Restriction: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Rise of Magic Book 1)

by CM Raymond

  A smile spread across his face as he watched the groups on the Capitol’s lawn. This was certainly a difference. This monstrosity sat in the place that was once dense woods. A little piece of the wild that he and his friends had chosen to maintain inside the walls of Arcadia. A reminder of the wilderness they had emerged from. But the wild spaces within the city walls had all been tamed.

  Ezekiel watched as the man in the tattered robe rose up before his congregation, his arms lifted high to grab their attention.

  “Good people,” the Prophet started. “I greet you in the name of the Matriarch and the Patriarch.” He paused dramatically, waving an outstretched arm over the crowd in a welcoming benediction.

  “You mean the Bitch and the Bastard,” a mocker shouted from the crowd. “They’ve left us, old man, if you didn’t get the message!”

  Ignoring him, the Prophet bent slightly at the waist toward the few sitting close. “Ah, my beloved. Your presence brings me peace in a tumultuous time and a glimmer of a future which will appear with his most certain coming.”

  Ezekiel sat up, wondering where in fact the Prophet's speech was headed. It was always interesting to hear people talk about you.

  A bit like being at your own funeral, without all of the messy dying first part.

  “Yes, faithful ones, a day is coming when The Founder, the one who gave us magic and taught us to use it, will return. It is The Founder, the one who brought us out of greatest darkness, the Age of Madness, who will come back to the city and revive it, restore it again with the Matriarch and the Patriarch’s blessing. Do you look forward to this beloved?”

  Murmurs came from the crowd gathered at his feet, but those on the outside continued to mock and hurl insults.

  “Keep waiting, ya old sonofabitch,” his heckler called back, then bit into a sausage.

  The Prophet lifted his chin and smiled. “I will wait. Wait for as long as I must. The Founder will return in due time. It is said that he awaits the day when magic is once again used in its proper ways.

  “When the Unlawfuls have been wiped away and a purity of magic returns to Arcadia. Never forget my children, unlawful magic is a scourge upon our city. These criminals and heathens do dark deeds by night. Only the pure will know the Patriarch and the Matriarch’s blessing.”

  Ezekiel shook his head, angry at the preacher’s words. To hear his life work become so distorted was a shock he had not expected.

  There’s something wrong with this world, he thought, but it’s not the Unlawfuls’ fault. And if the Matriarch were here, it wouldn’t be the poor from the Queen’s Boulevard begging for mercy. She would have her fair share of dark deeds to do by night, hell probably during the day, too.

  If this fool only knew.

  ****

  “I’ve gotta get back to QBB,” Hannah said, finally sitting up nodding toward the small crowd. “Not to mention, I can’t listen to this idiot anymore.”

  “The Prophet? We always get a kick out of him,” Parker looked from the crowd to Hannah and back.

  “Until yesterday,” Hannah agreed, thinking of the Hunters that assaulted her in the alley. She pulled on the edge of the wool hat to make sure the tag was still covered. She was now the exact kind of person Old Jed was preaching against.

  “Right. I forgot you’re a heathen devil worshiper now.” Parker said it with a smile, but part of her thought he was right.

  The Prophet and his ministry only served to distract people from their real problems, have them blame the Unlawfuls rather than the nobles. The Governor's decrees and the Academy’s restrictions—the things that really hurt people—were only supported by the Prophet’s perverted message.

  The Chancellor, the Governor, and Old Jed preached the same ideas, only they divided and conquered, each of them finding a place in the hearts of a different part of Arcadia. The Prophet drew the lower-class people, and the institutions had sway over the upper class.

  Hannah expected Old Jed’s disciples to take “justice” into their own hands and become vigilante hunters with pitchforks and torches instead of magic and magitech. The Prophet was radicalizing the people against Unlawfuls.

  Soon, if the witch hunts began, no one would be safe.

  “It’s all horseshit anyway,” Hannah said, getting to her feet and knocking off some grass. “Gods? The Founder? Purity of magic? All horseshit. Magic just is. Don’t need to create a freaking religion around it. Some people are born with it, just like some people are born rich, and others are born ugly like you. Just luck, not the blessings of the gods.”

  “Sure,” Parker said. He could be blind and still see she was upset.

  Hannah stuffed her share of the spoils into her pockets. “Nice job today. I gotta run. Need to see if I can score something for William in case he gets sick again.”

  “Be safe,” Parker said. She knew exactly what he meant. As far as she knew, the Hunters were still on the prowl, and she didn’t want to see what a dose of anger added to their violence.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Half your take in the box, Hannah.” Jack was as big as a cart and as fit as a milk cow. He wasn’t half-bad, except for his breath and the fact that he worked for Horace, the manager over Queen’s Boulevard.

  Horace extorted the people under his care as much as he was able, and the Governor didn’t give a shit about the evil he worked on the streets of the slums. The people who lived there had neither voice nor power, so it really didn’t matter what they thought of Arcadia’s governing authorities.

  Most of Horace’s men were terrible. It was common knowledge they did their own skimming out of the toll box—the place that every street kid had to drop half their earnings to make it back into the quarter. At least Jack wasn’t a big douche over the whole thing. He did his job, sometimes with a smile, and never gave her much trouble.

  Hannah dug into her pockets and dropped almost half of the cash in. She figured Jack wouldn’t check, so keeping some out was worth the risk. “A small price to pay for a safe neighborhood, right?”

  Her sarcasm was lost on Jack, whose straight face looked as dumb as it did ugly. Everyone knew that Queen’s Boulevard was the most dangerous within the walls. Most Arcadians wouldn’t dare come into her part of town out of fear of muggings, murders, rapes, or all three at once. But it was different when you lived there. QBB residents left their own alone, at least during daylight.

  “Good girl,” Jack said. “And tell your old man that it’s time for his drunk ass to get back to work. Time to contribute, that’s what Horace says.”

  Hannah nodded and passed by. Fat chance that would happen. As far as Hannah saw it, her dad’s working days were over. If Horace expected more money from her family, it would have to come from her.

  The tension in her neck eased a little as she crossed onto her home turf. All day she had been nervous about the Hunters, waiting for them to jump her around every turn. But back on the Boulevard, she knew she was safe.

  She couldn’t help but feel at home in QBB. She’d never lived anywhere else and probably never would. Many in the ward felt a sense of hopelessness with their lot in life; Hannah had a sort of resignation. She’d been dealt a shit hand, with a shit dad, and, for the most part, a shit life.

  She smiled, with shit to look forward to, up was probably her only direction.

  Or death, she rolled her eyes.

  Screw Death, that bastard could go find someone else to keep his ass company.

  Hannah’s mind shifted to William, and she realized between him and Parker, all wasn’t lost. At least they would always have her back, and she would have theirs. As she walked down the dirty cobblestone, she saw people—neighbors—she would consider good, fine people.

  Taking a right into a back alley, she stepped down two stairs and knocked on a battered steel door. A tiny window opened near the top; a single crazy eye stared out at her.

  “Ah, Hannah,” a voice said through the opening.

  The peephole slid closed with a bang. A ser
ies of locks, magical or mundane, Hannah was never sure, snapped open. The steel door creaked on its tired hinges.

  In the doorway stood Miranda, all four foot eight of her. A set of bifocals sat on her crooked nose, which terminated with a wart on its sharp point. A shawl hung from her shoulders and dragged on the ground. If there were ever a quintessential witch, it was her. But Hannah was careful never to call her that.

  Miranda was insistent that she was only a chemist—and a chemist only for friends. Mention the word alchemy, and one might never be served again. Which was awful, since Miranda was really the only source of good, affordable medicine on the Boulevard.

  Miranda’s work would fall under the Chancellor’s prohibitions. The Academy regulated all kinds of magic, not just the physical, battle kind of stuff. But Hannah wasn’t certain if the woman was an Unlawful, practicing magic in secret, or just good at healing people.

  Nevertheless, Miranda’s brews always packed a punch and had extraordinary effects. Which is why Hannah always came to see her. That and the fact that Miranda had known Hannah since birth. The woman had always taken pity on her mother, and once she was gone, that pity was transferred down the familial line.

  “Come in, come in, dear,” she called back over her shoulder as she walked back into her hovel. Hannah stepped in, closing and locking up the door behind her. That Miranda trusted Hannah with locking up made her feel good.

  One more item in the good column. Screw you again, Death.

  She followed behind the tiny woman and joined her at a squat table near the wood stove that burned year-round, regardless of the weather. Hannah peeled off her outer cloak, hoping it might not offend the lady of the house, and settled into a stiff chair. She sat quietly and let Miranda inspect her face.

  “You’ve seen trouble, girl?”

  “Not so bad. A misunderstanding, really,” Hannah said.

  “If I had a dollar for every time a woman came in here because of a ‘misunderstanding,’ I could retire and move into the Capitol building.” Miranda stopped and considered her words. “Your mother, she had her share of misunderstandings as well. Is this of the same sort?”

  Hannah raised a hand to her swollen nose and thought of the men in the alley. Her father wasn’t a man that would shy away from the rod for the sake of punishment, but neither Hannah nor William had ever been brutally beaten by him, not to this extent anyway—at least not yet. Not to mention, her father preferred to keep his children’s’ scars outside of the prying eyes of neighbors.

  Looking Miranda directly in the eyes, she told the truth. “Not him, other trouble found me. I’m OK.”

  “Well, lovely,” the old woman said, rising from her chair, “you’ve come to the right place. I have something that will take away your black eyes and make that nose pretty again.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Hannah said, peeling the wool hat off her head to expose the Hunters’ tag adhered to her forehead. She held her breath, praying that she could trust the old alchemist.

  “Ah, that kind of trouble.” A nervous smile appeared. “Dear, I didn’t know you were a…”

  “No. I’m not,” Hannah said. “No idea what happened out there. It was a misunderstanding; they saw what they wanted to see. But it didn’t stop them from beating me up, or...or anyways it almost cost me my life.”

  Miranda nodded her head knowingly. “Those bastards. Can’t do their job or keep their nasty cocks in their pants, hmm? When will the Founder return to clean up this mess?”

  Hannah blushed, embarrassed that her mother’s old friend would believe in superstition and children’s stories.

  While Old Jed, the Prophet, preached that the Founder would return to cleanse Unlawful magic from the land, in the name of the Matriarch and the Patriarch, some of the really old timers told it differently.

  Folks like Miranda thought that when the Founder returned, it would be the creeps that had it coming. Hannah thought it was hogwash either way. There was no magic in the world strong enough to clean up Arcadia’s problems.

  Miranda’s voice faded as she left the room to rummage around in another area of her little home.

  Sitting in the warmth of the fire, for the first time in a long time, Hannah felt completely safe. Miranda, with her tiny body and warted nose, scared Hannah and the other kids as they were growing up.

  A lot of mothers in the quarter would tell stories about how “Miranda the Witch” would take bad children from their beds at night and use them to make her potions.

  Still to this day, Hannah was only 90% sure they were just old wives’ tales. But, growing up in the Boulevard, you didn’t have the luxury of choosing your friends, and Miranda had always been good to her—witch or not.

  The little steps came back into the room as the old woman hummed something under her breath.

  “Here we are,” Miranda said, sliding a tube across the table. “Rub that on tonight, and in the morning, you should be as good as new. Now, as for that tag. I’ve removed a few in my life. Damn Chancellor with his damn academy and damn Hunters, grabbing more and more good people each year. But usually, if they tag ‘em, they bag ‘em. Not sure how you got away.”

  She turned away from the table to her stove, she placed her left hand out and dropped a few dried leaves into a boiling kettle and lifted it from the fire. It produced an awful, cat piss kind of smell.

  Miranda lifted the pot off of the stove and set it on the table. “Lean in, dear.”

  Hannah leaned across the table, and Miranda let the steam hit the girl’s forehead.

  “Shit,” she screeched as the scalding mist hit her forehead. But as quickly as the words left her lips, the Hunters’ mark lifted from her head and fell to the table. Hannah stared at its harsh symbol until the tag burst into flame and burned itself up.

  Hannah forced a smile as she rubbed her still burning forehead. A sense of relief washed over her, her eyes open wide, her dark future now had a lone sunbeam come crashing through the clouds in her mind. “Thank you, Miranda, this means a lot!”

  “Wasn’t so bad, was it?” Miranda chuckled.

  Hannah looked down at the table, to Miranda and back at the table as she rubbed her forehead one more time for good measure as she wrinkled her nose. “Better than drinking it, I guess.”

  “I’d guess so,” Miranda said with a laugh.

  Miranda turned to put her small box of herbs away, and Hannah reached out and grabbed her hand.

  “Actually, I didn’t come here just for me. It’s Will.”

  “William? I haven’t seen that boy for ages. He OK?”

  “Well, we’re not sure.”

  Careful not to expose too much, Hannah told the story of what had happened to her brother on the streets of the market. She left out the detail that she may have stopped the seizure with magic.

  It’s not that she didn’t trust the old woman, but rather, if Hannah were an Unlawful, the ward would be searched. People would be questioned. The Hunters who defiled her would be back and nothing would stand in their way. And no one, including Miranda, would be out of the line of their wrath.

  Better for her to have a good excuse. Plus, the fewer people who knew, the easier it was for Hannah to deny it to herself.

  Miranda left again and returned with a bottle of pills. “Now, I can’t be certain, but sounds like the tremors have taken his body. If that’s the case, two of these in the morning and evening will stave off the convulsions. Bring William to me in a few days. Let’s have a look together.”

  For all the terrible things people say about QBB, it was the place where Hannah had people who truly loved her. Miranda was one of the many. She felt her throat constrict and her eyes grew glassy. Hannah had to get out of the room before she lost it, she hated showing her emotions.

  “Thank you.” She slid nearly half of her earnings from the day across the table.

  Miranda covered Hannah’s hand with her own. “Your money’s no good here, girl.”

  “You are kind, but
I’m not a child anymore. It is time for me to pay what is due.”

  Hannah turned for the door before the alchemist could resist. She made a quick stop at the only grocery in their ward. It was small, cramped, and the food was overpriced and often spoiled, but Hannah knew that if she went home with money her father would take it for booze.

  Within minutes, she was standing on the doorstep of her home. More anxious than she’d been all day, the young woman listened for her drunk father.

  ****

  If one believed that the Capitol was magnificent, the Academy was downright heavenly. Ezekiel marveled at its stone architecture, each block laid perfectly within the others. He ran a finger along a seam. When they had started construction of the city, the magicians took particular care to build it strong and to last. Their hope was to make it a place where all could dwell in harmony.