THE NEWLY WOKEN
1904—St. Louis
North didn’t really care what Maggie said about giving the new guy a chance, and he didn’t care that the Thief had managed to deliver the device like she was supposed to. He’d found them too late to hear much of what they’d been talking about. But he still didn’t trust either one of them, even if Ruth was starting to. Which was why he found himself sitting next to the one who called himself Ben as they drove the brewery’s wagon toward the hospital to collect their new brothers-in-arms before the Guard could get to them. After the rounding up of the Mageus over in Dutchtown, Mother Ruth wasn’t taking any chances. Considering that Ben looked like a born liar, North wasn’t taking any chances either.
The hospital was on the north end of town, far from the excitement of the Exposition. It was still the dead of night, so they didn’t pass more than one or two other travelers on the road. Rescuing the newly awoken should be an easy enough job, considering that they had one of their own on the inside working as a night charge.
He gave the horses another gentle flick of the reins to urge them on. Easy or not, the faster it was over with, the better. Next to him, Ben was silent, but North could feel the weight of his stare as he drove. After a couple of miles, he’d had about enough.
“You have a problem?” he asked, glaring at Ben. “Something you want to say?”
At first North didn’t think he would answer, but then he spoke.
“Your tattoo . . . ,” Ben said, and there was something funny about his voice.
North had heard enough about the mark he chose to wear on his arm in the years since he’d gotten it, which was why he usually kept the tattoo covered. But he hadn’t bothered to button the sleeves of the shirt he’d tossed on when he’d been woken about the kids, and as he’d driven the horses, his sleeves had fallen back to reveal the dark circle that ringed his left wrist.
“What about it?” North asked, lifting his chin and daring him to say something.
“I knew someone who had a tattoo something like that,” Ben said.
“I doubt that.” He rotated his wrist to reveal the bracelet of ink formed by a skeletal snake eating its own tail. “Not unless he was Antistasi.”
“It was something like that,” Ben said, frowning down at it. “Is that what the symbol is—the mark of the Antistasi?”
“This symbol?” North said. “It’s an ouroboros, which goes back way before the Antistasi. But, yeah, the Antistasi adopted it, probably sometime during the Disenchantment. They used it as a sign so they could identify each other,” he said, pulling his sleeve back down. This time he fastened the cuff to hide the mark from view.
“You had to accept it, then, to be part of Ruth’s organization?” Ben asked. North could tell he was trying to keep his tone light, but he was failing miserably.
“I didn’t have to do anything,” North said. He’d had the tattoo since he was sixteen, a promise to himself and to the father he’d lost. It was sheer luck that he’d run into Mother Ruth and her people not long after that, and even better luck that she’d taken him in. “Nobody is forced to take the sign. It’s not the Middle Ages anymore.”
“But you did take it.”
“Because I liked what it stood for,” North explained, answering the implied question. “The snake eating its own tail is an ancient symbol for eternity. Infinity.” Rebirth. He’d been a different person before, and the serpent on his wrist reminded him he’d be a different person yet again someday.
“The serpent separates the world from the chaos and disorder it was formed from,” Ben said, as if he knew something about it. “Life and death, two sides to the same coin, as my friend used to say. You can’t have one without the other.”
North frowned, not sure what to make of Ben’s statement. He’d never thought of it like that, and he wasn’t sure he cared to. “The Antistasi use it because it represents magic itself. Because everything in the world—the sun and the stars and even time itself—it all begins and ends with magic.”
“And if magic ends,” Ben said, his voice low and solemn, “so does the world.”
North huffed out his disagreement. “Magic can’t end,” he said. “That’s what the symbol shows. Magic has no beginning and no end. Since the Disenchantment, they’ve tried to snuff us out and kill us off, but they haven’t been able to. We learn and bend, and then we change.”
“You believe that?” Ben asked, looking at North with curious eyes.
“You don’t?” North tossed back.
But Ben didn’t answer, and it was too late anyway, because they’d arrived.
North pulled the wagon around back, just like they’d agreed to, and gave the signal—a couple of sharp whistles that were returned in kind. A few minutes later the back gates of the hospital opened and their work started in truth.
There were about a dozen people to move. One had his hands wrapped in gauze, and they all had a sleepy, docile quality to them.
“What’s wrong with them?” Ben asked. “Did the serum do this?”
North shook his head. “This isn’t the serum. The hospital doped them up to make sure they can’t do anything. Morphine, probably.” He understood why the nurses had drugged them. The newly made Mageus had caused too many problems because they didn’t know how to control their powers.
He’d understood what Ruth’s goal was in giving these people magic, but seeing it up close like this—it wasn’t what he’d expected. Ruth had talked about freeing something inside these people, but they didn’t look free. They looked worn and tired and like they’d been dragged through the mud and back. And they looked scared.
The last one out was a young woman who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Her blond hair hung limp around her face, and the smattering of freckles across her nose gave her the look of someone much younger. Like the rest, she had a stunned look to her, but unlike the others, she stopped to speak to North.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Where are you taking us?”
“We’re friends,” North assured her. “And we’re here to take you somewhere safe.”
She frowned at him, her eyes still glassy from the drug. “The hospital isn’t safe?”
North sighed, feeling every minute of the sleep he was missing. He didn’t have time to explain the reality of the girl’s new world to her. “What’s your name?” he asked instead.
“Greta,” the girl said, frowning sleepily at him.
“Do you know what’s happening to you, Greta?”
She shook her head. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I don’t mean to do it, but I can’t stop it. . . .”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Something inside you’s woken up, that’s all. The old magic is yours now.” He tried to infuse his voice with the same reverence that Ruth used, but it didn’t come out right, and the girl only frowned at him more.
“Mr. Lipscomb—Caleb. There was an explosion. Is he—”
“He’ll be just fine,” North assured her.
“They wouldn’t tell us anything. They kept us locked up but wouldn’t tell us what was going on.”
Of course. Now that these poor souls had the old magic, they’d be treated like the pariahs they’d become. “We’re here to free you,” he said gently.
But her chin trembled, and the next thing North knew, the girl’s cheeks were wet. He thought it was from tears, but a moment later North realized his cheeks were wet too.
“It’s raining,” Ben said, looking up. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, and it’s raining.”
“I’m sorry.” Greta sniffed. “I don’t know why that keeps happening. I don’t know how to make it stop.”
North didn’t know what to tell her. He’d imagined the people they’d given magic to as reborn, but these poor souls looked more like they were ready to curl up and die. He didn’t have the words to comfort that kind of sorrow, and he wondered if he had any right, considering what his part in it had been. Without another word, he helped Greta into the back of the wagon. Before closing the door, he popped the fuse on a bottle of Maggie’s Quellant and tossed it in with them.
“Is that really necessary?” Ben asked. “They could barely walk as it is. I doubt they’re going to cause any trouble.”
“They’re like children,” North explained. “They don’t know how to control what they have. We got one in there who sets fire to his own hands because he can’t stop it and another one who leaves a trail of growing vines on everything she touches. It’s a long ride back to the brewery, and we can’t risk them not being able to hold themselves together until they’re safely back and we can show them how to control it.” He glanced over at Ben. “You remember what it was like, don’t you? When you were just a kid and you didn’t realize everything you could do?”
“Yeah . . .” Ben’s voice held the ghost of some past regret in it. “I remember.”
“There you go,” North said, climbing up into the driver’s seat of the wagon and knowing without a doubt that he wasn’t the only one with ghosts following his footsteps through life.
Bringing up his childhood apparently was enough to shut Ben up good and tight, which was fine by North. He didn’t care to deal with any talking when he had thinking to do.
They rode in silence back through town to the brewery, with the first light of dawn setting the horizon aglow. But it was Ben who saw the smoke first.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing in the direction of a glowing place on the horizon, where a plume of black rose up like a nightmare, blocking the stars in the sky.
The brewery was on fire.