Copyright © 2021 R. A. Consell
All rights reserved.
Contents
Contents 3
One Bytown Royal Orphanage 1
Two Market Day 6
Three A Wolf in Uniform 11
Four Trials Beyond Measure 15
Five Dock Day 19
Six Lodging 24
Seven Familiar Faces 29
Eight A Brief History of Ignorance 33
Nine Heights 38
Ten Fall Guy 44
Eleven Promises 46
Twelve Samhain 54
Thirteen Le Chateau du Printemps 60
Fourteen Smoke and Mirrors 64
Fifteen Self-Guided Tours 70
Sixteen Party to a Disaster 75
Seventeen Stale Cake 81
Eighteen Strays in High Places 86
Nineteen Throwing Stones 91
Twenty Introduction to Smuggling 97
Twenty-one The Greatest of All Treasures 105
Twenty-two Immovable Objects 114
Twenty-three Candy Castles 120
Twenty-four Questionable Successes 126
Twenty-five Unhelpful Aid 134
Twenty-six Birds of a Feather 139
Twenty-seven Chasing Memories 142
Twenty-eight Where There’s Smoke 149
Twenty-nine A Silver Bracelet 155
For Becky
Thank you to Jim, Bee, Aileen, Topher, Carrie, Kayleigh, Luke, Arlene, and Polly.
Your wisdom makes it look like I know what I’m doing.
One
Bytown Royal Orphanage
A decaying fortress sits alone at the end of a cracked and broken country lane, without another building in sight. Its solitude is in no small part a symptom of its appearance. It is so dismal and threatening that no other building would approach it; not even the bravest and most stalwart edifices would dare share a landscape with that miserable architecture.
The fortress is a concrete monstrosity, grey as a November rainstorm and streaked with orange from the rusting barbed wire that tops its featureless walls. Its single entrance, a massive iron door, carries a dozen different locks barring entry or exit. Above that door are two sets of words. One, the fading stains left by the corroding letters that once marked this place the Bytown Confederate Jail. Those words were now poorly concealed by a roughly carved wooden sign claiming the old prison’s new purpose, Bytown Royal Orphanage.
As with so many things in the fey realm, the exterior of the orphanage has little to do with what is inside. Behind those imposing walls is a secret sanctuary seen by few besides the children who reside there. The space within the walls is a sea of green grass and fruiting trees. Cobblestone pathways connect colourful wooden cottages to a large central manor from which waft the scents of baking bread and cinnamon. The only inner reflections of the outer decrepitude are the grey stone walls surrounding the haven, but even they fail to interrupt the coziness of the place. They have been left bare not to darken the interior but as an enchanted canvas for chalk drawings, bringing the children’s sketches to life.
At the centre of it all stands a bronze statue of the man who founded the orphanage, the man who saw the potential of the derelict and decommissioned old prison and repurposed it to house and protect the wards of the state. The statue is of a rangy man with a piercing gaze and a wry smile. He wears a long coat of military cut, and a massive wolf sits at his side. It is a statue of Talen Dubois, knight commander of the Canine Unit of the Royal Guard, and it was this statue that Kuro was trying very hard to destroy. Kuro had a troubled history with Talen Dubois. The commander had arrested him less than a year prior for attempting to prevent a burglary. It was incredibly unjust that Kuro would be chased down and imprisoned for his good deed, though Dubois had little sympathy for that argument. It was nearly the only legal thing Kuro had ever done. He had spent most of the thirteen years of his life as a burglar and pickpocket.
Once in the clutches of Dubois, Kuro had been held captive, interrogated, and experimented on before being sent to the Avalon Academy boarding school, which served as his prison. Dubois had even held Kuro’s cat hostage to ensure his cooperation and good behaviour.
Despite Kuro’s dislike of the man, that was not the reason he was trying to destroy the statue. Kuro was not a naturally destructive boy. Destruction was noisy, messy, and drew attention, all things that were contradictory to his preference, which was to spend as much time as possible hiding.
He was not being allowed to hide, though. He had failed a class in his first year at school, and for that he was spending his summer suffering through evocation lessons so that he wouldn’t be held back and made to repeat the year.
Kuro struggled to decide whether repeating would be so bad. On the one hand, he would do much better the second time around, and he might feel prepared for his second year by the end of it. On the other hand, Charlie, Marie, and Arthur would advance without him, leaving him alone and friendless in class.
Which option Kuro would choose was a moot point, as it would require a miracle for him to pass the test coming at the end of summer break. Kuro was terrible at evocations.
It wasn’t for lack of trying on anyone’s part, though. He had hours of formal instruction every weekday from the matron of the orphanage, Miss Brigid, and the older children took turns tutoring him in the afternoon.
His favourite tutor was Meredith Thrump. Despite, or maybe because of, being twice the size of any other student and having a smile like a crocodile, she was kind and encouraging. She’d taken Kuro’s side during the school year when he’d been falsely accused of stealing and had even helped clear his name. Unfortunately, her kindness did nothing to help Kuro succeed at anything. She could spend an hour watching him fail to make a pea hover, saying, “you’re doing great,” “you’ll get it next time,” and “you’re really getting better,” without any of it being true.
Arie Vanderbosch wasn’t much better. He was a firefly, someone born in the mundane world who had found his way into the fey realm. He kept trying to explain things in terms of Blandlands stuff. To boil a glass of water, he gave advice like “focus your thoughts like sunlight through a magnifying glass” and “condense the magical stream into a cone like the flame of a blowtorch.” Kuro, having never used either a magnifying glass or a blowtorch, had trouble applying the advice.
Johannes Plumb was even less helpful, as he didn’t say or do anything. He was a typical wizard in that he was extremely lazy and disinterested in any problem he couldn’t solve with magic, and Kuro was exactly that sort of problem. He supervised Kuro’s practice by napping in the shade with firm instructions to Kuro not to wake him unless something was on fire.
Kuro’s final tutor was Belladonna Lamorak, and it was on her orders that Kuro was attempting to deface the statue of Dubois. She had no more love for the Hound than Kuro since Dubois had arrested her for committing the crime that Kuro had tried to prevent.
She had blamed Kuro for her capture, but after a series of ill-fated revenge attempts, which led to Bella nearly losing an eye and Kuro nearly losing his life, they had come to something of a truce. Someone else, though, had taken up Bella’s flag and quest for vengeance against Kuro: Azalea Lamorak, Bella’s little sister.
Azalea was a year younger than Kuro and had not yet started school, so he had met her only after arriving at the orphanage. Within an hour of meeting, she had declared herself his mortal enemy.
She was a sickly girl, with her nose fixed permanently in a book. She let dark hair fall in front of her face so that she always seemed to be peering through a curtain of hanging vines. Even on the hottest days, Azalea wore all black and shrank from the sun like a vampire.
She cultivated an aura of gloom and had an arsenal of disdainful looks to unleash on anyone who interrupted her reading: from sullen glowers to violent glares. The only person whom Azalea had any affection for was her big sister, and in that lay Kuro's problem.
When Azalea had seen the scar that Kuro had given Bella, which ran from her eyebrow down to her cheek and made her one pupil look like a cat's, she had sworn vengeance. Bella had forgiven Kuro and had even liked showing off her scar, but Azalea's fury could not be assuaged. The fact that Kuro had also ended up in the hospital after that fight didn't matter to her, nor that Bella had attacked Kuro in the first place. All she cared about was that someone had hurt her sister and still drew breath.
Azalea was wary of attacking Kuro directly. Instead, she lurked menacingly. Wherever he went, she seemed to be there, watching him from around a corner or through a window with dark angry eyes. She made a point of reading books with titles such as The Modern Baba Yaga: A Compendium of Curses, A History of Assassinations in the Three Kingdoms, and Poisonous Plants of Tirnanog.
She kept careful watch from the shade while Belladonna tutored Kuro, staring from the shadows of the manor like a graveyard statue.
Under Azalea’s watchful gaze, Belladonna instructed Kuro to ruin Dubois’s bronze likeness, though it wasn’t purely out of spite. She insisted that there was an educational purpose to the vandalism.
Bella had a very different method for teaching than anyone else. “They always try to make us start small,” she had said. “Small, safe, calm, and controlled. It’s way easier to start big. Find the feeling, make it work, and get it under control later.”
To her, feelings, big feelings, were the basis of evocations, and everything else was just trying to put reins on the outcome. She had shown with a sharp glare how anger could be directed to create heat, boiling a full kettle in a matter of seconds. Kuro hadn’t much experience with anger, but he did manage to boil his little cup of water and ruin a small portion of the tabletop where he was practicing.
Their efforts with cold were reversed. Bella demonstrated how concentrated fear could chill, freezing a glass of water solid in mere minutes. Kuro had drawn on his deep reserves of fear and not only frozen his cup but burst two pipes and shattered a window with the sudden cold snap that filled the manor hall.
He was then forbidden from practicing indoors, and it became quite clear to Kuro why children were taught to start small. Were they to try it at school, the damage caused by a full class of children using Bella’s methods would level the building.
Relegated to the courtyard, Bella set Kuro against the statue of Dubois with aims of getting him to finally evoke some electricity. “Lightning is all about the difference between two things,” she explained. “Focus on the difference between you and your target and let that feeling build.”
Kuro could feel the small hairs on his arms and neck stand on end as Bella demonstrated. She held out her own amber rod and scowled at the statue. “When the charge gets too big”—a blinding flash and a crack like splitting wood shattered the peace of the orphanage yard as lightning arced between her rod and Talen’s forehead—“nature will balance it out.”
She smiled with grim satisfaction at the small pit her lightning had dug into the bronze and handed Kuro the amber rod.
The rods were important. Lightning always has two ends. If one were to attempt to evoke it without a rod, then it would arc to their body instead. In class they had used small pencil-sized rods, one in each hand, while they attempted to get a spark to jump a gap narrower than a finger. This rod was the size of his forearm, and Bella was encouraging him to arc a couple of yards.
Kuro did as he was told. He focused on the differences between him and Dubois and let them charge the air. It wasn’t hard. Bella had chosen his target well. Dubois was tall, strong, handsome, and confident. He was rich and powerful, the head of the Hounds, a knight commander in the Royal Guard. People respected him. People feared him. He was Kuro’s captor, Kuro his prisoner. He was the law, Kuro a criminal…
Crack!
A blinding bolt of lightning arced from the statue to Kuro’s left palm. As before, Bella’s methods worked, but not without collateral damage. He was so focused on making something happen, he’d failed to notice where the charge was building. His arm recoiled by reflex, punching himself in the face. Bella swore, Azalea cackled, and Kuro collapsed. His arm simultaneously went numb and screamed in pain.
Five minutes later Kuro was sitting on a table in the dining hall while Miss Brigid smeared his hand with burn salve and tore a strip off Bella. “Of all the irresponsible, unthinking, reckless things you’ve done, Belladonna, this might top the list.”
“He’s fine.” Bella rolled her eyes at the accusations and slouched against a wall.
Kuro was feeling better. The initial pain from the shock had faded to a dull ache, though his arm still felt like rubber, and his whole left side tingled.
“He is not fine!” the matron replied as she wrapped gauze around his hand. It was impressive how gentle she could be while shouting so loudly. “You’re bloody lucky the shock didn’t stop his heart.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Bella argued. “It’s the first time he’s ever made lightning.”
It was true. It had been some of the easiest magic he’d ever evoked and hurt less than some of his failed attempts at school. The only thing easier was summoning the wind that helped him run and jump, and he didn’t know how to do that—it just sort of came naturally.
Miss Brigid was unconvinced. “The efficacy of your methods is not what’s in question. It matters precious little how well they work if the student doesn’t survive the experience.” Bella tried to defend herself further, but Miss Brigid did not give her the chance. “You are not to tutor Kuro anymore, understand?”
“Not much of a punishment.” Bella shrugged. “It was a chore anyway.”
“Oh, that is not your punishment.” The matron taped down the last of the dressing and stood up to properly face Bella. “We will speak of that later,” she said with a promise of unavoidable misery.
Bella scowled, muttered something under her breath, and turned to leave. Kuro felt like he should say something. He wanted to apologize, or thank her for her help, or both. It was hard to craft the right words to thank someone who had nearly gotten him killed minutes earlier, though.
Before Kuro managed to say anything, Bella paused at a bowl of fresh peaches on a table near the door. “By the way, there’s something nobody seems to have noticed about him that might be worth knowing.”
She picked up a peach and tossed it at Kuro. He snatched it out of the air before it hit his face, then dropped it as the impact with his burned hand shot tendrils of pain up his arm.
“He’s left handed.” She departed without giving the fuming matron a chance to tear into her anew. Azalea followed, backing out of the room with her ferocious eyes fixed on Kuro through a curtain of black hair.
Bella’s accusation stuck with him over the week as his hand healed.
She was mistaken; Kuro wasn’t left handed. He used to be, but not anymore. It was one of his many failings, one of the few his creator had been able to fix. Phineas Hearn had trained it out of him. Proper wizards were right handed. Magic was done right handed. Writing was done right handed. Being left handed was incorrect.
Why, though, had Bella thought he was left handed? And why did he try to catch the peach with his left hand? That was particularly foolish since his hand was injured. He’d just acted on instinct.
He pondered it one night as he sat down to write a letter to Charlie, his best friend from school. He watched as his right hand clumsily scrawled out stories of his recent misadventures. He thought about switching hands. Could he even do it? Was he allowed? Going against his master’s orders was potentially fatal.
His former master, Kuro reminded himself. Phineas Hearn wasn’t his master any longer. Kuro hated Phineas. Properly hated him. He was
a cruel, violent, arrogant murderer. If being right handed was what Phineas considered correct, then Kuro would be the most left handed wizard in the fairylands.
He switched his pen to his left hand and started to write. He was afraid at first that it was against some long-forgotten order, but he did not feel the slowing of his heart that accompanied disobedience. Of course, it would have been absurd to forbid Kuro from using his left hand. Kuro had been a pickpocket and thief for his former master; using two hands was a necessary part of that job. It was just improper to favor the left.
Kuro wrote with an enthusiasm and vigor he’d never had before. Despite his hand still being sore, he filled pages. Suddenly the simple act of writing was an act of rebellion against Phineas. The writing wasn’t neat or fast or orderly, but that wasn’t any worse than normal. It felt better, more natural. Like he was unpracticed instead of incapable. He didn’t know if that was just in his head, and he didn’t care.
He wrote the longest letter he ever had to Charlie, three pages of rambling about his little room in the cottage, the lightning bolt, Azalea haunting him, the peach trees, the chalk drawings, anything he could think of on which to spend ink. He signed his name with a flourish that tore a hole in the page and jammed the whole thing into an envelope.
Charlie was out on her farm in the Western Wildlands, raising all manner of strange beasts. He hadn’t heard from her yet, though this would be his third letter to her. He hadn’t heard from Arthur either. He tried not to let it bother him. They were probably both busy with their families and summer activities. They weren’t trapped in a renovated prison with nothing to do.
Marie would have been diligent about replying, but he couldn’t send letters to her. She was out in the Blandlands, and the lutin post could not reach her. Sending her a letter would involve finding a way out of the fey realm, locating Blandlands postage and a mailbox, and waiting days or weeks for it to arrive. Even then, she’d have no way to reply.
Volume 2: Burglary Page 1