Heart's Blood(60)

Pearl blinked. "I don't know. What is a sorcerer's familiar?"

"Well . . ." Amanusa seemed perplexed at having to explain. "I have never been without one. Jax taught me sorcery and brought me out of Romania, where I was living, to England. He has been at my side from the very beginning."

"But not always your familiar," he said, apparently deciding to become present in the carriage again.

"Yes, but what does a familiar do?" Pearl asked. "What is it-he-for?"

"Holding magic, mostly," Jax said. "Like a walking, talking magical power coal bin."

"Oh dear." Pearl felt faint. "Grey wouldn't like that."

"I don't see why not," Amanusa retorted. "As I understand it, a familiar who is also a magician, as Grey obviously is, can access the power as easily as the sorceress who has given it to him, or her. Familiars do not have to be male, though most of them have been.

"Sorcery, being human body magic, must be stored in blood and bone and flesh. Yes, magic from innocent blood does hover, waiting to be used, waiting for the proper blood and bone to attach to. But all the rest-it abides inside you. And me, and Jax and Grey and everyone else in existence. A sorcerer is simply the one with the ability to call it out and use it. A familiar expands the sorcerer's power by sharing her magic."

"Because I have no magic talent of my own," Jax said, "I have nothing to share with Amanusa in return, but as her familiar, my blood is very nearly as powerful as hers when used in spells. And I am able to work some small spells on my own because of that. But since Grey does have magic . . ."

"I can see spirits and lay ghosts." Pearl thought she began to understand. "What about Grey? What benefit does this have for him? Anything?"

"He walked through the dead zone, did he not?" Jax raised a craggy brow. He was handsome enough in a rough-carved way, Pearl supposed, but she didn't know how anyone could prefer it to Grey's refined beauty. Amanusa must have been in love with Jax before she ever met Grey. Love is blind, after all.

"The familiar acts as a power source to the sorceress," Amanusa said. "The sorceress also feeds power to the familiar, creating a power loop, providing the magic necessary to sustain an extended journey through a zone without magic. It's the only way we've been able to explain it so far. We can't stay in a dead zone forever, but we can survive several days."

"So what do we do now?" Pearl asked.

Amanusa drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "I suppose that depends on what you and Grey want to do."

Pearl loved Grey. She wanted to be with him. She didn't understand precisely what the familiar bond was or what it did, but she understood enough to know that she truly didn't want to give it up. But she wouldn't hold Grey if he wanted it gone. One did not hurt what one loved. "Is there a way to undo it?"

The look Amanusa exchanged with Jax held painful knowledge this time, along with the love. Pearl knew the answer before Amanusa said yes.

"Then, whatever Grey wants."



HARRY SPENT THE rest of the morning organizing another conjurer for building the barrier at the dead zone. He collected two-George Meade, and an instructor from the academy, Colin Bennett. Which meant that a very large group assembled outside the dead zone that afternoon.

Since Amanusa brought all of her students, Bennett asked to bring an equal number of conjury students, and Harry thought that didn't seem to be fair to the alchemy school, so seven of their top students came as well.

Elinor was the only wizardry apprentice present. She was the wizard who had helped build the first dead zone barrier in Paris. The wizard's magister, Cranshaw, had forbidden all students and guild members from taking part. Two master wizards, from the total of twelve in all England, defied their magister to attend anyway. One was James Ferguson. The other was Sir William Stanwyck, head of the Magician's Council, and so only technically under the magister's command.

They had so many bodies present, and the zone was so large, that Amanusa asked everyone to volunteer a little blood for the spell, but only if they truly wished to. Everyone did. Pearl was thrilled to be asked to help draw it, after Amanusa inspected her lancet and observed her technique. It did not ease the pain in her heart, but it provided a grand distraction.

Harry divided the group into two sets of spellworkers to go each way around the huge zone and meet in the middle. Pearl was named to the group with Harry as alchemist and Elinor as wizard, along with the conjury teacher. That way, each group had a magician who'd done the spell before.

The spell, as Amanusa explained it to Pearl, was similar to the protective warding spells she'd already done, only with blood rather than with saliva, and with the other magics mixed in. Blood would allow them to build it higher and stretch it all the way around the zone. And blood would bind the magic together, mixed with the earth and water of alchemy, and painted over conjury's sigils with wizardry's leafy green twigs, which would then be planted to create a sympathetic palisade.

There was a bit of a kerfluffle at the beginning, when the conjurers couldn't get their spirits to cooperate even with the bloody slurry painted over the sigils, which Amanusa claimed had solved the problem before. Pearl didn't want to put herself forward. She was only an apprentice, and not of conjury, but she was getting cold with all the standing about. She squeezed through the horde of oversized boys to see what the trouble was.

"Where's your safety sigil?" she asked.

"What?" The conjury instructor, Bennett, sounded offended.

"She's Carteret's apprentice," Meade said. "Can't help but collect conjury lore." He swiftly drew the sigil, showing the spirit curled up safe between walls, and Pearl daubed on a bit more of the solution from her bucket, identical with that in the bucket Jax Greyson carried.

The warding magic settled into place with a soundless thunk, and those who heard and felt it broke into cheers. "That's done it," Harry said. "Let's get it built round the rest."

Amanusa's party went north, Harry's went south, stopping every few yards to draw sigils, plant leafy sticks, and paint on blood, earth, and water as they spoke the words of the spell. Students were invited to take a turn to draw, to paint, to speak. As Harry said, the more who knew how, the better.

When the groups met again on the eastern side of the zone, Pearl was exhausted, but it was a good exhaustion. The kind after hard work, creating something useful. Better, it had kept her from thinking.

The students were dismissed, to be escorted back to house and hotel by Bennett and Fiona Watson, who acted as a prefect-matron to the younger sorcery students. Pearl almost went with them, her status up in the air. She didn't even know if she was still engaged, though she doubted it.                       
       
           



       

Elinor insisted she come to Harry's for a celebratory dinner with Elinor and Harry, Archaios, and the Greysons. Even Sir William, Meade, Ferguson, and Mr. Bennett were invited, though they all declined, claiming prior engagements or obligations.

Grey found them there, gathered in the drawing room after the meal, still talking over the day's success.

"Carteret," Harry drawled. "Glad you could join us. Bit late for food, but you can 'ave a spot o' tea." He waved a hand at the tea tray.

"Thank you, but no." Grey bowed, more formal than Pearl had ever seen him.

He still wore the clothes he'd worn to the dead zone this morning, rumpled and a bit grimy around the edges. He appeared to have lost his hat somewhere, for his hair was damp and curling in utter disarray. Pearl wanted to take him home, dry him off, and warm him up. But he wouldn't look at her.

"If I might-I need to speak with the sorcerers. In private." Grey bowed again, not even quite looking at Amanusa.

Harry climbed to his feet. "It's late. Not time for doin' business-"

"It's all right, Harry." Amanusa rose, giving Pearl a smile. "Better to resolve this sooner than later."

Pearl dreaded the encounter, but putting it off wouldn't ease the dread. Better to rip the bandage off and suffer the pain all at once so she could begin the getting-over-it.

"May we use your library?" Amanusa asked Harry.

He made a "feel free" gesture. "Might as well. Everyone else does." He sat and watched the drama, not even pretending to avert his eyes. No one ever claimed Harry a gentleman, either.

Pearl stood. So did Jax.

Grey glared at him. "You're not invited."

"Where my wife goes, I go," Jax said calmly.

"This is a matter for magicians," Grey growled.

Jax's voice came harder. "Where my sorceress goes, I go."

Grey's expression filled with a black rage that made Pearl shiver. He didn't try to hide it.

"Magister Carteret." Amanusa's voice cut through the male posturing. "You asked for privacy?"

Grey shifted his glare to Amanusa, then he backed a few steps out of the doorway, and bowed their way past him. Pearl followed Amanusa, Jax falling in behind her. She felt a great coward for being grateful they protected her between them. She deserved Grey's wrath. She shouldn't be hiding from it. But she wouldn't weep in front of him. She wasn't so weak as that.