The Necromancer Trilogy - Black Magic

Chapter Ten - Nothing To Do But Wait

Matt loathed his new uniform.  It made his skin crawl, made him feel so unclean and hypocritical. But his life depended on remaining the good little puppet-general, and a life is a dangerous thing to throw away.

The uniform was black, trimmed with dull gold that wouldn’t gleam at night. Tailored jacket, ironed shirt, pressed trousers, thick boots…Matt couldn’t imagine why it was necessary to have a special outfit for dying in.

The largest of the training halls at Jamaica Street was empty save for him and his newly-appointed lieutenant. Storm didn’t have uniform, but he had consented to wear a band around his arm, marking him out as one of Matt’s top men.

 The trainers had ordered this procedure. Matt needed to organise his troops into regiments, appoint captains, arrange a gang of mismatched, bad-tempered children into an orderly army capable of taking on The Cause.

So far, the table in front of Matt was heavy with files he was creating and notes he was taking on all the people who demonstrated for him what they could do. Red marks were drawn on the ones he thought would make good captains.

 Storm, as Jamaica Street’s superior purveyor of rumour and gossip, was quietly filling him in on everything anyone knew about each person. Their histories, incidents, friendships, characteristics, nothing was a secret where Storm was concerned.

 Matt had been wondering precisely how to organise his regiments for days now. By ability, clearly, but did he want the most similar together or the most diverse? Would it make sense to have a range of abilities in each section or to specify?

 He had several children marked as high possibilities already: Dixie, Peter and Noah. He was trying to be sensible, to balance power with leadership skills. It wasn’t going well. His scorn for disgraced leaders was rapidly dissolving into faint understanding.

 But he was going to keep working. He was going to build an army to save his life. Then he was going to turn them on his superiors, to avenge Eleanor’s.

Blue burst through the door to Bastard Cruel’s house, eyes wild with panic.

“We have to rescue Adele!” he shouted. “Now!”

“Do we?” Adele sashayed into the hallway. “You know, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that on my own.”

“Oh,” Blue hastily made his expression nonchalant, slouching where he stood. “Well then. No problem.”

Adele laughed.

“You idiot,” she said, and hugged him.

Blue’s eyes widened before she hastily moved away, heading for the door to the main room.

“Now,” Adele tossed her hair. “Are you coming, or do you want to be late for our catch-up meeting?”

Sophie raised her eyebrows at Blue as she passed him, and got a punch in return.

“Don’t say a word,” he hissed.

“Oh, I won’t. I’ll just wait here nice and quietly…smiling.”

Blue glared at her as she laughed, walking past him into the dining room come meeting room.

“Sophie!” Celia threw her arms wide in a gesture of triumph. “My well-trained apprentice! You’re alive!”

“Sophie,” Merry sighed in relief. “You’re safe.”

“Sophie,” Max sniffed in disapproval, “you appear to have your arm in a sling.”

Sophie looked down at her broken arm, aware that the deadened ache was increasing with every minute as Gus’s magic wore off.

“Yeah,” she pulled an apologetic face. “Bit of a car crash. Sorry, Max.”