New Blood (47 page)

“I demand that this unholy ceremony be performed right here in this chamber,” Cranshaw said. “In full view of the members of the conclave where we can stop her before she kills or enslaves anyone else! Let nothing be hidden from us.”

Amanusa hid her worry. How could she preserve guild secrets and still get her blood into the cup? Would this even work? If they were so opposed to sorcery itself, would they care about the truth? She wished she had Jax's skill at sleight-of-hand. But she would do whatever she had to do to clear her name. “Agreed. We can do it here on the dais. There won't be much to see, however.”

“What do you need?” Gathmann laid his gavel on the podium as the rumble of noise rose on the chamber floor.

“A little furniture rearranging.” She surveyed the dais, thinking about the mundane to divert her mind from the panic hovering, waiting to pounce. “Podium
over there out of the way, I think. Five chairs—the large ones—in a half circle in the center. It would probably be best if the governors watched from below. Then I need a pot of tea, Inquisitor Kazaryk, Monsieur Szabo, the witnesses, and this.” She drew her lancet from her pocket and slipped it onto her forefinger.

She also wanted Jax, but she wanted him safe more than she wanted the comfort of his presence. If he remained in the lobby, surely “out of sight, out of mind” would hold true. “It might be a good idea to arrange some of your Massileans on the floor around the dais, in case someone panics.”

“As you request.” Gathmann inclined his head and beckoned the nearest Massilean guard.

The dais was cleared of extraneous people, Grey giving her a look as he descended. Amanusa wasn't sure what he meant by it.
Good luck? Be careful? I hope you know what you're doing?
All of those probably.

One of the Massileans arranged furniture while two others escorted the suddenly reluctant Kazaryk and Szabo to the platform. Dr. Rosato mounted under his own power. The Massilean escorts remained on the dais, behind the chairs.

Amanusa arranged the men; Rosato and Vaillon in the two outside chairs, Kazaryk and Szabo to either side of her place in the center. Her white dress with its scarlet trim made her shockingly visible among the men in their somber colors.

The tea was brought in on a little footed tray, with five cups rattling in their saucers around the fat white teapot. Amanusa had the apprentice set it off to the
side and poured a single cup of tea. One would make it easier to disguise the fact that she didn't take any of the tea, and the men needed to take only a swallow for the magic to take effect.

Then she walked to the center of the semicircle and faced her accusers. She held up her hand with the lancet around her finger, let the light glitter along its sharp silver point. The light flashed with the trembling of her hand, but hard as she tried, she could not stop the trembling.

“Dragos Szabo. Anton Kazaryk. You claim yourselves victims, that your blood is innocent. Do you offer your blood to prove your claim?”

“Yes.” Kazaryk looked as if he wanted to spit at her, but refrained. Perhaps because of the Massilean alchemist standing just behind him.

Szabo couldn't meet her gaze, but the stubborn old goat firmed his jaw, glaring at the magicians in the chamber behind her, and nodded.

“Say it aloud.” Amanusa gestured at the crowd of observers. “So they can hear you.”

“Yes,” he muttered, then flicked an angry glance at Amanusa.
“Yes.”

“Give me your hand.” Amanusa held out her left hand, palm up, her right poised with the lancet.

Szabo extended his hand, squinching his face up and turning away.

She isolated his longest finger and, with a quick stab and a squeeze, drew out a fat droplet of blood. She let the others—the witnesses and the two Massileans on the dais—see how small the drop was, then she scooped it up with the side of the lancet and strode to the tea tray, her skirts swaying with every step.

She stirred Szabo's blood into the tea, and with her wide skirts hiding her actions, quickly lanced her own finger and squeezed a few drops of blood into the cup. She sent magic with it, praying that the spell would work as she intended. As she hoped. If it did not—she thrust away that fear.

When she returned for Kazaryk's blood, he didn't hesitate, holding up a finger in a rude gesture. How childish. She enjoyed his wince when the lancet drove home. Perhaps that was childish too. She didn't care. Again, she collected a drop of blood and stirred it into the tea, along with a spoonful of sugar to hide any metallic taste.

Amanusa picked up the cup and turned to face the audience as she brought it to her lips and pretended to drink. “One swallow,” she said, handing the cup to Szabo. “You need to leave enough that everyone gets some, but you need to take a good mouthful.”

Szabo sipped warily.

“A mouthful, Szabo.”

The Massilean behind him shifted position, nothing more. Szabo took a larger drink. The others drank in turn—Kazaryk, Vaillon, Rosato. More than a swallow was left when the cup came to Rosato, but he tossed it all down.

“It would have been better with a nice Chianti,” he said, handing her the empty cup with a smile. “Magic always goes down better with wine.”

“Really? I've found vodka to work quite well.” She had to force the feeble quip past her frozen face, astonished she could make one, no matter how inane. Everything depended on this.

Rosato burst out with a laugh, but smothered it
quickly at the hum of disturbance from the watching crowd. Apparently they did not approve of levity at such moments. For herself, she was grateful someone could laugh.

Amanusa set the cup back on the tray and moved the tray beside the podium in the corner, for something to do while she waited for the magic to settle into their respective bloodstreams. She returned to her chair and sat, folding her hands in her lap.

Her hoops didn't do well in the throne-like chair. Exchanging it for one of the small armless chairs on the chamber floor gave her another few endless minutes that she could occupy her mind with something besides worry.

“What are we waiting for?” Cranshaw demanded from the floor.

“I told you there wouldn't be much to see,” Amanusa retorted, then regretted it. Those on the floor were watching, not participating. She did not owe them answers. Not until the spell was done.

She sat again in her chair. “Catch me if I fall,” she murmured to the Massileans behind her. One of them inclined his head in assent.

“We are waiting . . .” Amanusa offered her explanation to Vaillon, the nonmagician in the room. “Because it takes a little time for the magic to reach the bloodstream. I believe we are ready now. I will bring you and Dr. Rosato into the magic first, then we will inquire of M. Szabo, and then Inquisitor Kazaryk.” The Inquisitor was the mind she dreaded visiting most, so she would put him last. He'd killed his conscience long ago.

“If you will relax into your chairs?” she said. “You
will probably be more comfortable if you close your eyes.”

Amanusa spread her feet a little more for stability, and settled firmly into her chair as she closed her own eyes. This was the moment of proof. More even than the spell binding the dead zone, this spell would demonstrate the power and the value of sorcery and her ability as a magician.

Justice magic was one of the foundations of sorcery, the magic that no other guild could perform. If she could not do this right, she did not deserve the name of sorceress. Moreover, if she did not do this right, she would lose everything in the world that mattered to her—both Jax and the magic. Therefore, she could not fail.

She took a deep breath, and her lips moved without sound as she invoked
Blood of my blood.

A
MANUSA
REACHED
FIRST
to touch Jax pacing in the lobby and worrying. She couldn't speak to him, could only touch and hold him somehow, and assure him she was well.

She let him go reluctantly and followed the fresh magic into Vaillon. Without much magic of his own, he might need more help from her and more time to adjust to the spell.

She checked his mental shields. Vaillon had a right to his privacy while they went rummaging through Kazaryk and Szabo. They were strong. He
had a decent magic sense, though somewhat thready, and his years as a policeman had helped build solid shields. Without blood magic, no one would know what Vaillon thought if he didn't want them to.

The captain's shielding secure, Amanusa gently opened his inner vision, adding to it until he ought to be able to see whatever she did, then she . . . glued it to her own. Or perhaps she put her vision over his like a pair of spectacles.

Amanusa reached for her blood, her magic inside Dr. Rosato. His shields were pristine, his mind bright with curiosity. He felt warm and—green—when she showed him how to open his inner vision. When both men seemed comfortable to her inside the magic, she
reached
for the magic inside Kazaryk, then it was time to ride Szabo's blood.

Dr. Rosato exclaimed as they rushed into Szabo's bloodstream and halted near his heart. It pounded furiously, clearly demonstrating his anxiety. She invoked her own blood in its role as innocent, as victim of Szabo's heartless leadership. She opened her memories and Szabo's and let them see the past.

Vaillon actually snarled as the brutal deaths of Amanusa's mother and her little brother flowed past. Szabo's guilt and regret registered. So did his joking about “breaking eggs to make an omelet.” Then Amanusa unveiled her own pain, her “deflowering” at the hands of the entire outlaw gang, and the years with Mihai, while Szabo looked the other way, telling her when she wept that she would get used to it. She let them feel everything she had experienced, made them experience it with her. Her bargain, allowing her to live apart from the camp
and Szabo's determination to bring her back, unfolded for them.

Then Szabo threw up a shield. Or he tried. Amanusa's magic shattered it with a thought. Nothing would be hidden. Memory bloomed, and the watchers saw Szabo meeting with Teo while in the background, Amanusa worked over Costel's wounds.

“We need her here at the camp,” Szabo growled. “This having to go and fetch her is no good. I have had enough of her defiance.”

“I could make her stay,” Teo said, his voice dark as he watched her in the hospital shelter.

Szabo gave Teo a wary look. “Without her striking back at us? We can't afford another episode like the last one.”

“When I break a woman, she stays broken. She won't dare do anything but what I tell her.”

“She still needs to be able to heal my men. It'll do us no good to have her in camp if she's too damaged to work.”

“I won't break her wits.” Teo's grin made Szabo shudder. “Only her will.”

“Her pet idiot might object.”

“Then he's a dead man. He might be a dead man anyway. Depends on if I can train him to serve you and me as well as he serves her. Or if he annoys me enough.”

Szabo stared at the flames of the campfire a long moment. The watchers could hear him thinking.
The revolution truly did need a healer. It was Amanusa's own stubborn defiance bringing this upon her. It wasn't like she was an innocent virgin, anyway. She was older now, not a child. It wouldn't
be so bad this time. Besides, they needed her. The cause demanded it.

“I'll take a party down to the river to trade tomorrow,” Szabo said. “Wait 'til I'm gone.” That way he could deny knowing anything about Teo's plans. And he wouldn't have to hear the screams.

In a flash, Amanusa shared the events of that morning, the working of the justice magic, and the crimes committed by the men who died, not only against her and her family, but against other innocents. They saw Szabo's outrage when he returned to the decimated camp, and his awareness of just which men had died, and which ones remained alive. And they saw him plotting with Kazaryk for revenge against her for destroying his cause.

Then she followed her blood into Kazaryk, bringing the others along. Shields barred her way, better-built shielding than Szabo had attempted to throw up. But her blood was inside the man. He could not keep her out because she had already breached his deepest barrier.

The Inquisitor's mind was a darker place than Szabo's, full of self-righteousness, self-importance, and self-interest. Whatever Kazaryk wanted was right and virtuous. Whatever got in the way of that was wrong and wicked. He was zealous in the performance of his duties because that way led to promotion, and the greater possibility for power and for enrichment.

Finding a witch powerful enough to kill so many men at once would garner promotion, possibly over the heads of several of his rivals. If torturing one crack-brained Englishman would get him this witch—
or any other profitable information—then the Englishman deserved torture. Anyone who thwarted his goal by snatching the man out of his grip committed a crime. And anyone who thought to make him suffer for anything he had done deserved to die.

“I have seen enough,” Rosato announced as Amanusa brought them up from the depths of Kazaryk's sludge pit mind. “And if this is an example of the standard operation of the Hungarian Inquisition, I believe the conclave should investigate.”

“Are you satisfied with the investigation,
Herr
Vaillon?” Gathmann drew near the dais to ask.

“Oui.”
The Frenchman came to attention, seated in his chair. Amanusa thought he might still be a bit disoriented.

“Then, I break this spell and release the witnesses.” Amanusa let go of the magic, murmuring the words that would send each man back into his own mind.

Gathmann mounted the dais again. “What is your report, Wizard Rosato?”

The Italian drew himself slowly to his feet. “If I were to tell you the horrors I witnessed, horrors suffered by this innocent woman when she was a mere child, you would weep in sympathy. Terrible crimes were committed against her with the willing collaboration of these men. And she received no justice.”