It Ends in Fire

by Andrew Shvarts

  But there’s something else in the air, just in front of Aberdeen, something that isn’t there, until it suddenly is. With a rush of air like a cosmic sigh, an obelisk appears where my sphere exploded, a tall translucent crystal made of glowing golden light that spins like the world’s slowest top. It traps the exploding shards within it, and they shatter against its sides, dissolving into nothingness in a cascade of dazzling sparks. Just like that, the crisis is averted. Without breaking a sweat, Aberdeen contained my disaster. Everyone lets out a gasp of awe, and even I find my jaw hanging open.

  Aberdeen spins back around to face me and I realize that actually the crisis might be far from over. “Dewinter!” he growls. “What the hell was that?” And there, there at last, I see it. The vicious snarl, the glaring beady eye, the radiating contempt. He hides it well behind the facade of the kindly headmaster. But here he is, unmasked, the real Magnus Aberdeen, the man who killed my parents.

  Even as he drops his facade, I have to commit to mine. “I—I—I’m sorry!” I stammer, scrambling back on my hands and knees. “I’ve never carved that Glyph before! I just slipped! I’m so sorry!”

  He inhales sharply, nostrils flaring, long gray beard billowing. Then he forces a patient nod, offering a warm patrician smile. “Of course. I understand. Everyone makes mistakes when they’re just starting. Believe me, it’s not the worst thing I’ve seen happen in this class. At least no one lost an arm!” Another laugh goes through the room, though this one is a bit more nervous. Aberdeen kneels right in front of me and oh, Gods, he’s so close, my heart thunders and my hands dig into the grain of the floor. “Your dormitory has practice rooms where you can refine your Glyphs. The next time you take this stage, I expect a better outcome.”

  “Of course, Headmaster,” I say, and I look away, and I hope he takes that as my embarrassment. “I’ll do better. I promise.”

  He nods, satisfied, and I rise to my feet, my head down as I hand him the Codex. He takes it out of my hands and lays it back across the table. “All right, then.” He turns back to the class. “Who’d like to try next? Perhaps with a bit less excitement?”

  I make my way back to my seat as everyone laughs, and I slide in next to the other Nethros. “Look on the bright side,” Desmond says. “We’re setting expectations low enough that we can only really go up from here.”

  I kind of hope that’ll be the end of it, but Fyl’s looking at me, head cocked to the side. She’s suspicious. Maybe I overplayed my hand. “Alayne,” she asks, and I can tell she’s not sure if she even wants to finish the sentence. “Did you do that on purpose? To make me feel better?”

  “No, Fyl,” I say, patting her hand, “I’m really just that bad.”

  Desmond laughs, shaking his head, and Fyl smiles a little, too. “All right. Good. Then we can both be awful together.”

  She turns back to the front of the room, where two new students have taken the stage. It’s odd. I actually feel a pang of guilt lying to her. Which makes no sense because my very presence here is a lie to her, because she’s one of them, because she’s my enemy, because if she stands between me and my mission I’ll have to cut her down. But despite knowing all that, I still feel that pang.

  The worst part is, she doesn’t even know why I’m lying. Yes, I destroyed my Glyph on purpose. But it wasn’t to make her feel better.

  I shift back into my seat and feel them crinkle under my shirt. Four pages from the Codex Transcendent, pages I tore out when everyone was watching Aberdeen’s crystal. Four pages from the very back, where I’m sure the most powerful and forbidden Glyphs are. Four pages that are now mine.

  My social status at Blackwater couldn’t be lower. For days, everyone will gossip about what a disaster I am, how my Glyph blew up in my face, how I don’t deserve my Mark. Even the other Nethros will probably keep clear of me. But I don’t care. Because I’ve been here for just one day and I already stole four Glyphs from right under Magnus Aberdeen’s nose.

  These Wizards have no idea who they’re dealing with.

  CHAPTER 11

  Then

  I am twelve when I make my first kill.

  He’s a Humble, a City Watch recruit, maybe twenty years old. Our paths cross through pure bad luck. I’m rushing through the alleys of Hellsum with a crew of Revenants, fresh off a raid on a Wizard merchant’s warehouse. He’s on patrol, a lonely night shift, whistling to himself as he walks. We round a corner and see him, just as he sees us. There’s a moment as we all freeze up, a moment of stunned recognition that lasts an eternity.

  Whispers sent me on this raid because I’m small and nimble and I can use my magic to melt metal, all of which makes us perfect for a smash and grab. It was supposed to be quick, easy, risk-free. No one was supposed to know. No one was supposed to get hurt.

  The recruit reaches for his whistle.

  My hands move, whipping out my Loci, and I’m in the Null before I can even consider what I’m doing, before I can even think. Had I slowed down and considered, I might have hesitated, maybe let one of the other rebels try to knock him out. But I can’t think now, because everything’s happening too fast, because his whistle is halfway to his lips, because I’m doing what I’ve been trained to do.

  I carve fire and push.

  A lash of flame shrieks through the air like a whip, scorching the brick wall of the alley. One moment the recruit is there. And then he’s gone, this fresh-faced boy, with a nose covered in freckles and a wispy barely-there beard. The flame swallows him whole, and all that’s left is a charred husk.

  I don’t speak to anyone as we rush back to our safe house on the city’s outskirts, as we divvy up the loot, as we lock down and set up watch. Sera’s there waiting, and she tries to talk to me, and I shove her aside, unable to even look her in the eye. But that night, I wake up screaming, and Whispers is there to hold me.

  “I killed him,” I tell her, tears running down my cheeks, every word a jagged stone in my throat. “That city watchman. I killed him.”

  “You did,” Whispers says. We’re up in the loft of the farmhouse at the property’s edge, on a pile of soft hay, the pale moonlight streaking in through the cracks in the roof. “If he’d blown his whistle, he would’ve brought the rest of the guard down on all of you. You would’ve been caught. Tortured. Killed. You saved us, Alka. You saved us all.”

  “He wasn’t a Wizard,” I choke out, but there are so many feelings bursting through me it’s impossible to put them into words. “He was a Humble. Like you, like my mother, like Sera.” I’m sobbing now, and Whispers holds me tighter and tighter, enveloping me in her strong arms. “I killed a Humble! I’m no… no better than any other Wizard!”

  “No, my darling,” Whispers says, and she kisses me, actually kisses me on the forehead, which is more affection than she’s ever shown. It startles me enough that I stop crying, if only for a second. “What you did was preserve your mission. What you did was fight for our cause. What you did was the right thing.”

  “Our cause is fighting Wizards,” I whisper back. “Helping Humbles. Not killing them.”

  Whispers sighs deeply, pressing her forehead to mine. Her skin is cold but surprisingly soft, and for a fleeting second I can almost remember what my mother felt like. “Oh, sweet child,” she says. “I wish life were that simple.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “For as long as there have been oppressors, there have been collaborators. For as long as Wizards have terrorized, there have been Humbles who aided them. There will always be those who place their own comfort over the good of their people.” Whispers still holds me, but there’s a coldness in her voice, a blade unsheathed below. “That man today chose his fate. He could have sought us out. He could have stood with those fighting for liberation. Instead, he chose to aid the oppressors. He made his choice, Alka. And you did what you had to.”

  “Have you killed Humbles?” I weakly ask.

  “Yes,” she replies. “More than I can count.”

  “Will I have
to kill a Humble again?”

  “Yes,” she says, without hesitating. “Almost certainly. We’re at war. Wars have casualties. That’s the price we pay, the burden we take on. We stain our hands with blood so that others can live in peace.” With that she takes my hands in hers. “Do you understand, Alka? If anyone stands between you and our cause, cut them down.”

  “But what if—”

  “Alka.” She gazes at me, her hair silver in the moonlight, her lean features as cold and distant as a statue’s. “Do you understand what your cause demands of you?”

  “I do,” I say. I’m not entirely sure it’s the truth.

  CHAPTER 12

  Now

  I desperately want to dive into the stolen Codex pages, but I also want to not get exposed on my first day, so I have to bide my time. I stash the papers in my room and try to put them out of my mind through dinner, through the socializing hours after, through the long stretch of evening when I can still hear people doing their homework and puttering about. Only at three past midnight, when I’m sure it’s safe, do I dare take them out again, and then it’s just to tuck them back into my pocket and skulk into the hall.

  Even I’m not reckless enough to try forbidden magic in my room. The odds of this going wrong are incredibly high, and I can’t risk that there, where the walls are so thin I can hear my neighbor snoring. So I sneak down the hall instead, pacing lightly on the balls of my feet like Whispers taught me, silent as a ghost. I creep down the stairs and through the common area (where that giant Velkschen boy, Zigmund, is passed out on the couch) to a heavy door that leads down to the dormitory’s basement. There, down a narrow flight of stairs, are the practice rooms. Calfex walked us through them last night: six private, windowless rooms, their walls made of dense cold steel, imbued with powerful warding Glyphs of magic entrapment. No matter how badly a Glyph goes, the rooms will make sure to contain it. In theory, anyway.

  As novices, these are the only rooms where we’re allowed to practice magic, and even then, under strict parameters: rooms must be reserved with the Order head and can only be accessed exclusively during evening hours from six to ten, and all students must practice with one of the Order mentors, a trio of young Wizards who live on the upper floor of the dormitory and are here just to ensure we’re safe. To make sure the rules are followed, the heavy metal doors to the practice rooms are locked at all times.

  Which is why I swiped a key off a mentor the first chance I got.

  I unlock the first practice room and duck into it. It’s decently large, maybe three times the size of my bedroom, but being inside still feels like being trapped in a dungeon. Every surface is cold metal, lit up by a single lantern built into the ceiling that bathes the room in a pale yellow glow. I fight back a shudder as I close the door behind me, sealing myself in, and lay the pages on the floor.

  Right away, I realize I may be in over my head. For one thing, while the Glyphs are accompanied by instructions, they’re all written in Old Marovian, a language I’ve only heard in temple sermons and one that I very much cannot read. For another, out of the four Glyphs, two look impossibly complex, geometric puzzles made of dozens of interwoven lines requiring precision worlds beyond what I can do. Of the remaining two, one uses the hatched line of fire at its core, and there are a dozen skulls drawn on the page, which cannot be good. That means there’s just one of these I’ll even consider trying. My great win is already looking a lot more meager.

  I lay out the page and study it closely. The Glyph itself doesn’t look overly complex: a series of four circles, nesting within one another like an archery target. I’m pretty sure I can carve it, but it’s a little worrying that I have no idea what it’ll do. It’s a second form, which means that it’s used to guide the power of a base, like push or sphere or shield. I squint as hard as I can at the Old Marovian, hoping it’ll make sense, but it’s just a mess of squiggly lines and the few things that look like letters don’t spell anything.

  A part of me feels like I ought to just call it off and head back up to my room. But I’m not going to be able to best the likes of Marius Madison if I’m afraid to take some risks. And isn’t the whole point of this room to make practicing magic safe? What’s the worst that could happen?

  I tuck the pages back into my pocket. Then I draw my Loci, take a deep breath, ground my feet, and slip into the Null.

  Right away, I realize how powerful the room itself is. In the Real, it looks like a cold metal cell, but here in the Null, I can see Glyphs everywhere, dozens and dozens of them. Spells of containment, like the one Aberdeen used during the lecture. They glow all around me beyond the ash, complex shapes shining a dazzling gold, carved into every panel of the walls and ceiling and floor. This is the brightest I’ve ever seen the Null, the light of the Glyphs dancing off the usual flakes of gray, turning them into falling golden petals. It’s like being trapped in a field of stars. I’d never known the Null could be so beautiful.

  Feeling a little safer, I raise my Loci and carve. Aberdeen said Ice was the safest Glyph, so I take him at his word and cut that as my base. Then I raise my other arm and carve the second form, the Glyph from the page, circles within circles within circles. It glows a cold steely white in front of me, and I can’t help but smile. First try.

  I slip back into the Real.

  Right away, I realize I’ve done something wrong.

  The air in front of me, where the Glyph ought to be, is flickering, like light from a candle blowing in the wind, like sparks of lightning in a storm. I hear crackling ice, but I smell burning instead and something else, like blood on metal. The little hairs on my arms stand on end and a horrible curdling feeling twists my stomach.

  I jerk back, and it appears floating before me, a single crystal of ice, no bigger than my first. Then a little branch shoots off it, then another, then another, all cold blue and jagged, tiny icicles stabbing through the air. It’s like frost growing on a windowpane, like glass cracking, but the glass is the world itself. This mass of ice expands, each offshoot crackling into its own offshoots, a spiderweb growing across the room, and growing fast.

  I don’t know what I’ve done here, but I don’t have to know that something very bad will happen if one of those jagged spokes touches me. I jerk away, and just in time, because the web has doubled in size, as big as me, and it’s growing and growing, a crystalline structure of jagged blue, an impossible fractal of interconnected lattices, and the room is so cold all of a sudden, the air so thin I can’t breathe, and I know with absolute certainty that if I stay in this room I’m going to die.

  I stumble back, grab the doorknob behind me, throw open the heavy steel slab, and tumble out into the hallway. Not a moment too soon, because the crystalline mass has filled up the entire room now, massive, frozen, pulsing with magical energy. I wince, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to cover this up, and then the sharpest furthermost spoke stabs into the practice room’s wall.

  The structure trembles, shudders, flaring with tendrils of golden light that lash through it like blood through veins.

  Then it crumbles instantly, shattering into nothingness. The spokes, the lattices, they all break like glass. The feeling of wrongness, the pulsing of energy, the curdle in my stomach, they’re all gone. The Glyphs I carved are gone. All that’s left is a hundred thousand chunks of slowly melting ice, scattered over the practice room’s floor.

  It’s a long time before I move. I just lie there on my hands, staring, panting. On the bright side, those containment Glyphs really do work. On the downside, I feel like my heart exploded in my chest. I’m in so far over my head. I have no idea what I’m doing. I—

  The thought sputters and dies. Because as I pull myself up to my feet I see someone, a figure standing at the end of the hall, a girl, staring at me.

  Marlena.

  Her eyes are wide, her jaw hanging open, and before I can do anything, before I can even think about doing anything, she runs my way. “Are you all right, my lady?” she
asks as she slides up to my side.

  “I’m fine,” I stammer, trying to come up with some way to possibly explain this. “I was just—see, I—a Glyph—and I mean—”

  Marlena turns to look into the practice room, where the last vestiges of ice are melting away, and I see the moment recognition dawns. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she says. “These rooms are locked at night. You broke in.” Then her eyes drift down to the floor between us and I follow her gaze and die inside. There it is. The page from the Codex, the Glyph I’d tried to carve. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I tumbled out of the room, and it’s just lying there, crumpled, unmistakable.

  “Is that from the headmaster’s book?” Marlena whispers. “How did you get…” and she doesn’t have to finish the sentence, because she’s already guessed how, and she’s maybe just realized how serious this situation is. Breaking into the practice room is bad, but it’s a transgression that could be forgiven. Ripping a page out of the Codex is unforgivable.

  The weight of the moment hits both of us like a wave, freezing us in our tracks. I can’t believe it. For all my efforts, I’ve been caught already. If Marlena tells Professor Calfex about this, it’s all over. I’ll be arrested. I’ll be tried. I’ll be dead by the end of the week.

  I wanted to help Marlena. I had vowed to protect her. To save her. But right now, she’s the biggest threat to me on this entire island.

  I know what I have to do. I know what Whispers would want me to do. I know what the mission demands. My hand flits down to my Loci, sliding into my palm behind my back. I could do it so easily. We’re the only ones down here. I could grab her and pull her back into the room, slit her throat, and hold her still as she bleeds out. I’d burn her body with a Fire Glyph, and dump the ash into the ocean. She’d just be a Humble who disappeared. No one would ever know.