by Eva Chase
Declan wasn’t part of the competition, at least, having to stick to observing because of his teacher’s aide position. I walked into the aide’s office, and he got up from the table where he’d been paging through a book. But at the sight of his expression warming with a small smile of welcome I could tell he was restraining from getting any larger, I found it suddenly hard to smile back.
Jude had helped me, warmed me up with affection that might have been genuine… and I’d let that stop me from seeing or talking about how he was treating everyone around me.
How much did I really know about Declan Ashgrave and his views beyond the few subjects we’d talked about? He probably saw Naries as just as “feeble” as the other fearmancers. Who knew how many pranks he’d been part of before he’d taken this gig?
It wasn’t just my heart I needed to be careful with here. It was the safety of everyone else I’d known and cared about or at least respected beyond the boundaries of this campus.
A couple of the other aides were standing off to one side of the room in conversation, so I couldn’t say half of what I wanted to yet. “Should we pick up where we left off last time?” Declan asked, and I nodded, and for the first twenty minutes I tried to train all my attention on magical techniques and not on the motives and feelings of the guy leading me through them.
Declan was obviously wary of being overheard too. He carried on as if everywhere were fine, even when I wavered a few times during the exercises, but his posture drew straighter when his coworkers headed out the door. The leash I’d kept on my tongue loosened at the same time.
“Is everything all right?” he said. “You’re having more trouble focusing than usual.”
“I’ve got a lot on my mind.” I hesitated and then just spat it out. “Have you hurt people?”
His eyes widened. “What?”
I swiped my hand across the table top. “You were with the blacksuits when they killed my parents. Maybe you’ve gone on other missions with them where you didn’t stand back. You were at this school for years before you had any rules about not picking sides—and that still doesn’t apply to the Naries, right? Have people gotten hurt because of the things you’ve done, accidentally or on purpose, as far as you know? I don’t think it’s that hard a question.”
Declan considered me in silence for a moment. My defenses stayed firmly in place, but he’d shown before he could put the pieces together without looking right inside my head. “This is about Jude and the thing with the bears, isn’t it?” he said. “The Nary girl who had to be sent home—she was from your dorm.”
“She was my friend,” I said tightly, daring him to object. “The only friend I’ve made here who’s never hurt me, I should mention.” Which he should have already known if he’d heard about my falling out with Jude straight from the source. “Did you know it was Jude’s spell? Did he tell you he was going to do that?”
Declan shook his head. “It was easy to guess after the fact. I don’t know any other student here who could have cast an illusion that complex.”
“Fine. It was a brilliant spell, etc. etc. I’ve already told Jude exactly what I think about it. We’re talking about you now.”
“Okay.” Declan inhaled slowly. “I’ve never done anything with the blacksuits other than that one mission. They only had me along because it was you—because of the similarities in our past. Beyond that… I can’t tell you I’ve never caused anyone even a little pain, Rory. Can you say that, even in the short time you’ve been here? Striking fear in other people is how we operate. I can say that I’ve always tried to act in ways that won’t do any lasting damage.”
“What does that mean?”
“To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never outright traumatized someone, and I’ve definitely never intended to. I don’t believe I’ve caused any physical injuries either. Scaring other fearmancers, within limits, is another way of teaching them how to handle themselves when they graduate and have to compete with mages who have far more experience.”
My chin came up. “And the Nary students?”
“I don’t target Naries,” he said. “I think it’s good that we have them here to prepare us for moving among them in the wider world, but tripping them up doesn’t seem fair.”
I studied him with a frown. Did he mean that, or was he just saying it because he knew it was what I’d want to hear? “Everyone else seems to think it’s fair. What makes you so different?”
He paused, and a flicker of uneasiness passed from him to me. He was nervous about talking about this—about what I might do with the information? About what I’d make of it? I braced myself.
“I don’t think I am so different,” he said quietly. “I know my family isn’t the only one that’s started to feel this way. It’s the way my father brought my brother and I up to believe, and from what he’s said and the comments I’ve heard from the barons, my mother had similar feelings. There’s always been jockeying for power and manipulation, but the kinds of aggressive harm a lot of the families are carrying out and encouraging… It’s not necessary. It gives the joymancers an excuse to come down on us, and it puts us at risk by weakening our own bonds and getting us into precarious situations with the Nary population. We should be better, smarter, than being malicious just for the sake of it.”
“So, you think we should be nicer to everyone for strategic reasons.”
Declan held my gaze. “That’s the best case I can make for it that anyone here is likely to listen to… which they’re still not very likely to. If the other barons heard me say that, I could be accused of treason. I don’t enjoy seeing people in pain. I don’t want to ruin people’s lives. That’s my personal moral compass, where I draw the line, not an argument.”
And yet it was the part that mattered most to me. “But you don’t draw the line enough to stick up for me when I say anything like that to the other scions,” I had to point out.
He gave me a crooked smile. “Did you miss the part about treason? I trust the guys more than I trust their parents, but they don’t really know—they haven’t seen— I can’t be sure they wouldn’t say something that would shatter everything I’ve worked for. And just because I don’t enjoy pain, that doesn’t mean I don’t understand it can be necessary. This is how the world you were born into works, Rory. You were never going to be ready for it if you didn’t have to face it.”
I let out my breath in a huff. “I’m starting to get very tired of people deciding what’s good for me. If all that is true, though, I’m really sorry for all of us that you lost your mom. If the joymancers had known she was pushing for peace…”
“That wouldn’t have stopped them. They wouldn’t have believed it. We’re all villains in their eyes, believe me.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a few folded papers I recognized as another report. I had three of them now stashed in the back of my wardrobe, so many words and images I didn’t want to believe.
When I got out of here, when I could go back to the Conclave and prove I was better than they’d expected, maybe I could get a few answers from them too. Some of the fearmancer records had to be biased, but… the joymancers could have gone too far too.
Still, even the worst incidents the blacksuits pinned on the joymancers didn’t compare to the attitudes my fellow students put on display every day here.
“Why are you giving me that?” I said abruptly. “What’s the strategy there? Are you actually trying to help me by showing me all that stuff, or is this part of some plan Malcolm or your baron colleagues or whoever came up with? I’m never going to hate the parents who raised me, if that’s the end goal.”
A flicker of guilt crossed Declan’s face. My hands clenched.
“You need to know the magical world isn’t as simple as good guys and bad guys,” he started, but I was already shoving my chair back to stand up.
“Why? Who says I have to know right now? Don’t lie to me. Everyone here always has some other agenda—that much I’m figuring out.”
; “Rory.” He got up to follow me.
I wasn’t sure I could stand to hear more right now. I headed for the door, and Declan caught my hand partway across the room. When I glanced back at him, there was so much turmoil in his bright hazel eyes that my feet stalled.
“I’m doing my best,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m trying to prepare you for everything that’s going to be thrown at you. Sometimes that goal is going to line up with something someone else wants, and sometimes I have to make… concessions, but I’m not in this to hurt you. I don’t want to see you broken. I want you strong enough to stand up with me in the pentacle of barons when there are hard decisions being made.”
“I’m just a tool, then—a future ally you’ll want to use.”
“No.” He tugged me closer, and my heart stuttered with the impression that he might try to kiss me again. Instead, he just tipped his head close to mine, dropping his voice even lower than before. “I’ve been as much of a shield for you from the people who do want to use you as I can without screwing us both over. Even telling you that could be a mistake. The barons are the most powerful mages alive, Rory. You don’t fuck with them unless you want to end up with your head on a pike. But I am anyway, because the alternative is purposefully screwing you over, and I do have a goddamned line.”
Strain radiated through every word he spoke. A tremor passed through his hand into me. My throat constricted as I squeezed his fingers. I’d thought I was carrying a lot of weight, but the pressures I’d felt were nothing compared to the tension in Declan’s voice.
“I didn’t know,” I said. “You didn’t say anything.”
“The less I tell you about it, the less chance they’ll pick up on it, one way or another. You’re not the only one I have to look out for.”
Not just himself, but his brother too. I swallowed hard. He was shielding both of us with all he had, even though those goals had to be in nearly direct opposition.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
He pulled back, releasing my hand, and grabbed the report off the table. “Will you at least take this? Throw it in the garbage as soon as you get back to your room if that’s what you want. At least then I can say I gave it to you.”
I took the papers and shoved them into my purse. I didn’t know what else to say in the face of the confession he’d just made. Maybe it was better to not say anything at all.
“Thank you… for the tutoring,” I ventured.
The smile he gave me looked exhausted. “You’re welcome. Keep those mental walls strong.”
I didn’t throw the report in the garbage. As soon as I was back in my room, I flopped on my bed and leafed through the papers. What other catastrophe had the joymancers supposedly caused?
This one wasn’t as large scale as the others. It was personal. No one had died. No one had even been injured, at least not in a physical way. But there was a cruelty to the account that made me feel more sick than any of the others had.
Deborah scurried up to join me. What now, sweetheart?
“Another report on the joymancers. This one says they messed with a fearmancer they didn’t like by forcing him and his wife apart. According to the blacksuits who investigated, anyway, someone cast a spell so that if either of them expressed affection for the other, they’d get violently ill. No one could figure out how to break the spell, so they just couldn’t be together.”
As I summarized it aloud, something sparked in my head. A spell that could trigger an illness only during certain actions…
That sounds more like a fearmancer spell than a joymancer one, Deborah said, but she’d hesitated first. I glanced down at her small body next to my arm.
“You’ve heard of something like this being done before.”
Only for the good of the people involved, she protested. And not so severe—no physical effects. There are times when we’ve implemented a repulsion in cases of unrequited love that was becoming harmful or other sorts of partners who always ended up in trouble if they associated with each other. Sometimes a bad relationship or friendship can be intoxicating, and those involved need a little help to break the habits. It doesn’t come up very often.
Often enough that she’d known about it. “You don’t think… It sounds almost like what’s happened to my mentor when he’s tried to talk to me. Could a joymancer have done something to him?”
Deborah made a doubtful sound in my head. How would a joymancer find him or know he had anything to do with you? Do you think he’d have gone to them of his own accord?
No. I couldn’t imagine any mage here risking the security of the school like that. And Banefield had seemed worked up about threats I was facing right now, while I was hidden away here where the joymancers couldn’t reach me.
But that didn’t mean a fearmancer couldn’t have learned a trick or two from the joymancer technique in this report—if it hadn’t been a fearmancer spell in the first place and the report a lie.
“How did those spells work?” I asked. “How did they get the magic to stay on the person so long? They wouldn’t follow them around recasting it over and over.”
No. There’d be a mark placed on the body somewhere, innocuous but designed to contain the spell.
A mark. That was something I could prove. I got up and shoved the report out of sight.
What are you going to do? Deborah asked.
“I’m going to see if I can finally figure out what’s making my mentor sick.”
I might object to Jude’s attitude about a lot of things, but he’d given me one good piece of advice. A locked door and the headmistress’s refusal didn’t have to stop me. I waited until a couple students had left the teaching staff hallway in Killbrook Hall, and then I went to Professor Banefield’s door and knocked, just in case.
No one answered. I waited a full minute, my ears perked for any sound on the other side of the door. Then I whispered a word to the doorknob, picturing the lock shifting to the side. Magic prickled up through my chest, and the door clicked open at the twist of my fingers.
The office on the other side was dark, only a faint glow seeping around the drawn curtain. I crossed the room to the door on the other side that led into Banefield’s private quarters, disengaged that lock too, and slipped inside.
The apartment I found myself in looked equally gloomy. Shadows slanted across an old-fashioned living room set and an open-concept kitchen, the smell of stale bread lacing the air. I followed the rasps of breath to the bedroom.
It was brighter in there, the heavy curtain pulled back leaving only a gauzy one beneath in place. My mentor lay sprawled in his four-poster bed, the covers off other than where they were tangled around his midsection, fresh sweat beading on his flushed face. The air held the lingering tang of vomit.
His eyelids twitched but stayed closed. I hoped his dreams weren’t too troubled.
He looked thinner than he had the last time I’d seen him, a couple weeks ago. His bent elbow stuck out with a knoblike shape that didn’t seem right. How much had the health center staff been able to get him to eat?
I shifted on my feet. I was here now, but where did I start? The thought of peeling the sheets off him to examine his whole body for some sort of mark made me balk.
As I hesitated, his hand jerked lower to scratch at his knee. A memory sparked. Deborah had said he’d done that a few times while she’d observed him. Because something there was niggling at him, maybe.
I crept to the side of the bed and grasped the ankle of Banefield’s pajama bottoms carefully. Inch by inch, I eased the fabric up over his calf. He was so deep in the fog of his illness, he didn’t even stir at the movement. When I’d uncovered his knee, I stopped, studying the skin there.
Nothing looked obviously magical. Some reddish hairs, a nick of a scar, and a small brown mole protruding right in the middle of his inner knee.
When I focused on the mole, a quiver of energy passed through me. Was there magic in it right now, working on him, keeping him sick like this? If I
could tell, why the hell hadn’t the health center mages done anything about it?
But then, no one had been able to help the couple in the report I’d read. A strong enough spell might be nearly impossible to break.
I had to try. Whatever the spell was, it had reacted to me—it was punishing him for talking to me. Maybe that would make the difference. If I could simply disperse the structure that held the spell…
I aimed all my attention on the mole. “Shrink,” I said, picturing it shriveling up into nothing.
Magic tingled over my tongue, but the mole didn’t budge. I tried again. “Disintegrate.” And again. “Dissolve.” And again. “Vanish.”
I worked through a few dozen words and angles, leaning closer and stepping farther away, hovering my fingers over the spot as if that might help. The mole didn’t so much as shiver.
I might not be trained in medical arts, but I should be able to have some physical effect, even if it was only superficial. The fact that the spot wouldn’t change at all only reinforced my certainty that it was made of magic. A toxic magic that was draining the life out of my mentor.
A magic that no one who’d treated him had been able to cure. Did the doctors plan on just letting him waste away until he died?
I couldn’t let that happen… but I’d just used up all the ideas I had. I didn’t have the faintest clue how to save him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Malcolm
When I came down into the scion lounge, Jude was slouched on the sofa, a glass half-full of amber liquid in his hand. Even though he’d thrown my concern back in my face the last time we’d really talked and it’d been a couple years since I last saw him go overboard with the booze, I took a quick scan of the room for empty glasses or bottles that appeared significantly drained since I was last down here. There weren’t any.