“So he went with things he saw.”
I nodded. “That’s the idea. But he was dying, and probably fuzzy brained, and he was a kid. They pick up on different things than an adult. But if we can figure it out, it may tell us who is still bringing people in—and where.”
James scowled some more; it seemed to be the war mage resting face, but it looked weird on his usually pleasant features.
“May tell you,” he corrected. “If the Senate wants to go ballistic on some slavers, that’s their business. But it’s not a priority for us.”
I stared at him. “Not a priority—”
“The guys upstairs consider it to be a problem that’s solving itself. So why waste manpower on it?”
“It doesn’t look like it’s solving itself to me!”
He raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t it? Fights mean casualties. Sure, you try to make things look bloodier than they are, and save your best people, but accidents happen. And even when nobody dies, they get injured and have to sit out for weeks or months. So you need a constant supply of new blood to stay operational, but with both us and the Senate on it lately, portals are getting shut down everywhere, and fights are getting harder to staff. Can’t get people to come out for that.” He nodded at the selkies.
“Rumor is, the slavers have started stealing from each other,” I said, thinking of Olga’s nephew.
“But that just determines who ends up with the dwindling supply of new blood,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t make more portals appear out of nothing. The big-time slavers, like the guy we raided three nights ago, are still in the game, being powerful enough or well connected enough to end up with the lion’s share. But the little guy ends up with damned selkies, or nothing at all. It was putting them out of business.”
“Was?”
“More and more, the slavers are switching over to a new line of work.”
I frowned. “Like what?”
James didn’t answer. He just gave a whistle that caused several of his boys to look up. “Toss me a crate.”
“Which one?”
James’ lips twisted. “Does it matter?”
One of the guys laughed. And then remembered that they had company, and quickly scowled some more. But he put what I guess was a levitation charm on one of the crates by the wall, and pushed it our way.
It glided swiftly across the room and James caught it, pushing it down to the floor, where it bobbed around gently.
It was an old-fashioned wooden thing, with a few tufts of straw sticking out here and there, like it was having a bad hair day. It was also familiar, looking like the crates Dorina had seen stacked along the walls in that underwater room at Curly’s. It was an odd coincidence, and for a moment, I got excited.
And then I opened it.
“What a load of crap.”
That was Fin, peering over my shoulder, but it looked like James agreed. The sad contents weren’t likely to impress a guy whose dad owned a magic shop—one of the real ones. Instead of fake magic wands and marked decks of playing cards, it had an outer room stuffed with dried herbs, a counter stained by a thousand potions, and a back room where people exchanged power for cash.
It was one of the spots around town where people whose bodies made too much magic, like
war mages, for example, could go to get a little relief. Because magic had to be used. A mage’s body made a certain amount all the time, like a fleshy talisman, and if you didn’t use it, bad things started to happen. And not just to you.
Rufus, James’ dad, had once told me about a mage who lit his own house on fire, in his sleep. He let too much magic build up, didn’t release enough of it, and it came out as a fire spell that torched his place and almost killed him and his entire family. And he wasn’t the only one.
Stories like that cropped up in newspapers from time to time, and were one reason magically talented kids were pushed toward the Corps—even if they didn’t have the mental aptitude, like Huey and Louie over there. They were standing guard at the side door where we’d come in, in case any nosy norms showed up and needed to be pushed along their way. And they’d be doing that for the rest of their careers, never rising higher than the magical equivalent of beat patrol, because the brains didn’t match the talent.
But at least they wouldn’t be setting themselves on fire.
And they might make a little something on the side, selling their excess magic to Rufus or somebody like him. Or maybe more than a little. Some of the biggest juicers, as they were known, could survive just off selling magic. The amount needed for major spells was high, so there was always a market.
I looked down at the crate.
And then there was this.