2.05
The swordswoman wasted no time, stepping forward. Bare foot on snow-crusted pavement. I backed away; to do otherwise would mean standing still while the point of that giant sword would simply slide into my heart.
Ms. Lewis, however, stepped into the space I had just vacated. She put her hand out, and as the blade approached her chest, she pushed it to one side.
“I’m supposing your master told you to kill or harm him,” Ms. Lewis said.
“What of it?” the swordswoman asked. She had a strange accent. Less like a person who had grown up fluent in one language and was carrying things over into the next, and more like a French, Russian, and one or two other accents were all layered onto one another, compounding each other.
“You shouldn’t harm me without her orders,” Ms. Lewis said.
The Other narrowed her eyes. “I can do as I please.”
“Go ask,” Ms. Lewis said. “Ask your master who I am, and whether you should carry through.”
The Other didn’t budge. Instead, she made a face, and then quickly came to a decision. She drew her hand back, ready to plunge the weapon through Ms. Lewis’ chest.
Ms. Lewis didn’t move.
The Other sniffed and transformed, wings unfolding and enclosing her in the span of a second. She disappeared down the far end of the alley.
“Familiars can’t go outside their master’s orders?” I asked.
“Master feels young,” Ms. Lewis said, taking hold of my arm. She led me in the opposite direction the Other had gone. “No older than thirteen. You generally don’t get inducted into this world until you’re about that age, these days. It means the familiar is new.”
“So you misled it.”
“Yes and no. It shouldn’t attack me, but that’s independent of everything else. Can you open locks?”
“Not a trick I know,” I said.
She drew a small notebook from her pocket. She drew out an image. An hourglass shape with a circle in the middle. She drew a small pad of sticky notes from another inside pocket. “Draw something like this, put it on the doorknob, and empower it.”
I did. I copied it out, stuck it against the doorknob, and then stabbed the back of my hand with the pen.
“Fuck,” I said. “Ow. That hurt more than I thought it would.”
Still, I used the blood that welled around the injury site and smeared it across the image.
“You need a power source,” Ms. Lewis said. “Blood won’t do for the long term.”
“I know,” I said.
The knob was rattling, internal mechanisms moving with excruciating slowness.
“I’d hoped for something quicker and more effective. You’re weak, and that is going to hold us back, Blake Thorburn,” Ms. Lewis told me. “Tell me, can you identify the Other we just saw?”
“Name it? No. Stick a label on it? I could maybe say it’s a Faerie, but that’s only a guess.”
“It’s an accurate guess.”
“My grandmother didn’t like putting labels on Others, or so she wrote. She wrote it was dangerous to do it, because they could lie or blur the lines, and making assumptions could get you killed.”
“Very true. In this case, I think it’s a safe assumption. You’ve read Essentials, I assume? Standard reading for most new practitioners.”
“I have,” I said.
“Then you know what Faerie are weak against?”
I thought, but I couldn’t connect it. “Something about raw iron, but…”
“Crude elements,” Rose cut in. “Things that have been worked, refined, or crafted are less effective against them.”
“Which puts us in an awkward position,” Ms. Lewis said. She was leaning against the wall by the door, scratching symbols into the metal with the needle. “In a city, they thrive, because just about everything is worked and refined. They find us interesting, and ennui is to them what death is to us.”
I was busy scribbling down another symbol. I looked up to ask, “Is that something we can use?”
The doorknob clicked. Ms. Lewis opened the door, leading the way inside.
When we were inside, I removed the paper from the one side, closed the door, locked it, and then stuck the other sticky note to the inside. Again, I smeared it with a thumbprint of blood.
“Protection?” Ms. Lewis asked.
“I figured it might help,” I said.
“It might,” Ms. Lewis said. “This way.”
We made our way down the hallway.
It was a residential building. Maybe an bottom-of-the-barrel old folks home, judging by the smell.
“Sorry, but I gotta ask, is it really going to help?” Rose asked. “He doesn’t have much power. It might have been more useful to spend the time running.”
“Probably,” Ms. Lewis said. “It also expended power. A small drop of blood, but there’s a larger share of personal power invested in that than you might think. Doing that too often is dangerous.”
I felt a sting of annoyance. “Then tell me that.”
“It doesn’t really matter, and I want you to be confident more than I want you to be entirely accurate and efficient in what you’re doing. You’ll be safer if you familiarize yourself with the tools at your disposal and act with conviction.”
“Okay,” Rose said.
“I want you to tell me if I do something wrong,” I said. “Please.”
“Then I’ll tell you we should be talking strategies and tricks. The first… have you learned to strengthen and break connections?”