Hard Magic

1903

"You are the one they call Nigger Jack?" the weathered old Filipino asked in surprisingly perfect English.

He'd been given that nickname after commanding the 10th Cavalry, made up of Buffalo Soldiers. He held open the flap to his tent. "I am Captain Pershing." He glanced about the darkened camp and saw that the guards were still at their stations. How had this man come this far into the camp? He placed one hand on his flap holster. "Who are you?"

The old Filipino was dressed rather nicely, with a red silk vest, probably one of the local leadership they'd been protecting from the Moros. "I am the one who has come to teach you about magic."

"I do not know what you are talking about," Pershing said firmly. He looked around. No one was close enough to overhear them. Even rumors of being Actively Magical could ruin his career.

The visitor raised his hand. A gold and black ring glimmered in the torchlight. "You have seen this before, yes?"

He had, several times in fact. As a boy, that ring had been on the hand of the man who had stopped a Missouri mob from lynching a child who could make fire with his thoughts. That ring had been on the finger of the man who'd thwarted his assignment to capture a magical Lakota girl. Then in Montana, a Cree medicine man had brought down real medicine and caused a plague to erupt, but they'd been cured by a woman wearing that same ring. In Cuba, a Spaniard who'd frozen them with his breath and shot ice crystals from his hands had been killed by an unknown soldier with a gold and black ring.

All of them had come, whether as enemy or ally, done something to protect a Magical, and then disappeared as mysteriously as they had come.

"We defend those who would be ruined because of their birthright, but we police our own, and will not allow magic to be used for ill. We keep the balance."

Pershing only had to think about it for a moment. He held the flap open wider. "Come inside." Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai