Arcane Entanglement (The Mage and His Brute #1)

Chapter 42

Evander’s pulse quickened as they joined the young man. He hunched down and carefully brushed away the loose soil. A hint of magic grazed his senses.

His fingers struck something solid a moment later.

“Rufus, Viggo, give me a hand.”

Together, they unearthed the ornate box Millbrook had buried at the edge of the grove. It was made of polished wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Evander cleared the dirt clinging to the surface before carefully inserting the key they’d found in the Charm Weaver’s workshop in the lock, his heart thundering against his ribs.

It was a perfect fit.

Inside the box were a leather-bound journal, a logbook, a stack of notes, and a small, cloth-wrapped bundle.

Evander checked the logbook with Viggo and Rufus while William began going through his father’s notes.

The name of Millbrook’s last client was one Caine Renwick. The object he had commissioned the Charm Weaver to make was a pocket watch.

Evander’s scalp prickled at the address Renwick had provided.

It was the place where he’d spent his formative years as a mage.

“What in the blazes?!” Rufus mumbled.

Viggo scowled. “That dark mage works at the Royal Institute for the Arcane?”

Evander opened the journal next, Viggo and Rufus peering over his shoulder.

It was a record of Alastair Millbrook’s days as a Charm Weaver. His neat handwriting danced across the pages, etching out his thoughts, emotions, and the humdrum that sometimes defined his occupation. He’d even hastily jotted down random ideas that came to him at the edges of the paper, as if he couldn’t find the patience to write them elsewhere or was fearful he might forget them.

The tone of his journal changed in the last fifteen pages or so. His penmanship grew more shoddy, ink blots darkening the sheets here and there, the language he began using hasty and blunt.

Sentences jumped out at Evander, the words betraying the Charm Weaver’s growing dread.

I am beginning to question the purpose of this commission. I fear R hasn’t been completely honest with me.

R came to the workshop again today. He grows impatient.

The hairs lifted on the back of Evander’s neck when he turned a page.

What have I done? Dear God, could this be what I think it is?!

R is a dark mage. I am certain of it now.

Viggo shifted closer, his knee brushing Evander’s thigh, the tension roiling off him reflected in Evander’s whitening knuckles.

I have to get Martha and William out of London. I curse the day I ever accepted R’s offer. This is the devil’s work and I shall be part of it no longer!

The journal rustled when Evander flipped the paper.

Millbrook’s final entry made him freeze and drew a curse from Rufus.

I am sure he will come to kill me tonight. I have done my best to foil his plans. To anyone who finds this, please, forgive me. I hope you find a skilled artificer to complete the countermeasure I’d begun to make. Give my love to my wife and son. And may God pardon me my sins!

Evander clenched his jaw so hard his teeth hurt.

The fact that Millbrook had not sought help meant he was either fearful for his family or things had happened too quickly near the end for him to do so.

Or maybe he thought Renwick was too powerful a foe to be stopped by Scotland Yard.

That thought chilled his blood.

“Your Grace.”

William’s dazed tone had them looking over at him.

The young man was kneeling in the dirt, his father’s notes spread out before him.

“If I’m reading this correctly, my father created a device called the Blood Siphon, ” he mumbled. “Its purpose is to capture and store vast amounts of energy.”

The pieces of the puzzle slotted into place like death knolls inside Evander’s mind.

“The crystal vial.” Rufus met Evander’s shocked gaze. “McAndrew and Brown said it was some kind of energy conduit!”

Evander swallowed and nodded. “That explains the thaumic capacitor we found in Millbrook’s workshop.”

William’s eyes rounded. “My father has a thaumic capacitor ? No, before that. You said something about a vial!” His gaze roamed a series of drawings on the ground. He grabbed a page and thrust it in their faces. “Do you mean this?!”

Goosebumps erupted on Evander’s skin.

Penned elaborately on the paper was a perfect representation of the object he’d found near Millbrook’s body.

Evander touched the drawing with trembling fingers.

“Yes. I found something like this next to your father!”

Viggo stiffened beside him. “What the—there’s a second one?!”

Evander followed his gaze to a sketch on the ground next to William.

It showed an object in the shape of a pocket watch, its edges covered in intricate engravings that made up complex runes. Two vials sat in the centre of the device, amidst a web of delicate gears and springs.

A buzzing sounded in Evander’s ears.

“William, did your father write down the design of those two vials and the purpose of the artefact?” he heard himself say from a distance.

“Yes, I think I saw something scribbled down somewhere in his latest notes.” William searched his father’s paperwork. “Here it is!” He snatched up a page. “Father wrote ‘ I believe they intend to use the red vial to absorb and store the raw life force…of…magicless individuals.’ ” He faltered, face turning ashen. “ ‘The blue vial— ’” He stopped and swallowed hard.

Evander’s heart thumped painfully against his ribs as he took the note from William’s shaking hand and finished reading out what he could not.

“ ‘The blue vial, being a stabiliser and refiner of energy, will turn the accumulated life force into a more potent, stable form’, ” he quoted numbly. “ ‘I think their true purpose is to make the device act as a reservoir of life energy that can fuel and augment magic. This would theoretically allow mages to grow their powers and have an almost infinite source of magic at hand to draw upon.’”

Rufus finished reading the rest as Evander lapsed into silence.

“‘The device is fashioned in such a way that both the absorbing and the stabilising components are essential for it to function as it should’ ,” the inspector mumbled in a voice full of horror. “‘Without the stabiliser, the Blood Siphon will be dangerously unstable and prone to exploding’ .”

The curse that left Viggo turned the air blue and made them jump.

“That bastard Renwick is planning to use this thing on thralls?!” he snarled, face dark with fury.

Evander clenched his jaw. Considering dark mages’ agenda as a whole, that fact did not surprise him.

Still, a crime of this magnitude would go beyond what the War of Subjugation intended to accomplish. This won’t just be genocide. This will be the mass extermination of an entire race of humans!

He stared at the note in his hand, blood pounding dully in his skull.

Alastair Millbrook’s final actions on the night he died had just become blindingly apparent. The blue vial had not ended up in the alley accidentally. He’d removed it from the Blood Siphon likely moments before Caine Renwick had broken into his workshop to collect the device and kill him.

William sagged, his face slack with disbelief. “Did my father really make such an awful invention?!” He stared unseeingly at Evander and his companions, as if begging for anyone to tell him he was wrong.

Evander faltered. “I don’t think that was his intention. I believe once he realised what it was he’d created, it was already too late.”

Rufus placed a gentle hand on William’s shoulder. “Part of his motives for completing this project may very well have been to protect you and your mother.”

Evander dipped his head in agreement. “Besides, he said he’d started making a countermeasure.”

“Is this it?” Viggo said in a hard voice.

They turned.

The Brute had uncovered the cloth-wrapped bundle in the box. A half-finished pocket watch sat in his palm, metal gleaming in the bright rays piercing the overhead canopy.

The pocket watch on Millbrook’s workbench flashed before Evander’s eyes.

Was that one a prototype?!

William unfroze and hastily shuffled the diagrams and notes scattered around him. His expression turned triumphant.

“This is it.” He showed them another schematic, this one a mirror image of the incomplete artefact Viggo held. “This is what he was making.” His fingers traced the diagram and the matching notes, his lips moving silently as he deciphered the complex engineering language. His face brightened, relief rendering him weak. “It says here this artefact could cancel out the effects of the Blood Siphon .”

The ramifications of everything they had uncovered in the glade made Evander’s head fairly spin.

“By the way, how come you can read those drawings?” Viggo asked William.

“I’m an apprentice Charm Weaver.” William’s ears reddened. “I want to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” the Brute grunted. “If it hadn’t been for what happened to my family and those bastard mages, I would have ended up a potato farmer like my pa.”

The incongruity of his statement compared to his reputation as the Ironfist Brute had William’s jaw dropping and Evander biting his lip hard.

“A potato farmer,” Rufus managed in a strangled voice. “It suits you.”

A smile tugged at Viggo’s lips.

The brief moment of levity lightened their sombre moods.

“We should return to London,” Evander said. “This changes things. We have to take this all the way to the top of Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Arcane Affairs.”

Rufus nodded briskly. “We should inform the War Office and the Mage Council too.”

They returned to the cottage with the box and its contents.

Evander filled Martha Millbrook in on their findings, carefully omitting the more gory details of the objective of her dead husband’s last commission.

“Alastair was a good man caught up in something terrible. We'll do our very best to find and punish his murderer.”

Martha nodded, her eyes gleaming with gratitude.

“Hawk will stick around and keep an eye on things,” Viggo told William. “I’ll send more men as reinforcements to relieve him.”

“We’ll have undercover officers from the Met come guard you too,” Rufus promised.

William squeezed Evander’s fingers as they shook hands at the door.

“Thank you.” He glanced over his shoulder, the sound of his mother in the kitchen faint. “It would have broken her heart if she’d been told what father accidentally created.” His jaw set in a hard line as he looked at them. “I hope you stop that bastard Renwick before he causes more harm.”

They bade him goodnight and made their way out of the woods.

It didn’t require too much persuasion to convince a farmer in the hamlet to take them into Harpenden.

The journey back to London was tense, the gravity of their discovery weighing heavily on all of them. Evander spent most of the trip poring over Millbrook’s notes and journal, a growing sense of unease eating at him with every mile that brought them closer to the city.

How and where is Renwick intending to use this device?

It wasn’t long before their train pulled into Charing Cross. As they stepped out on the platform, a figure caught Evander’s eye. The man disappeared in the bustling crowd, but not before Evander recognised the mocking sneer he shot his way. His pulse stuttered.

Renwick?!