The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  This was a big fucking deal for the Lyceum. It had been nearly five decades since any students had been offered an apprenticeship at the Archean Academy. The preceptors didn’t even bother sending representatives but once every lunar conjunction, and even then it was a transparent excuse for them to load up on duty-free nonperishables. Meat was apparently a rare commodity for the floating city.

  Maddox had rehearsed his acceptance to study at the Academy many times in his head, but actually seeing this woman here was intimidating. She probably knew more about theurgy than every magus in the college.

  Taking his awkward silence in stride, she said, very formally in her Archean tongue, “Your magus regards you highly, and I was bemused with the quality of the scribble things he sent to the Academy. The registrar sends his regards that he could not be here, but it is my…you know, honor…to serve as attestator to your thing today.”

  Or at least that was what he understood. Although he read Archean proficiently, speaking it wasn’t his strong suit.

  Maddox cleared his throat and answered in broken Archean, “Thank…you.”

  Petra replied in very fluent Thrycean, with barely a hint of an accent, “The augurs have foreseen a favorable confluence. Their accuracy is…um…better these days, so I’m hopeful as well. You certainly have the capacity for success in this.” She had a brilliant, motherly smile.

  “Really?” he said, then quickly added, “I mean, of course. How hard can it be?”

  It was extremely difficult. Not only was the inscription exacting, but drawing it incorrectly was potentially fatal. Some of the failures for this seal had been spectacular—everything from spontaneous aging, to necrotic ailments, to even an unstoppable reversal of the aging process had ended the careers of many promising mages.

  Petra grinned slightly. “Remember that confidence is only part of the Circle.”

  “Comprehension and competence complete the ring,” Maddox finished for her.

  “Exactly so.” She nodded then turned to Tertius. “But imparting wisdom is traditionally the role of your preceptor. I’ll leave you two to discuss.”

  “Come, Archwizard,” Turnbull said cattily to Petra. “I’ll show you to the buffet. I’ve taken the liberty of having some food packed. I imagine you’ll be leaving very shortly…with our most promising student of course.”

  “How are you feeling, my boy? Are those arms loosened?” Magus Tertius wrapped his arm around Maddox’s shoulders and gave him a fatherly squeeze. The older man was practically bubbling over with enthusiasm.

  “Yes, Magus.” Maddox took a deep breath. He’d spent the better part of the morning warming up his shoulders and wrist for the inscription, although he didn’t find it made much of a difference. He had drawn the glyph hundreds of times from memory, each of them perfect. His hands remembered.

  “Good, good,” Tertius said, hastily fishing a box from a fold in his white robes. “I wanted to give you a present.” He barely could contain his excitement as he handed it to Maddox. “Go on! Open it.”

  Maddox looked at the small wooden box and, using his Seal of Movement, caused the latch to open and the lid to flip back. The bound magic within him functioned like an extension of his own limbs; with barely a conscious thought, he could move objects as if he were holding them.

  Inside, a long golden stylus with a rune-inscribed shaft and a ruby tip rested on a pillow of black velvet. The stylus floated out of the box and spun slowly in front of Maddox’s face. “This is beautiful. It’s a fucking piece of art.”

  Tertius grinned with obvious satisfaction. “I had Aurius fabricate it to the most exacting specifications, measured to your grip.”

  Maddox was blown away. The tip looked irregular, but each facet had been cut to produce a specific kind of line. He let the stylus fall into his hand and tested the weight. It shifted slightly—a mercury core. “This is beautiful, but I haven’t practiced with it—”

  Tertius waved his hand dismissively. “It’s for after the inscription. You’ll need a new stylus.”

  After he completed the seal he was attempting today, he would be expected to relinquish his current stylus to the archive, to sit framed beside his portrait. The thought of giving up his first stylus was bittersweet, but he was already eager to practice with the new one. “Thank you,” he said.

  “I knew when you first came to this school you would bring great honor to this institution. Now go out there and show the Archeans what Genatrovan mages are capable of.”

  Maddox hugged Tertius. “I won’t let you down.”

  He took a deep breath and entered the Circle. Already he sensed the thrum of power on his fingertips. Above him was a skylight, the clouds outside providing a diffuse overcast but more than enough illumination. He took a seat in the center and laid out his instruments: a book of diagrams, a parchment, and an incense burner, which was purely for show.

  From his tool kit, which contained styluses, rulers, and compasses, he selected his plain black beginner’s stylus. As worn and simple as this stylus was, his hand knew its quirks. Most students threw their first styluses away when they could afford better instruments, only to waste months relearning tension and release.

  Magus Tertius had taken his seat next to High Wizard Quadralunia, who donned a pair of wire-framed spectacles with lenses made out of polished prismite. The material flickered with soft, shifting illumination, making her eyes appear to glow. She seemed to be in good spirits.

  The red-robed Magus Quirrus took a seat toward the back. This was turning out to be quite the event if the dean of Blood Sages was in attendance. Maddox felt the sudden gravity of the occasion as Magus Aurius floated into the chamber behind Quirrus. The artifact mage inhabited a golden sphere no larger than a man’s head. The Grand Invocus followed after, shrouded completely in his black cloak. This current Grand was rarely seen outside of the tower.

  All the magi of Rivern were here. It made sense; after Maddox attained the seal, he would be awarded the honorific of magus and join their ranks on the council. It was tantamount to mastery. If he pulled this off, he would bypass decades of required study and become the youngest magus in the history of the Lyceum.

  “I’m ready,” Maddox announced.

  Tertius looked at him gravely. “Are you certain?”

  He couldn’t back out now if he wanted to. Half of Rivern was in the drawing theater, with more filing in. Maddox knew in his bones that he could do this. He was born to do this. The liquor from earlier was helping him relax, which was good.

  More were still coming in. The room was so full that the alchemist magi in their blue tunics had to stand toward the back. Maddox smiled in satisfaction at that. His first degree from the Lyceum was in alchemy, a discipline he was proficient in but utterly despised. It was the only scholarship available, however, and he’d gotten it only because he had worked in his father’s alchemy shop. He didn’t have the good luck to be born a Silverbrook. He’d had to earn his dues.

  “I’m certain,” he said, projecting confidence.

  “Close the doors.” Tertius waved his hand before addressing the room. “Friends, the Seal of Vitae is the height of mastery for our discipline. The extension of life is the pinnacle of theurgical achievement in our era and in the eras that have come before us. No one at the Lyceum has attained it in nearly half a century, and all but one out of a hundred who attempt it either fail or perish in their efforts.” He paused for dramatic effect.

  He directed his voice to the room but spent more time announcing to the archwizard than anyone else. “I’ve watched Scholar Baeland grow from a frightened, skinny boy from the downriver district to a Scholar and draftsman of unparalleled proficiency. Under my tutelage he has mastered the fundamentals of our craft and today has reached the culmination of those years of study.

  “I also would like to take this opportunity to welcome an esteemed colleague from the Archean Academy, Archwizard Petra Quadralunia, who is here as an envoy to the Archean senate.”

 
Petra cleared her throat. “I’m a representative, not an envoy. All Archeans with the rank of archwizard have votes in the senate.”

  Tertius grinned broadly. “How marvelously progressive! Female senator Quadralunia graces us with her presence. And Scholar Baeland takes the ultimate risk to become the fourth youngest to ever attain the seal and the first to attempt it as his second inscription. I couldn’t be prouder of any student than I am today.” Tertius smiled and took a seat. “You may begin,” he said. “May the Guides direct your hand.”

  Maddox began.

  The task of the inscription was twofold. The seal of the Guide Sephariel would be drawn in the center of a circle, surrounded by the words of Maddox’s own True Name binding them together as one. The diagrams were exacting and required perfect precision.

  The tip of his stylus glowed as he focused his will into it. The seal wasn’t created with ink but with the pure concentration of the caster. He drew the initial circle freehand with a flourish. There was a collective gasp; it was nearly perfect. Even Turnbull looked mildly impressed. Torin was mesmerized. Tertius leaned back smugly, enjoying their reactions.

  The archwizard was absolutely stoic.

  Maddox waved his hand and watched the paper crumple and fly to the side of the circle. It was a nearly perfect inscription. His next one, drawn more deliberately, was perfect. He made a few checks with one of the compasses and, satisfied, continued the seal.

  He drew the lines and curves from memory, imagining them on the surface of the parchment and tracing as he had done in his practice sessions. He had done it so many hundreds of times that it came as naturally as breathing. There were 123 specific points of detail in the seal that needed to be done perfectly.

  Sweat poured down Maddox’s forehead as he worked at a feverish pace. He practiced each stroke with his hand just once before he committed it. As the details of the seal—its stylized lines—came into focus, he felt the chamber surge with theurgy. The Seal of Movement was child’s play compared to the energies that coalesced around him.

  The Guides appeared slowly at first. They were motes of twinkling lights that descended gracefully from the heavens, like little lanterns on strings blowing gently back and forth in the breeze. Maddox counted nearly twenty. Each point of light was supposedly a fragment of Sephariel; he’d need fifty to adequately power the seal.

  Each stroke was perfect. He always had been skilled, but he’d never been as focused as he was now. The room disappeared, and it was Maddox alone with his drawing as he completed the forms and ligatures.

  Above him massive balls of glowing white light had formed in the dome of the skylight. Hundreds of smaller glimmers reached all the way to the floor, swimming playfully across his field of vision, sometimes alighting at the end of his stylus, other times timidly investigating his seal before darting away.

  It was nothing short of miraculous.

  As he placed his final stroke, an agonizing thirty minutes later, he admired the seal and felt the energy build and surge through his body. He gazed up at the marvel of lights and completed his invocation. “Sephariel, Azzailement, Gesegon, Lothamasim, Ozetogomaglial, Zeziphier, Josanum, Solatar, Bozefama, Defarciamar, Zemait, Lemaio, Pheralon, Anuc, Philosophi, Gregoon, Letos. Anum! Anum! Anum!”

  He waited, arms to his side, head toward the sky, as the first mote of light floated to his mouth. He sighed with relief.

  And then the light hesitated. With growing horror Maddox watched as it started to ascend, and then all around him the motes gathered themselves and moved upward. It was as if they were…rejecting him.

  “No!” he screamed.

  “Say the invocation again!” Tertius whispered insistently.

  “This is remarkable,” Petra said, adjusting her glasses, “for so many to have come all this way just to meet your student.”

  Maddox knew differently. He was being judged. And for what? He’d been a good person, unselfish mostly. He’d never been intentionally cruel to anyone who didn’t deserve it. It would have been better to die than to live with the shame of failure and Tertius’s disappointment.

  His green eyes returned to the inscription. Maybe he’d missed something. Everything looked perfect, but he began to panic. He reached out with his mind for his magnifying glass and pored over the seal.

  The room started to darken.

  Maddox returned to his schematic. The image didn’t look right. It drew and redrew itself on the page hundreds of times in rapid succession. Something had made it indecipherable. The outer wheel of the diagram spun as the lines bounced off it, and slowly the lines fell into place and locked. The wheel stopped, and the sigil appeared to him.

  There! He’d missed a crucial ligature between two halves of the design. It was a symmetrical construction, but he’d forgotten to join it with a small vertical bar in the lower quarter of the central parallel.

  With a single desperate stroke, he created the line and repeated the invocation.

  The lights splashed to earth at once with an ear-splitting shriek, shaking the room with the force of raw theurgy as they struck. The floor cracked beneath Maddox as the light poured into his body.

  Immediately he rejuvenated, as if he had been dying slowly from a wasting illness and suddenly had been cured. It was a feeling he’d known so long that he didn’t have a word for it, but the closest thing that came to mind was rot. He had been rotting for as long as he could remember, and now he was clear of it.

  Maddox ripped off his tunic, revealing his narrow, wiry frame. His new seal was opposite his first, above his heart. It looked like a tattoo done in shining liquid gold. It was absolutely stunning to look at.

  “What the fuck?” Petra gasped, literally causing every person in the room to stare at her.

  Turnbull sighed. “Well, this has been a colossal waste of a morning.”

  “Leave us!” Tertius stood abruptly. His voice trembled with fury. “All of you!”

  The attendees didn’t waste a second getting out of their seats and filing toward the exit. No one would look at Maddox directly, but he caught many of them staring and whispering as they walked out. He was still smiling, but the slow, cold realization that something had gone amiss started to dawn on him.

  Oh, Guides! Maybe I’m dead. Maybe they can’t see me.

  He cleared his throat and said, “But I did it! The seal bound!”

  “Bound what exactly? There’s no central ligature in the schematic,” Turnbull said. “And it wouldn’t kill you to get some sun. Or at least put your shirt back on.”

  He heard one of the junior apprentices say to Torin, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  Torin punched the apprentice in the shoulder. Hard. “How would you feel if that was you?”

  “No, no, no…It was right here.” The book containing Maddox’s diagram flipped toward him. The fat fucker was right. The schematic had a symmetrical design divided in half with nothing joining them.

  This was bad. Really bad. If he went off book…a seal mage never went off book deliberately. He had done something that never could be undone.

  The book fell to the floor, and he dropped to his knees next to it. Trying to make the line reappear, he rubbed his finger on the diagram until the ink started to smudge.

  THREE

  The Backwash

  HEATH AND SWORD

  IF THE INLET District is the face of Rivern, then the Backwash is her stinkin’ arsehole. Like a great painted whore squatting on a chamber pot, the city sits astride the Trident Falls, her legs spread wide to the majestic river in the east and her ass to the rest of the Protectorate. Above the falls, she’s a right marvel of engineering and architecture. But all those fancy shitters and aqueducts have only one place to go.

  Wander down the granite switchbacks sometime, past the beggars and the cripples, to the Spray, and you’ll see what she’s really about. Away from the leering eyes of the Chillers and Fodders, you’ll find her warren of creaking boardwalks and claptrap shanties. There’
s gambling, drugs, and a thug on every corner. Alchemists dump their waste right into the water, breeding all manner of monstrosities.

  Lore has it they threw men over the falls as a method of execution in the old days. They’re still sending us down here to die, but they do it more subtle like—with vagrancy laws and voting precincts. We can’t get representation in the Assembly to ask for more representation in the Assembly. And most of the poor fucks are too busy trying to survive to give two shits about politics.

  Those who do manage to claw their way back to Rivern’s teat never look back. Everyone loves a story about a boy from the Backwash made good. Gives ’em peace of mind. The rest of us is just lazy fucks who like livin’ in their shit.

  —ASSEMBLYMAN CAMERON, TWENTY-FIFTH-DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVE, IN A GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE INLET DISTRICT VIADUCT

  HEATH SIPPED A glass of wretched cormieu at the bar as a group of shifty thugs leered at him from a corner of the Broken Oar. The place was the kind of shit hole that you went to when you wanted to get mugged. It was Cordovis’s turf to boot; the man had been Heath’s mentor in his formative years, so Heath knew how shit went down. He was pretty much guaranteed to get jumped the second he stumbled out the front door drunk.

  He wore a ridiculous getup of purple velvet finery that would pass for extravagant to the eyes of the Backwash thugs, with a hooded cloak and golden half mask frequently worn by Bamoran nobility to hide from their indiscretions. He looked every bit the part of a dark-skinned Bamoran noble looking for excitement in the seedy ghettos of Rivern. Being one of the few black men in Rivern who would deign to wander the impoverished districts, he quickly earned a reputation. The clothes, the mask…they hid his athletic physique enough that Cordovis’s goons wouldn’t recognize him.

  He had Sword out next to him. Even in its humble scabbard, it was a fine piece of cutlery. The hilt was simple, but the steel gleamed in the flickering lamplight of the smoky tavern. Large, impractical, ruby-colored gems rested in the pommel and cross guard.