Spellhacker

by M. K. England

  “This way!” I call, leading us around a patch of dense beach scrub and scrabbling over a waist-high boulder without even slowing down. It’s a bit longer to go around the scrub instead of through it, but at least this way we can see where we’re putting our feet. There’ve been trip wires, mines, ankle-twisting holes, and even the occasional aggressive crab. I’ve never been more aware of my feet in my life, and I jump off buildings on the regular.

  “Try to step where I step,” I say, adjusting the opacity of the map overlay so I can clearly see the ground while staying on track.

  “You know, I’m not sure I want to meet Professor Silva anymore,” Ania says, panting with exertion. Remi barks a short laugh.

  “You have to admit, his work is genius,” Remi says. “Twisted, but genius. I think I admire him even more now.”

  “Who’s shocked,” Jaesin deadpans.

  The next quarter mile is deceptively quiet. I call out the locations of mines and other traps, and Remi spends a few slow, careful minutes feeding a bare trickle of terraz back into Ania’s ware, trusting me to guide them as they do. The ware really isn’t designed to be loaded that way, and Remi can’t accomplish much while we walk, but it’s something. Enough for Ania to keep the structure of her shield strong around us while Remi feeds energy into the system, just in case a giant missile falls out of the sky or something. At this point I won’t rule out anything.

  We crest a sandy dune and step through a curtain of seven-foot-high beach grass, which seems determined to get in my mouth. I bat it away and spit, my nose itching with some kind of unfamiliar pollen. I’m not sure I like this nature shit. It’s so empty, too much nothingness on the horizon, and it’s so quiet when there’s not a cannon going off next to my face. About a mile in the distance, the gray-blue ocean churns against the coastline, eroding the land little by little. And a quarter mile away and to our right is a little cottage nestled in a dune valley, surrounded by rock gardens and flowers and rogue tufts of waving grass. It’s adorable.

  Between us and the house is a curtain of fire.

  “Well,” Remi says, matter-of-fact. “That’s effective. What do you think, Ania?”

  Ania grunts and stumbles down the front of the dune to get closer to the fire, oblivious to the razorweeds slicing at her trousers and ankles. At the bottom, she steps up to the wall of fire until her nose is nearly touching it.

  “It’s not giving off much heat. Try the usual stuff?” she says, turning to look back at Remi.

  “May as well,” they reply. “Might tell us more about it, at least.”

  The two of them put their heads together and chatter back and forth, trying combinations of aeraz and wataz that have no obvious effect, but which always prompt some kind of muttered, “Hmm, interesting.” Jaesin and I glance at each other and roll our eyes, and I fight down a surge of warmth. Just because we can share humorous appreciation of Remi’s and Ania’s complete and utter nerdiness, that doesn’t mean he’s going to forgive me. I can hope, though.

  This whole stars-forsaken experience reminds me of being on the playground in my first group home, where I met Remi and Jaesin, but before I met Ania. I was so confused about Remi for so long, following them and Jaesin around, sneaking food from the kitchens with them and sharing in the blame when we got caught. Whenever they managed to steal a bit of maz, though, I’d turn tail and run, hide on a roof somewhere and not speak to them for days on end. Jaesin had the total opposite reaction. Growing up without much maz around, he was totally fascinated, and he made Remi drill him on all the manual-dexterity exercises they taught us in school. When we all got tested for maz aptitude in fourth year, he was heartbroken.

  I’d never been more relieved in my life. I didn’t want that crap anywhere near me. Remi, of course, was fast-tracked for every advanced placement maz course in the catalog. I avoided them for two weeks straight after the test. I guess I’d been hoping, somewhere in my irrational child brain, that their weaving was a fluke. That it wouldn’t really stick, and they’d be in mundie classes like the rest of us.

  There was never anything mundane about Remi, though, not from the start.

  We were ten when Remi and Jaesin came and found me hiding on the roof of an abandoned factory across from the group home. They’d used some stolen maz to fight off a girl who’d been threatening them both for weeks, and the whole thing had scared me so bad I’d seriously thought about running away to a new group home, somewhere far across the city where people were still properly afraid of maz. Remi pulled themself up on the roof, panting with the exertion and obviously overtired, but refusing Jaesin’s help all the same. Even though I was terrified, and therefore angry, because even at ten years old I was still me, I remember being so worried. They looked like they were ready to collapse.

  Remi crawled across the roof and sat down cross-legged in front of me, expression unusually solemn for them. They reached inside the front pocket of their ratty blue hoodie, pulled something out, and pressed it into my hands. Their palms gently cupped mine as together we held what looked like a mottled egg the color of melting chocolate-chip ice cream. As Jaesin knelt beside us, the egg rocked once, twice, then split open to reveal . . . a tiny golden puppy?

  But puppies didn’t hatch from eggs. And they didn’t come in brilliant glowing shades of silver and gold, though it felt real enough as its tiny paws scrabbled at my arm, climbing as high as it could before it started licking me furiously. When I finally realized what it was, I froze, nearly bolted, but the two of them soothed me, drew gentle fingers over the puppy’s floppy ears and scratched its fuzzy golden belly. Eventually I relaxed enough that we all made a big triangle with our legs for the puppy to run around in, making it do tricks and play fetch. By the time the maz lost its energy and the puppy crumbled away, I was sad to see it go.

  I climbed down off that roof and went home with Jaesin and Remi that night, and we threw our blankets and pillows on the floor between two of our beds and slept in a pile of limbs and snoring. I’ve never totally lost my fear of maz, but I guess I absorbed the fact that Remi and maz were a package deal and I had to get used to it. And I did, well enough to be around Remi and their little maz creatures, at least. Eventually I figured out that I could work with maz too—to contain it, control it. Make it safer. I started to work on ware, then build my own. Maz gloves, drones, stable storage vials, everything I could think of. I was good at it. If Remi and Jaesin had given up on me back then, I might never have found my talent.

  Surely we can’t be broken forever when we have history like that, right?

  A sudden “Ha!” of triumph breaks through my melancholy just in time for me to catch Ania and Remi pulling back the edges of the fire wall, broken threads of fraying firaz drifting through the air like ash and embers. Jaesin and I race down the hill to join them, and barely a minute later we’re through to the other side, nothing between us and our goal.

  Nothing except a pack of spellwoven berserker rabbits that pop into existence the second we crossed the firaz threshold.

  Mother. Fucker.

  The rabbits charge, their powerful legs propelling them forward like a herd of angry terriers, teeth gnashing and whiskers quivering. Professor Silva apparently has an imagination like a horror-movie version of children’s cartoons, and the end result is legitimately terrifying. Ania empties the last of her nullaz straight into the front line, the first few rabbits dissolving into a cloud of threads for the others to leap through. Jaesin punches a rabbit that dares to go for the jewels, then punts another straight at Remi, who catches the thing and uses its maz to take out another.

  We push forward, Ania throwing tiny shields out as needed, Jaesin kicking and stomping like some kind of dancing murder bear, and me chucking rocks to goad the rabbits into chasing me as I leap over rocks and holes, my legs burning with the exertion.

  And then there’s Remi, totally in their element, slinging spells left and right, tearing these damn rabbits down into their component parts and shoving the ma
z right back in the face of the next one. By their sheer ferocity alone, we fight through the final quarter mile, leaving a trail of scorch marks, dissolving maz, and despair.

  By the time we reach the front door of the little house on the wasteland, we’re panting, exhausted, and scraped bloody, alive thanks only to Ania’s talent with shields and Remi’s overall awesomeness at weaving on the fly. Remi honestly seems thrilled by the whole thing, eyes shining with curiosity even as they prop themselves up against one of the porch pillars, totally wiped out.

  “I mean, I could weave a rabbit like that if I had, like . . . all day? I’ve done plenty of smaller ones. But for it to just be triggered like that, and to retain its potency after being bound up in that trigger spell—”

  “Shut. UP,” I say, wiping a trickle of blood from the heel of one hand. It must be from when I braced for my shoulder roll during the unicorn incident.

  It says a lot that neither Ania nor Jaesin gets after me for speaking to Remi like that.

  Remi takes no notice of our moods and, with triumphant precision, brushes the sand off their clothes and begins to put their hair back to rights. Ready to meet their ultimate hero.

  Screw that. I’m ready for this to be done.

  I walk straight past Remi and knock three times on the heavy wooden door. Shuffling steps approach from the other side, and I hold my breath. We’ve fought our way over two miles for some answers, and we’re about to meet the person who can give them. The knob turns, the door creaks, and finally we’re welcomed in . . .

  . . . by a man with a giant fireball in his hand.

  Should have known.

  Nineteen

  THE FIRE GLINTS IN THE man’s black eyes as he opens the door wider, the light deepening the shadows of his gaunt cheeks and making his rich golden-brown skin glow with ominous red highlights. He murmurs something under his breath and, with a twitch of his wrist, sets the fireball to spinning, the weave stretching, and I stumble back, throwing my arms wide to shield Remi behind me—

  The flaming ball of firaz in the man’s hand bursts into a sparkling flower that settles into the center of his bow tie, glittering cheerfully.

  “Good evening!” the man chirps, as if greeting an old friend. “Come on in! Do you take honey in your tea?”

  “Yes!” Remi says. They grab my arm to steady themself, bright-eyed and eager. “Honey is great! Thank you! It’s so great to meet you, Professor!”

  Whoa, dial it back there, Remi. The professor doesn’t seem to mind at all, though. He waves us inside and escorts us through a dowdy old sitting room, past another elderly man in an armchair. The man’s head is tipped back against the headrest, mouth open, with soft, rhythmic snores filling the small sitting room. Is the professor not even going to ask what we’re doing here?

  “Don’t mind my husband,” he says instead, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He takes a nap once an hour, it seems. He’ll be awake in time for dinner, though, the old bastard, don’t you doubt it. As soon as the food is ready, poof! Alert as a cat stalking a mouse.” He pauses in the kitchen to fill a kettle with water and set it on the stove, then leads us onward without turning on the burner.

  I turn to share a snicker with Jaesin, completely charmed by the man’s chatter, only to find him already waggling his eyebrows at Ania. The two of them share a near-silent giggle, hands pressed to their mouths. My shoulders sag, but I continue on, still supporting Remi as we walk. They practically glow with excitement, despite their visible exhaustion.

  Once all this is over, if we aren’t dead or in jail, they’ll probably all go right back to their grand plans. Ania to university, Jaesin and Remi right back here to Jattapore. Especially now that Remi knows their dream professor is here. Silva will probably take them on as a student. Who could resist? Anyone who meets Remi can tell within ten minutes the kind of talent they possess.

  Suddenly the old man isn’t quite so cute. I glare at the back of his head as he leads us back to a disaster area of a workroom. Three long tables dominate the space; one covered in vials of maz, one piled high with old paper books, and one so covered with potted plants leaning toward the nearest window for sunlight that the tabletop is barely visible through the foliage. One wall is lined with heavy wooden bookshelves cluttered with more maz and books, and even more spill out onto the floor. We can barely take a step without clinking bottles together or tripping over some overturned pot of dirt, though one area of the floor has been kept completely, meticulously clear: a giant hatch that reads IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.

  Well, that’s not ominous at all.

  Professor Silva shoves a pile of folded towels off a stool and sets it down in front of Remi, then looks up and blinks at the rest of us, as if surprised to see us there.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m afraid I don’t normally get this many visitors at once. I . . . oh, here we go!”

  And with one grand sweep of his arm, two strands of maz fly from somewhere in the room, so fast I can’t even identify them, then twine together in midair and burst into light with an audible snap. All the books on the half of the table nearest the door jump up in sync, slap together in neat rows, and hurl themselves at the nearest empty bookshelf, nearly taking Jaesin’s head off in the process. I want to laugh at the wide-eyed look on Jaesin’s face, but I can’t make my face obey. That was incredible. I’ve never seen maz used like that, so effortless and effective, in my entire life. And I live with a spellweaving prodigy. I finally feel a bit of the awe that’s always colored Remi’s voice every time they talk about Professor Silva.

  “There!” he says, obviously delighted with his solution. He gestures at the table.

  “So we’re supposed to . . . sit on the table?” Ania asks.

  “Yes, yes,” he says, flapping a hand at her, then he turns to his own stool and sits primly atop it, folding his hands on his crossed legs as we awkwardly clamber up. “Now, what can I do for you. You wish to study with me, yes?”

  “Yes!” Remi says, then bites their lip, glancing back at the rest of us. “I mean, I’d like to, really, but we’re actually here about something else. Something more important.”

  The professor’s posture stiffens, and he lifts his chin, waiting.

  Remi swallows, but pushes on. “We’re here to ask about some of the research you supervised while you were at Kyrkarta University.”

  The words are barely out of their mouth before the professor is up off his stool, shooing them away.

  “No, I’m sorry, absolutely not. I’ve signed an agreement, I’m legally tied, I’m sure you understand.”

  Remi leaps off the table, palms held out in front of them. “Wait, I know, but—”

  “Then you know I can’t help you.” The professor throws open the door to his lab with a bang and ushers us out with a little tailwind of aeraz at our backs. When it’s my turn to leave, though, I brace both hands in the doorway and hold on.

  “We know that maz-15 caused the spellplague,” I blurt.

  The professor stops and holds himself against the hallway wall with one hand, leaning over as if to catch his breath.

  “What did you say?” he wheezes.

  Remi, sensing an opportunity, puts on their most solicitous student act and turns back to the professor. “MMC has it out for us too. Because we stumbled across maz-15. And now that I know it’s what made me ill . . . I can’t just not do anything about it, you know?”

  Silva looks up sharply and locks his gaze on Remi as if seeing them for the first time. A lump catches hard in my throat, and I step forward.

  “We’re going to keep investigating this, one way or another. But I think you know things that could help us understand our situation . . . and the spellplague. Not just for Remi, but for everyone. What is maz-15? Why does it make people ill? Can it . . .”

  I can’t finish. The professor gets my meaning anyway, though. He turns and leans against the wall, suddenly looking every hour of his seventy years, rather than the spry leprechaun of a man we fi
rst met. Footsteps sound at the end of the hallway, and the concerned face of Professor Silva’s husband peers around the corner.

  “You okay?” he asks, staring the rest of us down warily.

  The professor waves a dismissive hand. “Fine, I’m fine, John. You heard?”

  “I heard,” John confirms. He pads forward on slippered feet and takes the professor’s hand. “I’ll get some dinner started for you all.”

  The professor snorts. “No you won’t, you old goat.”

  John’s grin is lopsided and charming. He must have been quite a heartbreaker in his youth. “It sounded good, though, didn’t it?” he says.

  The professor’s eyes crinkle with warm mirth. “At least put a pot of water on to boil, will you?”

  “That I can manage, my life,” John says, giving the professor’s hand a squeeze. He shuffles off down the hallway, and once the clanging of pots and pans sounds from the kitchen, the professor turns, blinking as if resurfacing from a daze, and leads us back into his study in silence. This time, instead of messing with stools and improvised table seating, he walks straight over to the IN CASE OF EMERGENCY door.

  He leans over slowly, pressing a hand to his lower back with a wince, and pulls the door open with a groan, propping it against the wall. The passage below lights up, and at first glance I think it’s string lights lining the staircase. As we step into the narrow stairwell, though, I get a closer look at the tiny glowing balls of sunnaz in the shape of lightning bugs, adhered to the wall at regular intervals.

  “They’re beautiful,” Ania says, reaching out to touch one of the tiny fireflies. It twitches away from her finger, then takes flight, settling higher up on the wall. Ania lets out a delighted laugh, eyes shining in the dim light.

  “But where do you get enough maz to run all this?” Jaesin asks, ever the practical one. “There’s so little ambient maz out here, and to buy this much would be so expensive. In Kyrkarta most people can barely afford the maz to keep their houses standing.”