Blue Magic (2 page)

“This trial is a step forward for America,” Roche said. His plan to steer the United States beyond the magical crisis was simple: convict and execute Sahara; then subdue the remaining Alchemites. Last, sort out the contamination in Oregon.

Will tried not to stare at the magical door. Astrid had offered to help him.

Still. He’d give Caroline one last chance.

They finished the interview in time to watch as nine Alchemite prisoners, seven women and two men, were led into the courtroom. Caro was third in line. Her posture was upright, her golden hair ragged. Scabs and bald patches marked her scalp. Hunger strikes had diminished the curves Will had once loved, and her now-skeletal face was puffy and bandaged. She wasn’t the only one: several prisoners sported black eyes.

Will shot an uneasy look at Roche.

“Self-inflicted,” he huffed. “Marshals caught ’em smashing their faces into the cell walls last night.”

The defendants were led to a side room for a last search, in case anyone had gotten their hands on a chantment on the way from the cells.

As Will followed Roche into the courtroom, the gate of brambles flowered into view behind the bench.

Sahara Knax was brought in after her followers were seated. Like Mark Clumber, she had been exposed to raw magic. Astrid had improvised a treatment for her condition: before her arrest, Sahara had been devolving into a bird. At present she looked human.

Her delusions of godhood were as strong as ever.

“Who’s the new guy?” Will asked, spotting a lean black man, maybe thirty-five years of age, conferring with the prosecutor.

“Gilead Landon,” Roche said. The man’s head came up, as if he had overheard. He raised a hand in greeting, revealing a badly scarred palm. “Landon’s been helping hold back the magical forest. He’s got ideas about containment.”

“Containment as in burning Alchemites?”

“It may come to that.” Will darted a look at Caro, and Roche added hastily, “Landon wants to burn the contaminated and their magic toys. Just Sahara and the chantments, see?”

“How’d this clown find you?”

“I found him.”

“What?”

“True or false, Will: Lethewood murdered that fire chief, Lee Glade, because he was in a competing magical faction.…”

“Fyremen.”

“Correct.”

“This Gilead Landon is a witch burner?”

“Will, if these people understand magic, I want ’em on board, not running wild. Anyway, he’s with you on Lethewood. Says she’s the one that matters.”

“Oh, if he agrees with me, let’s get into bed with him.”

“Why shouldn’t I reach out to a potential resource?”

“They’re murderers, Arthur. A society of killers whose charter was written in the Middle Ages.”

“Says who? Astrid Lethewood? She’d killed one of them, Will. She had every reason to claim they’re bad guys.”

“Didn’t you just say this guy wants to put Sahara on a stake?” The Fyreman was studying Sahara as she sat at the defendant’s table.

“Law says if Knax gets convicted, we’ll give her a lethal injection,” Roche said. “So what if we cremate the remains afterwards?”

“What if he wants to burn her alive, Arthur?”

Roche made a frustrated noise. “This isn’t pattycake we’re playing here. You want your kids back or not?”

Will was spared the necessity of a reply when a clerk called court into session. The assembly rose, and the Federal Circuit Judge, George Skagway, wheeled his chair to the bench.

“Be seated.” His voice was a rich, resonant bass, the modulated boom of a seasoned speaker. Everyone obeyed him …

… except Sahara Knax.

“Poisoners of the world, lovers of the Filthwitch, I hereby mark your faces,” she said. Her lawyer tugged on her orange plastic sleeve, but she shook him off. “You will drown in floods, freeze in blizzards, choke in the dust storms I bring down upon your Earth-hating heads.”

Filthwitch: that was her name for Astrid.

“Praise the Goddess!” The defendants chanted, “Praise the Earth, praise the—”

“That’s enough!” Skagway had the lungs of an opera singer; he drowned out the sound of his own gavel coming down, overriding the prisoners. “Defendants will quiet down or be banned from the courtroom for the day.”

The Alchemites’ prayers became shrieks of rage. Several banged their heads against the table. Others, Caroline included, curled so they could reach their hair with their cuffed hands and yank it out in bloody tufts.

The U.S. Marshal in charge of courtroom security, Juanita Corazón, already had her team jumping in to restrain the defendants.

Sahara feinted, stepping out to face the prosecutor. “You, Wallstone. You’ll be first to feel my wrath.”

The Fyreman, behind her, laid his scarred palm on Sahara’s shoulder. She swayed, dropping into Juanita’s arms. The gallery quieted.

“Move to dismiss, Your Honor.” The defense attorney hopped up. “Prosecution’s assaulted my client.”

“Motion denied. Who are you, young man?” Judge Skagway asked.

“Gilead Landon, Your Honor.” The Fyreman raised his eyes to the bench. “Consultant to the air force.”

“I’ll thank you to stay away from the defendants. The marshals have this in hand.”

“Just trying to help.”

“Help us again, you’ll be banned from court.” Judge Skagway said, “Defendants may watch the proceedings on closed-circuit TV. We’ll recess to facilitate the transfer.”

“See, Will? Gilead’s got his uses.” Roche covered a smirk with his hand. “The public sees how easily subdued Sahara is, it makes her less scary.”

“You planned this?” Will said.

“It didn’t take much imagination to know Sahara would want to disrupt the first day.”

“But will you broadcast her threats?”

“We may edit the footage.”

“And pretty up the Primas’ black eyes digitally, while you’re at it?”

“Not a bad idea,” Roche said, ignoring his sarcasm.

“Won’t people wonder how Landon knocked her out? Won’t they say, ‘Hey, wasn’t that magic? Aren’t you government types telling us that magic is bad?’”

“Officially, the point is terrorism, not magic,” Roche said. “Now, do you want to talk to Caro?”

No,
Will thought. “All right.”

Minutes later, he was seated across from his ex-wife in one of the six-by-six booths the Wendover staff had dubbed “squirrel cages,” watching a marshal cuff her to the table. A screen on the far wall offered a view of the courtroom; a keypad on the desk let her text her defense attorney during proceedings. No need for that now, though—a lawyer was present.

The newest raw spot on her scalp was oozing.

Caroline the Alchemite bore little resemblance to the Caro who had rappelled from the roof of a student residence tower to the deck of Will’s apartment when they were undergraduates; the woman who’d climbed K2 without oxygen on her twentieth birthday. The woman who had shared his bed and dreams, who’d worked two jobs while he attended grad school, who’d soothed their son’s night terrors while writing her bioethics thesis was gone.

These days, Sahara was first in her thoughts. “What did that bastard do to the Goddess?”

“Want me to find out how she’s doing?”

“Still the negotiator, William? I’d have to do something for you, right?”

Never fight the subject on her own terms. Will produced a file, sliding out two news clippings: an account of an Alchemite’s death in Wichita, first. Just after Sahara’s arrest, her followers had taken to wearing orange jumpers similar to prisoners’ uniforms. It made them easy to spot; this one had been beaten to death in his home, which had then been looted—the killers, naturally, were after chantments.

The second clipping was about a woman who’d had the bad fortune to resemble Sahara: she had been drawn and quartered in Bogotá. He let Caro read, saw her blanch. She passed the pages to her lawyer with a shaking hand.

“Caroline, tell me where Ellie and Carson are. Whoever you’ve left them with, she isn’t safe; she can’t protect them.”

She shook her head.

“Sahara can’t watch out for her flock. The army’s chipping away at your leadership.…”

“We’re coming out even there,” she muttered. It was true. Hundreds of soldiers had vanished in the skirmishes of the past six months. A few had been killed; when desperate, the Alchemites powered their chantments by drawing the life out of the people they were fighting—and any unfortunate bystanders.
Vamping,
they called it.

Will fanned three last pages out in front of her. “You weren’t the only mother in the cult, Caro.”

“I am the Prima of Wind, Worker of Miracles,” she hissed. “I am soft air washing away the sins of the technofilth—”

Her gaze fell on the pages.

It was the biggest weapon he had, a police report detailing the fate of a minor Alchemite and her three children. He had not spared her the photos. Caro let out a long keening breath. For the first time since her arrest, she was rattled.

“Caroline?”

Tears ran down her face, and Will felt a shred of hope. She tried to pray, stuttered, looked at the images of the bodies. Then her expression closed, shock bleeding out, hate brimming in. The fleeting glimpse of his kids’ mother was gone.

She launched herself across the table, clawing at him with her free hand.

Will stood his ground. A gust of power from his enchanted ring heaved Caro back. Her arm jerked against the restraint of the handcuff and she teetered, pinned and off balance. Will had to fight not to slump. Magic was tiring; it would have taken less energy to step out of reach.

“Ellie and Carson, Caro. They’re not safe out there.”

“Filthwitch puppet,” she bellowed, regaining her feet. “I’ll cut their throats myself before I see them back with you!”

Will’s hand flew to his gut, as if he’d been punched. “We’re done, then,” he heard himself say. Abandoning the papers, he walked out.

Roche had been watching through the glass. “You okay?”

“Did you hear her?” It was sinking in; the army couldn’t get the kids back. He’d been wasting his time.

“Will,” Roche said. “Snap out of it. I’ll get the team on it, work up a new strategy. Try drugs on her, maybe.”

Cut their throats myself …

“She’s locked up; she can’t harm anyone. Will, you listening?”

“I’m okay.” He forced his numb lips into a smile.

“Trial starts again in five.”

“Five.” Six months, the trail cold, and anything could be happening to Carson and Ellie. They should be in school.…

“Where are you going?”

“I need a protein shake. The ring.”

“Of course.”

“Arthur,” he said. “I know you’re trying. Thank you.”

“See you in there.” Roche almost saluted, then turned the gesture into a weak wave before walking away.

Will took a last look through the one-way mirror of the squirrel cage, at the woman who had been his wife.

“She’s bleeding,” he said to the marshal on duty. “Can you get her treated?”

“Of course, sir.”

He stumbled across the base to the officers’ lounge, a dimly lit bar with big flat-screen TVs. Off-duty pilots crammed the place, waiting for more trial coverage.

Near the bar sat a fridge filled with protein shakes.

As Will opened the fridge, the magic gate formed silently beside him. He could write a note, explain his departure. He could send a text message and be gone before Arthur received it.

He fingered the shakes. He thought of stealing one, bearing something from the old world into whatever lay beyond the magical gate. He examined the plastic bottle, the stamped red expiration dates, the foil seal.… This faltering world of technology had been such a marvel. Would the land of the fairies have refrigeration, or hot running water? It seemed unlikely.

Closing the fridge, he slipped through the bramble-framed magical gate.

Nobody saw him go.

CHAPTER TWO

MORNING ARRIVED IN INDIGO
Springs, but it did not bring the dawn.

The shattered remains of Astrid Lethewood’s hometown rested beneath a dense thicket of magically contaminated forest. Earthquake-tumbled buildings lay in pieces in the understory, the concrete rubble interspersed with steel beams, plastic refuse, and the knotted roots of overgrown cedar and spruce.

Though daylight could not penetrate the matted canopy overhead, it wasn’t dark: the glow of raw magic suffused everything it contaminated. The massive trunks of the alchemized trees cast a lambent blue-white light. Their glimmering, fast-growing roots eroded ancient bedrock and cement building foundations with impartial ruthlessness. Blades of grass and seed cones shone; motes of dust hung in the air, winking like stars.

The trees had crushed cars and shoved whole homes aside as they shot upward, like a thousand fairy-tale beanstalks … and then died. Even magical plants needed sunshine, and most of the affected trees had lost the race to the sky. Much of the luminescent tonnage overhead, as a result, was deadwood.

As the federal treason trial raised its curtain in Utah, as Sahara Knax threatened judge and jury and Will Forest finally lost faith in the system, Astrid was planting tomato seedlings.

She had erected a makeshift greenhouse atop one of the few buildings that had weathered the disaster—the Indigo Springs Grand Hotel. The hotel was the center of her world, in a sense: when she escaped government custody, six months earlier, she had found it standing here, stately and solid, defying overgrowth and tremors alike. Here, in the heart of the enchanted forest, she had begun pruning out the tons of sun-starved vegetation around the building. By reducing the dead trees to chips, she had carved out an open space at ground level, a clearing both supported and illuminated by the trunks of the surviving trees.

Beyond and above the perimeter of the clearing, the forest remained overgrown and impassable. The tangle blocked out daylight, but it also shielded them from ground assault and from Roche’s planes.

As if summoned by her thought, a jet howled past, rattling the panes of the greenhouse.