sky, come rushing to him.
That was what snapped Sin out of her paralysis. Too late.
She had scarcely uncurled from beside Celeste’s body when they all heard, clear even accompanied by the sound of the storm, a lot of footsteps coming up the steps.
Jamie’s eyes met his sister’s. For a moment Sin thought that would be it, that they would all just run.
“We’ll see,” said Jamie, and lifted his hand.
The boat was torn away from the side of the wall as if Jamie had ripped a piece of paper off a notebook. Sin made an enraged sound, Mae and Alan and her sister suddenly just black dots almost disappearing against the gray sky, almost entirely lost to her.
“Don’t—,” she began, advancing on Jamie, and he spun toward her with his eyes blazing white.
Blackness blasted her vision as she was knocked off her feet and across the deck, rolling and hitting the other side of the boat. The door opened. There was a shallow shelf on this side of the boat, with rope coiled upon it. Sin rolled under it.
She would be half-hidden by its shadow. Unless someone looked too closely.
As a dozen magicians burst on the scene, though, it was clear that at least for now all their attention was focused on Celeste’s body.
The sword-wielding magician called Helen went down on her knees beside Celeste. It gave Sin a strange feeling to watch the woman touch Celeste’s hair, as pale a blond as her own. She wondered if they had been related, sharing that as well as a Circle.
Some of the magicians looked truly grief-stricken and horrified. There were others, not just magicians but messengers, among whom Sin spotted Phyllis, who simply looked scared.
Gerald stood at Celeste’s feet, his head bowed and his hands clasped for a moment. When he looked up, Sin could read nothing on his face.
“Jamie,” he said, his voice as unruffled as his expression, mild and calm. “Perhaps you can explain this to me?”
“The Market people came for the girl and her sister. We were attacked and overpowered,” Jamie said flatly.
The storm had quieted into a dark muttering in the sky, which seemed muffled by the blanket of clouds that made the whole world dim. The glow of Jamie’s magic gaze seemed like the only light in the world, and that light was a terrible one.
“Perhaps you can explain this to me in some way I might believe,” Gerald suggested, his voice even softer than before.
“It happened like I said,” Jamie insisted. “They came. And Celeste died.”
“And you, with the demon’s power, you couldn’t do a thing to stop it?”
Gerald almost smiled.
Jamie said, “Maybe I could have.”
That shocked Gerald, Sin noticed, sending a jolt through him that seeing Celeste dead hadn’t. Now Jamie was the only one who looked calm, standing on the deck with a ring of people around him whose murmurs were turning louder and fiercer than the dying storm.
“She let my mother die,” Jamie continued. “She wasn’t my leader. You are.”
“Is that so?” Gerald asked. “And how am I supposed to trust you, if you would stand aside and let one of our own die?”
The sky was so thickly overcast, everyone’s skin looked gray. Gerald took a step forward.
He loomed over Jamie, his shadow falling over Jamie’s face and quenching the glittering light of his eyes. The boat lurched on the river, and Sin felt cold hit her skin. She twisted around and saw trails of dark water snaking across the rail, over her own body, toward where Gerald stood.
“Where’s Celeste’s pearl?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie whispered.
“You let a fellow magician be killed. You let the symbol of the Aventurine Circle be stolen. You realize that I should execute you.”
Four glistening black lines of river water crawled their way up Gerald’s trouser leg, trailing from his shoulder to his right hand. The water wrapped around Gerald’s fingers, which he lifted to Jamie’s face.
“I could drown you in an inch of water,” Gerald said.
Threads of water touched Jamie’s face, sealing his mouth like a transparent gag. He glanced around for support, and then water crisscrossed behind his neck and held him in place.
“He isn’t lying,” Seb said. “Everything happened just like he said. He couldn’t have saved Celeste. Neither of us knows where the pearl went.”
Nick stepped up behind Jamie, and the water dissolved into silver smoke.
Gerald’s hand stayed uplifted, wreathed in the smoke.
“It was a risk, taking you into the Circle at all,” he said. “Now a magician is dead. Give me a reason to trust you.”
When Jamie spoke he was gasping for breath a little, his face wet as if he had been crying.
