Volume 2: Burglary

by R. A. Consell

  Kuro mumbled answers while trying to hold his breath, feeling like the whirlpool assaulting his head was creeping forward and might cover his face at any moment. He just kept guessing at answers until the hairdresser was satisfied.

  Then the blades came.

  All at once the water vanished and three sets of scissors flew from the hairdresser's apron and attacked. The razor-sharp steel gleamed viciously in the morning sun. Like a school of piranhas, they tore into Kuro’s mop of hair, piles of it falling away all around. He tensed every time he felt their cold metal touch his skin, expecting the next thing to fall would be an ear.

  The hairdresser guided their assault like a conductor, adjusting their paths with a gesture and grinning with malicious glee. After what seemed like hours, he waved away the scissors to make way for the second wave of his army. Combs dug into Kuro’s remaining hair, wrestling it into shape and fighting a tug of war with tangles. Along with the combs came the creams, strange lotions that oozed up his neck and crept along his scalp.

  With a clap, it was done. The hairdresser held up a mirror for Kuro’s inspection. “Well, what do you think? Très bien, non?”

  Kuro stared at the boy in the mirror. It was at the same time a stranger and unmistakably him. The unruly mop that had disguised him and kept him warm had been shorn away, revealing the unpleasant truth beneath. His blotchy brown skin was fully exposed to the light, his ears stuck out even more prominently, and the dark eyes looking out without the shield provided by his bangs were evasive and fearful. “It’s . . . shorter,” he said.

  The hairdresser’s smile shattered. In a flash, the sheet was removed, and Kuro was ejected from the chair. “You are finished. Next!”

  As Kuro retreated, he could hear the hairdresser grumbling about “ungrateful children” and being an “unappreciated genius.”

  With his mandatory grooming complete, it was time for the next torture to begin. Kuro marched glumly to the dining hall, where the test was to take place. There he was met by Mr. Ogonov, the Avalon Junior High evocations teacher.

  Ogonov looked as he usually did, overdressed for the occasion and undersized for his personality. “Kuro, good to see you,” he boomed, tossing one side of his high-collared cloak over his shoulder to expose the sharply cut tailcoat beneath. “All ready for the big test?” He was entirely too excited for the boredom that was to ensue.

  Ogonov sat Kuro at a table in the middle of the otherwise empty dining hall and passed him a worryingly thick exam booklet and several more sharpened pencils than Kuro wanted to believe he would need to complete the test. He began writing as fast as he could while Ogonov looked on, gently sculpting his beard into a finer and finer point.

  Kuro’s initial anxiety was quickly replaced with shock as he wrote. It was easy. He knew the answers. He actually knew them. He wasn’t just writing down half-remembered re-creations of stuff he’d seen in a haze of chalk and confusion in class. The words he was putting down meant things. He knew that most of his answers were correct. He not only knew they were correct, but he knew why they were correct.

  More than that, he could write them without thinking. His left hand just wrote whole words without him having to pay attention to each stroke of every character. He hadn’t noticed how much easier it had gotten, but with all the letters he’d written over the summer, his hand must have at some point started knowing what to do without being told.

  Three hours later he found himself staring dumbfounded at a completed exam. His first ever. He was shaken from his distracted state by Ogonov informing him that the time was up. He neatly ordered the ream of paper and passed it over to the teacher.

  “Are you all right, lad? You look a bit pale,” said Ogonov. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad. You nearly passed the last time, and you’ve had all summer to improve. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on the next part.”

  Kuro’s stomach lurched. In the happy surprise at his ability on the written exam, he’d momentarily allowed himself to forget about the practical portion.

  Ogonov led him out to the lawn to a table that had been prepared for the purpose.

  The evocations teacher had good cause to set up the table outside. When Kuro had done the test at the end of the school year, he’d sent it and everything on it flying into, and partially through, the far wall. Telekinesis was his bane. Everything else he could at least do poorly. When he tried to move things with his mind, one of the most basic magical skills there are, the best outcome was that nothing happened.

  It was the same setup as before: a rock, a cup, two sticks, and a ring in a line down the long table. Unlike last time, though, people were watching. The whole orphanage was gathered around the table to see Kuro perform, or fail to.

  With their haircuts complete, Kuro’s test was the most interesting thing happening that day. They hovered close to the table, waiting for the underwhelming display to begin. His tutors for the summer, Arie, Johannes, Meredith, and even Bella, jostled for the best position, curious if their tutelage had been sufficient.

  The younger children, especially the few going into their first year at Avalon, were eager to see what they’d be learning at school. Even Azalea pushed for a spot at the front while attempting to turn the shimmering cascade of waves she’d been given by the hairdresser back into the tangle of vines she typically hid behind.

  The fight for the best view was frustrated by Ogonov, who urged the whole crowd backward. He claimed it was to give Kuro space to work and reduce the pressure on him, but Kuro knew it was for their safety.

  Kuro approached the first of the challenges, a rock with almost transparent white crystals growing from it. He just had to turn it from quartz to amethyst. He gripped the stone and focused on the right ideas, encouraging his thoughts to take the shape of the hexagonal protrusions from the rock and then shift their tune to be more ferrous. Minutes ticked by, and the hue of the stone shifted very slightly pink. It wasn’t the deep purple that it should be, but Mr. Ogonov nodded in approval and said “sufficient” before making an exaggerated checkmark on his clipboard.

  There was polite clapping from the gathered spectators.

  Kuro moved to the small pair of amber rods. All he needed to do with them was get an arc to jump between them. He focused on the difference between his hands and let that fill the rods with opposite charges. Left and right, correct and incorrect, the one that had served Phineas, and the one that belonged to him alone.

  Crack!

  It was just a single snap of electricity. Full marks would have required a sustained arc, but he wasn’t aiming for the top of the class. He just wanted to have the chance to fight for the bottom of it again.

  Ogonov nodded with satisfaction, and Kuro moved on.

  Next was a small paper cup filled with water. Kuro encircled the cup with his fingers and focused all his thoughts into the middle. Less than a minute later, the cup was steaming, then a bubble formed and rolled to the top. It was enough. “Well done,” said Ogonov, accompanied by a bored smattering of applause.

  As he prepared to freeze the water, he thought he saw money change hands between Johannes and Bella.

  He was most confident in this task. He was certain he could do it, just not the way he was supposed to. He couldn’t slowly draw off the latent heat in the water through a deep understanding of magical principles; Bella’s method was the only one that worked for him. The real challenge was not to turn himself and half the lawn into a glacier. He tapped into his fear, an old ally that had kept him alive and out of trouble through years of thieving. He let just a little of that overwhelming feeling trickle out and tried to guide it into the water.

  The water froze in seconds. So, too, did his palms. The concentrated cold shot right through them. He jammed his hands in his pockets and balled up his fists to try to warm them again without looking suspicious.

  Ogonov raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the unusually rapid success but ticked off a pass on his clipboard regardless.


  The final challenge taunted him. The little metal ring sat waiting for him to raise it up off the table. It should be trivial, but the skill had always escaped him, and everyone around knew it. He could hear the murmurings of the orphans expressing their doubt and boredom, and he noticed Arie taking bets from the other tutors. He needed to block that out. He needed absolute focus.

  He let the world fade away. He let the tension he was carrying in his muscles ease. The ring didn’t move. That was good. If he tried too hard, there would be an explosion. That was his problem. The thing he knew how to do well was to make the wind blow, and whenever he tried to move something other than himself, via that or any other means, it would blow very hard, very fast, in all directions.

  Seconds ticked by with nothing happening. Ogonov knew Kuro well enough to recognize that as a limited success but not nearly enough to pass.

  Kuro tried every trick anyone had ever suggested: trying to feel its shape in his mind, imagining the ring staying still and the ground moving away from it, using hand motions, holding his breath, breathing steadily.

  Everyone watched his utter incompetence, and he wanted to run. A gentle breeze picked up behind him, offering its help if he chose to accept.

  He refused its gentle urgings. He was resolved to fight his instincts and pass this test. His denial, though, only increased the strength of the wind. The cup tipped and the amber rods rolled off the table. When the ring started to slide, he begged the wind to stop, to help him instead of destroying things.

  To his amazement, the wind relented. The breeze died, and the ring started to rattle, then flipped on end and started to spin, lifting off the table very slightly. A tiny cyclone held the ring up, twirling, just above the table.

  A round of genuine applause from the audience broke his focus. He tried to catch the ring before it fell, but in his hurry, he tried too hard, and the cyclone grew uncontrollably. Everyone dove for cover as the table was torn apart and wood pelted the audience. Ogonov shielded himself from the debris with his long black cape.

  Kuro didn’t bother moving. He just let the remains of the table and his hopes rain down on him.

  As the wind died, Mr. Ogonov lowered his cape. He walked to the epicentre of the disaster and examined the ring, still spinning in the air. He stroked his beard, refining the end to a fine point while making curious and contemplative hums. “Technically, a pass,” he said.

  Five

  Dock Day

  Kuro spent every spare minute he had over the last few days before school trying to make another ring hover, to no avail. Cyclones he could make; carefully controlled ones, not so much.

  He somewhat suspected that Ogonov had helped him. He clearly wanted Kuro to pass, as a matter of both kindness and pride. He wouldn’t like to think his teaching would produce a student as poor as Kuro. That theory was shattered, however, when Kuro received his grades. He’d done well, but that wasn’t the point. What became clear was that he hadn’t needed to float the ring to pass. He’d earned enough marks even without that.

  Sorting that out could wait, for the moment at least. There was another mystery that needed clearing up, and he would finally have direct access to the people involved. He spent the bus ride to the ferry that would carry them to Avalon Academy carefully crafting questions for Charlie and Arthur about the lack of letters. He’d sent dozens to each of them, to Ms. Crawley, and even a couple to his classmates Oliver and Magna and hadn’t received a single letter in return. He hadn’t received a single thing at all.

  The bus passed through the carefully manicured tunnel of trees into the ferry dock parking lot. It was already busy with other students and littered with cars, carriages, and carpets from all over the three kingdoms. Parents tried to give tear-filled farewells or stern lectures about the value of scholarship while their children desperately tried to escape to find their friends.

  The orphans had no such ritual to perform. Miss Brigid was too busy making certain the two new students had everything they needed to worry about the older ones. They piled off their bus and quickly added a measure of chaos to the proceedings at the docks. While only a dozen strong, they lacked the shackles of propriety that the presence of parents placed on the other children. They crashed over the parking lot in a wave of hugs, greetings, and insults. Their impact rolled through the crowd, pulling students along with it, away from their families and towards the boat.

  The Princess sat at the dock waiting. It was a hulking brute of a ship that had clearly been in service for ages. The powerful steel prow was scarred from breaking up the ice that filled the bay in the winter months. The gangplank squeaked and rattled like it was one footfall away from collapse as porters carried student bags onboard. The only attempt at matching the ship’s name was the bright white paint with blue and gold embellishments, but even that was laid on in too many layers with too little care.

  Kuro knew all of that was a lie. He had seen his former master turn the entire hull to sugar and leave it sweetening the harbor. This Princess was indistinguishable from the previous. Someone had gone to great effort to create a perfect replica of the original. Kuro doubted if that one had even been the original. This boat was ugly on purpose. Kuro surmised that it was to avoid standing out on the trip through the Blandlands to Avalon Island. It was carefully calculated to be just presentable enough for the wealthy parents to allow their children onto it, while not so ostentatious as to draw attention out in the bay.

  Another bus pulled into the parking lot alongside the one from the orphanage. Its passengers disembarked with less vigour than the orphans. They dismounted hesitantly, staring with confusion, wonder, and fear at the assembly of people on the docks. These children were dressed strangely, wearing cotton T-shirts, jeans, hoodies, and nylon jackets. They were the fireflies, children from outside the veil, who had spent their summer in the magic-free Blandlands and were now returning to the fey realm.

  As Kuro approached them, he saw a pair of familiar faces dismounting together. Marie and Sean stood out in the crowd and were both trying not to. Sean was the palest person Kuro had ever met, with carrot orange hair that stuck out at odd angles, much like his teeth. He hunched his shoulders and ducked his head in a hopeless attempt to hide behind the other students. Marie was his complete opposite: dark, with tight orderly braids and a stiff, proud posture she was clearly copying from nearby Tirnanogian students. They looked more like tourists failing to look like locals than returning students.

  When Kuro went up to greet them, he was met with confusion. Sean introduced himself as though they’d never met, and Marie returned his greeting but lacked her usual spirit. “Hey . . . How are you . . . Kuro?” Her words were distant and uncertain, like she only half recognized him, and she had to probe the corners of her mind to recall his name.

  Before he could ask anything about it, he was ushered away by an adult minder of the fireflies. “Don’t bother the Blandlanders,” he said sternly. “They haven’t had their memories returned yet, and you’ll just confuse them. Give us a few minutes and we’ll have her back to normal.”

  Kuro was given a little shove to encourage him farther away. He didn’t fight it. Marie wouldn’t thank him if he delayed the process. Also, despite looking like an aging shopkeeper, the minder moved like a guardsman—all the adults on the firefly bus did. They marched more than walked, their postures strong, and they kept looking around, focusing on nothing but seeing everything as if they were patrolling the market. It wasn’t clear if they were in disguise to seem more friendly to the fireflies or to avoid distressing the ordinary students and their families. A half-dozen guards in uniform have a way of chilling the air.

  Kuro watched as most of the fireflies were led to a small building at the side of the parking lot that he’d never noticed before. It could be mistaken for a large tool shed, a simple square building with a single metal door. It was made of heavy stone, however, and the door had multiple locks. Once the guard had it open, one fir
efly at a time was led in, looking vacant and confused, and exited a few minutes later, rattled but recognizing the scene around them.

  Two other fireflies, the youngest, were led directly to the ferry. Each had a personal minder to make sure they got on the boat and didn’t get off. They were the new students. Like Marie, they had found their way through the veil by accident at some point in their lives and were gifted enough in magic to be brought back later for proper schooling. They would both be first years at Autumn Lodge.

  Kuro scanned the crowd as he waited for Marie to be finished. He picked out his nemesis, Evelyn Lemieux, being fawned over by a collection of students. She looked like a painting, like all the imperfections of a real human had been smoothed away by an expert artist’s hand. Every blonde curl lay perfectly without a single hair wandering astray. Even though she wore the same school uniform as everyone else, hers was immaculate. The white shirt and cardigan were perfectly tailored, the pleated kilt perfectly crisp, as if it had been designed for her and everyone else was just wearing cheap copies. Evelyn was rich, smart, beautiful, and had very nearly enough royal blood to be a princess. Those were all her good qualities. Everything else about her was rot and malice. She saw others as existing only to celebrate her perfection or to serve her.

  Kuro wondered whether Azalea would be upset to know that Kuro disliked Evelyn more than her. He also considered that despite his best efforts, he was collecting enemies. Not a good practice.

  Marie thumped Kuro on the shoulder to get his attention. “Nice haircut,” she said in her rough Montreal accent. “How was your summer?”

  “Boring,” replied Kuro. “Except for a duel in Bytown, I was trapped in an orphanage with not much to do. How about you?”