Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [108]
Katya breathed in dust and old wood, keeping her breaths shallow, as she listened to the others. “Telling future,” the gypsy said, an insolent tone in her voice. “Hoping to see you not in it.”
“You are wasting magic,” he replied, surprise giving way to his usual irritation.
“Is mine to waste,” she said indifferently. “If you wanted tame, timid girl, you should have taken tame, timid girl. You carried away Django girl. You get what you took.”
“Insolent mortal!” the Jinn growled. “Very well, if you are going to waste it, I must take more from you from now on, so you cannot!”
Klava gasped, there was a strange, discordant sound—
Katya stifled a gasp of her own, as she was overwhelmed by a feeling that something was pulling all the blood from her body. She thought for a moment that she was going to faint.
Then the moment passed, though Katya still felt weak, and the Jinn sounded as if he was speaking from a great distance. “Heed my orders in the future,” he said.
“If I choose,” said the gypsy, and laughed, though weakly.
The Jinn growled, and Katya felt the hum that signaled his presence receding.
She continued to breathe shallowly, all her limbs as heavy as lead. After a moment, the lid to the chest came up, and she sat up. “I think I’ll just stay here for a while,” she said weakly. Klava nodded.
“That was rather nasty,” the apprentice said, looking as unexpectedly exhausted as if she had run for seven leagues, then spent a sleepless night.
“Was expecting same,” the gypsy replied. Katya looked to her, and saw that, though she looked a bit drained, she did not look as wretched as either Klava or herself. At Katya’s look of puzzlement, the gypsy smirked.
“Source of your magic is you,” she said, pointing to Katya. “And same being for you, Klava. Source of my magic is all gypsies. He takes only what I have at moment, and no more. I call upon magic of my people, it is all returned to me again.” And indeed, she was looking better and better as time passed. “I think we do this again, when bird returns. Yes?”
“He’ll mark you as the troublemaker,” Katya warned weakly.
“This is not new thing for me.” The gypsy lost her smirk, and shrugged. “Everywhere gypsy goes, are marked as troublemaker. Me, he will not kill, I am knowing how far to push, and no farther.” She looked about furtively. “I am Anya,” she whispered, giving them her name for the first time.
Katya gave her a little bow; she had noticed that the gypsy girl never offered to take anyone’s hand. “Thank you for your name,” she said, taking care not to repeat it. Names are power. The gypsies must take the opposite tack as her father, keeping their names hidden as much as possible to keep people from taking that power. “But I shall call you Magda.”
The gypsy’s face lit up with a smile. “Is good name. Was name of babushka. Am liking name.”
Looking completely recovered now, she offered Katya a hand out of the chest, which Katya sorely needed.
“Did you notice?” Klava said suddenly. “He didn’t seem to know he was taking power from three, rather than two.”
Katya blinked at that. It was true. And there were other things, now that she thought about it. “And he never appears when Lyuba and Shura transform, nor when Guiliette passes through walls.”
“I think,” Klava said, slowly, “perhaps those things that we do that are a part of us do not count as spells. I have never seen nor heard Lyuba say anything when she transforms.”
Katya pondered that. “I can’t think how that could be useful, but it might. We should remember that.”
“Magda” laughed. “Is useful because he cannot tell when we are searching!” she said triumphantly. “But we must tell others. In search, some might think to use spell, and that would be bad.”
Katya nodded. “I will, when we gather for dinner,” she said. “But now—I really think I will go and lie down.”
“Be lying down here,” Magda said firmly. “Is place in other room I use when want to be alone. I keep watch.”
Katya and Klava both staggered into the tiny room that Magda pointed to, and