The Thorn of Dentonhill

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  The glass cracked.

  Blazes.

  He pulled his hand away, and prayed to whichever saint might listen that the sound of the glass hadn’t been loud enough to get Rellings’s attention.

  One thing was clear to Veranix. He couldn’t possibly sneak into his own room and act as if he had been there since before curfew bells rang.

  Focusing on maintaining the shroud, he moved along the ledge, slowly and carefully. What were his choices at this point? The water closet had a window, that could work. So did the water closets on the second and fourth floors. Then he wouldn’t have as much risk running into a prefect who was eager to bust him down.

  He climbed up the wall, finding the little fingerholds in the brick. Simple enough, even with his shoulder screaming in pain. He reached the ledge of the next story and pulled himself up onto it.

  Now he had to find the water closet.

  The safest presumption was that it was directly above the one on his floor. He had a vague memory of Parsons or Eittle or some other Sciences student saying something about pipes needing to be aligned together or something like that. That made sense, didn’t it?

  The window he presumed was the water closet had a few lamps burning in it, and peering in, he confirmed it was the water closet. It also had two first-year students washing up and talking about whatever stupid thing first-years talk about when they were washing up. Veranix sighed. Maybe he should have gone to the second-floor.

  They were still talking.

  He decided to save a little time and magicked the metal grate off. Those two kishes wouldn’t notice anything outside the window.

  Veranix stopped himself. He had actually just thought of them as “kishes”. This night was really getting to him. He didn’t need any further aggravation.

  Their conversation died down, and Veranix heard the sound of the door open and close. Without wasting any more time, he magicked the lock on the window and threw it open and dove into the room.

  There was still one first-year in the room.

  Veranix had kept his shrouding on, so for all the poor kid knew, the window just flew open of its own accord and a vague, shimmering shape leaped at him. Any sensible person would scream or faint.

  The boy had the good sense to scream and faint.

  Several pounding footsteps came charging to the door.

  This was not going well at all.

  Before the door opened, Veranix threw another blast of soft magic around the room, blowing out all the lamps. When half the fourth floor came charging into the water closet, it was completely dark.

  “The blazes is happening in here?”

  “Did Cackly just scream?”

  “Scream like a little girl.”

  “Get a damn lamp in here!”

  A few lamps came in from the hallway, and the collected boys of the fourth floor found young Cackley sprawled out on the ground, wet with his own mess.

  Veranix had magicked his appearance to an average, ordinary looking student, wearing his bedclothes. No one that anyone else would really look twice at.

  “I don’t need to see anything else,” he said to the group, who didn’t make any note of him other than to let him slip out through them into the hallway.

  “What’s going on?”

  Veranix found himself face to face with the fourth-floor prefect.

  “Cackly screamed and passed out, sir,” Veranix said. “Don’t know why.”

  “The window’s open!” someone called from the water closet.

  “Great, another thing.” The prefect didn’t really look at Veranix, or anyone else for that matter. “Listen, chaps, apparently someone is missing from the third floor.”

  “Third floor is all trouble!” shouted someone.

  “Right, and rather than presume that one of them has—again—snuck out into the night, Rellings has the idea that something might actually be wrong. So he wants to search the building.”

  “Looking for volunteers?” Veranix asked. This was a complete mess, but if he was clever enough he could at least take control over something. It was his only chance to get in bed and get one night of decent sleep.

  “Yes, thanks, um . . . Henson.” The prefect looked confused but waved Veranix on. “Go on down to third and ask what you can do.”

  Veranix’s mind raced while he went to the stairwell. They were already searching for him, and he needed to find out why they were searching for him. They thought something was wrong. What might that be? He needed to know, and decided it was wiser to maintain his disguise rather than just stroll in and act normal. With some luck he could find a place to hide on the third floor, and act like he’d been there all along.

  He came out of the stairwell on the third floor, and the common room had several people milling about in their bedclothes, annoyed looks on their faces. It was nearly ten bells at this point, most of them were probably wanting to be in bed by now. Delmin and Rellings stood at the center of the group.

  “Now, we know for certain that Calbert isn’t on the third floor,” Rellings was saying. That eliminated trying to hide somewhere here.

  Delmin added to that, talking just a bit louder than he probably needed to. “Remember, though, wherever he is, it’s very possible that he is hurt and unable to respond. This will take more than just calling out for him.”

  Delmin couldn’t know that Veranix was in the room, but it was possible he was trying to get a message out there. Delmin had seen him outside the window, Veranix was pretty certain. Perhaps this whole search was a desperate ploy on Delmin’s part to buy time.

  Veranix was finding that he might owe Delmin several times over before too long.

  “You come from the fourth floor?” Rellings was talking to Veranix.

  “Yes,” Veranix said, lowering his voice a little. “He’s not there.”

  “Then we search downward. All the way to the basements.”

  Basements. Perfect.

  “We should get on it, then,” Delmin said.

  Veranix went back into the stairwell before anyone else could get out there. He quickly shrouded his appearance and leaped down the stairs as fast as he could.

  Right before he hit the landing, he drew in another burst of magic to mute the sound of his feet on the stone. He did it again: leap, draw, mute. Twice more and he was on the ground floor.

  He could hear the search party coming into the stairwell above him. They were moving slowly, methodically. Calling out his name. That gave him both time to get in position and noise to cover it. Muting his footsteps had taken more out of him than he expected.

  This particular staircase went down to the basement, where hardly anyone ever went, especially after curfew. There wasn’t even a door to the outside in this stairwell, so hardly anyone on the ground floor ever used it.

  That would work just fine for his purposes.

  The search party above him was going onto the second floor, and probably waking people up calling out for him. Of course, there would be no legitimate reason for him to be hiding on the second floor, but if Delmin was buying him time by organizing an Almers-wide game of Find the Cat, he was more than happy to play along.

  He scrambled down the stairs, dropping all magical disguises. He then realized that wasn’t going to work very well, since then he would be wearing the cloak, and surely someone might ask a question or two about it.

  A breath of magic later, he appeared to be just wearing his uniform, though said uniform was dirty and wrinkled. For an additional hint of showmanship he gave himself a bruise on the side of his head. He briefly considered blood, and then decided that would be that step too far. That would require maintaining illusional blood for an indefinite period of time.

  He blew out the lamps at the bottom of the stairs, giving him a fair cover of darkness, and then lay on the landing, twisting his body into
an uncomfortable angle, head pressed to the ground.

  Now just to wait for discovery.

  Several minutes passed. Veranix considered several times the merits of emerging from his position, crafting a story of barely being able to pull his injured body up the stairs. Each time he considered the only advantage of this method was allowing him the comfort of getting out of the basement stairwell. The disadvantages involved in not being discovered by the search party were too great. There was nothing to do but wait it out.

  His stomach growled.

  Those guys better find him soon.

  There were footsteps above him, voices calling out his name. They were pretty close. Close enough to give them some help.

  Veranix let out a low moan.

  “You hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  Veranix stifled the urge to shout at them. Another moan.

  “That was definitely something.”

  “If you say so.”

  Veranix didn’t know whose voice that was, but he was going to make sure that whoever it was would have some kind of magical unpleasantness happen to him in the near future.

  “Hello?” Veranix croaked out. His throat was drier than he thought it would be, which meant he didn’t have to force much performance. If this went on much longer, he wasn’t going to be faking being weak and woozy. He might even pass out.

  “That was something,” said the first voice.

  “Is anyone there?” the second voice called out.

  “Help!” Veranix returned. It wasn’t very loud, but it didn’t need to be. The two students came down the stairwell, one of them carrying a lamp.

  “Blazes, it’s Calbert!”

  “What happened to him?”

  Veranix allowed himself to be picked up, faking being too weak to stand on his own. “I was . . . I slipped at the top of the stairs . . .” He took a good look at his two rescuers. He recognized them, at least in the sense that he knew they lived on the third floor, but he couldn’t remember their names.

  “Blazes, he fell down all those?”

  “Lucky he didn’t break his neck.”

  “Come on, Calbert,” said the first one, pulling Veranix’s arm around his shoulder. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

  The other one took Veranix’s other side. “Everyone’s looking for you. How long were you down here?”

  “What—what time is it?”

  “Bit past ten bells, I think.”

  “Ten bells!” Veranix exclaimed, followed by a feigned dry cough. “It was . . . it wasn’t even eight bells when I was coming up the stairs.”

  “You’re lucky, Calbert,” the first one said. “If Rellings hadn’t turned out the doors to find you, you could have been there all night.”

  “Should we take him up, or to the hospital ward?”

  “I—I don’t think I’m—let’s try and get to the third floor, all right, mates?”

  “If that’s what you want.” His hand patted Veranix’s back. “Something wrong with your coat?” He was probably feeling the cloak through the illusion. Thank every saint these two weren’t magic students. Of course, of the hundred or so magic students on campus, only a handful lived in Almers. Odds were in his favor.

  “Hey, we found him!” They shouted up the stairs, and several people came out in the staircase, including Delmin and Rellings.

  “Blazes, Veranix,” Delmin said. “What happened?”

  “I fell down those stairs,” Veranix said, laboring his breathing as much as he felt he could without it sounding false. “I was coming up and I guess I was pushing myself too hard.”

  “You probably were,” Delmin said, his eyes narrowing. “You did wake up in the hospital ward this morning.”

  “I guess I wasn’t as healed as I thought.”

  “I would think so,” Delmin said.

  “All right, all right,” Rellings said. “You don’t need to henpeck him like you were his mother, Sarren.”

  “That’s Rellings’s job!” someone called from up the stairs.

  “Enough!” Rellings snapped. He came over to Veranix, looking at the bruise Veranix had magicked across his forehead. “Cracked yourself good there, Calbert.”

  “Probably looks worse than it is,” Veranix said.

  Rellings eyebrow went up, and he glanced at the two who found Veranix. “You found him at the bottom of the stairs?”

  “We were lucky we found him,” the first guy said.

  “They told me I have you to thank for the search party, Rellings,” Veranix said.

  “Well, now that’s all over. You good to get up there, Calbert, or do you need to go to the hospital ward?”

  “Let’s try and get upstairs,” Veranix said. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me that won’t be cured with a decent night’s sleep.”

  Rellings took over supporting Veranix from the other two, leading him up the stairs. “Show’s over, everyone. Man found, everything’s fine. Lights out by the end of the hour.”

  Allowing Rellings to help him, but doing his best to keep the cloak situated in a way that Rellings wouldn’t touch it, Veranix got to his room. Delmin came right behind them. After a last bit of questioning, which Veranix felt lay somewhere between well-meaning concern and interrogation, Rellings left them both to go to bed.

  Delmin waited a few seconds after the door closed to drop his facade.

  “What the blazes happened to you tonight?”

  “Lost track of time,” Veranix shrugged, hoping that would satisfy Delmin. The look on his friend’s face confirmed that wasn’t about to happen. “I went out into Aventil. Not to cause trouble, just to get a sense of what was happening in the city. And to get a better sense on how to use this.” Veranix dropped all magical pretenses, the cloak appearing, his uniform cleaning, and his bruises vanishing. Delmin’s eyes went wide.

  “You . . . you were able to maintain that degree of magical illusion with the cloak on?”

  “Pretty amazing, huh?”

  “That’s . . . that’s beyond amazing, Vee.”

  “It’s powerful, I admit,” Veranix said, taking off the cloak. “I was able to—”

  This was all he said before he dropped the cloak on the bed, and the second he let go of it, he felt all of his strength leave his body. He collapsed to the ground, and would have cracked his head open for real if Delmin hadn’t been there to catch him.

  “Blazes, Vee, what was that?”

  Veranix gasped for breath. He wasn’t expecting anything like that. He could barely keep his eyes open, keep himself from drifting off into a gray haze. Delmin put him on the floor and went over to his desk.

  “I thought something like this might happen,” Delmin muttered as he went into the bottom drawer. “Good thing I’m ready for an emergency.” He came back over to Veranix with an apple and dried lamb.

  “I—I—” was all Veranix could say. Delmin forced the food into Veranix’s mouth.

  “Keep eating, I’ll be right back,” Delmin said. He grabbed a pitcher from the bed table and left the room.

  Slowly, Veranix chewed and swallowed. Small bits of strength returned to him, and with that he moved his hand back toward the cloak. If he could get his hand back on it, he might be able to—

  Delmin returned, and as soon as he saw what Veranix was doing, he rushed over and swatted his hand away. “No, Vee, don’t do that. Not yet.” He offered Veranix some water from the pitcher.

  “What . . . what is happening?”

  “Something I thought might happen,” Delmin said. “You’ve got to be careful when you use that thing, Vee.”

  “Careful how?” Veranix was able to sit up again.

  “As in, when you’re wearing that, you have no sense of how you’re really using your own numina. It all feels like a rush, doe
sn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I’m able to control the rush,” Veranix said. “It’s not like . . . it’s not like effitte or something, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “No, not like that!” Delmin said. He laughed a little. “You just have to learn how to be aware of how you are drawing numina out of your own body when you have that thing on. You had depleted your own strength, and had no idea because of that thing feeding you numina.”

  “So what you’re saying is, just because I have that on, I shouldn’t push myself much further than I would without it.”

  “Else when you take it off, you fall on your face.”

  Veranix pulled himself up onto his bed. With a quick swipe of his hand, he knocked the cloak onto the floor, and then kicked it under the bed. Even that brief contact gave him a surge of numina, which then faded as quickly.

  “I’m making a mess out of everything, aren’t I?”

  “Probably,” Delmin said. “At least your marks are still decent, though I don’t know how you manage that without studying.”

  “That’s really what I should be doing, isn’t it?” Veranix asked. Saying that opened a floodgate, a rush of anger and remorse that he was too exhausted to hold back. His voice broke with sobs as he went on. “I mean, my father had a safe, happy life in the circus, and because I needed to come here—begged to come here, Delmin—he came back to the one blazing place in Druthal that wasn’t safe for him. The least I could do is make sure I learn something.”

  Three days. That was all they were going to stay in Maradaine. Get Veranix delivered to the college, do two shows out on the east side, far away from these neighborhoods, and leave. Despite that, Fenmere still found his father and killed him. Then destroyed his mother for good measure.

  Delmin watched Veranix quietly. “So what did you learn tonight?”

  “Trouble is brewing out in the streets,” Veranix said. “And it might be my fault.”

  “Might be?”

  “All right, it is my fault. At least, between hitting on Fenmere’s dealers and sending the constables onto the Aventil gangs . . . not everyone out there is happy with me.”