Page 82 of Choosing Jenny
“I don’t think so,” I refuted. “I think Noc knew something was coming. Some magician’s scrying or telepathy. Sam was too frightened to do anything but vomit.”
Though time would tell, I thought, as we walked inside.
The palace magician’s lab was deep in the belly of the palace, beneath the main floor and near the dungeon. The location had made interrogations much faster when I was a child. I would go from the dungeon, where the Royal Executioner had tortured me, to the palace magician’s lab, where Noc had used tricks to crack into my mind. I did not begrudge him his work—he was merely doing his job. But that didn’t mean I liked him. Or his lab.
It was a dank, glassware-infested open room. Tables were strewn in every direction, topped by bells, books, candles, and potions. Bookshelves lined the walls and the occasionalcina scurried from around cracks in the walls. Small bodies of dissected animals were housed in jars. Others held larger singular organs, of which I did not know their origin. Yet, the whole room smelled of cinnamon somehow.
“Because I like cinnamon,” Noc said, seemingly appearing from a far corner.
I had always hated that he did that. He could read minds to a fraction of a degree, usually the last thing someone thought. It was intrusive, at best. At worst…
“So,” he said, rubbing his hands together and addressing Longshot. “I heard you lost a hand. That was rather careless of you, Longshot.”
“My kindness overrode my good sense,” he said in a flat tone.
“That’s what kindness gets us, eh?” Noc winked. “Well, I am happy to try and—”
“Try?” I snapped. “You said you could do it.”
Noc waved away my annoyance. “This work is an art, not a science, Malice. Hands are particularly difficult. So many delicate nerves and tendons and the entire structure of it all. Then there’s the question of how much pain the handless will tolerate before they give up.”
My body tensed. “Pain?”
Something in the magician’s eyes gleamed. “We do not remember it, because we were inside our birth parents at the time, but growth is painful. Once we get started, Longshot, you will experience more pain than you have ever known. It is not fair, but magic is not fair, though I think you already know that, don’t you?”
Longshot’s jaw tightened, and we both knew that Noc was insinuating he had magician’s blood coursing through his veins. “I am aware there is usually a cost associated with magic, yes,” he replied vaguely.
“Hmm.” Noc swiped his hand over Longshot’s good arm, drawing blood with no knife. Longshot didn’t so much as flinch and Noc licked the sticky liquid.
“I knew it,” Noc said triumphantly. “I long held my suspicions, but now I know the truth. You’re a magician.”
Longshot nodded and did not deny Noc’s claim. “By blood. Not by practice. Yes.”
“By the strength of Muraska, your secret is safe with me,” Noc said and extended his hand.
Longshot gripped it with his good one, and their hands glowed black for a few seconds, then they returned to normal.
I’d never seen anything like that and frowned. “What was that?”
Longshot offered a rare smile. “A magician’s swear. If he breaks that swear, he dies.”
Noc clapped his hands, almost gleefully. “Are you ready to begin?”
Longshot exhaled a breath. “Lead the way.”
I followed behind the pair toward the west end of the room. A padded exam table sat beneath a lamp that held a dozen different colored bulbs. Behind it, a cart of medical equipment shone in the ambient light. In this space, the scent was something herbal.
“Eucalyptus,” Noc said.
“Stop reading my mind,” I growled at him.
He ignored my complaint and continued. “That scent helps when I’m dissecting bodies. It covers the smell. Mostly.”
It wasn’t something I wanted to know.
Noc gestured to the medical table. “Longshot, lay there please.”
“Can you give him anything for the pain?” I asked.
