Volume 2: Burglary

by R. A. Consell

  Arthur grew a couple of inches from the praise. “I’m only missing a few,” he said. “But nothing fits our suspect. Everything is too big to hide, too small to steal stuff, or wouldn’t be able to open doors or windows.”

  “Does anybody have a raccoon familiar?” Kuro asked as he looked through the list.

  “Why?” asked Arthur, quickly grabbing his notes back and flipping to a clean page. “Do you have a reason to suspect a raccoon was involved?”

  Arthur sounded so much like a Hound that Kuro was uncomfortable answering. “I saw a raccoon yesterday that was acting weird,” he sputtered. “And a raccoon could make that kind of mess.” Kuro’d had regular disagreements with raccoons in Detritus, fighting over bins with freshly discarded food and competing for good hiding places. Kuro usually lost those fights.

  “Weird in what way?” Arthur was vigorously making notes.

  “It was just watching me from the woods.”

  “And where were you when this happened?”

  Kuro didn’t like being interrogated, even by his friend. He started to get evasive out of instinct. “Near the Winter Quarter.”

  “And what were you doing there?”

  “Practicing summoning my familiar,” Kuro lied.

  It felt gross coming out of his mouth. He was a bad liar and felt terrible for deceiving his friend, but he wasn’t sure he should tell Arthur about his working with Bindal, especially within earshot of other lutin. Bindal might be breaking rules by being there. He wasn’t breaking his promises, but that was only because he thought Kuro was a monster. Others might not think the same way. Also, there was a good chance everything Arthur wrote down would go straight to his father, and Kuro had to protect lutin. He’d promised.

  Arthur didn’t appear to detect the lie, though. Instead, he flipped to his list of names and found a blank space beside the name Kuro Hayashi. “And what is your familiar?”

  “Why is my name on that list?” asked Kuro. “Do you suspect me?”

  “It’s always the detail you overlook that ends up mattering most,” Arthur replied without noticing the hurt in Kuro’s demand. It sounded like he was quoting his father.

  Charlie rescued the conversation from descending any further into unpleasantness. “You know, I’ve seen a raccoon acting weird, too.” She had her head cocked and her eyes scrunched most of the way closed. It looked like she was trying to see something hidden in her own brain. “Or Henrietta did. It was looking at her from under a bush in the middle of the day. That’s really strange for a raccoon. They only usually come out at night.”

  Arthur started a new page with “Raccoon?” written in large letters at the top. He then concluded the official investigation meeting by handing out assignments with instructions to burn them after reading.

  Kuro hadn’t been aware he was in a meeting; he’d mistaken it for dinner with his friends. Neither did he remember agreeing to be part of an official investigation, but Charlie and Arthur were enjoying themselves so much that he didn’t want to fight it.

  “What does he have you doing?” Kuro asked Charlie as he threw his instructions in the fireplace.

  “Surveillance!” she replied proudly. “I’m gonna have Henrietta fly over the island watching for suspicious behaviour.”

  “Isn’t that what you’d be doing anyway?” asked Kuro.

  “Of course,” agreed Charlie, “but this way it feels like I’m solving a mystery while I lie around watching her fly. What does he want you to do?”

  “He wants me to spy on Mr. Widdershins.” Kuro shook his head at the silliness of it. “Apparently nobody knows what his familiar is.”

  Charlie nodded at the wisdom of the assignment. “He is very mysterious. I always thought he acted strange. He’s too nice and nervous and he dresses funny, like he’s hiding something.”

  Kuro tried to imagine Widdershins as a thief. It was hard to do. He was the least suspicious person Kuro could imagine. He was earnest, kind, and dull. He got excited about the dates of historical events and was too clumsy and awkward to sneak anywhere. He dropped his chalk at least twice a class, and all his shoes had scuff marks from where he’d tripped over his own feet.

  If he was a thief, then he’d put a lot of effort into pretending to be a teacher. Nevertheless, the idea kept invading his thoughts as he sat through class the next day. Was he too innocent? Was it all an act? He’d only started teaching at the school the year before. Could it all be for show and he was secretly a criminal mastermind?

  It was hard to fight those unwelcome ideas because they were so much more interesting than what the rest of his brain was being subjected to.

  Mr. Widdershins had the unhappy duty of describing the current lines of succession for the three courts, and doing so required drawing a huge web of names joined by arrows. Some of Kuro’s classmates were on it. Evelyn was at a nexus of the webs, being twelfth in line for the Acadian throne, thirtieth in line for Alfheim, and in the top fifty for possible queens of Tirnanog.

  That information garnered praise and admiration from the class, but Widdershins was unmoved by it. He was excited, however, by the fact that Freya Mimirdottir was forty-second in line for the crown of Alfheim, though it wasn’t at all clear why. On a normal day Kuro would have dismissed that as an innocent peculiarity, but now that he’d been infected by Arthur’s suggestions, it seemed suspicious. It wasn’t sinister, but a part of his mind was trying to find a way to make it so. When the teacher hit his head on his desk while bending to pick up a piece of chalk he’d dropped, instead of seeming comical, his clumsiness appeared artificial.

  Kuro found he couldn’t help but follow the teacher after school, not because he truly suspected Widdershins, but because he needed to prove to himself how silly the whole thing was.

  Kuro waited around outside the school for Widdershins to leave at the end of the day. He emerged nearly an hour after classes had ended carrying a pile of papers and accompanied by Mr. Ogonov.

  Kuro knew of two ways to follow people. The first was to avoid being seen. That was what people expected of thieves: creeping through shadows, silent and invisible. It worked well enough when slipping in through unlocked windows in the dead of night but was a lousy method for picking pockets.

  His preferred technique was to go unnoticed rather than unseen. All he needed to do was blend into the background, look like he belonged, and move with the flow. So long as he did not draw attention to himself, he wouldn’t be remembered even if his target looked right at him.

  This was made somewhat harder by the fact that Mr. Widdershins knew who Kuro was, but at the same time, Kuro really did belong there. His school uniform gave him permission to wander the grounds unquestioned and made him indistinct from the hundreds of other children. All he had to do was move with confidence that he was going somewhere he was supposed to be and disinterest in anyone around him, and he would be unworthy of notice. If Kuro was good at anything, it was being unworthy of notice.

  The two teachers chatted lopsidedly as they strolled toward the centre of the island. Widdershins was a tall, quiet man, while Ogonov was a short, loud one, and so at any distance it sounded as though Ogonov was having a conversation with himself. “Quite well, thank you,” Ogonov boomed in response to a soft greeting from Widdershins. “The repairs were pretty easy today. Not a single broken pane of glass.”

  “Oh, I don’t imagine he has any idea,” Ogonov continued after some unheard commentary from Widdershins. “And that’s probably for the best. Don’t want him worrying about it. Besides, I take it as a personal challenge to keep that room in working condition. It’s not the first time a student has had trouble keeping their magic contained. Every time I’m sure it’s warded and reinforced in every way possible, they come up with some new way to cause damage.”

  Another pause as Widdershins spoke.

  “No, I haven’t the faintest idea how he’s doing it. It’s quite remarkable, really,” Ogonov answered the unheard
question.

  Another contribution from Mr. Widdershins made the evocations teacher burst out laughing. “A prodigy? Oh, my goodness, no. No, no, no. Quite the opposite, sadly. I’ve never seen anyone work so hard to be so bad.”

  “Well, yes, he’s better than you, but it’s not a fair contest, is it?”

  Kuro had been actively ignoring the conversation as best he could. It was easier to look uninteresting if he were uninterested, but that last comment caught Kuro’s attention. It sounded like Ogonov just accused Widdershins of being worse at evocations than a student. It was an odd thing to say to a teacher.

  When the pair reached the base of the granite pillar at the centre of the island, Ogonov removed his cape with a flourish and laid it on the path. Both teachers stepped onto it, but Widdershins quickly sat down and crossed his legs, clutching his sheaf of papers close to his chest, while Ogonov stood casually. The enchanted cape went stiff and carried them both up to the plateau and the teachers’ residence.

  It was another unremarkable moment that he would have ignored on any other day, but the oddities were starting to accumulate and form a picture. Kuro spent the rest of the week watching Widdershins like a hawk. The more he watched, the more his suspicion grew into a theory, and then a certainty.

  The teacher always wrote by hand. He would walk across the classroom to fetch a book. He’d abandon a half-finished cup of coffee after it went cold. Even when the class got unruly beyond his control, all he would do was try to raise his voice over the noise of the class. These were all entirely ordinary things to do. They had never seemed strange until Kuro started looking out for them, but after a week, he was certain.

  Kuro shared his discovery with his friends over dinner that Friday. “I know why nobody knows what Mr. Widdershins’s familiar is,” Kuro said, attempting to copy how Charlie would leave them hanging in suspense when telling stories.

  Charlie leaned in over the table as if being a foot closer to Kuro would get her the information that much sooner. Arthur whipped out his investigation notebook and flipped to find the page he’d dedicated to Widdershins. Henrietta snorted and surrounded the crew with her wings to keep the conversation private, and Marie was nowhere to be seen.

  “He’s a stray,” Kuro whispered.

  Charlie spouted a continuous stream of exclamations of shock and disbelief, while the left side of Arthur’s face drooped in confusion.

  “He never does any magic at all,” explained Kuro. “Think about it. Have you ever seen him do anything even a little bit magic?”

  “But he’s a teacher,” said Charlie as if that were all the evidence she could possibly need to disprove the idea.

  Kuro pointed out a small hole in her argument. “He doesn’t teach magic.”

  “But how does he expect to keep that kind of secret,” she rebutted. “Someone is bound to find out.”

  “I don’t think he is hiding it,” said Kuro. “I think we just didn’t notice. Mademoiselle Sygne and Ms. Frigard don’t do very much magic either. They don’t need to for their subjects, but even they don’t bend over to pick up the chalk when it breaks off or walk across the room to close a door.”

  Charlie continued to huff and sputter, trying to find some reason that Kuro could be wrong. It wasn’t that she disputed his facts; she was just having trouble coming to terms with the idea. Arthur, however, was much faster to accept the notion. He sighed with resignation and put a line through Widdershins’s name on his list of suspects.

  “Have your investigations yielded anything?” he asked Charlie, who instantly forgot about her upset at Kuro’s claims and started recounting all the exciting things she’d seen. After several minutes of stories about people she’d seen holding hands, broom races she’d watched, a very cool frog she’d followed, and how much nicer the winds were in the Spring Quarter for flying than anywhere else, Arthur managed to wedge himself into a pause for breath.

  “Did you see anyone acting strangely?” he asked.

  “Not unless you count Marie.” Charlie rolled her eyes at the thought of her roommate. “She’s gone weird searching for the frog puke. Well, what about you, Arthur? Did you solve the mystery yet?”

  “No,” he replied in his flat tone, which failed to express how he felt about the fact in any way. “I tried to learn more about the raccoon you reported. I worked all week to get a familiar that could sniff it out, but no luck.” He gestured to his familiar, which was currently in the shape of a small tortoise very slowly learning that it didn’t like the pickled cabbage that had been served any more than Arthur did.

  As dinner finished up, Arthur handed out new assignments to Kuro and Charlie. Charlie snatched hers up with glee, while Kuro took his reluctantly. The mystery-solving game was getting too serious for his liking. He felt gross having spied on Widdershins, even if he had learned something. It had been fun when it was just Charlie imagining absurd possibilities, but this felt too much like being a Hound for Kuro’s comfort.

  Nonetheless, he knew how much Arthur was enjoying it. He talked more about his investigation than anything else. It was the only subject he’d ever been able to discuss without being completely bulldozed by Charlie. As a favour to his friend, Kuro could play along.

  Or so he thought.

  He opened his assignment to find two words: “Follow Marie.”

  Nineteen

  Throwing Stones

  Kuro spent the next half hour pacing the few steps between the door and window in the room he shared with Arthur, waiting for his roommate to enter. He used the time imagining possible justifications he could have for suggesting Kuro spy on their friend.

  Maybe he didn’t mean for Kuro to follow her in secret, but rather to join her in her search for frog bile. Perhaps he was worried about her and wanted to be sure she was okay. It could be that he imagined her a likely target for burglary and wanted Kuro to protect her. Even if Kuro didn’t quite agree that following her would be the right way to do any of them, they were at least for the benefit of Marie.

  When Arthur finally wandered into their room, Kuro found he was too upset to even ask a proper question. He just thrust the assignment that Arthur had penned into his face and demanded “Why?”

  “You were supposed to burn that,” responded Arthur, surprised to see it whole.

  “To make sure Marie didn’t see it, I assume?” said Kuro.

  “Of course,” replied Arthur, entirely failing to understand why Kuro was upset.

  “Why did you want me to follow her at all?”

  “You heard Charlie,” said Arthur, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She’s been acting very strangely.”

  “Lots of people act strange,” said Kuro. “What about your sister? Is she on the list? She’s been following me all over the island. Keeping notes on where I go. Maybe that’s all to frame me. Maybe she’s the thief.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Arthur.

  “Why?” said Kuro.

  “I know Moira,” explained Arthur. “She’s not like that.”

  “And we know Marie, don’t we? Do you really think she could be the burglar?”

  “She could be involved,” replied Arthur.

  Kuro stared dumbfounded at his roommate, trying to imagine in what world Marie might be the burglar. Nothing about it made sense. She didn’t have the skills, the knowledge, or the motivation. Also, she was acting strangely, which was the opposite of what any competent thief would do. Even if none of that were true, even if she were secretly a very clever burglar, she was their friend. Kuro didn’t know a lot about being friends with people, but he was pretty sure that spying on them wasn’t the right way to do it.

  “Who cares?” he said. “So what if she is stealing junk from the royals? She’s our friend.”

  Arthur gasped. “But she would be a criminal.”

  “I’m a criminal,” Kuro reminded his roommate.

  “Not anymore,” Arthur assured him.

/>   “That’s not how it works,” said Kuro. “I got caught. The only reason I’m not in Niflheim Prison is that your dad decided to send me here instead. All he would have to do is change his mind and I’d disappear.”

  “My dad wouldn’t do that,” argued Arthur, horrified at the mere suggestion of his adoptive father being anything but a noble hero.

  “But he could,” said Kuro. “All I need to do is make a mistake or be more valuable to the Guard in prison instead of school and I’m gone, and he has you to keep an eye on me.”

  Arthur bristled at that suggestion. “He never asked me to do that.”

  “He didn’t have to.” Kuro was starting to realize that he was upset about more than just the request to spy on Marie. Thoughts that he’d kept quiet for a whole year were spilling out. “You write home every week. Do you think it was a coincidence that we ended up in the same room?”

  Arthur didn’t answer. It was clear from the contortions of his face that he’d never thought about it before, and now that he was thinking about it, he wasn’t quite sure he liked the answers.

  “You were supposed to be alone in the room, weren’t you?” Kuro asked.

  “Yes,” said Arthur.

  “Because you’re a changeling,” added Kuro.

  “Yes.”

  “I bet your parents would be mad about it if the school made a change without asking.”

  Arthur’s teeth rearranged themselves as he tried to find words to disagree with Kuro. “But we’re friends,” he said as almost more of a question than an argument.

  “Then why am I on your list of suspects?”

  Arthur didn’t even try to respond; he just looked at his investigation notebook as if it had bitten him. Kuro shuffled awkwardly for a minute, not sure how to mend the damage he’d just done or whether he wanted to. Eventually he just gave up and left.

  “Where are you going?” asked Arthur.

  Kuro hadn’t a destination in mind, but the question helped him choose a direction. If he really was upset about the assignment, he should do the opposite. “I’m going to see if Marie wants any help finding frog bile,” he said. “It’s due on Monday. Maybe she’s changed her mind but doesn’t want to ask us.”