Seraphs (6 page)

I should have worn the dobok, I thought irrelevantly. My hands were sweating and my breath came too fast. I steadied myself with deep breaths, listening as business matters came before the court—property disputes that dated back to the Last War, disagreements over who actually owned land that had changed hands during the times of disruption after the three plagues. A delinquent payment on a loan was presented. All were tabled for further fact-gathering, the gavel strident. Behind me, the TV camera whirred. Why hadn’t I just run?

“Thorn St. Croix Stanhope, take the stand,” the chairman called out.

Panic detonated through me, stealing my breath and leaving my heart thumping like a drum in the hands of a maniac. I couldn’t do this. Not on national TV. The Enclave priestess would never forgive me once she heard. I’d be ruined.
After this, I could never go home to Enclave.

The thought was a shock. Until now, I hadn’t known I wanted to go to Enclave. I hadn’t known some tiny part of me still thought Enclave
was
home. I shivered. What else didn’t I know about myself?

Audric stood. From the far side of the aisle, Rupert stood. Both waited a beat until Audric moved up beside me and bent far down, placing his mouth at my ear, easing a hand beneath my arm, his lips by my face. “Showtime, little mage. Wimp out on me now and I’ll beat you into a soft lump of modeling clay at our next practice.”

A frenzied giggle burst from me and Audric clamped down on my arm so hard the giggle wheezed into silence. Pain helped clear my head. Slowly I stood, catching sight of Ciana’s terrified face. My heart faltered, slammed a fierce beat into my chest and up my neck, settling into a fast, steady rhythm. Okay. For Ciana. I managed a smile. I glanced up at Audric and gestured forward. Showtime, the man said. Fine. What choice did I have now?

I threw back my head, took my walking stick in hand, and stepped into the passageway toward the dais. The three remaining brown-clad bailiffs were in a line against the wall to my left. Two wore guns at their hips; the other had a truncheon and Taser. All three held their hands at the ready, cupping the butt of guns or billy clubs. All three looked eager, a little too eager, to take on a mage before a national audience.

The last of my panic fled and battle tactics began to build in my mind. I had studied the strategy and tactics of war, training at Enclave until I was fourteen and had to flee or die. Lately, my training had begun again, every morning at Audric’s hands. I looked around the room as I walked, studying it fully, as I should have when I first entered. I dismissed the guards. Rupert could handle the hill-billies with guns, even with the unfamiliar sword. The one with a Taser and stick I could stop with the throwing knives at my wrists. My breathing steadied as I analyzed. They might make two steps before their hearts stopped, say three seconds from throw till they hit the floor, but I doubted it.

Of course, if I killed them, I had better be ready to fight the entire town. And if they got my amulets away before I could mount a defense strong enough to save myself and my friends, I’d be toast. Worse than toast. Stripped, raped, flayed, beaten, butchered, and left to rot in the snow. Most humans didn’t care much for mages. I smiled as I took the steps to the dais. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a sweet smile.

Reason mulled over battle plans as I looked at the side door. A second alternative presented itself. I didn’t like it, but it would be smarter. I could let Rupert and Audric take care of the bailiffs and hold off the crowd, and I could run. Yeah. Cowardice might save my friends, and me too. And there was a third way. I scanned the town fathers who would act as my judges, wondering which of the unknown ones were for me and which were against. I had risked my life to save this town, even if they hadn’t been there to see it. I had lived in Mineral City for a decade and had hurt no one. Not once. Yet someone had decided I should face trial and die for an accident of birth that made me a neomage.

Holding my cloak closed over my mage-attire, moving slowly so my skirt bells didn’t jingle, I took the seventh step, reaching the stage that used to be a holy place, mage-boots silent on the scarred wood, walking stick clacking softly. Flanking me, so much taller than I, Rupert and Audric climbed. I must have disappeared behind them, vanishing from the crowd. I felt my body drawing on the amulets as we came to a stop in front of the judges’ desk.

“What’s this?” Waldroup asked. Without looking, I felt the bailiffs step forward. Violence shimmered in the air. “This won’t do. We called a mage to speak, not you two.”

As if they had rehearsed it, Rupert and Audric stepped to either side, revealing my small frame to the audience behind us, and emerging in my peripheral vision. It was a clever move with a two-pronged outcome: A triangle made a good defensive fighting position if we had to draw blades, and it made me look quite defenseless and helpless before the judges. Mages are small, and behind the bulk of my friends I probably looked like a young kid standing before the principal’s desk.

“We are her champards,” Audric announced into the silence, one eye on the slow-moving guards. At a gesture from the bench, the bailiffs stopped, but I noted a slight twitch beneath Audric’s cloak. He had drawn weapons.

“What’s a champard?” Waldroup asked the man on his left, voices lowered as they conferred. Elder Culpepper darted a glance at me, furious, hate-filled, and bobbed his head down, realizing I had seen his reaction. He had plainly hoped I’d be alone and unprotected. When no one at the judgment bench seemed to know what a champard was, Waldroup addressed me. “Well?” I stood silent, letting Audric handle my response. A champard’s responsibilities included acting as a legal consultant, hauling firewood, acting as a human shield, fighting to the death, and keeping his charge warm at night, among other things that had been known to include being sex slaves. If I survived this, I would have ammunition to tease Audric unmercifully.

“You may think of it as a companion, a partner, and a champion,” Audric said.

“Oh? Well, the girl don’t need neither. Sit down.”

“We will not. It is a mage’s legal right to have us beside her. You may refer to the case of Masters vs. Tomlinson.” Which I had never heard of, but I wasn’t going to argue.

Waldroup looked nonplussed but, after an even shorter conference with the men to his left and right, he shrugged. “Fine. Speak your name, title, and address, girl.”

In a clear tone, I said, “I am Thorn St. Croix, residing over Thorn’s Gems on Upper Street.” I gave the street number.

“Not Stanhope?” he asked.

“No,” I said, offering no explanation. Lucas had divorced me. I had seen no reason to keep his name, and I saw no reason to tell the court my personal business unless they asked officially. But I was aware of Ciana’s distress at my reply. I didn’t understand how I knew what she was feeling, but I could sense her unhappiness and growing dread.

“I asked you for your title.” Waldroup said, seeming to understand that getting information from us was going to be like pulling pig’s teeth.

“Mages have no titles,” Audric said.

Waldroup, a tiny, ancient black man, shook his head and sighed. The wrinkles around his eyes tightened into an aggrieved weaving. “What kind of mage is she?”

“I’m a stone mage.” I was other things too, having received training as a battle mage, but they didn’t ask for particulars, and likely they had no idea what differentiated one mage from another anyway.

“It’s come to our attention that you lived in Mineral City for a time without presenting a visa. Mages have to have visas and a GPS thing any time they leave, uh, one of them Enclaves.” When I didn’t respond, he said, “Well?”

“When you ask a question, the mage will be happy to reply,” Audric said. The crowd tittered. I had a glimpse of Ciana, pushing up in her father’s lap so she could see better, her face pale and anxious.

“Do you have a visa and a locator band?” Waldroup asked, eyes narrow, patience wearing thin.

“Yes,” I said.

“When did you get them?”

“She refuses to answer,” Audric said.

“On what grounds?” Culpepper asked, steepling his hands in front of his mouth.

“Irrelevancy. The mage has a visa. According to international protocols, the moment someone asks for her visa, it will be presented as proof that she legally left the sovereign nation of the New Orleans Enclave, and her concurrent right to be in Mineral City.” I hadn’t been wearing it not so long ago when Durbarge, an investigator for the Administration of the ArchSeraph, arrested me. I just hoped no one present remembered. I resisted the urge to look around at the thought of the AASI,
assey
to the insulting. Durbarge should be here, standing right beside me, glaring at me with his one good eye, and he wasn’t. In its own way, that was more unsettling than anything else today.

“Let’s see this visa,” Culpepper said.

Stepping to the table, I displayed my left wrist, encircled by the bracelet containing my GPS locator device. From the folds of my cloak, I dangled the visa, carved of pink tourmaline, for inspection; it was similarly inscribed and softly glowing. At the revelation of a seraph-blessed object, two of the town fathers sat back. Culpepper, however, stared at the official stone visa and bracelet. His brown robe of office falling away from a bony wrist, he reached out, coveting them both and surely not aware that his desire showed so clearly on his face.

My first thought was to step back, but I stood my ground. He brushed the bracelet with a thumbnail, discarding it for the watermelon-colored tourmaline. Hesitantly at first, and then with inquisitive fingers, Culpepper stroked it like a cat. I knew that the flat, four-inch, ring-shaped stone would cause a faint, pleasurable tingle to a human. I had heard a visa could sometimes calm an angry man.

Unexpectedly, Culpepper made a fist around the visa and yanked. Surprised, I was pulled forward, nearly losing my balance. Faster than a pure-blooded human can move, Audric slammed his hand down on the elder’s wrist, wedging his body between the desk and me. He compelled me back, off balance, forcing Culpepper to drop the visa. I heard the elder’s wrist bones creak; his face flattened with fury. Wrenching his hand away from the bigger man’s grip, Culpepper stood, toppling his chair with a crash. Instantly, the guards moved to surround us, weapons sliding from holsters.

Time dilated, expanded, decelerated. As if in slow motion, I saw Audric and Rupert throw back their cloaks, swords sliding free.

Chapter 6

Heart racing, I caught myself on the judgment desk, drawing on my amulets. Unexpectedly, the tourmaline ring answered, saturating my system with unfamiliar power. Battle-lust rose up, tempered by the strange energies of the ring-shaped visa. Tactics I hadn’t considered presented themselves to me, gifts of the ring of the seraphs, help I hadn’t known was available. My mind separated out one strategy, a line of attack with myriad possible outcomes.
Image.
Around me, men were still drawing weapons.

Choosing the tactic almost at leisure, I dropped my cloak to the floor with a shrug. Before it puddled at my feet, before the bells on my skirt had time to sound, I drew my blade and threw up a hand. I shouted, “No!” The word roared, amplified, so loud it hammered the walls. My mage-sight flared on, the room and everyone in it radiating with energy. My neomage attributes blazed, skin glowing. All movement stopped. The echo of my command died. Every eye in the building was on me, my back to the crowd, my sword extended.

My long blade was poised at Elder Culpepper’s throat. He grunted softly, his wide eyes ensnared by mine. Fear, hatred, and fury merged there. I eased the blade tip back an inch. My heart thudded in my ears. Slowly, I lowered the hand that stretched to the ceiling, far overhead. I had thought the stone ring was a dead political tool. I hadn’t known it possessed any strength except that of governmental and legal protection. Hadn’t known it was a diplomatic library and an amulet of power I could draw upon as I had with my voice just now. Clearly I had a lot to learn, but I didn’t have time to think about all that. My skin was blazing. And I was holding a sword to the throat of an elder.
Oops.

Stunned, Shamus Waldroup’s eyes attracted mine. He shook his head slightly. With one look, I gleaned that whatever had been set in motion today, it hadn’t been planned by the council. My eyes flicked back to Culpepper and my lip curled. Not the
entire
council. I swallowed, throat dry and burning in the aftermath of my shout. My fingers, shaking and cold, brushed the donut-shaped talisman, making certain it was still attached to the amulet necklace. Following the basic strategy I had gleaned from it, I shifted my sword to my left hand and turned, so my back was no longer to the crowd, facing the audience, head high. Allowing the town to view a neomage, the way the plagues and the sins of humans made us.

Speaking softly as I turned, I said to Waldroup, “I was called here today to hear charges against me. Read them.”

“Put away the weapon,” he whispered, his eyes on my hand and the blade. “Please.”

The hilt, the prime amulet, was almost hot in my palm. The skin of my hand was bright, white scars blistering, my body luminous. Reacting to the strategy found in the tourmaline visa, I had drawn on every amulet I was wearing. In the wash of their energies, I was shimmering, slightly drunk on the mix of power swarming into my blood. I thought about muting my attributes, but it was a bit late for that. And maybe the gracious “please” was a start to rational negotiations. With a decisive flourish, I sheathed my blade in the walking stick, the motion jingling my skirt bells.

Relief flooded Waldroup’s face and he banged the gavel. “You guards get back over there against the wall. You two champards put them swords away. We ain’t gone have no violence here today.” When no one moved, he banged the gavel again. “You heard me. Do what I said, all a you, or stand in contempt a court.”

The guards holstered their guns and stepped back one pace. Audric and Rupert hesitated a long moment before resheathing their blades. The sound of steel on leather was supple, threatening. The guards retreated two more steps, widening a circle that had tightened around us. The testosterone was so thick I could taste it on the air.

As I repositioned, I caught sight of the TV camera at knee height on the edge of the platform. The news crew had mounted the dais. Fury still twisted Elder Culpepper’s face. A quick look confirmed two others at the long table had been prepared for aggression. I thought there might be weapons beneath their jackets. I didn’t know Culpepper’s cronies, but I’d remember them, and so would the camera lens panning the bench. Of the remaining four judges, Shamus and one other were for me, it was clear. The other two had poker faces and were impossible to interpret. “Read the charges,” I said again, hoping a return to procedure would restore the peace.

Shamus shook a sheet of paper, the rattle carrying in the too-quiet church. “It has been brought to the attention of a kirk elder that the licensed mage in Mineral City, Thorn St. Croix Stanhope, has indulged in debauchery, decadence, and dissipation, leading our town’s human males into immoral and iniquitous behavior.” The accusation seemed to bounce off the church walls, a bright, harsh sound.

“Thorn?” Jacey called from the crowd, disbelieving. The camera swiveled to focus on my friend as she stood with an expression of disbelief. In the sea of black clothing her red dress and emeralds shimmered. “
Our
Thorn?” The pronoun seemed to say several things at once: that I was one of them, that I was innocent, that I belonged to the town, that the accusation was ludicrous and everyone knew it, that I was a jewelry maker and a prosperous one at that. Jacey laughed, the sound infectious. Several others laughed with her. The level of antagonism in the room plunged. I could have kissed her.

“Sit down. When the judges want comments from the crowd, we’ll ask for them,” Waldroup said. Jacey sat, a confident smile on her face. I was pretty sure the camera loved it.

“When and with which men?” Audric asked. “What evidence is to be presented? And when can the defense question the accusers?”

Shamus scratched his head, gazing at the cameraman, who was repositioning to sight along the bench. I was sure he rued letting in the crew for the meeting. Mineral City was now hot news. If things got out of hand, the town fathers would have an image problem no matter which way things worked out.
Image,
the visa had suggested to me, a hypothesis and proposal with the greatest likelihood of success. Which meant the visa was an interactive amulet. If it had been alive it would have been purring with pride. As it was, I felt its distinct feeling of smug satisfaction. It was disconcerting. I wasn’t sure I liked it.

“This ain’t no big city court like they got in Raleigh or Atlanta or Mobile,” Shamus said. “We mostly mediate minor stuff here.” He was explaining for the media. Damage control. I took a breath, the first full one in minutes, and stopped a smile before it lit my face. “As to crimes, if someone’s guilty, they confess and we punish them. Big crimes, federal stuff, goes to the district court in Asheville. We ain’t had a federal crime in over twenty-five years. We just usually read the charges and talk it through.”

“The licensed neomage has been called before a legal court,” Audric said. “Specific charges? Witnesses?”

“That would be me,” Culpepper said. His rage mutated into something colder as his gaze raked me, pausing at my breasts, pushed up by my mage-shirt. He thought he had me, and surely had my punishments designed and arranged, and he didn’t care if the television camera saw it all on his face. My breathing sped up and I worked to appear unmoved, even as I slid my thumb across the release on my walking stick to make certain my blade was still free. Culpepper raised his voice. “I heard the confession of a twelve-year-old boy who was seduced by her wicked dancing and led into lewd and lascivious behavior.”

“Who, where, and when?” Audric asked.

“He refused to say when. I didn’t ask where. The accusation is enough for a kirk elder to charge a harlot. But let me remind you all,” Culpepper said, his voice rising, looking past me at the crowd, “lest we doubt, the whole town saw her dance. At the last sun-day, the early thaw celebration, she wore
pants and boots,
dressed like a
man,
her body posed to entice. The mage danced before us all, a public spectacle. She moves like a harlot. We all saw!”

He was right. Well, sorta. Along with half the women present, I had worn jeans and boots to the town’s early thaw gathering, where Audric and I had competed in the dancing, beating the band and winning a wager. The whole town knew that. It was fact, and one fact, even an unrelated one, added corroboration to accusations. Though there was no law against a woman in pants, and never had been, the observation was calculated to appeal to the orthodox.

“Will the accuser come forward for questioning?” Audric asked.

“No. I will not break the seal of the confessional for a mage and I’ll not have him traumatized again. It’s my right to bring charges and to testify for an underage youth.”

Audric shrugged a huge shoulder, his cloak moving as if with a hard breeze. “We request that the charge be dismissed.”

Culpepper darted a glance into the crowd and smiled, showing teeth. I really didn’t like the look of that smile.

“What grounds?” Waldroup asked.

“The crime is hearsay. No dates for the alleged offense have been offered, no accusers have come forward.” He looked at Culpepper. “The charge is gossip. And gossip is a sin,” Audric said, “punishable by branding.”

“He has a point,” Waldroup said.

“As you wish. We have other accusers,” Culpepper said, satisfied. The expression on his face said he wasn’t surprised to have his first accusation thrown out. He had come prepared and had multiple legal assaults at the ready. I figured there was a witch-catcher under his chair too, for use if I was pronounced guilty. If humans took an unprepared mage, they would win, humans having much greater muscle mass than mages. But I wasn’t unprepared. Culpepper didn’t seem to know what that meant in terms of winning and losing a confrontation. Of course, if I fought, caught on camera, public opinion would crucify me. And not just me, but all mages. Even if I won, I lost. Maybe the elder was counting on that.

The elder slid a paper to Shamus. On it was a list of names. I would have bet the store that the accusers were orthodox. The orthodox wanted women in long wool dresses, unrelieved black, and ugly as sin. They wanted their women quiet and soft-spoken, chaste and dull, and to walk behind their men and masters. I wore slacks, leggings, and bright colors. I was a divorcée. And a mage.

“Call your witnesses,” Audric said. He glared at a bailiff. “Get the accused a chair.”

The bailiff looked at Culpepper, who inclined his head. The exchange was caught by Waldroup, who sat back, the shock on his face quickly masked. He stared at Culpepper for a long moment before turning his attention to the rest of the town fathers, as if contemplating a new reality. His gaze settled on the judges who were obviously siding with Culpepper. There had been a shift in the political climate and Shamus recognized he was on the outside.

I was offered a chair at the head of the platform, facing the assembly. I stepped over my cloak and approached the seat as if it were a throne offered to a queen. Before I sat, Rupert lifted my cloak from the floor and settled it with a flourish on the seat. The red silk lining picked up the radiance from my skin and glowed like a jewel. I let Rupert adjust the cloak for warmth in the unheated room and I rested the walking stick across my lap.

I could smell the assembled with both nose and that related mage-sense, the mind-skim. The human smells were sweat and the reek of unwashed bodies, leather, perfume, and moonshine. Beneath them seeped excitement and fear. Humans were beautiful in mage-sight, with the soft glow of life, the auras they carried—all except Audric, whose half-mage attributes rested beneath an oddly lifeless human glamour. I could pierce it if I wanted, and see him as he really was, but I didn’t bother. As I watched, two more brown-robed bailiffs came in from the cold, bringing the total to five.

Rupert stood to my right, between the guards and my chair. Audric crossed the room and took up a stance beside the nearest bailiff. The guards didn’t like that, but there wasn’t much they could do if Waldroup allowed it. The tiny baker seemed disposed to allow the accused and her champards a lot of leniency at the moment.

Waldroup read the first name and called out, “Will Amos Ramps come forward and take the witness seat?”

An old man in black shambled forward, climbed the steps, and sat in a chair to the far right of the long table occupied by the fathers. “Swear him in, Tobitt,” Waldroup directed the first bailiff.

Whispers swept the gathering and Amos’ head came up fast. “Ain’t no one said nothing about no swearing in. I was jist s’pposed to say my piece and go.”

“I think we’ll do this a bit more formal than usual. Swear him,” Waldroup said. Culpepper’s eyes narrowed and he sat back in his chair.

A look of alarm crossed Amos’ face as Tobitt held a black leather-bound Bible to him. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help the Most High and all the seraphs?” the guard asked.

Amos looked from the Bible to the table of erstwhile judges and gulped, saying, “I do.”

“What do you know regarding the charges brought against the neomage Thorn St. Croix?” Waldroup asked.