Sorcerer's Spin Read online

  Unlike the uniformed man standing next to Cecilia, Captain Gregor Whitman wore street clothes.

  Dark brown cargo pants and a black shirt. Tailored. It had to be to fit his sizable shoulders.

  It was quality cloth. She could tell at a glance.

  He was tall enough to carry his broad shoulders with ease though he was slightly slumped. His blond hair, almost a burnished gold, went every which way as if it bore the brunt of his dissatisfaction with life and it was trying to flee in any direction it could manage. His blue eyes were serious, their bright hue striking as he stole her livelihood in the name of the government.

  “I apologize, Miss Rand, for the intrusion, but this is for the safety of the Republic.” Judging by his tone, she wasn’t sure he believed what he said. She certainly didn’t.

  “The safety of the Republic. You expect me to believe that?” Mara eyed the vans. “Those spinning wheels are as dangerous as a bag of cotton balls. By taking them, you’re stealing the food off my employees’ tables. How does that keep the Republic safe?”

  “Oh please,” Cecilia spat.

  Mara ignored her. Nothing agitated Cecilia worse than being ignored. Besides, the ugly gleam in the other woman’s eyes was nothing new. She’d seen it before. In fact, she could almost guess what Cecilia’s next words would be.

  “The government doesn’t need to keep people like you safe.” The highbrow Power United executive narrowed her eyes to slits. “Your mere existence is a traitorous smear on our land.”

  Mara gave a mental nod. Yes, she’d guessed it almost perfectly. She took a moment to imagine what it would be like to spin the other woman in a tight, sticky spell, roll her out of here, and leave her in the middle of the street. But Mara could never commit violence with her power. The truth was, she wasn’t that skilled.

  “I will not stand for this,” Mara said softly to the blue-eyed man. “I will fight this with everything I have.”

  He nodded as if he’d expected as much. He opened his mouth, but Cecilia beat him to it.

  “Well, you don’t have much, freak.” Cecilia folded her arms across her chest, lifting her cleavage high. “You’re finally getting your due. Blue Light Mills won’t recover from this. No wheels, no thread, no cloth, no money.” She tsked. “Just remember, Power United can offer you employment spinning copper wire. We believe in charity for the weak and disgraced.”

  That last bit was more than Mara could ignore. “Your charity murders its target audience.” The whispers of the dead stirred against her skin. They had for a long time. She’d do almost anything to lay the whispers to rest, but that, too, was beyond her skill.

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be in a grave.” Cecilia glared at her for a moment and then she smiled at the two men in charge. “Since you gentlemen have this under control, I’ll leave you to it.” She winked at the uniformed man. “Maybe Captain Whitman will lend you my calling card. He has one. I’d like to hear from you.” With that, she sashayed away, her red high heels silent on the pavement as she muffled her footsteps like every polite mage.

  A familiar tap of gentle vibes pressed against Mara’s shoulder. Lady Henrietta Alden—Harry, for short—alerted Mara to her presence as she silently stepped out of the mill. “Was that the notorious Cecilia Garnet in action? I missed it.” A regretful frown crossed her face and then disappeared. “Maybe next time. For now, I’ve called my contact at The Dispatch. She’s saving room in the afternoon edition for the story about the theft of our spinning wheels which was apparently aided by the army.” Her cool gaze landed on the man in uniform. The man wiped his hand over his face and shook his head as if Harry had just made his life harder.

  Good.

  “Thank you, Harry,” Mara replied. The story wouldn’t make the front page, nor would it make any difference, but it was something.

  “Just doing my job, lady boss.” As Blue Light Mills’ PR woman, Harry had done everything possible and then some to right the mill’s reputation.

  “Lady Alden, I wish you’d waited to do that.” Captain Whitman was well-informed if he recognized one of the aristocratic daughters of Alden Territory. It was far away from here, tucked in the southwest corner of the Republic. Harry was a long way from home…and employed by a wayward mage. Mara still couldn’t believe the woman worked for her, but she was grateful.

  “Waited?” Mara asked. “Why? So you could smother the story before it got out?”

  A rush of footsteps pattered down the hall before she could pursue the topic further. She turned to see her sorceresses spill out the door, still dressed for the ritual. Mara braced for the showdown.

  “You can’t take our wheels!” Esther shouted, shoving toward the front, thrusting out her barrel chest, hands on hips. “Who the hell do you think you are?” She glared at the uniformed army man and Captain Whitman.

  Stella dashed forward, her head covered in a cloth, her lips curling inward where her teeth should have been. She halted next to Mara and pointed her drop spindle toward the men at the vans. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. You’re not taking me back! And you can’t have my wheel!” Her hand shook.

  Mara’s heart jumped in fear. Before she could step in front of the bold girl, the uniformed army officer yanked the spindle from her as if he thought she could actually cast a spell. The jerk on Stella’s arm cascaded through her body and her kerchief fell back, exposing her bald head. Stella’s shoulder’s crumpled, and her face went white.

  The men of Power United laughed.

  “You’re not going back. Ever,” Mara whispered, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her kerchief up with the other. “And I’ll get your wheel back. I’ll get them all back.”

  The laughter disappeared, cut off in mid-chuckle as if someone had turned their volume off. Their mouths were moving, but no sound came out.

  “Sorry about that, ma’am.” Captain Whitman gave her a nod. His gaze was tight at the edges, and his broad body spoke of coiled power as if he were waiting for an attack. “I don’t think these men learned proper manners as children. But it’s never too late to learn.” He took the confiscated drop spindle from the army man. The other man gave it up with a dark look. Powered waved between the two of them—even Mara could sense it—as if some unspoken communication flitted between them. Captain Whitman handed the spindle to Stella. The girl took it with shaky fingers.

  Mara nearly pressed her hand to her heart in gratitude.

  Sorceresses couldn’t cast energy without some type of spin to conduct it through. Her employees used the spin of their spindles or their wheels to cast power, the most elementary of sources due to their ease of control. Mara, however, was different. She was the only sorceress she knew who didn’t need an outside source of spin to use her vibes—another quirk of her odd power. It was one of her most tightly held secrets, and she had a lot of secrets.

  “You put that away,” the uniformed army man snapped as if Stella was someone to fear.

  “One last thing.” Captain Whitman handed Mara an envelope, taller and wider than the one she’d just received. “An invitation. The High Councilor requests that you appear tomorrow afternoon at a quarter past high sun at the Council House. You can find it by—”

  “I know where it is.” As the personal tailor to the old crone, she’d been there dozens of times.

  She turned her back on him, ushered her sorceresses inside her mill, and tied the handles of her doors shut with a thread she spun right there with her vibes.

  She knotted it tight…as if it would actually keep them safe.

  Though no mage had ever broken through such a thread of hers, the High Councilor could get to her anywhere…just like the person who been sending her those notes for so many years.

  3

  Night shrouded the thin, rocky path that led toward the moat surrounding the Rarified Library. Mara navigated it carefully, struggling to see in the dim light. Tonight, she planned a last-ditch effort to arm herself with as much information as
possible about the white spinning wheel and the other two mythical glister relics.

  The library, fashioned of stone, looked like a towering eight-legged beast with a tall, pointy body on top. Every inch of the thousand-foot structure was covered in detail, decorated with hundreds of carved faces, statues, gargoyles, arches, and buttresses. It resembled a castle gone mad and skinny from a hunger strike.

  It sat on the outskirts of the city’s main cemetery as if the scrolls had been laid to rest, never to be disturbed again. Though it was one of the oldest buildings in the Republic, few knew it existed. Some complex spell far beyond her ability or understanding hid it from view of the general public. Mere knowledge of the building’s existence broke the concealment spell for an individual, but that knowledge was reserved for the mighty and elite. She was neither. A client had told her about the library as payment for a Blue Light Mills’ blouse. Mara wasn’t opposed to occasionally bartering with clients who couldn’t afford to pay her cash. Tonight’s visit, like all her trips to the library, was also a bartered arrangement.

  A young woman, pale gold hair streaked with a single, thin line of blue, met her at the edge of the bridge that crossed the moat. Jane Witt, assistant to the librarian of the East Legs, had a long way to go before she resembled the blue-haired mages who ran the Rarified Library. Mara had caught glimpses of a few of them on one of her visits. Something about the job turned hair blue. Mara had asked Jane about it, but she claimed it was a trade secret.

  Mara crossed the bridge. Beneath it, the great-vibed sharks jumped and snapped with iron teeth. “Stop it, boys,” Jane ordered. The sharks obeyed and swam away. “They’re always testing me. One of these days, I’m going to smack one with a scroll spell and roll the life out of it.”

  Mara lifted her eyebrows at the petite woman.

  “Viciousness is all they understand. Some creatures are like that.”

  Some mages were like that too. They were all the worse when they could hide their viciousness, swimming through society with their cruelty concealed beneath pristine layers of handsome smiles and faux kindness, unnoticed until the sting of their bite tore the life out of their victims. It was why she’d concluded that of all the people involved in stealing her spinning wheels today, the most dangerous person there had been the blond captain who’d returned Stella’s drop spindle. She’d wondered at that all day, a dozen questions about his motivation spinning through her mind.

  Jane led Mara to the first of the two East Legs. The door was heavy and warped as if the flow of molten metal had cooled before it could lay flat. Mara suspected the waves were caused by the power bulging inside the building. Despite the door’s uneven front, it blended perfectly with the structure, enough that the eye passed over it. A mage could circle the building for hours in search of the entrance, assuming he could get past the sharks. Despite her previous visits, Mara couldn’t have found the entrance on her own.

  Inside, Mara held out her package, wrapped in paper.

  Payment for this visit was a scarf, its threads spun with a concealment spell, though nothing as powerful as the one that hid this building.

  Unlike Mara, the other woman was a normal wayward and could conceal her glow…when she remembered. Jane was a moderately powerful finder mage—a brilliant thinker but absent-minded. While occupied on fact-finding missions, she tended to drop her concealment spells for her glowing, wayward eyes. The scarf would hold that spell for her.

  Jane took the package. In return, she held out a piece of paper. “Directions. And good news…the scrolls you want are on a lower shelf. You can reach them just fine.”

  Mara sighed with relief at that.

  “It’s a popular spot lately.” Jane disappeared into the enormous stacks of scrolls before Mara could ask for clarification.

  She looked around. There were ancient spells at work here. Based on the outside dimensions of the library, only a couple of scroll cases should have fit in the first of the two east legs. Instead, shelves stood in rows as far as she could see and stretched thirty feet high. They were packed so tightly together there was no room for a ladder to access the scrolls at the top. A mage would have to cast a levitation spell to get them. A good thing the scrolls she needed were on the lower shelves…of the upper tower, that was. She could handle climbing the two-hundred plus stairs, but she would have been hard pressed to cast a levitation.

  She followed the directions on the paper to the stairs. The first three staircases took her to the main body of the Rarified Library. The remaining steps were housed in a tiny tower that clung to the main structure.

  She began the hike in the tight, coiling space. It was dark, and the skinny windows admitted mere slivers of moonlight. The power of the knowledge contained in the library vibed around her, emanating from the walls as if the building were alive. She sensed it even with her own power tightly wrapped away. As she climbed, the scent of old stone and paper and the dusty robes of a thousand scholars brushed against her nose.

  With every step, she listened for a pair of feet coming down. It had happened once when she’d been researching syphon mages, one of whom was now a client. She’d come face-to-face with a giant of a man. She still wasn’t sure how he’d fit in this small area. He’d had to bend down, so he didn’t bump his head on the low ceiling as the staircase twisted around and around. Plus, his width should never have fit. She could only guess he’d cast a greased pig spell. She’d had to return to the main floor to give him room to pass and restart her climb after he’d exited.

  Glancing at her directions, she let a hint of her power unwind from its tight spin inside her and cast a mage light in the darkness of the circular staircase.

  Tenth floor. Stack three. Shelf four. Scrolls 118.34A through 118.34AB.

  She was out of breath by the time she made it to the top.

  The door to the tenth floor was four inches shorter than she was and at an odd angle. She ducked and tilted to the left to enter.

  She cast another mage light, doubling the brightness, preparing to read the call numbers on the scrolls’ handles. She paced through the shelves. She’d assumed stack three would be close to the front. Instead, the shelves went backward starting at ninety-seven. It felt like it took her five minutes to make it to row three.

  She entered the row and jumped back. Captain Gregor Whitman stood in the aisle, his blue gaze focused on the entrance of the row. Evidently, he’d heard her coming.

  She certainly hadn’t sensed him. “You!” Fright pulsed in her temple and demanded immediate retreat.

  “Miss Rand, this is a nice surprise.” A small smile crossed his lips.

  “Nice?” she snapped. “Why in the starry vibes would this be nice? What are you doing here? Are you spying on me?”

  He rolled up the scroll he was reading and stuck it under his arm. “Definitely nice. You were like the grand champion of the weak and beleaguered today, and lately I’d given up hope anyone like that might exist.”

  She rolled her eyes. “And yet, you stole my wheels.” Her voice echoed around the stacks like an eerie warning to flee. To do anything else was beyond foolish. He was at least six inches taller than she, his shoulders were broad with powerful muscles, and he probably knew all kinds of spells that could do horrible things to her.

  “Yeah.” He dropped his chin with the rough word, but he didn’t look away from her. “I agreed to carry out the mission. As ordered. And I do my duty…did my duty. But I’m done. Today was my last day. I’m unemployed as of this afternoon.” He squared his body to her though his shoulders still had that faint stoop.

  “Why? Did you get fired?” It was a nosy question, but maybe the answer would hold a clue about her stolen wheels.

  A small chuckle lifted his shoulders. “No. I didn’t get fired.” He looked around them as if there was something to see other than shelves and scrolls. “The reason is too long of a tale for such an uncomfortable space. We should sit down for that story.”

  His answer made her warier yet. �
��So, you don’t work for Power United?”

  “A side gig. Temporary at that, and it’s over.”

  “But Power United has my wheels.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do I get them back?” She tried not to sound desperate. She was certain she failed. Blue Light Mills’ factory floor was empty and silent. Her sorceresses were a sad, scared lot after this morning’s awfulness.

  “I don’t know.” His voice was calm, but a bleak note ran through it. “I wish I did.”

  He sounded sincere, but she couldn’t believe him.

  Silence built between them for a moment. “Any other questions I can answer for you?” he asked.

  She backed up one step. “No. I don’t want to know anything else about you. In fact, I wish I hadn’t met you.” Cruel words. But true.

  He pulled in a long, slow breath. “I can understand that. You’d probably like to confine me to the still-hells with the fallen god.”

  She gave a single, decisive nod. “I thought that very thing this morning.” She hadn’t. But she should have.

  “In which case, before I’m cast down, I have a confession.”

  She braced for bad news when she caught sight of the number written on the side of the scroll tucked under his arm.

  118.34A. The relics.

  “Why do you have that scroll?” Her words burst out, accusing, and interrupting his confession-to-be.

  He didn’t even glance at the scroll. “The spinning wheel in your office. I left it there.”

  For a minute she didn’t follow. What did that have to do with the scroll? “That’s your confession?” He nodded, and she shook her head right back. Her curls scattered against her cheeks at the brisk move. “No, you didn’t.” She’d been in her office for most of the day meeting with her forewoman, brainstorming ideas on how to keep her mill running without spinning wheels.

  She knew darn well there was no spinning wheel in her office.

  “It’s hidden with a don’t look spell exactly where you left it. In the corner. To find it, all you have to do is reach out and touch it. It will reveal itself to its owner, but no one else. Just don’t let anyone around it or they might trip.”