“Surely it’s too dangerous!” Amelia protested.
“I can always heal Veronica,” Mistress Blossom said. “Just make sure you don’t aim at the head or the heart, Jacques.”
Jacques nodded. “My accuracy is unrivaled in Brightwater. My hands are guided by Loku’s will. You can count on me.”
Veronica crossed the room and stood against the opposite wall. With her newfound confidence at making her tattoo work, she seemed to have forgotten her shyness about her body. The red leather that held her breasts made an amazing compliment to her tumbling silver hair and smooth, olive skin.
I stood in awe of her beauty as lightning flickered and crackled around her head and shoulders. She turned to face us, her hands on her hips and a look of fierce challenge in her eyes.
“Ready!” she called.
Jacques took aim and flicked a knife at Veronica with barely a twitch of his wrist. There was a loud crack and lightning blitzed out from Veronica’s side. The knife hit the ground with a clang and skidded a few feet, and a puff of smoke lingered in the air. The smell of hot metal wafted over to us.
Jacques threw another knife, and then another. Veronica knocked them out of the air, one after the other. She was smiling, calmly watching the knives and allowing her defensive spell to zap each knife to the ground.
After a while, she held up her hand to Jacques. “That’s enough, Jacques. I can feel my Mana getting a bit low.” With a moment’s concentration, she skillfully withdrew the flow of Mana from the spell, and the lightning absorbed back into her skin.
Jacques set the last blade down on the table next to him, then stuck his thumbs into his belt and rocked back on the balls of his feet, gazing at the Lightning Mage and shaking his head slowly.
“Never seen anything like it in my life,” he said, then turned to me. “Good job, William. You’ve done well for yourself, lad, and that’s for sure. You’ll be able to deal with whatever life throws at you now.”
He was looking at me, considering, and I caught a strange look in his eye. He chewed his lower lip for a moment and took a breath as if he was about to say something, but Mistress Blossom’s voice interrupted us before he could.
“I think that’s enough for one night,” she said. “Great job, Veronica.”
The mistress was helping Veronica back into her tunic and breastplate. I looked at the two of them and thought that what Jacques had said was true. Tonight, I had created two new Rune Sorcerers. With such an ability, I certainly would be able to meet whatever challenges life threw my way. For all that, there had been something in Jacques’s voice, something odd…
“I’ll have Sophie prepare some rooms for you all,” Mistress Blossom said as she and Veronica came over to join us. “Shall we go upstairs? How about that drink, Jacques? It’s a while ago you suggested heading back upstairs.”
We all laughed, but then looked at him and stopped. To everyone’s surprise, Jacques was not eagerly leading the way back to the bar. Instead, my old friend was shuffling his feet, not looking at us.
“Jacques?” I asked, feeling a moment of impending dread. “What is it, buddy?”
He looked up and gave a helpless gesture with his hands. “You’re not going to like it. When I saw you this afternoon, I resolved not to mention this, but after having seen your new powers, I think you’ll be able to handle it.”
“Not mention what? Handle what? Come on, Jacques, spit it out!”
“Well, it’s about Katlyn, you remember Katlyn?”
Cold fear smote me. “Of course I remember Katlyn. What about her?” I wasn’t sure how Jacques could even know anything about my girlfriend—as far as I knew, she was still in Aranor.
“Well, you see, she’s. . .”
“What? What is she?” I could have shaken him, but I restrained myself. He was obviously deeply uncomfortable.
“I suppose she’s what you might call a slave.”
My hands clenched into fists, my fingernails biting into the skin of my palm. “What?!” I shouted. “How can you know this?”
“I saw her in a wagon, passing through Brightwater.”
“How long ago?”
“Two days back.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this when you first saw me?”
He held up his hands as if to ward off my anger. “Hey, think about it from my point of view! For all I knew you were just a simple farm lad still, with no more magic in you than I had. You showed up in Brightwater, the last person I expected to see, and at first, I thought, well, what’s he going to do about it anyway? He can’t exactly go up to the mines and start freeing slaves single-handed. Better to not mention it. Less painful for you, you know?”
I glared at him. “And now?”
“Well, now, I see that you might be a man able to handle such a task as taking on a whole mine full of slavers, overseers, monsters, and gods only know what else. On your own, I’m not so sure, of course, but with Amelia and Veronica at your side, well, I can’t think of anything you three couldn’t handle!”
So deftly he managed to turn his confession into a series of careful compliments. Amelia and Veronica were looking pleased with themselves and smiling at each other at his compliments, but Mistress Blossom was frowning at Jacques with her arms crossed on her chest.
“Anyway,” he continued, a mischievous glint in his eye, “we were having such a pleasant time; I didn’t want it to end prematurely.”
“Jacques, I feel like using my magic to burn you to a crisp right now.”
“I can understand that. But there was nothing we could have done, even if I had told you earlier. And how could I have known you were now a powerful Ink Mage, with beautiful and magical companions…”
“All right, all right,” I said, interrupting his sweet-talking of the women, “how do
