“This is the magician’s version of the demon’s mark,” Gerald said, his eyes on Sin. “I have complete control over anyone who wears it.”
He’d put the mark on Toby at the Goblin Market. He’d handed the baby over to Mae when he had no further use for him.
“I hold this child’s life in the palm of my hand,” Gerald said in a clear, carrying voice. “My Circle is walking out of here tonight.”
“Toby,” Sin said in a strangled voice, reaching for him. “How—”
“I wouldn’t,” Gerald advised. “I called the child here. I can make him go anywhere I want him to go. I could make him walk off a cliff. I could have him possessed. I could stop his breath with a thought. Have your people stand down.”
“Get back!” Sin commanded.
But the Market could taste blood. They finally had magicians at their mercy, and Sin was not the leader yet.
“The child’s as good as dead anyway,” said Matthias the piper, his bow still strung. “It’s not like he’s ever going to take it off.”
“Matthias!” Sin exclaimed, but there was a murmur of agreement around the square.
“And we don’t want a leader who can be blackmailed!”
Toby started to cry, his soft, wailing voice rising above the slanted roofs of the buildings around the market square. Jamie gave Mae a look she couldn’t read, not with his magic-hot eyes, but then his hand sought hers and she realized he was horror-struck.
“I take no pleasure in this,” Gerald told Jamie, but Jamie continued to look as sick as Mae felt.
The piper was right, though. Mae could see no way to make Toby safe.
Sin stood with her back straight and her knives still drawn, her mouth trembling.
“Kill them,” said Matthias, and the crowd surged.
Alan said, “Wait.”
He came forward, made it almost to Gerald and the baby in a few long strides, and then Toby gave a long cry of pain. Alan stopped, hand outstretched.
“What good is the child to you?” he asked, his voice wrapping sweetly around every word, less guiding than simply making you want to follow him. “You can hear them. They’ll kill you anyway. You need a better hostage than that.”
He slanted a dismissive look at Toby’s small head. Gerald was starting to look thoughtful.
“You need collateral to control the demon,” Alan said, and he turned his hand palm up, reaching out the other for the baby. “Hand over the baby. Transfer the mark. You can have me.”
“Alan,” Nick said in a terrible voice. “Alan, no.”
He started forward, knocking down everyone in his path.
“Now,” Alan commanded, and Gerald reached out and clasped his hand.
It was over that soon. The baby was held gently in Alan’s arms, and the mark was branded on his palm.
“Shhh,” Alan murmured to the child, who was quieting already in his arms. “You’re safe now.”
He took two steps toward Sin and put her brother in her arms. She accepted him almost numbly, her face blank but her arms going around Toby tight.
Alan did it just in time, an instant before Nick reached him and spun him around, one hand clenching tight on Alan’s shoulder. For a second Mae thought Nick was going to punch him.
Nick held on for a moment, in a tight grip that looked more like violence than anything else, and then he turned to Gerald.
“I’m going to make you sorry,” he whispered in that demon’s voice, like chains settling on your hands and feet, like a chill getting so deep into your blood it would never leave and you would never be warm again. “I’ll make time longer, just so you can suffer in it. I’ll never let you die. You’ll live to the end of the world, crawling, bleeding, begging, wishing you had never even thought of touching my brother.”
Gerald didn’t answer in words, but Alan gave a short scream between his teeth and sank to his knees, and Mae knew exactly how much pain he would’ve had to be in before he let Nick hear that.
When Alan rose, he almost staggered. For a moment that seemed normal, and then Mae remembered he was meant to be healed now.
“Your brother was whole for all of five minutes,” Gerald said. “Was it worth handing over any of your power for that?”
Nick shivered in one tight, controlled burst, as if someone had hit him.
“My ring,” Gerald commanded.
Nick yanked it off his hand and threw the silver circle to the ground at Gerald’s feet. He did not look away from Alan.
“Yeah,” said Gerald, stooping to pick it up and sliding the bloodstained ring onto his finger. “I think we’ll go now.”
“Who said you could go?” asked Matthias. “Now you don’t even have a child of the Market. Let the traitor die.”
“It’s worth a sacrifice,” said a woman Mae remembered from the chimes stall. Alan looked at her, his face startled, and she turned her eyes away. “It’s one life,” she said. “We were all willing to risk ours.”
The square seemed to turn upside down as Nick snarled, tipped into a darker world. Everyone shivered as the wind rose. Mae saw her breath on the air like a dragon’s.
“You dare,” Nick said softly.
The Market people cleared a space around the demon now, unity dissolving, tables turning, only a few of them left standing with Nick. Alan, Mae, Jamie, Annabel. And Sin, trembling, with the child in her arms.
“Wait,” Sin said, sounding uncertain. They paid her no attention.
“Wait, you idiots!” Mae shouted. “Let’s give the magicians a chance to surrender.” She let her eyes move significantly to Jamie. “We’ve seen how useful they can be.”
There was sudden murmuring among the Market people. Mae did not think they sounded largely in favor of the idea, but at least they were talking. Seb uncurled from the ground, green eyes alight.
“You must be joking,” Gerald scoffed, but Mae saw that a couple of the other magicians looked thoughtful.
“I for one think it’s an excellent idea, Gerald,” said Celeste Drake, moving from the shadow of the church with the Aventurine Circle behind her. “Why don’t you surrender to me?”
The Market people flowed back toward Nick and Jamie, toward them all. They were united again, trapped between two magicians’ Circles.
Celeste paid them no heed at all. She sailed forward, serene as a china swan on a glass lake, until she was standing before Gerald with her hands held out to his.
“I told you that you would reconsider my offer.”
Gerald regarded her coolly. “And you told me you’d take everything I had.”
“True,” Celeste admitted. “But in light of other contributions you can make …” Her eyes slid to Alan. “I’ll make you the same offer I made before. Will you take it? Last chance.”
“I will,” said Gerald, and put his hands in hers.
“Circle of my circle,” Celeste said. “You are mine, and your marks are mine, and your magicians are mine. I will brand you with the sigil of the Aventurine Circle, and no loyalty will come before your loyalty to me.”
“I’m yours,” Gerald told her, his head bowed.
“And your enemies are mine,” said Celeste, her icy gray eyes sweeping the Goblin Market army. “And you will be leader of the Circle when I die. The bargain is struck. Do any of you dare stand against the Aventurine Circle?”
Everyone stood silent. There were just too many magicians, Mae thought. There was Helen the magician with her swords bright in her hands, Gerald with his marks: the union Mae hadn’t wanted and hadn’t planned on. Even with Nick and Jamie both, there were far too many to fight. Celeste wasn’t likely to start fighting until she had the Obsidian Circle safely branded as hers.
The battle was lost. Their best chance for survival was to stay quiet.
Celeste turned away, and Gerald started after her. For a moment Mae thought it was over.
Then Gerald stopped beside Jamie and said, “Come with me.”
Jamie stared at him.
“You know you have to now, don’t you?” Gerald asked. “Now you’ve had power. All you want is more. Come with me.”
Jamie kept staring, mouth a tender, hurt shape, still a little in love despite everything.
“Okay,” he said.
“What?” Mae shouted.
She surged forward, but Annabel got there first, her sword a blur of light and then a line of steel held between Jamie and Gerald.
“You’re not taking him,” said Annabel. “He’s mine.”
There was a ring of steel on steel.
Helen of the Aventurine Circle had lunged forward, and now her blade was kissing Annabel’s. They stood looking at each other. Annabel lifted her chin, defiant, and Helen’s lip curled.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “He belongs to us now.”
Mae thought Helen would turn away then, and she did.
First she lunged in and drove her sword to the hilt in Annabel’s chest. Annabel made a small sound, more incredulous than pained, her body crumpling on the blade. Helen slid her sword free and swung back into line with the other magicians.
Annabel tumbled to the ground on her back.
“Mum,” Jamie said, his voice small and terrified, and he dived to his knees by her side. Mae didn’t know why there was a clawing in her chest, didn’t know why her mouth had gone dry, when Jamie was going to heal her. When Annabel was absolutely fine.
She did not look fine. Their mother was lying with her smooth blond hair fanned out on the bloodstained bricks. Blood was trickling from one side of her mouth, was a spreading pool on her white blouse, and her eyes were staring wide and sightless into the clear night sky.
Mae made a low, hurt sound in the back of her throat. Jamie’s hands, frantically patting and searching, had gone still.
“Mum,” Jamie repeated, panicked, as if he was searching for her, as if he had lost her and could not find her, as if she was not right there. “Mum, please, please. Mum.”
And without Mae making the decision to kneel down, there she was on the bricks, on her hands and knees beside her brother. She was making that low, wounded sound again, her hands on Annabel, shaking her and shaking her until Jamie pulled at her wrists.
“Mae,” he said, crying, close to her ear. “Mae, don’t. She’s—she’s—”
She was crying too. He was nothing but a blur of magic-hazed eyes and demon’s mark, and then he was holding on to her, clinging around her neck the same way he’d clung to their mother this afternoon.
“Hush,” Mae said, her voice sounding oddly distant in her own ears. Jamie’s tears were slipping down her neck. She had to be strong for him. She smoothed her palm down her brother’s shivering back, down the line of his spine. “Hush,” she whispered again. “I know she’s dead.”
The Goblin Market was camped out in Portholme Meadow, not so far away from the town. It was, Mae vaguely remembered, the largest meadow in England. It was also, she realized dimly, quite beautiful. The caravans and tents of the Goblin Market took up only a tiny bright space of all the lush greenness, and all around them in the early morning were the sounds of birds singing and trees whispering to one another.
Mae was lying alongside Jamie in a red tent, watching the shadowy patterns the leaves cast on the fabric. She was trying not to move, trying not to wake Jamie after he’d cried himself to sleep, but she couldn’t sit among all those strangers whispering condolences to her. She just lay there, watching the shadows move.
She didn’t even know what they had done with the body.
“You do realize you’re as good as dead,” Nick said from outside the tent. “With that mark on you. Gerald’s playing with you like a cat with a mouse. He just wants us to think about what happens next. You’re already crippled again.”