Page 82 of The Unweaver

“Th–the Unweaver,” he whispered, palming the revolver strapped in an elaborate belt around his paunch. “The Unweaver… is… a woman?”

Nope, definitely no qualms.

“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” Anita plopped into the chair opposite him and slid the bullet shard across the table. “Tell us what this is. You get paid whenI’msatisfied.”

Rune downed his wine, his frightened gaze lingering on the Necromancer in his private suite. “Just keep it on a tight leash, will you? Let’s see about this metal. Hm. Curious. Very curious. You’ve come to the right place, Azalea. Given my prodigious talent, I am the only Ferromancer with the right caliber in all of London. No, in all of Europe—”

“Just get to it, old man.”

Casting Anita a foul look, Rune Borges ordered a valet to bring him another trayful of sandwiches. He’d devoured them all by the time he finished running his intricate tests on the metal shard. Sweat beaded on the Ferromancer’s forehead as he squinted down at the results.

“Not magic-repelling, but magic-absorbing,” he mumbled, turning the shard over in his gloved hand. “The more a mage tries to use their magic, the faster they’re drained. Ingenious.”

“You aren’t earning your pay by telling us what we already know, old man.”

Rune blinked up, seeming to remember they were in the room. His gaze hovered on Cora before he found his voice. “What I just did was very challenging, Azalea,” he said as if explaining her own ignorance to her. “This metal is… This shouldn’t exist. It seems to be made of Sephrinium—a metal so rare I’ve only heard myths about it. The Tribunal’s Ruination Stone, lost for centuries, was forged from Sephrinium. But now…” He sat back and raked trembling hands through his hair, his troubled gaze far away. “Meu deus.”

The Ruination Stone was said to have counteracted every magical affinity by nearness alone. A crafty punishment in the hands of the Tribunal Masters, who could drain a mage of their magic and force them to live as a human.

“If the bullet drains magic,” Cora said into the heavy silence, “does that mean it has to be human made?”

His gaze fastened on her for a horrified moment before turning to Anita, as if he could ignore the Unweaver out of existence. “The only one who could have made this bullet is a human. I’d bet your lives on it. It could’ve been a clueless human told to manufacture it. Regardless of the bullet’s origin, this…” Rune cupped the shard in his palm. “This is the end of mages.”

The truth shivered through Cora, though the grievous implications were just beginning to sink in. Humans and impossible bullets and ruination.

Anita handed him a handsome bribe, threatening creative applications of her Sanguimancy if he spoke a word of this to anyone. Rune waved them off, licking his fingers and recounting the money. A valet escorted them out of the suite and through a labyrinth of hallways.

“Think he’ll keep his mouth shut?” Cora asked Anita.

“Not a chance. Least we tried.”

Their exit, unfortunately, did not go undetected. They were halfway across the atrium when a woman with fiery haircascading around her shoulders sauntered into their path. Anita cursed under her breath. They’d almost made it out unscathed.

“Azalea,” the redhead called, her eyes flashing amber. Her feline tail swished in tune with her undulating hips. One of the few Bestiamancers Mother hadn’t leashed. “Madam Kalandra’s office is this way. Or has it been so long you don’t remember?”

“Iris,” Anita said between her teeth. “We’re actually in a bit of a rush—”

“This way.” Iris turned on her heel and loped away, not sparing them a backward glance. The valets closing in behind them ensured they followed.

Madam Kalandra’s silk-swathed office was one Roman orgy fresco shy of gauche. Iris pushed them inside when they dawdled on the threshold of such grandeur. Tail swishing, Iris locked the door and draped herself in a chair beside it.

A buxom woman in a burgundy gown that showcased her assets to the fullest came around her desk to greet them. With her flawless, tawny complexion and henna-stained hair, she was some indeterminate age over forty. An encyclopedia of pillow talk smoldered behind her kohl-lined eyes as she sized them up. “Why, Azalea—”

“Anita,” she corrected. Realizing her error, she sketched a deferential bow. “Madam Kalandra. I prefer to be called Anita now.”

Madam scalded her with a reproachful look. Anita’s hopes of her former employer’s understanding had been in vain. To Kalandra, Anita had turned if not turncoat, then turn-corset, when she defected to Bane’s gang.

“I don’t often welcome deserters back into my home.” Turning with a swish of skirts that hugged her generous curves, Madam Kalandra assessed Cora, her gaze catching on her midsection. A private smile played across Madam’s fresh-picked rose petal lips.

Cora glanced down. The price tag was still attached to her new clothes. She flushed, feeling like a one shilling hooker as she ripped it off, earning a wider smile from Madam.

The Animancer’s gaze sharpened in recognition. “Or the Unweaver, for that matter.”

Bad news travels very fast.A lifetime of secrets was now aired out like dirty laundry for the world to inspect. Fighting the instinct to flee, Cora drew up to her full height, a head taller than Madam in her satin heels.

Kalandra appraised her like an object full of revolting potential. “In my business, I can neither condone nor condemn you, Unweaver. But I can pay much better for your… skills than Malachy Bane.”

Here was Cora’s out, offered by a brothel madam, no less. “That may be so. But I doubt I’d want to use my, er, skills that way.”

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