“Welcome aboard the Queen’s Corsair, Cynthia Davies,” she said. “I have good news. We’re going to let you live.”
“That is good news,” said Sin. “Where’s my sister?”
“And we’re going to let you go free,” Celeste continued. “Now you’ve been exiled from the Market, you’re not a threat anymore, are you?”
Sin smiled. “Unchain me and find out.”
Celeste leaned forward in her chair. “You’re not much of anything anymore. But you did protect one of our own. We don’t forget things like that.”
“My sister isn’t one of yours,” Sin snarled. “Where is she?”
“We’ll bring her to you in a moment,” Celeste said. “And when we do, I want you to tell her that she will be staying with us. That this is the best place for her, the only place for her, and you don’t want her to live with you any longer. Tell her she belongs with her own kind.”
Over Celeste’s shoulder Sin saw the boy, Seb, flinch. He didn’t look at Celeste or at Sin, though. He just kept staring at the ground.
For her part, Sin kept staring at the pearl. She did not want to meet those cold eyes.
“We do not usually take in children so young, but considering how gifted she is and how terrible her circumstances are…” Celeste shrugged. “There is absolutely nothing you can give her, is there? Except this. Make the parting easy, and be sure she will be treated well. She’s going to be a great magician. You should be proud.”
Sin’s lip curled. “Maybe she can start killing innocent people before she hits ten. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“If you gave her up to the magicians,” Phyllis said in a low, rapid voice, the voice of a woman making excuses, “then you could come back to the Market.”
“Your concern for the Market is very touching,” Sin murmured back.
“You should do as we ask for her sake,” Celeste continued gently. “But if you don’t see that, you should do it for your own. You should do it for your baby brother. What will happen to him if we kill you?”
Sin spared a moment to be deeply and terribly thankful that she had left Toby safe with Alan.
“I know what will happen to Lydie if I abandon her,” she said. “I won’t do it.”
Celeste’s hand twitched a little, a touch of pale magic glinting on the surface of her pearl. She did not lash out, though. She stood instead, straightening her skirt.
“You’re not important enough to sit around arguing with, Cynthia,” she told her, with a pitying smile. “You can have some time to think about how little this show of bravado will get you. When I come back, if you’re still being stubborn, I’ll give you to the demons. They took your mother, didn’t they? Think about that.”
She headed for the door, making a small gesture, more waving them forward than beckoning, for the others to follow her.
Phyllis was the first to leave, getting out of Sin’s sight as fast as she could.
“You two stay and watch her, okay?” Gerald said. He crossed the room toward the boy in the window seat. “Okay?” he repeated gently.
He reached out a hand to touch the boy’s shoulder; the boy drew away without looking at him.
Gerald reacted so smoothly it seemed like it hadn’t happened, nodding as if he’d received confirmation of his orders and looking at Seb.
Seb nodded almost automatically, then glared at Gerald’s back as Gerald went for the door.
Gerald didn’t catch the look, but the gray-haired woman beside him did.
“He’s not good for much else besides standing guard, is he?” she said, her voice cutting through the air. Seb’s face turned, a red mark rising on his cheek as if she’d slapped him.
“Leave him be, Laura,” Gerald advised as he and the woman—Laura—left the room.
Helen, the magician with the swords, lingered for a moment by the door. She didn’t look undecided. She looked as if she’d never been anything but absolutely decisive in her life.
“I spoke up to save you, dancer,” she said abruptly. “Don’t make a fool of me.”
Then she ducked out of the room. The boat lurched as she crossed the threshold, but she didn’t falter for an instant.
Sin was left with the two magician boys. Which was better odds than she’d had before.
“Looks like it’s you and me, Seb,” she said, and lowered her voice just in case a pretty girl in distress might appeal to him. She could use that. “And you,” she added to the boy in the window seat. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”
The boy turned away from the window.
All of Sin’s breath was scythed out of her throat.
He unfolded from the window seat in a leisurely fashion, in slow, deliberate movements, and every movement sent a chill down Sin’s spine, like a ghost drawing a cold finger along the small of her back. He was slight and not tall, but that didn’t matter: It just made her think of elves as they were in the oldest stories, alien and terrible, child thieves and traitors. His eyes were silver coins, whatever color they had once been drowned in shimmering magic, and his face was a perfect blank.
Sin’s sense of dread built, as if the finger tracing her spine had become a claw. The thing between his palms, the thing he was turning over and over as if it was a familiar and favorite toy, was a gleaming-sharp knife. There were carvings on the hilt, and the blade looked too sharp to be real.
Worse than that, as he turned to face her head-on, she saw the demon’s mark set along the sharp line of his jaw. It was a dark and wavering brand, an obscene shadow crawling on the boy’s porcelain-pale skin.
“You don’t remember me?” he asked. “I’m Jamie.”
For a moment Sin could not accept it, her head filled with buzzing like far-off screaming. She did not want to accept it, that this was the sweet, forgettable boy she’d met at a barbecue, that this was Mae’s only family, her beloved brother.
If Mae’s brother could turn into this, what would they do to Lydie?
Whatever expression she had on her face at that moment, it made Jamie laugh softly. He came toward her, tossing the knife from hand to hand. The blade made a whining sound in the air, like a hungry dog.
“Ring any bells?”
“Sure,” Sin said, and did not let herself strain against her bonds, did not try to scramble away, as he drew closer. “Your eyes used to be brown.”
His eyes were shimmering and bright, pools of pure magic. They looked awful. He looked blind.
His mouth formed a crooked smile, something that might have been almost sweet without those eyes and that knife. All the other magicians looked so much more normal, Sin thought, the claw of horror raking up her spine again. What had he done to himself?
He sat at the other end of the table from her, still smiling. There was a tiny dimple on the cheek above the demon’s mark.
“True,” he said, and she almost couldn’t remember what she had been talking about. He looked even more amused, as if he could read her mind. “I’m a whole new man.”
Maybe he could read her mind. She couldn’t know.
Jamie tossed his knife up into the air and then caught it again.
“Imagine your baby sister turning out like me.”
“Oh, I am,” Sin breathed.
“Then you should do the right thing,” Jamie advised. “Think it over. It will all come clear.”
The boat rolled. Sin’s stomach was rolling too, but she didn’t think there was any connection. Jamie checked his watch.
“How long are the two of us expected to stay here watching a chained-up girl with no powers?” he asked in a bored voice.
The question brought Seb’s bowed head up for the first time.
“I don’t know,” he answered. He seemed to be choosing his words with difficulty. “But I’m—I’m glad they did. I want to talk to you.”
“I got that from all the knocking on and waiting outside my door,” Jamie drawled. “Here is some information about me you may not know. When I want to talk to p
eople? I give them subtle hints like opening the door.”
He slid the blade on his knife closed and put it in his pocket. Then he slid closer down the table, toward Sin and away from Seb.
Even though Seb had had his head bowed and his eyes determinedly fixed on the floor while Celeste and Gerald were in the room, Sin had received the impression that he was terribly, guiltily aware of her the entire time.
Neither of the boys seemed aware of her now.
Seb was looking at Jamie, green eyes intense, like a man on a mission. Jamie just looked bored.
“I’ve been thinking a lot, since we came here,” Seb went on. “Now that all the things that used to matter—school and stuff—they don’t matter anymore. Everything’s changed.”
“I know,” Jamie said in a serious voice. “At school, you were the one with all the power, and you made my life miserable. And now I’m the one with the power, and you want to be friends. Isn’t it funny how that works?”
“That’s not it,” Seb burst out, and bit his lip.
“That’s not it? You don’t want to be friends?”
Seb hesitated. Jamie laughed.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care about how tortured you are about killing or your pathetic lack of power or anything else going through your mind. You may have finally worked out what you want, but I don’t care about that, either. Because I don’t care about you.”
Given Seb’s rapt attention, drinking in those terrible white eyes, Sin could work out what he wanted too.
So the beautiful prisoner-in-distress routine was unlikely to work, then. Just hell.
Careful not to let her chains rattle, Sin drew closer to Jamie.
“I know that,” Seb said. “But—”
“Would you care for some advice?” Jamie asked, his voice full of mock pity. “There is a reason following someone around and drawing little pictures”—he sneered at the word, and Seb flushed a painful red—“is so very unappealing. You lose sight of the fact that the object you’re viewing from afar is a person.”
“I know you’re a person!”
“You don’t know anything about me. In fact, I sort of doubt you know anything.”
“I know some things about you,” Seb said. “I could get to know more. You could get to know me.”
“Tempting!” Jamie exclaimed. “No, wait, that’s not the word I mean. What’s the opposite of that?”
Normally, it wouldn’t have taken Sin so long to notice someone’s body language. But there had been the knife to distract her, those awful eyes, and the demon’s mark.
Jamie’s thin shoulders were hunched up, his fingers always on the curl toward fists. Every muscle he had looked tense.
“I realize I don’t deserve a chance,” Seb said. “But I wanted to say—I wanted you to know that I want one.”
Jamie blinked, which was the first not entirely negative reaction he’d had. Sin was horrified witnessing the whole scene: She didn’t want to think about magicians having painful crushes, or feeling anything. They were the enemy. She didn’t want to see this.
She was grateful for how distracted they were, though. She could reach out and touch Jamie.
Seb looked away, obviously embarrassed, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that much desperation.
“Why should I care what you want?” Jamie asked eventually.
“Well, you and Gerald don’t seem to be getting on so well lately,” Seb said awkwardly. “I thought—you might want someone who would be on your side.”
The way Jamie was standing changed in a way that might have meant there would have been a change in his eyes, if they had still looked like human eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” Jamie asked in a soft voice.
“Well,” Seb said again, awkward and hopeless. “If you felt like I do—no, I don’t mean that. I mean, if you’re lonely here.”
“And you were doing so well, too,” Jamie said. “I don’t care about being lonely. But you’re right. I’m not getting along with Gerald. I don’t like it when people tell me what to do, and the whole Aventurine Circle seems to have an opinion on how I should behave. I could use an ally.”
Sin saw the wariness in Seb’s eyes, but he took a step forward all the same.
“What do you mean by an ally?”
“I mean someone who will support everything I do,” Jamie answered, with a faint, unpleasant smile, “and do everything I say.”
Seb took another step forward. Jamie stood. The knife in his pocket, which Sin had just managed to get her hand on and draw out a few crucial inches, tumbled neatly into her palm.
Jamie didn’t seem to notice. He reached out his hand and Seb hesitated, then jerkily offered his hand in return.
“Then it’s settled,” Jamie said, still smiling that smile. His fingers slid over the inside of Seb’s wrist. Seb shivered, and Jamie’s nasty smile spread. “Sweetheart.”
There were steps outside the door. One was someone in heels, Sin thought. Seb jerked away at the sound, as if he’d been caught doing something indecent. Jamie didn’t seem to care.
“Here it is,” Celeste’s voice said.
Sin couldn’t see her, because she was standing behind Nick.
He stood at the door like death waiting to be invited in, all in black. It made his face look white as a skull.
“You’re late,” Jamie snapped. He clicked his fingers, and Nick walked slowly, reluctantly, forward over the tilting floor.
Sin realized this wasn’t Nick’s ordinary pallor. He was a demon in a human body: Being trapped in a vessel over running water was like being slowly tortured for someone possessed. There was no way he would be here willingly.
He was here, though, and coming like a dog to heel.
When he reached Jamie he went down in a crouch by the table. His eyes flickered over Sin, not even seeming to register her.
Jamie reached out and twisted the cord of Nick’s talisman around his fingers. Sin saw the leather bite deep into the side of Nick’s neck.
“Don’t be late again,” Jamie commanded softly. “Or I won’t let you go back. Understand?”
Jamie’s hold on the talisman forced Nick’s head back, his face tilted up to Jamie’s. The strange light of Jamie’s eyes shone reflected in Nick’s blank black gaze.
Nick lowered his eyelids and nodded.
“Turns out when a demon marks a magician,” Celeste said from the door, her voice rich with satisfaction, like a cat in the process of drinking the cream, “it doesn’t give the demon any power over the magician at all. Rather the opposite, in fact. Isn’t it marvelous?”
It couldn’t be true, Sin thought. If Gerald had control over Nick already, he wouldn’t have bothered torturing Alan.
“Marvelous for me,” Jamie agreed, his tone as silky as hers. “Since he’s mine, and I don’t feel like letting the rest of the Circle enjoy any of his magic. I guess you shouldn’t have killed my mother.”
“Jamie, do we have to go through this again?” Celeste sounded impatient. “Helen has apologized. And she was only a human.”
“I know, I know,” Jamie drawled. “But it’s the little things. Don’t you agree?”
“Make sure it behaves at the party tonight,” Celeste ordered. She turned on her heel and left.
Jamie let go of Nick’s talisman and leaned back along the table, putting his weight on his hands behind him.
“You heard my fearless leader, Hnikarr,” he said. “This party is going to be her little show of strength to the other Circles. I want you to stay in the ballroom like everyone else, so I can show you off. And I want you to be on your best behavior. No more magically throwing people down the stairs. That is naughty.”
“I understand,” Nick grated out, as if he was having difficulty speaking at all, or as if he was too sick to talk much.
Sin felt sick too, sick at the thought that this was how magicians treated their friends. She wanted to do something, to hurl the knife she had just stolen at Jamie?
??s head, but she couldn’t do a thing to help Nick, and if she tried she would only make sure she couldn’t help herself.
“Atta boy,” Jamie said encouragingly. “That’s what I like to hear. See how nice the world can be, when one of us is just the obedient slave of the other?”
Nick said nothing, but his lip curled in a soundless snarl.
Jamie smiled at him brightly, then got up. “Well, come on,” he said. “We have to get ready for the party.”
Nick uncoiled from the floor and rose, passing Jamie and making silently for the door. The boat lurched a little again, and Nick had to catch himself against the wall.
He had not acknowledged Sin’s presence in any way.
“You coming?” Jamie asked Seb.
Seb was looking at the floor again, but when Jamie stopped in front of the other boy, Seb lifted his eyes slowly to Jamie’s face.
“We’re supposed to guard her.”
“She’s chained up,” Jamie reminded him. He reached out and touched Seb’s arm.
Sin couldn’t see Jamie’s face, but she could see Seb’s. They could all hear the breath he drew in and could not let go.
“I thought,” said Jamie, “you were going to do what I wanted from now on.”
When Jamie left the room, Seb went after him.
Sin unclenched her fist around what she had been terrified for ten minutes one of them would see, or Jamie would miss. The magician’s knife gleamed safe in her palm.
She handled it with care, and let out a deep sigh of relief as the blade cut through the chains attaching her to the table leg with as much ease as if they were string. Then she unwound the chain from around her wrists and the table and stretched it out on the floor. She chose her spot and cut the length of chain exactly in two.
Then she wrapped the ends of her two new chains around both wrists, leaving them dangling so she could strike out in either direction at any time. She sheathed the blade and tucked it in her jeans pocket.
She was a dancer, so she made it to the door without more than the softest jangle of chains. She stepped outside to begin the hunt through the magicians’ lair for her sister.
11