“Sodomy, and interfering with the virtue of a young lady of quality? Yes, those are still scandals.” Chulzh’th grinned and lifted Leroy a little higher. “Are you sure you don’t want this one as a mate, Aphra? He sounds lively.”
“Quite. Thank you.” I gritted my teeth against the sudden memory of a soldier in my parents’ foyer, lifting me just so, mugging for his fellows, goading my father to his death. Hey Jack, check out my ugly girl.
Leroy rolled his eyes wildly and flailed in Chulzh’th’s grip. She caught her balance easily and tried to grasp his swinging arms—but one unlucky blow landed in the vulnerable soft tissue of her eye. She roared, slashing out blindly, and Leroy fell to the sand, shirt and chest shredded by four parallel furrows.
Chulzh’th gasped and clutched her hand. I let go of Sally, who threw herself to the ground beside him, Audrey close behind.
“You killed him,” wailed Sally. Chulzh’th backed further, holding herself tightly.
“She didn’t,” observed the archpriest. “His blood is still flowing.” But he made no move to intervene.
I wished for Spector or Dawson, and their knowledge of mundane first aid. I had a vague idea of bandages, and that salt water might clean a wound. I had neither skills nor supplies. Instead I knelt at Leroy’s shoulder and dipped my finger in red arterial blood. Sally shrieked and tried to push me away, but Audrey grabbed Sally’s hands and shook her head violently. I drew a quick and dangerously messy glyph in the sand, muttered the chant as swiftly as I could pronounce it, and hoped the salt left in Leroy’s wounds from Chulzh’th’s talons would be sufficient.
I’d never done this variant on the Inner Sea before—trying to ride someone else’s blood without using my own as a foundation—and could tell immediately that I’d done it wrong. Blood is one of the three foundations of magic, but it is not a foundation of control.
The spell tore me from awareness of my own body and plunged me into Leroy’s. His blood was of the air, and fragile. But he was young and strong and knew his final form only vaguely; everything in him fought desperately for survival—not a torrent but a flood overflowing its banks. I floundered, seeking the flood’s source, but could not direct my own consciousness, let alone the vital forces surrounding me: the pulse, too fast to ease the flow; the natural guardians that staunch wounds, too slow at their work.
I began, dimly, to feel my own body again. Something touched my shoulder, and a familiar pulse echoed Leroy’s. I grasped at the familiarity, found Audrey’s muddy river bank, dragged her into the spell as a drowning man will seize a hand without regard for sense or safety. As our connection flared I felt Caleb, drawn forward to touch my other shoulder in spite of deep reluctance, and Charlie, out of breath from the climb and sitting abruptly in the soft sand of the dune, reaching out and sharing strength.
And none of that was enough. I sensed them all, knew they could sense me, knew them swept into the same flood that bore me along. But the spell had no less power, no more control, than before. If we had practiced longer, knew one another better, I might have been able to push my students to pronounce our intentions in clearer Enochian or trace better-formed symbols. But my vague sense of Caleb’s unease was the closest thing to thought that passed among us.
I clung to their bodies. I heard Neko’s urgent questions through Charlie’s ears, saw out of the corner of his eye Trumbull survey the scene and start down the dune. In strange offset harmony—Caleb’s hearing a fraction sharper and faster than Audrey’s—Ngalthr said to Chulzh’th: “Your wound. Your choice.”
Long silence, and flood waters rising—and then Caleb’s eyes following Chulzh’th as she knelt to mark a diagram around our bodies. On her claws, Leroy’s blood had already begun to dry and darken. She moved slowly, trying to draw lines that would hold in the shallow sand. Sally cringed and glared as the acolyte came close. Further symbols crowded around us.
As Chulzh’th built word and symbol atop my rough foundation, our path through the floodwaters began to take on form and meaning. Now I could find the wound, sense the places where it sought to knit together and the purpose in Leroy’s blood as it strove to find a healing hold. I worked to strengthen those capacities, channeling the power that had almost drowned me. There were ways to draw on the support of my confluence, but none that I’d studied. Still their presence anchored me against the temptations of fear, as I worked with tools I scarce understood to save a man who’d likely turn on me if I succeeded.
At last I felt the floodwaters recede. They settled slowly, still far too high. I continued to push until Audrey shook my shoulder. “Aphra, it’s stopped healing. That’s all we’re going to get.”
I awoke to my own body, shaking my head with the shock of the transition. I gathered my courage, then took in what lay before me. Leroy breathed, a victory in itself. His wounds had grown shallow, blood begun to thicken and clot. Some seeped around the edges, though, and his breathing was labored. A hand to his forehead found it covered in clammy sweat: both wounds and their repair had taxed him, and further illness might threaten. But he was alive. Now we would need to figure out what to do with that.
Charlie came down the dune, faster than he should with the cane, close-spotted by Neko. She hurried to my side: “Onee-san, are you okay?”
Neko rarely used the Japanese honorifics that came so easily to Mama Rei; she must be shaken as well. I realized I was trembling. I put my arm around her. “I will be, I think.”
“What happened?” asked Charlie. Trumbull knelt to examine the healing sigils, and I resisted the urge to shout at her.
“Leroy tried to fight the acolyte,” I said instead. “She lost her temper.”
Chulzh’th ducked her head. “I was not angry. I was startled.” In R’lyehn: “For one on the clerical path to so easily be caught unawares, and to shed blood in surprise, is inexcusable. I might have chosen to harm him if he would not promise silence, but I apologize for doing so without intention.”
“You might have? He’s barely spawn, surely there were other ways.” Now I was losing my temper—fully aware of it, but unable to resist the need to release the pent-up fear and frustration and the sight of a boy I disliked lying unconscious in the sand. Every blade-sharp R’lyehn phrase I’d ever heard from my mother, in her rare moments of anger, came pouring out. “Have the pressure changes addled your mind? Are you a mayfly to make thoughtless choices in a second’s time? Is this what you wish written of you in the Archives?”
“Aphra Yukhl,” said Grandfather. “Speak respectfully to your elders.”
“We do what we must to protect our people,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. “Sometimes it must be done quickly. Long life does not mean having forever to choose.”
“Is that what happened with Upton?” I demanded. “You had no time to decide what to do with him—no time to reconsider this past quarter-century?”