Every one of his muscles was corded and ready. As if to – to what? To run? He might have laughed aloud at the concept, if he had dared to let out a sound. Sweat beaded on the back of his neck, cold in the rising heat, and he resisted the urge to shiver.
What he should have done was call to the magister. His jaws were clamped tightly shut, as if they had locked around something. What he should have done, at the very least – for propriety’s sake, and for the sake of his reputation – was help the detainee to a seat, first. Somehow, the thought of the magister walking in on this, which had tormented him every step of the way, had vanished; other, stranger thoughts replaced it.
The magister was clairvoyant. She was to be the judge, when the trial came; Morandi had done a great deal of reading on her. She had become a magister, as he recalled, through the innovation of several new scrying methods. Not, then, much of a warder. More a theorist, a writer, than a caster; her field was weak enough.
His head jerked at her whisper. Without the fullness of her voice, she sounded almost like – it was so familiar, and from such a long time ago, that it was almost like hearing the voice of a ghost –
Once her eyes had caught him, there was no looking away. The red had drained from her cheeks, leaving them pale behind her freckles. Her eyes were very wide, still rimmed red with irritation, pupils very small. She was looking at his face, but not into his eyes: out of focus, she was staring somewhere around his chin, a few wisps of red hair drifting in front of her face. The pit in his stomach was lodged in his throat. Of a sudden, his eyes were very wide, too.
Of course, he wanted to say. A promise is a promise, dog or wolf. What kind of man do you think I am?
The words did not come. Quiet, he wanted to snap – she will hear us, do you not understand? (That hardly mattered, now. She was closer and closer by the moment, by the rustling and snapping of the twigs.) Yes, he tried to say, but there was only a small intake of breath.
“I,” he finally managed, I promise…
“There you – gracious, me, Inspector!”
There was a small, plump shadow in the door, leaned heavily upon a cane. Somewhere outside, he could hear a moa scratching its talons. As she came in, the light caught on a thick swirl of white hair. Morandi blinked, squinting; the magister was laughing.
“Oh, come now, you needn’t look at me like that. The two of you look as if you’ve just been from a hell,” Magister Desrouleaux tutted.
“Magister,” the Inspector said sharply, pulling himself as straight as he could with her on his arm. “The detainee was injured,” he added, “and I have only just regained my sight.” He was not sure where Shadow had gone.
“Likewise, Inspector. We spent the night in the coach, I’m afraid, but Mr. Goodwine and I are intact.” The magister came closer, close enough to caprise; the clairvoyant mona met the perceptive, and Morandi forced himself to relax his muscles, to take a deep breath. “Aurelie, dear, look at you – my, my, what you’ve gotten us into,” she breathed. “You’re very fortunate nothing worse came of this.”
The Inspector shut his eyes. He could still feel her hand on his arm, with its scars and calluses.
“At the very least, you needn’t worry now,” she said.
There was a pause.
The words must have been on the tip of his tongue since Graywatch. Whatever else he was, he was utterly and completely sure of this. There was not a doubt in him.
His field flared hot and etheric, and every trace of his headache vanished, replaced by a lovely, dizzying, soaring surge of adrenaline. Without letting go of Aurelie, he began to cast, word by guttural word, a reading spell. Behind them, he heard Shadow begin to growl; he ignored it. He spoke the invocation and reached out until he could feel the soft membrane of Desrouleaux’s mind, could feel it well enough to know something of the shape of it. He worked himself into the cracks of it, face twisting with concentration, then began a maintenance spell. He had interrogated academics before; he had never broken one on purpose.
He stared into her eyes and watched them jolt wide, and he did not blink or look away, because the eyes were half of a perceptivist’s arsenal.
It was a few moments before she gasped. A word of monite – the invocation of a ward – slipped out of her mouth; she broke off. The clairvoyant mona flared etheric, then fizzled, agitated by the brail.
She gasped again, let out a strangled laugh, and dropped, as if her strings had been cut.
It was a few moments before he curled the spell; when he did, a little blood trickled from his nose, cold and iron-smelling. “Oh, my gods,” he gasped, then: “Aurelie,” his voice breaking.