Midnight Magic Read online

  "That's where I started, but I couldn't even begin to try to separate them out," Aurelai said.

  "What do you think it is?" Vimika had a guess, but it was too nice a day to give voice to that kind of horror.

  Aurelai had no such compunctions, and even seemed to take some satisfaction in saying, "It's Father. Not all of him, but it's him."

  "The Last Breath?"

  "I think so," Aurelai said. "The rest was waiting for it, like a catalyst, or a key."

  Vimika continued to walk and Look, trying to find the patterns that must exist amidst the complexity. It had been designed, and every design had to start somewhere, even if it was buried under 200 years of overgrowth. "Or a driver. He built the carriage and harnessed the horses, they just needed to be told where to go."

  "Yes. Do you think there could be that much of him left?" Aurelai asked one tree in particular. "I want to know I'm not crazy for believing it."

  Much like the spells themselves, it was going to be hard to undo the other damage he'd wrought before casting them. "Remember how I said I saw myself in there? I had a conversation with... her. It could just be a manifestation of my inner voice, like talking to a memory or a projection of my own inner monologue, but the more I've thought about it, the less I believe it. She felt... intelligent. The last thing she said to me was 'you aren't worthy of her.' I thought it was about what she'd just shown me, but... what if it was something else?"

  "Like what?"

  "You. What if it was your father trying to scare me off?"

  "Then he could have shown you a slobbering fell beast, or a wall of fire, or a crazy person with a crossbow, not shouted something cryptic at you as you ran right towards me," Aurelai said with a dismissive wave.

  "Or maybe he's had a change of heart. Could be why he let me through," Vimika ventured.

  The resulting laughter was like shards of broken glass hurtling towards her face: sparkling and sharp, preceding a messy impact. "The only way my father could have a change of heart is if you ripped out the one he had first. Death was an opportunity for him, not an obstacle. Isn't that why everybody wanted his head? He was an obstinate, ruthless, dispassionate villain, and 200 years isn't nearly enough time to begin to change that. He probably likes being dead."

  Hearing Aurelai spitting such invective sounded perverse. Vimika wasn't above a good verbal shellacking, but for Aurelai's hard-won self-discipline to slip for even a moment revealed just how deeply rooted her feelings were, but also how far they could still reach. More than her blindingly intense animata, there was still far more to her than Vimika had been able to see until now.

  "I'm sorry," Vimika said. She wanted to kiss Aurelai, but the pain in those dark eyes was too near the surface. The torment, the long years of isolation and what could only be called betrayal by the one person she had ever, could ever, trust, it wasn't a pain that could be kissed away, only lived.

  The heat in Aurelai's face melted away until it was cool and serene once again. "It's not your fault. You only know him through books and legends. He's more like a character in a story than a real person to you, I imagine."

  "I suppose so. What was he actually like?"

  Aurelai gathered Oliver into her arms, cradling him with one hand and scratching behind his enormous ears with the other. For an immortal wild animal with bones made of gold, he seemed pleased with this turn of domestication.

  "Our relationship was… complicated. I loved him. Or tried to. I believed him when he said we had to stay, that there were too many who wanted to hurt me out there. He was right about that much. Though his mind was starting to go when he died, his last words were 'I love you.' I cried for days afterwards... I didn't even leave the house for... I don't know how long. I must have spent months in suspension to avoid thinking about it. It was only when I had the energy to start using magic again that I noticed everything was off."

  Aurelai glanced into the trees, but didn't seem to see them. "The forest felt strange and off-color to what it had before. Thinking it was a blight of some kind, I had a Look. In moments, I went from feeling completely bereft to absolutely livid. If he had asked! Told me! Consulted me in any way, I might have agreed to some sort of protection, to living behind magical walls, but he didn't. My entire life, he'd never given me a choice in anything, and he kept right on doing it! Even in death he denied me, as part of me still believed that it was too dangerous to try to leave. I lived with that fear for years. It's why I... settled. Why I set up the climate spells and started farming.

  "Eventually, whether it was loneliness or insanity, I decided that whatever was out there was better than in here, but every time I tried to leave, the forest would turn me around. No matter how hard I tried to walk straight, or for how long, I would end up back here again. Days and nights I would be gone, following false stars, but always the same outcome."

  She shook her head at the memory, and Oliver burrowed himself more tightly into her arms. The smile Aurelai had for him was beatific, at complete odds with her story.

  Nonetheless, she continued, "Anger became despair when I couldn't untangle the magic. It fought me like it knew me. Adapted to everything I tried before I'd tried it. That's when I knew what that animata was out there. He actively thwarted me, Vimika. My own dead father. His last words were the only ones I'd ever wanted to hear from him, and they were a lie."

  Vimika looked into the trees with a renewed, uglier type of disgust. "He never appeared to you out there?"

  "No. I never saw any other evidence of consciousness beyond it fighting back when I tried to undo it."

  "Huh. What about him?" Vimika asked, joining Aurelai in giving Oliver a right proper doting. "It doesn't seem to have affected him at all, even though he's pretty much made of magic. I'd've thought a field that intense would do something to him. Scare him, at least."

  A long tongue curled out of a longer yawn, as if Oliver found the idea rather droll. Viewed with Sight, he was bright white, concentrated animata with none of the impurities that were found in normal animals and people. They had things like minerals and iron in their blood, muscle, sinew, things that were suffused with animata, but acted more like a sponge for it. Mechamagical creations weren't strictly speaking alive, according to the propaganda of the last few centuries, but Vimika could See the truth now. Oliver was a living, thinking being, and utterly beautiful. He should have died of old age while Aurelai's father was still alive, but his eyes were sharp, nose wet, no sign of any injury or infection having ever plagued him. He was, for all intents and purposes, perfect.

  That's traitor talk, Vimika reminded herself. Perhaps she'd had her hat off for too long and forgotten just what tragedy the creation and trafficking of these creatures had wrought on her people.

  But is that their fault?

  "He doesn't fear much anymore, it would seem," Aurelai said. "I think he knows what he is. When I touch his mind, he doesn't feel like other animals. He's more... complicated. Even the thought of Borrowing him is repugnant, it would be like trying to Borrow you."

  Vimika stroked Oliver under the chin, and he looked up at her with soulful brown eyes. "He's certainly had a long time to think about things."

  "Maybe he's been here before. Father made him, after all, perhaps he welcomed Oliver home."

  "You'd never seen him before?" Vimika asked in surprise.

  Aurelai shook her head. "He must have been made before... before. For one of Tarsebaum's ancestors?"

  "Likely. I have no idea how you would acquire a mechamagical animal after the Purges. The penalties for harboring one are extreme. For us, at least. Maybe it's easier for a wealthy non-wizard to find a few loopholes in the back of their vault. They would be quite a prize for someone who has everything."

  As always, Vimika thought. Us and Them, with different rules for each. Since the return of her magic, she'd been lulled into forgetting what actually lay in wait for them when they made good their escape. It was going to be less sightseeing and adventure than running and hiding
.

  In secret. Even if they managed to spirit Oliver away (there was no chance of returning him to Tarsebaum now), powerful people had a vested interest in keeping the fact he had ever existed hidden. The obvious choice was to flee Atvalia completely, but they were wizards, and wizards who did manage to get themselves away to safety would only guarantee the consequences fell squarely on their families. It was one reason the government turned a blind eye to big wizard families. They were collateral.

  Something bumped against Vimika's side, and she looked down to see her hands shaking.

  "Don't think about it, Vimika. Anger doesn't suit you."

  "Nor you."

  "Mm. Perhaps I was a bit optimistic. That you would walk in here and already know the answers, or immediately see something I couldn't and we'd be gone in an hour," Aurelai said with an eye on Oliver. 'We' had come to mean 'three' without need for discussion.

  "To be fair, this is the first time I've been able to put any real thought into this. You're going to have to give me some time too, Sweet Beak."

  Aurelai looked up, eyes sparkling. "Why did you call me that?"

  "You said you liked it. I was paying attention, you know," Vimika said.

  A small, slightly embarrassed smile spread across Aurelai's lips. "Is that so? What color were the birds, then?"

  "Not to them."

  Aurelai wetted her lips. "I think I like this charming Vimika. Some kind of spell, is it?"

  Vimika took Aurelai's free hand and brought it to her lips. "Magic, yes. But not cast by me."

  "Oh, you... you!" Aurelai's cheeks washed over scarlet. "You'll get what's coming to you, just you wait."

  "I'd better. But not now. This," Vimika tossed a hand at the forest, "is too much to bite off at once. I can See it now, and that's enough to start. I hope. We should go back to the library. Maybe I can find some chink in this thing there."

  "I've been through every book in there a hundred times, I told you," Aurelai said.

  "Even the blank ones?"

  "Why would I look through those? Father died before writing in them."

  Vimika shrugged. "Maybe so. Or maybe that's where you missed something. I may not be as powerful as you old wizards, but we've made up for it in a fair bit of cunning, along with having a vested interest in hiding magic from people."

  "Fair enough," Aurelai said, setting Oliver down.

  As they fell into step beside each other, Vimika reached out for Aurelai's hand, but found only a swift column of moving air where it should have been.

  "Old wizards, you said?"

  "Aha... ha..." Vimika wasn't the strongest swimmer, and all the rocks she tried scrabbling over to rescue herself were slippery. And cold. Then the current got faster and was that a shark? "As in... legendary. More of a... style... than age. A... way of thinking."

  There was a unique, altogether new type of pressure that came with eyes that didn't blink terribly often. Or at all, as was the case at the moment.

  A slender eyebrow arched over one of them.

  With sharks nibbling at her toes and a horizon quickly vanishing in a decidedly waterfall-y way ahead, Vimika lunged for a low-hanging vine. "Sweet Beak?"

  With a wry smile, Aurelai surrendered her hand.

  The library could wait.

  ~

  Their first attempt at a bath together went as well as could be expected in a tub built for one, resulting in the mutual conclusion that it wasn't nearly what stories made it out to be. Their next attempt would have to wait until they came to a river or a lake.

  "Or a bathhouse," Vimika said as she shrugged into a robe that was decidedly not for modern wizards. Or to be worn outside. Or be seen by anyone, really. Prim and proper the old ways may have been, when it came to dressing down, they dressed down. But up or down, Vimika was coming to enjoy being dressed by someone else, especially when that someone smiled every time. Though Vimika still wasn't fond of the mirror, she was beginning to delight in being seen.

  "A whathouse? Why would you need such a thing?" Aurelai asked, hair dripping in thick black ropes as she led them outside into the dying light of the setting sun.

  "They're really nice! You build them on top of natural springs so you don't need any complicated pumps or to expend a bunch of magic to make the water hot."

  Vimika hadn't been very often, and only with her family, a rare treat for one made up of seven wizards.

  "You go... somewhere else, to take a bath? Somewhere public?" Aurelai's face said everything about how she felt about the idea: pinched and uncomfortable.

  "Trust me, after the hike it takes to reach most of them, you're glad for a long soak in mineral water that leaves you pink when you get out."

  Aurelai's dressing gown was thicker but slightly worn from having seen actual use in the last two centuries. Modest compared to the one Vimika wore, it was designed to be seen by servants in. Aurelai tugged her belt tighter. "With other people."

  "They give you a towel. At any rate, they're expensive and hard to get to. Hold still."

  Vimika muttered a few non-words and ran her hands down the long cascade of Aurelai's hair. By the time they reached the end, there wasn't a single drop of water left, leaving it to hang once more as a single silky curtain.

  "Thank you," Aurelai said, gathering a handful and looping it around her waist like she was checking her tail for twigs or insects. Satisfied, she set about returning the favor for Vimika.

  "No, wait!" But Vimika's, so used to being bound, was overzealous in enjoying its freedom and exploded outward as Aurelai's hands flew down Vimika's back in a single, swift arc. In the the time it took to blink, her ears vanished without a trace.

  "You see why I'm so jealous of yours?" Vimika asked as she felt out the size of the dark brown cloud now enveloping her head.

  Though Aurelai had gotten better at policing her features, a crime spree was now running rampant across her face. "Oh! Oh... dear. How did that happen?"

  "You dried it too quickly." Something tugged at the corner of Vimika's lips. "I suspect on purpose."

  "Do you now? How unfortunate. I guess that means you'll have to jump back in the bath?" Aurelai said, the gleam in her eye taking on a somewhat lecherous hue.

  "No. I look ridiculous, and your punishment is being the one who has to see it," Vimika said with a satisfied smile and an indignant crossing of the arms. "So there."

  The law returned to Aurelai's face. The sentence was to flip her smile upside down and for her eyebrows to fight to the death. "What? No... that's not what was supposed to happen!"

  "Sorry, I don't make the rules."

  "What rules? Where? Where are these rules written? Tell me, Vimika," Aurelai demanded with endearing sincerity.

  "Oh, you don't know? That's too bad. Because they say that now I can torture you as much as I want. That's what happens to naughty wizards who abuse their power. Sorry."

  "They do not," Aurelai said. Her eyes flicked off to one side.

  "They do. Page seven, paragraph four, subsection b: 'A female wizard's hair is a gigantic pain in the arse and isn't to be trifled with without said wizard's permission. Infractions shall be emended at the plaintiff's discretion.'"

  "You're making that up."

  "'However, exceptions can be made, and the record of the offender expunged if she gives Vimika a kiss and says she's sorry.' See? All there. Straightforward as can be."

  Aurelai crossed her arms. "What if she's not sorry?"

  "Then I'm going to go play with Oliver. He likes me. I think. Oliver!"

  Magelight swelled from Vimika's fingertips, but not one of ethereal fire, but liquid. When it reached just the right size, she let it drip onto the grass, where it bounced, a glowing yellow blob.

  Oliver came trotting up, espying the globule immediately.

  Before he could decide what to do with this turn of events, Vimika's foot shot out and sent it skittering across the grass. "Go get it!"

  White lightning raced out to follow, catching up to it in
a flash. When Oliver leapt atop his prize, it shattered into four smaller copies, squirting out in as many directions. He stood puzzled for only a moment before deciding which of his prey to go after, which he did with gusto.

  "He will literally never get tired, you know," Aurelai said. What was now eight lights danced in her eyes as they flicked to Vimika's hair. She bit back a smile.

  "That thought occurred to me round about when my foot connected. Thankfully I have you here to spell me, don't I?" Vimika teased.

  "I don't know any stamina spells. I could have a look, but-"

  "What? No. Spell... as in 'take over' for me. Not... magic spell."

  As Aurelai watched Oliver bat two magelights into one another, sending them careening off in opposite directions, she looped an arm through Vimika's. "You know, there are times I wonder how we can communicate at all. Language has changed more than I would have thought in 200 years. I have books older than that, but I can read them without issue."

  Vimika patted the back of Aurelai's hand, letting their magic swirl and combine before speaking. "People talk differently than they write. I imagine Delica was even harder to understand through a cat's ears."

  "It was... difficult, I admit," Aurelai said.

  "There's no shame in that, you know. I live below her, but it took me a good few weeks to figure out what she was saying. Every time I walked into the Double C, I would just smile and nod. She was always so nice! I thought she fancied me for a little while. That's how I met Seris. She, ah, rescued me from myself. Had quite the egg on my face." Vimika saw the question forming. "Means I was embarrassed. No, I don't know why."

  "Oh," Aurelai said with a little pout.

  One Vimika had to keep from trying to chew off.

  Now that she was whole again, not only did the world seem brighter magically, it did in many other ways as well, and the brightest beacon of them all was Aurelai. With the blinders that had been Vimika's anxieties about her usefulness removed, she could see Aurelai how she deserved to be seen.