Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

but when she did, she was eager to join Milo in making the skin-coats.

Unfortunately, Milo had made adjustments to their resources and division of labor.

They were not appreciated by the ghul princess.

“You did what?” she snarled.

Milo knew she’d heard him, so he didn’t waste the effort of repeating himself as he worked at his mortar and pestle. He’d made three coats in the course of the night and was feeling the drain on his soul, something that seemed to translate directly into marked fatigue. To counteract the effects, he was making some nightwatch to keep him upright for the next three.

“We have other options,” he said simply as he ground the ingredients with heavy, even twists of the pestle.

“How dare you!” Imrah snarled. “You are the student, I am the master. You don’t get to determine which tools I get to use!”

Milo removed the pestle and shook the ingredients into the waiting tincture in a tin cup.

“Actually,” he began, keeping as level a tone as he could manage, “this is a Nicht-KAT operation, and therefore, command flows down from Jorge to Lokkemand to me. Lokkemand’s given me operational discretion, so I get to decide how this show’s going to go, and I say no more kid bones. It’s that simple.”

Imrah trembled with rage, stabbing a hooked finger at him as spit flew from her lips.

“You wouldn’t even know what you were doing if it weren’t for me! You ungrateful wretch!”

Milo focused, then threw the nightwatch back in one gulp. He braced for the magical stimulant’s effects, which came with their increasingly familiar rolling surge. In the back of his mind, he wondered what habits would need breaking once this was all over, but the thought disappeared as the elixir washed the fatigue out of his limbs and the fog out of his brain.

When he turned his eyes on Imrah’s seething figure, his gaze was clear and sharp.

“You can throw your fits all you want, but unless you are quitting the operation altogether, you’re going to have to make do,” he said firmly, then set about clearing his table to begin working on another skin-coat.

Imrah snarled Ghulish curses that lacked human corollaries and made several abortive attempts at storming away before coming back with a hiss.

“Where are the bones? What did you do with them?”

Milo turned. He would have been nose to nose with her if she was a bit taller.

“They’re gone,” he growled. “Get over it.”

“I’m not using my blood!” she spat. “Where are the bones?”

“Don’t use your blood,” he shot back. “There’s enough resonance in the extra ingredients we have for you to draw essence from them.”

“Scraps, and inefficient scraps at that,” Imrah replied in a hard, flat voice. “I’m not going to go scrapping like some scavenger. Where are the bones?”

Milo glared at her.

“Where are the bones!”

“Buried,” said a voice as hard and blunt as a hammer stroke.

Man and ghul turned to see Ambrose coming down the stairs.

He was dusty, and grimy streaks decorated his face, which was set in a thunderous scowl. One hand clutched the bundled-up bags that had held the infants’ bones, while the other rested pointedly on an officer’s sword the big man had “appropriated” sometime since they arrived at camp. His boots hit the basement floor and he advanced on Imrah, the bundle raised in front of him.

“There still might be some bone dust in there,” he rumbled. “You want a sniff, vulture?”

Imrah recoiled, seeming ready to flee for her life, but Ambrose settled for throwing the bags at her feet.

“There, get a snout full,” he said in a low, deadly whisper. “That’s the last thing you’re going to get out of them.”

Imrah’s eyes darted to the bag, to Ambrose, then Milo, and back to Ambrose. Her face became a sneering mask even as she cringed and threw an unconvincing shrug at the bodyguard.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said with forced nonchalance. “I have ways of finding them.”

Ambrose took one step, and Imrah flinched back.

“Do that,” Ambrose warned icily, “and there won’t be enough of you left to do magic with. Do you understand me? I will end you, then render you down into pieces too small to bother finding.”

Milo’s stomach tightened and his skin prickled. There was a red radiance in Ambrose’s eyes that he hoped the ghul could see. One more foolish word from her might lead to the fatal termination of this argument.

Imrah’s gaze fell quicker than even Milo expected, and her shoulders sagged.

“Fine.” She shrugged sulkily. “But even scraping every last bit of essence from the spares won’t be enough. That isn’t an excuse, just a fact.”

Before Milo could speak, Ambrose had peeled back one sleeve and stretched his arm out in offering.

“Take whatever you need,” he said.

“Ambrose!” Milo exclaimed quickly as he stepped forward. “You don’t have to do that.”

The guard fixed him with a powerful glare.

“’Have to’ has nothing to do with it,” he replied pugnaciously. “If this gets things sorted and stops another war, I’m happy to do it.”

Imrah eyed the big man through narrowed lids.

“Do you realize what you are offering?” she asked. “Do you really understand the risks?”

Ambrose rounded on her and shook his bared arm.

“Do you understand that you need to shut your mouth and get to work?” he shot back. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

Imrah looked at Milo, who could only nod.

“If anybody knows their mind, it’s Simon Ambrose.”

“Damn straight!” the big man shouted, ambling over to an unoccupied table to slap his arm down. “Now hurry up before I get bored and use the pigsticker on my belt to get things started.”

23

A Ruse

Seven long and grueling days after the fifty corpses had been relocated for Nicht-KAT research, in the near darkness before dawn, fifty uniformed soldiers shuffled out of Bamyan, cutting south and east across a series of broken hills.

Their movements were stiff, their faces slack, and if anyone had bothered to look closely, they would have noticed how vacant their eyes were, refusing to focus on anything. Those deeper in