by CM Raymond
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 series 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.
Beauty was important, but they believed that virtue came with a modicum of humility, so they constructed the walls, houses, and shops with such a philosophy in mind. It was obvious that their framework had been jettisoned after Ezekiel had left decades ago.
Two wings stretched out in either direction. Each identical to the other. They met in the middle in a massive hall with an entryway held up with arches reminiscent of the great buildings that existed before the Age of Madness.
In the center of the building, a tower reached toward the sky, marking the highest point in all of Arcadia—an image of the ascendancy of magic.
Students littered the lawn in front of the Academy—all of them sons and daughters of nobles. Some leaned over books and scribbled in leather-bound pads. Others stood in small circles practicing the spells assigned to them in the classroom.
Ezekiel could feel the power coming from the students, which paled in comparison to the sheer force that lay within the walls of the building. He couldn’t help but smile.
Part of his dream was to build this place. A school for all to study—somewhere that young adults could take time with no other cares than to learn the arts. It would have cost a lot, and they had discussed that. But they all knew that supporting a university of magic would be worth the sums, making Arcadia into the paradise he had dreamed of.
He stepped up the wide, block staircase leading to a set of oversized doors. Before he could reach for them, they hummed and swung open, welcoming his presence.
Clever, the old man thought.
One of the advances that Adrien made was his application of the magical arts to tools, both common and spectacular.
Magitech doors undoubtedly impressed the nobles. Just a little incentive to help loosen their grip on the piles of coins that would procure a spot for their children.
Thinking of the market and the Queen’s Boulevard, Ezekiel knew that the magic in the doors could have been put to use elsewhere to ease the life of the brokenhearted and the down and out. Injustice ruled in Arcadia—sometimes it came in packages as innocuous as a set of doors.
“May I help you, sir,” a young man, most certainly a student, dressed in official academy formal wear, asked.
Ezekiel nodded. “Yes, I was hoping to get a tour,” he answered and then stood there, quietly waiting for an answer.
The young man looked Ezekiel up and down taking in his mundane cloak. It wasn’t customary to give commoners tours of the Academy, which wasn’t hard to enforce.
People in the lower classes never bothered asking. He looked over his shoulder at a crowd of nobles gathered at a reception desk sitting under a magnificent rotunda.
“OK, well, tours are by appointment only. If you would like to schedule a time—”
The old man tapped his staff on the marble floor. Its tone echoed through the hollowed-out space. “Looks like there’s a group ready for you now.” He grinned at the young man. “I’ll stay in the back.”
The guy flushed and looked back again at his group. In Chancellor Adrien’s Academy, rules were made to be followed. “I’m very sorry sir, but—”
Ezekiel stopped listening to the man. He closed his eyes and found his center. When he opened them, his eyes were fire red, but hidden from others. “It would mean very much to me to see your school. I expect you will oblige me.”
The guide paused as if lost in thought. Then, he said, “Of course, sir. Luckily, there is a tour only now about to begin.”
Ezekiel’s eyes faded back to their normal steely gray as his face broke into a grin. “Fabulous! I’m glad that reason still has a place in Arcadia.”
As promised, Ezekiel stayed in the back, shuffling along behind the group of noble parents and their snotty children. Although the prospective students were on the doorstep of adulthood—all of them eighteen to twenty years old—they nevertheless looked like children to the old man. He wondered at the fact that he was not much older than them when he set off to make a new land—to build Arcadia. The difference was that these kids had grown in privilege.
Ezekiel and his companions had aged quickly by the trials and toils of the world groaning for redemption in the years after the Age of Madness.
Mothers doted over the kids and fathers joked to one another about how good the kids had it there. Ezekiel thought it might do the noblemen good to spend a day in the QBB to see just how good they had it with their government jobs and businesses running on the backs of the poor.
Things had certainly changed in Arcadia, and this ship needed to be righted. His annoyance was fanning into the flame of being royally pissed off.
The guide stopped in the middle of a long hall. Artwork from the days before the Age of Madness hung on either side of him. Everything glistened as though it were just made.
“The Academy was founded only a few years after the last block was laid on the southern wall. The construction began before the Capitol. I’m always impressed by the fact that higher learning was in the mind of our founders from the very beginning of our city—a true testament to the fact that magic is the bedrock for the flourishing of Arcadia.”
He took careful steps backward, recounting the history—or at least the “official” history of the Academy with each step.
“Several magicians were here, of course, when the construction of Arcadia began. They were all powerful for their time, but magic conceived in those days was certainly different than it is now. It was learned in the woods and throughout the wreckage of the old world. As you can imagine, it wasn’t elegant as it’s taught here in the Academy—but nevertheless, it was quite effective.”
Ezekiel followed along and smiled as he remembered those early days in Arcadia. The guide didn't quite have everything right, but it was close enough. Certainly, he and the others were scrappy magicians in those days.
They learned on the run and under pressure. Their magic didn't come without discipline and training—without a cost.
The young man continued. "But even in those days, there was one magician who stood out from them all during the founding of Arcadia. He was more skilled and powerful than the others. But thankfully, that man didn't hold his power as something to hold over the rest, instead, he understood his gift as one which held great responsibility. Our Chancellor, Adrien, was that man. And where you stand right now, is the dream that Adrien had."
A chill spread over Ezekiel’s spine as he listened to the revisionist history.