by CM Raymond
Parker shrugged. “Guess I’ll give it a chance. Forty coins?”
The man laughed and pointed. “Stupid kid. It’s here.”
Parker grinned and flipped the shell. It was empty. “Sorry, mate. Thanks for playing, though.”
The crowd cheered while he grabbed the coins.
“You little cheat,” the trapper yelled.
“Sir, I resent your comment. I am an honest—” Without finishing, Parker kicked the crate into the man’s legs and shot through the thick crowd. He had to circle the whole quarter before he knew he was safe.
Collapsing on a bench on the edge of Queen Bitch Boulevard, Parker counted his coins and caught his breath. The shell game was always a risky con. It only ever lasted so long before it was broken up by an angry tourist or the Governor’s guard, but he made enough for the day.
“You want to try again?”
The nobleman stood over him.
“Pretty far away from your quarter now, aren’t you sir?”
Glancing down Queen Bitch Boulevard, the man smiled. “Dunno, looks quainter than I imagined. Maybe I’ll move in.”
Parker laughed and the man dropped onto the bench next to him. “Can’t wait to get out of this stiff cloak—makes me feel stuffy, like those noble bastards. How’d we do today?”
“Not bad, Sam. About two-fifty. You did pretty good—almost believable as a man from the Capitol.” Parker dropped half the earnings into the man’s hand. While Parker knew he deserved more of the take, he split it evenly with the man because that’s what he always did with Hannah. And most hustles needed a partner. “It was a good day.”
The man nodded, grabbed his share, and headed toward Queen’s Boulevard. He stopped and turned. “I know it’s usually you and Hannah running the cons, but if you need me, I’m happy for the work.”
“Sure thing, Sam. We’ll have to change it up tomorrow, but I might need you again.”
Parker hid half the coins in his shoes and made his way into the Boulevard. Stopping at the toll, he paid the cut to Jack who would hand it over to Horace, the scumbag manager of their quarter. As if life wasn’t hard enough in Queen’s Boulevard, it felt harder every time he handed over hard earned cash to the “civil servant.”
Halfway down the boulevard, he heard a hushed voice call his name. His face lightened when he saw it was William.
“Come with me,” he said.
“William?” Parker looked around quickly before returning to her brother and hissing back, “Where the hell is Hannah?”
“Just come with me. I’ll tell you everything.”
Parker followed William as he wound his way through an alley and climbed over a broken-down fence. After crossing an empty lot littered with trash, the boy looked over his shoulder at Parker and around the edge of the lot before ducking through a hedge.
William stepped through a broken window into a building that appeared suited for demolition. While the outside was falling apart, the inside was neat and tidy. Pieces of discarded furniture lined the walls, and it looked as though someone had recently swept the old worn floors. Condemned buildings were a dime a dozen in Queen’s Boulevard, but he’d never seen one cared for like this.
“What is this place?” Parker asked looking around.
“A clubhouse, I guess you could say. Hannah and I found it years ago. We’d come here whenever we got the chance. You know, kids’ stuff? We’d play house, or school, or magic. Called it our own. Two years ago, when Hannah started running the streets with you, we stopped coming, but I decided to keep it up. Only felt right. I come when I can.”
Parker walked the perimeter of the room and tried the knob on the only door. “The rest of the house like this?” he asked.
“Nah. Just this. I don’t know why, but we usually stayed in this one room. Ventured out into the rest of the house a few times. Smells like cat piss and death. Everything’s a mess. But, you know, when you carve out a little corner of the world, you can actually find something you can care for. We started small. Thought that someday the place would be ours, and we could do the rest. But sometimes you have to start small.”
William sat down on a chair in a corner arranged as a sitting area. He rubbed his hand on the arm of the chair and tilted his head back.
Parker dropped into a chair across from William. He noticed the color in the boy’s face and the steadiness of his hands. Hannah’s sick little brother looked like a different person.
He started to ask about it but reconsidered. “Where is she, William? It’s been days. I never want to be the overbearing street partner, but I’m starting to worry. You know, with the thing in the alley.”
“Yeah. That’s why I found you. I think she would want you to know that she’s gone.”
“Gone?” Parker asked. “When? Where?”
His mind raced, and once it started to settle down, Parker realized he shouldn’t be all that surprised.
They all had it bad in the quarter, but some of the kids—like Hannah and William—had it worse. At least Parker had a mother he loved and who cared for him. He also had his health. But not them. They had a mother who was dead and buried, and a father they wished was.
Some people get the short end of the stick; Hannah and William got the short end up the ass. But he never thought that she would leave William behind. He was all she ever talked about.
“I don’t know for how long, but she’s gone to study magic.”
Parker laughed. People from their quarter didn’t study magic. It was impossible. “Come on. Where is she?” he pressed, his anxiousness diverted by the outlandishness of the answer.
William looked at Hannah’s partner, “Really. A powerful magician saw her potential. He was watching in the market square when I had my seizures. I have no idea what he saw, but he saw something.”
Parker thought about Hannah’s description of the attack. If the Hunters were after her, then maybe she could do magic.
“So, she’s at the Academy?” Parker asked.
William fidgeted in his lap. Parker could tell that he wasn’t sure how much to share.
Finally, the boy looked up and spilled the beans. “The Founder, Parker, he came and healed me. And then he asked my sister to go with him, to train or something. He just kept talking about saving Arcadia—like he saved her life. Like he saved me.”
The boy filled in the gaps of the story. Parker smiled along to the wives’ tale, nodding at all of the right times, but deep down he didn’t believe that there was a Founder and neither did Hannah. He wondered how much trouble his friend was really in.
“Where did they go?” he finally asked.
William shrugged, “To a tower outside of the city, at least that was where the Founder told her they were going,” he answered.
****
Hannah sat in the great hall thinking about the incident with the wild boar and Karl. She cursed herself for needing his help. She needed to get stronger. Guts came naturally. Toughness had been honed over time, hustling in the streets of Arcadia. But she needed skill. Training would be necessary.
The old man had brought her to the tower to teach her magic. Despite her reservations, she was willing to learn.
“Are we ready to begin?” the magician's voice echoed through the hall.
“I’ve been ready since you zapped us over here. You’re the one napping.” She gave him a half smile and wondered if the old man had a sense of humor.
“When you’re my age, sweet little girl, the simple things like kicking ass and teleportation take a bit out of you.” He nodded to her, “You will see soon enough.”
“All right, Zeke. Teach me some magic.”
“You can call me Ezekiel. And the magic will come, but first, we need some context. You need to learn some history. Come, walk with me,” he finished as he turned and headed towards the now familiar door.
At the door, he waited for her to catch up, and then pointed ahead of him down the length of the building.
The teacher and h
is new student walked laps around the tower. Hannah chose not to mention the fact that she had already taken a self-guided tour outside. The man’s strides were long, and she had to move fast to keep up with him.
She was clueless of his actual physical stature since much of what she had seen had either been a disguise to make him look weaker or an enhancement, which made him appear to be physically powerful. The walk was the first clear indication that the man was strong—which made sense if he’d spent a major portion of his life walking Irth.
“What do you know about the history of Arcadia?” he asked.
She thought about that. How much did she know? The temptation was to either say too much or admit too little. If she was going to get training, Ezekiel needed to know what he was working with.
A lot of good that was going to do him.
“Not much, I guess. As much as any other kid from QBB might know. I mean, I never really went to school or anything. More of an education of the streets. My mom told me some things before she…” Hannah paused.
“Died?”
Hannah’s throat got tight and a quick nod of agreement got her over the hump.
“Yes. Died. My mother’s parents had come to the city soon after the Age of Madness came to an end. The city was new then, and opportunity was everywhere. My grandfather had gotten a job working on the final stages of the walls. There were plenty of magic users at work, but he provided some muscle. Magic doesn’t run in my family.”
The man nodded along with her story. It was a travesty that hunger and desperation drove a smart kid like her to the streets instead of into a life of learning and exploration.
Ezekiel was fortunate to have found her.
When she concluded her story, he added, “Well, you know in part, but you made an assumption about magic that is only partially true—like most truths. The old world, the world before the Age of Madness, and the Second Dark Ages before that, didn’t have magic as we know it today.
“But, in most senses, their society would have seemed incredibly advanced in comparison to ours, at least in the technologies they had developed. For the people of the Early Age, science and technology were their magic, and many worshiped it like a god.”
Ezekiel waved at the buildings they were passing. “They built huge buildings, reaching into the heavens, and developed all kinds of machinery and technologies—like great flying ships. Just before the coming of the Madness, the people had all but mastered communication technology. Just through their technologies, they could talk with anyone around the world.” The old man waved his arm toward the sky. “And even into the heavens.”
“Wait,” Hannah stopped walking and pointed toward the clouds. “People lived in the freaking sky?”
The old man turned, seeing her incredulous expression and laughed. “Eventually, yes. We started just by traveling there, but as the time went on, it became home to some.”
“But what the hell powered it? Magitech?” she asked as she started walking again.
The old man shook his head and turned to continue his own walking. “Magitech is new, even to me. That is something Adrien has introduced into the world. In the old days, the humans would harness the energy from the sun and dig fuel out of the ground. It was really quite something. Just before the end of the Early Age, they had learned how to split an atom to make power that is beyond our imagination. Beyond what any magician can do.”
“Split a what?” she asked as she stepped over the same broken ground she had dealt with for the past seven laps.
“Mm, yes. An atom.” For some reason, he didn’t seem bothered by the rough terrain. She tried catching him, but it didn’t seem like he was using any magic to float across.
He just knew how to walk better than her, apparently.
“The technicalities aren’t that important. But you should know that this source of energy is what got us into a lot of trouble. Seemed the smarter people got, the more foolish they became. Eventually, the power in those atoms was used to destroy the world and everything in it.
“Almost no one lived through the releasing of that energy. But those who did survive worked to rebuild Irth. They began the process of making the place we now call home. But during the process, something even more terrible than their science emerged. Something even more deadly.”
Hannah answered as he paused in his story, “The Madness. It was the judgment of the gods upon the wicked.”
This made the man laugh. Apparently, children of Arcadia—at least those growing up in the Queen’s Boulevard—had cobbled together pieces of the stories of their past, the cracks filled in over years with their own imaginations.
“Again, you understand only part of the truth. The Madness, it was again the result of technology gone awry. Although this technology was quite different from the bombs and the planes. It attacked us from within.”
Hannah quietly took in the old man’s words. While some of it made no sense to her whatsoever, the idea of being attacked from within was perfectly clear.
Her words came out slowly. “You mean like a sickness…”
You could hear Ezekiel’s feet hit the ground, so he wasn’t floating. She would have to find out how he walked so easily on some of this dirt.
“Mmm, yes, exactly! It was a disease, one that could attack anyone at any time. But instead of giving people fevers, or making them shake, like your brother, this disease attacked the mind. It turned people, good and bad people, into monsters. One day someone living in your small village was normal, the next day they had the hunger to eat their own children alive, to attack and consume human flesh.”
Her face, if Ezekiel had seen it, would have made him chuckle. “Ug. Now I know why it’s called the Age of Madness.”
“Yeah. It’s had several names throughout the decades, but that seems to be the one that has stuck. Probably because it was so fitting. At the beginning of the outbreak, people were spread out all over the world. Little communities were fending for themselves and trying to protect their own from other groups. They were rather uncivilized civilizations. But when the outbreak happened, people realized that there was safety in numbers. The disease pushed the people to gather in concentrated areas, to work together. This is how the early cities were developed.”
“Are there, um, other inhabited places like here?”
“Oh yes. It is hard to fathom just how large the world is. There are places just like Irth, filled with cities and people. But there are huge swaths of the world that are now left uninhabited—places that the infection completely wiped clean of humans.”
They walked in silence for a lap. She had heard stories from the old days, but it had always seemed like a children’s tale. Much like the gods... and the Founder. But now, as Hannah walked side by side with a man powerful enough to heal her brother, she found it easier to accept that maybe the old stories were all true.
She allowed herself just the smallest amount of hope to grow in the secret place, the one we all protect.
Her most inner place where she had stopped allowing hope to enter so many, many years ago.
****
Ezekiel looked down at his new student, trying to assess how well she was taking all of this.
The girl was shocked, and rightfully so.
Ezekiel had just dropped a serious lesson on her, and the world as she knew it was nothing like she had imagined. Her silence betrayed her skepticism, but that was fine.
Belief must be owned by the believer.
He had seen too many people swayed and manipulated by clever rhetoric before. The truth had to become her truth. He considered leaving their history lesson stand, but she pushed for more.
“And that’s when the Founder… I mean... you stepped in. I mean, if you are the Founder, then you brought us magic. They say you were the one who ended it all, that drove away the Madness. The Prophet even calls you a god—like the Matriarch and Patriarch. Should I bow down, almighty Zeke?” she asked, looking at him with a smirk on her face.
Well, if she was starting to believe, it hadn’t made her any more reverent.
The man laughed. “It’s Ezekiel, and I’m no god. And from what I can tell, the Matriarch and the Patriarch weren’t really gods either. But that’s a story for another time. What I can say is that I didn’t overcome the Age of Madness on my own. I had help. Some really powerful help,” he admitted.
She stopped walking again, her hands on her waist, lost in thought. He paused his own walking and looked around as he waited for it to come, wondering how long the questions would bubble in her brain before she asked.
“But how did you do it? And if magic didn’t exist before, then where did it come from?”
He enjoyed that as she spoke, she would often talk with her hands. It was a type of expression he enjoyed. Ezekiel nodded to himself. Her questions were getting to the heart of it. She was even more clever than he realized.