by V. St. Clair
Aleric and Master Willow both winced perceptibly, probably because they knew Asher well enough to predict how this comment would go over. Master Antwar seemed tense, like he wasn’t sure which way Asher would jump. Reede looked like he was preparing to be immensely entertained.
My father could rip you in half without even breaking a sweat, you pathetic stick of a man, Asher thought savagely, rage filling him rapidly. He may not wear fancy robes and drown himself in fragrances all day, but he is worth more than the combined value of you ineffectual wastrels on the Council, and by the time I’m done proving myself smarter than every one of you, you’ll wish you had taken the time to invite the man who made me to this stupid award ceremony, you posturing sack of idiocy.
It wasn’t until he finished the thought that he realized he had actually been speaking out loud—at volume—the entire time. The whole room had fallen silent sometime during his rant; most of them looked as though they’d been clubbed over the head and had no idea where the blow had come from. Aleric had abandoned his politically-guarded face and was wincing openly, while Reede appeared barely able to contain raucous laughter. Aleric’s parents were on the other end of the room, also watching him; Cowen Frost’s expression gave nothing away, though Adorina looked faintly appraising.
Calahan’s face was so red with disbelief and outrage that there was a real chance of him experiencing heart failure in the imminent future.
“You dare speak to a member of the Council of Mages with such blatant disrespect?” he gestured to his robes as though Asher could have possibly missed this indicator of rank.
“Welcome to our world,” Master Antwar muttered at the same time that Reede said, “Oh I’m so glad I came today,” wiping a tear of mirth from his eye.
Calahan turned his fury on the Masters and said, “I would have hoped that you highly-paid, well-respected mages could teach him how to behave around his betters after six years of magical education.”
Well, I’ve already screwed this one up…best to commit wholeheartedly, Asher mentally resolved, still fueled by adrenaline and forward momentum.
In his most acidic, sarcastic tone, he said, “When I meet one of my betters, I’ll be sure to give them the respect they deserve.” He spared an exaggerated glance over Calahan’s appearance. “All I see right now is a pampered rich boy who wears padded shoes to make himself look taller, and thinks he’s entitled to be a jerk just because his parents were rich enough to buy his rank.”
“Shhh!” Master Reede whispered theatrically into the horrified silence that followed. “We’re all supposed to pretend we don’t notice the shoes…”
Master Willow looked like he was watching Mizzenwald burst into flames and had no idea how to stop it. Antwar was pretending not to know who he was, which was odd, since the man was clearly his mentor and had been the one to present his work originally.
“Enough,” Herewald, the Chief Mage, spoke sharply before Calahan could say anything scathing in retort. “We should not be squabbling like children over sweets in the benches. We have an award to present.”
With enormous effort, Calahan forced a neutral expression back onto his face and said, “You’re quite right, sir. Come this way, Asher.”
Because he wasn’t sure what else to do—and because he really wanted that medal—Asher followed his new enemy to the center of the room, taking his place on the platform and noting that many members of the audience were stretching in their seats to get a better look at him.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen…Asher thought grimly. This week only, the Boy Who Can’t Shut Up!
Herewald launched into a prepared speech about his work, summarizing the discovery and expressing the Council’s (ha!) joy at being able to properly recognize the achievement. Asher zoned out for most of it, letting his thoughts wander as he reconsidered over and over again what he had just done. He couldn’t decide if he would do things differently, were he able to go back in time. At some moments he thought it was sheer idiocy to make so many powerful enemies in the very circle of people he was trying to become a part of. On the other hand, how dare these pretentious snobs tell him his father was a nobody?
If anyone is going to treat my father like garbage and belittle his life’s achievements, it’s going to be me!
He wasn’t sure whether his father would appreciate the sentiment or not, but family solidarity had to count for something, surely.
He didn’t return his focus to the speech until it was over and Herewald was draping a bronze medallion on a purple ribbon around his neck. The room filled with moderate applause, and the Chief Mage turned to Asher to allow him a chance to speak.
Calahan was still seething quietly to his right, and the audience was staring at him with a mixture of anticipation and concern.
Asher touched the medal around his neck, looking down at it for the first time since receiving and saying, “I thought it would be bigger.” Master Willow let out a groan, but a few other spectators chuckled in appreciation.
“I want to thank the Council of Mages for awarding me this honor, and for welcoming me so warmly into your illustrious company.” He spared Herewald a courteous nod before addressing the room once more. “Cal here has informed me that he will be the next Chief Mage, in which case I’d like to congratulate you on the promotion,” he beamed at Calahan amongst an outbreak of whispers at this early declaration.
Ha! I knew I called it right; he was just being cocky.
“Cal, I would like to inform you that I intend on seeing a lot more of you in the future, because I’m exceptionally intelligent and I anticipate winning enough medals to weigh down a wall in my room. To avoid any unnecessary unpleasantness on the next go around, be sure to have someone invite my father to the festivities. His name is Torin.”
And with that, he stepped off of the platform and walked out of the room.
18
Betrayal
The room practically exploded with conversation when Asher walked out of it. Aleric had never attended such an entertaining—albeit horrifying—Council meeting at any point in his life, nor did he think he was the only one in the room who could claim such a thing.
I should have known things could never have gone normally with Asher here, he reflected belatedly, still a little shaken up from the jarring unfamiliarity in the proceedings. Especially after Calahan got involved…I should never have let them speak to each other before the ceremony.
In truth, he was so used to dealing with these people and moving around in high society that it hadn’t even occurred to him that Asher would find any of the others offensive. The moment Asher had innocently asked where his father was, Aleric realized this gross miscalculation on his part. If he hadn’t been so absorbed in his own problems, he might have had the foresight to prep his friend for this ceremony and they could have avoided the entire incident…maybe.
“I hope Asher attends all of the important meetings around here,” Master Reede was still wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “This might be the first time I’ve actually enjoyed myself at one of these things.”
“Why can’t things ever just go smoothly?” Master Willow sighed mournfully, looking up at the ceiling as he spoke as though addressing the deities above. “Just once? Is that so much to ask?”
Before Aleric could fully shake himself from his stupor, his mother grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to his feet with surprising strength.
“What are you still doing here?” she hissed at him in a low voice that only he could hear, betraying a surprising amount of frustration with him. “Go after Asher and make sure he doesn’t leave. A networking opportunity like this will never come again for him.”
And with that she pushed him away like a discarded thought and drifted off to speak to one of her friends, all traces of agitation gone from her voice and appearance. The behavior was alarming enough to cause Aleric’s brain to reengage, and he realized that Asher probably didn’t know he was supposed to stick around after the meeting for informal socializ
ing.
He hurried out of the room and broke into a jog once he hit the hallway, determined to catch his friend before he translocated back to Mizzenwald.
Though why Mother thinks he has a chance at finding allies right now is beyond me. Everyone in the room was appalled at him for calling out their highest-ranking members; no one is going to want to be seen with him after that.
It was a hideous political blunder, irrecoverable in Aleric’s opinion. At least half of the people in that room harbored bad thoughts about the Council of Mages, but everyone was too tactful to call attention to it so openly. It just wasn’t done…it was social suicide.
Still, he knew better than to disobey an order from his mother, who was more socially savvy than any other person alive. Once on the grounds, he saw Asher glaring hatefully at a statue of Idalgo the Keen in the grass, standing in front of a large stone fountain.
“Asher, wait!” Aleric called out to his friend, slowing down once he got his friend’s attention.
“Spare me the lecture,” Asher turned his scowl on him instead. “I know I was a bad little boy in there, and frankly, I don’t care. That sorry excuse for a mage should be knocked down a few rungs, and it made me realize that everyone in that room is the same as him. You’re all privileged, self-entitled snobs who think you’re better than everyone else just because you’ve got money and bloodlines.”
Aleric couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen Asher this angry. He almost never got mad at Aleric himself…
“Even me?” he asked, to give his friend a chance to take the obvious out and apologize.
“You’re as entitled and haughty as the rest of them, though you’re at least able to hide it better than them in mixed company.” Asher continued to frown, taking in his surroundings as though it was the last time he planned on seeing them.
“Look, I should have warned you about Torin…it just didn’t even occur to me that you wouldn’t know he wasn’t going to be here,” Aleric explained as fast as possible, because he heard voices approaching from inside the Tower. “I’ve told you time and again about how arrogant my peers are, how shallow, egotistic, and scheming, so this shouldn’t come as a horrible surprise to you. We don’t have time to argue about it right now though, so put your hurt feelings aside and try to make yourself charming; I know you can manage it when you put your mind to it.”
Asher looked stunned and said, “You think anyone is going to want to associate with me after that fiasco?”
Well, at least he knows it went badly…
With Asher, one could never be certain what he was thinking.
“I think you committed social suicide, but my mother obviously sees something I don’t, because she told me to come out here and make sure you didn’t leave prematurely.”
His friend appeared to appreciate the honesty, some of the anger fading from his features.
“And they’re coming out here, or should I go back inside?” Asher gestured to the lawns.
“Normally everyone stays inside to talk, but you and I came out here so Mother must have convinced them to come to us, to make it look deliberate and not like you were running away. She probably told them that it was the new, edgy thing to do or something…she’s always been thought of as a social trendsetter, and you’re clearly a wildcard that no one was expecting.”
Miracle of miracles, Asher actually vented a small laugh at that, and suddenly he was back to normal.
Just in time, Aleric thought to himself, as people began to pour out of the Crystal Tower to join them on the grounds, glancing around like they had never been here before.
Thankfully, Adorina Frost was the first to approach them, shaking Asher’s hand and congratulating him on his success and for all the future contributions he would doubtless make.
“Aleric says you think I’m not hopeless,” his friend answered quietly, forcing a charming smile for the onlookers who were out of earshot. “What do I need to do to salvage this mess?”
Aleric’s mother took Asher by the arm, as though he was escorting her to a ball, and said, “Right now your reputation is in limbo. You’re an unknown entity, and a new and refreshing breath of air into the normal way of things. You acted the way most of the people in that room have secretly wanted to for years; not everyone is friends with the Council members,” she explained gently but rapidly. “If you are capable of presenting yourself in the right light, you could be viewed as daring and self-confident.”
A look of illumination dawned on Asher as he said, “Oh right…I forgot that arrogance is a prized trait amongst you people,” without a trace of sarcasm. “I always get reprimanded for it at school, so it’s easy to overlook…”
And with that, he released her arm, thanked her for the earlier compliment, and went to mingle.
“You really think he’ll be able to turn it around?” Aleric asked his mother doubtfully once they were alone. His father must be using the opportunity to meet with a few of his business partners inside the Tower, because Aleric didn’t see any of them outside.
“If he is as talented as he needs to be in order to survive in high society, then yes,” she answered simply. “On the subject of talent, how is your new research project coming along?”
Aleric pursed his lips at this, hating to be asked about his work when he was making such frustratingly little progress on it. His achievements seemed even paler against Asher’s enormous discovery.
“Did Father tell you about my new topic of focus?” he probed curiously.
“He did,” his mother said with a knowing look. “He wanted my opinion on whether it was a worthy pursuit of your time.”
“And what did you say?” Aleric asked with interest.
“I told him it sounded very ambitious, and that if you were able to pull it off, it would be the greatest achievement of the century.” She still had that knowing look on her face. “Aleric, I know that you feel driven to please your father, and that you think this will earn you the effusive praise you so ardently desire…”
He wanted to interrupt her and tell her that he wasn’t just trying to get praise anymore, that he finally understood why his father pushed him to such grueling extents—though he still didn’t like it—but he held his tongue.
“This project of yours…” his mother continued. “I fear you have set yourself an impossible task, and that it will only leave the both of you disappointed in the end. This goal of yours isn’t simply ambitious…it’s unheard of.”
Well, at least Mother understands the sheer magnitude of what I’m trying to accomplish.
“Do you think I’m unequal to the task?”
“I am not involved enough in your academics to make that determination,” his mother admitted evenly. Adorina Frost was never one to take guesses without the relevant information to support her thoughts. “I merely point out that I have seen how you react to failure and the feeling of inadequacy; if you fail at this, I’m not sure how long it will take you to recover.”
Aleric frowned thoughtfully. How could he explain to her that he wouldn’t fail, that he couldn’t, according to his father? Everything depended on him being successful, in following the path he was meant to embark on, the path to true greatness…
“I won’t fail,” he told her simply. “Before this is all over, the whole world will know my name. You’ll see.”
She gave him a look that was hard to read, but then nodded and said, “Then I leave you to your work, and it to you.” With that, she walked away and went to talk to other people.
Aleric looked around and saw that Asher seemed to be making a group of women giggle uncontrollably, which was a good sign. He should have known that only Asher could pull off that kind of flagrant disrespect for authority without any real consequences, though the Council would surely not forget his attitude anytime soon. Asher had been getting away with his casual disregard for his superiors for years now; something about his personality kept people from judging him too harshly. If he, Aleric, had pulled such a st
unt, he would be packing his bags and heading to live on his own amongst the commoners by now.
He shook the moment of envy and went to socialize with a few of the more tolerable people in the group, closest to him in age, but his heart wasn’t really in it. In truth, he just wanted to get back to his research; everything else would be an annoyance until he made tangible progress on his project. He forced himself to endure a few minutes of their banter, and then excused himself to go look in on his father, though mostly he just wanted a few minutes alone.
So he walked back into the Crystal Tower and turned into the first door on his right, which was the men’s restroom. It wasn’t the ideal place to spend his free time, but at least it was quiet, currently empty, and the odds of anyone thinking to bother him in here were relatively low. He sat in a hard-backed chair in the foyer, where people were intended to wait if the bathroom was full, and closed his eyes, his mind turning to his work.
I’ve tried every prism combination I can think of, and not one useful white modifier in any of them.
Well, that wasn’t true…technically there would be dozens of white modifiers in any of his prisms, the trick was in finding them and determining whether he could actually use them with their adjacent alignments. So far this had been a total bust, as there were thousands—tens of thousands, maybe—bands of light in each prism, which could all be used differently depending on their bordering colors, the presence of nearby direct or indirect inverses, the quality and type of lighting available, and a dozen other factors. Throw in the effect of compounding, which was almost certainly going to be crucial to his work, and the possibilities were multiplied a hundredfold. White was the most difficult color to see in a clear object that was otherwise filled with light from every color in the rainbow, so a small sliver of white next to a wide-band green or blue would be almost impossible to pick out unless he got very lucky.
Well, if using a prism was easy, it wouldn’t be the rarest major of the major arcana.
He exhaled heavily and rubbed his eyes. As much as he loved being a Prism major, partly because of the exclusivity of it and partly because of the raw power that Prism users were able to capitalize on, sometimes he wished he had a more straightforward major. Powders was much less nebulous in terms of the basic principles; if he was tired, or had a headache, he wasn’t necessarily any worse off in the channeling of powders as long as he could focus his will properly. If Aleric got an eyelash stuck in his right eye, he might not be able to use prisms reliably for an hour.
