Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews

We wouldn’t have that problem.

The plan was simple. Go in until noon, less if we had to fight our way through. Stop. Make camp. Rest. Keep going. If the night caught us before we got there, we would camp again. Shapeshifters had an advantage in the dark, but I needed daylight. Also, I would be tired as hell by the end of this march, and a lot of that final fight was riding on me.

I put my hand on Conlan’s shoulder. Every muscle on his back was tight. He was like a kitten watching a butterfly dancing in the wind.

He glanced at me. “The archers will slow us down. And we have to protect them. We should leave them here.”

“Fighting a war involves more than just calculating the odds. I’ve claimed Penderton, but I told them that I would never interfere in their governance. The decision to send the archers came from the town council. They are volunteers, and they come as allies rather than subordinates.”

“It’s not safe for them.”

“Wars are not safe for anyone. They’re brave. We must respect that. How would you feel if we left you behind?”

He looked back at the forest. “You’re my parents. I can’t just wait here… I want to help.”

“So do they.”

“But they will make things harder for us.”

A little of my father coming through. I needed to deal with that here and now.

“For five years the forest has terrorized them. It killed people in the town square. It demanded human sacrifice. Yesterday, it killed two of their own right in front of them. A boy about Darin’s age who was guarding the tower in front of our house. A manticore grabbed him off the wall and broke his neck. How do you think they feel?”

He seemed to consider it. “They are angry.”

“People are ruled by their emotions, Conlan, and anger is one of the most powerful emotions we can experience. It can fester if you don’t vent it. Always take that into account.”

“Are you angry?” he asked.

“Very.”

“Because of the boy who died?”

“Yes. And because of other things the power in the forest has done. It has no regard for the value of life, human or animal. Your father and I will end this today.”

“Is Dad angry too?”

“Yes.”

“He never gets angry.”

Oh, you have no idea.

Conlan looked back at the woods. Logic told me that he was only eight, but it didn’t seem that way. I was his mother. I gave birth to him, I have raised him, and yet there was something about my son that remained beyond my understanding. Sometimes I wanted to open up his head and see what was going on in there. But then all parents probably felt that way at times.

“Do you feel the magic of the claiming?”

He nodded. “It feels welcoming. It feels like I’m home. Like safety.”

“Good.”

Erra had told me that it was supposed to feel like that. The Shar was an ugly beast, but it affected the members of my family in different ways, and children experienced it the least. For them, being in their parent’s territory brought feelings of safety and content. They knew they were protected.

It would be another decade or so before Conlan might want his own territory. Or he might never claim one. Erra hadn’t until she’d settled at her current base in California, and even then, she’d only claimed the immediate area around it.

When Erra and Julie had left Atlanta, my aunt had gone as far west as she could while staying on the same continent. She was giving me a lot of room. My father and she thought not in years but in centuries. They expected me to claim territory and grow it. Fortunately for everyone, I was a champion when it came to failing parental expectations.

“Come with me,” I told Conlan.

He followed me along the top of the wall toward the gates. Two men waited by the stairs leading up to the wall, Jushur and Rimush, wearing identical green and gray garments, a kind of tactical uniform on the crossroads of modern military and ancient assassin. They each carried two curved swords, one on each hip, and bows on their backs.

They looked up at me. I nodded, and the father and son came up the stairs.

I pointed to a spot slightly behind me and to my left. “Stand here.”

Conlan moved to it.

I raised my hands, dropped the magical cloak that obscured my power, and let the flow of magic fill me. It surged through me, through every cell, through bone, muscle, and skin, like a light beam entering a prism, and then it poured out of me in a golden light. I had become a glowing beacon.

On the street everything stopped. People stared at me, some in awe, others in alarm. Luther, my friend at Biohazard, had put it best. Magic was wild and unpredictable, and humans, who always had trouble with chaos, searched for ways to understand and codify it. They tricked themselves into thinking that some things were impossible because it made them feel safe. Without my cloak, I was that impossible thing. The very idea that a person with that much magic could exist shattered the established illusion of safety. Some found it exhilarating, others feared it, and some sought its protection through service. I was a great and scary beast, and it was warm and safe under my wings.

Jushur took a knee.

“Jushur, son of Kizzura, the first of the Eyes and Ears, the Fourth Blade of Shinar, declare your intent.”

Jushur spoke, pronouncing each word with deliberate exactness, as if carving it into stone.