#patrick koenig

[louxosenjoyables]

[keircatenation]

Silvertongue 9

One | Eight | Ten

            Blake House had several private ports, which would take them to the nearest hub, where they could catch a long distance port to any other major hub in the world. It was a luxury that not many people had. Most people needed to get to a hub by traditional transports, whether it be foot or car or even zeppelin, and then they’d port to their final destination. Miranda liked the port hubs more than zeppelin fields, but she preferred cars more than anything else. They were easier to control, and certainly didn’t have as much hang ups about stopping for bathroom breaks. But witches typically preferred porting – it was the quickest.

            So the Blake party – Gabriel, Miranda, Patrick Koenig, and several other cousins and bodyguards – left Blake House and arrived at the Charlotte Port Hub within seconds, and though it left Miranda feeling shaky, at least it was over quickly. The magic in the back of her head was also quiet, a little surprising considering the fact that it tended to act up a bit when confronted with exterior magic.

            But it was quiet, through security (she did get looks from normals because she couldn’t take off the locket, and then again from the witches because of the magical levels she was giving off), and through finding their next port station. Their runescribe wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes, so they took a seat where they could find them – usually on baggage. Miranda had only her duffel, so she leaned against one of the ornamental pillars scattered around this arm of the hub. They were placed rather randomly, although there had been a lot of hoopla about how they enhanced the runic foundations of the hub. Miranda leaned her head back against the pillar and resisted the urge to poke at the wall in her head.

            Gabriel gave Miranda a look when she rubbed her eyes, but she rolled her eyes at him. It wasn’t like she was suddenly going to give out from the stress of leaving the house. Please.

            There was a niggling reminder in the back of her head that Gabriel was right to be concerned, that Miranda had died and then almost died again, but she pushed that thought away because it sounded remarkably like Rain when she was explaining why Miranda really should study for the practical, even though she couldn’t actually get the magic to work.

            Miranda blinked and shifted her weight. She missed Rain. She missed the rest of her friends at Barrowmore as well, but rain most of all. They had been roommates freshman year, after several “mishaps” had happened to the first two girls Rain had been “saddled with.” Miranda had decided that she didn’t want to know, so she didn’t ask, and Rain didn’t explain, and they got along splendidly. Miranda still decided that she preferred living alone, but Rain was like a sister. She resolved to call her when she got to California.

            “Still up for this?” Gabriel asked, leaning against the pillar next to her.

            Miranda groaned and rolled her eyes. “Please,” she said. She turned to face him, leaning on her left shoulder, and crossed her arms. “I’m not some damsel in distress,” she added.

            Gabriel raised his eyebrows. “Oh, so I didn’t save you from death under a month ago.”

            Miranda scowled and turned away. “That’s stupridos,” she muttered.

            “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Gabriel said sternly.

            “Gabriel, come on,” she said. She turned back, opened her mouth to continue, and then closed it again. She shook her head, shrugged, and then said, “You know what, I’m obviously never gonna get you to see things my way. So – there. I give up. I already promised to follow your orders.”

            Miranda flopped back against the pillar, arms crossed again and shoulders hunched. She closed her eyes, ignoring Gabriel moving next to her. It was harder when he insinuated an arm between her shoulders and the pillar, but she refused to unclench until he had completely surrounded her with his arms. She kept her eyes closed, but she took a deep breath and relaxed her shoulders, letting her arms come around and hug her brother back.

            “There,” Gabriel said into the top of her head. “This is what I want.”

            “Tell that to these dissenters of yours,” Miranda mumbled into his chest. “Maybe they’ll let you off easy, late Midwinter’s.”

            “Don’t you mean an early Candlemas?” Gabriel asked.

            “I thought orgies would be a bit too much to ask of them,” Miranda replied. “Besides, I know I wouldn’t want to get that close to them, sounds unsanitary.”

            Gabriel laughed softly, and then squeezed Miranda tight and spun her around, ignoring her yelps and the fact that they were in the middle of a busy port hub. Only after they almost hit three people did he put her down.

            She drew herself away like a disgruntled cat, combing through her hair and resettling her tee shirt and jacket appropriately. “And here I thought coven leadership made you more mature,” she said exasperatedly. “I have no idea where I got the idea from, since you’re obviously still the same, extra three feet of height or not.”

            Gabriel gave her a wide, lazy smile and raked a hand through her hair as well. She batted his hand away with a huff.

            “It’s probably a good thing you never see each other,” Patrick Koenig said suddenly. He was sitting on his luggage, watching them with a small smile. “You’d never get anything done, elsewise, if this is any judge of your behavior.”

            “It’s entirely Gabriel’s fault,” Miranda informed him primly. “He’s supposed to be the more mature one, I can’t help it if he decides to take the low road.”

            “Excuse me,” Gabriel protested somewhat half-heartedly.

            “That so,” Patrick said, and Miranda discovered that she could probably enjoy spending time around her sister’s husband.

            Hmm, actually liking members of her family. That was a new concept for her.

            Just then, the runescribe hurried up to their port and started drawing the spell to take them to California. Miranda watched with interest. The man had his manual with him – it was regulation, and the hubs wouldn’t let a runescribe wander around without one while on duty – and it was open to the Charlotte-San Francisco transport spell, but he never even glanced at it. The spell followed a standard template, it was easy to see that, with slight modifications based on start and end destination.

            Miranda followed the chalk strokes and wondered if she couldn’t somehow improve it…

            Gabriel nudged her and she tore her eyes away from the runes. She gave a sheepish smile. Gabriel shook his head and drew her close as the entire party gathered around the port.

            “Right,” the runescribe said briskly. “Just breathe normally, keep still, and first timers should probably close your eyes. Ready? Alright. Dona haec viatores celeris transitus, nuntius custos.”

            Miranda felt the tug of well-worked magic in the pit of her stomach, and she closed her eyes against a fresh pounding in her head. She kept her breathing slow and even, through her nose, despite how much she wanted to bend over and gag. She clenched her jaw and hoped it would be over soon.

            After several long moments, the tug in her stomach dissipated, and she found herself on solid ground again. She opened her mouth and took a gulp of air. She relaxed her back and shoulders deliberately, rolling her head to loosen her neck as well.

            “Don’t port well?” Patrick asked, kindly enough.

            Miranda shrugged and shook her head. “Usually it’s fine, but I guess I haven’t done it in a while. Maybe that’s it.”

            Gabriel nudged her. “You said you it was calming down,” he whispered in her ear.

            “It was,” she whispered back. “Sometimes, it just, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to like outside magic.”

            “We’re going to talk about this when we get to the hotel,” Gabriel said.

            “Yes, dad.”

            The Blake group gathered their luggage and made their way toward security. The San Francisco hub was larger than Charlotte’s, with a different style of architecture that favored bright, wide-open spaces. Miranda thought it looked like one of the incomprehensible modernist pieces of artwork that was in a gallery opening she’d been dragged to by Rain last year. She’d gotten cornered by a woman in purple jeans and a plaid scarf and had spent the entire night nodding and saying, “Yeah, makes perfect sense,” for fear of getting ripped apart by a rabid art critic.

            Miranda trudged along behind Gabriel in the lines, studying the white curves and wings around her, when she noticed a strange nob on one of the pillars nearby. She frowned and turned to examine it more closely when one of the bodyguards behind her said, “Fuck,” and grabbed her arms, and then there was an explosion of heat.

            She felt weightless for a moment, and then she hit the ground hard, her right side taking most of the impact. She cried out and lay there for a moment, completely stunned, and then she felt hands grab at her again. She opened her eyes – when had she closed them? – and saw the face of the bodyguard from before.

            He said something to her, but she couldn’t hear him. She shook her head to clear it. He made a face and pulled her over to a nearby curve of marble and tucked her against it. “Stay here,” he said, and this time she hard him.

            Then he was gone, and Miranda of course had to look at what happened.

            The terminal was chaos.

            There were witches slinging spells at each other everywhere, some wearing the Blake crest, some wearing the Lupei crest, some wearing the Himura crest, but most wearing Vega. She spotted Gabriel fighting three witches, his back to a pillar, a blade in one hand and his blue glow of spellrunes in the other, and blood running down his cheek. Patrick wasn’t too far away, green runes glowing in both hands and a snarl on his face. Miranda winced as he got tossed ten feet back, but he just got back up and tossed that witch even further back.

            Miranda gasped for air and forced her eyes away from her family. She could help, she knew it. Just what – think, think, think. There were plenty of people cowering away from the magic, like her. There – that was something she could do. She could clear them out, make sure that no one could hit them even by accident.

            She stood up gingerly, gritting her teeth against the pain in her side. She studied the terminal, plotting out the best place, the safest places that she could get to. Obviously, the exit would be best, but there was a large alcove there that could shelter maybe twenty, and another there that could fit about ten.

            Mind made up, Miranda took a deep breath and edged out of her shelter. A dash of orange runelight flew past her and the magic in her head surged against the wall, but Miranda kept her feet and dodged the next spell, sprinting across the way for where she could see some people huddled. More red, green, and orange spells flew past her, one singing through a bit of her hair, but she was able to dodge all of them. She had a lot of experience, both from her childhood and also from dueling club at Barrowmore.

            True, at Barrowmore no one had been trying to kill her, but they had also been a good deal more consistent and precise with their aim.

            Miranda made it to the trio across the way and crouched down with them, ignoring the pounding in her head. “Listen, you need to make it to the exit if you can,” she said, hoping she sounding calm enough. “Get to that wall, and then that alcove there, see? After that, you should be able to make it out.”

            “What the fuck is going on?” demanded one of the guys.

            “Fuck if I know,” Miranda said. “I don’t follow politics.”

            Then she took a breath and ran back out into the fray. The Blake group was holding their own – they were all remarkable duelists – but the dissenter group had numbers on their side. For every witch Gabriel knocked out, there were two more to take his place. It was like fighting the Hydra, but with no way to stop new heads from appearing! More dissenters kept porting in at regular intervals, so even if Gabriel or Patrick or one of the other Blakes took several out in one move, there were always more.

            Miranda slid into and alcove, a spell flying right over her nose, and she pressed herself up against the wall and gasped for breath. Okay, this wasn’t working. She saw Gabriel trying to work himself away from the wall he was pressed against, trying to make his way over to one of the ports – of course.

            The ports.

            They needed to close the ports.

            Break them.

            Whatever.

            That’s what Miranda needed to do. The civilians were clearing out on their own, and with the help of hub security. But no one was getting close enough to the ports to stop people from coming in.

            Ports were really very simple constructs. Flat surfaces, generally stone or metal encasing precious gems that channeled the magic of the runes drawn by a runescribe. If any of those things broke, the connection couldn’t be formed, and the port was useless. Miranda couldn’t break the ports herself, but – someone with magic could.

            A dull red spell flew by her shelter and she grinned ruthlessly. Those spells were pretty dangerous thing sot be throwing around a port hub. Who knew what they could hit?

            Miranda stepped out again, but instead of running for shelter, she ran at one of the ports. Almost immediately, she was dodging more spells, but it was still just like ten-on-ten duels at Barrowmore. The adrenalin was erasing the pain in her side, and once she got a feel for the positions of everyone around her, she was gaining ground.

            She grinned when she managed to trick a Lupei witch into throwing another Lupei twenty feet back into a wall.

            But that was child’s play. Even a rookie could manage that, in these conditions. Miranda had to do better then that, to break these ports.

            She was getting closer to Gabriel. She was also gasping for breath, pain edging past adrenalin and magic thumping at her temples. Gabriel – focus on Gabriel. There was a Vega behind and to her right, she could hear him chanting a fire spell. When he was on his last rune, Miranda sped up and dove under the witch in front of her, not quite smiling as she heard his yelps and felt the heat of fire pass over her. She landed on a port and immediately rolled off it as a yellow spell whipped at her.

            The spell crashed against the port instead, and the gems cracked, fogging over. It was useless.

            Perfect.

            Miranda managed that routine a couple more times before she dodged too slow and was thrown back. She gasped for breath, rolling onto her back, but the last thing she saw was the glow of red runespell before everything went black.