by K. Gorman
Magic.
She’d heard that Mages could stop bullets, too.
Her jaw tightened again, and she forced herself past it. The track changed on her player, the subway’s boom rising in the seconds’ silence between songs. She kept walking.
By the time she stopped, the gates were gone, along with the mid-morning crowd. The stores on either side were closed, their advertisements six months expired. She took her headphones off, hearing the tail end of a far-off announcement snake up the tunnel. Tinny-sounding music blasted from her neck.
The stone sides of the memorial’s outer archway matched its inner pillars, carved to look like thick, twisted rope. A hundred threads marked their surface. At the top, the cross-piece was formed of carved branches stemming across the arch.
The dim light danced inside. She saw the first of the monsters glare out from the dark. From behind her came the echoes of people, the screech and bang and howl of arriving trains, the loudspeakers that coordinated them.
Ahead of her, the memorial was silent.
She stepped inside. As she passed the arch, darkness fell around her like a curtain. The air thickened, the stone walls closed in. Quiet hushed her every step.
Soon, she heard the sound of water.
Her music jarred with the peace. She turned it off, taking her time. She had lots of it.
Orange light shone on the wall up ahead, and she paused. What was she doing? Shouldn’t she be avoiding places like memorials?
Her hand clenched in her pocket.
God, this is probably the worst place for me to be.
But avoiding things hadn’t worked so far.
She followed the curve into the main room. There, she paused, feeling her mouth tighten into a grim line.
There were a lot of names.
Emotion dragged at her eyes. The room burned into a bright orange haze. She turned her mind away from that aspect of the memorial, trying to focus on its workings rather than what it represented.
It had to be magic. The words burned like neon, except they weren’t confined to a tube. As she watched, the characters fluctuated, moving through shades of red-yellow-orange like glowing embers. One briefly combusted before returning into a spider-thread-thin line of text.
Their Cyrillic shape was familiar. Her mother had tried to teach her the Russian alphabet once, part of her family’s legacy, but she’d run out of time. Uncle Alexei had promised to pick up where she’d left off, but she doubted he could keep his word. Her mother’s death had hit them all hard.
Her throat closed on the memory. She pulled out another tissue, brought it to her face, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her jaw gritted closed. The tissue dampened silently.
A minute passed. It took a couple of tries to get the room into clear focus again. Her right hand followed the wall, feeling the stone etching bump underneath her touch. The wall glowed above her.
At least, no one else was here.
She had been to Terremain’s memorial, where her mother’s name was carved into black marble and inlaid with gold. Her mother hadn’t been the last on the list. There had been others below her, and a lot of blank space under that. Mieshka remembered staring at that emptiness, seeing her reflection in the polished stone. Her father had stood to her left, a tense hand on her shoulder, and her uncle to her right. They’d all looked dead in the marble. A grim family portrait that was missing her mother.
She closed her eyes, grounded herself, counted to ten. Afterward, she leaned against the wall. A monster, some kind of tree spirit with scratching claws and pointed teeth, dug into her side, and her backpack pressed into her shoulders. She pinched the tissue to her nose. When she blew, its snotty echo bounced about the room, sounding immature and unexpected against the memorial’s sombre atmosphere.
She almost laughed, but the burning light was too sobering for that.
There were a lot of names. None she knew. None she could even read. These people had died in another world, four years before she had been born. These weren’t her ghosts.
She shrugged her backpack off her shoulder, slid it down her arm, and slumped it next to a pillar. The light of ten thousand burning names moved across her skin. She joined the backpack, stretching her feet down the steps that led to the center. Pulling out another tissue, she leaned against the pillar’s smooth, square base.
Her head ached. Memories swarmed within it. She closed her eyes. Through her eyelids, she saw the glow. She crumpled the tissue in her hand and put it on the floor next to her.
She had a lot of time to kill.
*
After a while, Mieshka began to hear beeps. A headache settled into her left temple with a slow throb. Her breath was ragged, nose stuffed, eyes dry and itchy. She rested her forehead on her knee, hoping the sound would go away.
Instead, it grew louder. She heard footsteps.
Ignoring her headache, she lifted her chin and strained to hear over the fountain.
A woman’s voice called up the entranceway. Mieshka’s eyes shifted to follow it.
“Buck, what the hell? In here?”
She stiffened. A faint shadow spread out on the entrance’s floor. It was a large shadow, though. The beeping sound grew louder.
“That’s what it says.”
The man’s voice—Buck, she assumed—sounded right beyond the doorway.
Mieshka edged closer to her backpack, sliding her hand around its straps just as he walked through the door.
He was big. That was the first thing she noticed. The gun at his shoulder was the second.
Her fingernails dug into a tissue.
As he stepped in line with the pillars at the edge of the shallow pit, she took a breath and forced herself to relax. Hadn’t she decided to face her fears?
She looked again, trying to ignore the gun. Though she recognized the military crew-cut she’d become familiar with among her mom’s friends, he was cast in silhouette on the wall behind him, which obscured his features from immediate view. He paused by a pillar, hunched over something in his hands. After a moment, he looked up and searched the room.
Mieshka cringed as he found her by the pillar.
Stomps sounded in the hallway. Where Buck had been subtle, the next person was not.
“Really? The ship crystal’s probably just fucking with—” The woman, a smaller, slighter person—though even in the quick glance she got, Mieshka noticed the muscle on her arms—almost ran into him. Mieshka saw her follow Buck’s gaze. “Her?”
Buck took a step forward out of silhouette. The shoulder holster was a shade lighter than his shirt. The tempo of beeps increased like a persistent alarm.
“Jo, why don’t you give Aiden a call?” Buck’s voice was low and calm. He stared at Mieshka from across the pit.
“Right-o.” Jo turned on her heel and disappeared through the door.
The man stepped into the fountain’s light. They watched each other. Beeping filled the silence.
She didn’t think people made a habit of walking around Ryarne’s subway system with guns and beeping machines—the school board certainly didn’t—but it was clear that the call Jo was making was because of Mieshka.
What the hell?
“Hi,” he said.
“You have a gun,” she said.
“I do.” He lowered his hands.
“Are you a soldier?”
“Was.”
For some reason, that made it better. She’d had enough of soldiers today. Apparently, he had, too, if he wasn’t one any longer.
“So was my mom.”
He didn’t speak, but his gaze dropped to the small pyramid of crumpled tissues at her side. They practically glowed against the dark floor. The beeping continued. As if suddenly remembering it, he glanced down at the thing he held.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s a bit complicated. Mind if I sit?”
She pulled her backpack closer.
“Who are you?”
“We
work for the Fire Mage.”
Just because they had guns did not mean they were bad people. She knew that, but she had to keep reminding herself. Her mom had carried a gun, but a gun had also killed her.
Ryarne had strict gun control laws. If he carried, his claim was probably true. If they worked for a Mage, they could likely carry any weapon they pleased.
She shoved her backpack down the steps to make room at the base of the pillar. Buck took the hint, and, slowly, maneuvered down about a foot away from her. She scooted over to create more space between them, feeling the pillar’s edge on her shoulder.
The beeps changed into a continuous tone as he sat. He fiddled with the device in his hand until it became silent. It was a dull black, about the size and shape of her dad’s TV remote, although lacking visible buttons. A slip of light slid along its edge.
“What’s that?” she asked.
In answer, he offered it to her, and she took it. Its surface was cold and smooth as glass. She flipped it around, holding it farther into the light.
Was it some sort of touchscreen? She couldn’t see anything on the surface, and it didn’t react to her touch. Buck had handled it all right.
“It was set to detect magic,” he said.
She almost dropped it.
“I don’t have magic.”
“You sure?”
She handed the remote back.
“Yep.”
Buck leaned back. Bright orange flashed under his thumb.
The beeps returned.
“It seems to disagree.”
She stared. The light looked similar to what burned on the walls around them.
What was magic, anyway? She knew it powered the shield, and if the Mage’s titles were anything to go on, it had an Elemental base. Not the chemical elements, but the old, mythological ones. There were three Mages in Ryarne: Fire, Water, and Earth. The Mage in Terremain was Electric. Beyond that, her education was sorely lacking. Robin said they’d learned about Mages last semester. Too bad Mieshka hadn’t arrived earlier.
She winced at the thought. A lot of things would be different if she had.
Buck was watching her. She pushed away the memories.
“I definitely don’t have magic.” She shook. “Heck, I didn’t think Terrans could get magic.”
“It’s rare,” he agreed. “But it’s been popping up more and more lately. Usually, those who have it don’t discover it until it manifests, which can be unfortunate depending on the circumstance, so the Council in Mersetzdeitz developed some detection devices.”
She stared. He hadn’t outright said it, but she could imagine what those ‘manifestations’ had been like. Anything that had necessitated the creation of a detection device had probably not been quiet or peaceful.
“I’ve literally never heard of this.”
“They’ve been keeping it on the down-low. For security reasons.”
It took her a few seconds before she understood the full implication of his words—if it were a hushed-up security thing, and he had no problem telling her all about it, then he was either a terrible soldier, or he had a ninety-nine percent certainty that his machine hadn’t glitched out and that it was telling the truth.
Magic. I have magic.
She took a slow, shaky breath. He pretended not to notice.
“Jo’s calling Aiden now,” he went on. “He can say for sure.”
“Aiden?”
“Aiden Tergunan. The Fire Mage. He’s kind of Mersetzdeitz’s go-to guy for this sort of thing. He’ll probably be the one who takes you on as an apprentice if you do have magic.”
Wasn’t that the old name for ‘student’? Mieshka’s mind spun away from that thought, fiercely looking for an excuse for the beeping-thing’s mistake. That woman—Jo—she’d said something before, hadn’t she? That something had been… fucking with the device? She glanced at the orange screen hovering above the fountain. It looked magical.
That was probably it. The tracker probably meant the screen, but had pointed to her instead. Like a bloodhound scenting something and getting distracted by a person with treats in her pocket.
Treats. Hah. All she had were textbooks and tissues.
“So, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” He had a wry look in his eye.
“Skipping.” She kept her tone dry. Despite that, there was a flash of teeth in his smile.
“Had enough?”
She folded her knees closer to her chest, hunching over to hug them.
“You could say that.”
They were interrupted by footsteps approaching in the corridor. The shadows at the entrance danced briefly across the floor before a man appeared. The woman—Jo—was close behind.
“—probably just the ship,” she was saying. She stopped short at the opposite side of the pit, leaned against a pillar, and crossed her arms over her chest.
Ship? Robin had said the Fire Mage’s ship was underneath here.
“Actually, it’s probably not,” said the other man—the Fire Mage, she assumed.
As he crossed the pit of the amphitheater, she tried to make herself smaller. He stretched a hand out to Buck.
“Gimme that.”
Buck handed over the silent tracker. The beeps returned as the man flipped it over, holding it lengthwise between his hands. Orange light reflected off his face as he operated it. Mieshka stared.
It was hard to see in the dim room, but both his hair and his eyes were light-colored. His worn T-shirt had several dark smudges across it, as if he’d been doing some work on the underside of a car. Several holes, not designer, gaped at the knees of his worn jeans.
Not quite what she’d expected.
An orange screen rolled out of the front edge of the device and hovered in the air, roughly four inches tall. It looked like a miniature version of the one above the fountain.
“So? Did Buck break it?” Jo stepped down onto the sunken dais, ignoring the shimmering display of names that surrounded her. She carried two guns, Mieshka noticed.
“No.” Aiden was still fiddling with it. He hmmed, then glanced up, catching her eyes. “Ever set something on fire with your brain?”
Mieshka froze, feeling as though she were caught in a spotlight. “No?”
“Damn. That would have made it easy.”
The beeping stopped a second later. He put the device away and crouched down to her level. She stiffened as his eyes studied hers, moving back and forth.
“What’s your name?”
“Mieshka.”
He paused. For the first time, she saw him smile.
“Nice name. Bonus points. Well, Mieshka, I need a bigger computer to scan you properly.”
“What?”
Her heart froze. Scan?
“This device here says you have magic, but it’s not smart enough to tell me what kind or how it’s developed.”
“I have magic?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She sat there, stunned.
Aiden apparently didn’t have time to deal with a confused teen.
“Come on, I’ll show you my spaceship. It’ll figure things out.”
Spaceship?
She perked up.
So this was what happened when you skipped school. She’d been missing out.
Chapter 6
Aiden led them behind the fountain, where a black wall stretched up to meet the memorial’s screen. Backlit by the fiery names, their reflections became dim silhouettes on its glassy obsidian surface. At their backs, the mythological tapestry wavered in the gloom.
He splayed his hand against the wall’s surface, and the main screen flickered above. Burning orange lines appeared, cutting across the black surface under his hand and looking a bit like a magical variant of one of those graphite-and-sand drawing screens she’d used as a kid. They formed a door-like square in the wall, which slid aside with a subtle hiss. Behind it, the aluminum doors of a freight elevator were slower to open.
The four of t
hem walked in. Mieshka found herself crowded against the control panel, wincing at the sudden, bright light. As the doors rumbled to a close, Aiden reached around her to push the lowest button. With a lurch, the elevator began its descent.
Buck held her backpack, and she tried not to fidget as its absence caught at her awareness, making her back feel light and empty. She stared straight ahead, aware of three sets of eyes discreetly studying her. Her head throbbed from the crying she’d done earlier, but only a little pain came with the sensation. Except for the less-than-comforting grinding screeches from outside the elevator, it was quiet.
Aiden was the first to break the silence. “You’re a redhead.”
“Well spotted, sir.” Jo leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded over her chest.
“Shut it. I’m tired.”
The elevator rumbled on. Mieshka caught her blurred reflection in the brushed aluminum siding—the light blue of her jeans, the darker blue of her hoodie, the blob of orange that was her hair. She glanced to the other reflections, noticing a similar orange blob on Aiden’s head.
“So are you.”
He had blue eyes, though, unlike her plain brown ones.
The elevator kept rumbling down. She examined the control panel. It only had three buttons: up, down, and panic. She resisted an urge to press that last one.
Just how far were they going, anyway? They’d already been—
Ding!
The door stumbled back, spilling light across a square of smooth concrete. Beyond the square, it was pitch black.
They filed out, Mieshka last. Aiden slipped off to the left while Jo walked straight into the dark. The elevator lifted slightly as Buck stepped off.
Mieshka toed the edge of the light square. A dry cold pressed in on her, and she hunched over, jamming her hands into her hoodie’s pouch.
Christ. Is this really happening?
The doors closed behind her, shutting out the light like blackout curtains. She heard a hydraulic hiss just after it closed. Then, nothing.
She couldn’t see anything. A light, flippy feeling tickled the bottom of her stomach as she tried to sense the room, and she froze, holding her breath. The scuff of a boot against concrete came from in front of her—Jo, probably. By the way the darkness seemed to swallow the sound, it felt like she was in a large place.
