by K. Gorman
She waited. He didn’t elaborate.
“There was a phoenix talking to me.”
The scraping stopped. The fire guttered briefly, reflected in the shadowy walls. The chrome gleamed.
“This ship is kind of special. It runs on a sentient power force, just like the shield. It figured out that it could transfer into you.”
“Transfer into me?” She wasn’t a computer.
He slid forward until his head cleared the console, and leaned against the navigator’s chair. The fire moved with him, settling near the floor. Its light glittered in his eyes.
“We might as well have this talk now. Do you want to sit?”
She glanced at the pilot’s chair, which remained dark. Sitting hadn’t worked well the last time. Still, she lowered herself to the floor and crossed her legs, leaning against the corner of a wall.
“Have you heard of living evolution?”
She shook her head. She’d studied evolution in class two years ago, but never heard of ‘living evolution’.
Aiden continued: “It’s like evolution, except it happens during a single lifetime. No need to pass on genetic material and evolve through descendants. Magic in this world is new and weird. Not really like in my home world. My home world developed with magic, so our sciences reflected magic. Here, well, think of the world as one big organism. A foreign body comes in, and the organism develops defences for it. Like antibodies for a virus. Magic sprang up in response to us Mages crash-landing in this world. It’s unpredictable and random, so the old technology works at odds with it sometimes.”
He cradled one hand in the other. She saw where the fire had burnt the skin.
“So, I’m like a white blood cell?”
“More like an antibody. From what I saw, your magic allows you to channel stuff. Basically, if we had let the Phoenix continue, you’d be a full-blown Fire Mage with its power. Quite a bit of power, mind you. Probably, if I’d left you alone, you might have lived a few years—maybe even the rest of your life—without knowing magic. But I’m running out of time. I need an apprentice.”
She hadn’t quite followed him.
“So you’re a virus?”
He stared at her through the fire. “A body will develop antibodies for anything it doesn’t understand. It’ll even kill the wrong type of blood.”
Right. She understood that.
The firelight pronounced the shadows on his face. For a moment, he almost looked like her father, with the lines grieved into his skin. His eyes held hers steadily.
With the next flick of flame, he was the Mage again, waiting for her response.
She curled her sleeves around her fists.
“Why do you need an apprentice?”
He leaned forward with a smile, teeth glinting in the light.
“Magic is dangerous. Can’t let you whippersnappers run amok with it now, can we?”
His smile dropped at her raised eyebrow. The navigator’s seat rocked as he leaned back. “Sorry. I’m not old enough to say ‘whippersnapper’. There’s more than one reason. An apprentice gives me security that what I know won’t die with me and my old world. I can’t teach my mercenaries—they don’t have magic—and I can’t write it down. Tried that, doesn’t work. There’s only so much you can learn from a book. With magic, you gotta learn by doing.”
Aiden yawned. Silence stretched out between them again. She felt a yawn pulling at the back of her jaw, too.
“Also, magic is dangerous. If us Mages didn’t have the shield to worry about… well, we’d probably have more apprentices. Maybe even set up a school.”
Mieshka remembered she was skipping. She hid her wince.
“Buck said there were other people with magic. Besides Mages.”
“There are. One’s with the Water Mage, one’s in Terremain. ” He paused. “There are several in Mersetzdeitz, but then everything’s in Mersetzdeitz, isn’t it?”
She smiled at the joke. That was what they said about Mersetzdeitz. Pretty city, bigger than Lyarne, and untouchable on its plateau. Mersetzdeitz was Lyarne’s ally, bordering Lyarne’s mountains. Several train tunnels connected the two.
And yes, everything was in Mersetzdeitz.
She shifted where she sat. The edge of the wall had dug into her back.
“Is there anyone else in Lyarne?”
“I don’t suppose there is.” Aiden shifted, too, sitting more upright. “Your guess is as good as mine. The only way I can track magic is by sending Buck out with the Bee—er—Energy Detecting Device.”
So that’s what it was called.
“You don’t have to decide now, but I’ll need an answer within the week. I really am short on time.”
He made to get up. She followed him, knee cracking as she stood.
“I’ll talk to my dad. Will I miss school?”
“Any more than you are now? No. I won’t wreck a perfectly good Lyarnese education. But there is one thing.”
He’d stopped just as she’d thought he would pass her.
“I need to put a tracking spell on you. As insurance. Hard to keep track of people, these days.”
She froze. More magic?
He must have seen the look on her face, because he quickly added: “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt.”
That’s what he’d said before.
***
A few blocks away, at the top of an Uptown highrise, James Redenbacher sat behind his desk and enjoyed the sun-filled scene of Lyarne’s sloping cityscape.
He wore a tailor-made, well-pressed, slate-grey suit over a dove-grey shirt, with a pair of gold cuff-links that his wife had given him on their last anniversary. His tie was a metallic robin’s egg blue, and his shoes had been polished this morning.
His office was warm, with a large, flat-screen TV built into the bookshelf on the wall opposite the windows. His desk, equipped with a few secret panels, had been ordered from a carpenter in Mersetzdeitz. Its top was protected by a rectangle of sage-green leather, on which sat a small laptop computer and a large glass of alcohol.
When the phone rang, he turned his thoughts to the latter.
“Yes?”
He listened for a moment as the person—the Swarzgard military’s commander—uttered a few formalities. By the time the commander had finished, Redenbacher’s left hand pressed down hard upon the desk’s leather so that his emotions wouldn’t show in his voice.
“Thank you, Commander. I would like to get down to business. My daughter is waiting for me at home.”
Which wasn’t true. She had band practice today. He simply did not want to spend more time on the phone than he had to. He could already feel the stress churning his gut.
“Yes, the new men have settled into the lower levels. Gerard will see that they are looked after.” His eyes locked on the glass of alcohol at the reminder, then turned a dead stare out the window. “The first prisoner has not tried to escape. I think he recognized the material.”
Just think of it as renting out space, he told himself. A seagull flew by his window, its small, refined body and black-tipped wings making it a northern—Russian—seagull, as opposed to the fatter ones he usually saw by the lake.
His fingers drummed on the desk.
“They plan to take the next one tomorrow, as per your command.”
He wasn’t sure why the commander was talking to him. He supposed it was a courtesy. Gerard ran the operation, really. Redenbacher was just the landlord.
The commander began to wrap up the conversation. Redenbacher relaxed. He swivelled his chair to see the small bar in the corner, eyes slipping over the various, dark-coloured bottles. He suspected he was going to need more than one glass tonight.
What was treason, anyway? He mused. He’d never sworn an oath to Lyarne.
Somehow, he didn’t think a court would buy that.
***
Mieshka let the apartment door close behind her, reducing the hallway’s light to a gold crack at the bottom of the frame. Sunset was long p
ast. From the far side of the dark living room, light from their neighbour’s television flickered through the vertical blinds.
The pizza boxes mounted high in silhouette. She didn’t breathe as she passed them. They were a war of attrition she was losing with her dad.
Down the bisecting hallway, a pale crack of light was the only sign of life. He never came out of his room.
Anger stirred like old, dark blood.
She shook it off, flicked on the light, and walked to the door.
“Dad?”
There was a muffled sound on the other side.
“What is it, Mieshka?” His tone was sharp. Had the school called already?
Something scraped the other side of the door. At the bottom, the crack of light flickered. When a shadow moved across, she backed off a few steps.
The door dragged as it opened. As her dad’s face appeared in the gap, she suddenly doubted the wisdom of coming to him.
He’d been a researcher before Mom died. Surely grief hadn’t killed all his skills.
He rubbed his eyes, which looked even more bagged and lined than they had last night. She wondered if he’d been crying.
“School called. You missed class?” His voice was rough and grating. Mieshka had planned to snap off something about administrative clerical errors, but thought better of it.
Truth was always a good place to start.
“Yeah. There was a… problem in class. So I left. I’ll tell you about it later and you can get angry at me or the school or whatever. There’s something else we need to talk about.”
Seeing him this close—he looked old. Lines carved close to his eyes. Her fist tightened. He was thinner than she remembered him being, despite his pizza intake.
He finished rubbing his eyes and, perhaps seeing something in her expression, dragged the door farther open. Mieshka led the way to the living area, where they faced each other under the dim bulb. A quick glance at the pizza boxes made her shun the couch. Instead, she leaned on the wall to the kitchen.
“I met the Fire Mage today.”
Her dad wobbled to a stop, looking dazed in the light. He frowned, suppressing a yawn. She wondered what his sleep cycle was like now.
“The Fire Mage?” he pronounced slowly, as if he hadn’t heard it right.
“His name is Aiden. He offered me an apprenticeship.”
He leaned his shoulder against the wall. Under the loose t-shirt, he looked too thin. The light put a sickly yellow on his oily skin. With his gaze withdrawn, he took a long, quiet moment. The kitchen clock ticked in the interim.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because his machine told him I had magic.”
Another quiet moment.
“Magic?”
The tone that made her smile. The gravelly quality of his voice had lessened. He sounded more like her old dad. “You don’t have magic.”
Nice support network. She didn’t take offense. His eyes were still withdrawn, forearms crossed over his stomach as if he were cold.
“I told him that, but his machine insisted. He’s going through the data right now.”
She decided not to tell him about what had happened in the ship. It would only worry him. Besides, it was hard enough explaining the rest of it.
“Magic.”
“He wants me to be a student.”
Her dad raised a hand to his face as if to rub his eye again, but thought better of it.
“What kind of magic?”
“I don’t know. I thought you could help me figure that out. Aiden will want an answer within a few days.”
“On whether you’ll study magic or not?”
“Yes.”
“Does it cost money?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure he’s the real Mage?”
“He showed me his spaceship.”
He was silent, fixing her with a stare.
“I suppose you aren’t doing drugs. If you were, you wouldn’t be telling me any of this.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“What? You’ve been in the big city for two months now. A parent’s got to wonder.”
“They’re easier to get in Terremain.” She was lying, of course. She had no idea what went down in either city. He gave her a hard look.
“So, magic.” Apparently magic was easier for him to believe than her doing drugs in the Terremain gutter.
“Yeah. Magic. I thought I’d go ask the Internet about it.”
He began to pace. Slowly. A ponderous step here, another retreating. In those small steps, she saw the return of her father.
“Magic.” He said again, and turned back to his room. His hand reached out, fingers curled as if to type while walking.
“I’ll grab us some dinner, then?” she asked his retreating back.
Something that wasn’t pizza, she thought. She took the rotting boxes to the garbage on her way out.
She found Chinese instead of pizza, and set the take-out on the kitchen counter. Roused by the noise, her dad emerged from the dark, scooped some into a bowl, and retreated. She took his preoccupied look as a good sign, and took her dinner to her room.
The Internet, as it happened, did not have much. There were a lot of theories, formulated on forums at great and dubious speculation. Conspiracy theories aside, the common agreement, which followed what she remembered of the official history, went something like this:
The Mages arrived into this world when their old world became uninhabitable, slicing through the dimensional boundary with their black ships. With them came knowledge, advanced technology, and magic. Their magic had an elemental base, which had less to do with chemistry than with the old definitions of the word: the Greco-Roman element wheel and its four elements was mentioned frequently. On one forum, the five Chinese elements surfaced.
There were more elements that mythology provided—Terremain had an Electric Mage, if she remembered right—which had people speculating on how many elements there were, exactly.
Lyarne had three Mages: Fire, Water, and Earth. That agreed with the set-up at the memorial: the fountain, the trees, and the burning names.
She chewed her chow mein, thinking, then searched for video.
Bingo.
Except for the occasional news coverage, most video was taken from cell phones. One showed a teleport: a man walked up a street in the rain, backed by a lighted boutique’s display. He looked up, stiffened, and was gone.
Right. Very convincing. She played it again, watching the reflection.
If it was edited, she couldn’t tell.
Her chair creaked as she leaned back. She swivelled it back and forth with her toe.
She didn’t feel very magical. If she did have magic, the Mage would have his work cut out teaching her. How did one train in magic, anyway? Would she have to learn the Mages’ language? Granted, she’d never tried to set things on fire with her mind. For that, she’d opted for a more traditional approach. Usually, her mom had given her the metaphorical matches. When she was back from base duty, anyway.
She turned back to her food before it cooled. Cold bok choy was just gross.
A few hours later, there was a quiet knock on her door. Her dad poked his head around and shambled in. Her chair sank as he leaned on it, reaching over her shoulder—much as the Mage had done earlier—and pointed at a video link.
“This one’s pretty cool.”
She clicked on it. They watched as a car splashed water over a crowded curb, and one of the people splashed the water back. When it was over, he squeezed her shoulder.
“I hope you use your powers for good, whatever they are.”
He believed her. That was nice. She’d half-expected more denial, considering the circumstances. What had he found on his search?
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked.
“Dunno. Just thought it was what a father should say. By the way, it’s 2 a.m. on a school night.”
“You’re sending me to bed?”
“Yep.”
“But this is important.”
“It can wait. I wrote a note for your school, excusing you from any more recruitment calls.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course I can. I’m your father.” He paused. “You should probably know that I told them we were Buddhist.”
“Nice.”
His arms dropped down around her shoulders in an awkward hug.
“Get to bed.”
CHAPTER 4
The next morning Mieshka found a stack of paper lying across her keyboard, neatly stapled. It was a university publication, ten years old. ‘The Children of the Stars’ took the title page in large, boldfaced text, accompanied by a picture of three black ships hovering above Lyarne’s old skyline.
She recognized one.
Hiding it inside textbooks and behind desks, she devoured the article during morning classes. It confirmed the basis of what she already knew about Mages: their original landing on this world, the Lost Technology, the elemental base to their magic, etc. She pored over the information until Mrs. Murphy hovered too close for comfort, and she was forced to flip the textbook’s page over the article.
At lunch, Robin found her in the cafeteria with the article spread out under one hand and a tray of untouched food by the other.
“Where were you yesterday?” Robin asked.
Mieshka glanced up from the article. It took a moment for Robin to focus.
“I went back to the… Mage’s place.” It felt weird calling it a memorial in the school cafeteria. “You didn’t text?”
“Murphy has my phone.”
They shared a quiet, knowing look. Robin set her tray down across from her, sliding onto the bench seat. When Robin didn’t touch the food, Mieshka raised an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?” Just how tired did Mieshka look today? She hadn’t missed that much sleep. Her eyes felt strained, but she suspected it was from the article’s tiny print.
Robin shifted. She didn’t meet Mieshka’s eyes. “You’ve been acting weird lately.”
“Weirder than normal?”
“Yeah. What is that, anyway?” Robin pointed at the article.
Mieshka showed her the front page. Robin raised an eyebrow.
“Is this about missing last year? Honestly, you didn’t miss much.”
Technically, Mieshka had not missed any, but there was a substantial disparity between Terremain and Lyarne’s curriculum.
“No. Something happened yesterday.” Mieshka dropped her voice low, glancing around. They were at a center table, but the clattering of trays and the buzz of conversation would mask what she had to say. She leaned closer to Robin, as if they could have a conspiring huddle with the table between them. “I met the Fire Mage yesterday. He said I might have magic.”