The Silenced Tale, стр. 112
“He’s exhausting,” I say rapidly. “Pip, he can’t sponge up enough magic. He’s going to make a mis—”
Before I can even finish the word, it happens. The real Bevel gets in low beside the Viceroy and slashes viciously at the back of his knee, hamstringing him. The Viceroy shouts and crumples, and instantly the other two Bevels are on him, each of them kneeling on his arms, holding his hands still so he cannot cast.
“Ha!” our Bevel cries, triumphant.
“Forsyth, find that Word now. I need you to—” Pip shouts, then she stumbles forward, a grunt tugged from her chest as she claps her hands on her sternum.
The Viceroy wriggles his hand free. He flings his open fingers at Pip, then fists them hard, and Pip stumbles again.
“Oh no you don’t, asshole,” Pip snarls through clenched teeth, looking up. I follow the line of her glare to see that the Viceroy has his hand flung at her chest, and he is trying to . . . to suck the magic back from her. “You’re not getting this back. This power is mine now.”
Closing her hands on what appears to be utter nothingness, Pip yanks.
The Viceroy makes a shrill, keening cry. “Stop, stop!”
“No, no,” Pip says with a grin, and yanks again. “This is my magic now. This is my power. My strength. You may have wounded me, cut me, scored me, scarred me. But you have brought a kind of magic into this world which makes the inherent, the inborn, the innate manifest. And what I am is a fan, Viceroy. Varnet, son of Solinde, weather witch and Deal-Maker. I take things, and I appropriate it. I borrow the voice of another to speak my own truths. I clothe myself in another’s power until I have grown steady on my own legs, and have learned to wield my own. You may have put the vines in me, but they don’t belong to you, not anymore. You can never control the interpretation of a piece of art once you release it into the world. You cannot control the way it affects others. This interpretation is mine now.”
Pip yanks a third time, and then, whatever it is she is grasping gives way. She jerks back, and I rush to get behind her, to hold her up, to keep her from crashing into the ground. Her eyes roll up in her head, her whole body slack, as the ivy scars wriggle and writhe all over her body, purple-swirled green glowing out from under her eyelashes.
The Viceroy spasms and jerks, his own eyes rolled up in his head and his mouth foaming.
“He’s having a fit!” one of the Kintyres shouts. “Get off him! You don’t hold down an epileptic!”
The fans scramble away, even as the real Kintyre says, “No, don’t—” and surges forward to pin the Viceroy in place. It is too late, though. The seizures have passed, and though he is dazed, the Viceroy is present enough to slug Kintyre in the face and kick him back. My brother grunts, surprised, and rolls back, flipping with the momentum of the blow and regaining his feet.
Even without the magic to bolster him, the Viceroy is quick. He skitters across the floor. Something glitters in his fist, and I realize that it is that damned dagger again.
“I wish I hadn’t bought that fucking thing!” I snarl, chasing after the Viceroy. He crawls away as fast as he is able, leaving a bloody smear in his wake.
“I won’t live without magic again. It hurts,” he cries.
“I . . . I never . . .” Pip says, all confidence and color draining from her expression. She stumbles back against my chest, and I wrap my hands under her elbows to hold her upright. “I never meant to . . .”
The Viceroy bares his bloody teeth at us. “You tortured me!”
“You started it!” Pip snarls back.
A woman dressed in light armor, carrying a staff and a pouch of what looks like tiny phials of potions skids to the floor, kneeling in Ahbni’s blood and pressing her hand firmly against the wounds of one of the Bevels. It is the healer. The real healer.
“Healing spell, healing spell,” the woman mutters to herself, digging through her satchel before crying out triumphantly and dumping a viscous teal liquid onto the bleeding gash. A quick glance around the room shows me that there are other cosplayers dressed similarly—paladins and clerics and holy druids—all performing the same office. Healing what can be healed, saving those who can be saved. I am grateful, suddenly, that the magic has spread so far that their potions and spells seem to be working. I wonder what had really been in those phials before the leaking magic altered them. And then I have no more time to wonder, for my attention is wrenched back to the battle before me.
The Viceroy dodges around Kintyre and lunges for Pip. “Give it back to me!”
But I am there first, Smoke swift and sure, to hamstring his other leg. The Viceroy howls as he collapses, hands barely catching him and palms already slick with blood, so that he slides forward onto his face. It becomes clear to me that the Viceroy will not be escaping this encounter alive—not because any of us will kill him outright, but because he is bleeding to death in small, ghastly increments.
Crumpled on the ground in the center of a spreading pool of ichor, the Viceroy peers up at Pip with pleading eyes. “Please,” he says. “Please, it hurts so much.”
“No,” Pip says back, crouching by his side. “No, I won’t give it back. But I’ll help the hurting. I’ll make it quicker, if that’s