by Jasmine Walt
“It may seem unfair in some cases,” my father countered, “but human lives are so short anyway—statistically, the laws hardly make an impact on them, since most of them never manifest magical talent anyway. I’ll remind you that the law exists for everyone’s protection, including other humans’.” His brows drew together in a scowl. “We cannot have untutored and dangerous talents running amok.”
“Surely there is a better solution—”
“I am starting to think your mother is right,” my father interrupted, a dangerous gleam now in his eyes. “Perhaps it really is time to settle down with a family.”
I stared at him. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“If you had a wife and children to provide balance to your life, you would not be so fixated on what is just a routine case,” my father asserted. “You have always overthought matters, Polar, and sometimes you take things a bit too seriously. Go take a long vacation, and clear your head. You haven’t taken a proper leave since you took the post of Chief Mage, and that was nearly fifteen years ago.”
Maybe I do need a vacation, I thought glumly as I left my parents’ house. The warm summer breeze teased my long blond hair as I walked up the street—it was a nice evening, and the house wasn’t all that far from the palace, so I elected to walk. My scholarly pursuits and Chief Mage duties didn’t leave many opportunities for exercise, so I made sure to walk as often as I could. The stars twinkled brightly in the night sky overhead, and the scent of freshly cut grass from the neighboring lawns was pleasant. But though I usually found these evening walks soothing, an unaccustomed agitation still prickled up my spine. Even the thought of a long vacation wasn’t tempting. It felt like running away from the problem, and I wasn’t in the habit of running away from anything.
I’d meant to head straight back to the palace, but instead I found myself climbing the steep hill in the center of Magetown, a climb I rarely made on foot. The path wound up and around the steep hill, which had many scenic spots and a pretty park halfway up the slope that was popular with mothers and their young children. I bypassed the park, not even stopping to rest on one of the benches, and by the time I got to the top, I was winded.
Catching my breath, I paused for a moment to survey the city sprawling below me, its sparkling lights like a thousand tiny gems spread across a black velvet blanket. Plassis was the capital of Nebara, and though I had traveled extensively both in and out of the Northia Federation, it had always been my home. My master had been the previous Chief Mage’s older brother, which was how I’d ended up working for the Nebara government even though I was a scholar at heart. While my duties were tedious at times, overall I was content to use my talents to serve my home state. Not to mention that being Chief Mage gave me access to quite a few old texts and documents that other mages never got to see. I’d always considered it a win-win situation.
But today, I was finding it hard to see how I could come out of this situation with any kind of win at all.
I turned toward the seemingly barren hilltop and spoke the magical password that all mages knew to use when they came up here. The air rippled around me, and the hair on my forearms rose in response to the magic. A golden, domed temple shimmered into life before my eyes, twenty feet tall, with an arched entrance and runes engraved along the edges of the roof and outer walls. The Temple of Resinah, the First Mage ever blessed with powers by the Creator.
A hush settled across the hilltop as I approached the temple, an air of reverence that always seemed to linger around this place. Mages came here whenever they sought guidance, either from the Creator, or more often from Resinah, who had been human once upon a time and presumably understood us better. We rarely got a direct answer, but being in the holy space usually calmed my soul and cleared my head enough that I could solve whatever problem I was facing on my own.
The attendant murmured a greeting as I entered, bowing low when she recognized me. She handed me a richly colored rug, and I pressed a coin into her hand in thanks before finding a spot to lay the rug down and kneel. The inside of the temple was circular, with magical candles flickering in wall sconces to illuminate what the moonlight filtering in through the stained-glass windows did not. In the center stood a twelve-foot statue of white marble carved in Resinah’s likeness. The First Mage stood tall and proud, her robes flowing around her willowy figure, holding a book in one hand and a flame in her outstretched palm. The flame was real, a bright blue ball that flickered gently. Some said that light came from the Creator himself, though I doubted it. The flame was probably just another magical enchantment, similar to the candles that lit the room.
Turn off your irreverent mind, I admonished myself as I knelt on the rug. I clasped my hands together and focused on that dancing flame, emptying my head of all thoughts. As I stared up at the light, suspending myself in that strange, weightless state that took over whenever I consciously emptied my mind, the fire began to flicker a little more brightly. My pulse jumped, but I didn’t dare look around to see if anyone had noticed, lest I break my focus. Was the First Mage here, looking down on us now?
Please, Lady Resinah, I prayed silently. Tell me that there is another choice I can make. Tell me that I will not be forced to send an innocent little girl to her death.
There is always a choice, a cool female voice murmured in my head. So long as you are willing to pay the price.
My breath caught, and I waited eagerly for more. But the flame died down again, and the flicker of the presence I’d sensed had disappeared. I waited for a few more minutes to be sure, but Resinah did not speak again, so I thanked her for her advice and left a heavy tip with the temple attendant on my way out.
Despite Resinah’s cryptic answer and implied warning, her message gave me hope. There was a choice, a solution, somewhere out there. All I had to do was look hard enough to find it.
3
The next morning, I glared out my carriage window as it bumped and jostled along the road. I should have been working, but I’d walked into my office to find a memo from Gelisia reminding me to sign that execution order. It had put me in such a foul mood that I hadn’t been able to focus on my files. Rather than waste time in my office being unproductive, I’d left the palace altogether and headed for Plassis Prison to interview the family and see for myself just how much illegal magic that little girl had.
I wasn’t going to let Gelisia or Frantina nag me into signing a death warrant without first doing a bit of investigation—and really, who did they think they were? I was Chief Mage, not them. They had some nerve, trying to push me around like this. I might not have a choice about signing the order, but I would damn well do it on my own timetable, not theirs.
It took twenty minutes or so to reach the hill on which the prison squatted, and by the time we reached the end of the winding road, I’d managed to get firm hold of my emotions again. I was finding it strange and unsettling that this case had me so riled up. I was a highly trained and skilled mage, and not at all inclined to be moody or volatile. Subduing my feelings had long been second nature, as was proper and necessary for a mage wielding potentially deadly power. This inexplicable, vibrant anger was most unseemly for a mage of my position, and I couldn’t walk into the prison looking anything but calm and collected.
The carriage finally came to a stop in front of the prison, and I disembarked, my boots scraping against the pockmarked concrete ground. Frowning, I swept my gaze over the facility—it was a small, joyless gray building surrounded with barbed wire fencing that was magically spelled to provide an electrical shock to any prisoner who attempted to touch it. Two guards were stationed on either side of the entrance, and they bowed respectfully as I approached. I nodded back at them as I passed through the gate, my skin tingling as a weapon-scanning spell rippled across my body. Not that the guards would stop me from entering if I chose to carry a weapon, but I rarely bothered with them. My magic was more than enough to protect me from any human threat.
“Good morning, Lo
rd Polar,” the guard at the front desk said, hiding his surprise as I stepped inside. The inside of the building was just as depressing as the outside—the walls and floors were a dingy gray, without so much as a scrap of carpeting to cushion footfalls, and the chairs in the waiting area were hard steel. “I did not know you were coming,” he said, with a slightly apologetic look around the place. “How can I help you?”
“I would like to interview a family you are holding in this facility,” I said briskly. “The Mundells.”
“Ah, yes.” Something like pity flashed in the guard’s eyes, giving me pause. He was a human, so it wasn’t odd that he sympathized with them, but still . . . “They’re in cell number forty-two.”
“Together?”
The guard nodded. “Since the children are minors, it seemed easiest to keep the family together. Would you like me to bring them out one by one to the interview room, or would you rather speak to them all at once?”
I hesitated—it would be much easier to simply speak to the parents. But they weren’t the ones about to be executed.
“All together, please.”
Another guard was called to escort me to the interview room—a small, utilitarian space with a metal table, a few chairs, and a magical mirror that the guards could use to monitor the interviews. As I followed the surly guard through the harshly lit hallways, I couldn’t help remembering the last time I was here to interview a prisoner, during my stint as Nebara’s Legal Secretary. She’d been a painfully thin woman, a maid convicted of making off with several jewelry pieces she’d stolen from the mage family she worked for. I’d sent her off to the mines for five years without so much as a twinge, but now my stomach turned at the thought of that frail body toiling away beneath the surface of the earth. She’d been sickly when I sent her off—she easily could have died there. Probably had, now that I thought about it, and the realization made me even more uncomfortable.
Labor in the mines was the usual punishment for humans and shifters who broke the law. That was why the local prison was so small—it was nothing more than a way station for criminals until they were convicted. I would have to send the parents to the mines as punishment for hiding their daughter. A wave of revulsion filled me at the thought. What would happen to their son while the parents were imprisoned? Would he end up in an orphanage somewhere? I knew there was a system set up to take care of children who ended up in situations like that, but since it did not apply to mage children, I had no idea if it was any good or not.
I was becoming painfully aware that there were all sorts of aspects to Nebara’s government system that I paid little attention to. Aspects that, as Chief Mage, I should be more familiar with. Oh well, there would be plenty of time to look into the matter of human orphanages.
The door opened, and the family of four was ushered in. The children came in first—a boy of around twelve with light brown hair and freckles, and behind him, a platinum blonde little girl. The parents, a couple in their mid-thirties, came next. All four wore the customary black and white striped prison uniform, with cuffs around their wrists, but the little girl’s manacles were heavier, with runes etched into them to suppress her magic. The parents and the boy were scowling at me, but the little girl met my stare squarely, her blue eyes blazing with such defiance that, for a moment, I was completely taken aback.
“Are you here to release us?” she demanded, raising her sharp little chin.
“Rellia, take care! That’s the Chief Mage!” the mother hissed, grabbing her daughter by the shoulder. She sounded terrified, but I caught a brief glint of angry defiance in her eyes before she ducked her head again. The little girl frowned, but she desisted, allowing the guards to herd them into the chairs that had been set up for them.
“Wait outside,” I said firmly to one of the guards as he made to stand against the wall. “I’ll call for you if I have need.”
“As you wish, my lord.” There was a hint of doubt in his voice, but he bowed his head and exited the room. The door clicked shut behind him with finality, and I turned my attention back to the family.
“You are Mr. Xido Mundell?” I addressed the father.
He nodded curtly. “Yes. And this is my family.” His angry brown eyes bored into mine as he rested his forearms on the table. “How long are you going to keep us cooped up here? And why have you come now? We were told that it was impossible to seek an audience with you or even send you a petition.”
“Who said so?” I asked.
“The wardens here. I have not even been allowed to hire a lawyer. They said it was a hopeless case, that you kill little children just to avoid any outside competition.” His voice trembled, betraying the fear under his bravado. “So we hardly expected you to show up in person.”
I subdued my annoyance at this information and kept my expression placid. “Citizens always have the right to request an audience with a representative of the Mages Guild, though not always with the Chief Mage. You could have asked for an audience with the Legal Secretary.” I’d granted a couple of those audiences myself when I’d still held the position.
The father didn’t look as though he believed me, so I made a mental note to look into this. Rights were no good if the beneficiaries were unaware of them and nobody gave them the relevant information. The list of issues to address was getting longer by the hour.
“I’ve come to see you because I would like to get a full account of what happened on your property the day Miss Frantina Sinowar came to check up on your tax records,” I said, looking the father in the eyes. “According to her report, your daughter Rellia attacked her with magic.”
“That fat woman was being mean to my parents,” Rellia said hotly. Her brother tried to shush her, but she waved him off. “She was threatening them!”
“The tax inspector was being very unfair, as well as rude,” the mother said, taking control of the conversation. Her blue eyes, the same color as her daughter’s, shone with similar anger. “Xido and I have always paid our fair share of taxes, and here she came waltzing onto our property and accusing us of falsifying the number of cattle we reported on our tax forms!”
“An entirely baseless accusation,” the father added, his jaw flexing.
“I see.” It sounded like exactly the kind of thing a born bully like Frantina would do. Probably a fishing expedition, to bluff them into admitting what she merely suspected. I should never have allowed her to stay on. “So, did you permit her to inspect the herd?”
“We invited her to,” Mundell said, “but she didn’t even bother. She told us that she knew we were lying but would drop the accusations if we gave her five gold pieces.” His face was white with anger. “As if we could afford such an exorbitant bribe when we have children to feed and a farm to look after! And we’d done nothing wrong!”
“We told her as much,” the mother said, “and she insisted she would throw us in jail if we did not pay up. She put her hand on our son, Tobis, and that was when Rellia pushed at her.” A sad look crossed her face as she ruffled the hair of the little girl, whose gaze had never once wavered from me. “Our Rellia is very brave and has a strong sense of justice.”
And now she’s being punished for it.
My stomach dropped as I tried to reconcile the concept of “justice” with executing this little girl. Averting my gaze from her and the parents, I found myself looking into the eyes of the little boy. He was more subdued than his sister, his eyes downcast, and I intuited that he was more like me—a quiet, introspective young boy who might grow up to be a scholar. I could have had a son like that, if I had married like my mother kept urging. Or a rebellious daughter like Rellia, whose talent would be developed and praised rather than hidden away and condemned.
“I truly regret how the situation has turned out,” I said gravely. “But the laws on hiding magic, and the illegal use of it, are very clear, and there is no bending them. Perhaps if you had reported your daughter’s magic right away, we might have been able to strip it from her, and thi
s situation could have been prevented.”
“How dare you,” the mother hissed, her thin cheeks mottling with rage. “How dare you suggest that, when everyone knows that magic wipes can sometimes damage a child’s mind!”
I frowned. “Those side effects are extremely rare and generally only occur when an incompetent mage—”
“If it was your daughter,” the father interrupted, “would you be willing to take that chance?”
His words hit me like an anvil, and I went silent. Of course I wouldn’t. If there was even the slightest possibility that a procedure, especially one I didn’t believe to be wholly necessary, could permanently damage my child’s brain, I would never consent to it. My chest tightened, and it took all my self-control not to look away from Mr. Mundell again.
“If there was anything I could do,” I said quietly, even though I knew better than to think it would help, “I would. But my hands are tied. The law must prevail.”
“You bastard!” the mother shrieked, lunging across the table toward me. “You can take your law and shove it up your rigid ass!” The father immediately grabbed her, and the children started crying as she struggled against him. “You mages think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re monsters! You don’t give a damn about anyone other than yourselves!”
Her barbed words and wild eyes told me that nothing could be gained by prolonging this painful scene. “Guards!” I called. They immediately burst in, weapons drawn. “Return the prisoners to their cells.”
The guards sheathed their weapons and took charge of the prisoners. Two of them grabbed the wife, who was still spitting and snarling at me. “You’re a child murderer, Polar ar’Tollis,” she howled, “and I will never let you forget it, so long as I live!”
