The Sorcerous Spy

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  "The first thing I must teach you is how to speak underwater. There are spells that can impart the ability for a short time, but they require preparation. You will, of course, learn those spells, but I will be teaching you how to create magic when you aren't expecting to be immersed in water. Maybe you've crashed a plane into the ocean, or you've fallen through the ice on a frozen pond. You never know what dangers your role in the Academy will bring."

  As the instructor spoke, Zayn noticed that Sofia had drifted next to him. Her brown hair floated around her head like a halo.

  Instructor Noyade continued, "The secret is to subvocalize the words. That the words exit your lips is not important. It is enough that your vocal cords vibrate with the right tones, creating the frequency required for the spell. This is similar to how the Serene Hall and the Stone Singers make their magic.

  "If the spell requires a manual component, you must match the pace of your words with the pace of your finger dexterity. As you all know, the timing of your spells, hitting your syllable marks, the clarity of your fingering shapes, these focus the faez into your spell. So if you fail to accommodate to the resistance of the water, you will not achieve your desired effect, and just might cause a problem far worse than whatever has confounded you. I suggest only attempting simple spells underwater, ones with a failure mode that can be survived. In fact, when you return to your rooms, you'll find a list of spells you must learn before tomorrow's class."

  A barely audible groan traveled through the water. Instructor Pennywhistle had given them until tomorrow to master the Japanese tea ceremony. Every week they had a new cultural ritual to learn. Zayn hadn't even started learning it, since he'd been scouring the city libraries looking for more information on Varna. He'd have to find a way to survive without sleep again.

  "I will show you a simple spell. One that will create a—"

  Instructor Noyade paused as Eddie broke from the top of the sphere to take another breath. She watched him the whole way, along with the rest of the class, who wore mirthful grins.

  "It looks like someone hasn't been practicing," said the instructor. "You will see me after class to enjoy thirty dives to help you learn how to hold your breath."

  Eddie both paled and blushed, which turned into blotches on his sallow skin. The instructor's punishment meant swimming from the surface to the bottom, which was two hundred feet down, then back up. The first few weeks of class they'd spent learning how to get to the bottom without passing out. It was a grueling punishment.

  With the distraction out of the way, Instructor Noyade taught them a simple spell to allow communication. They paired up to practice. Sofia captured Zayn right away, leaving no doubt as to her intentions.

  "Why do you resist me?" asked Sofia, floating in the water across from him.

  The speaking spell required a brief hum at the base of the throat with a touch of faez before releasing his words through the water.

  "I'm not resisting. I'm busy," he said. "You heard the instructor, we have to learn another batch of spells before tomorrow, and I still don't know the tea ceremony."

  "We've been busy, but not that busy," she replied. "What are you up to, Zayn Carter?"

  "It's my Second Year Contest group," he lied. "We've been meeting a lot."

  Sofia pursed her lips at him. "I know you're not being truthful, and while I do not know why, I know you can't keep this pace up."

  "I'll be fine," he said, though he didn't believe himself. He'd figured out if he kept a low amount of faez running through his sensory imbuement, he could stay awake for long periods of time. He was on the third day in a row and it was looking like he'd have to risk a fourth.

  "You don't look like it." She wrapped a leg around his, and a pleasurable electricity shot through him. "Let me help you, take some burden off. Or at the very least let me be a distraction."

  His face was fuzzy with warmth. He'd never imagined that being seduced would be difficult. His body was desperately trying to betray him.

  Sofia floated against him. Her skin softly caressed his. As they drifted further beneath their classmates, going deep enough that the distance hid their movements, she pressed her lips against his and his mind exploded with a shiver that went down to his toes.

  This was going to be much harder than he thought. The way she was touching his hips, tugging slightly on his swimsuit, suggested she was willing to take him there.

  "You can't tell me that you don't have time now, and this would be a form of practicing our spells. I think Instructor Noyade would approve," said Sofia with her lips against his ear. She placed her teeth against his neck, biting down hard, and dug her fingernails into his back.

  Zayn choked for a moment as he forgot to maintain his spells. He had to stammer to put them back in place. He glanced up, seeing the nearest students as only a haze in the water.

  What was making this harder was that keeping his sensing imbuement running at all times was making him more susceptible to her advances.

  He nearly gave in, until Amber's predictions floated back into his mind. Why does this have to be so difficult? He dropped the imbuement, and a sledgehammer of exhaustion hit him. All his spells unraveled. He had to throw faez back into them, or succumb to the water.

  Sofia had stopped her advances. Her luminous brown eyes were wide with worry.

  "What's wrong? You just went limp all of the sudden like you'd fallen asleep," she said, rubbing her hand gently across his back. "Don't you want to be with me?"

  Having resumed using his imbuement, the lure of her touch was overwhelming. She'd wrapped her legs around him. He felt like he was being sensually strangled by an octopus.

  In a desperate attempt to stop the seduction but not fall asleep seventy feet below the surface, Zayn shunted the faez from his sense of touch while keeping the sight and hearing, which what was keeping him awake.

  The saturation of her touch immediately stopped. He wasn't sure how he'd done it. It'd been a fit of desperation.

  Now that he was in control of himself, he kicked towards the group. Immediately, he realized something was wrong. No one was in the water except for him and Sofia. Pouring whatever reserves of faez he had into his imbuement, he powered through the water, throwing himself out like a dolphin at a park when he reached the surface.

  The class had circled around Keelan, who was sitting with his head between his knees, coughing. Instructor Noyade was kneeling next to him, until she realized the class had surrounded them.

  "Everyone back in the water. Keep practicing."

  Zayn ignored the request.

  "You okay, cuz?" he asked.

  Keelan nodded his head without looking up. "I don't know what happened. I'm sorry."

  "If you cannot pass my class, then you will not be able to stay in the Academy. While underwater missions are uncommon, they occur often enough that Pri expects everyone to be able to function like they do on land."

  Keelan rested his chin on his knees. His eyes were bloodshot.

  "I know, I know. It won't happen again," he said as he climbed to his feet and headed back to the water. He dove in as soon as he hit the edge of the pool.

  Instructor Noyade appraised the spot where Keelan had dove in before frowning. Zayn stepped into the pool after his cousin before he had to answer any of her questions.

  Chapter Seven

  The Spire, November 2014

  A side trip, with implications

  A month later, Zayn was headed into the Spire when he saw a hooded figure standing inside the archway, leaning with their back against the wall so he couldn't see their face. The passageway leading to the lower level had been warded to only allow Hall students, which meant that whoever was waiting there was a student, but the way that person held themselves made every hackle on the back of his neck stand up.

  Readying himself to flee at the first sign of danger, Zayn called out, "You there. What are you doing?"

  When the figure stepped aside, pulling back the dark gray hoodie, his fac
e flushed with embarrassment.

  "Patron Sai," he said, bowing his head.

  "I'm not royalty, so don't treat me like one," said Priyanka, walking out from the archway with the grace of a panther.

  Her appearance on his way into the Spire did not seem like coincidence. "Am I in trouble?"

  "Probably, but that's not why I'm here," she said. "I need the services of a student who can improvise and knows how to keep their mouth shut. Am I correct?"

  Zayn took a step back and glanced either way to make sure he wasn't being flanked.

  "How do I know you're really her?" he asked.

  The corner of her lips twitched with amusement. "Your caution is well warranted, but let me dispel your concerns."

  While she stood and smiled at him, he felt a stab of pain, like the beginnings of a migraine, right through the conduit he accessed his faez from—the same place he was linked to his patron. He put his hands to his temples, grimacing.

  "That's a neat trick, one I hope to never enjoy again. I'm sorry I doubted you," he said, shaking his head.

  "Never be sorry. Always doubt. Always. Now follow me."

  He pointed down the passageway. "What about my group for the Second Year Contest?"

  "They've been informed that you are currently ill and will not be joining their meetings for the foreseeable future," she said, striding back the way he'd come.

  "I can't say I'm going to miss them," said Zayn.

  They cut through a parking garage and entered a door marked as an electrical substation. Inside, a rack of cabinets, clearly marked with danger symbols, confused him, until she closed the door and waved her hand. The illusion dissipated like smoke, revealing an obsidian archway that he recognized as a portal in the Garden Network.

  "Where are we going?"

  Priyanka reached inside the neck of her shirt, pulling out what looked like an obsidian key.

  "You get to learn why they call me the Mistress of Doors," she said. "I'm taking you to Deathbird."

  "Deathbird? That sounds like a thing, not a place," he said.

  "It's more of a joke," she said, and the way she said it suggested she didn't think it was that funny. "This is a place people in our profession go to retire."

  "You need information. Is this about those mages I saw get killed?"

  "Yes."

  "But why not bring Keelan too?"

  "Because he's not the one that wanted to investigate the screams in the first place, and he's not the one who took down the Goon's Alpha network," she said.

  "Why do you even need me to go?" he asked.

  Priyanka closed her fist around the obsidian key and closed her eyes. The swirling portal came to life. She opened her eyes and held out her hand. It was calloused and firm.

  They stepped through the portal. Zayn expected the journey to take a blink of an eye as it had for every other transit through the portal network. Usually the worst part was the vertigo, but it was brief and dissipated within moments of arrival. When it lasted longer than normal, he thought something was wrong. It felt like he'd been dropped off a mountain without a parachute.

  They landed hard. Priyanka held him steady when he tried to tumble over. There was a moment he thought he might vomit, but she squeezed his hand.

  "Fight it back with your imbuement, speed not sensing. The latter would only make it worse," she said.

  When he was upright and able to move, Priyanka released his hand. He was standing in a room covered in crimson silks. A crystalline wash basin on a table invited cleansing, next to a decanter of sparkling water and glass tumblers.

  The journey had given him an awful thirst. He surged towards the decanter. Priyanka yanked him back.

  "It's poison," she said.

  He took a second look at the table. Someone new to this place, having just traveled by portal and developed a thirst, would grab a drink, expecting hospitality. Just like he'd been about to do. The meaning of the word Deathbird was coming into focus.

  She waited until he'd finished taking stock of the situation, leaving the room when he nodded his head. There were things she wasn't telling him, but he assumed there were reasons why.

  She looked over at him, her eyes creasing at the corners, an acknowledgement that his decision had been the proper one. This wasn't a teaching expedition, she was judging if he could handle himself in more challenging situations. The mistake at the entrance portal, when he almost drank the poisoned water, burned more deeply in retrospect. He'd failed that test. But since she hadn't sent him back, it meant he wasn't finished. He had a good chance to prove himself, which if he could, would help with his problem in Varna.

  Outside the portal room, he was presented with a city that stretched across many hills, nestled against a low mountain range covered in crystalline trees. A stray shaft of sunlight poked through the cloud layer, turning the peaks to brilliant flame. Zayn shielded his eyes in reflex, but found no discomfort from their glare.

  He watched for a minute as the shaft of sunlight traveled across one section of the range, filling the air above them with scintillating colors like a rainbow exploding into a million pieces.

  "It's beautiful," he said.

  "And deadly. A jog through that forest would leave you naught but bones."

  The city was less populated than he first thought. The hilltops, and he counted a dozen or so, were each covered in a Roman-looking villa, except for a fortress structure on a hill nestled against the mountains. Cobblestone roads connected the hills, crossing glittering rivers that meandered through the lowlands.

  He wanted to ask about who lived in the villas, but decided the time for questions was over. Though Priyanka exuded a calm exterior, he sensed a hair-trigger readiness beneath through the patron link. She kept glancing to places along the road, and he expected to see something or someone, but each time, he found nothing but the empty air.

  It seemed odd that in a city of this size they'd seen not one person. He was beginning to wonder if it was a trick, when he finally spied someone across the second bridge. A man with bushy black hair, a handlebar mustache, and a suit that belonged in the Old West was sitting on a park bench reading a paper in a language Zayn didn't recognize.

  "Your kind isn't welcome here, you deceitful chicken-hearted cad," said the man with the mustache. "I'd rather breathe the same air as an Illiopian Death Cloud than your tired ill-handed corpse."

  His right arm, the one Zayn couldn't see, was held awkwardly, as if he had a weapon. Zayn readied a force bolt, preparing to knock the weapon out of his hand should he make a move towards his patron.

  Priyanka scowled back in his direction. "And I wouldn't be seen with a rotting skin tag that's uglier than a burnt boot and has little more brainpower than a dead guinea pig."

  The mustached man folded his paper as he stood, revealing a nasty looking knife that hummed with a high-pitched vibration that set his teeth on edge. He had to fight to keep his hands from covering his ears, while next to him Priyanka either ignored or couldn't hear it.

  "You're wanted in a thousand realms, and each would hand over a small fortune for your corpse," said the man.

  "A small fortune?" she asked incredulously. "There are a lot of ways I'll let you insult me, Halfdan, but that is not one of them."

  The tension lasted for three whole breaths, until both of them burst into laughter, leaving Zayn bewildered. Halfdan twirled his knife into a sheath, silencing the horrible vibration, and met Priyanka for a hearty hug.

  They hooked their arms around each other, patting each other on the shoulders.

  "Small fortune? Really?" asked Priyanka. Her laughter made her hair dance around her face.

  "If there's one way I know to prick you, it's your pride," said Halfdan, a crooked smile on his lips.

  When Priyanka laid her eyes upon Zayn, she looked almost sheepish, as if she were embarrassed about the exchange. Halfdan raised an eyebrow with a bemused expression.

  "Is this your new protégé?" he asked.

 
When Priyanka glanced askew, clearing her throat, he chuckled.

  "I'm sorry, he didn't know he was on the clock, did he?" Halfdan looked to Zayn. "Did you?"

  "I suspected," said Zayn, feeling a kernel of pride in his gut, but also knowing that allowing himself to enjoy it would be dangerous.

  "See!" said Halfdan, releasing Priyanka. "If he couldn't figure that out, then you didn't want him in the first place."

  "I would prefer to inform him on my own time, rather than through the lips of an overenthusiastic rogue who had to retire because he was banned from everywhere else."

  Halfdan bowed gracefully, adding a flourish with his right hand.

  "At your service." He winked at Zayn. "But I'm a halfwit compared to Priyanka. She's the best. Period. No one's ever beat her or outsmarted her. That's why I'm eternally glad that I'm retired, so I didn't accidentally run up against you."

  Priyanka crossed her arms. "You've gotten soft, Halfdan. I can see right through your flattery. What do you want?"

  The three of them continued the journey. Zayn followed their conversation intently, feeling both privileged that he was a witness to it and completely out of his element.

  "You're here to see the Black Council, aren't you?" asked Halfdan.

  "How would you know that?" asked Priyanka.

  "You wouldn't have come here otherwise. It's not like they have any love for you. So it must be important, which means the Black Council."

  "Have you been stalking the portal gate?" she asked.

  He raised one shoulder. "I keep an eye out for opportunity."

  "I thought the Pact forbids getting involved unless someone breaks the rules," she said.

  "It does, but that doesn't mean we don't politic here. It would get boring otherwise." He hesitated. "Any chance you'll give me a sneak preview of what you're asking the Council?"

  "Sorry, Halfdan. I'd rather only explain it once," she replied.

  "Fair enough."

  As they crested the rise, an exquisite horse-drawn carriage crossed the street further up. Purple curtains covering the door ruffled slightly, but never opened.