Magical Intelligence, page 24
This time Myra waited. Kady vanished and reappeared again. And Myra connected. Her stave caught Kady full on the stomach. The Kinetic’s breath went out of her with a whoosh and she fell to the ground. Eyes bulging, for one long moment she did not move save to cough ineffectively.
The bloodlust cleared from Myra’s eyes, and she knelt at Kady's side. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Kady waved her off, still unable to catch a breath. At length she wheezed, “Don’t lie in front of the Maester of Triewes, Myra.”
Myra followed the line of Kady’s weak grin to the doorway where Aidan lounged. Simply watching. She felt new color enter her cheeks—warmth not triggered by exertion.
“You did what an agent does, what we’re training to do, Myra.” Kady sat up, clutching her ribs. “Put aside your pride, your personal need for revenge, and act intelligently. With foresight.”
“Which, with Kady’s gift, is a rare thing to be able to achieve, Moira.” Aidan entered the room, complicating things.
Kady nodded, wincing. “I’m not used to having anyone predict my next move.”
“Save for me.” Aidan sat cross-legged, joining the party. They all laughed at his hurt tone. How could they not? Myra rose, suddenly fearful that she was intruding on a private moment. And in her own lesson with Kady, too. How dare he.
Aidan seemed to realize he was in the way, standing as well. He offered his hand to Kady. She ignored it, using her stave to help her to her feet. He persisted, “Ye hurt?”
Scowling, Kady shook off the concern. “Winded. Likely bruised in about twenty minutes’ time.”
She turned to Myra. “Which gives us just that. On guard? Aidan, move. You’re in the way.”
Myra remembered to be ready. Still she was caught off guard as Kady did not immediately go on the attack, flickering from sight only to appear behind Aidan. Feminine hands ruffled the wizard’s hair and then disappeared in an instant. Myra didn’t even bother to turn, whipping up her staff to block Kady’s shot from behind. She missed.
The blow came hard, harder than she had any right to expect. Myra fell like a stone, glancing her chin on the hard wooden floor. Pain exploded, drawing tears to her eyes.
Stop it. Stop it, I say, she commanded her tears. If they heard, they did not listen, pouring down her cheeks to mingle with the blood now flowing freely from her chin.
Aidan was at her side in an instant—quicker than even Kady, it seemed to Myra, though that would have been impossible considering the latter’s gift.
“Lesson is over,” he declared.
“Nuh ’snot,” Myra managed, thanking her lucky stars that she hadn’t bitten her tongue when she had gone down.
“Before one of you kills the other,” Aidan continued, stern. “She’s new to this, Kat.”
“I know that. But she also landed one on me so I assumed . . .” With Aidan there, there was no real need to elaborate further. He knew. Kady stopped her explanation, opting instead for apology. “I’m so sorry, Myra. I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Don lye eebunt a e Aesser Truus.” Myra was still trying not to move her jaw overmuch while simultaneously attempting to smile.
“Oh, you poor dear.” Kady dissolved into helpless laughter. “Aidan, you idiot. Run and get her a compress.” Gently lifting Myra’s chin so that she could better assess the damage, she added, “And James. He’ll fix this right up, I'm sure.”
In the end, it was Benjamin who fixed the cut on Myra’s chin. And not with magic but with good old-fashioned doctoring.
Myra found that she was in too much pain to enjoy the gentle nearness of M.I.’s ever-distant walking, talking encyclopedia. She had been missing that. It was over altogether too quickly. Benjamin was skilled. Where he learned to sew sutures was not really a question, though. Probably in some book, some time.
Myra felt like a sideshow spectacle. Come one, come all. See the girl with the amazing swollen jaw! Admission only sixpence! Each of the M.I. agents had their turn with her, eyeing the angry wound, crooning their condolences. And generally giving Kady all manner of chastising glances.
While she longed to defend Kady—and, in fact, at first tried—the pain of talking defeated Myra at last. She sat in sore silence, feeling idiotic and having little available to alleviate it.
Myra’s injury had given the team an excuse to call a holiday. After the tumult of tears and high-spirited catching up after weeks apart, it seemed that everyone’s jaws were tired. The afternoon was spent in reading and quiet contemplation.
By the time tea was served, Myra discovered that Benjamin’s poultices, though a bother to keep upon one’s chin, had done a tidy job at reducing both swelling and pain. She could talk again. And, after hours of near silence, she was ready to, having come to a startling realization during that time.
“That machine. I’d seen one before.” Myra unfocused her eyes, intent on a past of which she could remember but a fraction.
“The one from the Flameists’ ceremony?”
“H-sssh . . .” Myra waved Ben off. “Yes.” She frowned, trying to block him out. The memory—not even complete—flitted just out of reach. A dark room. Big. Cavernous in spite of being filled with crates. And just visible, glinting in the uneasy orange illumination, crouched the now-familiar mass of gears, wire, brass, tubes, and knobs. Twin to that used in the Order’s ceremony not even twenty-four hours prior. Or, perhaps, the same machine.
But where? Where had she seen such?
Julius? His offices had been filled with similar bric-a-brac, carried much the same aesthetic as the half-remembered thought that so plagued Myra, if brighter and more modern. Practical. Her hand strayed to the pendant at her neck.
No. While the style was most certainly his, the very idea that Julius could be the architect of such an instrument was absurd.
But I’ve been so few places . . . Also not true. While not well-traveled, she had had her fair share of adventures even before joining up with M.I.
So, the memory was old. It would explain why the recollection was so dim, time-blurred. As though seen through an imperfect lens or glimpsed from the corner of her eye—
“The warehouse,” Aidan supplied the answer. “I remember seeing it through the double bars of the cage. In the chaos that followed, I’d all but forgot. Tucked away behind a shipment of munitions, I remember thinking ‘That’s not one of ours,’ and wondering its purpose. I figured it was what powered the outer cage that was holding us there.”
“I wonder if it’s the same one,” Myra and Aidan said in unison.
Myra blushed as the memory came into greater focus, aided in part by Aidan’s confirmation. Yes, she had been in his memories. A glimpse and nothing more. Or, rather, it was more like blown through on the way to Stephen’s experiences . . .
Kady sat upright, red-faced and clearly upset. “I brought it to headquarters.”
“You what?” Seven astonished faces confronted the Kinetic. Stephen hung his head in embarrassment.
“Well, we can get it back, right? I mean . . . After all, it’s not my fault! I didn’t know they’d ousted you.” Kady scowled, defensive. “And it’s not exactly like they hate us.”
“Just don’t trust us is all,” James snorted, rising to his feet to pace the room uneasily.
“You hadn’t told her? All that time?” Laurel looked to Steve. Myra figured the wizard likely had no idea she was adding to Stephen’s pain with her ill-timed compassion.
“I had not. I thought that maybe after what had happened in America, that they’d reopen the lines of communication. Out of decency. I didn’t know it had gotten so bad as that. When I heard we were living here, all of us . . .” Steve shook his head.
“Does explain the look I was given by the man in the room when I dropped it off . . .” Kady’s clear bitterness made her resultant laugh sour.
“Someone saw you?” James stopped his pacing, face agog.
Kady went back on the defensive. “Well, of course. There was a guard there. His jaw dropped so, I thought he’d dislocated it in astonishment. It wasn’t even half a second, James! Look, I’ll just nip back in and—”
“Fast. It has to be fast,” James practically leapt upon the Kinetic in furor. “They’ll be armed, they might know you’re coming back for the evidence you so generously deposited on their doorstep.”
James’ tirade had helped Kady regain her poise. She gave one of her trademark crooked smiles. “Fast? Really.”
She blinked out of—and then immediately back into—sight.
Kady swayed, stumbling into a seated position and looking around her dazedly. She appeared undamaged but looked ill. Utterly spent, the Kinetic swore, even that verbiage managing to come out haggard and mangled. Alarm renewed itself in the occupants of Grafford House; Aidan was at Kady’s side in an instant.
“All around ’lectric,” Kady gasped, managing coherent language at last. “Blocked—blocked us . . .”
All began talking at once, each fruitlessly shouting above the other in an effort to be heard. Myra’s eyes stayed on Kady. Kady in Aidan’s arms. The normally strong mage seemed small. Indomitability had been bested.
Myra wanted to soothe the woman, give her strength. But her Empathic magic just couldn’t quite reach her. That in itself was frightening.
“I’ll go,” Stephen cut through the din at last.
“Go where?” James rounded on him. Myra tore her eyes from Aidan and Kady with difficulty, focusing on the new drama building within the team. Stephen did not answer. He didn’t have to. They all knew where. Myra sucked in her breath.
James sputtered through his rapid turning of emotions. Myra wasn’t even certain who he was mad at, Stephen or the now hostile DMI. “What? How? They’ll—”
“They’ll what?” Stephen threw wide his arms, laughing manically. “I’ve no powers, and I’ve already died once. Surely they cannot think they can outright do anything to me.”
“What makes you so sure of that? What makes you think your past service protects you?” Aidan, for once was on James’ side. It did Myra’s heart glad to have him add to the conversation. While still pale, Kady was stirring, gaining a bit of her fire back.
“Why, they’ve let us live,” Steve said, nonplussed. “Knowing what we do, our service clearly has to count for something.”
He had a point.
Clandestine or not, someone had to know the M.I. agents held out in Grafford House. And they had not been harassed. At times, they had been helped. Narrowing her eyes, Myra glared at the new thought that rose in her mind. Where is Julius in all of this? Is he truly that angry with James?
“I’ll take Myra with, if that puts you at ease.” Stephen’s offer shocked Myra out of her private reflection.
What, me? Myra looked about her for escape, objection from Aidan, James, even Benjamin. None came.
“She is unaffected by the Dampening, is she not?” Stephen turned his eyes on Myra. “You can shadow me, invisible. There to get me out of trouble should the need arise. In light of current circumstances, I do believe you’re the only one of us who can do it.”
The bright flame of excitement birthed in Myra’s chest, fueling her bravery and coloring her cheeks. She nodded. She would do it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Spilling out onto Wilton Road from Chatham Station, a crowd of hurried travelers threatened to separate Myra from her spell of invisibility. Worse, it endeavored to tear her from he whose elbow she clutched.
“Don’t be nervous,” Stephen muttered under his breath. “Almost there, love.”
Myra considered reminding him of her cursory familiarity with DMI’s headquarters but saved her breath. Such memories came from a time when the team had thought Steve dead. Best not bring that up.
Myra shivered in anticipation, invisible to all and therefore subject to pummeling by wayward umbrella tips and tripped up by carelessly swung canes. She checked her spells again, raising a transparent arm in front of her eyes and looking down to espy, well, nothing of herself. The sickly mid-morning sunshine shone right through her, none the wiser. Myra’s magic held.
Grumbling to herself over having been forced to walk for the entirety of the not inconsiderable journey, Myra tried to remember which of the identical buildings on the long block was the illustrious office of the Department of Intelligence Formerly Magical. None stood out. In fact, given the leisure to examine them, the entirety of the tenements reminded Myra of a group of schoolchildren each pressing his friends forward to take the blame for some ill deed or another, reluctant and eager to keep the discerning eye of authority turned from them.
Part of its charm, I suppose. Myra marveled once more at the clandestine operation’s ability to blend into the background.
Stephen slowed. Myra loosed her grip on his arm slightly as the mage-turned-ord sniffed and hunted about in his pocket for a handkerchief. Nervous, she startled as Stephen removed them from the press of traffic so that he could tend to his nose, positioning them safely in the wake of a light post.
After a snuffling and short cough, Stephen moved to replace his cloth in his pocket only to miss, dropping the small square of linen and juggling to catch it before it met an unfortunate end upon the pavement. His movements were so fast, so fluid, that Myra nearly missed the sign.
“That’s better.” Stephen’s words were a signal to Myra that she cling to his arm once more as he stepped out into the street. Her curious eyes were thus torn away before she could look more closely at the chalk markings adorning the ornamental base of the lamp. Call and response. Unremarkable yet impenetrable as Benjamin’s egg cipher.
Myra thrilled as she and Stephen skipped up the steps and in through the front door into one austere and ordinary tenement amongst many, her memory still refusing to recollect the details from her last visit therein. Though it seemed unlikely considering the circumstances, a part of her wondered if there was magic at work there. Something to keep the memory permanently befuddled.
“May I help you?” Clad in the trappings of a modern gentleman but carrying all the haughtiness of an old-fashioned keeper-of-the-gate in a castle, a mutton-chopped and spectacled fellow greeted DMI’s unannounced visitor from behind the massive desk that all but blocked the flow of traffic in and out of the front hallway.
Myra frowned. Now that they were inside, the rest was all beginning to look familiar. Granted, the desk had since been emptied of its impressive clutter and now gleamed vacantly in the lamplight, a vast smooth ocean of brown. And the lighting itself seemed a touch brighter. Her mind ticked off each detail, signaling approval and recollection. Save for this fellow. And he gave her the shivers.
Where was Mr. Black?
Sitting with one hand hidden beneath the vastly underutilized piece of furniture, the man glared at Stephen through bright eyes made small by both his glasses and the over-large nose that would have dominated his face but for his bushy wealth of whiskers. Said off-proportioned face turned pale a second later, drained of its blood-flow by pure shock.
“Seems you’ve a bit of a ways to go there, Mick,” Stephen laughed, holding up his hands for inspection. “Your face just now . . . Best beware with that postiche that you keep your mouth from gaping so, else a family of birds might take up residence there.”
Still stunned, the man continued to stare, now bringing up his other hand to rest upon the desktop. With a clatter, the pistol that had held a hidden threat toward unwanted visitors to the department dropped to the table, silent as its owner.
“Stephen Tomlinson.” A second of DMI’s employees entered to join his co-worker, his voice demonstrating that he, too, was perhaps as shocked as the first but better disciplined. He, too, was a stranger to Myra. “You were dead.”
Stephen turned to the newcomer, giving a wry grin and slight shrug. “Not the first time, as you know, Lee.”
That both men recognized Stephen—and he them—reassured Myra. There had not been as complete a rearrangement of staffing as she feared. She darted her eyes up the stairs, thinking of Julius Griggs.
“Uh, uh,” Lee chided, stepping back. Hand straying to his own weapon, he prompted, “Protocols, Agent Mickey.”
A rosy hue underscored Mickey’s paleness, embarrassment as he fumbled for the surrendered pistol under his cohort’s reproving glance. He trained it back on Stephen once more.
Hands still up, Stephen’s face grew hard. “I have no wand, Lee. I’m—”
Choking on the word, the former mage fought a standoff more perilous than that of two trained agents of the Crown leveling pistols at his heart. Defeated, he finally acknowledged, “I have lost my gift.”
The two agents mentally picked through Stephen’s confession, Mickey registering its meaning quicker than Lee. Or perhaps he had greater grievance with the former wizard. A smile spread through his face—far better concealed than his shock but still marked. Long-standing jealousy peeked out and then quickly hid itself.
Behind Stephen, Myra shivered. They really don’t like Stephen and our ilk. Is that why they’ve been switched out with Mr. Black?
“And so you came skulking for a job?”
“What business have you here?”
Both men spoke at once, attacking Stephen with words rather than physical force. Again, Stephen rolled his shoulders, effrontery at the intimation. And a signal to Myra.
Loathe to separate from Stephen in the face of such naked animosity—for his sake as much as hers—Myra pondered the consequences of disobedience. And rejected such.
“I came because I needed to see for myself whether the events of my mission in America changed anything, anything at all.” Stephen pretended nonchalance, observing his surroundings with a detached professional interest. “Nice lighting, by the by. Bright. Very . . . electric. Newly installed?”
“Mission,” Lee snorted and put up his weapon. It gave Myra the opportunity needed to slip past. “Calling your actions such are a perfect example of why your kind have no place in our business. You with your undisciplined, slapdash way of spying. An embarrassment, sir. To the department, to the Crown. More lucky than accomplished. You and your hocus-pocus, your mumbo jumbo—”
