Volume 2: Burglary

by R. A. Consell

  “I was wandering around the forest by myself,” he groaned as he unslung his bag from his shoulder and handed it over.

  They went through their traditional series of questions before Flint went inside to pillage Kuro’s dorm room.

  What Kuro didn’t tell Flint, though, was that he knew someone else who didn’t have an alibi. Someone in a foul mood, whom he had found close to the Winter Quarter, and to whom a very suspicious raccoon had made a direct path.

  Twenty

  Introduction to Smuggling

  Kuro made a decision as he failed to sleep that night. He was going to help Marie.

  If she really was the burglar, then it was only a matter of time until she got caught, so he needed to stop her before she did. If she was just miserable about her gold project turning out so badly after months of hard work, he needed to make her feel better. It really didn’t matter which it was. If he understood her feelings at all, which he doubted, both problems had the same solution. It was the same one that had changed Kuro’s life for the better the year before: friends.

  Marie had friends already, but they had all sort of forgotten. Charlie had gotten distracted by her familiar, Arthur had gotten distracted by his mystery, and Kuro had gotten distracted by trying to teach Bindal. They were all too wrapped up in their own things to really notice Marie’s state. Now that Kuro had noticed, he couldn’t just stand by and do nothing.

  Kuro was no expert in friendships or happiness, but he knew what had made him feel better. The first step, the most obvious step, was Solstice. Marie needed a good Solstice present. It had to be something she wanted and would show that her friends cared. Kuro knew just the thing: gold.

  Kuro’s alchemy project had turned out well. He had an egg-sized lump of gold taking up space on his dresser. It was pretty, and he was proud of it, but he had no use for it. It would be much better used by Marie out in the Blandlands, where it was worth more than a nice pair of socks.

  Professeur De Rigueur had explained that gold couldn’t be brought through the veil, which was mostly true. It was the sort of thing a wizard who had never needed to get things through the veil would think. De Rigueur likely never had cause to try to bring anything in or out of the fey realm. There’s a good chance he never left except for the occasional boat trip across the bay.

  Kuro, on the other hand, had participated in a variety of transfers of material across the veil, including gold. Phineas knew how to do it but had forced most of the labour onto Kuro. Kuro was glad that he could turn some of that uncomfortable experience to good use.

  The first hurdle would be finding enough salt. It was expensive and extremely hard to come by within the fey realm. Given that it couldn’t even be transported by lutin post, there was hardly any on the whole of Avalon that hadn’t been built into the foundations of the buildings at incredible expense. Kuro, however, did know someone who might have some.

  As soon as school let out for the day, he headed for the dock rather than for home. There, he slipped out of the gentle warmth of the Spring Quarter, through the veil, into the ferocious cold of the Blandlands.

  It was fully winter out in the Blandlands. It was almost always winter out there. The snow started to fall a month after school began and didn’t stop until it was nearly over. Kuro was pretty sure Avalon Academy was on this island to prevent students from even thinking of running away. Anyone with any good sense would turn around the moment they felt the winter wind.

  Kuro did not have such good sense. Or rather, he knew where he was going, and he was almost guaranteed to have a hot cup of tea waiting for him on the far side if he survived the trip. He turned to face inland and trudged through the snow toward Dani’s cabin.

  The snow wasn’t too deep to walk; the island was too barren for very much to accumulate. It was still slow going, though, as what did stick to the ground was hard and icy, and the wind that was so helpful to Kuro most of the time was his eager opponent here, biting at his exposed skin and trying its best to push him back into the bay. By the time he reached the shelter of the thicket of trees in which Dani’s cabin had been built, most of the snow that did not accumulate on the ground had instead accumulated on him.

  He knocked politely at the door, which Dani preferred to him sneaking in through the window, and waited. Rather than the “come in” that usually greeted him, he heard Dani shout, “Could you get that?”

  Kuro was already so cold that he didn’t realize it was still possible for a chill to run down his spine. To his knowledge, the only other person who ever visited Dani was Ms. McCutcheon, who did not approve of him wandering the Blandlands. He had checked that she was still in her office before he left, but maybe she had a secret way of getting here faster. Kuro wasn’t so much worried about the detention, but the idea of leaving unwarmed and empty handed was upsetting.

  He hadn’t time to hide. The door swung open before he’d made it two steps. The voice that shouted after him was not the sharp voice of the principal, with her perfect Tirnanogian accent and diction, but the warm and unpolished drawl of a Blandlander. “Well, if it isn’t the master thief himself. Where ya going?”

  Kuro tripped to a stop and turned to find Sam, the young servant lady, waving him in.

  “What are you doing here?” Kuro sputtered.

  “Freezing my butt off with this door open,” she replied with none of the careful formality she’d had at the Samhain feast. “Get in here before we let all the heat out.”

  Kuro hurried inside, too confused to do anything but what he was told. The interior of Dani’s cabin was gloriously welcoming. The small living room was a fortress of cosiness against the wicked cold just outside. The endless shelves of books were a barricade against any chill that tried to creep in through the walls, an armoury of slippers and blankets girded against invading frost, and an arsenal of flame, from gas lamps to wood stoves, fought back the ice and the night.

  “Why are you here?” Kuro asked of Sam while he tried to find a way to shake the snow off himself without getting too much on the floor.

  “I’m a heroic saviour,” she said, posing as if in a portrait of a knight. “I risk life and limb to save Dani from freezing and starvation.”

  Dani sneered at the younger woman and forced a mug of tea on Kuro. “She brings me food and wood when Liath works late.”

  Kuro was always a little uncomfortable when anyone called Ms. McCutcheon by her first name. It felt unnatural. Every time Dani did it, he expected the principal to burst through the door and give her a detention. Even if she did have her own housecoat and slippers in the cabin, and even if Dani was probably just as old as she was, it felt like treason.

  “You would be long dead without my noble services,” said Sam.

  “You only come to play with the cat,” replied Dani.

  Sam conceded the point. “To be fair,” she said, “she is a very nice cat.”

  Said cat was now either greeting Kuro affectionately or trying to kill him, he couldn’t quite tell. She wove between his legs as he tried to walk closer to the fire while balancing his full cup of tea. He couldn’t bear to shoo her away, though, as she was another friend Kuro had been neglecting.

  Graeae, his first ally, croaked her greetings and leaned heavily against Kuro. She was small, deaf, and half blind, but through Dani’s care, the cat had become plump and lazy, two things Kuro hoped to achieve himself someday.

  Having inflicted her tea upon Kuro, Dani settled into her chair and finally spoke to him. “Just here to steal Grey away from Sam, or is there something you’re here for?”

  Kuro sipped his mug. He didn’t understand tea. The idea of a hot drink was great—it warmed him from the inside out and the cup quickly thawed his fingers—but it tasted terrible. He would have preferred just a cup of hot water, but she always presented the foul liquid to him with such earnestness and care, he felt rude refusing. “It’s Solstice soon, and I’m trying to find some presents for my friends.”

&nbs
p; Dani lit up with excitement. “Oh! I have the perfect books,” she said, hopping up and starting to inspect the spines of her many paperbacks.

  “Not everyone likes books for presents,” said Sam, who took the opportunity to steal Dani’s armchair near the fire and tried to coax Graeae away from Kuro.

  “Nonsense!” Dani pursed her lips just as McCutcheon did when she disapproved of something. “Everyone loves books. Some people just don’t know it yet.”

  Sam rolled her eyes and turned to Kuro. “What do your friends want?”

  Kuro had to think. He had come because he needed help with Marie’s present. He hadn’t yet considered the other two. Charlie was pretty easy as she made her every thought known to the world, often discovering her likes and dislikes at the same time as everyone else within earshot. “Well, Charlie really likes adventure books,” Kuro said.

  Dani planted her fists on her hips and shot a smug look at Sam as if to claim victory. She then spun and began to dig through her library, her fingers crawling along the spines like a spider. It took only a few moments for her to find what she was seeking. She pulled out a well-worn paperback novel and held it out to Kuro like a precious treasure.

  “C. S. Lewis?” asked Sam, unimpressed by the selection.

  “It’s a classic, and I have it on good authority that wizards think it’s hilarious,” defended Dani. “It’s one of Liath’s favourites.”

  Kuro examined the book in Dani’s hand. It had a picture of children riding a lion, which did seem like the sort of thing Charlie would like. He was impressed with her insight, though it wasn’t until she thrust it into his hands that he fully understood what was happening. “I can’t just take this.” Kuro tried to push it back to her. “It’s yours.”

  “Not anymore,” Dani said. “I just gave it to you. Besides, we have two copies. Happy Solstice! It’s a present.”

  Kuro looked to Sam for help, but for the first time since he’d arrived, she agreed with Dani. “Can’t refuse a present like that. It would be rude.”

  “Right, that’s settled, who’s next?” Dani rubbed her hands together with excitement for her next hunt.

  Kuro tried to think of what Arthur liked but wasn’t certain that he knew. Arthur didn’t talk about himself. Kuro couldn’t think of anything Arthur had ever expressed wanting. He didn’t even have a favourite meal so far as Kuro could recall. The only thing Kuro was sure Arthur liked was Talen Dubois, which was something Kuro wished Arthur would get less of over Solstice, not more. The best Kuro could think of was that Arthur was pretty invested in solving the burglaries. “I guess he likes mysteries,” he said.

  Dani decided that what Kuro meant was that Arthur liked mystery novels and hunted through her stacks for the best one, eventually settling on The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as it was, in her words, “required reading for any mystery lover.”

  Kuro was again unable to refuse the book and was pressed for more friends in need of presents so that she could inflict more generosity on him. “Well, Marie is the one I actually came here for,” Kuro said.

  “That’s the one from Montreal, right?” Dani confirmed as she moved to look through her collection of French books.

  “Yeah, but I already know what I’m giving her,” said Kuro, trying to head off any more literature being inflicted on him. “Would it be too much to ask for some salt?”

  Sam and Dani shared a look between them, a silent argument of who would have to deliver the bad news. Dani was the first to accumulate enough pity to say something out loud. “So, Blandlanders don’t feel the same way about salt as wizards do,” she said, trying to let him down gently. “It’s easy to find out here. The whole bay is full of it.”

  “They dump it all over the roads in the winter,” Sam added. “It’s dirt cheap.”

  “I know,” Kuro said, trying not to be annoyed at how little they thought of him. He couldn’t really blame them, given how clueless many wizards were about life in the Blandlands. “That’s why I asked you. I’d never get enough inside the fey realm.”

  “That’s because you can’t get it through the veil,” said Sam, now eyeing Kuro with suspicion.

  “Of course you can,” said Kuro, “just not very much at a time.”

  “Liath never told me that,” mumbled Dani. “Said it was impossible.”

  “Maybe some wizards don’t know how,” said Kuro. “You have to be pretty poor before it’s worth running Blandlands salt for money.”

  “I still don’t understand why you want it. Are you baking something for her?”

  “No, I don’t think anyone would want to eat something made with it,” said Kuro, grimacing a bit at the idea of using smuggled salt in food. “It’s just for wrapping the present.”

  Dani shook her head in bemusement. “Wizards are so weird,” she muttered as she headed to her little kitchen. “How much do you need?”

  “Just a good-sized mouthful if that’s okay?” said Kuro.

  That earned another exclamation at the strangeness of magic folk.

  “I brought my own cup,” he added, which did nothing to ease the mutterings.

  Once fully loaded with salt and books, he thanked Dani repeatedly for her generosity and headed out into the snow, this time accompanied by Sam.

  She bemoaned having to leave the warmth of the cabin but claimed she had duties to attend to on the other side of the veil. Also, she wanted to see how Kuro got the salt through.

  It was nice to have company for the walk through the frozen Blandside wastes. Not only did she provide some shelter from the ferocious wind if Kuro stood on her leeward side, but she provided conversation. “How’d you end up here anyway?” she yelled through clenched teeth. She didn’t need to shout, but something about an icy wind tearing against one’s face makes it impossible to speak normally.

  “I got arrested,” said Kuro.

  “And they sent you to boarding school? That’s rough.”

  “How about you?” Kuro turned the conversation around before she started asking questions he couldn’t answer.

  “Liath,” she said. “She dropped a notice in my cup of an opening at the school for a servant. Loads of places do that sort of thing, poaching the new strays before we wander back to the Blandlands or get too ugly from living rough. I scrounged enough money together for a clean outfit and a haircut and applied.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  “Yeah, well enough, I guess.” Sam attempted to shrug, but her shoulders were already so hunched against the wind that she just flapped her wrists. “It’s better than anything I had waiting for me in the Blandlands.”

  Kuro knew better than to ask a stray why they didn’t want to leave the fey realm. Some might have stayed for a while out of curiosity, but nobody chose to beg on the streets of Bytown through winter if they had anywhere else to be. The silence dragged on, and Sam seemed to slow down and slump under the weight of memories from her earlier life, and Kuro could feel his own past looming out of the dark corners of his mind, threatening to swallow up his good mood.

  He was rescued from the demons of his memory by a more pressing threat of being swallowed by the cold waters of the bay. They reached the length of shore where the veil thinned enough to allow entry to the fey realm. The waves off the bay were raging high enough that Kuro would have to make a dash for the entrance between swells or be dragged out to sea.

  He took out the cup of salt and the books Dani had given him from his bag, where he’d been keeping them safe. It was just a normal bag in the Blandlands. Once through the veil it would go back to being magical, and he wouldn’t have access to the stuff he’d stored while it was ordinary.

  “I wish someone had told me about getting salt through the veil when I first got here,” Sam said as she stepped out into the surf, preparing for her own run. “Selling salt is way better than begging on the streets.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Kuro. “I prefer begging.” Then he tipped his
head back and poured as much of the salt into his mouth as he could and still shut his lips firmly.

  His eyes watered, his tongue burned, and he could feel the mass quickly turning into a grainy sludge around his tongue. He stepped quickly through the veil and out into the Spring shore. Sam followed to see him gagging out the mass of saliva-soaked salt back into his cup.

  “That’s disgusting,” she said.

  Kuro nodded his agreement, though his mouth was still too angry at him for the mistreatment to let him speak just yet.

  She was kind enough to let him recover before asking more questions. “Why does that work?” she asked once he’d stopped making pained faces.

  “It’s something about living things and magic fields,” he said, trying to remember the extremely long and technical explanation his former master had given. “It’s the same reason tears and sweat don’t rip out of your body when you pass through.”

  Sam shuddered at the thought.

  They hurried through the Spring Quarter. The weather in Spring was lovely, but not warm enough to fight off the winter chill that had sunk through their coats or dry the icy water that had soaked through their trousers. As they reached the warmth of summer, the urgency faded, and they were left with the choice between wrestling with their personal demons or engaging in conversation.

  “Nice night tonight!” Sam said.

  “Very!” Kuro agreed, glad for the break in silence. “But I like the Autumn Quarter better for sleeping.”

  “I bet it would be. The servants’ quarters here in Summer are always too hot. The wizards all have enchanted rugs to keep their rooms at a good temperature, but they don’t bother with us strays. They just let us sweat it out.”

  “Ugh, wizards,” Kuro groaned.

  “You’re one of them,” Sam reminded him.

  “Not on purpose,” grumbled Kuro in reply.

  “I’m sure you’re one of the good ones,” she said, giving his shoulder a teasing shove with her hip.

  Kuro waved off the accusation. “Not according to any other wizards.”