Liquid Fire (42 page)

Once again, I found myself in a circle, sipping spiced tea while being grilled about magic. This time the questions were lathered with a bit more woo-hooery (I hate that phrase, but there’s no other polite way to describe that New Age nonsense) but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.

And nothing Arcturus and Zinaga hadn’t just prepared me for. They just leaned back, quiet, sharing smiles with the Grinder, who grew similarly reticent, sitting to the side with her chin propped up on her fist, head and headdress tilted askance while Finch kept grilling me.

At first, he grilled me about my tattooing setup: how I prepared my needles, how I stored my inks, how I drew my magic circles—asking subtle questions designed to see if I knew how to prevent magical infections. Next, he tried to crack my knowledge of graphomancy. Good luck.

Finally, he switched to pigment grinding—something I’d learned even less of from Arcturus than skindancing. But I’d spent three years in chemistry before dropping out, and now Arcturus leaned forward, hands steepled together, as interested in my answers as Finch.

These
questions were hard. Finch drilled me mercilessly on the five colors of magic, their relationship to human perception, and how that could be realized in chemical structures. I had to use
everything
I’d learned, even the newest alchemy knowledge I’d picked up from Devenger and his books, and I wasn’t sure I would get the answers right. But, again and again . . . I did.

“Fractions of magic are more interesting than spectra of light,” I said. “Less like a line, more like a fractal tree, with complex, interwoven possibilities. The higher up the tree, the farther out you can fall, like a Pachinko machine. That’s why we use Fermat numbers—”

But Finch was only half listening to the answer to his own question about why firecap ink could create such amazing magical colors. Instead, almost the moment I began talking, his eyes started flicking over my shoulder, in the direction of the sun, setting behind the trees.

I relaxed. We kept talking, shifting from my knowledge to the lore of the Skindancer Guild, and Finch kept trying to trip me up, standard job interview stuff with a little mysticism thrown in, but I wasn’t fazed, or fooled. I just sat cross-legged, at the ready for the real test.

When the last rays of the sun faded, Finch stood up.

———

“Enough talk,” he said. “Show us how you dance.”

44. Skindancers, Duel

Oh, had I been
waiting
for this.

I stood in one fluid move, uncoiling my crossed legs in a corkscrewing motion which made the tails of my newest vestcoat whip around me as I whirled to standing. I raised my right hand in the traditional skindancer bow, then began the Dance of Five and Two.

Skindancing isn’t like traditional dance, or even ballet—the moves aren’t designed to look pretty, but to build power, stretching the skin over exercising muscles to generate mana. Worse, if one move builds mana, its mirror takes it away, so even the basic footwork is complicated.

The Five and Two draws out a pentagram, a quick, light-footed sketch in one direction, then repeating it again, switching right for left, always building power. It can look awkward, but I’ve practiced until it’s perfect, feet flickering through the J-steps.

I didn’t wait to be given direction. When Arcturus had said they were better off having me quiz initiates, I realized that knowing the shape of my art was just as important as the details. I had to show them my scope. So when the Five and Two was done, I really cut loose.

I whirled into a pirouette, curling my arms in the proper
port de bras
to capture magical power as I flicked my legs up in complicated sequences of
battements
. The turnouts and pointed steps weren’t really ballet, but I’d been practicing ballet to help with skindancing.

Because if
I’m
going to do something, I want it to look
good.

I whirled, then abruptly stopped, discharging all the mana I’d generated into a gleaming bubble of power the size of a bowling ball. The sphere of power gleamed from red to green to blue to gold and back again, showing I’d mastered channeling different kinds of power.

I was just preparing to re-absorb the power and show off the magic of my marks when Finch began clapping. “Not bad,” he said, raising his right hand in the traditional skindancer salute. “Now let’s see how you use it.”

And he blew a kiss to me, sparkles glittering off his hand and wafting toward me in the air like a trail of pixie dust—and then a tattoo bee shot through the sparkles like an ink bullet, puncturing my bubble of power into a spray of Technicolor fireworks.

I flinched as mana sparked around me, but I was prepared. Finch didn’t like me, and I’d had no illusions a fairy grandmother blessing was winging to me on that kiss. I twirled my hand as I turned out my feet, uncoiling my vine as I grounded myself to drain off power.

Savage tribal marks leapt out of Finch’s skin, a thicket of dark razors, swirling around him as he swept his hands in a circle, his feet nimbly hopping through a complex dance called the Seven Three Five. Razor bees streamed off his tattoos and swarmed me, biting, stinging.

By now I had two vines out, whipping them around, batting the bees away. But Finch’s magic was strong, and I was forced to bring my asp tattoos to life, sending the coiling snakes down the vines to bite at the scalpel hummingbirds he’d added to the mix.

A mistake—Finch stamped his foot, and his tattoos surged out in a spray of abstract shapes. The angles overwhelmed me, and I felt a surge of mana drawn out of me, chilling my core and making my heart race—and then my asps twisted free and fell away.

My eyes bugged as my asps flopped on the ground. Finch had used metamagic, applying his magic to mine, forcing my tattoos to become
projectia.
No, I realized, as an asp thumped against the root of a tree, not just
projectia
—they drew so much mana they had become
solid
.

Finch drew in power for another attack, and I angled myself backward, legs stretched out in a move drawn more from Taido than from ballet. I threw my hands forward, pretending to fire another burst of energy or launch a tattoo—and Finch’s abstract angles surged over me.

My pulse raced. My body shivered. Mana surged through me—not just from my heart, but up through the ground. I’d become
real
good at drawing mana from other sources, and now I used Finch’s metamagic against itself, drawing mana from the ley lines beneath our feet.

Let me loose,
whispered a voice,
let me loose
—and I saw no reason to deny her.

“
Spirit of fire,
” I said, “
come to life.
”

Smoothly, my dragon’s wings slid out of the slits cut in my coat. Gracefully, its tail slid out of my pants leg. Powerfully, its arms hulked out of my sleeves, mirroring my movements. Fueled by Finch’s metamagic, the dragon became more solid than it ever had.

“That’s your masterwork,” Finch said, his angular armor wavering.

A low crackling rumble erupted from the dragon’s throat. “Sure you want to bring this one to life?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor from my voice as mana poured through me like a conduit. My boots were smoking. “Sure you can handle this
projectia
flying around—”

“Damn it!” Finch swept his hands aside, the angled shapes dissipating. My own dragon partially evaporated as the metamagic subsided. So it
was
still tattoo magic, requiring a beating heart; I stole a glance at the asps, and watched them fade. He said, “You weren’t supposed—”

“You had a chance to tell me the rules before picking a fight,” I said.

“That’s not the point! You’re supposed to react,” Finch said, stomping forward like he was spoiling for a real fight. “
Of course
an inker can pull out a masterwork and beat someone without one. You’re supposed to match magic for magic, not pull out PhD level charms—”

“Whoa—match magic for magic, with you using
metamagic
, which I haven’t even had the opportunity to learn, because it’s clearly a secret?” I said, glaring down at him. “What is this, capoeira, where you get baptized to the mat? Is that it? Did I have to lose to get initiated—”

“Oh, you’ll lose,” Finch said—and punched at me.

I fell back into an improvised Taido middle stance. I had a head on him, but no way am I going to underestimate a guy in a fight—guys have twice the upper body strength of girls, and Finch could do me serious damage if I wasn’t careful. Still, I repelled a flurry of blows.

“We’re done,” I said, after he subsided. “This isn’t a fistfight—”

But I’d made another mistake, this time turning to leave in the hope that backing down would help defuse the brewing street fight. I felt, rather than heard, the swish of the punch aimed behind my ear. I didn’t think—I just shifted down and to my right, caught his hand and tugged. Finch’s momentum carried him over my left leg, flipping him so he landed on his ass.

“You all right?” I asked, hand on his shoulder, less to comfort him than to keep him from popping back up. “Anything wounded other than maybe pride?”

He surged under my hand, then blinked and raised his hand to mine. “Yes,” he said, face a struggling mix of anger and admiration. “You pass. Yes, the fight was supposed to be a lesson in humility—but you not only can fight, you know when to
stop
a fight.
Of course,
you pass.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Arcturus said, raising a drink which had appeared in his hand.

We once again sat around the fire, drinking yet another strange brew Finch assured me was an important part of my initiation later that evening. I was still rattled from our almost-fight, but Finch was treating me like his new best friend, and was telling me about Grinder traditions.

The little werekin girl kept trying to eavesdrop, and her presumptive parents, the Asian woman and the Native American man, kept shooing her away. I lost her for a while, and then I spied her, again up on a thick live oak branch, watching us. I swear her ears were tufted.

“Is that young girl a werekin?” I asked, and she ducked back behind the tree branch. Entertaining, but you couldn’t be a mother and not realize that kid was a person—and not part of the show. “A werelynx? We should get her together with my daughter, set up a play date—”

“Khouri has no interest in a ‘play date,’ ” said the Asian woman, archly, sitting up straight and haughty even though the girl was peeking up over the edge of the branch, her interest piqued. “Especially not with a tame werekin who’s never seen forest.”

“Cinnamon’s a street cat, and Atlanta’s the City in the Forest,” I said. “I’ll wager she had a harder upbringing than Khouri—no role models, no parents, no education. Though she’s a real quick study; I’ll wager she could tutor Khouri if she needs help with her math homework—”

“Khouri doesn’t have homework,” said the Asian woman, tossing down her mortar and pestle. “You can dance, you can even fight, but you have not learned what’s important. You’ve not learned our traditions. We have our own ways here, and we’ll train her in them—”

“If you want to indoctrinate your children, there’s always Sunday School and Bible Study,” I said. “Or Wiccan Hour, or meditation, or home prayers, or whatever. Trust me, your children will have no trouble choosing their path. After all, you did.”

“And now that we’ve chosen, we want to pass it on,” she said, folding her arms. She had leather bracers like Jewel’s, but where Jewel’s were mostly proof against fire, this woman’s intricate beaded gauntlets were laced with magical symbols. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“You chose this life,” I said. “She didn’t. You’re choosing for her. Even down to who she plays with.” The woman’s face faltered, and I raised an eyebrow. “Khouri
does
have someone to play with, doesn’t she? No? Would
you
really want to have grown up all alone?”

“No,” the woman said, licking her lips.

“Well, if you want to find a playmate for Khouri, I’ve got a werekin who’s a bundle of springs,” I said. “Cinnamon’s a little older, a bit surly sometimes, but she’s a real good sport and a total softie on the inside. I’d be happy to bring her by. And she is a whiz at math and science.”

“Is she?” the Grinder said, looking at me calculatingly. “Are
you?
”

“Well, I could say yes, and you could just take my word for it,” I said, looking back at her, equally calculatingly; she’d just asked something I’d love to know about
her
. Then I quoted Feynman, “But if you really want to know, ‘the sole test of any idea is experiment’—”

“Thank the Goddess,” the Grinder said. “At last, someone to tell the whole story to.”

“I thought I handled it quite well,” Arcturus said, “when you first told it to me.”

“
You,
” the Grinder said, and Arcturus fell silent. “All that knowledge you’re so quick to discard chasing each new mystery. Mysticism helps you train your body to dance, but it will not help you grind a perfect mixture. We need both learning
and
wonder.” Arcturus looked down; then the Grinder turned her strange eyes on me. “Come,” she said, rising. “You are ready.”

The Stonegrinder’s hut was a stone and moss version of a hobbit hole—underground, but cozy and comfortable, not crude and cold. Another fire flickered at its heart, warming it; its smoke curled up in a strangely corralled column, slinking out a hole in the roof.

All around the room were piles of worn textbooks: chemistry, geology, mathematics, all
very
old. I flipped through one, examining its yellowed pages—it had the bad typography and dense math of something turn of the
last
century. Perhaps the Grinder’s job involved preserving the stored knowledge of her predecessors . . . or perhaps she was not just old, but
very
old.

On a terraced column that reminded me of a stone cat condo rested the stonegrinder’s tools—stone pots and modern droppers, handmade brushes and Pyrex glass. Dozens, no, hundreds of little bottles were piled everywhere. On the highest platform rested a lacquered skull.

“Oh, hey,” I said. “Who’s Yorick?” I stared at it with a slight smile, then noticed a stick behind the skull. Slowly, I realized it was a thighbone. It was yellowed with age—real human bone. At last I said quietly, “And how did you get him?”

“Through nothing untoward,” the Grinder said, stepping up opposite me with that slightly addled stare. She took the skull and flipped it over, tossing into it herbs and powders. Then she reached for the thighbone. “It was given freely to my master by
his
master upon his death.”