“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 who 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 that her father preferred to keep his children’s scars away from 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 chemist.
“Ah, that kind of trouble.” A nervous smile appeared. “Dear, I didn’t know you were a—”
“I’m not,” Hannah interrupted. “No idea what happened out there. It was a misunderstanding—really—they saw what they wanted to see. But it didn’t stop them from beating me up, or...or anyway, 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 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 nobles and their minions who had it coming. Hannah thought it was hogwash either way. Magic strong enough to clean up Arcadia’s problems didn’t exist.
Miranda’s voice faded as she left the room to rummage 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, had scared Hannah and the other kids as they were growing up.
Plenty 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.
Hannah was only ninety percent sure they were just old wives’ tales to this day. 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, where she dropped a few dried leaves from her left hand into a boiling kettle. It produced an awful cat piss kind of smell.
Miranda lifted the kettle off 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’ tag lifted from her head and fell to the table. Hannah stared at it until the harsh symbol burst into flame, then disintegrated.
Hannah forced a smile as she rubbed her still-burning forehead. A sense of relief washed over her; her dark future had 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, back to Miranda and then at the table again as she rubbed her forehead one more time for good measure and wrinkled her nose. “Better than drinking it.”
“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 might have stopped the seizure with magic.
It’s not that she didn’t trust the old woman, but if Hannah were an Unlawful, the quarter would be searched. People would be questioned. The Hunters who had defiled her would be back, and nothing would stand in their way. And no one, including Miranda, would be out of the line of fire.
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 said about QBB, Hannah had people who truly loved her here, including Miranda. 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 and left before the alchemist could resist.
She made a quick stop at the only grocery in their ward. It was small and cramped with overpriced food, but Hannah knew 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 atop the others. He ran a finger along a seam. When they had started construction of the city, the magicians had taken particular care to build it strongly. 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. Obviously, the original viewpoint had been jettisoned after Ezekiel had left decades ago.
Two wings stretched out in either direction, each identical to the other. They met in a massive hall with an entryway held up by arches reminiscent of the great buildings which had 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—a metaphor for 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 folders. Others stood in small circles practicing the spells assigned to them in the classroom.
Ezekiel could feel 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 f
or all to study; somewhere young adults could take time to learn the arts with no other cares. It would cost a lot, and they had discussed that. But they all knew that supporting a university of magic would be worth any amount, making Arcadia into the paradise he had dreamed of.
He stepped up the wide block staircase, which lead to a set of oversized doors. Before he could reach for the handle, they hummed and swung open to welcome him.
Clever, the old man thought.
One of the advances that Adrien had 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 Queen’s Boulevard, Ezekiel knew the magic in the doors could have been put to use elsewhere to ease the life of the broken and the poor. Injustice ruled in Arcadia, and sometimes it came in packages as innocuous as a set of doors.
“May I help you, sir?” a young man asked. He was most certainly a student as he was dressed in official academy formal wear.
Ezekiel nodded. “Yes, I was hoping to get a tour,” he answered and then stood 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.
People in the lower classes generally never bothered asking. He looked over his shoulder at the crowd of nobles gathered at a reception desk in the 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 cavernous 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 smile. “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 cusp of adulthood—all of them eighteen to twenty years old—they nevertheless looked like children to the old man, even if he had not been much older when he had set off to build Arcadia, actually. The difference was that these kids had grown up in privilege.
Ezekiel and his companions had aged quickly from the trials and toils of a world groaning for redemption in the years after the Age of Madness.
Mothers doted over the kids and fathers joked with one another about how good the kids had it there. Ezekiel thought it might do the noblemen good to spend a day in QBB to see just how good they had it, with government jobs and businesses running on the backs of the poor.
Things certainly had changed in Arcadia, and this ship needed to be righted. Up to this moment he had been annoyed. Now he was royally pissed off.
The guide stopped in the middle of a long hall. Artwork from the days before the Age of Madness was displayed 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. 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 a flourishing Arcadia.”
He took careful steps backward, recounting the history—at least the official history—of the Academy with each stride.
“Several magicians were involved in the construction of Arcadia. They were all powerful for their time, but magic 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 as elegant as the magic taught here in the Academy. Nevertheless, it was obviously quite effective.”
Ezekiel followed 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 had been scrappy magicians in those days.
They had learned on the run and under pressure. Their magic developed through discipline and training, and with 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 regard his power as something to hold over the rest. Instead, he understood that his gift was one which held great responsibility. Our Chancellor Adrien was that man. And this hall in which you stand now is Adrien’s dream."
A chill spread over Ezekiel’s spine as he listened to the revisionist history.
Eve had warned him; the new narrative should have been no surprise.
Rewriting history allowed those in power to keep their influence and increase it. Adrien had always been smart, but Ezekiel had once believed that he was also virtuous.
It had been the main reason why he trusted leaving Arcadia in his hands. Ezekiel thought that he had trained Adrien in both magic and morality, but he was clearly mistaken.
As the guide continued to back down the hallway reciting more history of the Academy, he stopped before a massive marble statue. Ezekiel recognized it immediately: It portrayed Adrien in his youth. The figure looked almost as Ezekiel remembered, except it was a little more beautiful. The features were more angular, and his body was shaped in a gymnasium.
The guy looked up at the statue in awe. "And here he is. The Founder of the Academy."
Mothers gawked at the striking image of the Chancellor as their kids shifted in boredom. They already knew that the path to prestige flowed through the Academy. A tour with all the boring history wasn’t necessary to convince them to apply.
“He really was quite striking,” the guide added with a smile. “And most would say he has matured just as well. Let me assure you, as a student who is just about to finish his final term, he is as kind and benevolent as you have heard. All our instructors are fabulous, but the one course the students really look forward to is Chancellor Adrien’s ‘Magic in the World’ class. It’s the capstone, a way for us to receive our final instruction magic’s real purpose. I’m in it right now.”
“What are you learning?” the bravest and most interested kid asked.
A smile cracked across the guide’s face. “The question is, what aren’t we learning? We began the term with the Chancellor explaining what had happened in the days before the Academy. Of course, we had covered this in our ‘History of Magic’ course with Professor Burns, but it was good to focus on it again. Before the founding of the Academy, people ran around doing anything they wanted with magic. As you can imagine, there were times when pure chaos would break out in the streets of Arcadia. Particularly on Queen Bitch…um…Queen’s Boulevard.
“Adrien realized that magic in the hands of undisciplined people was the worst thing for the future of the city. So, he did something about it. Today the magical arts can only be learned here, as you know. The Academy trains magicians and licenses magic’s use in the world. But what people don’t talk about is the proper application of power. We’re taught that magic used at street-level is wasted.”
Ezekiel could hold back no longer. “Wasted?”
The guide, for the first time, turned his attention to the old man. “Yes, sir. Wasted. It’s like this: there are only so many magicians admitted to the schoo
l. One’s magic is limited because it wears the caster out. So it only makes sense that there is a limited amount of magic to be applied in the world at any given time.
“The available magic could be used to do silly little things like mending a neighbor’s fence, or it could be used for the sake of the city at large. That’s what magic is for, to fortify the city and to help it prosper. Because—”
“Pardon me, son,” Ezekiel interrupted. It took effort to keep his anger out of his voice. “But did you say mending a neighbor’s fence is silly?”
“Yes, you see there is only so much magic—”
“How about using your magic to save a family, or, say, a child from evil men?” Ezekiel pressed.
The guide laughed uncomfortably. “Yes, sir. Because there is only so much magic in the—”
“If you were being eaten alive by some unknown disease that treated your body like a rancid piece of meat, and I or someone used their magic to save your life, would that be silly?”
The guide, not used to people asking questions, let alone challenging the status quo, was clearly flustered. He had been taught to spew upon the noble visitors rehearsed lines concerning the glory of the Academy. Ezekiel, though cool on the outside, had reached his own limit.
“Adrien…the Chancellor says that magic used on the weak is worthless. Magic’s place is for the city and for the strong. When we flourish, the city flourishes.”
“Well, the Chancellor is a damned fool!” Ezekiel ground out, his eyes turning pure crimson as he released the frustration and anger he held within.
Ezekiel cupped his hands in front of his chest, palm in. The eyes of the visitors went wide as a pebble appeared, floating in front of him. It quickly grew into a boulder.
The onlookers took a few steps away from him. Turning his palms out, Ezekiel pushed the object, sending the giant rock careening toward the statue. It hit with a loud crash and marble shattered, shrapnel flying in every direction.
The guide and his guests all hit the ground, covering their heads as shards of rock bounced off the walls.
When the dust cleared, the old man had gone.
Welcome To The Age of Magic Page 8