The Effaced: Chapter Seventeen

With one stream of my consciousness, I was walking with Kelly, slowly making our way through the city, keeping on the move so the constables didn’t suspect us, and so anyone tracking us would have more trouble following. 

With the other, I was turning the mystery over in my head. 

The false version of me that the Arenamaster was running around with now had been tasked with killing me. 

Someone else, possibly related to the Arenamaster, possibly unrelated, was framing me for the death of a senator. 

If the new Mist had a familiar that granted the same aura power that Odril had given to me, and had reached to the level of the fourth arch-star, and the aura-hiding one, and had the same experimental rune bond as I did, then she’d have been able to kill Ermonte. 

I wished I could say that any one of those was beyond belief, but if anyone was capable of creating another rune bond that approximated the ability to alter something’s mass, it would be the Arenamaster. She would also be willing to put a child under enough stress to kill them until they developed the right set of arch-stars.

But could she get someone to give out the familiar power to infuse aspects of your aura into items and spells? 

I wasn’t sure. 

Getting the same familiar power wasn’t impossible, and when working with weaker beings, it could even be arranged by more powerful ones, like a Faerie Queen of Fire forcibly altering the non sapient beasts in her Court to give out flame resistance boons. 

But Odril hadn’t been weak. She’d been powerful enough to rival a Faerie Lord, or even a weaker Queen, and her contract had been enhanced by the power of the Contractor, to bind us tighter.

That made it unlikely. Not impossible. 

I wished I’d taken more courses on druidic magic in college, because that would have let me take a more reasonable guess about how unlikely it really was. 

The stream of consciousness that was answering one of Kelly’s questions about aura manipulation noticed an automobile following us, and I allowed the one focused around figuring things out to instead start working on a set of defenses. 

“Can you sense the minds of anyone in the automobile to our left and always behind us?” I asked Kelly, even as I built a metal sensing spell, infused it with my aura hiding arch-star, and slipped it into the car until I found the twisting mechanical heart of its aura generator. 

I didn’t break it yet – there was a chance that the car following us was purely coincidence – but I was ready to break it at any instant. 

Kelly held his hands up and started shaping a mind sense spell. It took him several long seconds before he frowned and shook his head. 

“Nothing.” 

I grunted. It was a slim hope that the ward wouldn’t be calibrated to deal with a mind mage, but I had still hoped. 

The automobile sped up and I tensed, shoving Kelly behind me. 

It drove past, and I relaxed for a moment, until it pulled to a stop and the doors opened. 

A tall aster woman stepped out of the driver’s side, and a shorter human man stepped out of the passenger.

“You should get in the car,” the woman said, and she sounded annoyed and tired, like she hadn’t slept in days. The man shot a glance at her, then raised his hands. 

“We don’t mean any harm,” he said. “I’m prepared to swear a compact that I have good intentions, Axel.” 

My fingers twitched as I itched to draw my knives, but restrained myself. Instead, I glanced at the woman. 

“That leaves your friend, and means you can threaten the kid.” 

“I’m not a kid,” Kelly insisted. 

“I’m going to light my aura,” the man said, and I slowly nodded. 

A soft, pastel green bloomed around the man’s body, and I spotted the pair of arch-stars floating above his head, but no rune bonds. There was a silver-brown knot of power woven in as well, probably some sort of faerie boon.

“By my oath and my power, I swear that I mean you and the child no harm, and to the best of my knowledge, neither does Miss Hadiya.”

“I don’t,” the woman – Hadiya, I assumed – said, though without the swearing of a compact, it didn’t mean much. 

I considered for a moment, then lit my own aura to seal the oath. 

I didn’t trust him completely, of course. There were far too many ways to get around a compact, from using tricky wording, to temporarily suppressing your own memories, to demonic magic from the Throne of Lies, to simply accepting the punishment. But it was a start. 

“And by my oath and my power, I swear that if you or your companion there do anything I think might cause harm to Kelly or me, I’ll break the aura generator in your car beyond repair.” 

It was a mild threat, as far as things went, but I didn’t want to swear myself to some sort of horrible, bloody vengeance.

The oath settled between the man and myself, and Hadiya sighed.

“Can you two get in the car now? Do you have any idea how many mages are trying to scry you right now? I have no idea, but it’s got to be at least four.” 

I nodded, but took a moment to truly study him and Hadiya before stepping in.

Judging the age of Aster, those with a touch of the darker faerie blood in them, was always hard, since they could live to be two hundred with ease, but I thought that Hadiya was still fairly young – perhaps fourty or fifty? She was definitely pretty, in a wildly curly haired, slender-tall willowy way.

My eyes alight on the thin, curling tattoo around her bicep, however. It peeked out from beneath her sleeves, and was glowing faintly, suggesting that it was an enchanted tattoo of some sort, or perhaps a powerful familiar mark. 

From the way she held herself, I thought she was dangerous, but I wasn’t sure that she was a fighter. She had an absolute confidence in her pose that suggested power of some kind – monetary, political, or personal – but didn’t have the scars or balance that I expected to see in fighters.

The man looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was shorter and a touch on the larger side, cute in a professorial sort of way. His hair was to his shoulders and black, with streaks of white running through it, though I couldn’t tell if it was white, dyed black, or black that had been bleached.

He, in contrast to Hadiya, looked nervous and uncertain, his eyes glancing up and down the street, and his feet shifting with uncertainty. If he was a threat, I’d eat my coat, metal and all. 

I gestured for Kelly to get in, then looped around to the driver’s side, so that I was across from the driver. If they tried something, it would be far more likely for them to shoot across than to turn all the way around, after all. 

The moment the doors shut, the familiar humming of a ward fell into place, but with a quick flex, I found my aura shaping completely normal. That let me relax a little bit, even as Hadiya pulled out onto the road again. 

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Well, this is Miss Hadiya, one of the–” the man started to say, but Hadiya cut him off. 

“I’m a researcher in the recharge research division of Elucidate Labs,” she said. 

“Yes,” the man said, and in the reflection of the glass, I thought he looked slightly perturbed.

“And you?” I asked. 

“Oh, dear. My apologies. I’m Rhys Ermonte.” 

I froze, but Kelly, djinn bless him, had no reservation. 

“Are you the son of the dead senator?” 

I made a choking noise that turned into a cough, but Rhys simply nodded. 

“Senator Ermonte was my dad, yes. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.” 

“I’m Kelly,” Kelly said. “I’m trying to pay back a debt to Axel. Also he’s teaching me how to use magic.”

“I’m not even a mind mage,” I muttered under my breath. 

“I think you should return home,” Rhys said. “This is going to get dangerous.” 

“I know,” Kelly said, jutting his chin out. “I’m not going to just run and hide though. Pressure is good for making arch-stars, right? I can fast track my advancement.” 

I resisted the urge to pull my hair out. Had the kid not listened to the entire lecture about arch-stars? 

“It’s still not sa–” 

Before the argument could get heated up, I cut Rhys off. 

“Kelly isn’t safe at home. He’s not safe with me either, but I can at least protect him some. Why were you following us?” 

Hadiya let out a sigh of relief at my cutting them off, and answered my question. 

“Before we go any further, I need to know. Did you work on airship one-one-nine-seven before it left the city?” 

I paused for a moment, thrown off by the question. I’d been expecting it to be something to do with Rhys’ father, or perhaps the Arenamaster. Even asking if I’d been in contact with the Contractor would have been less strange. 

“The Dancer?” I asked. “I worked on it, yes. A few days ago?” 

I tried to remember how long ago it had been, but the time was starting to blur together, and it had all been very stressful. 

“And is Aiden Smith actually your attorney?” 

“He is,” I said. 

“I see,” Hadiya said. “I will authorize a release of information when we get to the lab.” 

“We’re headed to Elucidate Labs? Why?” 

“Elucidate’s experimental labs have the best wards in the city,” she said, a mild note of pride in her voice. “This auto’s wards are good, but not on the level of those.” 

“What about your stuff?” Kelly asked, looking at me. “We were going to go get it.” 

“You can get it later,” Hadiya said flatly. “We don’t need any more stops, and it isn’t as if Elucidate doesn’t have weaponry.” 

I was sure they did – most labs had security staff, and one as powerful as Elucidate would probably have weapons that rivaled even the military. But they wouldn’t be my weapons. 

Still, we were getting off track again, so I tried to drag us back on. 

“Is the testament of the crew going to be enough to acquit me?” I asked. 

A grim look came over Rhys’ face, and he reached beneath his seat, then passed me a paper. I skimmed over the headlines until I found the one he was referencing. 

Aiden Smith had told me that the judge hadn’t wanted to post bail, even with how fishy my case was, and that he’d gone to the district attorney in order to get that decision overturned.

That same district attorney, along with four others in the regions surrounding my part of the city, had been indicted in cases related to corruption, bribery, and perjury. 

I let out a low, slow curse, and Rhys let out a slow, tense breath. 

“You see?” 

“I do,” I said. 

“Excellent,” Hadiya said. “Now I want you boys to shut up while I drive. As I said, the wards on the auto are good, but not that good. We can discuss more delicate topics when we get to the lab.” 

“Does this mean you can teach me more aura shaping?” Kelly asked, and Rhys turned in his seat to look at us. 

“Oh, I did see that you went to Bronzelight as well, didn’t you? Engineering degree, with some classes in metal magic and enchantment?” 

“I did,” I said, nodding my head. “You’re a witch?” 

“I am,” Rhys said, giving a soft smile. “My specialty is in sympathetic magic, specifically in researching linguistic and cultural connections and their historical applications for ritual magic.” 

Hadiya let out a snort at the words ‘sympathetic magic’, but Kelly frowned like he was trying to puzzle out what Rhys had said. 

I glanced at him and sighed. 

“I’m not qualified to give a crash course on witchcraft, but sympathetic magic is things like painting a spell blue to make it defend against foreign magic better.” 

“Right,” Rhys said. “They’ve got some interesting implications, especially when we consider how they change across history and cultures.” 

“Weird,” Kelly said after a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t care. Do you know any secret, ancient aura shaping techniques or spellcraft, Rhys?” 

I ran a hand through my hair. This was going to be a long car ride.