by Dan Wingreen
Eallair's grin got wider. "One or two."
Aidan stared in disbelief, then his eyes flicked to the duffel bag in the back seat. He opened his mouth, but all that came out with a surprised yelp as he ran over a particularly deep pothole.
"Watch the road!" Eallair said.
"Sorry," Aidan said quickly, hands tightening on the wheel.
"And you call me a calamity," Eallair muttered under his breath.
Aidan ignored him and, after letting out a relieved breath that the tire hadn't exploded, asked, "Can I see them?"
"Not while you're driving," he answered, somewhat more warily than Aidan thought was necessary.
"Of course not," Aidan said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. "I wasn't asking to read and drive."
Eallair’s answering grunt was suspiciously noncommittal.
Aidan ignored that too. He chewed on his thumbnail and managed to hold off his next suggestion for an entire minute. "We could pull over you know."
"So, you're wanting to pull over for a quick read when we got probably half the cops and DMS agents in two time zones looking for us?" Eallair asked.
Great way to not be a burden. Might as well ask if we can go back to my apartment to get my favorite pillow.
Aidan let out a small, annoyed huff that was directed more at himself than anything else. "Right. Sorry."
He saw, out the corner of his eye, Eallair wave away the apology. "No need. I get it, and I promise you can have a look when we stop for the night."
Aidan nodded, but some of the excitement was dampened. No matter how easy it was to talk with Eallair, or how many times Aidan made him laugh, Aidan still wasn't contributing anything meaningful to their quest besides his carriage.
They drove in silence for a few minutes before Aidan realized Eallair had never actually told him the rest of his plan.
"So, how do you wake Arthur up, anyway?" he asked. At least if he knew as much as possible, he could hopefully avoid any life-threatening screw ups.
"We're back to 'you' now?" Eallair sighed. "What happened to 'we'? I liked we."
Aidan turned his head away so Eallair wouldn't see how much that affected him. No matter how much I screw up, he still actually wants to do this with me. "Okay," he said after a few moments. "How do we wake him up?"
"Much better," Eallair said. Aidan looked back to see him grinning. "And we wake him up with Excalibur, of course."
"What?" Aidan exclaimed. He was half surprised he didn't swerve into the other lane. "Excalibur? Arthur's sword Excalibur?"
Eallair nodded. "You know of a different one?"
Aidan bit back a sharp reply, too excited to care that he was probably being made fun of.
Excalibur was one of the greatest mysteries in history. Or at least the admittedly small bits of history most people bothered to learn. Aside from crystal, Excalibur was the only known object or material that had ever been infused with magic without using modern magic processing technology. Some people refused to believe it ever existed, since no one had ever found it and the entire concept of a non-crystal magical object that old was thought to be impossible. "You know where Excalibur is?"
"Not a clue," Eallair said cheerfully.
Aidan punched him in the arm.
"Ow!" Eallair said, rubbing the spot Aidan hit. "That hurt."
"You're an asshole," Aidan snapped.
"And now we're back to the name callin’," Eallair muttered under his breath.
"Are you full of shit?" Aidan asked seriously. "Does Excalibur even exist or are you just making fun of me."
"I'm not making fun of you," Eallair said, his voice sharp. "I wouldn't do that. You…" He shook his head. "I wouldn't do it."
Aidan stayed silent.
Eallair sighed softly. "As for the sword, of course it exists. I'm not a liar, Aidan. I know I make maybe a few too many jokes, but Arthur and what we're doing are two things I take very seriously, even if it seems otherwise."
Even though he wanted to stay mad, Aidan found his anger cooling. "How do you know?"
"About the sword?" he asked. Aidan nodded. "Forbidden books, remember?"
"Oh, right." Aidan frowned slightly as something occurred to him. "Wait, so if we need Excalibur to wake Arthur up and we don't have it and you have no idea where it is, why are we going to Arthur's tomb now? Isn't that kind of pointless?"
Eallair stayed silent for so long Aidan was beginning to think he was avoiding the question.
“E…Ellie…Eel—hey! Don’t ignore me.”
“It really ain’t that hard to pronounce.”
“I don’t care about your stupid name. Answer my question.”
Eallair looked away, then, after another drawn out moment, he sighed. "We need to get to him before someone realizes what we took and where we're goin’."
Aidan frowned. "Didn't you burn down that room so no one would find out what you stole?"
"Aye," Eallair said. "Although 'burn down' is a bit of an exaggeration. The room's still standing." He shrugged. "Probably."
Aidan growled in frustration. He closed his eyes and took a minute to collect himself.
He’s hiding something. If I start yelling he’s just gonna start an argument and use it to distract me. I need to calm down and stay on point.
Aidan took a deep breath. "So how would anyone know what you took, then?"
Eallair must have heard something in his tone, or else he just didn't have anything flippant to say, because he answered seriously, albeit reluctantly. "Because someone, somewhere, knows it was there. And whoever they are, eventually a report about that building being attacked is gonna come across their desk, if it hasn't already, and when it does, they're gonna assume the worst and send out a hunter."
"A hunter?" Aidan asked. He avoided yet another pothole and decided just to drive in the middle of the road for a while; it wasn't like there was anyone in the other lane. "Like one of those guys who lives in the woods and kills animals with old weapons?"
Eallair snorted. "Not exactly. Hunters are…a whole different breed of trouble."
Aidan rolled his eyes at the cryptic statement. "And why is that?"
"Because hunters are…different. They can look at things and see connections no one else does. They can track someone across the whole country on just a bollocksed up description and a rumor; and they always find what they're looking for. Trust me; if we've got a hunter after us, we need to do everything we can to stay ahead of him."
Aidan absently chewed his lip. Eallair almost sounded…nervous. Which was ridiculous, because he was talking about a person, not some kind of comic scroll super monster. People never made Eallair nervous, not that Aidan had ever seen, at least. He had the feeling that anyone who did was a kind of trouble Aidan couldn’t imagine.
"If they're so dangerous, why haven't I ever heard of them?" he asked.
Eallair let out a humorless laugh. "They're one of them secrets the government loves keepin’ so much. No one outside the higher bits of the DMS knows about them. Most people only find out when a hunter tracks them down, and then it's too late to do much about it."
"Then how did you find out about them?"
Eallair just crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.
Aidan blinked. "One of them found you?"
"Aye."
"And you're still alive," Aidan said with a small, relieved smile. "So, you can obviously take 'em."
Eallair snorted again. "Can't say I ain't lovin' the confidence you got in me, but I barely survived. The only reason I ain't dead is because the one what was huntin’ me didn't know what I looked like and I got lucky; he killed the smuggler I was talkin’ to instead of me. And even then, I almost died fightin’ him. I made it a point to find out what the hell he was after that and when I did, I went to ground for years to make sure another one didn't pick up my trail."
Aidan's smile disappeared. "How can someone almost kill you? You took on a whole DMS building, twice, and won. Are they some kind of
magical super soldier experiment, or something?"
"You really gotta stop readin’ those books," Eallair said, shaking his head.
"And you have to stop not answering my questions," Aidan said.
"Am I doing that?" Eallair asked.
"Lee!" Aidan snapped.
"Lee?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Aidan's face heated up, but he refused to acknowledge it. "I can't pronounce your stupid name," he said with a scowl. "It was the first thing that came to mind. I keep thinking of you as ‘Ellie-air. Ellie, Lee? Would you rather I call you, ‘Ellie’? Or ‘Air’?"
“Nah, Lee’s good.” Eallair smiled. "I like it. It means 'shelter from the storm'. Kind of appropriate, no?"
"It does?" Aidan asked. He almost smiled back. It actually was kind of appropri… He shook his head rapidly. "No, it doesn't matter. You're still not answering me. What's so bad about a hunter? If one of them is probably gonna find us and you can't just wave your hands and kill him then say something stupid, then I think I deserve to know why."
Eallair's smile melted away. "Fine."
Aidan wanted to hit him when that's all he said. "Well?"
"Hunters are powerful magic users," Eallair said. "And they're trained too. Combat magic, conservin’ energy; everything I know that gives me an advantage, they know, too. But, that's not why they're so dangerous. They can steal magic from people, just by touchin’ ‘em."
Aidan's blood ran cold. "They're siphons?!"
"Not the way you're thinking. They—eyes on the road, please!"
Aidan looked back just in time to see that there was a carriage coming towards them. He pulled back over into his lane, but the second the carriage had passed he turned all his attention back to Eallair.
"What do you mean 'not the way I'm thinking'?" he asked before Eallair could start lecturing him about staying in his own lane. "Siphons are siphons, there's no other way to think about them. They're…they're mindless monsters that kill people for their magic! They can't track anyone down; they probably don't even know what 'tracking down' means."
"And how do you know that?" Eallair asked.
"Everyone knows that. The government—" Aidan stopped cold when he realized what he was about to say, a horrible weight settling onto his chest.
"Oh, the government said so? Well, then we know it can't possibly not be true, right?" Eallair asked.
Aidan barely noticed.
"Siphons ain't the monsters you think. They're not even different enough to deserve a name, not the way sorcerers and wizards and necromancers and the like are. Anyone can learn to take or share magical energy, even wizards; the takin’ don't even really hurt. What you lot call siphons are just people born able to do it a lot easier, like some people who can make really good shields or strong wind spells. The government finds your 'siphons' and takes 'em in when they're still kids. The ones that can be trained are turned into hunters; the rest are killed."
Even wizards…
"That's how you gave me your magic," Aidan said, subdued. I knew there was something weird about that. I just had no idea… He supposed it was a good thing he didn't realize that at the time. He might have ruined their escape by doing what he was about to do now.
Aidan slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard to the left. The carriage spun around, tires squealing in protest until it came to a stop in the other lane, facing back towards the direction they'd come from.
"What the bloody fuck are you doing?" Eallair yelled.
"I need to go back." He pushed the accelerator pedal down as far as it would go. The tries spun, squealing again, and then the carriage took off.
For all of three seconds.
"No, you don't," Eallair said. He clapped his hands together, once, and all four tires popped loudly.
"Fuck!" Aidan swore as the carriage started to swerve. He slammed on the brakes and sparks flew up past the windows as the rims scraped over the road with an ear-splitting screech. The carriage tilted ominously a few times, but somehow, they managed to come to a stop without flipping over.
Aidan turned towards Eallair, eyes blazing. "Why the fuck did you do that?"
"Because you're bein’ crazy." Eallair was infuriatingly calm. "We can't go back to the city. Not with a hunter after us. Not even if there weren't a hunter after us. We'd be caught in less than a minute."
"I don't care!" Aidan said frantically. "I need to get back."
"Why?" Eallair asked.
"Because they're not monsters! It's my fault they were arrested and they're not monsters and we can still save them!"
He fumbled at the door latch with shaky hands, trying to open it. Fuck the carriage, he’d run back if he had to.
Eallair grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from the door as much as he could with Aidan still buckled into his seat. "Calm. Down. What are you talking about?"
Every bit of Aidan chafed at holding still when he should be getting back, but he forced himself to at least try and take a deep breath. Maybe if he explained it, Eallair would let them go.
Aidan swallowed heavily, trying to get his emotions under control. "There were two kids," he said, "in my WA group. They were twins and they manifested at the same time…"
Grim understanding dawned on Eallair's face. "You reported them?"
"Yes." Aidan nodded, then shook his head. "No. I didn't report them, Carl did, but it was my fault we even found out about them and they only got arrested a week ago so they could still be alive and we need to go find them and save them."
"Aidan," Eallair said gently. Aidan didn't want gentle, he wanted to go. He tried to pull away but Eallair's grip on his shoulder tightened. "Aidan!"
Aidan gave up struggling and slumped in his seat, all the fight draining out of his body. "They're already dead, aren't they?" he asked dully.
He heard Eallair sigh. "Do you think either one of them would be likely to make it working for the government?"
Almost unwillingly, Aidan pictured Dallin, so angry at everything, and Skyler, shy and sweet and holding out hope that her mom still loved her… "No," he said softly. "I-I don't think either one of them would."
"Then, yeah, they're already dead," Eallair said, just as gently as before. "I'm sorry."
It didn't matter how gently Eallair put it, it still felt like someone had shoved a burning hot knife into Aidan's stomach. The horrible guilt was bad enough when he thought turning them in was necessary, but now that he knew it wasn't, that it never had been, that he’d sent two children to their deaths…he thought it might crush him completely.
"It's my fault," Aidan said as the first tears fell down his cheeks.
"It ain't your fault," Eallair said.
Aidan glared at him through watery eyes. "Yes, it is! I—"
"Didn't do anything but what you thought was right. You didn't kill them, and you weren't even the one what turned them in." Aidan opened his mouth to protest that he would have, but Eallair didn't let him speak. "And even if you were, you were doin’ what you thought was needed to save other peoples' lives. You're not to blame for believin’ a lie. No one's to blame but them that did the lyin' and the killin'."
"I could have helped them," Aidan said, furiously wiping tears away.
"No, you couldn't have," Eallair said. "Those kids were dead the second they were born and nothin’ you could have done would have changed that."
Aidan covered his mouth with a trembling hand. Eallair’s eyes blazed with a raw, painful honesty Aidan wasn’t prepared for.
"You can't blame yourself for something you had no control over. Trust me, you'll just end up goin’ crazy. Sometimes horrible things happen and all you can do is endure and maybe, if you're lucky, you can stop them from happenin’ again."
Even through the grief and the tears, Aidan had the sudden impression Eallair wasn't talking about the kids anymore. He couldn't bring himself to care though. Not then. Even though part of him knew Eallair was right, all he could feel was a guilty, soul crushing regret.
And, below that, a spark of anger that was slowly, but surely, growing into an inferno.
Because Eallair was right about something else, too. A government that could kill children just because it couldn't use them didn't just deserve to be replaced, it needed to die. It needed to be burned to the ground and swept away so not even its ashes would remain behind to taint the foundations of whatever followed.
He almost didn't even notice when Eallair let go of his shoulder and put his arm around Aidan. He definitely didn't remember resting his head on Eallair's chest. All he knew was he was crying against something solid and comforting—something that eased part of the terrible ache inside him.
◆◆◆
Noah looked down at the paper in his hands and read the transcribed note for the third time.
From the office of the Prime Minister
They're going east.
It confounded him, that note. The cryptic nature. The implications behind it. Noah had been spending every waking minute investigating the attacks, and even he had no idea where Collins and the man in black could be going or even what they’d stolen. There wasn’t the slightest clue in any of the records he had of the attacks or in Collins’ file. He’d even had agents search the house of Collins’ family on the off chance he’d run home to mommy and daddy, but he wasn’t there, and they both insisted they hadn’t had any contact with him since he manifested as a wizard. The agent handling the informal questioning believed them, and none of Noah’s instincts were telling him otherwise. No matter how much he turned that note over in his head, he could only come to one conclusion.
Someone knew where his quarry was headed. And, aside from a vague direction, they weren't telling him.
He supposed it should have bothered him, but if there was one thing Noah had faith in, it was the system. That the note had appeared on his—or rather former Agent Farren's—crystal ball less than an hour after filing his initial report, showed that somebody high up, possibly even the Prime Minister himself, was paying close attention to this hunt. If somebody that high up didn't think he needed to know exactly where they were going or what they'd stolen, then he didn't need to know.
Still, he wished he knew why it was so important to keep him ignorant of facts that could give him an advantage.