City of Broken Magic

by Mirah Bolender

  He made a frustrated sound and switched the umbrella to the other shoulder.

  “They taught me early. I thought it was useless.”

  Oh. Well then. Laura drew back. She inspected the handle of her umbrella and began to turn it for a distraction, sending scattered droplets into the air.

  So she’d done something he hadn’t dared to before. Maybe Clae had been on to something when he’d said Okane felt connected to her by vulnerability. It was just that Laura reacted, and maybe he respected that. She thought back to the Sullivan mansion, the way the cook had snapped at him and the maids avoided him, the mention of whipping and Henry’s thunderous face. No wonder he sounded afraid to laugh before. She dragged in a deep breath and spun to face him. He jerked back, eyes wide.

  “Well! We’re both apprentices now, and I doubt Clae’s going to let either of us go if he can help it. I’m not going to let you beat me, but let’s try to get along better, okay?”

  She held out her free hand, hoping it was enough of a peace offering. Okane eyed it, then, very, very slowly, took it.

  “All right.”

  His grip was loose and rather weak, but they shook, and Laura felt a little better about the whole situation.

  9

  YESTERYEAR

  “Laura.”

  Okane’s voice came as a soft squeak, timid but stronger than it was a few days ago. She looked up from her book to see him drifting across the shop toward her.

  “Hm?”

  He rubbed at his arm nervously. “Sorry, but I was wondering if --- could tell me some things.”

  “About the job?”

  “Not quite, no.”

  “Then what about?”

  He seemed embarrassed but elaborated, “It’s been gnawing at me for a while. What exactly are amulets?”

  Laura blinked in surprise. “Are you serious? You don’t know what they are?”

  “No, not really.”

  “You didn’t ask Clae?” Come to think of it, why would he wait until Clae had stepped outside to ask about the subject? Clae was the one who knew this best, and despite her new efforts Laura knew she was still prickly dealing with her new coworker.

  “No. I already look stupid enough to him. I don’t want to add to it.”

  If he was looking for pity, he certainly got it. Laura straightened up in her seat, unclipped the amulet from her belt, and set it on the counter with a loud clack as she asked, “How much do you know about amulets?”

  He dragged over a stool, mulling over what knowledge he did have. “I know they give power for appliances.”

  That was it? Laura pursed her lips as she tried to figure out where to begin.

  “Well, let’s see … Yes, amulets do hold energy, but that energy is magic. Some of them are like this one”—she tapped the smiling amulet before her—“so they’re made out of the magic source. That’s called Gin. It’s a rock found way below ground that has so much magic, it leaks out. But you want to keep that rock down there, because its magic helps ward off bad things and helps all kinds of plants grow. If we didn’t have it, we’d have trouble growing all the crops we need here. But Gin around Amicae has gotten kind of rare: in the beginning they had to mine so much of it to pay for construction of the city, and the Council kept leaning on that as a way to pay off debts. Most of the Gin around here is strategically placed and monitored closely, so amulets like this are very expensive. They’re more powerful and convenient than regular amulets. Regular amulets are made out of a more common material like other stones or clay, but they have a hollow inside so they can absorb and store magic there after they’ve been stored by Gin for a while. Common amulets need recharging, while Gin doesn’t.”

  “But they don’t all look like that one,” Okane muttered.

  “People like amulets to be decorative. A lot of them get painted or carved, so they all look different. They tend to be around this size, though.”

  “What are they used for?”

  “Power, of course. For normal people, anyway. It’s a nicer replacement for electricity and gas, but if things can go wrong with those, it can get catastrophic with amulets. Plus there’s the danger of infestations getting into them, so cities make sure amulets are priced high so the only people who can get hold of them are the ones who can afford to take care of them. Less damage, and easier for the police to track.”

  Okane frowned, reaching out to prod the amulet. “It’s expensive electricity, then. But if amulets hold magic and infestations are killed by magic, why do infestations live in them?”

  “That’s what they’re meant to do. That’s why they were made.” Laura shrugged. He sent her a puzzled look, and she got the idea he had no clue what she was talking about. “You know, because they were designed that way?”

  “Designed?”

  “Did they teach you anything at that mansion?”

  He recoiled, and she decided that must be a resounding no. Leaning back herself, she sighed.

  “Sorry, it’s just that they had a big impact on how everything works. A lot of everyday things don’t make sense unless you know about the monsters first.”

  “I didn’t learn much about the outside,” he admitted, rearranging his hands in his lap. “Mobs I know, gas lighting I know, but history? Nothing I can use.”

  Laura eyed him shrewdly. “Do you even know what country you’re in?”

  He shifted guiltily but avoided the subject.

  “If the infestations were made, who made them?” he questioned instead, eyes fixed on the amulet. “Why would anyone ever make something like that?”

  “I don’t know, why would anyone make a felin, either?”

  He glanced up, apprehensive. “Those actually exist?”

  Laura exhaled slowly. He had zero knowledge of the world. She was no teacher, but she could give some kind of overview. She searched under the counter. Clae had bundled a huge number of things down here, along with all the sharp objects. Once she found her prize—a crinkled roll of paper—she had to tug it out from under a stack of angry letters from the Sullivan offices.

  Okane tracked her movement and drew back as she spread the document flat on top of her book. The piece in question was a map outlining the three main islands and scattered landmasses, the thirty cities marked by dark triangles with their names printed nearby. Some of its usefulness was diminished by random spots of ink in the mountain areas and colored lines drawn to show where various train routes went.

  “Okay,” she announced, “I’m going to give you a quick rundown on the history of the Orien Territories.”

  He looked up with a raised brow. “Orien?”

  “It literally means ‘east.’ When the first explorers from the mainland sailed east and stumbled on the islands, they thought they were at the end of the world. That’s why the ocean to the east is called Malamare—it means ‘bad sea,’ since you’d fall off the edge of the world if you went too far on it. So you are currently in the archipelago called Orien, in the biggest country: Terual.” Her finger circled the middle of the largest island, tapped a marker on the southeast side, between a particularly large mountain and a bay. “This is Amicae.”

  Intrigued, he leaned over to inspect this. His eyes tracked farther down, though, to the darkest-shaded portion of the map, the southernmost of the main islands, which was labeled in pictographic script Laura couldn’t read.

  “What’s this?”

  “I’ll get to it,” Laura grumbled. Of course he’d pick out the source of trouble right away. “Back in 323, Zyra—that’s a big kingdom on the mainland—decided they wanted to expand and went searching for more territory to conquer. They were trying to figure out how far they could go when they sailed into the islands. There were already people living here, but what Zyra was really interested in was the Gin. Back on the mainland Gin was scarce, so it was really valuable. People used to use magic in things like weapons, so they thought Orien’s supply could fuel their war goals and ‘bring them into the arms of untold fortune a
nd prosperity.’” The quote was from an old textbook. “So then everybody wanted the Gin, and everyone wanted Orien. Needless to say the people living here didn’t like that, so they put up a fight. Zyra organized crusades to sail in and conquer. They turned it into a holy war—the Orien Conquest—and tried to wipe out the original people completely. But that took a long time and backfired, because the conquerors set up their own kingdoms and hoarded the Gin they could find instead of sending it back. That’s how we ended up with four countries.”

  She gestured at the country names, assuming he’d take it in quickly enough, but paused. He squinted at the print, but there was something about the determination in that squint, how slow his eyes moved …

  “Can you read?”

  “No!” he squawked, loud like the very idea was foolish or incriminating. He averted his eyes from her and the map completely, and Laura was baffled.

  What was he, twenty? And not able to read a single word? She opened her mouth to demand what Sullivan had been playing at, what kind of crackpot waste-of-space teacher Okane had as a child, but the knowledge of another textbook flickered in the back of her mind. Slaves were not often taught to read, crippling their independence; it kept them from running away, communicating, or learning. Knowledge is power, and a slave must not have power. There was more to Clae’s statements than she’d realized. Kept like a slave, indeed.

  Suddenly shameful of her own lack of understanding, Laura shuffled the paper around. She cleared her throat unsurely, making a mental note to try teaching him later (hopefully without such a violent reaction to the idea), and tried to grab his attention again by circling the countries with her index finger.

  “The northernmost island is Ruhaile. The biggest island is divided between Terual at the top and New Zyra at the bottom. We just call it Zyra, though.”

  Reluctantly Okane turned his head again, not all the way, but enough to peer distrustfully at the map again.

  “And the last one?”

  “Kuro no Oukoku.”

  A flicker of comprehension crossed his face and he translated, “The Black Kingdom?” before realizing what he’d said and curling in on himself.

  “That’s right.” She nodded, skin crawling. She didn’t want to think of what had happened in the past to cause such self-deprecating actions. Knowledge is power. She got the feeling, between Okane and Mary, that she wouldn’t have fared well at the Sullivan mansion at all. Slowly Okane relaxed, still somewhat tense but blinking owlishly with those abnormally silver eyes.

  “The Black Kingdom?” he repeated.

  Laura chewed at her lip before continuing.

  “It took a long time, but the crusaders either enslaved or uprooted all the natives in their path. The remainder escaped to the last island, and they rallied there.” This part had never been in any of her schoolbooks, instead related to her by Clae on a dark afternoon as the overhead light flickered and a storm raged against the shop windows. “The native people knew that the invader’s power came from magic weapons; if that magic could be crippled, they’d be as good as sitting ducks. So the natives created an anti-magic monster. Even if it couldn’t take magic head-on, it could infiltrate magic containers, interrupt the power, and wreak havoc on their enemies from a place they’d never expect. The problem was, the creature they created couldn’t comprehend ‘master’ or ‘ally.’ Everything was food to it, and they didn’t understand how it grew or spread yet. It escaped their hold, and it ate them.”

  “All of them?” Okane breathed.

  “No, but a lot of people wish it did. Some survivors got on boats to escape to the other islands, but they brought the creature’s offspring with them by accident. Infestations don’t like water, can’t or won’t cross it, so if they hadn’t sailed out, it would’ve been confined to Kuro no Oukoku forever … or longer, at least. As it happened, the monster did its job. Once it got to the other islands, it spread like crazy. People died all over, and once the mainland got wind of it they set a quarantine on Orien. Nobody can come or go. If people tried to sail to the mainland, they’d be sunk on sight. Go the opposite of the mainland, and you fall off the edge of the world. The quarantine was set up back in 723, and we haven’t had people sail here from the mainland since. No contact whatsoever. And the ones left behind? They couldn’t be spread out the way they used to be, so they grouped together in cities to defend themselves. That’s why we have the big fortress cities today, with the wilds in between—that way Sweepers can keep track of people and stop infestations easily, instead of running all over the countryside and being too late to save anyone.”

  Okane frowned down at the dark blot of Kuro no Oukoku and summed up, “So it was a weapon in a war that got out of hand, and we’re stuck with it all these years later.”

  “Five hundred and ten years,” Laura agreed. “Countless casualties. Amicae is mostly under the impression that infestations aren’t a threat anymore, and that’s beyond stupid. Their entire purpose is to infest so you can’t see or stop them, and strike out while your guard is down. It’s meant to kill huge numbers of people at a time. It’s genocide on legs. Sweepers are critical, because if one of them is allowed to spread, the city will die. It’s not like we’ll have much help, with the Council’s attitude and the mobster Sweepers having nothing to do with us. It’s terrifying when you really think about it, how close we are to being erased off the map. I wonder if the natives would’ve gone through with it if they realized how much damage they’d cause. How they’d almost get wiped out, too.”

  “Maybe it didn’t matter,” Okane muttered, barely audible.

  Something else Clae had said came to mind. Maybe that doesn’t matter. When Magi are out in the world on their own, it’s not usually because they want to be.

  Laura scratched at her arm, unnerved.

  “How many of the natives are around these days?” Okane pressed, not catching her discomfort.

  “There are a good number in Amicae. Apart from Zyran cities, we’ve got one of the largest populations. The woman who owns the pawnshop is one.”

  “She is? How can --- tell?”

  “Well, it’s kind of obvious. She’s got the black hair, the—” She paused, then said, “Sometime I’ll bring you past the pawnshop and maybe we’ll see her. You’ll understand better that way.”

  “Okay,” he mumbled, mystified. “Is Amicae special or something?”

  “Hm?”

  “The largest population outside Zyra, but there are plenty of other cities closer to that border.” He pointed out cities like Vir and Avis. “Why are there so many here?”

  “Because it’s like the infestations: designed that way.”

  “How so?”

  “Amicae is a newer city, compared to the others.”

  He nodded. “Made after Sweepers were established.”

  “Exactly. There are a few reasons why it was made: to bridge the gap between Terrae and some other southern cities, to take advantage of the bay for fishing, and to make a haven. All the cities have nicknames, and Amicae is ‘the friendly city.’ The main drive behind it was a charity that wanted to make a place where people lost in the wilds could find refuge. That’s why an extra level was added to the construction. Other cities only have five Quarters, but Amicae has a sixth. That’s why Amicae is partially overrun with noncitizens and refugees from destroyed satellite towns. Those refugees included the native people, since Amicae didn’t turn anyone away for a long time. Most of them went to Thrax, since that city had more lenient laws for them, but a lot came here, too. Of course, we aren’t exactly ‘friendly’ anymore. The friendly city took a twist in politics, so here we are, little rights for the poor, slowly crumbling into a caste system … and people don’t treat them very well. That’s one of the reasons so many of them are in the mobs. When the MARU was around, they came down on natives pretty hard even when they weren’t with mobs; some sort of idiot tactic meant to scare relatives who were. Oh. You know about the MARU, right? The group everyone thinks we are
?”

  He nodded solemnly. “The Mob Action Resolution Unit. Back in 1198, the mobs grew full of themselves and started acting openly enough that the Council was afraid we’d descend into a mob-run city like … Carmen?” He seemed pleased by her nod and continued, “The Council approved the formation of a police-recruited vigilante squad. Those seven recruits became the massive MARU, and almost ran the city for twenty-eight years. Sullivan took pleasure in their loss.”

  “‘Loss’ is putting it lightly,” Laura muttered. “The MARU might still be around if it hadn’t branched out in targets. I mean, they started going after innocent civilians just because of their race—it was messed up. I don’t know why it was allowed.”

  Okane wore a wry smile. “This is the same MARU that regularly manhandled their informants and murdered any mobster who didn’t reply correctly.”

  “True enough,” said Laura. “The Silver Kings mob decided they’d had enough. They started alliances. The MARU were good at picking on individual mobs, but a united front? They became the hunted.”

  She remembered those days well, even if she’d only been in elementary school. Gruesome headlines in the papers told of MARU officers captured, mutilated, or killed outright, pictures drawn of a MARU survivor who’d been doused with acid, and all throughout it were print and pictures of a thick and perfect circle, dribbling paint or smeared in ash. That was the psychological part of the mob threat, serving as a giant target and drawn everywhere a MARU agent went—on the house, on their coat, hung over baby cradles—so agents quit, bent to the will of the mobs, or were driven crazy with fear before being found shot full of bullets in a cramped alley. The MARU buckled and broke. The few survivors were either so horrifically injured that they couldn’t return to duty, or so cowed that even upon returning to the police force they fled at the slightest hint of mob involvement. Clae had mentioned that a real revival of the MARU was attempted in fall of 1229, but the mob backlash had been so sudden and violent that it was given up entirely.