjamin could decipher it, and it was good to see that the Magical Intelligence Department of the British government had some of its spark back.
Save for he who had turned the tide.
Benjamin left Myra’s side and, taking up Robert’s newly vacated seat, opened upon his lap a book he had grabbed on his walk past one of the library shelves. The rest of the team might have been stone statues for all the attention he paid them after finishing his galvanizing announcement.
Ben might be resigned to his fate, but that didn’t mean he had to necessarily witness it.
Aidan was slower than the rest. For his part, he was content to rouse himself from his fireside post and dart his measuring glance about the room. His eyes fell to Myra last. “You’ll be fine staying here alone?”
Myra opened her mouth to remind Aidan she would not be alone—though it was painfully obvious that he already knew that—and was interrupted by Ben’s snort.
“Three to two is good odds, Mr. McIntyre.” James stood in the doorway with crossed arms. “You, yourself, are welcome to stay behind, if you would like.”
Chapter Thirteen
In the end, Aidan went with Laurel, James, and Robert.
Which left Myra with Benjamin. Benjamin and a whole heap of books, actually.
