New Blood (8 page)

“Yes, Miss.” Jax dipped his head in his servant's bow. Amanusa could just see it. “I can teach you how to ride the blood, which is the beginning of justice.” He paused. “I know you want justice. I can feel you crying out for it.”

“Justice,” she said. “Not revenge.”

“Sometimes, it looks much the same.”

She pulled her feet back and folded them under her. “Then teach me.”

“Tomorrow.” He moved back near the door. “It's not always a gentle ride. This night is too old. You need rest for tomorrow.” He slid his tarpaulin nearer the tent opening and stood there, hunched over, until Amanusa lay down on her cot.

“How long will they keep you here?” He stretched across the doorway.

“Until Costel is out of danger. That's what Szabo
usually does.” She wrapped herself tighter in her blankets.

“Will he live?”

“If the magic you taught me works like you said.” She sighed. “It will be a miracle if he does. Belly wounds . . .”

“The magic will work.” He fell silent.

Amanusa wanted to ask how he could be so sure, but decided she didn't want to hear the answer.

 

T
HE NEXT DAY
was spent checking on Costel, changing Szabo's bandages and those of the others who'd let their minor injuries suppurate, and hunting the herbs that insisted on clinging to high mountain slopes rather than growing placidly in a garden plot. Jax made a bulky shadow, but Amanusa found herself grateful for his presence, and not only for his beast-of-burden talents.

After last night, she trusted Jax a bit more. Maybe more than a bit. He'd shed blood to keep her safe. Not much, but blood nonetheless. She'd inspected the scratch on his thumb in the morning's light and almost laughed at his sly request that she lick it whole again. She did lick her own thumb and rub it over his small injury. Even if she did not completely trust him—and she didn't—she trusted Jax more than she did anyone else in this hellhole.

As darkness deepened, Amanusa left Miruna to watch Costel through the night with instructions to spoon more broth and willow-bark tea into him if he woke again. She began to be cautiously optimistic that Costel would indeed survive his terrible belly wound. That did not explain the bubbles of tension
that simmered along her nerves. She strolled with false casualness toward her tent.

“Amanusa,” Teo bellowed. “You do not drink with us?”

“Not tonight, Teo,” she called back and stepped through the magical perimeter surrounding the tent. It enfolded her lovingly as she passed through it, then solidified again into shimmering protection.

“You will make us think you don't love us.” His teasing shout seemed to carry underlying threat.

“I love you all, Teo.” She blew him a mocking kiss. “I just don't like you very much.”

Jax eased up behind her, so close that his blanket-cloak brushed her hand. He stood straighter than his awkward madman's stance and Amanusa could feel the hostility simmering in him. Dear Lord, she did not need him starting anything tonight. Dead Yvaine hadn't turned him completely eunuch. He had a man's possessive jealousy.

“Go inside,” she told him. “You're only making things worse.”

He snarled, lip curling, eyes fastened on Szabo's second-in-command, but he obeyed her.

“Is that the secret?” Teo shouted. “You only fuck the feebleminded now? Half-men?”

Amanusa swallowed the hot-tempered retorts crowding her tongue. She had a hundred of them, a thousand, beginning with the size of brains compared to the size of—but she didn't dare use them. Even with the protection Jax had built for her.

She was tired of it. Tired of swallowing her temper and choosing every word. Tired of this place. Tired of this
life.

And Jax waited inside the tent with something new. Fresh magic. Powerful. Different. Suddenly she wondered why she'd ever hesitated.

“Good night, Teo.” She turned to walk the few paces to the tent's opening.

“Don't you walk away while I'm talking!” Teo's voice came closer, grew louder. “Come here, woman. I'm talking to you!”

Amanusa ducked inside, stomach churning, just as Szabo snapped out Teo's name. The outlaw fell silent, and after a moment she heard the crunch of footsteps walking away again.

Her knees crumpled and she reached out for . . . for . . . she didn't know. Something. Anything.

Jax caught her trembling hand. He helped her to the cot. He brought her a tin cup of tea, blowing on it to cool it before he handed it to her. He wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and knelt to unlace her shoes and ease them off.

“Thank you.” She took a sip of the tea, huddling 'round its warmth. She didn't know why she should be so chilled; the night hadn't yet stolen away the day's warmth. “I feel so silly.”

“That man means you harm.” Jax set her stocking-clad feet on his thighs again and began to rub them warm. “It's natural to be afraid, especially since you have not had the magic to protect yourself. I don't know what he said, but I heard how he said it. We have work to do tonight.”

Amanusa frowned as she sipped again. “I thought you understood Romanian.”

He gave her a crooked smile, his rubbing changing from warmth-inducing to deep, penetrating
kneading. Heaven. “I understand
you.
I can tell when you're speaking—Romanian, is it? But I don't understand them when they speak it. Helps with the simpleton role.” He patted her toes as he set her second warmed, soothed foot back on his leg. “Finish up the tea and lie down. Better that way for your first ride, I think.”

Now Amanusa was the obedient one as she drained her cup and handed it to Jax. He stretched his arm past the door flap to set it on the table outside while she stretched out on her back.

“There we go.” He tucked the blankets close around her feet. “Arms out,” he said. “At least for now.”

“Explain what we're doing. What does it mean to ‘ride the blood'?”

Crow walked into the tent and cocked his beady eye at them, as if checking to see what they were about, then turned and hopped out again, apparently satisfied. Jax chuckled as he sat on the ground near Amanusa's head, looping his long arms around his upthrust knees.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” he said. “You will follow the blood—yours—” He pointed at her. “Inside the subject—me—” He turned his finger toward himself. “And ride it. It's one of the foundations of blood magic.

“When you ride, you can search out hidden thoughts, hidden illness—whatever you need to find. It's how the sorceress obtains justice. Secrets are impossible to keep when you ride another's blood. You can heal while riding the blood, though it's difficult and requires more blood from you.”

He paused. “Death—the execution of justice—requires
only a tiny drop. Which is why I will take more from you than that.”

“Why only a drop?”

Jax met her eyes a moment, before looking back at his loosely clasped hands. “Yvaine never explained it to me. That I can remember.”

Amanusa shivered at the reminder of the magic he bore.

“But I think it's because the small amount allows the sorceress to maintain her distance. More blood means a closer binding.”

“So how much did you take from Yvaine?”

He ducked his head between hunched shoulders. “Over the years? Seems like gallons, but I'm sure it wasn't so much.”

“Will her magic interfere with this? With what we do now?”

“It shouldn't, or she would not have told me to do it.” He unbuckled his belt. In another man it would make Amanusa run away in alarm. Now, she rolled onto her side and watched him.

“It was the last thing she told me, when I came to her before they burned her. ‘Have her ride your blood,' she said. ‘Soon as you can. Don't wait. Teach her to ride your blood.' Then she sent me away or they'd have burned me too.”

His matter-of-fact tone sent more shivers crawling up Amanusa's back as he opened a hidden pocket in his belt and pulled out a small silver object and showed it to her.

It was flat, about as long as the tip of her forefinger at its sharp point, and twice as wide where it spread out at the base below. The chased metal was tarnished
almost black at the base, but the point gleamed silver-white.

Jax rubbed at the tarnish. “I haven't had this out since Yvaine gave it to me. Haven't thought about it, to be honest, but it's good enough for tonight. I'll polish it later.”

“What is it?”

“Yvaine's lancet.” Jax began gently bending the broad, flat sides down, shaping them into a circle. “Now, it's yours.”

Amanusa blew out a breath, wishing she could calm her nerves. She spoke lightly, to hide their state. “So far, Yvaine's bequeathed me a man and a lancet. What else?”

“Well, there's the tower.” Jax concentrated on his task, glancing now and again at her hand trailing over the edge of the cot. “And the land that goes with it, of course. And the books—quite a lot of those. She had a fair bit of jewelry too. That should be all right. No one'll have gone into the tower. Then there's the bank accounts—”

“Wait,
wait.
” She caught Jax's arm to make him stop fiddling with the lancet thing and look at her. “I was joking.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “I wasn't. All of Yvaine's possessions come to you, since she had no other heirs. Council law. Possessions—gold and jewelry and such—can be left to heirs of the body, if there are any. But in any case, a magician's workshop—Yvaine's tower—and all the magic items go to the magician's apprentice. You. In Yvaine's case, you get everything. The money and jewels, the books, the instruments—glassware, lancets, and such—and me.”

“You're not a possession.”

He winked at her. “No, I'm a magical item.”

Amanusa huffed out a breath of laughter as Jax made a few more adjustments to the lancet. She could almost like this man, and how was that possible?

To be honest, she knew. He could make her laugh, even when she didn't particularly want to. He warmed her feet. He made her—somehow—feel safe. She didn't trust the liking any more than she trusted the man.

“There.” A world of satisfaction swam in his voice. “May I have your hand?”

Bemused, she held it out.

“No, your other. You're right-handed. I want the right.” Jax lifted her hand hanging off the cot. He slid the lancet over her forefinger and squeezed, tightening it a fraction more until it fit snugly. The broad flat section that had extended to either side of the instrument now curved around to hug her finger, while the sharp point extended beyond it to create an artificial claw.

Jax let her examine it. “You'll use your right hand as a source of blood eventually, but you'll want to take it most often from the left. Not because of any difference in the blood, but because many times, you won't want to impair the use of your right. There are other places to draw of course, but for small amounts, fingers work quickest and best.”

The designs wrapped in silver around her finger included ancient words—Latin perhaps. She'd seen Latin written in churches, though not these words. They twined around tiny lilies and skulls. The whole of it sent shivers skittering through her. No wonder
people feared sorcery if it could frighten even its practitioners.

“What do the words say?” She let him work the lancet off her finger.

“No idea.” He sent her a crooked smile. “Might have known once but—” He lifted one broad bony shoulder. “We'll have to look it up together, when we get to those books. I'll draw the blood, all right? Until you learn how deep for how much.”

“Yes, all right.” Amanusa gave him her hand again, the correct one this time, her left.

Jax separated out her middle finger, the longest, and looked up at her with the lancet poised over her work-roughened fingertip. “Ready?”

Mutely, she nodded.

“Breathe in,” he said. “Hold it an instant, then let it out. Focus on your body. Hear your heart beating your blood throughout. Feel me holding your hand, your finger. Feel the sensations in your finger, the air around it, the warmth inside it, the hand that touches it—”

As he said the word “touches,” the sharp point of the lancet drove into the plump pad of her fingertip. Amanusa cried out, her hand jerking reflexively, but Jax held tight. Because she had been so focused on her finger, it hurt more.

“All right?” Jax watched her from beneath frowning brows. “Shall I stop?”

Amanusa bit her lip as she shook her head. The pain wasn't so much. She'd cut herself worse—nearly to the bone at least twice, and had the scars to show. It was just that she'd been concentrating so hard on her finger and its senses when he lanced it.

“These are the words.” Jax squeezed her fingertip and blood welled up to glisten in a fat bead.

“Blood of my blood,” she repeated the words he gave her. “Carry my soul safe with thee. Be with me. Answer me. Even as you journey without. My blood. My heart. My will.”

Magic stirred. Deep inside her, something blossomed, opening to the magic's call. Warmth glowed through her and she followed its path through her body.

“Can you feel it?” Jax's voice came from very far away. “The magic?”

Amanusa started to nod, but she feared her head might wobble right off her neck. The warmth hadn't gone that way yet. She started to turn, to make sure her head was properly attached. But something pulled her the other way.

“Sorceress.
Miss Whitcomb
.”

That was Jax. Her servant. Her
man
servant. Amanusa blinked her eyes. Yes, there he was, his head floating in front of her. No, it was attached to his shoulders too. Something called, tugged at her.

“Do you feel the magic, sorceress?”

Carefully, Amanusa shaped her lips, pushed breath from her lungs. “Yes.” A whisper.