Page 3 of The Unweaver

Echoes of another scream, and another, joined in. A chorus of agonized voices rose to a shrill crescendo, then cut off. An aborted nocturne from victims silenced by the explosion.

And there, amidst the swirling fog, the rattle of an impending death grew louder. A promise in the night. The dire sensation pervaded her senses.

Her gaze swept the decimation for apparitions in the fog, but the death’s origin eluded her. Any manner of creature might be lurking in the darkness along with her. A hapless human, or an Umbramancer, a shadow amongst shadows. She searched for the glimmering outline of an illusion-casting Lumomancer or the lambent eyeshine of a Bestiamancer.

There was nothing but her fears and the fog.

It must be the rattle of her own death, beckoning her across the mud. Foreknowledge never circumvented death. She had learned that terrible lesson by now. Powerlessness was a familiar ache. Pulling the cloak tighter, she hastened around the warehouse and froze.

Voices. There were voices in the mist.

Cora flattened herself against a rusted shipping crate. Craning her neck, she saw two men huddled beneath the lone streetlamp’s halo of light, their hushed words pluming in the frigid air. Dread trickled down her spine. A clandestine meeting in disputed territory did not bode well.

One man shifted from foot to foot, his eyes darting beneath the low brim of his cap. On his jacket sleeve was stitched a golden triangle engulfed in flames, and on his hip glinted a Ferromancer’s wicked scimitar. The emblems of Verek’s gang. The metal mage was one of the Pyromancer boss’s thugs.

Apprehension forced Cora deeper into the shadows. No one could bear witness to her Necromancy except the dead. Especially not a mage from a rival gang.

The other man stood with his back to her, but she knew his face better than her own. Tall and willowy, Teddy Walcott was the polished mirror image of herself. With his cultivated flamboyance, her twin carried himself with a grace Cora had always lacked. His hands, often whimsical as he spoke, were crammed into the pockets of a plum coat that would’ve looked garish on anyone with a fraction of his self-confidence.

As Mother’s favorite pet, Teddy did her favors more openly than Cora ever had or ever would. While Cora heard the secrets of the dead, her twin heard the secrets of the living. With a touch, Teddy’s Animancy could play someone’s heartstrings like an instrument. Rile tempers. Coax fears. Inflame passions.

Mother wouldn’t risk sending her beloved Animancer into disputed territory unless their target was terribly important and supposed to be alive. Something had gone wrong. Somewhere, a corpse awaited Cora.

“You’re bloody hours late,” said Verek’s thug.

“I am never late, my dear Horace. I arrive precisely when I intend to,” Teddy said, his voice low and husky, like her own. Raking back his artfully tousled hair, his gaze swept the ruined dockyard, latching on slow shadows. “The Chronomancer is in the tunnels?”

“What’s left of him. What d’you want with his body, anyhow?” Peering around, Horace lowered his voice. “That Necromancer coming? The Unweaver?”

The moaning wind carried the name, uttered with reverential disgust, to Cora’s ears. Her nickname, courtesy of sensationalized newspaper headlines about the cloaked killer stalking the London streets, had become less grating over the years. She’d been called much worse, after all.

Only a few of the living and scores of the dead knew who the Unweaver really was. If anyone discovered Cora, mages would condemn her as an abomination and humans would execute her as a murderer. She was fairly confident she was only one of those things.

With her twin as a mage, fortunately no one suspected what she was. For now. Magic wasn't inherited, but a random happenstance of birth. Magical affinities rarely manifested more than once in an extended family. Even identical twin mages were unheard of.

And Cora intended to keep it that way. Necromancy was a secret she’d take to her grave. If only she could stay in it.

“Even a dead bird can sing,” Teddy said.

“I heard the Unweaver can raise the dead.” Horace dropped his voice lower. “He killed again last week. His filthy handprints were all over the bloke’s chest. Rotted right down to the bone, he was.”

A by-product of communing with the dead had become the Unweaver’s unwitting trademark. Her rotten handprints commemorated where death’s magic had unwoven the threads that bind.

Like most reputations, the Unweaver’s was built on misunderstandings. Cora wasn’t killing her alleged victims; only herself, piece by piece, with each death. The dead didn’t stay dead for her.

Although, in a dark, nasty part of herself, she couldn’t deny the grim satisfaction of pulling a thread and watching the tapestry unravel. Feeding from the awful energy born of entropy, as order was reduced to chaos, as lives were unwoven to waste heat that her magic channeled and corrupted.

“I feel compelled to remind you, dear Horace,” Teddy said, “that Mother wanted the Chronomancer alive. Instead, he isquite unalive. Which begs the question of how you failed in this particular endeavor.”

“Er, what?”

Teddy gave a long-suffering sigh. “How’d he die?”

Horace held out his gloved hand. Grumbling, Teddy handed him money that disappeared quickly into the thug’s pocket. “Cocky, time-warping bastard deserved it, strutting alone in our territory.”

“I would be remiss not to enlighten you, my intermittently bright Ferromancer, that the specific ownership of this particular…” Teddy swept a hand over the devastation. “Hellhole, is still a matter of contentious debate.”

“Try telling that to Verek.” Horace huffed a humorless laugh. “Boss is set on building another steel factory here, the Realmwalker’s claim on every bloody dock, railway, and road in London be damned. Well, after we nabbed us the Chronomancer for a bit of conversation—which you were late for—he, er, died.”

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