Broken Throne Complete Boxed Set Page 5

  Elaine shook her head again, then said nothing more. What was she so upset about? She hadn’t even met Mr. Merrilyn before. He hadn’t contacted her prior to Mrs. Adams’s visit asking for a favor in return. He probably wouldn’t even remember sending the woman to Charmed for the repair. It was a harmless little act of kindness, nothing more.

  They sat in their small apartment’s living room for a while in silence, holding hands.

  Her mother felt responsible for Winnie’s lack of a real childhood. She’d been forced at a young age to help out more and more around the shop as Elaine’s hands quickly withered and her knuckles finally betrayed her. Eventually, she’d had to stop working altogether. Winnie had learned to cast increasingly complicated charms under her mother’s verbal directions. She’d dropped out of high school to keep the shop open full-time. It hadn’t bothered Winnie at the time, though she knew it bothered her mother plenty.

  Her friends were all working now, anyway. Winnie had a head start, and was proud of all she’d accomplished in the past few years. At sixteen, she’d been the youngest licensed chanter in the city, passing all the certification exams and tests from the officials downtown. She suspected they added a few tests that weren’t even on the books, but Winnie aced them all. In the end, they gave her the license to operate Charmed in her mother’s place and sent her on her way.

  Now she’d discovered a new use for her talents, and Mom wanted to shut her down for fear of a man Winnie had never even met. It didn’t make sense. While every chanter knew that Artos Merrilyn was involved in darker magics in some way, she couldn’t see how this situation brought her any closer to him than before. She would repair magical clocks and hand mixers, hammers and leashes; harmless tools owned by everyone but the most ardent temperance followers. All those middling housewives and home handymen would need someone to maintain their magic items, and Winnie could be that resource, at least for some of them.

  “Mom,” Winnie said, breaking the silence between them. “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you, dear.”

  “Then trust me to handle this. We need income, and I can do this. The shop has to stay open, and this is the way it can.”

  “But you made so much money the last few days. It added up to six months of our regular income. We have some time to look for something else, anything else but this.” Elaine gave her daughter’s hands a squeeze. “It’s your new benefactor I don’t trust, Winnie. That man has a reason for everything. He is a waiting spider, striking at the slightest tremor in his web. He has a reason for recommending you to Mrs. Adams. And when that reason is revealed, you may not be so happy to have accepted this opportunity.”

  “He’s not my benefactor. I’ll not be tricked into doing anything nefarious. You know how I feel about the Sable trade... I don’t forget what you told me about how Grandfather came home after the war and was never the same again. Look at what it has done to Joey. He says he’s off the Sable vice now, but he’s not a normal, carefree teenager. Abusing Sable magic has scarred him. I see that. I’ll never participate in something that leads to people being hurt like that — I promise.”

  Elaine sighed and waved a hand in the air. “You’ve always been so pig-headed, Winnie. I’ve never been able to change your mind once it’s made up. No matter what Artos might have planned, he’ll not be able to make you do anything that you don’t want to do. I’m just asking that you be careful and watch your back. There are bigger things to manage than opening the shop under a new license. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the middle of something you can’t get out of, okay?”

  Winnie nodded and leaned in to give her mother a hug. She would never admit that she had some reservations about the new plan for Charmed, though it wasn’t Merrilyn she was concerned with. Her worries rested with Constable Holmes.

  Breaking the embrace, Winnie leaned back and looked at her mom, still smiling. “Let me show you something I’ve been working on while I was looking at the clock’s broken charm. It was something to do with the way the old charm flows were tied in this that I had never seen before. It gave me an idea and I think I figured out a way to invert the flows, making them harder to see. I did it as I wove them. You know I’m always worried about others copying my work. This could be a way to protect me from copycats.”

  Elaine peered at the clock face and the magical charm placed there. “I can barely see any charm there unless I know where to look. To the average chanter casting a view magic charm, they would see nothing at all. How did you get this idea?”

  “The Red Legs in the shop today showed up with special cameras and view screens. They used them to identify every magical item in the shop so they could catalog them and carry them back to their vehicle. There wasn’t much left, but I could see what they saw on the screen. It looked a lot like what we see when casting a viewing charm to watch the weaves as we cast them.”

  “So when you invert the weave as you cast it, and can’t see what you’re doing, aren’t you afraid that you might ruin something?”

  “That’s the beauty, Mom.” Winnie felt herself growing excited. She loved sharing discoveries with her mother. “It’s like I’m holding the key. Anyone who knows the inversion pattern can see the flows while casting a viewing charm. But if you don’t know the pattern, you don’t see a thing. At least, that’s the theory. It’s not perfected. There’s still a sort of shimmering that I can’t seem to remove.”

  “I see what you’re referring to, Winnie.” Elaine tilted her head, peering through her bifocals and looking closer at the clock. “It’s sort of like the wavering over pavement on a hot summer’s day. It’s very faint. If I wasn’t looking for it, I wouldn’t know the item was charmed.”

  “Pretty cool, right? Now if I repair something, I’m the only one who can fix it if it breaks again. I’ll be the only one who can see the flows that need fixing.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like it, Winnie. This is very creative. You’re such a smart young lady.” She paused. “It’s a shame you couldn’t stay in school. I should have found a way to keep you in class. Maybe you would have won a scholarship to one of the universities that still has a magical studies major.”

  “Stop worrying about that, Mom. It’s old news. You said never to fret the past, because it can’t be changed. So take your own advice. Besides, those programs are all focused on the bigger public works projects. No one cares about the theory of magic anymore, especially not with the passage of Resolution 84.” Winnie stood and looked to the kitchen. “Want something special for dinner? I thought I could make us dinner before I meet Cait and Tris.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We thought we’d go to Spark. A night of dancing will be fun after the last two days. I can use something to look forward to for a change.”

  “Talk to your friends, Winnie. Cait and Tris have both seen things in their work that you haven’t. Tell them what happened with the shop and see what they think. Tris has dealt with people like Artos Merrilyn in her job tending to public works projects, and Cait knows what can happen when powerful people above you make decisions that affect your life.”

  “They’re my friends, Mom. They’ll support me no matter what I do.”

  “Talk to them, sweetie. You might be surprised by what they have to say.”

  Chapter 7

  The music was pumping loud enough to vibrate a full city block. Winnie took a sip of her drink and leaned in closer to hear what Tris was saying.

  “I don’t know, Winnie. I’ve never seen Artos do anything illegal myself. But I’ve heard plenty from people I work with. He’s mixed up in the Sable trade for sure.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t an honest favor for a woman who asked him a question? It could be completely innocent.” Winnie was frustrated — her friends were clearly unhappy to hear about her shop’s new direction. It was as if her mother had spoken to each of them and offered a script.

  “Don’t get us wrong,” Cait shouted over the
din of the music. “We’re happy that you have some sort of solution. We want you to keep the shop open. But I’m with Tris: you need to be careful when dealing with people like Artos Merrilyn. Everyone knows he’s dangerous and mixed up with the worst of the Sable trade. That kind of reputation doesn’t come from nowhere. You need to be careful.”

  Winnie sat back and crossed her arms, knowing she looked petulant but not able to care. Why couldn’t they be happy for her? She wasn’t a child. She knew Artos’s reputation. You couldn’t live in the Enclave, or anywhere else in Baltimore, and not know who he was. Every time he rode by in his limousine or paraded down the street with an entourage behind him, people would mutter stories of some horrible thing perpetrated at his orders.

  Winnie remembered being very young and pointing to his shiny new car while out with her mother. Elaine had pushed Winnie’s arm to her side and scooped her up, saying that it wasn’t polite to point. It wasn’t until much later that had Winnie realized how frightened her mother had been that it might draw unwanted attention to them.

  She got the idea: Artos was dangerous. And Winnie was aware of the danger. She was also impressed that Artos had known about her well enough to send a customer her way on the very day she needed it the most. It made her proud of all she had achieved in her short eighteen years. She didn’t like owing anyone, but this was different. This was referring a friend to a service provided by another. She owed the woman for securing the license for her shop, not Artos.

  Winnie turned back to her friends. Again, she leaned forward and shouted over the thumping bass line. “I don’t want to fight with you guys. Let’s just have a good time, alright? I want to dance. Who’s with me?”

  The girls nodded, smiles returning to their faces. These were her closest friends and she was glad to be out with them tonight. Tris and Cait jumped up and joined her as she pushed her way through the crowded room to the area under the flashing, multi-colored lights that served as a dance floor. Soon, they were all jumping around and moving in time with the beat, their earlier tense discussion forgotten amid youthful celebration. The music moved Winnie, and she was so caught up in the moment that she kept on moving even after the music screeched to a stop.

  Shouts of anger clashed with screams of alarm. Winnie looked up to see what the commotion was about. She saw a large force of Red Legs pushing their way into the club from two directions, knocking people aside as they made their way toward the DJ’s booth. Constable Holmes led one of the columns of officers, forcing people aside as he made a beeline to the far wall where the DJ was spinning tunes.

  The DJ seemed startled by the sudden appearance of police. He was on a raised platform so Winnie — and surely everyone in the dance hall — could clearly see him reaching into his pockets. He pulled his hands free, now clenched in fists. He turned, then threw something at the closest group of advancing Red Legs as they ascended the stairs to his table.

  The air lit with a sparkle and Winnie knew what he’d done.

  “It’s pixie dust,” she told her friends, referring to the common practice of using regular craft glitter as a foundation for an airborne spell. Often used for things like children’s parties where you could project images and shapes into the air with the reflective particles, this was the first time she’d seen the substance used in an offensive capacity.

  The first few officers in the advancing line threw their hands to their faces and fell backward into their fellows, rubbing at their eyes as if blinded.

  The scattered glitter continued to spread, then hung suspended in the air. A blinding flash forced the Red Legs back. The DJ jumped over his table and sprinted away from the officers. His pursuers shouted in alarm, one of them pointing toward where he’d joined the crowd.

  A hand raised, holding a weapon.

  Winnie screamed, “No!” as the first officer in line pointed his pistol at the fleeing man. The DJ was running straight toward them. No matter how good a shot that Red Leg was, he would miss with at least some of his shots if he started spraying bullets in their direction.

  Her attention was still fixed on the scene unfolding before her when Cait tackled her and Tris, bringing them both to the floor beneath her. Then the shooting started, followed by screams.

  Winnie saw others diving to the floor around her, and figured they’d decided to take cover there as well. It wasn’t until she saw the blank stare of one girl looking back at her that Winnie knew she was wrong. They weren’t diving to the floor to avoid the bullets. They were falling to the floor because they were struck by them.

  Winnie screamed in alarm as she realized the vacant eyes staring back at her belonged to a dead teenager.

  “We have to get out of here,” Cait shouted. “Follow me.”

  Winnie rolled to her side and saw Cait and Tris crawling across the floor towards the emergency exit at the club’s rear. Cait was right. If they could get there, they could reach the street and make their way home. She started crawling behind them, avoiding bodies, alive and dead on the dance floor around them.

  Winnie risked a glance behind her and saw another flash of magical energy, this one a flow pattern she didn’t recognize. Its power was undeniable, though she felt the wind leave her when a charm detonated behind her.

  Red Legs in the lead were thrown backwards by the blast, bowling over their companions behind them and scattering their guns. Winnie looked up and saw the DJ laughing, his expression crazed as he sprinted past her companions and out the door. Casting the Sable spell that had caused the explosion gave his eyes a glazed look of euphoria as he ran. He probably felt invincible.

  The three of them crawled faster. A few feet from the exit, they all rose to a crouch and ran for the opening. The shooting had started again and Winnie heard the thunder and saw the bullets pocking the walls around her.

  Who were they shooting at? The man they were after had left the building already.

  Outside, the world was filled with groaning from the few who had made it out ahead of them. Cait grabbed Winnie’s arm and helped her to stand. Tris was beside her.

  “We need to go,” Cait said. “Are you both alright? You’re not hit, are you?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  Cait continued. “This isn’t a normal raid. This is going to shut down the entire Enclave for the rest of the night, or until the Red Legs are satisfied they have searched long enough for their suspect.”

  The tall blonde pointed to an alley between two buildings across the street. She pushed her friends from behind to get them started, then the three of them ran toward it as sirens announced the approach of more Red Legs coming to support their comrades. They got out of sight in the alley just as the first flashing lights turned onto the street. The three of them kept running for another two blocks, slowing only to make sure there was no traffic coming down the larger streets as they crossed. They stopped by a dumpster in the dark shadows next to a decrepit apartment building to catch their breath. The tenement looked down on them, its old windows like broken teeth.

  “What were they thinking, shooting into a crowded nightclub like that?” Tris asked. “There must be dozens killed or injured back there.”

  “They did what they needed to do to defend themselves,” Cait responded. “That DJ was too prepared for an escape. He wasn’t just another performer. He must be mixed up with the Sable trade. That last blast was an air detonation spell, like the kind I learned in the army. Powerful stuff, and forbidden to be used by anyone unless under direct orders.”

  “That’s the kind of thing that allows the middlings to keep us all isolated here in the Enclave.” Winnie was angry at the DJ for breaking the law and making chanters look like criminals in the eyes of so many middlings. She remembered the look of mischief on his face when he’d seen the effect of his spell on the Red Legs.

  Sirens still sounded in the distance. Winnie hoped some were ambulances and not just more Red Legs adding to the carnage. She knew the primary responsibility for starting the commoti
on lay with the Sable Trading DJ, but she was angry that the Red Legs hadn’t shown more restraint. With Constable Holmes leading them, it was unlikely they would take extra care of the wounded until after apprehending their target. He didn’t care about a few chanter lives if he could get his hands on a Sable trader carrying forbidden wares.

  It took a few minutes for the three to catch their breaths, then they came out of the alley and started toward the nearest bus stop. Perhaps they’d get lucky and catch a crosstown bus still running despite the excitement.

  It would save them a long walk home in the dark.

  Chapter 8

  Winnie woke up the following morning to find her mother watching the news, the anchorman talking about the “cowardly chanter attack on security services bent on cracking down on the Sable trade.”

  Elaine looked up from the kitchen table, her eyes going from her morning tea to Winnie to the TV. She pointed to a video showing the interior of a devastated night club. “Were you there?”

  “Yes, but we left before all the excitement.”

  “Excitement? That wasn’t excitement. That was a gun fight in the middle of a gang war. This is exactly the kind of thing you can expect, getting mixed up with a man like Artos Merrilyn.”

  “Mother, this had nothing to do with Artos and his doing me a favor. The DJ was mixed up with something — he attacked the Red Legs when they came to arrest him. They overreacted and started spraying bullets around the club, hitting anyone who wasn’t taking cover. It was bad, but it had nothing to do with me. I was an innocent bystander.”

  “Are Cait and Tris alright?”

  “Yes, they got out safely with me. We came home together. We’re all fine. I’m going in this morning to finish repairing that clock for Mrs. Adams.”

  “You’re not afraid about a backlash against chanters and their businesses by the Red Legs? Dan Conners on the morning news said the authorities are using video surveillance footage to apprehend everyone involved in the attack.”