Caster

by Elsie Chapman

  I was sure that nothing was real.

  The last conversation I had with Shire couldn’t have been an argument. Rudy couldn’t have called the teahouse at dawn to say she’d cast too much full magic and had lost control of it. My parents couldn’t have spoken about full magic with such poison in their voices that they almost made me feel like poison, too. They couldn’t have spent the next days whispering together at night over the state of the teahouse, never asking me if I was willing to help in any way.

  It wasn’t until I touched her starter bag left on her bed that I finally accepted she was really gone, her absence final. I felt it like someone had sucked all the air out of the room, out of my lungs so that I was just a dried-up shell—now that the person I used to follow behind was gone, the wind would just blow me away, wouldn’t it?

  This bag held the items that started Shire’s magic, and it’d just been left on her bed. Discarded there like any unimportant shirt or pair of socks. The starter bag was Shire’s connection to her magic and she would never need it again.

  My eyes stung as I picked it up, knowing instantly I wanted nothing else of hers, needed nothing. My own starter bag was stained dark gray canvas, nothing special. I bought it because it went with everything in my wardrobe. But Shire’s was the yellow of chrysanthemums, of emperors and empresses, and the shiny silk moved like liquid gold. It suited my sister, who always dressed like she had better things to do than pay off a gangster.

  But now, walking this last part home, I wonder if I missed something in her room. Something I wouldn’t have guessed about because how could I have known? Tonight, fighting and using ring starters, I found out for myself how impractical it would be to use a starter bag in battle, my pockets not much better.

  Kylin said Shire had been the best. Shire, who never jumped into anything the way I did, who spent months training and then practicing in order to be exceptional.

  That last night had been the final fight, the one for the championship. She’d been fixing something on the table. Something she’d rushed to hide to keep me safe. All her life, Shire had only ever hidden one big thing from me, and that was how she was really using her magic.

  My nerves prickle with the lightness of discovery.

  It’s all a guess, but it also feels very right. Like I’m making a new connection to Shire, even if she’s gone. She had to keep everything about being a fighter a secret when she was alive, but now that I’m a fighter, too, she’s finally able to share. Distant laughter from the teatini bar I pass drifts over but I don’t entirely hear it, and it’s starting to drizzle again but I barely notice. Shire’s never coming back, but I have these pieces of her now that I never had before, pieces I think she’s giving me herself.

  Shire, maybe I was wrong to think I didn’t need anything else of yours. Maybe I’ll see if I can find a tangle of metal in your room.

  When I reach the block of the teahouse, I duck into the alley that runs behind it and squeeze my way through our fence of snowball bushes. I fold my mask back into my pocket, walk up to my bedroom window, and yank.

  It doesn’t open.

  My mother, exasperated, locking it from the inside.

  “Damn it,” I whisper before yawning hugely. I dig out my key to the teahouse from my back pocket. Exhausted, I half walk, half limp my way around the side of the building, every part of me craving sleep.

  Golden light flows out from the front window of the teahouse.

  I slow down, then climb the steps to the door.

  Confusion dances with the murkiness of my brain as I work the lock with clumsy fingers. Could my parents be waiting up for me, discovering me gone and thinking I’m coming back from handling a late-night package for Saint Willow? Even so, why would they be waiting in the dining room instead of our regular kitchen? The kitchen is where my mother has her television and Liar’s Lair for her to disappear into, where my father chooses to drown in paperwork.

  I open the door, and there’s a man sitting at the back table. He has a cup of tea in front of him. For a second I see my father, with his parental intuition somehow knowing that I’m hurt from fighting and wanting to cast leftover magic to help.

  But then my father lifts his head and it’s Jihen.

  My blood runs cold. My heartbeat pounds in my fingertips, wrists, behind my eyes, as I struggle to make sense of Jihen being here, in this place that’s too good for him. The scents of too many gentle things like red fire–dried leaves and smoky green fields aren’t supposed to make room for anything else.

  I shouldn’t be surprised, though. I of all people understand the reasons for staying unpredictable. And hadn’t I done this same thing to Rudy? Breaking into the apothecary and waiting for him to arrive? If he felt as I do now, invaded and vulnerable, no wonder he was always particularly livid those days. Shame flows now, and I let it.

  “A late night for you, Aza,” Jihen says, “and a rough one by the looks of it.” His gaze crawls over my face and the bruises and the blood on my clothes. He makes a sound of disapproval. “You teenagers, always so confusing with the things you do. Like wild animals, like gnau neng. Dare I ask for details?”

  “It’s none of your business.” There is no explanation that would work. Not that I owe him one anyway. Anger begins to boil up.

  “Delicious tea.” Jihen sniffs from his cup. “I can see why you’re so determined to keep the family business alive.”

  “How did you get in here?” Jihen’s leftover magic can’t have broken open the lock. And now an absurd sense of betrayal begins to creep in—he agreed to never show at the teahouse again. I’ve been paying each time he finds me, haven’t I?

  “The simplest way, Aza.” He holds up a key. “Saint Willow doesn’t like it when things get unnecessarily complicated.”

  They have a key. Of course they do. I forgot that Saint Willow and his family technically own nearly every piece of land in the sector, so it makes sense that they also maintain access. It’s a given so obvious that no one actually talks about it anymore—if you are here, it’s because Saint Willow allows you to be. Our home isn’t really ours because it’s really his. It’s Jihen’s. It’s any of his henchmen’s.

  This place being off-limits is just one more illusion I’ve let myself be fooled by.

  “We had a deal,” I say. “I pay you directly, and you stay away from the teahouse. How is that complicated?”

  Jihen sips at his tea. Seeing his thick fingers gripped around one of our most delicately designed cups makes my stomach roll. He was in our kitchen. He was in my room, locking the window to make sure I came in through the front. My stomach rolls harder.

  “Well, beauty, here’s the problem. You’re not paying—not the way you promised you would and definitely not the way Saint Willow needs you to.”

  His voice is louder than it needs to be, and I think he’s doing it on purpose. I force myself to keep from glancing down the hallway that leads to my family’s apartment, willing my parents to stay asleep.

  “I did pay you today, and I’m sorry it wasn’t enough. I told you that. But I can’t just cast more marks into my pocket.”

  While it’s not impossible to cast an object into something else, it is nearly so to keep it from changing back. Same for casting objects into reality and making them stay that way. It took the Guild combining all its power together to re-create the Kan Desert, and even then, all that sand had still been more illusion than real. I don’t have that type of spell, and neither did Shire. Of course, a thief like Jihen would want to take full advantage of being able to pull marks from the air.

  “Now wouldn’t that be nice? Full magic my way and everything’s fixed.” Jihen’s smile is mocking. “Know anyone I can tell the boss about?”

  My throat goes dry—why did I have to mention full magic to Jihen of all people? His boss would collect full magic casters the way a child collects toys if he could. I hope my face gives away nothing. “Would we be having this conversation if I knew someone who had real magic?” />
  “Perhaps one day, then.” Jihen slurps from his cup. “We can always dream, can’t we?”

  “So just tell Saint Willow exactly what I told you—that I can’t pay what I don’t have. I’ll have more the next time I see you.”

  “Beauty—”

  A bitter helplessness surges, coats the back of my mouth. “Don’t call me that, remember?”

  “—you don’t think the first thing I told the boss was that you just didn’t have it? I was walking in there with a pathetic amount of marks—of course I had to explain how it wasn’t me doing a bad job, a job Saint Willow says even a beebee could do.” He lifts his palm and casts, picking up his cup. “I hate cold tea.”

  A waft of the freshly heated tea tickles my nose. It’s our Content blend. I’ve never liked it.

  “What do you want, Jihen?”

  “Where is the teahouse’s till money?” Now his voice has softened, and it stirs the hair on the back of my neck. “The day’s sales. Boss sent me here for them. Consider it interest on your frequently late payments.”

  Panic is a vise around my ribs, squeezing. I picture where my parents always keep the day’s sales, in the safe in the family kitchen.

  “I— You can’t. That’s for everything else we have to pay—bills, suppliers, insurance, rent to the company that Saint Willow owns.”

  “Ah, but there’s one less supplier to worry about now, yes? If you like, we can look into getting rid of more contracts for you. Anything to help remind you to pay your debt of honor marks as soon as possible.”

  The vise tightens. I can barely breathe as the name Leafton floats across my mind. “Saint Willow can’t do that.”

  But of course he can. Saint Willow can cut Wu Teas off from companies one by one in Lotusland just to see how hard he can push, how far we’ll bend. How I’ll do almost anything to save us.

  “The day’s sales, Aza.”

  I make Jihen wait outside the teahouse, just in case my parents wake up. I walk over to the safe inside the deep cupboard in the kitchen and open it with shaking fingers and a heart full of hate. The number of marks I take from it fills my stomach with a real nausea as I step outside and shove the envelope at him.

  Jihen takes it from me with a small, smug grin. “Much appreciated, beauty.”

  I go back inside, lock the door. Exhausted or not, it takes me until morning before I can fall asleep.

  I’m still stiff when I wake up the next afternoon—sleep didn’t do as much as I hoped. Worry nags at me as I get dressed. How will I feel by the time I get inside tonight’s fighting ring? How will the other fighters be feeling?

  When I open up my starter bag to see what needs replenishing, I go still. My thoughts race as I dig the tiny glass jar out from the pebbles and leaves and other starters I always keep in my bag.

  Having Rudy’s healing meds would change everything. I wouldn’t be walking into each fight still hurting from having to use my magic. Shire must have used the same method, since the pills were hers.

  But the bottle is empty. I took the last pill after casting for Coral’s mind wipe. I meant to get more from Rudy yesterday when I visited the apothecary, but given that he died during my visit, asking for a refill slipped from my mind.

  I decide I’ll have to break into the apothecary. I’ll have to use full magic to do it, but then I’ll at least have medicine afterward to help with the pain from casting. I’ll go today, before heading for the Mothery to convince Piper I’m worthy of being her fighter.

  I cross the hall to Shire’s room.

  It’s been a year and my parents have left it mostly untouched. Other than using it to store the odd bit of supplies, they rarely come in. Shire’s room is just like family meals out in the teahouse dining room—too painful still for them to consider.

  Maybe it doesn’t help that I’ve let them forget. Maybe I should remind them that Shire wasn’t the only one who liked those family dinners.

  I check her bookshelf first, then her trunk, before finding it in the pull-out drawer of her desk.

  The tangle of metal isn’t as random as my glimpse of it that final night made me think. It’s actually a lot like one of those octopus-style key holders, with a flat disk as its main body and then half a dozen small loops coming out from along its edges where you would attach your keys. There’s a sturdy clip at the top of the disk for attaching it to something, which I think is what Shire might have been adjusting when I caught her with it in the kitchen.

  The small loops are spring-ring ones. A single hard tug and—

  Then I get it. How it works and why Shire must have made this to give herself an advantage in the ring.

  I take out the ring starters from my pocket—I transferred them there from last night’s still-ruined jeans—and lay them out on Shire’s desk. A smattering of square coins—red, white, silver, gold.

  I pick up a red coin and slide it onto one of the small loops through its center hole. After a second of debate I attach the clip to one of the belt loops on my pants. I test my theory, giving the red coin a single hard tug as though I’m in a fighting ring right now, needing a starter without wasting even a second.

  The red coin drops smoothly into my palm.

  Shire, you really were the best, weren’t you? The favorite, there in the ring and here at home, too. But now I think it’s my turn to try, and I think you’re helping me try. I feel the ghost of you and I hope it’ll be enough.

  I detach the holder and slip on the rest of the ring starters, making sure I know where each different color rests on my hip. I spend the rest of the afternoon practicing reaching for starters and yanking them free until the motion is mindless, until I grab whatever I need entirely by feel, and in a fraction of a second. It’s the repetition of Rudy’s sorting exercises in his apothecary all over again. Then I unclip the whole thing and place it securely in my starter bag. Slinging the bag across my shoulder, I head for the kitchen, starving because it’s long past lunch.

  The kitchen is empty, the island top wiped clean. My parents are in the tea shop, and their voices as they serve customers float back down the hall, along with the scents of fresh tea and pastries.

  There’s a covered plate on the island, though—wedges of scallion pancake, sides of fruit recently ripened courtesy of leftover magic, a teacup with water and a selection of tea bags next to it. Like they know I haven’t slept enough and food is still one of the ways they can speak to me.

  My eyes go to the deep cupboard beside the fridge. The safe inside hasn’t been touched since I opened it for Jihen in the middle of the night. My parents won’t open it until closing tonight, which is when they’ll add today’s sales to it. At the end of the week, they’ll use the saved-up marks to pay off our family’s long-running suppliers, business partnerships as old as the sector we live in.

  I take the fifty marks from last night out of my starter bag and slip them into the safe. The amount isn’t nearly enough to cover what I took to pay Jihen, but I just have to hope my parents won’t notice anything is missing until the end of the week. That’s when they’ll take it all out to make their payments. By then, I’ll have hopefully replaced everything with more winnings from bets getting put on me during the tournament. Getting Piper to agree to back me is a huge part of replacing the marks. Of course, winning two hundred thousand marks is also another part of the solution.

  Pressure swells in my chest as I lock up the safe. I can’t let my parents notice anything at all. It’s not my having to pay Jihen that will throw them, but my doing it the way I did. Why would I need to give him marks from the safe when they believe I’m working down our debt as Saint Willow’s courier?

  My head spins over my own web of lies. The shadows between its spirals are like traps—one wrong move and I’ll be falling. The family legacy will tumble down behind me.

  I cast leftover magic and the water in my cup heats. I cast the television on so I can stop thinking for a few moments about all the ways I can mess up.

  It
’s just the news, recaps of the city since early this morning. I’m only half paying attention as I tear open a bag of our Energizing blend to steep and start in on the food.

  I nearly choke on a bite of pancake when I actually start listening to the news report.

  At dawn, a huge sinkhole opened up in the Meat Sector. Measuring fifty feet across in both directions and nearly forty deep, it took out an entire intersection between major streets. No one was injured when it happened because all the adjacent businesses were still closed for the night. Though there’s some structural damage to some of the nearby buildings that will take weeks to fix, the one that suffered the most damage—a nearby underground mall that was completely crushed—was already set to be demolished in two weeks, luckily enough.

  I could try believing it’s just a coincidence. Every day, somewhere in the world, something falls apart or is destroyed or dies out. Not because someone’s currently casting full magic, but because too many someones did so a long time ago, and the earth’s still paying for it. A quake. A freak wildfire. A tsunami. Lotusland isn’t saved from any of that.

  But the underground mall—I can still feel the sand of the Kan Desert between my fingers—is too much to ignore.

  A knot of dread sits in my stomach.

  I helped do this. The Guild of Now’s magic is powerful, but it can’t turn earth back to being unbroken. Last night’s fight, fifty of us, just casting full magic as though we’d been reborn into casters of old, as though no consequences existed. No price for magic.

  And just like that, I realize I should have known.

  Because just about a year ago, didn’t the same thing happen? A series of disasters, memorable because they were all located within the borders of the city, each one the breakthrough damage from the battles of last year’s tournament.