by Guy Antibes
~
Later that night, Ricky finished the eighth of ten scrolls. They certainly didn’t take as long as the thick books. He reviewed his notes. He intended to go over some of the words with Betti in his morning session the next day.
A certain passage that he had copied down stopped him. The topic was on teleportation. Such a thing used up too much energy to be of any use for magicians. Ricky felt that Professor Calasay included the scroll because it talked about aspects of joining sorcerous power. Like teleportation, the energy lost made it a poor technique. It was easier to infuse something with power, like a wand or a sword, rather than join it to something else.
A comment caught Ricky’s eye. He wrote it down before pondering its meaning. “Bindings between objects and animals must be done deeply, and are more effective when there are emotions present that carry an affinity.”
He read his notes and pictured breakfast in the Mansali mansion. All of the Baron’s sons were in the room. No wives were present. He wondered if Baron Mansali could be so cold-hearted to have the sorcerers who were on the other end of the communications be his sons’ wives located in such far-flung places?”
Ricky wanted to ask Loria, but he would have to find a different way to get that critical information.
He locked up the room and wondered if he had discovered the Mansali secret.
~
Betti generally showed up late during their morning session, which up to now consisted of watching Ricky pore over the books.
“I might have stumbled across the secret.”
“Impossible,” Betti said.
Ricky let Betti read the passage directly from the scroll.
“This is talking about teleportation.”
“It’s talking about binding. What if the joint resonance between two people in love coupled with the right spell, allowed them to teleport thoughts.”
“I…” Betti blinked. “I think you may have something. I would never have linked communications with teleportation. It takes a strong sorcerer to teleport anything instantly more than a few feet, so they generally just move things with their magic. That happens often enough in performance sorcery.”
“We still don’t have a spell or a proper resonance.”
“As we used to say in the theater, where there is will, there is a way. If the concept is right, we will stumble across what we need. Sorcerous communication might not work this way, but we have nothing else that comes close, so far, do we?” Betti asked.
Ricky nodded. “I want to finish the scrolls, but maybe you can start working out how to proceed.”
“Aren’t I the supervisor?” she said.
That brought a smile to Ricky’s face. “You are, and Professor Calasay didn’t want me experimenting on my own. I’ll help, but I have no idea what the bounds should be.”
Betti poked Ricky. “You are a smart boy. I will do as you command, Duke Naparra.”
Ricky glared at her. “We promised not to talk about it.”
“Sorry, we did indeed. Ricky of Shantyboat Town.”
Ricky’s serious face broke into laughter. “Right, Shantyboat Ricky.”
~
It took Ricky a full week to finish and review the scrolls. Betti called Professor Calasay to their noontime meeting to go over their progress.
“Show me the scroll,” Professor Calasay said.
Ricky pointed out the passage.
“This is my scroll, and I must have read it twenty or thirty times. I never made the connection. That is brilliant, Ricky.”
“How much have you learned?”
“A lot,” Ricky said.
Professor Calasay proceeded to grill Ricky on the books and scrolls and what he had learned. Ricky had to do a lot of thinking to answer a number of the questions. Her review took most of the two-hour session.
“Amazing. Your theoretical knowledge exceeds what we expect our Sorcery students to leave Doubli with. Now we will examine how to get your practical experience to catch up.”
“Leave that to me,” Betti said. “All I’ve done so far is answer Ricky’s questions as he’s read and thought. I’ve come up with a plan, at Shantyboat Ricky’s request.” She giggled as she pushed over a small stack of paper with writing and tables.
Ricky had seen her work on the plan, but he didn’t know how to interpret what she diagrammed.
Professor Calasay’s eyes flashed with excitement. “It’s like planning for a new presentation, isn’t it?”
Betti sighed and nodded.
“Presentation?”
“What we call the program of a Sorcerer’s performance. We block out each of the effects and then test them out. We will do the same thing. We will try different resonances for various effects. We only have two effects: finding a joint resonance, and then the tough one, the binding spell,” Betti said.
“The problem is we can’t do a proper binding spell if the two sorcerers need to be in a loving relationship,” Professor Calasay said. “Let’s hope that mutual trust will work. We don’t need to create a communications network like Baron Mansali has.”
“But we need to prove the concept,” Ricky said. “The way to do that is contained in the books.”
Professor Calasay’s eyes brightened. “It is, and I didn’t even think to test you on it. What do we do to get started?”
“Find the best way to do a joint resonance?” Ricky asked.
Betti nodded. “Second task on the list. The first is to find a suitable partner for you. Will it be Dari or me?”
~
“You need a break,” Saganet said as they walked into the commissary.
Ricky eyed Loria and her new girlfriends eating in the student area. Benno sat next to her. He sighed and followed Saganet.
“You’ll never get over her,” his guardian said. “She’ll be in the back of your mind for the rest of your life. That’s just the way it is for youthful love.”
“I didn’t say I loved Loria,” Ricky said.
“Don’t have to. But don’t worry. It’s over, and still time for a break. Why don’t you show me your shantyboat and your little plot in the forest tomorrow?”
“I need to change the knot securing the door anyway. Loria knows where my boat is and how to get in.”
“What if you moved it?”
Ricky shook his head. “Not worth doing. I like where it is.”
Saganet strapped on a sword and Ricky did the same with his knife before they ate a quick breakfast and headed out.
“Mind if we drop by Karian’s shop?” Saganet said as they passed through the academy man-gate.
Ricky shook his head. “I wouldn’t mind it at all.”
Saganet led them on a circuitous route to the north and emerged on Karian’s street not far from his shop.
“No one is following, that’s for sure,” Saganet said. “But our enemies could be posted anywhere.”
“Surely we’re not important enough for them to stay in one place looking for us.”
Saganet chuckled. “Who knows? We’ll see what Karian thinks.”
The shop looked the same except for a young woman behind the counter. She looked familiar.
“Mina! What brings you out here to mind a shop?” Saganet giving his daughter a hug.
“Karian talked me into it.”
“I did,” Karian said popping up from behind a shelf. “She wanted to talk, and I wanted to work, so Mina came here.” He looked past Ricky.
“Where is the girl?”
“Loria? We had a falling out,” Ricky said.
“Actually a bit more than a falling out. Their relationship is now history,” Saganet said.
“Ah, first love is like that.” Mina sighed and stood next to Karian holding his arm. “It’s not first for either of us.”
Ricky blushed. He hadn’t thought of a professor’s life outside of school, except for Saganet, of course. “You are married?”
“He wishes,” Mina said, turning and smiling up at Karian.
&nbs
p; The shopkeeper blushed. “You have come here for some reason, I imagine?” he said to Saganet.
“Just to say hello. Is there anything we need to discuss in private?” Saganet said.
“Not today, but check back in four or five days. I’m expecting something from Applia.”
Saganet nodded. “My treat today,” he said to Ricky.
After filling a bag with sweets, he put some back. “No one to share them with,” Ricky said.
“What about me?” Saganet said.
“When have you eaten any of my candy?”
“Well…” he looked helplessly at Mina and Karian. “Once.” Saganet straightened his coat and raised his eyebrows. “Shall we be going?”
Ricky nodded and bowed to the couple before leaving the shop. “Are you going to have a son-in-law?” Ricky said as they made their way through the market.
“I expect that will happen sometime in the future. Mina and Karian have known each other for as long as she’s been teaching at the academy. Circumstances have kept them from setting a date.”
“Political circumstances?”
Saganet narrowed his eyes and looked sideways at Ricky. “Sometimes, I think you’ve become too smart.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “Now show me your shantyboat.”
Ricky’s rowboat seemed to be undisturbed. He checked it before taking it out into the river’s gentle current. “I’m on the other side of Shantyboat town,” he said as rowed.
He made his way to the little enclave and turned the boat around so he could steer as he rowed and then gasped. “It was there.” Ricky pointed to a mass of hulks burned to the water line.
As far as Ricky could tell, not one of the enclave shanty boats made it through the fire. He hoped no one died as he put the rowboat by the side of what he thought was his shantyboat. “I didn’t have anything valuable in it,” he said. “But I spent a lot of time making it better.”
He felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. He stared at the destruction. None of the other boats outside the enclave seemed to have been affected much other than a few visible scorch marks. At least the residents could use river water to douse a fire, but none had made such an effort to keep the enclave intact.
Ricky saw the water seller walking on a plank between boats, bent by carrying skins of potable water.
“What happened?” Ricky said after calling to the man.
“You had a boat in there?”
Ricky nodded. “My getaway.”
The water seller made a sympathetic face. “It happened about four weeks ago. Whoever did it used lamp oil. Most of the residents got away. We were lucky only two died, and the fire didn’t spread.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t appear like you’re sorry. Those are fancy clothes. Looks like you found a good job as this man’s servant.”
“Thanks.” Ricky didn’t bother to correct the man. “Have you seen Gobble?”
“Not lately. Not for months actually. I haven’t seen him since winter. If he doesn’t return soon, someone might claim his boat. You’re not returning are you?”
Ricky shook his head. “What’s going to happen to those?” He looked over at the hulks. “I imagine those will be gone by the end of summer.”
“Yep,” the Water Seller said. “You need another boat? You can always take over Gobble’s.”
“If I get another boat, I’ll build one myself,” Ricky said. He looked at the remains of his shanty. “I’m sad it’s gone.”
“Take care of yourself!” the Water Seller said as he left the two of them.
Ricky rowed over to the north bank and tied up the boat.
“Does that make you sad?”
Ricky sighed. “I’m sorry to see my little refuge gone,” he said. “It represented my independence from my grandfather.” Actually, Ricky shouldn’t be calling Gobble his grandfather anymore, now that he knew he was his grand-uncle, but it was hard to think of him as anything else.
Saganet followed Ricky up the stone steps to the top of the bank. “If you want a hideout, I can share mine with you.”
“You have a secret place in Tossa?”
“And in Applia and Sealio,” Saganet said. “They probably aren’t better than your boat as a hideout, but I’ll show you my townhouse after you show me your wild farm.”
Ricky couldn’t help but grin. “Then I don’t have to worry about someone in Shantyboat Town betraying me.”
“There are plenty of others in Tossa who are adept at that,” Saganet said.
They walked through the forest. Paths shot off from the main one that Ricky took until he found his own.
“It’s early in the season to have much to harvest,” Ricky said.
They walked through the forest. The last time Ricky walked here, Loria was at his side, radiant with excitement. Would she be so excited now? He sighed again.
Someone had cleared out some of the old growth.
“Ah. It seems even my farm has been taken over by someone else,” Ricky said.
The trip started out with the anticipation of showing Saganet how he had survived, but now, Ricky walked his old farm with sad thoughts.
Saganet put his arm around Ricky’s shoulders. “Life moves on relentlessly. It stops for no one.”
Ricky nodded. He felt like pulling up the shoots that poked out of the ground but stopped. “It’s time to go back to Tossa. I’m finished here,” Ricky said.
Neither of them said much of anything on the trip back to town.
They were walking through the city’s streets, heading south towards the academy through an alley, when three thugs stood to bar their way. Ricky looked back and saw four more behind them.
Saganet glanced back and drew his sword. “Draw your sticker, too. It looks like someone passed along the fact that we were in Shantyboat Town.”
“Someone spotted us at Karian’s shop?”
Saganet shrugged. “Maybe, but that doesn’t matter now. Getting out of this alley alive does. We will attack the four behind us. Thugs generally put their best fighters in front. Raise your weapon and run at them. Poke your knife into their thighs.”
Ricky followed Saganet, looking back at the awestruck thugs, still standing on the other side of the alley.
“Don’t hesitate. Attack!” Saganet said as he reached the four men. Only two of them carried weapons in their hands, and they collapsed on Saganet.
Ricky used the forms that he had learned to keep clear of the other two men’s reach. He poked his knife into the forearm of one man and ducked, just missing a punch from the other. He twisted around and thrust his blade into the leg of another, who immediately went down.
Saganet disabled his two Assailants. “Run!”
Ricky followed Saganet into the street and to the right. Two of the thugs emerged from the alley and stood there, letting them get away. The third man probably stayed to aid his fellow miscreants.
Saganet leaped into a carriage-for-hire heading in their same direction. “Doubli Academy, but don’t turn around, we are being chased.”
The driver looked behind anyway and cracked his whip. Ricky still ran beside the carriage, but took Saganet’s hand and tumbled into the vehicle.
His guardian put out his hand. “Your sticker.”
Ricky slapped the hilt onto Saganet’s palm and then realized his hands were covered in the blood of two of the thugs. He wiped it on his pants.
Saganet looked behind them. “They won’t be able to get to the academy before we do.”
“Were they after you or me?”
“If someone watched your little skiff, then I imagine they were after you,” Saganet said, breathing hard.
Ricky ground his teeth. “I thought I was safe during the day, but I can’t leave the academy whenever I want, can I?”
“If we are careful. We were lucky only two of them had weapons, and the other three didn’t get to us until we broke through the others. I won’t just be wearing a sword the next time, and we are going to wo
rk on knife-throwing next in the gymnasium. It’s not something I ordinarily teach, but your life may depend on it.”
Ricky bit his lip. “I still think Lord Taranta is behind all this.”
“I don’t know who else it could be, except for Gobble Bangatelli or Baron Mansali. You are beneath Loria’s father’s notice, I’m sure.”
Ricky looked at his bloody hand. “I left my sweets in the alley,” he said. “Candy has lost its appeal to me now.”
Saganet chuckled, his breath returning. “It might come back, unbidden. I’ll show you my townhouse another time. It wasn’t a very pleasant break from everything, was it?”
Ricky shook his head. “I thought I could easily slip away if I needed to,” he said. “My past is gone, I’m living my present, and the future is anything but clear,” He said, shaking his head. “It hasn’t been a good day.”
Saganet suggested dinner at the commissary. Ricky wasn’t in the mood to cook or do dishes at the cottage and readily agreed.
“So how is your project coming along? With all the excitement and disappointment, we didn’t get much of a chance to talk.”
“I’ve been forced to do a lot of researching. I don’t know why I have to find out stuff that Professor Calasay and Betti already know.”
“They want someone with a fresh set of eyes to look at the problem. That is plain to see. Sometimes a general will bring someone else in to look over his battle plans. Everyone misses something.”
Ricky finally produced a smile, the first after the fight. “I did find something. We think the two communicators need to have an emotional link. So I have to figure out who I’m more emotionally attached to, Professor Calasay or Betti.” He laughed. “Me. I’m only fourteen, and they are both old enough to be my mother.”
“You could do worse, but it’s a shame Loria can’t participate. You have an emotional attachment to her.”
“Had,” Ricky said. “I still can’t hate her, but she hates me.”
Saganet picked up a knife and examined its edge. “Maybe not hate,” he said. “But certainly not the proper affinity at this time.”
“Affinity. That might make more sense when I have to choose.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t do the choosing. It’s a two-sided thing, remember?”
Ricky nodded.