Two years ago I was slopping hogs back at my Dad's farm, and look at me now: on the roof of the Governor's 'scraper. Should have left them years ago.
There was no changing the past. But it didn't stop him from fantasizing about it. If only he had accepted the inevitable, that his older brother would inherit the farm someday. Not him. But no. he had to hang around, being useful, thinking that somehow they would split the land, that Helmut would see his way clear to letting him in for a share of his inheritance.
Well, fat chance of that. He blew out smoke and watched it whirl away in the evening breeze. Like his future: dust in the wind.
Xander had told him there was still a chance he could become a wizard. Had the old man really meant it? Or had he just used Kurt's hopes to recruit him as a guard and general errand boy for the School?
The wizard had said that exposure to the Gifts might still increase Kurt's chances of becoming trainable. It had seemed plausible at the time. But when would he get that exposure? Hopping up and down the stairs carrying messages? Strolling around the floors while the students busied themselves practicing their magic? Or would it be when he was smoking up here on the roof feeling sorry for himself?
He coughed and spat into the wind. That's me, nothin' but a gob of spit in the wind. But isn't everyone? A hundred years from now, none of this would matter. The buildings and the wind would still be here, but he would be gone. Xander would be gone. The students would be gone. Even the school might be gone.
Didn't keep him from wishing he was part of it.
The sound of the stairwell door opening interrupted his musings. Turning, he saw it was Kaleb. So he wasn't the only one not sleeping tonight. Kurt flicked the cigarette butt out into the arms of the wind and turned. “You can't sleep either?”
“Not yet. You got another one of those?”
“Yeah.” Kurt just looked at him. “I didn't know you smoked.”
Kaleb pulled a sour face. “The caravan boss Trent introduced me to it. I've been trying to quit but you know how it is. Sometimes you just have to have one to quiet the nerves. Can you spare one? Dunno if I can sleep unless I get a fix.”
“Sure.” Turning his back to the wind, Kurt dug out his pouch of tobacco and a couple of rolling papers. “But you'll have to find someone for a light. I brought the one I was smoking up here already lit.” Deftly, he rolled them each a cancer stick.
Kaleb cracked an easy smile. “Well that's where we're in luck. I lifted an everflame from school supplies. They'll never miss it.” He pulled a coin out of a pocket and stroked the side of it, making the little mote of light and heat appear an inch off the side of it bearing the General's silhouette. They both ignited their smokes and said nothing for a minute or two, savoring the flavor of them.
“So how'd you get the job of guarding the school?” Kaleb asked him, clearly curious. “Was it some kind of punishment?”
“No,” Kurt told him. “I asked for it.” He explained about what Xander had told him about exposure to the Gifts. “Don't know that it's doing me any good, though.”
The student took another drag on his cigarette. “You never know. If it works, it'll probably take time, be a gradual thing.” he paused, as if an idea had only then occurred to him. “You know, maybe I could help you, when I'm not busy. Unofficially.”
Kurt eyed him. “How?”
“Well, I could hang out with you, let you play with the artifacts they let me handle. You know, increase your exposure.”
Kurt felt a surge of hope, then cursed himself for a fool. Xander and Lester, they'd never let the magic stuff out of their sight for long. But it was a chance. Another slim chance.
“In return for what? I got nothing to share with you in return.”
Kaleb took another drag before answering. “Oh come on, you know better than that. Unless I'm mistaken you've got a hip flask in your back pocket. Am I right? Saw it when I came out here, before you turned around.”
Kurt glanced around the rooftop, but the one guy watching for light-shutter messages on the opposite corner of the roof seemed to be ignoring them. “Well, I'm off duty.”
“Our robes are easier for hiding things than those leather trousers of yours. But they can be draftier, too, in a breeze like this. How about a swig for the cold?”
Kurt surrendered the flask and watched the younger man tilt it up for a swallow of the firewater. “I thought you wizards had ways of keeping warm.”
“Who, me? I'm just a beginner, just a student.”
Yeah right. The student must not have taken much of a swallow, because when he thrust the flask back at Kurt a little of the whiskey sloshed and wet the front of Kurt's shirt. “Shit, man, be careful with that! It's four dollars of my pay I'll never see again.”
“Sorry.”
Kurt realized he was still holding his cig with his other hand. He cursed and stubbed it out on the railing, then slipped the flask back into his pocket. “Perfect. Now I have to go down to the laundry and change this shirt before anyone smells the booze on it.”
Kaleb's face was a study in penitence. “I said I was sorry. Look, here, you can keep the everflame, okay? I'll tell them I lost it. It'll give you something to increase your exposure.”
“Yeah, whatever.” He pocketed it. “See you later.”
Kaleb was looking at him strangely. “Maybe.”
What was that about? thought Kurt. Never mind, he needed to change the shirt before he forgot. He strode over to the stairwell and yanked open the door. As he turned to hurry down the steps he saw Kaleb kicking a rock toward the door, but there was no time to ask why.
Pounding down the stairs, he was actually glad the guy had done it. The air rising up the stairwell to escape through the roof door was warm, but it kept him from sweating.
By the time he realized his clothes were on fire, it was already too late.
Chapter 65
Lester: accidentally on purpose
Did Xander ever sleep? He must have been up late reading. How else did he get here before me? Lester watched the older wizard poking the soggy but charred remains of the guard and tried not to gag at the stench in the stairwell. “What happened?”
“If you ask me,” said Xander, sniffing the air and nudging a metal hip flash out of the mess with one boot, “it was whiskey, a cigarette, and eventually, a bucket of water, too late to help him.”
“That was me, sir,” said a young guard. “I heard him screaming, and when I ran up to the landing he was rolling on the floor trying to put the flames out. I grabbed one of the buckets we keep filled for emergencies, but by the time I got back to him it was too late. Poor bastard.” The guard's eyes were wet. “Burning's a terrible way to go. Should I get Daniels?”
“Let the doctor sleep. Nothing he can do here.” Xander rubbed his chin, thinking. That's two accidents on the stairs now.”
“You sure about that?” Lester asked him, seeing a wisp of steam begin to curl up from the body. He reached down and groped for a moment, then pulled a coin out of the remains, holding it by the edge. “Because I think it was no accident.” It was dark enough in the stairwell to just make out a faint red mote hovering in the air above the coin. “I think he had this in his pocket and didn't know it was still turned on.” Xander stared at it in silence.
“Come on,” Lester told him, leading the way back upstairs to their quarters. “There's something I should have shown you earlier.” When they got there he went to his bed, reached under it, then took Xander's hand and put something cold in it. Something invisible.
“What's this?”
“One of our swizzle pipes, with an invisibility weave on it.”
“Why'd you make it invisible?”
“I didn't. I found it in the stairwell after my own 'accident'. I think someone left it there for me to trip over. Whoever it was didn't want to risk me seeing it.”
He half expected Xander to say it was a crazy idea, but the older man just nodded, lips pressed thin by anger. “But who? Do we h
ave a wizard infiltrator?”
“What, you mean, like Ludlow? I don't think so. Look.” Lester lifted the pipe and turned it this way and that, showing Xander how the cloaking wasn't perfect from all sides. “See that? I think old Ludlow would have done a better job than this.”
Xander sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his eyes. “You're saying it was one of the students?”
Lester began to pace. “Who else? But who and why? I'd rule out Carolyn, but the other three are all from other countries – Texas, Californ, and the Emirates. They can all do the invisibility weave by now, and any one of them might have been sent here with a hidden agenda.”
He could see Xander processing that. “That might explain what happened to you,” Xander said slowly, “but whoever the guard was, he was no wizard. Not even a student. Why kill him?”
Lester kept pacing. “That's a tough one,” he admitted. “If we were on the ground level, I'd say it was a diversion to help someone else sneak into the building. But we're dozens of floors up.”
“Well then, maybe it was an accident.”
Lester stopped pacing as another idea occurred to him. “He really burned up, as if someone was fanning the flames.” He looked at Xander. “I'll bet I can prove it was deliberate.” He turned and strode out the door. “Come on!”
Xander followed him back to the stairwell, and Lester surprised him. Instead of heading down to the body, he raced up to the roof. “Just as I thought,” he said, and pointed down at the corner of the door, propped open by a rock wedged in just right.
Chapter 66
Kristana: a necessary deception
“Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.”
– Golda Meir
Spring came nearer every day, but you could still see your breath at night. Gazing out the window of her inner office, the Governor of Rado felt colder than the morning air outside.
Duty goes both ways, up and down the chain of command. In the grim business of war, men die, but at least you know, if you are doing your job as their commander, that their deaths serve a higher purpose. Whether riding down lonesome trails or charging into battle, her soldiers knew full well that the arrow or sword of an enemy might end their careers. But that was part of the job.
Burning to death in a stairwell was not part of the job.
The door behind her opened and her two wizards filed in. She watched a crow land on a shorter building across the street. “Tell me what you know.”
Xander spoke up first. “It wasn't an accident, although it might be best if we explain it that way, for now.”
Now she spun to face them. “Best? A man is dead...and you want me to lie to my troops about it? In what world is that best?”
“In the world of the killer,” said Lester. “We have more of a chance of his making a mistake if he doesn't know that we know it was deliberate.”
She collapsed into her chair and regarded him. “Do we know that it was? Deliberate?”
Xander nodded, his face grim. “Someone spilled whiskey on his clothes, slipped him an everflame that was still putting out heat, and propped open the roof door to ensure an updraft on the stairs to fan the flames.” He looked at the floor for a moment, then continued. “The everflame we found on his body was turned down low, but not off. It must have taken half a minute or more to ignite the fumes. The killer wanted time to leave the roof.”
She put her face in her hands. “Did anyone see anything?”
“The message sentry on the roof, Simon, says he saw him talking to someone.” He paused. “Someone in a gray robe.”
She digested that. “Any of those robes missing?”
“No, I thought of that, but but your tailors haven't made many yet, and I keep the spares in my quarters. I wish I could say someone swiped one, but no. They're all accounted for.”
She rose and turned to the window again. “So it was one of the students. But why?”
“One of the male students,” said Xander. “Simon would have remembered someone as attractive as Carolyn. As to why they did it, well, it wasn't because of any grudge. Kurt had only been guarding the school for two days.”
“Can we stop dancing around the obvious?” Lester said. “Someone wants us to shut down the school. Whoever their agent is, at first they tried to get lucky with me. Wen I survived, they decided that killing non-wizards would get your troops riled against having wizard in your building.”
“I'm afraid he's right,” Xander said. “Could be the TCC, but my money's on Angeles or someone in the Emirates.”
“At least you only have three suspects, then.” She turned back to face them. “Maybe I should lock them all up, until we know which one did it, just to be on the safe side.”
Xander scowled. “That's exactly what you shouldn't do. We have to keep this quiet until we know more. Making student wizards look like criminals sends the wrong message to everyone. You'd be confirming soldier prejudices and scaring future students away.”
“So I'm supposed to just shrug it off as an accident?”
“No, not just shrug it off.” Xander sighed. “I hate deception as much as you do, but I think the best course of action is to announce it as an accident and use it as an excuse for safety lectures.” He rubbed his chin. “Another troubling question is what to do with the killer when we catch him.”
She stared at Xander. He couldn't possibly be asking for leniency just because it was a student! “That's obvious. Either we get a confession or hold a quick trial, then a public execution.” Her eyes narrowed. “We could even make the punishment fit the crime.”
“What, burn him at the stake?” Xander seemed horrified at the idea. “I get that you want him to suffer, but we're not barbarians. That would make us no better then him.”
“Fine, then hanging it is.” When she saw him start to open his mouth she cut him off. “No prison sentences for murderers. Not on my watch.”
“I wasn't going to argue,” he said. “But until we know for sure, this has to stay between the three of us.”
Chapter 67
Kareef: “...and a practice for every one of you”
“We have appointed a law and a practice for every one of you. Had God willed, He would have made you a single community...”
– Quran 5:48
He glared at the length of pipe in his hands. It was bad enough that Xander let a woman study magic. After his initial shock of seeing her, in those disturbingly clinging clothes of her, he had tried to make his peace with it. Different lands, different customs. He supposed in a country ruled by a woman, it would be hard for the wizard to refuse at least one female student.
However, now she was making him, Kareef, look like a fool! It came as no surprise that she was able to master the invisibility trick before him. She had been working on it longer. But then she had solved the swizzle test, shortly after Xander's demonstration with the smoke ring. That rankled. Bad enough to share a class with a female, but to lag behind her? Intolerable!
He had tried imagining smoke rings traveling down the pipe, to no avail. What was he missing? It could not be that hard if a woman had solved it.
“Listen up.” The junior wizard, Lester was addressing them again. Kareef set the pipe down and watched him. The teacher was barely older than Kareef himself, and yet according to Qusay, few of the Order back East could make a swizzle as this young man already could do.
“I have some announcements to make. As you know, this school is just getting started. No one we know of has ever set up a school like this before, so we'll be making changes from time to time as we learn new things.
“The first change we're making is uniforms. Our first thought about clothing for wizards was to have everyone wear gray robes, but we're changing that. In a couple of days you'll all be issued white robes. Yes?”
Carolyn had raised her hand. “Won't white get dirty faster?”
“Probably. But some of you won't be wearing white long. Whe
n you've made enough progress, you'll be back in gray.”
Lester turned slowly to look at each of them. “We've decided to make wizardry a guild, like blacksmithing, doctoring, leather working, and the other professions.” He brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Apprentices like you will wear white robes. Once you have learned all we can teach you about pathspace and are ready for other things, you'll graduate to journeymen and put on the gray to become teachers like me. Xander will be our master wizard, and he'll be wearing black. Yes, Esteban?”
“From what I understand about the guilds, journeymen aren't considered proficient enough to teach until they complete their master piece. After they are accepted as Masters, then they are allowed to teach, but not before that.”
“You're right. Someday we'll have exactly the same rules. For now, however, since the school will be growing, we'll soon be needing more teachers than we have. By the old rules, technically, I'm only a journeyman myself. But Xander can't be spending all of his time teaching you, so that falls on me.”
“Are you saying we all have to stay here and become teachers?” Esteban asked. “Is that the price for our training?”
“I'm not saying that, no. This isn't a prison. You're all free to go home at any time. If you stay, however, and progress all the way to the black robe, then you'll have a choice. You can stay here and continue teaching and helping Xander and me with research, or you can leave and start your own schools if you want.”
“Why do we need more schools?” Carolyn asked.
“Because we're going to change the world. Do any of you know why the civilization of the Ancients fell? It fell because we had no wizards. Xander prefers to call us 'psionic engineers' but either way, the fact was that we couldn't keep the Gifts of the Tourists going, and that's what crashed us.”
Esteban raised his hand. “But the Ancients had an advanced civilization before the aliens came. Can't we just do it again as we did before?”
Spinspace: The Space of Spins (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 2) Page 22
