Late-night walks weren’t the worst way to make a living.
Especially when the weather was this good. Clear skies, a
cool breeze, and enough moonlight for Jess to see the road stretched out in
front of her. She still had a ways to go before she could call it a night, and
the streetlights had disappeared some time ago.
Her music, though, never failed her. Jess piped a steady
stream of her favorite tunes as she walked, simplifying them enough she could
play them in her sleep. A few doors from nearby houses shut as she went by,
curtains quickly closing, but Jess didn’t take it as a commentary on her music.
Almost no one liked watching hundreds of rats walk down
their street.
With each step, the number kept climbing. Rats trickled out
of every house and outbuilding she passed by, emerging from cracks and
knotholes to join the ever-increasing rat army behind her. She called them with
her music, with the thread of power she wove through every note, and they
wanted to follow more than they wanted air. It wasn’t useful for a lot, but it
was an easy way to clear them out of a town.
Some people become witches or sorceresses. Other people
had magic that was only good for pest control.
The little boy standing by the side of the road didn’t seem
to care, though. All his attention was on the rats, watching them with the kind
of rapt fascination she hardly ever saw from anyone over the age of 12. She
took one hand off the pipe long enough to wave at him, the song briefly turning
into random notes as her concentration slipped. The kid didn’t notice, waving
delightedly back at her.
Unfortunately, the moment was short lived. The boy’s
mother burst out of one of the nearby houses, hurrying over and snatching him
up. She capped the whole thing off by giving Jess her fiercest glare, clearly
hoping she could wither her on the spot.
It was hardly the worst look Jess had ever received, and
so she responded with the most dramatic wink she could manage. The woman
huffed, clearly displeased by the response, but rather than trying to do
anything about it she simply turned around and hauled the child back into the
house.
The rest of the walk was quiet, ending in an empty field
with a flaming trench along the far end. This was her least favorite part of
the routine, walking over the magically fire-protected bridge while the rats
fell into the flames. She always made sure to do this part as quickly as
possible, sweeping the rats off the side of the bridge with her foot. She tried
to do it without looking down at all, though she never quite managed it.
The town council representative standing at the end of the
trench didn’t seem at all bothered. He watched the entire process without
saying a word, and even when the last rat was gone it was Jess who spoke first.
“I assume you have my fee?”
The man’s expression instantly turned skeptical. “You sure
you got all of them?”
Jess’s hands tightened around her pipe as she tried to
hold her temper back. It was hardly an uncommon response – she was young, a
woman, and had powers almost no one really understood. Even worse, she was a
little too different-looking to really blend in to the local population. Her
olive brown skin was close enough to a farmer’s tan for people not to question
it, but her hair was just a little too black and a little too straight to
really pass.
Jess did what she could to adapt. She kept her hair short,
always lied about her age, and learned how to use the knife she kept in her
boot. When it came to business negotiations, however, biting her tongue usually
got a better result than the knife.
Not that she was always entirely successful at that. “If
there’s a rat left in the entire town, I can promise you they’re completely
deaf.” She did manage to keep her tone professional, promising herself she could
imagine punching him later. “Now I believe you have the rest of my money?”
Reluctantly, he reached into his back pocket and pulled
out a decently full envelope. “Always found pipers kind of creepy, myself,” he
muttered, holding it out to her. “Not right, what you can do.”
Punching wasn’t enough. She’d let herself imagine stabbing
him later.
For now, Jess snatched the envelope out of his hand and
counted the money with one quick swipe. Then she gave him her brightest, most
artificial smile. “If I find any more rats, I’ll make sure to send them your
way.”
The man stalked off at that, disappearing into the
darkness. Jess watched him go, long enough to make sure he wasn’t coming back
with a bunch of angry friends, then sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have done
that.”
Neither the night sky or the empty field had any response.
Jess waited a few beats in the silence, broken only by the crackling of the
slowly dying flames. Standing there in the slowly flickering light, it was easy
to imagine she was the only person left in the entire world.
She probably was alone. There were so many other
things he could be doing.
Still, she cleared her throat. “It’s okay to agree with
me, you know. I don’t mind hearing when I’ve done something dumb.”
Barely a breath later, the emptiness in front of her was
replaced by a young man. He had a soft, dark cloud of tightly curled hair, warm
brown skin burnished by the firelight, and the kindest eyes Jess had ever seen.
She’d been traveling with him for almost a year now, and she still wasn’t tired
of looking at him.
“Sorry.” Thomas Abernathy, official Rat and Mouse Reaper,
pushed his glasses back up his nose. He looked genuinely apologetic, which was
both completely ridiculous and made her chest ache in the worst way. “I didn’t
want to interrupt you with a response if you were just sort of brooding at the
universe.”
I always want you to interrupt me. Instead of
saying that out loud, she busied herself with putting both her pipe and the
money away in her case. “I do like a good round of artistic brooding.” Her mom’s
quote slipped out without her realizing she was going to say it, and the brief
stab of pain was its own distraction. “Right now, though, my question was
completely serious. How stupid was I?”
To her surprise, Thomas scowled. “You were just fine. He
deserved worse.” His jaw tightened, every part of him radiating fierce
protectiveness. If he’d said something about sirens, I might have punched him
myself.”
Jess’s chest tightened. “Look at me, tempting you to
crime.” She’d meant the words to be a joke, but there was something unsteady in
her throat. “You know you don’t have to wait for me, right? I’m sure it would
be less boring, and then you wouldn’t have to overhear so many jerks.”
Thomas’s protective anger instantly disappeared, replaced
by a sudden uncertainty she wanted to kick herself for activating. If she was
going to finally punch someone the way they deserved, it would be the staff of
the Dr. Abernathy Home for Abandoned Children.
“I don’t have to wait here if you don’t want me to.” He
took a step back. “You don’t actually need me to keep track of how many
rats and mice you’ve collected, and if you wanted you could just mirror call me
when you were ready for me to—”
“Hey.” Jess caught the lanyard he always wore around his
neck when he was on the job, tugging on it gently. “I don’t want you to stop
doing anything. I was just trying to save you a little boredom.”
He smiled at that, whole face lighting up, and it took
real, concerted effort not to reach up and smooth her fingers along his cheek. “Being
bored just means more time to read.” Then his expression softened. “Besides, I
like watching you work.”
Anyone with sense would have kissed him for that. Jess had
plenty of sense, but she also had warning bells clanging in the back of her
head telling her to stay away from Thomas for his own good. She wasn’t going to
do that – she refused to let herself say she couldn’t – but she needed
to keep herself from making it any worse.
Taking a deep breath, Jess made herself let go of him. “Right
now, though, I’m the one who’s keeping you from working.” She tightened the
strap on her pipe case to make sure she had something to do with her hands. “Why
don’t we—”
The rest of her cover attempt was interrupted by the sound
of her pocket magic mirror chiming that she had a new message. Grateful for the
distraction, she pulled it out and swiped her finger across the glass. Real magic
mirrors were alive, as full of free will and personality as any person, but
they were also incredibly expensive and only worked for the people they wanted
to. These mirrors were just empty vessels operated by complicated spells,
hooked into the local ley lines in order to send and receive their magic.
Thomas watched her, hesitating as he reached for the I.D.
hanging around his neck. “You want to skip following me around tonight, so you
can focus on the message?”
He always asked her that, in one form or another, even
though she’d never once taken him up on the offer. It would have been safer,
but there was a lot she’d do to keep that look off his face. “Not a chance. I’d
hate to miss hearing you explain something.”
His expression relaxed, but now he looked at her like she’d
just made a particularly dumb joke. “Ha ha. You’re hilarious.”
“While that’s definitely true, right now I’m being
completely serious.” Opening the message with one hand, she tried to ignore the
familiar tingle as she laid the other hand on his shoulder. There was an
entirely practical reason for it – if she let go of him, she’d immediately get
dumped back into the regular world and Thomas would end up invisible again.
Besides, it wasn’t like she was putting her hand anywhere
near his bare skin. That would just be stupid. “If you ever want to quit being
a Reaper I’m sure someone would hire you as a tour guide.”
Thomas made a rueful noise. “Only someone who was really
interested in hearing an itemized history of the local plant life.” He finally
slapped his hand against the I.D., making both the darkness and fire disappear
in a rush of gray. The only spots of color left in the world were her, Thomas,
and the cool blue light of the rats’ discarded life energy floating in small
clouds above the flames.
According to Thomas, everyone’s life energy stuck around
after they died. It normally faded away after a few days, and without the extra
boost of the cloak only witches and sorcerers could see it. That meant the less
scrupulous ones could absorb the energy as an extra power boost, which tended
to be bad news for everyone else.
That was where Reapers came in.
Thomas curled his hand, murmuring a word Jess could never
quite catch. An instant later, a glowing, translucent scythe made of energy
appeared in his empty grip. Thomas had explained once that both the scythe and
cloak spells were stored in the I.D., along with a whole host of theories about
how they might have been made. He liked explaining things, and she liked
listening to him explain them.
Sometimes, she even gave him prompts just to keep him
talking. “You know, it’s really not fair that you have to wait until they’re already
dead,” Jess tried, watch him carefully swing the tip of his scythe through each
one of those small clouds of blue light. The light flared and disappeared,
going someplace even Thomas hadn’t dared to speculate about. “Especially with
those quotas you have to make every month.”
Thomas shook his head as he worked. “If I kill them, the
scythe spell somehow knows and won’t let me Reap them.”
When further explanation didn’t come, Jess frowned. “How
does that work, exactly?” she prompted.
This time, it was his turn to sigh. “Honestly, I have no
idea. It’s probably a combination of several spells, but I’ve asked various
supervisors and none of them seemed to even know what I was talking about.” He
made a frustrated noise. “Not that that’s anything new, really.”
Jess would punch Thomas’s bosses, but she didn’t
want to make his life any harder. “You could probably figure it out,” she
prodded gently. “Take it apart yourself, see how it worked.”
Now his expression turned wistful. “That would be nice.”
Then he shook his head, firmly enough like he was chasing the thought away. “There’s
no point, though. Right now, we should be more worried about your work.” He
inclined his head toward the mirror. “Which you just got a message about.”
Letting herself be deflected, she activated the mirror
message. The smoke swirling on the other side of the glass cleared, revealing
an exhausted middle-aged man with a decent suit and the lingering trace of a
farmer’s tan. “Miss Tremeau, my name is Arthur Perkins. I’m the mayor of Kensford,
a bustling, prosperous town boasting—” He stopped, closing his eyes like
something pained him. “But you don’t care about that.”
“Your clients don’t usually sound this stressed, do they?”
Thomas asked absently, still focused on his own work.
Jess paused the message. “Sometimes. If his constituents
are complaining, or the last piper couldn’t do the job, he’s getting a lot of
extra pressure.”
Thomas considered this a moment, then nodded. “That makes
sense. The witches from the mirror group mention that sometimes with clients.”
Jess smiled a little. “Are they still trying to get you
named an honorary witch so they can make you a member?”
Thomas’s sigh was both affectionate and long-suffering as
he pushed his glasses back up his nose. “They’re just trying to be nice. There’s
nothing special about the fact that I read a lot.”
There was no way to answer that wouldn’t completely betray
her, so she just squeezed his shoulder and restarted the message. On the other
side of the mirror, Mayor Perkins cleared his throat. “We’ve talked to the
leaders of some of the other cities and towns you’ve done jobs for, and they
all say you’re the most thorough piper they’ve ever worked with.”
Jess had just long enough to feel a glow of pride before he
ruined it by continuing. “We had to research a little more extensively than usual
since we heard your name in an odd way. We put up our usual posting for a
piper, and a man named Crispin St. Clair responded. His—”
Alarm spiking, she shut off the mirror message again.
Thomas stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Did he just say—”
“Unfortunately, he did.” Jess hesitated, sure she should
delete the message. “We both know this is a bad idea, right? The last time I
took a job over from him, he almost got us both arrested.”
Thomas’s expression gentled. “And after everyone figured
out you were right, he was the one who got arrested.”
Jess’s jaw tightened at the memory. She was a far better
piper, but Crispin had proven to have an unexpected talent for smear campaigns.
“I’m sure he tried to smear me here, too.”
“And they want to hire you anyway.” Thomas smiled. “You
should definitely finish the message.”
Taking a deep breath, she restarted it. “—reputation is
unfortunate enough that nearby towns had already warned us against him, but we
were desperate.” The mayor grimaced. “Unfortunately, he couldn’t even call a
single rat. When confronted him about his failure, he insisted you were somehow
to blame. We began researching you, and after hearing the reports it’s clear we
desperately need your help.”
She stopped the message completely, far more tempted than
she knew she should be. “At least it sounds like it won’t be boring.”
“You don’t have to talk me into it,” he laughed. “Let me finish up here. Then we’ll get a few
hours of sleep and set out for Kensford in the morning.”
Jess grinned. “I’m sure the rats will be excited to see
us.” Sending a quick return message, she slipped the magic mirror into her
pocket and went back to watching Thomas work.
If she heard warning bells, she carefully didn’t admit it
to herself.
#
They made it to Kensford by the following afternoon.
Rather than going straight to town hall, they took a detour through the market
to restock their provisions and get a better sense of the rat situation. If the
mayor had been desperate before Crispin screwed things up, there might
be additional complications. If so, Jess needed to find out what they were.
Part of that was keeping an ear open for gossip.
“These rats are a menace! They’ll steal food off a table
just like a cat!”
“There was one sleeping in my daughter’s bed last night!”
“I mirror called my sister in Hammelin to see if my family
can stay with hers, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of her. I’m getting
desperate.”
At one point, Thomas leaned in close. “If the rats are
really as bad as people say, why aren’t they running wild through this place?
They always go for the food, and this place has to be at least as exciting as
the local grain stores. But we’ve been here almost an hour, and I haven’t seen
a single rat. I haven’t even heard a shriek.”
Jess had noticed the same thing. “I would say the rats are
too full to eat anything, but the food is all still out in the open. If they’d
spent the last few days fighting off rats, they’d have at least a few
protective measures in place.” She poked her head underneath the edge of one of
the stalls, lifting the display cloth, but no rat ran out with a stolen prize.
Thomas frowned. “There’s no such thing as a polite rat.”
“No, there isn’t.” Jess straightened. “And from the way
people are talking…”
The words trailed off as a rat emerged from under a nearby
stall, walking casually as if it had all the time in the world. The few people
that were nearby shrieked and ran, making the rat jump and run around in
circles. When someone went at it with a broom, the rat started squeaking wildly
and backed itself into a corner. Still, it didn’t run for real cover until
another rat darted out and chased it into a protected area.
Thomas’s brow furrowed, still staring in the direction the
rats had gone. “That’s not how normal rats behave.”
“No, but it would explain why people are freaking out even
though there aren’t that many rats.” Relief loosened a knot she hadn’t even
known was in her chest. “A bunch of rats accidentally eat some magical grain or
something and start acting funny. People get spooked enough to complain to the
mayor, and suddenly the entire town has a rat problem.”
Thomas’s expression relaxed a little, but not enough. “I
guess that could work. It would have to be a traveling shipment of grain,
though – there’s nothing in this area that would qualify.”
“That makes sense.” She nudged his arm, not liking how
worried he still looked. “What this really means, though, is there’s a chance I
might get done early tonight. Which means you’ll get done early tonight.”
The idea made his eyes light up again. She firmly ignored
how unfairly attractive it made him look. “Which means we might both get some
actual sleep.”
Cheered by the thought, they headed to town hall and
wrapped up negotiations with the mayor without too much trouble. Jess agreed to
do the walk that night, offered a brief demonstration to prove that she
actually had the skills she claimed, and walked away with the first half of a healthy
fee.
That night, Thomas headed to his usual position by the
trench as Jess started her walk. A surprisingly large crowd had gathered – the
rats really had made people nervous – and Jess made sure to put on an
extra touch of showmanship. Even though she was nowhere near a center ring, she’d
never forgotten her mother’s lessons about putting on a show.
Then she raised her pipe to her lips and started playing.
A few steps later, she closed her eyes and reached deep inside her chest. That
was where the magic waited, and just like always it came easily to her call.
Except there weren’t enough rats following her. She could
only hear a few sets of little feet trailing along behind her, even though she’d
gone almost a block. Even if Kensford was exaggerating their rat problem, she
normally would have called out at least 10 or 15 by this point.
She thought about the rat they’d seen at the market, how
oddly it had behaved compared to every other rat she’d seen. Thomas would
probably say it was why she was having so much trouble calling them now, maybe
even suggest stopping the walk until she could talk to the mayor.
If she was right, though, the weird behavior was the
entire reason the mayor and council had called her here in the first place.
They certainly wouldn’t see it as a good enough reason for her not to do her
job, which meant she’d be fired.
Just like Crispin.
Appalled by the thought, she reached back down for more
magic. She had to dig deeper than usual, but when she made the connection it
was like a dam bursting. The power rushed through her, pouring into the song so
suddenly she stumbled a little.
It only took a few more steps before the rats started
coming. She could hear their tiny claws on the cobblestones, flooding into the
street the same way her power had into the song. She didn’t turn around, but she’d
been doing this long enough she couldn’t stop her brain from estimating the
number from the sounds. One hundred… five hundred… eight hundred… A river of
rats, when she was used to a steady trickle.
It was fine, though. Jess told herself that she’d just
used too much power, pouring it into the song too fast. It didn’t mean anything
was wrong.
But they kept coming. More and more rats found her with
every step, the sound of them loud enough now to be heard over the music. The
townspeople were growing increasingly unnerved, and it was getting harder and
harder to pretend she wasn’t feeling the same way.
As the audience thinned, the number of rats started to
slow down as well. She could see the trench fire glowing in the distance, holding
onto the image as she made it to the empty field. The rats were still following
behind her like an obedient little army, and she just had to cross one last
little stretch of dirt. Then she could get the rest of her money, and she and
Thomas could—
The thought cut off as Thomas suddenly appeared in the middle
of the field, hurrying toward her at a dead run.
