Burned by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #1)(4)

“Oh, come on Baine,” Nila, a blond Enforcer, had scoffed as the coroner and the crime scene technicians filed out of the house with Roanas’s body and what pertinent items they’d found in tow. I studiously ignored the covered stretcher as it went past us, but my heart clenched all the same. “You should know better than to believe in conspiracy theory crap like that. We’ll find out who did this to your old man, but don’t be surprised if we drag some rat out of a hole who happened to have a bone to pick with him, rather than a serial murderer.”

“He told me someone was targeting shifters before he died,” I’d said between gritted teeth. “And don’t try to tell me he was just hallucinating or paranoid, because I don’t believe it. Roanas doesn’t make mistakes like that.”

“Didn’t,” Nila corrected me.

“Look,” Brin, the other Enforcer, had interjected before I ripped Nila’s face off. “I’m not going to deny there have been other silver poisonings in Shiftertown recently.” He’d given me a stern glare, as if I were a whelp that needed to be put in her place rather than a fellow Enforcer. But then, Brin and Nila were part of the Main Crew, many of whose members routinely treated the other Enforcers like we were beneath them. “But we don’t have enough evidence to determine whether or not the murders were related. We’ll work to find your friend’s killer, but in the meantime you need to back off and stay out of our way.” He stepped forward and shoved his nose into my face, menace bleeding from every pore in his hulking body. “Have I made myself clear?”

I’d responded by flipping him off, and then I walked out with the case file Roanas had mentioned tucked beneath my leather jacket, which I’d torn the house apart to find while I was waiting for the Enforcer’s Guild to arrive. No way was I turning it over to them. Brin and Nila weren’t exactly known for being thorough – their work was half-assed at best, and more than likely they would end up pinning this on the wrong person just so they could collect their bounty and go home. Besides, they were both humans and didn’t give a rat’s ass about Roanas.

Roanas deserves better than them, I thought as I swung my leg over the seat of my steambike. A few people passing through the streets on foot glanced nervously at my bike and then scurried to the sidewalks as I turned the engine on – steam-powered vehicles were a rather new invention, less than fifty years old, and steambikes in particular were considered dangerous. It didn’t help that mages abhorred technology as a whole, sticking to either magical methods of transportation or the horse-drawn variety.

I took my rage out on the streets of Solantha, whipping around corners at breakneck speeds and leaning the bike so close to the ground my leather jacket scraped against the asphalt. I raced the bike up and down the hilly roads reserved specifically for steam-powered vehicles, zipping past clusters of townhouses huddled together and groupings of small shops where you could get anything from takeout to bridal gowns. My helmet shielded me from most of the scents, but I still caught a few of them – the briny air drifting in from Solantha Bay, freshly baked goods wafting from an open shop window, and the unique burnt-sugar smell that I recognized as magic.

Magic and I have a complicated relationship. I can’t survive without it, but it’s bound and determined to be the death of me. The mages in this country have a monopoly on magic, and use it to beat us into submission. Since they’re the most powerful race in this country, they rule us by default, which really sucks because they don’t care about anyone outside their own ranks.

However, magic isn’t all bad. It’s what gives us shifters the power to change forms and communicate via mindspeech – all useful talents to have, even if they were given to us by the mages experimenting on our human ancestors. And the various charms, amulets and spells for sale on both the black market and the regular one have their uses. Lots of people rely on them, convinced they can’t live without the mages who provide them.

I’m not one of those people. I may use the amulets, but I hate mages more than anyone else. My father was a mage, and he left me before I was even born with a talent I’ve had to hide for years in order to avoid execution. A talent that’s failed me more often than not, and has never worked when I needed it.

The crush of buildings began to thin out as I reached the bay, giving way to wider streets, fancier shops, and luxurious apartment complexes Solanthans paid a premium for so they could sit in their living rooms and enjoy the waterfront view. The scent of brine grew significantly stronger as I approached the shoreline, where the sun had broken over the horizon, painting the stone boathouses at each pier a pale pink and gold. The line of piers stretched in either direction as far as the eye could see, covering the coastline along the bay from end to end.

This section of town was known simply as the Port – but a lot more happened around here, than just ships coming and going to pick up and drop off cargo and passengers. While most of the piers lining the south end of the shore were exclusively devoted to shipping, the ones up north each had their own hubs of activity. I stopped at a corner to allow traffic from the perpendicular street to pass, glancing to the pier on my right that was known as The Fish Market. Even if you didn’t catch the stench from a mile away, you could spot it by the cawing seagulls constantly trying to swoop down and snatch bass or mussels from the vendors. I watched a particularly haggard-looking man waving his wide-brimmed straw hat at a gull who was circling his stall, only to get blindsided as another one swooped in from behind and snatched a silvery-looking fish right from the cart. It made me wonder whether the feathery bastards worked in tag-teams.