He did, however, pause for just a moment, pulling at his cloak until it nearly covered him completely, then fumbling underneath it with his hands, rubbing them together against the morning chill, pressing his fingers to his heart.
He could not generate the full burst of energy he’d been hoping for; he’d waited too long.
He glanced down the steeply sloping wynd, and decided that this would end this morning.
He needed to get somewhere where there would be a couple of people, he thought. He would be hampered in the use of his powers then, but so would his opponents, and they would be more so because they were the aggressors. He knew that if he still didn’t dare let anyone outside the cult he had fled see what he could do, then they wouldn’t either. The imperative for secrecy was sown into their very bones.
He knew where they were, but he also knew they had to know where he was. He had to keep moving.
They had to know where he was, yet he kept to the shadows even so, to keep anyone looking out their windows from noticing him either. He wasn’t about the break into any of the private homes around him, and risk an alarm going off before he could stop it. He needed some sort of public facility; the alarms there he could deal with preemptively. Some place where maybe the janitor had come in.
He wished he had a better idea of where anything in this city was located. He had the layout of the streets and wynds around the old town memorized, but the map he had seen said nothing of what lay along them.
He was American, originally, having grown up in Seattle, Washington. That much he could remember, though at some point his former master had stepped into his mind and quietly removed the memory of what his original name was. He knew he had taken on the name of Joshua when he’d joined the Disciples, but it was the only name he had now. Nor could he remember his parents’ names, where he went to school, or even anything besides flashes, images of people and places that he could find precious little context for.
There was no life for you until you became a Disciple of the Two Marys. It was absurd, but he still believed that, as sure as he believed that the magical powers that ran from his fingertips were real. Everything Gabriel Isaac had taught him was true, except, of course, where his powers had come from. And how much it was really possible to do.
It had been a dose of cold stone reality, finding that book. He still had no idea who’d written it, but that was no matter; his master had lied to him, and that was all there was to it. And he was doing the man a favor by leaving without telling anyone else. Though he understood why he couldn’t be trusted to live.
When he found the building at the bottom of the hill, he knew it had to be the public facility he was looking for. How else in a historical city district like this could it be so big and grey and ugly? He scrambled about, looking for the entrance. Every minute it took for him to find it brought his persuers closer.
And then, suddenly, one of them was there, a bare five feet away from him, though how she could have gotten there so quickly he didn’t want to think. He raised his hand, pounded his fist, and screamed.
It worked. She went down. She wasn’t dead, but hopefully she would never wake, leaving the Disciples to believe that he was still being chased.
He would have to carry her somewhere she would never be found, but first he had to deal with her companion, whom he doubted was too far behind.
There was no time to break into the building anymore. He backed up against the house next to it, his head pressing against the cold surface of a window pane. His twisted his hands together and began to chant, “I call my spirits to awaken. I call my kindred souls to come. I call those who would gather around me to bring me their protection...”
Then his head fell back as the window opened, and his head was shoved against the edge, and a huge book labeled The Complete Works of Jane Austen waved over him as a weapon as a female voice demanded, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
Then a flash of blue light flew past him and the book hit him in the face as the woman fell over, and he was quick to realize that her memory had been erased as well. He pulled the window shut and turned to face the man, who had stopped and was staring at the woman in horror.
“Kill,” he ordered, but the man did not fall; the spell hadn’t taken. The man raised his own arms, and in a mad panic Joshua flexed his fingers and cried out, “AWAKE, MY THUNDERS! AWAKE, WHAT I HAVE ABSORBED, YOU SERVE ME NOW, AWAKE!”
It was the most dangerous spell there was, the one they had been warned only to use in case of no other recourse.
The air around them shrieked. Joshua thought he saw the other man fall back. Then bright light covered his eyes, an unbearably high-pitched whine filled his ears, and he passed out.
Kate wondered why not only Diamond, but even Sheila now insisted on calling her that. Not just “Mosley,” but “Mrs. Mosley.” She’d heard varying things about the so-called British formality. On one hand, they tended to use full address like this. On the other, their store clerks were as rude as hell.
Though with that overly nervous tone, its presence now really shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. She’s also seen him talking with Sheila earlier with her clutching his hands to give him moral support. This was hopefully the confession that Kate had been waiting for since she’d started coaching the pair; she didn’t want to have to deal with any real issues yet. They were all on edge enough with Sheila’s citizenship exam imminent, and their ability to possibly go to the next Olympics at stake.
“What is it, Diamond?” she said. “Spit it out.”
“Well...I just think you might end up finding it relevant, you know, it’s just that IminlovewithGeorgeandhesinlovewithmeandwereinarelationshipnow.”
Kate let her relief show freely. So it was just that after all. “Good,” she said, “for a moment I’d thought you’d fallen in love with Rubinstein.”
Diamond was staring at her open-mouthed. Kate liked that. It meant she was where she wanted to be in his head.
Though on the other hand, their timidity might prove a big problem later. She preferred her skaters to be like she had been, truth be told. Like George Fiddleson, and his partner Nessa Ross. Rudy Klukov might be currently muttering “Big B,” under his breath whenever he was around the latter, but Kate respected both of them very highly. Though in this case it raised one concern.
“I will want to talk with George, of course,” she continued, leading him out towards the rink. Sheila was already there of course, sitting by the edge, studying, just as she’d been every moment of the past two weeks when she hadn’t been on the ice. Camille and Rudy were warming up. George was standing near Sheila, staring at Kate and Diamond intently. Nessa was standing near the edge of the rink, tapping her foot and staring at George impatiently. Their coach, Betsy Weller, was watching Camille and Rudy, having apparently resigned herself to this taking as long as it would. The Russians were nowhere in sight.
“Take Sheila onto the ice and start warming up,” she ordered Diamond. “Mr. Fiddleson,” she called, “if I could have a word?”
He came over, exchanging a reassuring look with Diamond as he passed him, and the first thing he said to Kate was, “Call me George.”
“All right, then. George. I understand that you are currently on an intimate footing with one of my skaters?”
“That I am,” he replied, and more or less looked her in the eyes. This was really more like it.
Kate sat down; she gestured for George to sit down next to her. “Have you considered what impact a relationship with you would have on him?”
“Mrs. Mosley,” he replied, “I can reassure you, we are both as dedicated-”
“I’m not talking about your practice time. You both strike me as perfectly responsible young men capable of handling that. No, what I’m worried about is how he’s going to be affected by your, well, dominant personality.”
“That’s a polite way of putting it, isn’t it?” He asked, flashing a cheeky grin that Kate could have sworn she’d seen on Diamond too once or twice. That was a good sign, if George had passed it on to him.
“The way I see it,” she explained to him, “being around you, he’ll go one or two ways. Either you’ll overwhelm him completely, and he’ll spend his life in your shadow, which, quite frankly, would be an absolute disaster, or you’ll teach him to stop being timid. So I would very much appreciate it, you see, if you made an attempt to see that the latter happens instead of the former. Because if I see the former happening, Mr. Fiddleson, well, I don’t know if I really have any authority over my skaters’ personal relationships, but I do know I can make things very difficult for you. And I will, if I must.”
“Don’t worry about that, Mrs. Mosley. I already know better than to underestimate you.”
“Glad to hear it. Off with you.”
As George left, Kate heard Nessa sigh, “About time,” and also the door open and someone else come into the rink. Hoping it was Doug with her breakfast, she looked up, but to her disappointment it was the two Russian skaters. The woman, Markova, was glancing about, and Kate thought she discerned their coach’s name in her speech. Usually the skaters all practiced at different times, but on Saturday, all four couples currently training in Edinburgh shared the ice, and this was going to be one busy Saturday. But then, she’d know that already.
His first thought was for the bodies of his two foes, and if they had been far enough down the alley so as not to be spotted. The fog had lifted enough for him to see them both there, apparently undisturbed.
He staggered over and reached down to take their pulses. But the burning was getting worst, spreading out to his wrists, and he found his fingers would not close around their wrists. He could tell only that he was cold to the touch, and she was warmer.
He recognized them both as well. The man was Lot. Joshua had never known him very well, and knew he would not give him much thought. Not when the woman was Perpetua.
She’d taken her name from a Roman martyr, and here she lay now, having suffered at his hands the fate most dreaded by all Disciples. At least death would bring release of the soul from the body and the hope of Heaven, but he would have to keep her asleep permanently to make sure noone else came after him, her soul trapped.
He’d claimed to have loved her once. He’d even genuinely believed that he had. She might even still believe that she loved him back, or maybe she was convinced that she couldn’t anymore.
Lot was easy enough to deal with, even with his hands twitching in their pain; a word dissolved his body into the air. But when he tried to somehow scoop Perpetua up with his arms to carry her out of sight, he only felt his arms start to tremble, than shake.
There was only one explanation, of course. His final spell had awoken what it shouldn’t have, and there was no regaining control until whatever was happening had run its course.
He nudged Perpetua’s body with his feet, trying to at least get her up against the wall. But he had scarcely moved her a foot or so when he felt his feet seizing up, and then, as if being pulled by invisible strings, began racing towards the wall of the big building he had sought out earlier that morning.
He crashed hard into the wall, believing for a moment that his hands would smash through in their mad quest to get wherever they wanted to go. He started scrambling madly towards the front, hoping he could get himself into the building-locked doors probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem-before anyone passed by or his hands really did smash through the wall. They felt as if someone was trying to slice them away from his wrists and run with them towards some place it was vital they get to, to deliver there what burned them so badly.
He stood rather stiffly in front of her as she took the bag. It smelt good and felt warm. “Mrs. Mosley,” he said, and she realized immediately he was practicing his bad British accent on her, “I have-haaahvve-no, dammit...”
Diamond was close enough to hear him, and burst out laughing. “Will you shut up?” Doug yelled at him. “You don’t have a job hanging on this stupid accent! At least the interview's not until tommorrow.”
Kate ignored them in favor of wolfing down all the bacon in the bag first. Then she happened to look over to where Sheila was practicing her jumps, cursing as she landed an axel awkwardly. Something looked wrong, and Kate could guess quickly what it was.
"Sheila?" she beckoned her over. Sheila came. "Have you eaten yet?" It was clear from her face that she hadn't. "Why not?"
"I overslept a little. I didn't have time." She failed to meet Kate's eyes.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you, Sheila." Sheila looked up, her face like that of a deer in headlights. For a moment Kate considered letting it go; she knew from her own experience that you couldn't push this. But according to what Pamchenko had told her, they were supposed to be past this point now. "You are going to eat after practice, aren't you, right, Sheila? Sheila?"
“Listen,” said Rudy, loud enough to draw everyone’s attention, “someone’s running outside.”
He was right. When all the conversation in the rink stopped and everyone’s skates stilled, they could hear a mad clatter of footsteps, heavy shoes on the hard floor.
Kate’s first thought was that it was the Russian coach, of course. But his shoes didn’t sound that heavy, and she had never known him to do anything to break his composure such as running. Still, his two students looked hopeful, gliding their way to the edge of the rink.
The doors nearest to Kate and Doug swung open, and in burst a man Kate certainly didn’t recognize, but would to her dying day never forget the sight of.
He was a tall man, tanned with wild brown hair which fell about his chest and waved in the air as he ran, but even when it fell in front of his face it did little to hide his crazed expression. His face was that of a cornered and cowed wild beast, halfway between whimpering for mercy and going down with its claws in its killer’s face. But even that wasn’t as frightening as his hands. He was holding them out in front of him, and they were clenched into fists. The skin on them was grey, horrible grey light bathed them, and there were streaks of red that Kate thought might just be blood trying to burst out through the skin.
At the sight of him Doug had backed into the rink wall, Betsy Weller was scrambling along the seats, and Sheila, Diamond, and everyone else were skating hastily away, but Kate found herself frozen in place. As he staggered towards her, Kate heard herself starting to say, “Sir...”
Then those ghastly hands grabbed her cheeks, and she opened her throat to scream, but her face was frozen, and a thousand emotions were suddenly rushing through her heart, and white light filled her eyes and ears before she saw before her the face of Elizabeth Bennett, her angry accusations hanging in the air, only giving fuel to the indignation he had felt that she had, against her own better interest, turned down his proposal. “And this is your opinion of me!” she cried. “This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed!”
“But perhaps,” the woman in Joshua arm’s continued, ignoring the man who had run up from the side of the rink and was trying to wrestle her from Joshua’s grasp, “these offences might have been overlooked, had your pride not been hurt by my...” Then her voice turned into a mumble, and the magic that had fused Joshua’s hands to her face broke, causing her to fall back into the man’s arms as she passed out.
“Kate?” The man was shaking her frantically. “Kate, wake up!”
Whatever relief Joshua had gotten by dispelling the first of his tasks was swiftly fading. Hastily he descended on the man and grabbed his face also, felt his hands again fuse.
As with the woman, the man’s eyes flew wide and his mouth opened and first froze in the shape of a perfect O. Then he wailed out, “I have just had a letter from Jane with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from any one. My youngest sister has left all her friends-has eloped;-has thrown herself into the power of-of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together...” Then his voice too descended into a mumble, and he fell from Joshua’s hands to the floor.
His hands were still burning. He looked up to see one old women, four young women, and four young men staring at him. Then one of them, a boy with sandy hair, turned and hastily started towards the nearest exit. The others followed.
With a wave of his hands Joshua sealed the doors. He’d have to do this to them all before the spell was satisfied, and he had no time to chase them all down through the building. He had to get this done and get back to Perpetua before someone found her.
The old woman couldn’t run very fast; he caught her just as everyone else clustered around the furthest of the doors. Seeing their struggle with it was useless, a tall man with loose curly blonde hair broke away from the group and came charging, yelling, “Leave her alone!”
Joshua ignored him, but only grabbed the woman’s face. He watched it seize up with one eye, keep the other on the man until he had reached them, and like the first man, tried the wrestle the old woman away. “Are you truly this much of a fool?” was all the woman managed before she went limp. Joshua then grabbed the man’s face.
There was a snarl on his face; it quickly vanished, of course. Then he said only, “To your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Willoughby that he may endeavour to deserve her,” before he passed out.
The seven people at the door gave up their struggle in favor of running at Joshua’s approach. Except that a brown-haired young man stood there, shoulders limp, staring at the downed form of the blonde man.
Two of the women grabbed his arms. “Come on, Diamond, please,” pleaded one, a thin girl with dark red hair.
“Have sense,” the other, a tall girl with dark hair added, “we can’t do anything for George now!”
When Joshua reached the three of them, the tall girl attacked him, her fists hitting his face before he had hers in his grip, after which they fell to her side.
“I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain. But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation -- as a friend, indeed, you may command me. I will hear whatever you like...” This girl’s speech before she passed out being longer, the redhead succeeded in bodily dragging her companion several feet before Joshua turned his attention back to them, but he easily covered the distance and grabbed her face first.
There had been tears in her eyes; they stopped as they widened. She too gave a long speech: “I understand you. You do not suppose that I have ever felt much. For four months, Marianne, I have had all this hanging on my mind without being a liberty to speak of it to a single creature, knowing that it would make you and mother most unhappy whenever it was explained to you, yet unable...”
“Why are you doing this to us?” the boy asked when she had gone limp.
There wasn’t time to answer him. Joshua took hold of his face and watched it shift, the pain in his expression fleeing. Then it abruptly returned as he cried, “No, no, misery such as mine has no pride. I care not who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be open to all the world. Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer so little may be proud and independent as they like, may resist insult or...” It was a relief when he went limp.
The remaining four in the room looked at each other. Then the older of the two remaining girls, a brunette, said, “No do this. No run. No cry. No escape; I get this done.” Pushing away the other three, she strode out and to Joshua, and closed her eyes as his hands fused with her face.
“Captain Wentworth,” she said when her eyes had sprung open again, “I have, in truth, given...much thought, to the matter of our engagement. You know, of course, my father’s opinion, and I said I did not care for that, and indeed, you must believe I have not given too much thought to it now, but there are other things I have been forced to consider, for your sake as well as...” Then she was falling, and this time Joshua found himself catching her, and carefully laying her across the floor.
His patience was rewarded when the younger of the two men said, “She’s right,” then strode over, saying, “Do your worst, you freak.” Joshua noted vaguely that he sounded American.
Joshua was feeling the pain in his hands start to recede now, especially as he grabbed onto this youngster’s face and felt it drain a little more. The remaining two youths, now pressed against the wall and whispering frantically to each other, and it would be done.
“I had not supposed it possible,” the sandy-haired boy was saying, in an English accent, but then the Russian-sounding girl had been talking perfect English as well moments ago, “coming in such a state of mind into this house as I have done, that anything could occur to make me suffer more, but you have been inflicting deeper wounds in almost every sentence. Though I have, if the course of our acquaintance, been...” He mumbled and went limp; Joshua dropped him down next to the brunette.
“Not zhat easily!” the last girl declared. She looked very young; possibly not even sixteen. “I will not give in zhat easily!” She turned and ran, but as she did she tripped, and before she could pull herself up, Joshua had come up behind her and slapped his hands to her face.
She flailed for less than a split second, and he could not see her face. But it was a scarce few moments before she said, “You are mistaken, sir, you are quite mistaken. How could Mr. Crawford say such a thing? I gave him no encouragement yesterday. On the contrary, I told him, I cannot recollect my exact words, but I am sure I told him...” mumbled, and passed out.
At last Joshua took swift strides to where the last young man was kneeling over the brunette, muttering to her in what sounded like Russian. He didn’t even break his gaze on her as Joshua knelt down next to him and took a hold of his face.
“Elinor,” he said, his position still unaltered, “if I may call you that, though I know I have precious little right now to even that much, I know you have every reason to despise me, I know very well that you may very well be ready to marry another man, one whom I believe is worthier of you than myself, but I must ask, nonetheless, if...” Then he fell, his body lying across that of his fellow Russian.
Joshua was aware that he should get up, he should get outside, he should get Perpetua’s body. But when he rose he found himself unsteady on his feet.
There was no denying he had committed the grossest breach of secrecy imaginable. Especially because he had the sinking feeling the spell he had cast on these eleven people was probably irreversible, leaving him no choice but to tell them everything. Suddenly Perpetua’s body lying outside seemed a minor infraction.
Not to mention he still wasn’t sure exactly what’d he done.
With another wave of his hands, he unsealed the doors, and one of them burst open as a man strode in.
“Zdravstvulte,” he called. “Ja ogorchenn...” Then his eyes fell on the scene. And stared. And stared. Joshua could almost hearing him asking “What the hell?”
It was a good question indeed. There was probably some connection between everybody’s speeches, if only because two of them had addressed an “Elinor.” In fact, their acting like other people put Joshua in find of one crazy theory held by many of the Disciples, but surely that couldn’t be true...
He reflexively backed away as the Russian man knelt over the younger two Russians, flipping them both over and shaking them. “Natalia?” he asked anxiously. “Sergei?” Each uttered another phrase, “Is not this song worth staying for?” and “Not to find it in you; for I cannot be ignorant that...”
It was the first phrase that triggered something in Joshua’s memory, something that felt like another lifetime, of watching a movie with his...sister? His memories of who she had been were erased. It had been...1995? 1996? Never mind that. He remembered the movie’s title: Persuasion. It had included a hero called Captain Wentworth.
Then he realized. The volume of Jane Austen. He had started the spell already when he had come into contact with it.
Yes, the other names seemed familiar. He was he’d heard some of them: “Knightly,” “Wickham,” “Willoughby,” in association with her works, even though he’d never read any of them.
But if this was what it was looking like, that meant that what he’d considered to be the craziest sect in the cult had been right.
It was at about this point that Joshua was suddenly slammed against the side of a chair with the hands of the newcomer at his throat. “Vhat haff you done to them? Vhat have you done to them?”
“I think I woke them up,” Joshua gasped in response.