Heart's Blood(27)

It was so easy, she worried for a moment that she was borrowing Grey's magic again. But he was on the other side of the warehouse, inspecting a spot on the floor. Not paying any attention to her in the least, though she had no doubt that if she stirred from her keg, he would know instantly.

Perhaps it was easy because she'd done it first without realizing it, when she had taken his hand in the hospital cellar and seen all the ghosts. Then she had borrowed. Now she didn't.

Now it was all hers. Eddies of red in all shades from deep, purplish crimson to the vibrant, almost glowing scarlet of fresh blood pooled along the floor, piled up in a sort of drift in the center where she assumed the murder had been committed. It swirled and churned every time someone strode through it, or when a spirit plunged through.

She could see spirits. More as pale foggy wisps stirring the red liquid-solid-smoke of sorcery, than anything substantial. One of the wisps she thought might be Angus Galloway, because sometimes she could see the shape of a long-fingered hand in the mist, or a beaky nose.

Pearl could just make out the golden glow of magic feeding the light Grey's alchemist had made. It blended with the light, but had more . . . substance. She needed new words to talk about magic. She couldn't see any wizardry moving in the warehouse, but wondered if that might be because there were no wizards present working magic, rather than her inability to recognize it. Wizards were quite rare among the ranks of magicians. Male ones, anyway. Most wizards had been women, long ago.

When the food arrived, Pearl made Duncan, the alchemist, take his food first, though they all wanted to be polite and defer to her. Duncan had been powering that light steadily since he'd sparked it, and though he drew the power for it from the air and bricks and stones around them, it took his energy, too.

Another hour or so after the meal, the warehouse was swept clean of all physical items, including the dust from the wide plank floor. It would be tested for magical residues. Everyone had been sent back to the I-Branch offices to help log in the evidence, save for Duncan, Grey, and Pearl. They stood at the inside end of the warehouse, looking across the expanse toward the door.

"I should have sent a message to Harry," Grey said, "asking if Elinor could assist us, since Ferguson is ill. Cranshaw won't let any of the other wizards help. Threw six kinds of fit when Ferguson applied to join I-Branch."

"Whatever for?" Pearl asked.

" 'Cause he's mad as a hatter," Duncan muttered from Grey's other side. The young alchemist had a broad, friendly face, its rounded-off edges making him look younger than Pearl suspected he was.                       
       
           



       

Grey's lips twitched, as if resisting a smile. "You might have noticed, Parkin. I-Branch is a trifle thick on the ground with conjurers. Until our new sorceress popped up at the end of the summer to divert Cranshaw with the wickedness of sorcery, he preached hell and damnation against conjury.

"He's one of those who believes conjury can call demons or spirits from hell. Apparently, to him, if you're dead, you're damned. Or something like that. But conjury is apparently the lesser of two evils."

"Surely the other wizards don't believe him," she said.

"Many do. Those who don't-most don't dare go against him. Cranshaw's got their bollock-got them in his grip because of his power as guild magister. Ferguson's an idealist, with a private income, so he was willing to join us. And as a Briganti, he's less vulnerable to the magister's power. But he's an exception."

"We'll just have to do our best without him, sir," Duncan said.

"Quite." Grey looked down at Pearl and she tried to look filled with energy and enthusiasm. She wanted to droop with weariness, but she also wanted to see this through. She'd never been on this side of a murder. Only on the "mourning the victim" and "hiding from killers" side. She liked this side better.

"Do you have the neckerchief, Duncan?" Grey looked out at the warehouse. "The one I told you to hold back from the wagon?"

"Yes, sir. Here it is." He drew a carefully folded, faded red cloth from an inner coat pocket.

Grey took the neck cloth and passed it to Pearl. "We should have brought the handkerchief with the blood I collected yesterday, but I foolishly did not anticipate needing it. If the stains on this cloth are Galloway's blood, as I suspect they are, it will serve."

He was correct in his surmise. Pearl could feel the blood, smell the magic rising from it. "Serve for what?"

"As we inspect this room for magic, to see what magic might have been used, we are also going to sweep it clean. It is part of our duty." He looked down at Pearl, a warmth in his expression that warmed her more than it should. "But now, I have hope that we can leave it actually clean of magic. Leave it without that whispering residue of ‘murder committed here.' "

"You think so, sir?" Duncan sounded excited. "I've been to too many places that felt haunted like that, but I've always thought it was ghosts. Conjury, not sorcery."

"I did as well. But innocent blood cries out for justice, and without a sorceress to use the magic and release the ghosts . . ." Grey cleared his throat. "Parkin, when you gather the blood magic-and even I can feel it in this place-put it in the blood on this kerchief. Amanusa said that sorcery is held in blood and bone, so-"

Pearl gathered up a little of the magic swirling close and poured it into the small stain on the cloth. The bloodstain soaked up the magic as if it were the Sahara and the magic a few drops of water. "Yes." She nodded. "That will work."





11




THEY BEGAN. PEARL went first, because although the actual amount of blood spilled was minimal, the murder created the same amount of magic as if all of Angus Galloway's blood had been poured onto the ground. Much of the magic had accompanied his body, but so much remained here, where he'd been killed, that they needed her to clear it out so their search could be done.

"Do you suppose the murderer was afraid of sorcery?" Mr. Duncan asked as he waited with Grey. "Could that be why so little blood was spilled?"

Grey gave a sigh deep enough that Pearl heard it from halfway across the warehouse, where the table had been standing and the crimson and scarlet magic piled highest. "It is possible. However, I believe the reason goes back to those damnable demonic grimoires we've never been able to eliminate.

"Most of them claim something like ‘the more painful the death, the more control the magician has over the demon.' Exsanguination-bleeding to death-is one of the least painful ways of dying. It's why so many suicides take that way out of their despair."

Pearl finished sweeping all the magic into the spot of blood on the neckerchief, and walked back across the warehouse to rejoin the two men. She marveled that she couldn't see the spot pulsing or glowing, given all the power she'd shoved into the small stain, but it remained a thumb-size, rust-colored splotch to ordinary vision. In her second sight, the color merely intensified to a vibrant scarlet against the faded orangey-red of the cloth.

"You have a fair sense of wizardry, don't you, Parkin?" Grey asked when she arrived. "I noticed you taking your time at the wizardry book in the library yesterday."

"Yes." She nodded, then made a face. "But it didn't feel right. Not like the sorcery book. Like home."

"Nevertheless, you will be able to recognize it."

"I didn't see any earlier, while everyone was working and I was practicing my secondary vision."

"I doubt anyone could, as much sorcery as was splashing about. We're going to be looking for the smallest traces of magic now. The faintest hints. Lead off, Duncan." Grey motioned for the alchemist to begin, then took Pearl by the shoulders to turn her about, and urged her forward.

Did he lay hands on her like that because he didn't trust her to turn on her own? Because he thought he could manhandle her at will? Or was he-as she was-so hungry for a touch of any kind that a shove would do?

They'd held hands for much of the day, but since he'd procured the peppercorn stool, before the Briganti arrived, he'd stayed close by without touching her once. Well, there was the time she'd yelped, the first time Angus Galloway had spoken to her. Grey had held her arms. Not as satisfying as the skin-to-skin touch of holding hands.

Pearl glanced over her shoulder at him and Grey scowled, gesturing at the space around them. "Open your magic sense to its widest. We don't want to miss anything."

Obviously he did not feel the way she did. He was her magic-master, and she had better get that through her thick head.

Duncan led the way along the warehouse walls, brushing his hands lightly over the brick.

"Does that help?" Pearl asked, deliberately turning her thoughts away from the man following her. "Touching the bricks like that?"

He smiled at her over his shoulder. Grey made a strange growling noise behind her, but she ignored him. Duncan went on. "Bricks and other products of the earth can hold an alchemical residue which is easier to sense if I touch it."

He dusted his hands off, frowning up at the wall. "I'm not sure what I'm getting here, however."