[The Elustria Chronicles 03.0] Magic Betrayed

by Caethes Faron

  “We just received new intelligence, and it takes priority over everything else. I don’t know how many people in the CCS Calista’s willing to bring into this, so until she gets here, it’s just us.”

  Darian stood. “I respect Calista, but I fear Thaddeus. If I don’t get this intelligence report on his desk before he gets back from the Council meeting, he'll kill me.”

  “Darian, sit down!” I didn’t know Lilibet had that tone in her repertoire. “Kat and I were just in the Council meeting. Sorcerers have gone missing, and one turned up dead without his magic.”

  “What?” Priya asked as Darian resumed his seat.

  “That’s right. What remained of his magic had been corrupted. Given the precarious nature of our relationship with the sorcerers, this might be what takes it over the edge. If they think mages can steal their magic, there’d be little reason for them to not go to war with us.”

  “They'll believe what they want to believe.” Darian shrugged. “There’s no way for us to prove a negative. And anyway, this is more of a job for analysts.”

  “Darian, right now you’re serving as both Kat’s shadow and as our field agent. If you’d like, I can make the shadow thing permanent and find a different field agent.” She stared at Darian until he appeared chastised and it was clear his lips would remain shut in a firm line. “And you’ve got it wrong, Darian, as you have most things. Maybe you would’ve been assigned to a more exciting post if you’d keep quiet and listen more. The Directorate has been working on how to steal magic from sorcerers. This knowledge has been kept on a need-to-know basis, but it appears they’ve made quite a leap forward.”

  “Is there any chance we can get the remains of the sorcerer?” Priya asked.

  My first instinct was to recoil at such a request. It seemed morbid, but Priya was smart. If we could have access to the body, we could examine what was done to the magic. Of course, any examination we did would fall short of the one the sorcerers performed. Their knowledge of magic, as much as we hated to admit it, went further than our own. While they appeared as human as we did, their physiology was different because magic ran through their veins like blood. I wondered how different my physiology was.

  “That hasn’t been discussed yet. This is all just happening, but I wouldn’t expect that the sorcerers will give us access,” Lilibet said.

  “So we’re just supposed to trust what the sorcerers tell us?” Darian asked, incredulous.

  “I’m not going to tell you to trust what they tell us, no, but I am telling you that what they’re telling us is all we have right now.”

  “We have nothing other than the word of a sorcerer saying that one of their own was found dead missing some of his magic.” This time, Darian kept his attitude out of it. Despite appearances, he was a good agent, and I knew he’d do his best on this case. Lilibet picked him for a reason.

  “We also know it happened near the Cushing Sea, or at least that’s where they recovered the body. We’ve noticed more activity there as of late,” Lilibet said. Then she directed her attention to me. “Kat, you may be in more danger now than you were before. I know you hate all the restrictions placed on you, but I need you to be extra vigilant. If the Directorate gets to you, I don’t know what they’ll do. Even if you don’t have any valuable information to give them, that may not stop them from coming after you.”

  “What does this have to do with her?” Darian asked, furrowing his brow. He was letting his dislike of me color his judgment. All he saw was the new favorite being doted on. He forgot who my mother was, if he even knew. Come to think of it, I doubted he did.

  “Her mother was researching how to steal magic,” Lilibet snapped. “They may think Kat has more knowledge to give them.” She looked at me. “Is there anything you know that could be useful to them?”

  The moment of truth…or not. If I was honest and said yes, I would need to divulge what information I had to them, which would reveal I’d been keeping secrets this entire time. Given the situation we were in, who knew what would happen then. I didn’t know how to answer that question in the affirmative without also revealing I was a pidge using my father’s magic. If I did that, they’d bench me for sure, if not kick me out of the CCS altogether. And then what? I wouldn’t be able to help on this investigation. I wouldn’t be able to set right the wrongs my mother had done. Besides, anything I said could potentially get back to the mole.

  “I don’t know what they know. In all my time with Casper, it never came up. As far as I knew, my mother kept her research secret from the Directorate. Sibelius is the only person I spoke with who knew anything about it, and he’s dead. His knowledge would’ve been much more beneficial to them. During the last months of his life, when he was looking for me, he worked closely with the Directorate. He told me he didn’t work for them and wasn't aligned with them, but there’s no telling what kind of information he might have given them. He’d gone crazy at the end there. If he told them everything he knew, then from what I know of him and my mother, I’m not surprised this happened.” It was as close to the truth as I could get.

  “Keep racking your brain for anything that might be useful. It wouldn't surprise me if our security level is raised when Thaddeus and Calista finish with the emissary. Did your mother leave behind any writings about the Cushing Sea or anything that would give you a hint as to why they were there?”

  “No.” That was easy. The only explanation I could give for the Directorate being at the Cushing Sea was to get the clay to build golems. I didn’t know if Lilibet knew that much about golem magic, and the only way I could was by breaking into section five of the library. This was the problem with lies: once you told one, you had to tell so many more. It never stopped at one.

  “For a sorcerer to come to the Citadel like this is an unprecedented step,” Lilibet said. “The mission of the CCS is to keep the peace. That mission has never been tried this hard before. If we don’t contain this, catch those responsible, then we’ll be at war with the sorcerers. It has never been more important for you to be good at what you do. If it were up to me, I’d have every agent in the CCS assigned to this, but I don’t know how Calista and Thaddeus want to proceed. So for now, it’s just you.”

  Wait a minute. “What about Kellan? Is Darian going to be my shadow permanently?”

  “No, Kellan should be coming. Once he gets here, he’ll resume his work as your shadow and also be on the team.” Lilibet stood. “I’m going back to the Citadel to see if the Council needs me. Get to work. We’ll need every bit of information we have about the Directorate’s operations at the Cushing Sea and anything we can find that appears to be about stealing magic. This could very well be the Directorate’s endgame.” Right before Lilibet opened the door, she turned back to Darian. “Try to keep her alive and contribute something to the team, Darian. This is the case of your career.”

  Once the door shut behind her, Darian released a breath. “What’s her problem?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not you. She’s under a lot of stress. I’ve never seen the Council that unsettled. If this doesn’t go right, they'll blame her. But she wouldn’t have put you on the case if she didn’t have faith in your abilities. It’s too important. She thinks you’re the best man for the job.” I reached over and rested my hand on his arm to offer reassurance. Sure, he’d been an asshole to me from day one, but he didn’t deserve the dressing down Lilibet had given him. She would’ve never done it had she not been so worried.

  “Thanks,” Darian mumbled. He pulled his arm out from underneath my hand and sat up straighter. “So where do we start?”

  Twenty

  The door to the mission room crashed opened to reveal Kellan panting for breath. “I got here as fast as I could. What’s going on?”

  “It’s nice of you to finally join us. Trying to get a little beauty sleep?” Darian jeered.

  “Don’t mind him, he’s just salty because Lilibet snapped at him.” I gestured to the seat next to
me, and while Kellan still appeared upset at me, and I couldn’t blame him, he wasn’t about to turn it away in the face of Darian’s taunting.

  “Have you been briefed at all?” Priya asked.

  “No, I was just given orders to come back down here, that it was urgent. I thought it had something to do with me being Kat’s shadow.”

  “It’s more than that,” Priya said.

  Feeling like I should be the one to explain since I’d been in the Council chamber and my mother was responsible for all of this, I turned to Kellan. “A sorcerer was found dead and his magic had been tampered with. It appears it had been drained from his body.”

  “Shit.” Kellan sat back in his chair. “Mages aren’t capable of doing anything like that. Why are they bringing us into it?”

  “Oh, apparently the Directorate has figured out how to do it. And Kat here knew the entire time,” Darian said.

  Kellan turned a betrayed look on me. “You knew the Directorate was capable of this and didn’t tell anyone?”

  “No, the Council knew. My mother was working on figuring out how to drain a sorcerer of their magic. As far as I knew, she wasn’t sharing her knowledge with the Directorate.” The betrayal in Kellan’s eyes receded but not completely. It was only a taste of what I’d see if I revealed the entire truth. I wouldn’t be easily forgiven. I could only hope I’d be able to complete my mission, uncover the mole, and stop the Directorate from carrying out their ambitions to make more talismans. Hopefully accomplishing all that would make my betrayal more palatable.

  “It doesn’t matter who knew what when,” Priya said. “What matters is that we’ve been tasked with figuring this out. The body was discovered near the Vortex on the shore of the Cushing Sea. We know there’s been recent activity there. We need to comb through all those mission reports and look at them with new eyes.”

  Priya turned to Darian who threw up his hands. “Oh no, I’m a field agent. I don’t do paperwork.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, feeling generous, especially since Lilibet had treated him so unfairly. “I’ve gotten used to paperwork. Kellan and I can go down to the crypt and see what we can find. You might want to liaison with the station out there and see if they know anything about a body. Come up with a plan for going into the field yourself, Darian. Until we get word, we have to assume that they’re not going to tell anyone else about this. We'll have to gather any new intelligence ourselves, which means going to the Cushing Sea.”

  “I have access to all the mission reports for the past six months from my orb, so just look for anything older than that,” Priya said.

  “Do we think the proximity to the Vortex is crucial to this or just coincidental?” Kellan asked.

  If the Vortex were vital to draining the sorcerer and containing their magic into a talisman, it would have appeared in my mother’s notes. She spent much of her time on Earth, and I didn’t think she would’ve traveled back and forth from the Cushing Sea and not made any mention of it in her journals or notes. I’d never even seen the Vortex mentioned. “I think it’s coincidental or perhaps meant to deliberately throw us off course.”

  “What makes you say that?” Priya asked.

  This was where it got tricky. I couldn’t exactly say, “Oh, I perfectly recall my mother’s notes and there’s no mention of the Vortex in them.” So I settled on, “There’s nothing about the Vortex or the Cushing Sea that could influence or help such a procedure.”

  “Oh, so you’re an expert now at taking a sorcerer’s magic? Good to know,” Darian scoffed.

  “No.” Even though I was more of an expert than anyone in the room, I kept that secret to myself. “But I have taken an interest in studying the Vortex seeing as I’m the only one in this room who’s been threatened with banishment. I don’t see how it could possibly make a difference. I think the Directorate left the body there knowing the sorcerers would find it. We know their goal is to provoke a war.” The sorcerers kept the Vortex in balance, which meant a body that close to it could only go a day or two without being found.

  Understanding dawned. It came to me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, but I could tell by the calm expressions around me that no one else had figured it out yet. I wondered if Thaddeus and Calista had. “Which means they’ve been more successful than we think.”

  “What do you mean?” Priya asked.

  “The Directorate wants war with the sorcerers, but they’re not stupid. They may be arrogant, but I doubt they’re arrogant enough to think mages can win an all-out war. Perhaps if the sorcerers weren’t fully committed, we could prevail in a few battles, but they have to know that if word got out that a mage can steal a sorcerer’s magic, the sorcerers would commit every resource they have to defeating us. There’s no way we’d win a war like that. It’s why the Council and the CCS are working so hard to maintain the peace. The Directorate wouldn’t provoke this unless they knew something we don’t.”

  “And what’s that?” Priya asked.

  “They’ve been successful. They’ve managed to steal a sorcerer’s magic. There is a Directorate operative out there somewhere with that sorcerer’s magic in a talisman. I’m sure of it.” It made sense. I knew my mother had created other talismans. The Directorate may have found them. Perhaps they thought that was enough to give them an edge with the sorcerers, but it couldn’t be. Were they that foolish? Would they provoke a war with such limited resources? No, I had to believe they were further along in the process than any of us thought. Despite the efforts Meglana had taken to keep her work secret, the Directorate had figured out the procedure.

  I could tell from the faces looking back at me that my theory made sense. They stared at me, processing the implication. Priya was the first to move.

  “Well then, we need to get to work. Darian and I will go through all the reports that haven't been archived yet. You and Kellan go down to the crypt to see what you can find there. We’ll call you as soon as we have an idea who from the Directorate was there around the time the sorcerer was killed. That might give us some clues.”

  We were in for a long night.

  Twenty-One

  When the door to the mission room shut behind us, tension sprang up between me and Kellan. Our temporary alliance in the face of Darian’s asshole behavior evaporated. I needed to make things right with him.

  “Kellan, can we stop a second?” I stopped walking, and he took a few steps before deciding to do the same.

  “What is it?” He clearly did not want to talk to me.

  The weight of his expectant gaze made me shift uncomfortably, but I had to do this. My discomfort was from my own behavior. Losing my temper with him had embarrassed me. “I’m sorry for earlier. I was upset, and it wasn’t fair to take it out on you. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I know. I’ll control my temper in the future. I promise.” I begged him with my eyes to forgive me. Kellan would perform his job as my shadow well no matter our personal relationship, but I needed his friendship.

  After a few moments, his face softened. “You know, we all just want what’s best for you.”

  “See, that’s where the trouble is. I’ve grown unaccustomed to having people care.”

  “I’ll always care. Maybe you should spend more time with your fellow agents outside of work. There’s no one outside this place you can talk to the way you can us. We’re family out of necessity if not by choice.”

  It had been so long since I’d had a family that calling on people wasn’t second nature anymore. I had Millhook and Alex, but I didn’t rely on them as much as I should. I couldn’t rely on anyone in the CCS, not until this business with the mole was worked out, which was more reason for me to redouble my efforts. The sooner the mole was exposed, the sooner I could take what Kellan and the other CCS agents offered.

  “You’re right. Maybe we can start again. Besides, it’ll be easier once this is al
l over and I’m assigned to Earth. It’ll be nice to have a somewhat permanent home.”

  “You're going to be a hit on Earth. Most of the agents there are as enthralled with the planet as I am. Your knowledge will be put to better use there.”

  I came so close to telling him the truth of why I wanted to be assigned to Earth. It was where my mother had likely hidden any other talismans she had made. I was in too deep now. Too many lies had been told. Existing talismans weren’t the priority. We had Directorate operatives on the loose killing sorcerers, draining their magic, and leaving their bodies where they could easily be found, probably to provoke outrage. “So we’re good now?”

  Kellan smiled and nodded. “Yeah, we’re good.” Then he shook his head as he resumed walking toward the rings at the end of the hall.

  Down in the crypt, the guardian’s shocked eye greeted us, and she croaked, “What do you want?”

  “We’re just doing some research, Ess. Nothing for you to worry about. I promise we won’t touch anything we’re not supposed to,” Kellan said as he drifted right past her. I shrugged my shoulders at her as I passed, and Kellan walked all the way to the farthest table in the back. “I don’t know what her problem is. What does she think we’re doing down here?”

  “In her mind, we probably all want to ransack the place,” I said as I sat. “Where do you want to start? I think we should look up all the activity around the Cushing Sea for the last year and send any names or imprints we find back to Priya. She can see if anything cross-references with more recent activity. What do you think?”

  Kellan stared over my shoulder at the guardian, and I turned to see what held his attention. She was berating some poor soul bringing down material to be archived. I turned back to Kellan. “Just ignore her.”

  “I have a better idea. Didn’t you want a list of all the CCS personnel to investigate who rigged your trials? Process of elimination and all that?”