Bloodring (Rogue Mage #1)

Bloodring (Rogue Mage #1) Page 5

"I said, 'If what? " Audric stood in the open doorway to his minuscule shop next to Thorn's Gems, his bald head and dark-skinned face reflecting the snow-bright light from the windows, his silver lightning-bolt necklace glistening.

"If Ciana really saw a daywalker," Rupert said.

Audric's eyes narrowed and he gripped the door header, arms bent though the opening was eight feet high. Audric was a seriously big man. He studied Rupert, who was hunched over a display case that needed no reorganizing. "Where did she see this daywalker?"

"On the Trine," I said. "Yesterday afternoon. It may have sniffed or licked her hand, but it didn't bite her. She said he was pretty, with green eyes. And he went poof."

"Gorgeous. Not pretty," Rupert said. "You opening today?"

When he was in town, Audric manned a ten-by-twelve-foot storefront he leased from us. In it, locals could come and view some of the smaller items he had mined, or photographs of larger ones, and bargain for them - anvils, axes, china, car parts, gold, anything that survived the destruction of Sugar Grove and the hundred years since. Audric made an indelicate noise at the obvious change of subject.

An uncomfortable silence filled Thorn's Gems as we each considered the shaky conversational ground. Kirk and secular law both required us to report any rumor of Darkness. But if we did, Ciana would be questioned, at the very least. At the worst, she would be taken into custody and disappear. Probably forever.

The tinkle of the door chimes saved us as Jacey blew in, late as usual, her long dark hair blowing in a wind that was billowing loose powder down the street. "More snow on the way," she said, dropping her walking stick beside mine in the two-foot-tall ceramic umbrella stand and unwrapping her voluminous black wool cloak. She slipped out of hobnailed boots and into suede ballerina slippers she kept by the door, scattering snow on the wood boards at her feet, scuffing the melting flakes with her heel in lieu of mopping them up.

"I heard about Lucas. You guys seen it yet?" she asked.

"We saw," Rupert said, sounding stiff.

"Your business partner's been in a dither ever since," Audric said, crossing to her and catching her up in a bear hug that dwarfed the tall woman.

"I missed you, big man." She hugged him fiercely. "Sure you won't leave that tacky hag and come be my love? You can teach me how to dead-mine and I'll teach you hetero. I can do queen almost as well as Rupert."

"Hey, you two," Rupert said, fists on hips, fighting an unwilling smile. "I'm right here."

"Will not happen, sugar-pie," Audric said, releasing her with a quick kiss to the top of her head and a swipe at her flyaway hair. "My heart is taken. And your husband - remember Zed?  - has a very big shotgun. Plus, his sons are big enough to give even me pause."

Setting her patchwork satchel on the counter, Jacey opened it and removed four wide-cuff bracelets made with flameworked beads and delicas, stitched into intricate patterns with floral motifs. Beside them she added a half dozen necklaces to match, some needing pendants, which I would apply. Lastly, she lifted out a beaded chrome sculpture in the shape of a winged warrior, wings outspread, toes pointed, shield in place, sword upheld and looking realistically sharp. "The cops know anything they're not telling the media?" she asked.

Audric lifted the seraph with a soft whistle. She grinned at him. "Glad you like it. It's Chamuel, our guardian angel."

"Nothing they're telling us. Only the video they keep showing. Violence on SNN, with government approval. Maybe seraphic approval too. Who knows?" Rupert said.

"Spooky." Jacey added earrings that could be sold with bracelets as sets or separately. She had been busy while I was out of town. Jacey's most productive time for finishing work was after hours and days off, as she liked to work in front of a roaring fire, surrounded by her large and ever-growing family. She had married a widower with five boys and promptly started giving them half-siblings. The total count of kids in her house was up to nine now. "I'm in the front this afternoon, right?"

"Right," Rupert said.

"I'm in the back now, then. In Friday's shipment, I got some stellar stock, and I want to see what I can come up with. Pure flame," she said as she disappeared into the workroom in back, her granny dress floating behind her. "Pure flame" was Jacey's trademark saying, both greeting and blessing, pure flame being what turned glass and ore into things of beauty.

Rupert began arranging the new pieces in the glass counter. I paused before I put on the chrysocolla creations I had decided to wear as display, realizing I had chosen the day's wardrobe to match a certain cop's green-blue eyes. I restrained a moan. I needed to look in my reference books and find out how long neomage heat lasted. Clipping on the stone jewelry, I turned to greet an early customer.

"Yeah, I'm open today," Audric finally answered Rupert's question. When neither of us responded, he vanished into his showroom.

Outside, snow swirled with the wind, turning the world white, obscuring the buildings across the street. Overhead, Lucas continued to be attacked, assaulted, and dragged away.

Wednesday's business was seldom brisk, and it slowed as snow piled up another three inches and temperatures fell. After lunch, which we shared around the gas fire in the center of the shop, we decided to close Thorn's Gems and Audric's showroom to work in the back. Larger metropolitan centers farther south or at lower altitudes had massive snow-moving equipment or snow-melting mage-devices, allowing commerce to continue all winter. But Mineral City, at over three thousand feet, and with a population of only four thousand, couldn't afford either. In blizzards, the town and surrounding hills closed down until the weather system moved on.

Jacey and Rupert had talked about moving to a warmer clime, a bigger city, where our client base could grow, but with the help of the Internet, we really didn't have to uproot Jacey's family and move. And I couldn't go. I was safer in the backwoods, though I just said I liked it here whenever the question came up.

I changed into work clothes, pulled a jumpsuit over the layers, and met my partners in the workroom. Such times were my greatest joy, when we worked together, the smell of solder or hot metal fouling the air as Rupert heated gold or copper or silver; the scent of gas and the blue flame from Jacey's torches as she melted and blew glass, fusing bits of found materials into beads, or welding a hunk of salvaged steel into sculpture. The faint stink of sweat as we expended energy in the warm room. The roar of my wet saw and diamond-tipped drill tools shaping stone, and the soft clicks Rupert made, nipping and cutting sheets of metal according to templates. It was a raucous multi-sense symphony.

Occasionally, music flowed overhead if we could all agree on the artist and style. Rarely, when we could afford the gas to heat the small kiln Jacey sometimes used, it was even steamy. All the smells, sounds, sights, and movements blended together and spoke of warmth and safety and home, my home since I had turned fourteen and was smuggled out of Enclave.

I was working the hunk of bloodstone I'd carted all the way from Boone in Homer's saddlebags, not waiting for the next mule train or freight train, fearing winter weather would delay it. A diamond-tipped blade roaring in the wet saw, I slowly excised large beads in rectangles, squares, rough ovals, and free-form shapes. If the matrix proved stable, each would be a focal stone for a necklace, the red heart bleeding into the dark green outer area.

It was a remarkable rough, and as I worked, I sent a skim into the heart of the stone and felt an unexpected hum of resonance, an echo of power. Lifting my safety glasses out of the way, I raised the remaining rough and considered it with mage-sight. The bloody heart of the stone was dark fuchsia, bordering on crimson when tilted into shadow. The very center of the stone would make a great amulet that would nest perfectly in the palm of my hand, heavy and smooth. Something carved into a sleeping cat, a sleeping bird, or a shell, and hung from a lace of leather thongs strung with dark green glass beads swirled with scarlet and gold. It would be an amulet hidden in plain view. I turned the remaining stone into the light. I could make my amulet and still get a dozen exciting focals from the double fist of rough. Pulling my glasses into place, I went back to work.

Even with snow outside, the room grew warm, our extra layers tossed over chair backs or onto the floor. My head was filled with the acrid stink of Rupert's copper and pickling solution, and the cleaner smell of Jacey's torch melting, turning, and blowing glass. Today she was flameworking blue glass globes into small droplets, fusing in gold dust.

As we bent over our tasks, a CDS of an ancient rock singer was playing, above the sound of my saw. Elvis Presley, long saved in crystal digital storage, blared overhead, crooning in a sexy, smooth voice. Rock and roll had been removed from the banned listing in the last year and was back in fashion, though we had listened to it for several years before it had been permitted. Elvis' mellow voice seemed tailor-made for the work we did, and he was one artist we could all agree on, though we also liked the Eagles, Patsy Cline, the Allman Brothers, and Tina Turner. We even liked Mercy Me, Avalon, and Casting Crowns, which we played when a kirk elder was expected to make an appearance.

Fifty years ago, when the orthodox had been at the peak of their power, holding both houses of Congress, ruling with the consent of the High Host, the music had been prohibited. As the old-timers died off and their edicts were challenged in the Supreme Court, many were being stricken from the records. No one knew whether seraphs hated rock and roll or the religious Right did, but the loosening of restrictions was a result of the recent seraphic disinterest in the affairs of humans. Regardless of who had once hated him, Elvis now crooned overhead.

When a dozen stones were ready for the grinding wheel, I took a break and peeled out of my jumpsuit, which was crusted over with stone dust. From the icebox in the unheated back hallway, I got us each a juice and sat at my workbench watching my partners on the tasks that had made our designs a success.

Rupert set down metal snips and a sheet of stiff copper he was cutting to the contours of a necklace I had designed. With tongs, he took a copper oval from the brazier and doused it in a heated pickle solution before twisting the top off his drink and taking a long swallow. He wiped the icy bottle over his sweating forehead, nodded to me, and returned to work. Jacey, her granny dress tucked under a thick leather apron, swiveled the welder's mask up off her face and rolled her shoulders before drinking. No one spoke. I stretched, flexing numb muscles that tended to paralyze in position when I worked stone. I was tired, as much from the energy-sapping snow accumulating beyond the walls as from the long trip and stonecutting.

I was restless. Taking my bottle, I rambled in front to check the weather, which was still horrid, and back into the workshop, down the hallway, past some deliveries that made the passage even more narrow, and into the stockroom. Stacked haphazardly, blocking easy entrance, were shipping crates showing rope scoring, the singular evidence of mule train transport. Heavier stock came by the intermittent freight train and was never secured with rope.

I set my juice bottle at the door. While we hadn't assigned jobs when we formed the partnership, we had each taken on certain tasks, the chores that went beyond the purely creative and sales parts of Thorn's Gems. My jobs were the art of working stone, design, and stock, which needed serious attention. With hammer and chisel, I opened the crates blocking the door and updated the inventory folder, which had been misplaced. When I left town, the stockroom always got cluttered, and when I was gone an extended time, I returned to chaos.

Thorn's Gems had been my dream, started with the money left me when my foster father, Lemuel Hastings, died just after my eighteenth birthday. Uncle Lem had been a rough, taciturn, coldhearted, rock hound who had loved only one thing in his life until I came into it - stone. Thinking me wholly human and orphaned, he had opened his home to me, and eventually his heart, teaching me that humans were pretty okay, and to love rocks.

Setting aside the tools, I put away Jacey's quarterly scrap metal order for salvaged gold findings, melted jewelry dead-mined from war zones, and old, broken glass. One box held rusted parts from Pre-Ap cars and trucks for her sculpture.

I stored the stock in bins and stacked empty crates in back for recycling. Two boxes were mine, filled with rough I had bought sight unseen online, in a rare moment when the computer worked without crashing. We needed a new one, but they were costly. Parts were getting harder to find, though there was a thriving cottage industry for computer repair, and the Internet was still the best place to get neat stuff.

An SNN reporter had claimed there were new companies on the northwest coast creating new PC parts and producing new units, which required high-quality quartz. Mineral City's main exports were guns, feldspar, and quartz crystal. We had seen an upsurge in quartz exports, so it was possible. There had been such claims in the past, however, and nothing came of them. I'd believe it when I saw a new computer.

Opening crates, I shelved some online stock and stacked the rest in a bin identified with big question marks. There had been a photo in the Internet ads, but if I didn't get to handle rough, I had no idea how fragile or frangible it was, so I'd have to study it later.

I cleared space, making the room accessible again, but even with my layers of clothing, it was cold in the unheated room. I thought I could empty a few more cartons before the temperature forced me out. Stepping into the hallway, I considered metal shipping containers that constricted the traffic pattern. It was rare for deliveries to arrive boxed in anything except wood and paper, as salvaged metal had become more valuable to the exploding human population. Usually, metal was used for more important purposes than transport, especially this much metal. The boxes were approximately fifteen inches deep, eighteen long, and nine high, with handles on top and sides. Metal strips looked as if they had been added later, crisscrossing back to front, secured with brass padlocks. It was a lot of metal.

I glanced at one address label and stopped, surprised, then looked at the address on another box. The metal ones were from Linville, Carolina, to Rupert at Thorn's Gems. There were no names on the returns, but the street address belonged to his gramma.

Well, that was just dandy. No telling what the old bat had sent, except that it would be a chore or a problem or a demand. And no matter what it was, Rupert would be ticked off. I slipped my fingers under the handle.

Stone... The cold in my flesh was replaced with a frisson of heat, a whisper of power, the touch of mage-perception. Slick sweat broke out on my arms and tingled down my spine. There is stone here. Stone imbued with power. Straining, I lifted the metal box to the floor. Uncertain, I touched the second box. It too contained stone. And behind it was another box, similar to the first two. I studied the boxes in the dim hallway light. They were an ugly green, painted with pale white pigments, words hidden under the crisscrossed security strips. A number 6 was clearly visible on one, the number 3 in a different place on another. I recognized Pre-Ap U.S. military ammunition boxes. Had the Stanhope matriarch sent these? And why to Rupert, her least favorite grandchild, rather than to her best beloved Lucas, or even to Jason, their older brother? And why stone delivered in metal ammo boxes?

I sent a skim into the box under my fingertips. The stone inside seemed to elongate, like a cat arching under a caress - then it swirled around me in an eddy, testing, toying. I sent a tendril of thought deeper into the box.

Something touched my mind, recoiled a bare instant before it wrapped around me, seized me, and pulled me in. My mind fell into the rock inside.

Shattering, fracturing, sundering might. Such power. It beat into me, demanding. I moaned, breathing in limitless, boundless energies. My head whipped back, my spine arched.

A small, lucid, prudent part of me wrenched away from the might, the mage-torque of stone. I watched as it wrapped barriers around itself, sealing itself off from the stone, the force thrumming against my brain. That small, safe part of me vanished from my own sight.

The desire to rip open the boxes heated my blood. I gasped as I pulled at the lock. It didn't give. Securing the hammer and chisel under my arm, I hefted one of the ammo boxes by its thin, rounded handles. The mage-torque from within burned my palms, singing, calling to me. Unsteady, I walked into the workroom.

Audric watched as I entered, his eyes alarmed as if sensing something wrong. He nudged Rupert, who looked up, irritated. Jacey raised her head, shoved up her welding hood, took us in, and turned off her torch, the blue-flame cone vanishing with a soft pop.

"What is it?" Rupert demanded.

"A lot of stock came while I was gone? " My voice sounded strange.

"Yeah," Jacey said, laying aside her hood, stripping off padded gloves, and untying her heavy apron. "A lot, all week. Why? Hey, I'm sorry, I know I should have stopped and put some of it away. I'm a lazy slob."

I swiveled to Rupert, who moved closer to Audric as if seeking comfort from an expected blow. "Your gramma sent you some presents. They're in metal ammunition boxes in the hallway, each nearly identical to this one. There's stone in them." I realized that sounded strange, so I added, "Maybe."

He glanced at Audric and rolled his eyes, shoulders relaxing. "It's no big deal," he said, crossing the room, steel tongs at his side. "It's just stuff from Grampa's desk. I've been expecting it. Gramma's been cleaning out the papers for probate and sending on anything that needs legal attention. And Lucas was going through Grampa's storage house, sorting estate things and sending on - "

"It's stone," I interrupted, striding past him. There was a resonance in my blood that only mineral could produce, that low, slow hum of something near craving, a hunger close to passion, that only stone recently mined from deep in the ground could demand of me. Ordinary stone, stone that had been exposed to the elements, scoured by water and wind, contained little usable power until after I recharged it with creation energy. But this stone was different, a beating heart of might. This stone was charged with something... strange.

I hefted the box and dropped it onto Rupert's worktable. It landed with a weighty thump that rocked the sturdy bench. The stone inside the carton was charged with something I had never felt before, something that was almost - but not quite - creation power. And it fed its hunger into me, hunger that translated into euphoria. I don't know what he saw in my eyes, but Rupert stepped back. "This box is not holding papers," I said.

"Touchy, touchy," Rupert murmured. But he set down his tongs and turned off the torch and brazier. Everything that caused fumes was off, so Audric flipped off the ventilation fan, silencing the low rumble just beneath the level of normal hearing, and ejected the CDS. Instantly, quiet pressed in, marred only by the tick and ping of cooling metal.

"Did she send a key to this?"

Rupert's face went blank as he took in the padlock. "Uh. No. Jacey?"

"Yeah, maybe. Hang on." She ran to the front, smoothing her dress, its fabric crushed into long wrinkles by the apron and the heat of her body. In a moment that seemed like an eon, she was back, carrying a manila shipping envelope. "I forgot. This came in the post on Saturday. I didn't know what it was for." From the envelope, she shook a small brass key.

Rupert inserted it, and the padlock clicked. Blood raced through my body, a beat of tribal drums. Open it, I wanted to shout. Rupert set the key aside and removed the metal strips, one by one, creating soft twangs that hung on the air, dull notes of off-key sound.

But when he tried to lift the lid, it didn't budge. "It's been soldered shut," Audric said. Rupert pressed his fingernail into a thin line of metal in the seam. The lead solder gave under the faint pressure.

'You want I should open it?" I indicated the box with the chisel and hammer, the need to demolish it nearly making me shake. At his acquiescence, I stabbed the narrow chisel into the seam between side and lid and whapped the blunt end with the hammer three times, three ringing chimes of steel, and beneath them, the dull notes of lesser metals yielding. Working the rod out, I inserted it a few inches to the side and struck again, three solid blows. Audric spun the ammo box and I repeated the steps on the other side, hearing the quiet groan as lead released from the tight seal. A crack formed in the solder. From within the box, something reached out to me, enveloping my mind.

Muscles bulging, Audric pulled the hinged lid and it opened with a shrill squeal as he stepped back, allowing Rupert access to the box. Though I was breathing too heavily for the amount of exertion, the aggression I was fighting had abated with the attack on the crate, and I put down the tools, watching as Rupert pulled out wads of newsprint, exposing sawdust. The pounding in my blood called for him to hurry, to get inside, get inside fast.