by Victoria Lee
“Name?” the man asked.
Noam didn’t answer, just to be contrary. Instead he tried to track whether the system immediately told the police his identity, but the data packet with his fingerprints uploaded instantly to federal servers. Servers which were, of course, concealed by antitechnopathy wards. Great.
They crowded Noam and all the other refugees—the Carolinia First contingent was notably absent from the arrestees—into a holding cell guarded by antiwitching soldiers. A man in a suit stood on the other side of the cell bars and said, “Listen up. We know one of you is an unregistered witching. If you own up to it, maybe we go a little easier on you.”
Silence answered. Noam and the others all avoided looking at each other, as if making eye contact might be taken as evidence.
The man waited patiently, seconds stretching out into minutes.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Then let me put it this way. Anyone who tells me who the witching is gets to walk out of here today. No charges. No questions. No deportation.” His cool gaze surveying each of them in turn. When he looked at Noam, Noam stood.
“We’re entitled to legal defense,” he said.
“As illegal immigrants, you aren’t entitled to anything.”
Noam was pretty sure he was more familiar with Carolinian law at this point than the man in the suit. He’d read quite a bit of it in the free library at juvie. “Carolinian law states every person is entitled to a public defender against federal charges. Every person, not just every citizen.”
The man looked at him. “Let me rephrase: illegals are not entitled to government-funded lawyers for immigration-related charges.” His smile was thin, mean. “After all, who said anything about charging you with federal crimes?”
Right—because why bother wasting resources charging them with incitement when they could just deport everyone in this room to Atlantia on immigration charges and save the trouble? They’d figure out who Noam was sooner or later, and that he was a Carolinian citizen, but for everyone else . . .
Noam sat back down.
The man in the suit was still smiling as he turned toward the room again, hands on his hips. “I’ll say it one more time. Who wants to walk out of here?”
Noam stole a glance at Sam, who still had Grace’s blood on his shirt. At DeShawn, with his left eye swollen shut. At the others, people Noam didn’t even know but who might know him, who had no reason to defend a Level IV witching when they could save their own skin in trade.
No one spoke up.
Noam should have been terrified, but warmth bloomed in his chest too.
He nudged Sam’s ankle. Sam didn’t react. So Noam found the wedding ring on his finger and warmed it up until Sam flinched and finally glared over at him, hand flexing. Noam stared back, brows lifted.
Do it, you idiot.
Sam exhaled a heavy breath. And at last he said, “It’s him,” and jerked his thumb toward Noam. “But joke’s on you, assholes. He’s not unregistered; he’s Level IV.”
The man in the suit looked back at Noam with narrowed eyes.
Noam smirked, even though it made his bruised cheekbone hurt like fuck. “I can see the headline now: ‘Level IV–trained witching arrested at anti-Sacha protest.’ Ouch. Hope you have a good PR department.”
He relished the look on that man’s face: hatred, resentment. Apprehension.
The man looked to one of the uniformed officers. “Call the Ministry of Defense and figure out how they want to handle it. You.” He pointed at Noam. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”
Noam got up—what else was he going to do?—and crossed the small space between the bench and the bars. They didn’t bother trying to cuff him this time, just opened the door and tugged him out by the arm. The door slammed shut after him, an officer twisting his key in the lock.
“Wait,” Noam said, gesturing to Sam. “What about him?”
The man in the suit tapped his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “Too bad,” he said. “Shoulda got it in writing.”
The holding cell erupted in a cacophony of shouts and threats, Sam lurching off the bench to bang his wrist against the bars so hard it probably bruised. But Noam wasn’t surprised. Not anymore.
The man walked away; Noam and the officers followed in his wake until the refugees’ anger was just an echo at the end of a long hall, cutting to silence as steel double doors fell shut.
No. Noam wasn’t surprised.
But this wasn’t over—because ever since the guy with the eyebrows pressed Noam’s hand against the fingerprint scanner, an idea had been taking shape in his mind. Formless at first, its blurry lines had become bold edges.
They locked him in a room and told him to wait. They didn’t say for how long.
Good. Noam needed time to work.
He knew what Faraday meant.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Noam spent two hours in that cell, staring at the wall opposite his chair without really seeing it. His awareness of the room faded to a gray blur, punctuated by the occasional buzz of a fly whirring past his ear. He only knew how long he was there because he felt the second hand of his watch tick-ticking along, a metronome beating out of rhythm with his heart.
The antitechnopathy wards were a Faraday shield.
A magical one, sure, but a Faraday shield—that was why Noam’s electric power couldn’t penetrate them. But that meant he just had to find the right wavelength of electromagnetic radiation to penetrate the shield.
That took the first hour and a half. The rest of the time was spent extracting data from the government servers by transmitting them at the same frequency as the shield to the flopcell Noam habitually kept in his jeans pocket, filling it up with anything and everything he could get his metaphorical hands on.
Ablaze with information, that flopcell glittered in his awareness like a thousand concentrated fireflies.
Two hours. The door opened. Lehrer stepped in.
Noam blinked, and the holding room slid back into focus. Lehrer was too tall for this place, Noam observed, his thoughts slippery and hard to hold on to. That or the ceiling was low. Lehrer had to bend his head to one side to keep from hitting it.
“What happened here?” Lehrer said and touched his own cheek.
“Fascism.”
“Hmm.” Lehrer stepped forward, claiming the seat opposite Noam’s. The interrogation table looked child sized when Lehrer placed his elbows atop its surface and surveyed Noam over the bridge of his hands. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, in your own words?”
“There was an antirefugee protest at the catastrophe memorial,” Noam said. “Carolinia First was there.”
If Lehrer had a reaction to the idea of Sacha’s followers using Lehrer’s own trauma as a vehicle for their message of hatred and intolerance, it didn’t show. His face was as impassive as always—like stone worn smooth, thousands of years of water flowing over its surface and blunting sharp edges.
At last the silence was unbearable enough that Noam had to say something to break it. “Things escalated. Sacha’s people started beating a girl, one of the refugees. I stole a police officer’s gun and threatened them with it, and they stopped. Then antiwitching units showed up, and I got arrested. And here I am.”
Lehrer lowered his hands to the table, tapping his thumb against its edge. “I notice you call them ‘Sacha’s people.’”
“That’s what they are. Sacha is responsible for them. He creates them, by creating a public environment where people fear refugees instead of empathizing with them. Everything Carolinia First does, they do in Sacha’s name.” He exhaled, very slowly. “I’m not going to apologize for what I did. If you’re going to kick me out of Level IV or throw me in jail, just do it.”
“I’m going to do no such thing,” Lehrer said.
Noam frowned. “Okay. What?”
“I’ve taken care of the situation. Your friends have been released, the record of your fingerprints on that gun has been erased, and I’ve ens
ured the officers will keep their silence on the matter. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
Noam gritted his teeth so hard it hurt. “I can’t believe you,” he snapped, and he shoved his chair back, on his feet before Lehrer could react. “You’re powerful enough to just—to wipe the slate clean like that, to clear my guilt for crimes I actually committed, but you aren’t powerful enough to do anything real that might actually save lives?”
“Noam—”
Noam slapped his hand against the table, its legs rattling against the floor. “No. Shut up. I don’t want to hear whatever excuse you’ve come up with—it’s good to know just how bad the corruption in the Carolinian government really is, I guess.” He felt like he had a fever, like his blood had risen beneath the surface of his skin. “Back in 2018 you were willing to do whatever it took to overthrow the US and get justice for witchings. But if it’s Atlantians, suddenly it’s all mild sympathies and cryptic notes and cleaning up my messes. So I guess while you will literally lift a finger on behalf of refugees, that’s about the extent of it.” His mouth twisted around the bitter taste on his tongue, mimicking Lehrer’s raised-brow disapproval. “Go on. Prove me wrong.”
Lehrer sighed, but instead of telling Noam to sit down, he rose to his feet as well in a single graceful movement. “Let’s continue this discussion elsewhere. I hate to impose on the officers’ time.”
“Fuck the officers.”
Lehrer reached into his pocket and passed Noam a blank two-terabyte flopcell.
Noam opened his mouth, but the look Lehrer gave him in response killed the words on his lips.
“I thought you might need an extra,” Lehrer said.
Noam fumbled for something to say, gripping the flopcell in his fist. “How did you know I—”
“Later,” Lehrer interrupted. He gestured toward the door. “After you.”
Noam slipped the flopcell into his back pocket to join its mate and preceded Lehrer out.
Lehrer didn’t speak as they left, not to Noam and not to the police officers—not that he had to. They got out of his way the second they saw him coming, doors opening the moment Noam and Lehrer reached them.
To Noam’s surprise, Lehrer didn’t lead him up to his study or even to the government complex. They took a sharp left on the street, away from the city and toward residential areas. Noam trailed at Lehrer’s heel, questions crowding his mouth, but Lehrer didn’t say a word. Just walked, hands slipped in his uniform pockets, casual as anything.
Noam wondered if he was being tested. If all these times when Noam questioned Lehrer and Lehrer fed him just enough crumbs to keep Noam on his side—if this was all being calculated and tallied up as points for and against. Like if Noam was just patient enough, Lehrer might eventually tell him the truth.
Fuck that.
“Where are we going? Sir.”
“I don’t want to be overheard.” Lehrer’s tone didn’t leave room for questions.
Out of downtown, trees sprouted from the ground lining the sidewalk. In winter their branches would reach like bony fingers toward a slate-gray sky—but in spring their broad leaves cast dappled shadows on the path. Somehow they managed to grow, despite the cold spell that had persisted into late spring. Noam shivered; they’d taken his coat at the jail and never given it back.
Lehrer glanced at him as they turned onto a new street. “Are you cold?”
“A little.”
Lehrer’s jacket buttons unclasped themselves—this close, Noam felt Lehrer’s gold-thread magic looping round each one in turn—and Lehrer shrugged off his coat, passing it to Noam. The wool was heavy in his hands, laden with all the sewn patches and stripes of Lehrer’s various honors and awards. Noam put it on anyway, sliding his arms through the sleeves.
“Thanks,” he said, and Lehrer nodded once.
Without his jacket, Lehrer looked far more human. He was still impossibly tall, broad shouldered, but the tailored dress shirt he wore betrayed a deceptively narrow waist. If it weren’t for the magic Noam still sensed on his skin, or the way Lehrer didn’t shiver in the icy air, he might have forgotten Lehrer was dangerous.
“I brought you here because I couldn’t discuss this where we might be overheard,” Lehrer said finally. When Noam looked, Lehrer was watching him.
“Your note?”
“I sensed it when you took the wards down.”
When Noam gave him a confused look, Lehrer just shrugged and said, “I made them. Very few witchings are capable of creating sustained magical shields, but I am one.”
“Okay,” Noam said, and at last he rounded on Lehrer, stopping there in the middle of the sidewalk. “But then why couldn’t you just take it down in the first place? You knew I was trying to expose Sacha. That day you caught me and Dara in the government complex and read the email off my computer, you could’ve just taken the wards down right then and there. Why didn’t you?”
“I had to know you could be trusted. If you weren’t serious about this—if you wouldn’t risk everything to take down Sacha—then I had no use for you.”
Noam’s chest went tight. This was it. This was what Lehrer had been up to, the whole reason he’d kept Noam on.
“Use for me?”
“I gave you a note instead of telling you the secret outright because I suspect Sacha has my study and my apartment bugged. I’ve looked, of course, but I’m no technopath—and I couldn’t risk being overheard plotting treason.”
The silence that followed was punctuated only by the dead leaves that rustled underfoot, caught up in a breeze.
“I don’t understand,” Noam said.
“These things are delicate.” Lehrer stood as still as calm water. “We cannot simply depose Sacha and declare power. Our rise must appear necessary and inevitable.”
Realization cut through Noam’s core.
Calix Lehrer hadn’t gone soft in the years since the catastrophe. Beneath that military uniform and the careful trappings of a government man, he was the same revolutionary who forged a new nation from the wreckage of genocide. And he’d witnessed Sacha assault the very foundations of that utopia.
Lehrer gave up the crown because he feared the corruption of absolute power, but corruption crept into Carolinia regardless.
“You’re planning a coup.”
A beat, then Lehrer nodded.
Maybe it was just the magic Noam had spent downloading two terabytes of classified government data, but his skin felt as if a current ran through it, blue and electric.
“Your ability is valuable and untraceable. You’ve already proved you know how to use it as a weapon.” Lehrer gestured toward the flopcell in Noam’s hand. “I assume you planned to leak that to the press.”
“I don’t trust the press. I was going to publish it on an independent website.”
“Good. Do that.”
They stood there, encapsulated in the soft grayness of their mutual secret, a quiet world that existed just in that moment, floating outside of time.
Noam had the strange urge to reach out and touch Lehrer, to put a hand on his arm and squeeze. He had the even stranger feeling that Lehrer would let him.
At last, Lehrer broke that gentle silence. “Thank you, Noam. I can’t tell you how much it means to have an ally in this.”
“Of course.”
“It will be dangerous.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Lehrer said it with a slight leftward slant of his head.
Noam met Lehrer’s pale gaze. The real Lehrer looked back at him, the man beneath all these layers of diplomacy and politics, the one who shattered a nation.
“I would rather die than do nothing.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.” Lehrer touched the back of Noam’s arm, guiding him down the sidewalk toward the government complex. Noam went, and it was several seconds before Lehrer’s hand fell away, but even then Noam felt the residual heat from his touch.
“There is one thing, though. You will need to st
op working with Tom Brennan.”
“What?” Noam frowned. “Why?”
“He means well, but diplomatic methods will achieve nothing. With him you’re invested in a losing battle. Besides, public opinion is divided on the issue of the Atlantian occupation—not to mention immigration—and we can’t appear to take sides. Your actions reflect upon me now, and I can’t publicly ally myself with Brennan.”
“Politics, then,” Noam translated flatly. “Somehow I think Carolinia will support you no matter what I do. You’re a war hero. You could declare yourself dictator tomorrow morning, and people would still love you.”
The look Lehrer gave him was half a warning. Still, Noam thought he detected a light curve to one corner of Lehrer’s mouth. A secret smile, for the secret they shared.
No one else would hesitate to obey. And yet here Noam stood, remembering what Dara told him: I don’t like naïveté.
“Brennan’s the only person I have left from my old life,” Noam managed to say. The words caught in his throat like small stones.
“I know.”
Brennan was there when they took Noam’s mother’s body down. He sat with Noam in the Russian literature section and read The Brothers Karamazov out loud until Noam’s father got home. He offered to let Noam stay with him for a while, but Noam said no, because if Noam left—if Noam abandoned his father the same way his mom had—he didn’t think Jaime would ever crawl out of the grave he’d dug for himself.
Still, Brennan had offered, and now he could barely stand to be in the same room as Noam.
Noam pressed the heel of one hand to his brow and closed his eyes, taking in an unsteady breath. Yeah, Brennan wasn’t exactly doing anything to foment real change, but could Noam cut him off entirely?
When he looked again, Lehrer still watched patiently, his ageless face blank and unreadable.
Maybe he was right. Maybe Noam was wasting his time trying to talk Brennan into seeing a truth that was, to Lehrer, already clear.
“All right. I’ll stop.”
Lehrer inclined his head, a slow nod Noam found hard to interpret. Could he tell Noam was lying? If so, he didn’t make accusations. “Thank you, Noam. I know it’s a lot to ask. But if you value the migrant cause as you claim, you’ll see the logic in being circumspect.”
