Broken Sorcery Page 2

  But the thought of a child going through that, alone, not knowing if anyone was coming to save her, was unbearable.

  “No, we have to get her back,” I said quietly.

  “Then we will.”

  I looked up at him and envied him. For Daiman, things really did seem to be that simple: he found a goal, and he put any thoughts of failure out of his mind. He smiled at me, as if he could read my mind and was amused at what he saw there.

  “Come on,” I told him. I took his hand and picked my way over the scorched ground.

  “One second, I want to try something.” Daiman pulled me back to him and kissed me.

  The kiss deepened until I was only partially aware of the trees around me and the ground under my feet, and when Daiman pulled away from me, I stared up at him, wide-eyed.

  “That is extraordinary,” he murmured.

  “Hmm?”

  He grinned down at me. “I think that’s the first time Lawrence hasn’t interrupted us when he had the opportunity.”

  I laughed and pulled him along toward the portal.

  “I mean, the boy has a real talent, I’ll give him that.”

  “Oh, stop it.” But he never failed to make me smile, and right now, that was something I needed. I tugged on his shirt and stood on tip-toe to kiss him. “Come on,” I said quietly, before I could get distracted again, “let’s figure out what we can, and go get her back. And then let’s go home before there are any more crises.”

  2

  The journey through the portal was easy in a strange way, like stepping out of the world and knowing that someone else was choosing where you’d end up. It never sat easily with me. I wasn’t someone who liked letting go and letting other people control things.

  I’d gotten better at it, though. And anyway, my own track record with controlling things wasn’t stellar. I held Daiman’s hand as we walked the passageways and tried not to think of that.

  Instead, I wondered about the people who had made this place. Who had built these passageways, no one knew. The Monarchists had only found them, and they weren’t truly a part of the domhan fior—they seemed not so much in a different world, as between worlds. Whoever had built this, I wondered if they’d built it as an escape. If so, what were they running from? What had happened to them? And what knowledge did they have, that had been lost?

  When we arrived in the caves, it was to the jarring sight of people crouched over a body. Only one voice was speaking, a woman’s, and that trailed away as people turned to look at us.

  I recognized a few of them, but remembered only a few names. There were Harry and Lawrence, of course, and then a woman named Tamar, whose sallow skin and unpleasant expression hid a quick mind.

  I nodded to her, and was given only the faintest acknowledgment in response. I opened my mouth to try to defend myself—against what, I wasn’t sure; how, I wasn’t sure—and then closed it.

  I’m used to not being liked, Daiman had said.

  And since when had I started caring? Once, I’d thought the same way he did.

  That wasn’t important right now, in any case. What mattered was getting Ari back. I nodded to Harry. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “You didn’t miss much.” He gestured to a woman with bleached blonde hair and ripped jeans, who was crouched near the body’s head. “This is Chloe.”

  Chloe neither smiled nor frowned. She didn’t do a once-over, either. In fact, she seemed bored by nearly everything about me.

  I was fascinated by her, however. Like everyone else, sorcerers tended to have a sense of personal style—even if it was the ostentatious lack of style. Some, like Philip, insisted on dressing in the clothing of their heyday. Others wore whatever they could find. Some adorned themselves with strange, disturbing jewelry.

  Only rarely, however, did I see someone dress so much like … well, a human. Hair dye wasn’t common, and neither was makeup. Boots tended to be handmade, in the old style. And tattoos were rare.

  Every human affectation was a deliberate choice that meant spending more time in the human world. From Chloe’s ripped jeans—something I’d seen on humans, and incorrectly assumed was a sign of poverty—to heavy boots almost like the ones the soldier was wearing, she was decked out in clothing that said she spent plenty of time in the human world, and was comfortable there.

  Daiman nudged me to jumpstart the conversation, and I realized I was staring. I cleared my throat hurriedly. “I’m, uh … I’m Nicky.”

  “Yeah.” The word was weary, and it could have meant most anything. Chloe stood up, brushing off the legs of her pants. She shrugged down at the body, and then met Harry’s eyes. “It’s Onyx. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  “Onyx?” I looked around. I seemed to be the only one unaware of what this meant—even Daiman looked horrified.

  “I didn’t think they were real,” Daiman said quietly.

  Chloe gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, they’re real. I was there when I was a kid. They’re real.”

  Daiman looked faintly queasy.

  “Chloe….” Harry sounded reluctant. “We haven’t ever asked you about that. Now … we need to.”

  Given Chloe’s bored look and purposely rebellious clothes, I expected her to say something snide, but she really seemed to care for Harry. She nodded. Her fingers were suddenly moving nervously, rubbing at the hem of her shirt.

  “What do you want to know?” She forced the words out.

  “Anything.” Harry shook his head helpfully. “Anything that will help.”

  “Nothing will help,” Chloe said flatly.

  For a moment, I expected Daiman to argue, but instead he closed his mouth without saying anything and led me to one of the benches along the wall to sit.

  Chloe looked around at all of us. Her eyes lingered on Daiman, and I wondered if she knew who and what he was. She looked me over, too, and it occurred to me that I had never seen someone assess me so thoroughly without caring about me. She clearly knew my full name and my abilities, but it didn’t matter much to her.

  She was the only one standing now, and she looked down at her ever-moving fingers before she answered. Her voice was soft.

  “I think I was born in ’72, but I’m not sure. My parents worked for Onyx, so when they had me … they knew what I was.”

  I froze. I didn’t need to ask what they had done. I might have seen grief if her parents had taken her and run, but it was clear that they hadn’t. All Chloe had left was dull acceptance.

  Whoever Onyx was, and it was clear to me that they were truly horrifying, her parents had turned her over to the group knowingly.

  “I don’t remember a time when they weren’t running tests on me. I remember my parents, but I don’t know when I stopped living with them. Onyx kept me in the labs, in their cages.”

  “Your parents allowed that?” Lawrence sounded broken. Within a split-second, he looked like he’d take back the question if he could.

  There was a long pause. “Yes,” Chloe said finally. “I don’t know what they knew—how much they knew, I mean. I remember my father crying once. I’d done something, I don’t remember what, and they had me strapped down on a table. I could see him crying, I knew he was my father—I didn’t know what that meant, just that he and my mother were my parents—and they were telling him that witches could be dangerous to themselves, so they had to help me learn how to control my powers.”

  There was a long silence.

  “That’s what they call us,” Chloe added inconsequentially. “Witches.”

  Normally, it was a distinction sorcerers cared about. Witches were a human invention, not real at all. The word said more about humans than it did about magic. Over the centuries, a witch had been anyone who scared the lords or the churches, anyone whose facts were too inconvenient. Magic had just been the excuse used by people in power to kill the people who made them look bad.

  That was why we called ourselves sorcerers. We were careful to do so, amongst ourselves. The word witc
h said nothing about us and we wanted nothing to do with it. Under other circumstances, we’d make little comments to each other that Onyx wanted to control magic, but didn’t care enough to know anything about it.

  None of us cared about that right now, not with the mental image of Chloe’s child self being caged and experimented on.

  “How did you get out?” Daiman asked her finally.

  Everyone gave him a look, but he kept his eyes fixed on Chloe. While the rest of us shuddered about what had happened to her, he was trying to get useful information.

  “You can’t do it the way I did,” Chloe shot back. Her hatred of Daiman had given her some energy.

  “Tell me anyway,” Daiman suggested.

  “You think I’m lying?”

  “I think the more we know, the better chance we have of getting Ari back without losing anyone more.” He kept his voice even, not rising to the bait.

  “You can’t do it,” she repeated. “I got out because I’d spent my whole life there. I knew everything about that place. I knew which guards didn’t care as much about their rounds. They were training me on the computers, so I knew how to get into the systems and get myself a path out of there. I knew how to fight, too. I was supposed to be some perfect super-soldier, so they’d taught me how to use guns, pressure points, all of it.”

  There was a silence. Daiman was waiting, watching. He hadn’t backed down, and I could see that it was making Chloe furious.

  “Those guards won’t be there anymore.” Her voice was rising. “The computer systems they have now … I could tell you about them, but I can’t manipulate them the same way. You have to know the ins and outs of a system like that.”

  Still Daiman waited.

  “And the building has changed,” Chloe reminded him. “They have a few. They’ll have made updates. They’ll only have gotten better—how do you think they found the Acadamh? They broke some of us, they must have. Those people will have helped them with everything they were trying to do before.”

  “What were they trying to do before?” Daiman asked. “Who runs Onyx? What’s their goal?”

  “They don’t have a goal.” Chloe looked down at the floor. “That’s what makes them so dangerous. They’re just waiting.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Until?”

  She looked at him then. Her eyes were grey, very clear, and far, far older than her years. “Until they find something they want,” she said. “And when they do, they’ll have everything they need to take it.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. For all her feigned nonchalance, Chloe was plainly terrified by the memories of where she’d grown up, and I couldn’t blame her.

  Until they find something they want.

  “How do they get funding?” Daiman asked her. “How does no one know about them? Is it businessmen who support them?”

  The girl’s lips twitched weakly. “Governments,” she said. “Whichever government would support them at the time, that’s who they used. Onyx is what they call themselves. They market themselves as a bunch of scientists who’d had very promising research under some other regime—whichever one their target hates—and all fled … and they say they’ll sell their research to whomever. Now, it’s the EU, I think. Before, when I was there, it was the USSR and the US.”

  “Both?” Harry asked skeptically.

  “Neither of them knew about the other one funding it.” Chloe shrugged her shoulders. “And who was going to tell them? Scientists aren’t very loyal. They just wanted their labs and their toys.”

  Her voice was so bitter that I felt my throat ache. Those ‘toys’ had nearly killed her.

  “Where are they now?” Daiman asked her.

  “Paris. But it doesn’t matter.” She shook her head at him. “You aren’t getting Ari back, and she’s not getting out. She’ll never learn what she needs to in time.”

  “In time for what?” Daiman pressed.

  Chloe crossed her arms. “D’you know how many others they brought in over the years, while I was there? Eight. I got to see it all eight times. They were good at finding sorcerer children.”

  “None of them got out,” Daiman guessed.

  “All of them tried. At first.” Chloe shrugged. “That’s what gave me the idea. But none of them made it. Three died. Five of them, though … they broke. Eventually. Everyone breaks eventually. That’s why I ran.”

  Daiman swallowed hard, but he made himself say the words aloud: “They’re loyal now.”

  “Yes.” Chloe shook her head. “If you want to hope for something, hope that Ari’s going to die. Because she knows a lot about the Monarchists, and if she breaks … she’ll lead them back here.” She looked around at all of us, meeting everyone’s eyes in turn. “Break, or die. Those are the choices. There’s no getting out, and there’s no getting in. Ari’s gone now, and we have to hope she’s not coming back.”

  I gaped at her—and then looked over at Harry. He was staring at her like he’d never seen her before in his life, and I was sure that when he opened his mouth, it would be to tell her to find them a way.

  But instead, he sighed and looked at the floor, and when he looked up again, it was with an expression of total defeat.

  “She’s right,” he told them all quietly. “We do the best we can. We keep the children as safe as we can from anyone who would want to take them.” His eyes went to Daiman, and there was a hint of ugliness in his voice.

  Daiman tensed, but he held himself still.

  “But when we lose,” Harry said, “we don’t throw good after bad. We don’t sacrifice the whole.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry to have brought you here for no purpose. Go now, and keep yourselves safe.”

  3

  “Oh, come on!” I slammed my hand down on the table. “You sent Lawrence to get us, you wanted our help—now you’re telling us to just get lost?”

  “You don’t need this trouble.” Harry barely looked over at me from where he was gazing out the window. “No one needs this trouble.”

  “So what’s your fucking plan then?” I spat the words at him.

  He said nothing, and I opened my mouth to say something else—I didn’t know what, but it certainly wasn’t flattering. Daiman laid a hand on my arm and I shot him a look, expecting him to say some infuriating platitude.

  He leaned close, however, and spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear him: “We’ll get her back,” he promised, “with or without him.”

  To my surprise, I felt tears in my eyes. I squeezed his hand. When it came to things like this, I was all fire, but fire could burn out easily. Daiman didn’t admit defeat, though, not ever. Roadblocks were, to him, only something that stood in the way of his eventual triumph.

  I had always been more impatient than that, likely to dash myself against the rocks and give up. I was glad he was here.

  Harry turned back to look at me. Behind him, the barrier between the domhan fior and the real world was swirling like a psychedelic nightmare. I saw a whale drift past, huge and dappled with watery sunlight, but I also saw endless fields of wheat, and sharp mountain peaks, and a swirling blackness.

  I wondered if he saw anything at all, or if the ability to see magic was tied to the ability to work with it.

  “My plan,” he said quietly, but with a great deal of authority, “is to pack us up and go to a hideout Ari does not know about. We will build a new one if we need to. We will find a way to close the pathways that lead through the otherworlds.” He nodded stiffly at Daiman. “The druid might help with that.”

  “You’re just going to run?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “I make it a point to listen to those who have good information,” Harry said precisely. “Chloe knows more about Onyx than any of us, and she says it’s not worth even trying to attack.”

  “You said the same thing about Philip!” I threw my hands up and turned away. “And we beat him.”

  “We lost people beating him,” Harry said. “And in that case, the stakes
were different.”

  I crossed my arms and stared him down. “Oh? How so, then?”

  “When we fought Philip, it was because he was hunting us, specifically. He was a threat to all magic users, and we could all band together to take him down. But these people?” Harry’s grizzled brows rose. “These are humans. Get a band of hundreds of magic users, and we advertise to the world what we are—and that’s even assuming we win. What if we wind up dead from weapons we don’t understand?”

  “That’s going to happen anyway,” I argued. “Onyx isn’t going to stop at Ari. They’re going to keep building an army until they have enough to take on all of us—and they’re trying to thin our numbers to do that. Not to mention, they’ll have taken children from the Acadamh, too. Every moment we wait, they grow stronger and we grow weaker. Someday, there won’t be anywhere to hide.”

  There was a stricken sort of silence.

  I looked around. Harry looked pale, the rest of the Monarchists had looked away purposefully, and Daiman was studying me like he’d never seen me before in his life.

  “…What? What’d I say?” I looked around myself. No one wanted to meet my eyes.

  Daiman answered, when it was clear that no one else was going to. He cleared his throat awkwardly. “You’ve said those words before. Pretty much verbatim.”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged. “Because I keep having to have this same damned argument with Harry. He didn’t believe me about needing to take on Philip, and he doesn’t believe me now. He should know better by this point.” I shot him a look.

  “Not … then.” Daiman cleared his throat again. “You said it at the conclave.”

  I felt a chill.

  Around the turn of the fourteenth century, magic users had been fighting over how to cope with the new world order, and the sudden, violent focus humans had brought to bear on suspected magic users. We’d had a conclave to decide what to do … and when my faction lost, I’d taken matters into my own hands and decided to kill most of the humans on earth.