by Victoria Lee
The car arrived on schedule: a sleek black vehicle with tinted windows and cushioned seats. Durham sped past, a blur of ancient brick buildings and glittering neon nightclubs paving the way to the government district. They passed the old stadium, lit up for some event or another. Here the streets were peppered with green-uniformed Ministry of Defense soldiers. Not too many, not enough to frighten, but enough for Noam to get the message: don’t try any shit.
Noam tugged at the sleeves of his new sweater to pull them down over his wrists, little linty flecks detaching to float down onto his thighs, and avoided his chaperone’s gaze. They weren’t far from Noam’s neighborhood—although that was probably a firebombed shell by now. Best way to stop a virus spreading, after all, was to burn everything infected to the ground.
In that neighborhood, people lived two families to a home and boiled swamp water for drinking. He knew every person who lived in the bookstore, from old Mrs. Brown to the family downstairs with six kids who never slept. There was mold damage on the ceilings and a rat nest that came back no matter how many poison traps Noam set out.
The government complex was nothing like that.
It used to be an old tobacco warehouse, then was repurposed, and repurposed again, renovated year after year before magic made the world fall into ruin. During the catastrophe it had been a barracks. Then it became a courthouse. Now it belonged to Chancellor Sacha. The brick walls smelled like history, remortared so many times that they were more mortar than brick. The people here dressed so well they had a new set of clothes every day of the week—and the more important they were, the better they dressed, all the way up to the ministers, with their crisp suit jackets and papercut collars.
These were the people Noam’s father had spent half his life trying to undermine.
Now Noam was one of them.
Level IV, they’d told him in the hospital, was the highest rank of the witching training program, practically a factory for generals and senators and future chancellors. They said it was modeled off the same training Adalwolf Lehrer gave his militia before they overthrew the US government in 2018. They said this was the seat of all real power in Carolinia, that Noam’s blood test made him the perfect Level IV candidate.
Noam reckoned he’d stay the perfect candidate right up until they remembered he was Atlantian. Then it’d be all, thanks for your time and conflict of interest.
“Wait here,” Noam’s chaperone said and disappeared through a heavy wooden door. Noam was alone.
It was a cool night, autumn perched on the blade of winter, quiet even in the center of the city. Someone’s magic, Noam thought—and shivered.
He sat on a bench and braced his hands against the seat, leaning his head back. In that strange silence, the seconds stretched out like dark molasses. Noam imagined he could feel radio waves arcing over the city—a cobweb trawled by government spiders and their all-seeing eyes. He thought about his father, about that same sky curving over his now-dead neighborhood, and shut his eyes.
He ought to feel more than this. He hadn’t cried over losing his father since feverwake three days ago, and now it felt wrong to be upset, as if he had the chance to grieve and missed it.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” a voice said from behind Noam’s left shoulder. His eyes snapped open.
Him. It was him. The doctor from the hospital.
Only he wasn’t a doctor at all.
“You,” Noam forced out, and Minister Lehrer’s mouth twitched into a small smile.
“Me. Enchanted to make your acquaintance properly, Mr. Álvaro.”
How the hell hadn’t Noam recognized him before? His grandmother’d had a photo of Calix Lehrer hanging in her house.
This time, Lehrer was unmistakable. In his military uniform, tawny hair combed back, he could’ve been freshly clipped from a newspaper photograph.
The air caught in Noam’s throat, oxygen suddenly something he could choke on. Reading about Lehrer, discussing him in history class and over the dinner table, wasn’t quite the same as seeing him in person. The uniform made him seem even taller.
Which, fuck, Noam was still sitting in the presence of the defense minister. He started to get up, but Lehrer touched his shoulder and gently pressed him down onto the bench again.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Next time perhaps we can stand on ceremony, but today, I think, exceptions can be made.”
Lehrer stepped forward and sat on the bench beside Noam, both feet flat on the ground, his shoes so shiny they reflected the lamps overhead. The wind caught his hair and blew strands of it loosely across his brow, making him seem less formal, though he still didn’t seem human. He looked the same as he did in that photograph Noam remembered, like he hadn’t aged a day.
Impossible to believe he was over 120 years old.
Noam was too aware of his own breath, exhaling as quietly as he could.
Lehrer was . . . well. Legendary came immediately to mind. At sixteen, he’d survived the catastrophe. At nineteen, he overthrew a nation. At twenty, he was crowned king.
Now, even though he occupied one of the most powerful positions in the world, Minister Lehrer could walk into the courtyard of the government complex utterly alone, without bodyguards, and not spare a thought for safety. He was untouchable, more myth than man. To look at Lehrer was to see a man who was everything Chancellor Sacha was not: Revolutionary. Principled.
Witching.
That was the one thing Noam had never quite been able to grasp. Why did Calix Lehrer, who’d sacrificed so much to build his utopia, allow a man like Sacha to rip his nation apart?
A question for later. Not now, with Lehrer so close that Noam felt his body heat.
His magic.
“What now, sir?”
“Let’s not talk about that yet,” Lehrer said, and this time when he looked at Noam, it was with a warm smile—one that reminded Noam, painfully, of his father. “Let’s just sit a spell. I don’t get to do that often, you know.”
It was a strange silence, Lehrer gazing at something far off in the distance and Noam wondering what this scene must look like to anyone watching: Defense Minister Calix Lehrer, reclining in the government complex courtyard next to a teenage boy in a too-small sweater.
Noam didn’t dare move. What if he accidentally knocked Lehrer’s elbow or brushed up against his thigh? He stole a glance at Lehrer’s wristwatch, visible below the cuff of his jacket, and his heart stammered to an abrupt stop. Before, Lehrer had worn leather gloves, but tonight his left hand was bare in his lap, long fingered and elegant.
The lines of the black X tattooed between his thumb and forefinger were blurry now. Just looking at it felt like an act of violence.
“It didn’t hurt as badly as you’d expect,” Lehrer said.
Noam jerked his gaze away from the mark as if burned, even though it meant meeting Lehrer’s eyes instead. They were unusually pale, more colorless than gray.
“I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to stare.”
Lehrer smiled. “Don’t apologize. There’s no harm in curiosity.”
Maybe not. But Noam didn’t fancy risking it either way.
He tried to imagine a Lehrer as a child sitting in some bureaucratic office in the old country while a state official dipped the tattooing pen in ink. Noam’d read how Lehrer used his power to erase the scars of torture. Why leave this one?
Maybe he didn’t want anyone to be able to forget. Everyone who had lived through the catastrophe was dead . . . except Lehrer. And as long as Lehrer had this mark, the descendants of those men who’d tried to wipe witchings off the earth could never sanitize history.
“It was a long time ago,” Lehrer said. He lifted his left hand, holding it to the light. He didn’t seem upset, just thoughtful. “Sometimes I feel as if all that happened to someone else.” A small, dry laugh. “Or perhaps I’m just going senile.”
Noam seized the opportunity to change the subject, desperate to talk about anything, anything,
besides genocide. “You don’t look your age. Sir.”
No shit, Álvaro. Still, Lehrer was the only witching who’d been able to achieve something close to immortality.
Lehrer laughed. “If you thought I looked any older than forty, my vanity would never recover.” He turned toward Noam, hooking his elbow over the back of the bench. He searched Noam’s face. “I will be blunt with you, Noam. You cannot understand what I’m asking of you.”
Noam thought he had a pretty good idea.
Lehrer went on, his gaze unwavering. “I’m asking you to make great sacrifices. But then, you’ve sacrificed before, have you not? I read your file. What you gave up, when your father became ill, was more than should be asked of any child. And as for your work with Tom Brennan, I think I, more than most, understand that sometimes individual freedom is an easy price to pay in exchange for justice.”
Wait—wait, was Lehrer saying . . . was he actually saying what Noam thought he was saying? He stared at Lehrer’s unlined face, breath stilled in his throat.
In Noam’s old neighborhood, everyone had worshiped Lehrer because they thought he might champion refugees the way he’d championed witchings during the catastrophe—as though Lehrer was the personal hero of the downtrodden and the oppressed. Noam liked Lehrer well enough as a historical figure, but he’d thought the rest a touch idealistic.
Maybe he should have paid closer attention.
Sympathy isn’t action, Noam told himself. Chancellor Sacha was still the one in charge of Carolinia. Lehrer’s power was hamstrung by the same laws he’d drafted after abdicating the crown in 2024.
Still. Noam’s chest was alight with a dozen fluttering butterfly wings, all of them beating the same rhythm.
“I’m not very patriotic.”
“Not for Carolinia as it is,” Lehrer said. “But perhaps for what it could be.”
The chilly wood dug in against Noam’s palms where he gripped the edge of their seat. He kept seeing Lehrer’s hand draped over the back of the bench, too aware of how near it was to his shoulder, of how he could tip slightly to the right and Lehrer would be touching him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I wouldn’t ask you to join Level IV if I didn’t think you could make a real difference in this country. I’m trying to convince you to stay.”
“Carolinia needs witchings. When the doctor said I was joining Level IV, he didn’t make it sound like a choice.”
Lehrer smiled, but it seemed incomplete. “There’s always a choice.” A moment’s pause. “Of course, I would like you to make my preferred choice.”
Always a choice? Not unless Lehrer meant enlisting in the military as disposable cannon fodder or being commissioned as an officer. Witchings weren’t exactly in heavy supply these days, and everyone who was anyone in this country graduated from Level IV. The signing bonus they gave witchings who joined the military could make a huge difference if Noam donated it to the Migrant Center. And at least this way Noam could do something worthwhile.
The thing was . . .
The thing was, Noam was nobody. To date, his greatest accomplishment was hacking immigration records and getting thrown in juvie for it.
Needless to say, he hadn’t exactly changed the world from inside a jail cell. Instead he’d watched four friends get deported to Atlantia. All of them had caught the virus within a week.
All of them died.
Ever since feverwake, he’d seen the world through a haze of shock and grief. Now, possibility glimmered just out of reach. Lehrer was here, Lehrer was sitting right here, the most magically powerful man alive, even though he worked under Sacha—and he wanted Noam to be part of his world.
He wanted to give Noam power.
If Noam gave this up, he’d be giving up a chance to do something real. To amount to more than his parents had.
Of course, just thinking that was enough to make him sick with himself. There was nothing wrong with being a refugee. But could he walk away from this? From Lehrer, with his incredible abilities and immortality and the faded mark on his hand that suggested he—if no one else—might understand what it was really like in Carolinia today?
“I understand,” Noam said. The promises—to trust Lehrer, to be a good soldier—should have come pouring out of his mouth, but they congealed there instead. Whatever Lehrer might say about information and consent, people like Noam didn’t have other options.
Perhaps Lehrer recognized that, too, because he said, “I’ll push you harder than you think you can go. Some days you might wish you’d said no to me here. Or that you’d died in fever, like your father.”
That cut deeper than Noam was willing to admit.
He wanted Lehrer to trust him, though, even if Lehrer shouldn’t. So he smiled, making himself the frail, nervous little thing Lehrer must expect him to be. “There’s nowhere else for me to go. But I’m stronger than I look.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Lehrer said. He reached out that same marked hand to clap Noam on the shoulder. “We need strong men and women to protect the ones who are weak. If you make it through training, you won’t just be powerful, Noam, you’ll be able to use that power to help people. That’s far more important than a little pain.”
Lehrer got to his feet and reached out to help Noam up. Noam felt dwarfed next to him, even though he’d always been the tallest in his class. Or maybe Noam was now small, shrunken by the virus into something fragile and easily subsumed.
Noam met Lehrer’s gaze and smiled again.
After 123 years, that was one thing Lehrer might appreciate.
Everyone else might be dead, but Noam was still fucking here.
And as long as he was, he had a war to win.
Level IV was housed in the east wing of the government complex, a building attached to the administrative west wing by a series of now-empty halls. Lehrer seemed oblivious to the silence. The nails in the soles of his fine leather shoes clicked off the hardwood floor, echoing toward high ceilings, his presence leaving no room for intruders. Even so, the shadows seemed to move in the corner of Noam’s eye, though every time he looked they stood still. This place was beautiful, Noam decided, but there was something about these walls that he didn’t like—walls that closed in on him, that had teeth.
“You grew up near here, didn’t you?”
Noam startled, and when he met Lehrer’s gaze he almost flinched. How long had Lehrer been watching?
“Yes,” Noam said. After a moment he dragged his gaze away, toward the windows and the few skyscrapers peppering the downtown skyline, the banks and office buildings visible through the evening fog. “Ninth Street.”
“You know your way around, then. Have you been to this part of town before?”
“Some. Mostly on field trips.”
“It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
Noam wasn’t sure he’d use that word. When Noam thought about lovely places, he thought of faraway cities in books. New York, before it was destroyed. Berlin and Kyoto. Places people had visited before Carolinia closed its borders but were now elusive as daydreams. Still, he thought he understood what Lehrer meant. If he could look at Durham for the first time, he might find beauty in the brick warehouses, the oddly crenelated roofs, the ancient and crumbling smokestacks.
And all this was Lehrer’s creation, of course. He and his brother built Carolinia from the ashes of the catastrophe, a nation cut from what used to be three states, now sewn together and made whole. It was lovely because it was loved—because it was alive.
“Yes,” Noam said, a little surprised with himself for saying so. For being sincere.
They turned one last corner and stopped in front of an unlabeled door. Noam tried to memorize its featureless face, its location in the hallway, to recall how they got here so he could do it again on his own, but all the seconds leading up to this moment were just a blur. And at the center, like the focus point of an old film: Lehrer.
Lehrer delivered him to a steely-haired woman named Dr. Howard,
who was in charge of supervising Level IV cadets. She gave him a cursory tour of the barracks, not that Noam remembered much by the time he was ushered to the boys’ bedroom and left alone in the dark. He lay awake for hours, feeling like he’d swallowed a storm. The other boys’ breathing rustled out from the shadows, too loud. It reminded him of the noises that hid around corners in the bookshop: his father’s soft snores, the pad of his mother’s feet on the floor when she got up for a glass of water, neighbors bickering downstairs.
All of them were dead now.
It was too large, too terrible, to comprehend: that a fever could wipe his world clean like a dishcloth scrubbing a dirty countertop. Heat burned his throat. Noam turned his face into the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. Don’t cry.
Don’t think about those little details: The way Carly laughed when she had a secret, the cut of his father’s grin that time Noam managed to get an illegal stream of the Colombia-Argentina game on his holoreader. Noam’s mother, asleep with a book draped over her face.
His grief was a grim specter on the other side of a shut door. And if he opened that door, he’d be consumed. He’d go fevermad, like the raving cretins scurrying pestlike through the gutters, ranting about evolution and viral gods.
No. He was finally where he needed to be. Where he could use whatever powers the witchings taught him to undermine the foundations of their world and rebuild it into something new. Something better.
He couldn’t break.
He wondered if Brennan was still alive. If he knew that Noam had survived. If he also lay awake on the other side of the city—had texted Noam, not realizing Noam’s phone burned with all the other contaminated artifacts of his old life.
Noam rolled onto his stomach and sucked in a mouthful of air. It tasted like detergent.
Brennan was like Noam. He didn’t have anyone else either. His kids died in Atlantia, and he’d never married. It was just him and Noam’s dad and Noam himself, the crooked edges of their broken families fitting together imperfectly but right.
Noam had to believe Brennan survived. Brennan didn’t live in the same neighborhood as Noam, so he might not have been blocked in by the military perimeter set up to stop the infection. Anyway, magic was transmitted by contact with infected body fluids, right? Noam hadn’t coughed on him or anything. (Or kissed him, like he kissed Elliott—Elliott who was most definitely dead.)
