Faith Hunter - Host

“Battle mages would take weeks to get here in winter. If it gets free, we run,” Audric said.

Cheran finally looked at him. “Spoken like a true coward.”

Audric seemed to shift, to blur, and a knife thunked into the chair, pinning Cheran’s oh-so-expensive pants to the wood beneath the upholstery and padding. The hilt quivered along Cheran’s inner thigh, a micron from his privates. He went deathly still, his fingertips bloodless.

I drank a long swallow of beer, hiding a smile. Some of my tension eased away. “I suggest you show my champard the respect due a master of both savage-chi and savage-blade,” I said, my voice sounding casual once again. “When you insult him, you insult me. And you don’t want to take us both on, no matter what else you are besides a traveling Enclave emissary.”

“Even a fool does his homework before he travels,” Audric said. “You assumed your unexpected arrival, your speed, and a visa would provide you with protection from the humans and answers to your questions. Your teachers in Enclave will be disappointed when I report to them your…sloppy”—he used the mage’s own word—“work.” He rested a hand on the hilt of a second throwing knife in his belt.

Cheran scratched his chin, fighting a grin. “My speed and skills haven’t gained me much, true. But what about the visa? I’m alive and still have my skin.”

“The orthodox in this town are sharply divided over my mistrend’s presence. Another mage, especially one with so few survival instincts and the wardrobe of a court jester, may not fare so well and may, furthermore, place her in greater danger. I will not permit this. If you endanger her, I’ll hand you over to them.”

Cheran’s brows lifted and he finally looked at Audric. “The orthodox would violate the legal sanctity of a diplomatic visa? You would violate it?”

“Anger the people in this town and they will leave you in tiny pieces in the snow,” Audric said, his strong teeth bared. “A mage lived among them in hiding for a decade. Many want her dead. Prejudice and emotions run high here, and most of the town fathers aren’t overly impressed with mages.”

Cheran worked the throwing blade back and forth until it eased from the chair frame. A tuft of stuffing came out with the tip, which he held up to the light. “Mule, I’ve known you less than an hour and you’ve sliced two holes in my clothes.” He flicked the stuffing away and tested the edge with the pad of his thumb. It was a vaguely threatening gesture; Audric gave him a “Try it and I’ll eat your guts for supper” grin. Territorial play by two males, one an alpha, one a wannabe.

“He’s a sweetheart,” I said. “Hand him the pretty knife like a gentleman. Hilt first.”

“Spoilsport.” He reversed the knife and offered it to Audric. “Since it seems I need an income, and your champard’s blades need work, do you mind if I set up my equipment in the corner there? I can put on new edges,” he said to me. Which told me what kind of mage he was. Not just a metal mage. But one of the few, very specialized, steel mages.

The thought flashed through my mind that I could put him in contact with the Schuberts, who owned Blue Tick Hound Guns. But I didn’t trust him enough to provide mage-steel for the family business, not when the guns they made would be used to fight Darkness in defense of the town. Our blades, however, needed attention, and giving them new edges couldn’t negatively affect their fighting power. Or I didn’t think it could.

“Okay by me,” I said, standing. “But you’ll have to ask Rupert and Jacey.”

He looked horrified. “You let humans make decisions for you? Humans?”

If this idiot didn’t watch his tone, I’d save the orthodox the trouble and run him through with a sword myself.

I climbed into a restorative bath and settled into the bottom of the tub with a sigh of purely human pleasure. In the nearest window, the lunar curve brightened a snaking mist that rested along the ground and above the hollows, the black shadows of trees following the hump of hills against the night sky. It was beautiful, almost surreal; no artist’s rendition of nighttime could come close to the reality of the mountain sky at midnight.

Not even the moon over the Gulf of Mexico was as lovely. Though I was certain no one at the New Orleans Enclave, where I had been born and raised—where I had spent the first fourteen years of my life, ten of them in stone mage training, and savage-chi and savage-blade training (the martial arts developed by the first neomages)—would agree. I would never see a Louisiana moon rise again. I was forever barred from Enclave due to the unlucky perversity of being mentally open to all the mage-minds present—

The thought vanished. I saw in memory a nugget of snowflake obsidian tossed at me, its leather cord flipping through the air. I hadn’t realized it when I removed my necklace for the bath, but Cheran hadn’t jumped back into my mind when the nugget of volcanic glass was no longer in contact with my flesh. Just having it near me now shut Cheran out of my mind. Was the amulet’s conjure spreading through me? And if so, what else might it be doing to me?

Dripping bathwater, I reached for the steel necklace of chain-mail links that secured my amulets. I had several new ones, conjures as yet untried, dangerous things I hoped I would never need. With wet fingers, I shifted through them all and lifted the rounded obsidian nugget Cheran had brought. Though I had looked into the incantation with my mage-senses, studying both the internal composition of the glass and as much of the conjure it contained as I could, I wasn’t sure yet exactly what it could do.

The amulet contained a conjure crafted just for me, a sort of semiprime amulet, one created by my old teachers at Enclave without access to my genetic material; I knew it was powerful, and that it was still settling into my psyche with far greater ease than I would have liked. That ease demonstrated that I was open and very vulnerable to certain types of incantations. That part I didn’t like. But the part about keeping other mages out of my mind…

A shiver raced over my skin, half fear, half unhealthy excitement. If the amulet held true to keeping one mage out of my mind, could it, just maybe, keep out all twelve hundred mages at the New Orleans Enclave that had sent Cheran? I turned the wire-wrapped bauble I had tied to my necklace. Drops plinked from my fingers to the bathwater. Could I, maybe, go home again? The word echoed in the silence of my mind.

Home. To Enclave? If that warm, muggy, sultry place was home. Or is home here, in the life I’ve built?

I could go…home. I tested the word on my tongue.

I dropped the Apache Tear to the table and it rattled softly on the old wood where I kept my oils and unguents and bath salts. Apache Tear. It seemed an apt name.

Releasing control over my mage-attributes, I relaxed totally, my skin glowing in the bathwater, pinkish and coral, warm tints. My scars glowed brighter, a fierce white tracery. Fingers drawn to the one wound that hadn’t completely healed, I traced the site on my left side where the spur of Darkness had pierced me. It was better. Almost gone. In human vision it was a dull bruise, in mage-sight, it was worse, but healing. Definitely healing. And the spur itself was safe in a pocket of my battle cloak. My throat, I couldn’t see except in a mirror. It was all new tissue, blazing white when my mage-attributes were set free.

I slipped deeper into the water, looking around at the loft where I had lived for so many years. I had moved here soon after my foster father died, his estate leaving me just enough money to buy the old, decrepit two-story building. It had been bare stone and brick walls three feet thick, splintered boards underfoot. The loft had rough beams overhead, empty windows, abandoned birds’ nests in the rafters. Downstairs, in the shop, it had been worse, the floor rotten in places, the pressed tin ceiling rusted, the walls filthy and covered in graffiti.