Climbing over bodies and slipping through warriors’ legs, his footie pajamas stained with blood and the foul ooze of dead things, came Sin’s little brother, Toby. He walked right into Gerald’s arms.
Gerald straightened, holding the child’s chubby hand out palm up and speaking a few words.
The world changed again, an illusion dissolving like mist in the sun, and they all saw the mark.
The mark was black and terrible in the hollow of that baby’s little hand: It looked like the magician’s sigil, but not quite enough like it. It showed a hand, forming a fist around someone else’s heart.
Gerald must have invented two different marks. A variation on the magician’s mark, which drained power from people instead of circles, and this one.
“This is the magician’s version of the demon’s mark,” Gerald said, his eyes on Sin. “I have complete control over anyone who wears it.”
He’d put the mark on Toby at the Goblin Market. He’d handed the baby over to Mae when he had no further use for him.
“I hold this child’s life in the palm of my hand,” Gerald said in a clear, carrying voice. “My Circle is walking out of here tonight.”
“Toby,” Sin said in a strangled voice, reaching for him. “How—”
“I wouldn’t,” Gerald advised. “I called the child here. I can make him go anywhere I want him to go. I could make him walk off a cliff. I could have him possessed. I could stop his breath with a thought. Have your people stand down.”
“Get back!” Sin commanded.
But the Market could taste blood. They finally had magicians at their mercy, and Sin was not the leader yet.
“The child’s as good as dead anyway,” said Matthias the piper, his bow still strung. “It’s not like he’s ever going to take it off.”
“Matthias!” Sin exclaimed, but there was a murmur of agreement around the square.
“And we don’t want a leader who can be blackmailed!”
Toby started to cry, his soft, wailing voice rising above the slanted roofs of the buildings around the market square. Jamie gave Mae a look she couldn’t read, not with his magic-hot eyes, but then his hand sought hers and she realized he was horror-struck.
“I take no pleasure in this,” Gerald told Jamie, but Jamie continued to look as sick as Mae felt.
The piper was right, though. Mae could see no way to make Toby safe.
Sin stood with her back straight and her knives still drawn, her mouth trembling.
“Kill them,” said Matthias, and the crowd surged.
Alan said, “Wait.”
He came forward, made it almost to Gerald and the baby in a few long strides, and then Toby gave a long cry of pain. Alan stopped, hand outstretched.
“What good is the child to you?” he asked, his voice wrapping sweetly around every word, less guiding than simply making you want to follow him. “You can hear them. They’ll kill you anyway. You need a better hostage than that.”
He slanted a dismissive look at Toby’s small head. Gerald was starting to look thoughtful.
“You need collateral to control the demon,” Alan said, and he turned his hand palm up, reaching out the other for the baby. “Hand over the baby. Transfer the mark. You can have me.”
“Alan,” Nick said in a terrible voice. “Alan,
He started forward, knocking down everyone in his path.
“Now,” Alan commanded, and Gerald reached out and clasped his hand.
It was over that soon. The baby was held gently in Alan’s arms, and the mark was branded on his palm.
“Shhh,” Alan murmured to the child, who was quieting already in his arms. “You’re safe now.”
He took two steps toward Sin and put her brother in her arms. She accepted him almost numbly, her face blank but her arms going around Toby tight.
Alan did it just in time, an instant before Nick reached him and spun him around, one hand clenching tight on Alan’s shoulder. For a second Mae thought Nick was going to punch him.
Nick held on for a moment, in a tight grip that looked more like violence than anything else, and then he turned to Gerald.
“I’m going to make you sorry,” he whispered in that demon’s voice, like chains settling on your hands and feet, like a chill getting so deep into your blood it would never leave and you would never be warm again. “I’ll make time longer, just so you can suffer in it. I’ll never let you die. You’ll live to the end of the world, crawling, bleeding, begging, wishing you had never even thought of touching my brother.”
Gerald didn’t answer in words, but Alan gave a short scream between his teeth and sank to his knees, and Mae knew exactly how much pain he would’ve had to be in before he let Nick hear that.
When Alan rose, he almost staggered. For a moment that seemed normal, and then Mae remembered he was meant to be healed now.
“Your brother was whole for all of five minutes,” Gerald said. “Was it worth handing over any of your power for that?”