Welcome To The Age of Magic

by C M Raymond et al.

  He watched as the girl cut through the crowd. Her hands moved deftly; the old man observed her draw secretly from each of her marks. No one so much as stirred as she picked their pockets. She headed in his direction and had nearly broken through the crowd when something went wrong.

  “Pardon me,” he heard her say as she knocked into one last mark on the edge of the circle—an overweight shopkeeper of some sort wearing brightly colored clothing, obviously not a resident of the Boulevard.

  The young lady slipped her hand into the pocket of the man’s coat. In a flash, he reached out and snatched her forearm.

  Ezekiel watched the young thief’s cheeks turn white.

  The shopkeeper opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, Ezekiel had waved his hand in their direction. He spoke a word of power and his eyes glowed red in the shadow of his cloak. The man froze, mouth still ajar. His eyes were blank, like he was sleepwalking.

  Ezekiel spoke another word, and the well-dressed man released the girl and turned his attention back toward the juggler on the wooden crate.

  The girl slipped away but made sure to grab a ring from the man’s hand first. Why waste an opportunity? She disappeared into the crowd without a backward glance.

  She’s determined, the old man thought. A little rough around the edges perhaps, but you needed some grit if you were going to succeed.

  Parker leaned his back against a large oak tree at the edge of Capitol Park and stretched out his long legs.

  An expanse of green grass spread before him, terminating at the steps of the Capitol building. The sandstone building itself was a large stately-looking structure sitting on a rise, its pinnacle just a little lower than the Academy tower.

  He had heard that it took a hundred magicians a month to build the place, and two had died in the process. But then, lies and exaggerations flowed through Arcadia like water in the River Wren.

  Capitol Park was a gem in their city. Precious resources, both magical and mundane, had gone into its creation. It remained the most beautiful area inside the walls.

  Public works like this were built every few years. Nothing like a show of magnanimity to keep the common folk satisfied. It allowed the Governor and Chancellor to focus the rest of their time on projects that advanced their own purposes.

  The lawn had become a primary gathering point for people of all classes and from all neighborhoods. It was patrolled by the Capitol Guard, a group of soldiers in pristine uniforms who were more of an accessory to the Governor than anything.

  Parker watched a group of mothers from the noble class sit and talk as their kids played in the grass. Several students from the Academy, with their fancy clothes and stacks of books, took up a stone table not far away.

  He noticed a crowd beginning to gather around Old Jedidiah, the town's “Prophet,” as they titled him.

  Jedidiah had become a popular figure in Arcadia a few years previously. He came into town from outside. The man wore rags and lived on a diet even the poorest would turn up their noses at. People said that he spent decades wandering in the wilderness.

  Some claimed animals raised him.

  The Prophet had no home, as far as anyone knew. Rather, he dwelt with his followers, moving from place to place. He spent his days in Capitol Park. The inner circle, standing closest to Jedidiah, was made up of his followers.

  A multitude always gathered on the outside. Many just wanted to hear the Prophet's words of the day, and others came to heckle, tossing insults at him and his disciples. But ridicule only fueled the flame of his preaching.

  Hannah limped toward Parker from the opposite end of the lawn. He had known they hurt her, but seeing her walk from a distance made him realize just how badly the Hunters had abused her.

  His lips pressed together as he cursed them, the Governor, and this city. Parker wanted the Prophet’s words to be true, to be real. The hope that someday there could be a different way of living in Arcadia, ushered in by the one that the people referred to as The Founder. The dream inspired many.

  The man who had laid the foundation for the city would come again and bring justice on his shoulders. But it was hard for Parker to keep the dream alive when the world around him was shit. Well, mostly shit. He got to spend his days with Hannah, after all.

  But seeing her in pain made believing in a better world even harder.

  "How’d it go?" Parker asked, being sure not to show his concern. Hannah was strong. She wanted none of his pity or anyone else's.

  She dropped onto the grass, then spread her cloak out between them and emptied the contents of her pockets onto it.

  There were a pile of coins and a few bills, a small magitech lantern that had a little juice left, and a bunch of other trinkets that might be of some value. Maybe they could hawk it on the Boulevard. The thing about being a pickpocket is that you never really knew what you were going to find, you just took whatever you could grab and tried not to get caught.

  That was rule number one. And probably rules two, three and five if he were being honest.

  "Went all right," Hannah said. "Your little trick with the bread cart worked well. The crowd ate it up. Something strange happened, though. Just as I broke out of the crowd, I went for a bulge in some guy's pocket."

  "Whoa, we're there to steal stuff. Reach for bulges on your own time," Parker said with a wink.

  "Screw you." Hannah returned the smile.

  She never minded his jokes, so he was happy to dish them out.

  Hannah continued with her story. "I reached into his pocket and he grabbed me. Based on how he was dressed, I bet he’d been picked clean before. Should have just skipped him. Anyway, I freaked. I mean, I thought he was gonna call for the guards. And with this still stuck on tight...”

  She pointed to her forehead. Even though Parker couldn’t see the Hunter’s tag, he knew it was there. He shuddered to think of what would happen if the guards saw it.

  Parker furrowed his brow. “What’d you do?”

  "I didn't do anything. This guy was big. My hand was in his pocket, he had me by the forearm, and then, out of the blue, he let me go and turned back to your show."

  Parker smiled. “I am a pretty good juggler.” Parker pulled a stick out of the grass and rolled it between his fingers. "Or he must've seen how much of a badass you are."

  Hannah laid back on the grass and stretched her arms out to the sides. "Yeah. I'm pretty much a badass." She looked over at his left eye, which swelled from his fifteen minutes of fame in the Pit. “How’s your face?”

  “Beautiful. Yours?”

  “The same,” she said.

  “Who knows, maybe the Matriarch and the Patriarch were smiling down on you,” he said, hoping to get a rise.

  It worked.

  She punched him hard in the shoulder. “If the Bitch and the Bastard exist, they don’t give a shit about folks like us. I gave up on fairy tales after my mom died.”

  Parker rubbed his arm and looked over at Old Jed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. We don’t need them. And besides, given my stunning good looks and charm and your spindly little pickpocket fingers, we will make our own magic.”

  She leaned back over and smacked his arm again. He made an effort to exaggerate how much it hurt.

  “They aren’t spindly, they’re dainty. And I wouldn’t bet on your looks. Maybe the crowds came to see the douche nugget from the Bitch’s Boulevard make a fool of himself.”

  He smiled. “You know me. I’ll gladly play the fool if it means we can eat.”

  The two lounged in the sun, their heads nearly touching. It was one of their rituals, to divide the wealth and then spend some time just watching the world go by. Other than his mother, Parker only had Hannah. When they were together on the lawn, it was a little taste of what the Founder, if he were real, would bring back to Arcadia.

  Ezekiel sat on the steps of the Capitol, a sandwich from Morrissey’s wrapped in brown paper clenched in his fist. Much had changed since he had left Arcadia. Many thi
ngs that once were part of his native city were now gone, and strange things had taken their place. But Morrissey’s, the first restaurant established in the newborn city, still remained, almost exactly like it was four decades earlier. A mix of nostalgia and longing washed over the old man as he ate, but he pushed it down. Now was not the time for sadness.

  He was back in Arcadia, and on a mission.

  A smile spread across his face as he watched the groups on the Capitol’s lawn. There were certainly differences. This monstrosity, for example, sat in a place that had once been dense woods; the little piece of the wild he and his friends had chosen to maintain inside the walls of Arcadia as a reminder of the wilderness they had emerged from. But the wild spaces within the city walls had all been tamed now.

  Ezekiel watched as the man in the tattered robe rose before his congregation, his arms lifted high to grab their attention.

  “Good people,” the Prophet started. “I greet you in the name of the Matriarch and the Patriarch.” He paused dramatically, waving an outstretched arm over the crowd in welcoming benediction.

  “You mean the Bitch and the Bastard,” a mocker shouted from the crowd. “They’ve left us, old man, in case you didn’t get the message!”

  Ignoring him, the Prophet bent slightly at the waist toward the people sitting close. “Ah, beloved. Your presence brings me peace in a tumultuous time, and a glimmer of a future which will appear with his most certain coming.”

  Ezekiel sat up, wondering where in fact the Prophet's speech was headed. It was always interesting to hear people talk about you.

  A bit like being at your own funeral, without the messy dying part.

  “Yes, faithful ones, a day is coming when the Founder, the one who gave us magic and taught us to use it, will return. It is the Founder, the one who brought us out of greatest darkness, the Age of Madness, who will come back to the city. He will revive it, restore it again with the Matriarch and the Patriarch’s blessing. Do you look forward to this, beloved?”

  Murmurs came from the crowd at his feet, but those on the outside continued to mock and hurl insults.

  “Keep waiting, ya old sonofabitch,” his heckler called back.

  The Prophet lifted his chin and smiled. “I will wait for as long as I must. The Founder will return in due time. It is said that he anticipates the day when magic is once again used properly.

  “When the Unlawfuls have been wiped out and the purity of magic returns to Arcadia. Never forget my children, unlawful magic is a scourge upon our city. These criminals and heathens do dark deeds by night. Only the pure will know the Patriarch and the Matriarch’s blessing.”

  Ezekiel shook his head, angry at the preacher’s words. To hear his life’s work become so distorted was a shock he had not expected.

  There’s something wrong with this world, he thought, but it’s not the Unlawfuls’ fault. And if the Matriarch were here, it wouldn’t be the poor from Queen’s Boulevard begging for mercy. She would have her fair share of dark deeds to do by night; hell, probably during the day, too.

  If this fool only knew.

  “I’ve gotta get back to QBB,” Hannah said, finally sitting up. She nodded toward the small crowd. “Not to mention, I can’t listen to this idiot anymore.”

  “The Prophet? We always get a kick out of him.” Parker looked from the crowd to Hannah and back.

  “Until yesterday,” Hannah agreed, thinking of the Hunters who had assaulted her in the alley. She pulled on the edge of the knit hat to make sure the tag was still covered. She was now exactly the kind of person Old Jed preached against.

  “Right. I forgot you’re a heathen devil worshiper now,” Parker said with a smile, but part of her thought he was right.

  The Prophet and his ministry only served to distract people from their real problems; to have them blame the Unlawfuls rather than the nobles. The Governor's decrees and the Academy’s restrictions—the things that really hurt people—were only supported by the Prophet’s perverted message.

  The Chancellor, the Governor, and Old Jed preached the same ideas. They divided and conquered, each of them finding a place in the hearts of a different part of Arcadia. The Prophet drew the lower-class people, and the institutions held sway over the upper class.

  Hannah expected Jed’s disciples to take justice into their own hands and become vigilantes with pitchforks and torches instead of magic and magitech. The Prophet mobilized the people against Unlawfuls.

  Soon, if the witch hunts began, no one would be safe.

  “It’s all horseshit anyway,” Hannah said, getting to her feet and knocking off some grass. “Gods? The Founder? Purity of magic? All horseshit. Magic just is. Don’t need to create a freaking religion around it. Some people are born with it, just like some people are born rich, and others are born ugly like you. Just luck, not the blessings of the gods.”

  “Sure,” Parker said. He could have been blind and still see her anger.

  Hannah stuffed her share of the spoils into her pockets. “Nice job today. I gotta run. Need to see if I can score something for William in case he gets sick again.”

  “Be safe,” Parker said. She knew exactly what he meant. As far as she knew, the Hunters were still on the prowl, and she didn’t want to see what a dose of her angry energy added to their violence.

  7

  “Half your take in the box, Hannah.” Jack was as big as a cart and as fit as a milk cow. He wasn’t half-bad, except for his breath and the fact that he worked for Horace, the manager of Queen’s Boulevard.

  Horace extorted the people under his care as much as he could, and the Governor didn’t give a shit about the evil he worked on the streets of the slums. The people who lived in the Boulevard had neither voice nor power, so it really didn’t matter what they thought of Arcadia’s governing authorities.

  Most of Horace’s men were terrible. They did their own skimming out of the toll box—the place that every street kid had to drop half their earnings to make it back into the quarter. At least Jack wasn’t a big douche over the whole thing. He did his job, sometimes with a smile, and never gave her much trouble.

  Hannah dug into her pockets and dropped almost half of the cash in. She figured Jack wouldn’t check, so keeping some out justified the risk. “A small price to pay for a safe neighborhood, right?”

  Her sarcasm was lost on Jack, whose straight face looked as dumb as it did ugly. Everyone knew that Queen’s Boulevard was the most dangerous quarter within the walls. Most Arcadians wouldn’t dare come into her part of town for fear of muggings, murders, rapes, or all three at once. But it was different when you lived there. Residents were safe, at least during daylight.

  “Good girl,” Jack said. “And tell your old man that it’s time for his drunk ass to get back to work. Time to contribute, that’s what Horace says.”

  Hannah nodded and passed by. Fat chance that would happen. As far as Hannah could see, her dad’s working days were behind him. If Horace expected more money from her family it would have to come from her.

  The tension in her neck eased a little as she crossed onto her home turf. All day she had been nervous about the Hunters, waiting for them to jump her around every corner. But back on the Boulevard she knew she was safe.

  She couldn’t help but feel at home in the Boulevard. She’d never lived anywhere else and probably never would. Many in the ward felt a sense of hopelessness with their lot in life, but Hannah resigned herself to it. She’d been dealt a shit hand, with a shit dad, and, for the most part, a shit life.

  She smiled. With shit to look forward to, up was probably her only direction.

  Or death…

  Hannah’s mind shifted to William, and she realized that between him and Parker, all wasn’t lost. At least they would always have her back, and she would have theirs. As she walked down the dirty cobblestones, she saw neighbors she considered fine people.

  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 in 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 she. But Hannah was careful never to call her that.

  Miranda insisted she was only a chemist, and 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.

  Her work would fall under the Chancellor’s prohibitions. The Academy regulated all kinds of magic, not just the physical 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 packed a punch and were extraordinarily effective, which is why Hannah always came to 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 over her shoulder as she walked back into her hovel. Hannah stepped in, closing and locking up the door behind her. Miranda trusted Hannah to lock up, which 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?”