Tomorrow, the Killing

5

The air in the Earl was so stale you could cube it and stack the pieces. I headed to the courtyard to draw myself a pint of water from our pump.

Wren sat cross-legged against the back wall, eyes closed as if in slumber. He had grown since I’d taken him off the street three years prior. As a child he had been lean and quick, light-skinned, dark-haired, and subtle as the night. As a youth he had turned gawky, and, cruel as it was to point out, acne-ridden. Though he ate three square meals and incessantly between them, he was as thin as he had been the day I’d found him loitering in an alleyway, and it sat worse on him than it once had. His limbs seemed overlong, like they were intended for a full-grown man but had been mislaid. I figured he’d grow into them, if someone didn’t kill him first.

And someone might, for a lot of reasons. Because he had a sharp mouth and opened it around people who repaid insult with iron. Because despite my best efforts he still had only a dubious respect for the concept of personal property. But primarily because of the small blue light that swirled around his outstretched palm – speaking more accurately, because of his ability to produce it.

Most folk live and die without ever having any direct experience with the Art. They come to think of it like it is in fairy tales, rings that turn you invisible, incantations that make a man fly or transform shit to gold. Maybe during the harvest festival they give a hoarded argent to a traveling conjuror in exchange for a charm or a palm reading. Almost certainly, they gave their money to a con man, and are lucky to have found themselves cheated.

Because there is far more terror in the Art than wonder, and even as a child, when I’d counted amongst my closest friends perhaps the most powerful and certainly the most decent practitioner the realm had ever produced, I still didn’t like it. Magic is a perversion of reality. Dabbling with it is, in my experience, a recipe for madness, or damnation.

Though in truth, the damage Wren might cause himself was not my primary concern. The Art was power in its most concentrated form, and the government regulated it zealously. At the first sign of the spark a practitioner was required to register themselves with the Crown, and anyone under twenty-five forcibly enrolled in the Academy for the Furtherance of the Magical Arts. Originally it had been a wartime measure, to fade away once the crisis with the Dren had passed. But of course, that’s not the way things work – once authority is ceded to the Crown, nothing short of revolution is sufficient to claw it back. Indeed, in the years since the armistice the Crown’s hold on the Empire’s practitioners had only grown firmer. When it first started the Academy had been a finishing school for practitioners, its students in their late teens or early twenties, already long apprenticed to a master. These days the Academy was closer to a prison than a boarding school, raising the next generation of sorcerers to walk in lockstep with the Throne.

I swallowed my greeting once I saw the phantasm. Mind fixed on his creation, Wren didn’t notice my appearance. Even a basic use of the Art is taxing, and he was still an amateur – it took every ounce of concentration to maintain his working.

A long-handled ax was slung by the door, awaiting the next time Adolphus needed to chop wood. I slipped my palm around the butt and stalked the short distance between us, flipping it over so the blade was towards me. Then I rang the back end of it against the wall a few inches above Wren’s head, the metal sparking off stone.

The light died stillborn and the boy leapt to his feet, but I was ready for him, discarding the ax and pinning his shoulders against the wall. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ I asked quietly, and despite the coolness with which I’d taken my quarry my heart beat a rapid staccato. ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’

He wouldn’t look at me, his head swinging back and forth as if to some unheard rhythm.

‘Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? What can happen if you miscalculate?’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

I tightened my fingers around his collarbone. ‘There are cells below the Bureau of Magic Affairs for people who knew what they were doing, knew what they were doing till they didn’t. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take you to see them, rows of lunatics shitting themselves and spouting gibberish.’

He stopped swaying long enough to sneer. ‘You wouldn’t get in.’

‘No, I wouldn’t – but they’d still be there, and you’ll still be joining them if you keep acting the fool.’

‘I’m careful. I don’t try anything I can’t handle.’

‘You don’t know enough to know that. And what if someone else had come by and seen you, as you were so bright you decided to try this outdoors? The Crown pays yellow for straight tips on children with the gift.’

‘I’m not a child.’

‘You act like one. How do you think it’d be telling Adeline that the gray are carting you off, remaking you into their tool, that she’s never gonna see you again?’ I shoved him back against the bricks. ‘The Art isn’t a fucking toy – pull your pud if you need a diversion.’

Not so long ago this exchange would have been enough to set him running off to the streets, and I’d have to spend the next half week dodging the wrath of his adopted mother. But three years of domestication had worn him down enough to accept rebuke, or at least fake it.

‘I want your word you won’t try this shit again. Not on your own, not without a guide.’

‘So find me a teacher.’

‘Believe it or not, boy, your education isn’t my sole priority.’

He gave a vague shrug, and looked to change the subject. ‘How’d your meeting with the general go?’

‘I’d comfortably assumed it’d be the worst part of my day, but you’ve gone and proved me wrong. Now do I have your word that you’ll hold off any more experimenting, or don’t I?’

He finally met my eyes. ‘You have it.’

You can’t trust an adolescent to keep a promise, they change too quickly – the person who gave his guarantee is dead twelve hours later. I’d need to do something to keep him satisfied. ‘Adolphus will be home any minute. Get cleaned up, he’ll need help with the dinner rush.’

Wren went inside and I finally got my water. It was warm, and brackish.