Heart's Blood(36)

"I need something with blood on it-preferably Mr. Galloway's-to store the magic in," she said by way of assent.

Grey tipped his head toward the cellar and one of his eager investigators-McNair, Pearl thought-dashed off to collect the necessary item. He returned with a large ballpeen hammer that screamed so loudly of murder and cruelty that Pearl recoiled.                       
       
           



       

McNair flinched at her recoil. Grey stiffened. Someone sneered. Someone else protested, and before it brewed up into a tempest, Pearl reached through the magic flowing thickly around the wicked instrument and took it from the alchemist. "It's fine. It will do nicely, thank you."

She swallowed, wishing the hammer were lightweight enough that she could hold it with just thumb and fore-finger, like an offensive-smelling shoe. But it was too heavy. She had to grasp with two hands. It did not feel as nasty and awful as the machine pieces. It felt . . . angry. She could deal with anger. "You all do know that this is the murder weapon," she said.

Everyone nodded, McNair sheepishly, when Grey gave him one of his patented piercing stares. "It's just," McNair explained, "he did no' bleed much, our Angus. There's no' overmuch with bloodstains t'be found."

Archaios gestured from the rope and table pieces to the hammer with its round head. "If you would, Miss Parkin."

With a nod, Pearl reached with those insubstantial hands she'd made and carefully swept the magic from the rope and the table bits into the rusty colored stains caught between the iron head of the hammer and the wooden handle. She was able to push the magic layered around the hammer into the bloodstain as well.

Why had the blood not soaked up the magic already? Why did it coat everything that Angus Galloway had touched, or that had touched him, and not bide solely within the stains? She would have to search her book for that information.

When the sorcery was swept away, a murmur broke out among the observers. "Do you see?" Archaios said. "Can you recognize the scent, the taste, the appearance of sorcery the next time you see it?"

"Maybe." Harry frowned. "I watched Amanusa work magic in Paris. Didn't look much like this. Didn't look like much at all, from wot I could see. But this-"

"It's raw magic," Archaios said. "Untouched and unshaped by the magician's will."

"Amanusa worked warding magic at the dead zone in Paris," Grey said. "Protective. Not the same as justice magic from innocent blood. We were at a distance when she did that."

"I suppose," Harry said. "So are we ready yet? Fire's burning."

"Now that the sorcery's gone," Archaios said, "what do you sense?"

Pearl opened her magic sense as wide as she could. She could still feel the angry turmoil of sorcery writhing inside the bloodstains on the hammer, but it was subdued. Contained and ignorable. Beyond that . . .

The fire raged, far hotter than she would have thought from the tiny pile of the charcoal on the hearth. Was that magic? All she could sense was heat, and said so. Instantly it damped, and the damping held a vague feel of Mr. Archaios. Elinor said that. The fire flared again, and that smelled of Harry Tomlinson.

"Magic often carries a signature," Archaios said. "Though usually it is not so blatant. Magister Tomlinson and I exaggerated the effect on the fire. If you know what to look for, and practice the looking, you can improve in the doing. Now, we shall test these items in the fire."

One of the alchemists closed a tempered-glass cover over the face of the forge. Faintly, Pearl sensed the hot-cold magic of alchemy working. Strengthening the glass? It tasted of neither Archaios nor Harry, and she thought the man closing the cover likely worked the magic.

Someone else fixed a long, curled, metal contraption to a hole in the glass. The first segment was a pipe of some dark, dull gray metal that extended from the glass in a gentle downward arc. At about a foot out, a Y-shaped joint connected the pipe to different-colored segments. These pipes tapered slowly to points, rather like animal horns. If animal horns had such fantastical curlicues.

The gold-colored pipe thing spiraled away in broad swoops. It wasn't actual gold, Pearl thought, given its brassy shine. The other pipe, with a steely sheen, danced in all directions, over and under its companion pipes and through the air around it. Dials and level-gauges sprouted from improbable locations, and it looked as if it could be unscrewed and taken apart in a wide assortment of places.

"To capture any smoke." Archaios bent to murmur in both apprentices' ears.

Grey was close by her side, Pearl realized. Close enough that if she fidgeted the tiniest bit, her bare hand would bump his. When it did, he turned his hand, clasped hers. She wasn't hinting that he should do so. Restlessness made their hands bump. And if she was glad to hold his hand, that was only because she could sense conjury better.

"Watch," Archaios said, bending over them again.

Grey tugged Pearl's hand, moving her away from the Greek's hovering, closer to himself. She thought she heard him mutter something to the effect of "Get your own apprentice," but couldn't swear to it. It made her smile.

Harry nodded at one of the I-Branch alchemists, giving him the go-ahead. With a thickly gloved hand, Tipple slid the swiveling cover off a hole in the top of the metal hood and dropped the bit of rope through, closing the cover back quickly.

The rope seemed to catch fire as it fell, the ends glowing red, then flashing into brilliant yellow flame as it hit bottom. It burned for perhaps the length of two breaths before it was gone, leaving only the dull red glow of al-chemical coal. Pearl blinked, the bright flame leaving a purplish afterimage against her closed eyelids. There was more to it than that, though. More she hadn't had time to grasp.

She edged closer, hoping to see better. Others crowded in behind her with the same intention. She tightened her grip on Grey's hand, though he was right beside her. As if she thought he could help her see alchemy, too. Foolishness. But she didn't let go.

The chunk of table was dropped in next. It took a few more seconds to catch, reaching the coal floor before bursting into flame. The flames flared as brightly but burned longer, despite the sample's smaller size: orange with a heart of yellow near the wood. But that was merely the visible fire.

Pearl stretched her magic senses as wide as she could, until she could see colors that weren't exactly there. Black and green and purple, but not. More than that. Different. She didn't have words for what she saw. Except-alchemy.

Bodies crowded close, trying to see, and she staggered, unbalanced by the crush, using her grip on Grey's hand to right herself. Then a hand planted itself between her shoulder blades and shoved. Hard.

She cried out. The force of the push tore her hand from Grey's grasp and sent her flying toward the forge. She struck the coiled metal construction, breaking it off, and the glass cover shattered.

Air rushed in and flames billowed out. Pearl could feel the heat on her skin. She heard men shouting and Elinor's scream. She threw up her arms to protect her face as she bounced off the front hearth of the forge before landing atop the alchemists' curlicue of pipes, crushing it against the pavement.

In some distant part of her, Pearl knew she should be in terrible pain. She'd just crashed into an alchemists' forge, with its refiner's fire burning. But everything felt distant-body, mind-Was this how it felt to die?

"Pearl!" That was Grey shouting. "Harry!"

"Done."

Grey swept her into his arms and set off at a run, into the building. Things got more and yet more distant. Pearl struggled to think. There was something she needed to say, to ask. What-? No, who.                       
       
           



       

She fought to return, struggling back from the distance to make her mouth form words. "Who pushed me?"

"Don't try to speak, dearest." Elinor was there, trotting along beside Grey. "Save your strength."

Pearl ignored her. She had to know. "Who pushed me?" This time, the words made more sound, made more sense.

"I don't know." Grey laid her on-on the chaise longue in the recently created ladies' retiring room down from the I-Branch office. Pearl recognized the cheap mourning cloth nailed over the half-glass interior wall.

"Let the wizards tend you," he said. "I will find out."



ELINOR AND FERGUSON made him leave before they began cutting away Pearl's ruined clothing. Grey had seen raw burned flesh where the dress had burned away. Only Harry's quick action-Harry's, Archaios's, and that of every other alchemist in the place-in damping the fire had kept it from being worse.

Refiner's fire was magic. It burned until it was quenched, and could only be quenched by magic. Through skin and flesh, down to bone and through it, until nothing was left but a few fragments, and teeth. Refiner's fire never burned teeth.

Grey ground his teeth into the howl wanting out. He dropped his head against the cardboard sign labeling the door Ferguson had gently closed on him, and squeezed his eyes tight shut. It didn't stop the memory of her perfect skin, blackened and blistered by flame. By the deliberate action of some villain.