Shadows of Asphodel (7 page)

Wendel’s eyes glittered with a molten emotion she couldn’t name. She found it hard to look at him, but she didn’t dare look away.

“God,” he said, “I hope so.”

She still held the bottle of absinthe out to him, and when he took it from her, the very tips of his fingers touched hers. A shiver of electricity skittered down her backbone, as if she could feel the latent necromancy in his skin.

For some strange reason, she wanted to touch him again.

Ardis fought the urge, until Wendel looked away and she glimpsed a split second of his face. He was struggling to hide his fear, and this made him look more vulnerable than she had ever seen him before. Deliberately, her muscles tense, she sat in the chair opposite him and touched the back of his hand.

Wendel’s stare snapped to her fingers. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to touch you,” she said.

He looked into her eyes, and his own were inscrutable. “Don’t.”

Ardis stared at him for a second longer, then curled her fingers into a fist. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.

“I figured it might be practical,” she said, “if I can touch you without feeling disgusted.”

This was of course a lie. She hadn’t thought twice about touching him during the battle. But he had utterly ruined the moment.

He sneered at her. “Lovely.”

She drained her glass of absinthe in one swig, to fortify her nerves, and climbed to her feet. Her legs felt a little wobbly, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the alcohol or something else entirely.

“Not everyone hates you,” she said, “until you give them good reason.”

Wendel’s eyebrows shot skyward, but he raised his glass as if toasting her.

“Hate?” he said. “Already? Bravo.”

“Don’t mock me,” she said. “You
know
what I meant.”

Before he could respond with more sarcasm, she walked out of the lounge car and didn’t look back. She made it to the cabin, slid the door shut, and locked it for good measure. Lightheaded, she sat on her seat and rested her elbows on her knees. She let her hair fall into her face, raking out the tangles with her fingers.

What was she thinking? Trying to
touch
a necromancer. To show him she cared.

Did she?

Ardis looked at her reflection in the window. Her face looked pale and tired. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours, she wasn’t even sure what any of it meant anymore. Her common sense had dried up and blown away like dust.

There was a rap on the door.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Konstantin.”

She sighed, climbed to her feet, and opened the door.

It was Wendel.

“I lied,” he said. “I thought you might unlock the door for the archmage.”

Ardis found it hard to catch her breath standing so close to him.

“May I come in?” he said.

She hesitated. “I—”

“I suppose I don’t need to. Let me apologize for being unnecessarily rude.” A smile quirked his mouth. “Or necessarily rude.”

“Did you come here to joke?” Ardis said. “It’s not very funny.”

“No.” Wendel sobered and stepped toward her. “Damn, let me try again. I’m not used to anyone wanting to… touch me.”

He held out his hands and stared at his fingers.

“I understand why I disgust you,” he said. “I’m a necromancer. I’m untouchable.”

“Obviously.”

Ardis knew it was easier to reply sarcastically, but she grimaced. She didn’t want to sound too much like
he
did, like nothing mattered. Although this time, when she searched his face, there was a sincerity in his eyes.

Wendel lowered his voice. “But I keep my hands clean.”

“Clean?” she said. “What makes you think I’m any less dirty? I have slept in the snow, and in the rain, and in the mud. I’m a mercenary, Wendel. You know my hands have had blood from who knows how many men on them. But what bothers me is the way you touch the
dead
, and do it to bring them back.”

He narrowed his eyes. “The dead were once the living.”

“Once,” she said. “Past tense. You… you
undo
what shouldn’t be undone.”

“Before you get too sanctimonious,” he said, “let me tell you a story.”

“Sanctimonious?”

“Yes,” he said, “sanctimonious.”

They stared at each other through the doorway. Ardis clenched her hands. Wendel’s face was shadowed, but she saw fire in his eyes. She stepped aside to let him into the cabin, and to prove she wasn’t intimidated by him.

“Sit,” he said, and he shut the door. “This isn’t that long of a story.”

She did as he said, her jaw clenched.

Wendel sat opposite her and stared out the window at some distant point.

“There was a cat,” he said. “A kitten, really. I had him when I was little, and I named him Maus. My mother made me keep him in the stables. She didn’t like cats. I would visit him every day after I finished lessons with my tutors. One day, Maus vanished. The stable boy told me that the cat had been kicked by a horse. Killed.”

“What do cats and horses have to do with anything?” Ardis said.

Wendel silenced her with a raised hand. “I went looking for Maus. I found him lying by the rubbish heap. His body was so—pathetic. Tiny and limp. I went to pick him up. I remember wanting to touch him one last time.”

Ardis kept her face stony, but her eyes were stinging.

“When I petted Maus,” he said quietly, “he woke up.”

“You didn’t know, did you?”

“I didn’t.” Wendel swallowed hard. “I brought Maus to my mother and father. I didn’t understand why they were so angry with me, or why they told the groundskeeper to bring Maus into the woods and burn him to ashes.”

Ardis hesitated. “How old were you?”

“Eleven. That was a month before they said goodbye.”

“When they sent you to the Order of the Asphodel?”

“Yes.” He laughed with immense bitterness. “Because, by then, I was hopeless. Ruined. But do you at least understand why I did it? I wanted to touch my cat one more time. Even if he was dead, he was still Maus.”

Ardis forced herself to look Wendel in the eye. A vague ache lingered in her stomach. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and looked out the window. Why was it so hard to say what she really wanted to say?

“Did you hate yourself for it?” she asked at last. “Do you still?”

“I won’t lie,” Wendel said. “When I first discovered my talent for raising the dead, I was… unhappy. But I learned to appreciate it.”

“In what way?” she said.

“Necromancy is fascinating,” he murmured. “There’s a certain repulsive elegance about the magic. With it, I can recover memories long lost. I can speak to the dead who left this world days, weeks, even centuries ago.”

His eyes gleamed in the dusk, and she wasn’t sure it was sadness for his childhood pet. She thought she heard
pride
in his voice.

Then he looked at her, and he smirked.

“If I’m an abomination,” he said, “I might as well enjoy it.”

“And you expect me not to be sanctimonious?” she said, but she couldn’t help smiling.

“I do tend to bring that out in people,” he said flippantly. “I aim to please.”

“Please who?” she said.

“Those whose fancy the repulsively elegant.”

“Or despicably handsome?”

A slow grin spread on Wendel’s face. “That too.”

Ardis cleared her throat. She was
not
about to admit that she found him handsome. Unless she already had, which was a mistake. Clearly he knew about his good looks, considering how much he resorted to charm. Not that she found him charming.

But after so much banter, he had reacted so badly to her touching his hand.

“Why?” she muttered.

“Pardon?” he said.

She blinked a few times. “Nothing,” she said.

Wendel nodded, though there was a tightness around his eyes. Ardis stood and tugged her jacket straight brusquely.

“I had better check on Konstantin,” she said. “Since I technically take orders from him.”

When her hand closed on the door handle, Wendel walked behind her. She heard him sigh, felt his breath stir her hair.

“Ardis,” he said.

She faced him and saw him offering his hand as if to shake it. He had a half-smile on his face, but his pale eyes said so much more that she didn’t understand. She decided to play it safe, and clasped his hand for a brisk shake.

“There,” he said. “Truce?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware we were at war.”

His half-smile became a whole one. “Touché.”

Touché. To touch. She wasn’t sure if he meant that to be a pun, or if he knew how different it was to touch him like this. A handshake seemed so banal for who he was, knowing what magic crawled beneath his skin.

Ardis slipped her fingers from his. “You know where to find me.”

Wendel nodded.

As she closed the door behind her, she realized the look in his eyes was one of regret, and she desperately wanted to know why. She wanted to tell him the truth. She hadn’t touched him out of pity, or practicality, but because she had felt for him.

But it was too late. The moment had passed.

Konstantin stood in a circle of trees near the train. The sun lifted itself above the horizon, and shafts of brilliant light lanced the fog. The archmage squinted at Ardis as she approached, and lowered a pair of aviator goggles over his eyes.

“Watch your step!” he called out. “My preparations are nearly complete.”

Ardis stopped in her tracks and took in the scene.

A dozen or so passengers clustered around the archmage. Gentleman, mostly, their cigar smoke curlicuing into the frigid air, but a few ladies, too, chattering and fanning themselves as if waiting for a show to start. A flighty lady in a fox-fur coat nearly stepped on a bloody splatter in the snow and shrieked for the benefit of the men.

“Your preparations for the Hex?” Ardis shouted to Konstantin.

“Don’t meander too close,” a gray-bearded gentleman told her. “I’m afraid this is rather too complicated for a feminine mind.”

She glared at him. “Do I look very feminine?”

Konstantin waved her forward impatiently. “Ardis, come closer. Just be careful not to step on the quicksilver or the selenite.”

“What does selenite look like?” she said.

“It’s a clear crystal,” he said. “Looks rather like ice.”

She glanced around and saw that he had drawn a vast triangle in quicksilver. The mirrored liquid quivered on the surface of the snow. At the three points of the triangle, he had planted clear crystals, each nearly a foot long.

“Can I step over it?” she said.

“Of course.” Konstantin nodded. “Nothing is active right now.”

Ardis stretched her leg over the quicksilver and stepped into the triangle. She squinted at the nearest crystal and resisted the urge to nudge it with the toe of her boot. This all seemed awfully mystical for repairing the Hex.

Maybe this was why Wendel was so scornful of the archmages.

“Do you need help?” Ardis said. “I don’t know any magic, of course.”

“Oh, that isn’t a problem,” he said.

Konstantin waved her closer. She noticed he wore leather-and-steel bracers that left his fingers bare—armor common archmages, though she admittedly knew little about their function. In the center of the triangle, he had set up an inconspicuous apparatus about the size of a bread box, constructed of steel and polished maple wood. Brass knobs circled a glass window that flickered violet-white with caged magic.

“The quicksilver and crystals are for show,” Konstantin said. “
This
is the true magic.”

“That?” Ardis said.

“This allows me to direct the magic along specific frequencies and harmonize with the existing structure of the Hex.”

Ardis suspected he wouldn’t explain things any clearer than that, so she nodded.

“As for you,” he said, “make sure nobody wanders too near. Very soon there will be some powerful levels of energy in this area, and I don’t want to singe a wayward duchess or anything like that. Can you do that?”

Ardis nodded. “I can keep any stray duchesses out of here.”

Konstantin clapped his hands, and his bracers clinked. “Good! Then let me get started.”

She kept her face businesslike, and walked back over the quicksilver on her way to the crowd. The gray-bearded gentleman who had been rude to her didn’t seem pleased by her return, so she looked directly into his eyes.

“The archmage asks that onlookers keep their distance,” Ardis said.

The grey-bearded gentleman raised one eyebrow, but he was interrupted.

“Why?” said the flighty lady in the fox fur. “Is it terribly dangerous?”

“Very,” Ardis said.

She didn’t know how true this was, having never seen magic of this scale before, but she was satisfied by the gasp of the lady.

Behind her, there was a pop like a small firecracker.

“That’s not quite right,” Konstantin said. “Let me adjust things a bit…”

Ardis glanced back and saw the archmage fiddling with the apparatus. Bluish smoke wafted above his head. He climbed to his feet, dusted off his knees, then stood with his hands on his hips. He furrowed his brow.