by CM Raymond
Parker flinched, unused to being asked about himself from someone other than his mother. He sat still as a statue, wondering how to respond. Finally, he rolled his sore shoulder and brushed his palm against his chest where the marks of his torturer still burned. “I feel… fine. I guess. Don’t want to be tortured again anytime soon, but I’ll be careful out there. I kind of walked into the last situation when I tried to get a job at the factory.”
“A lot of men are making that error,” Ezekiel said. “Desperate times push us all to do that which we question. It’s why we must proceed with caution and patience. Our propensity will be to try to usher in the rebellion faster than we ought. Timing is everything.”
Parker shifted in his seat. The Founder was still a bit of an enigma to him, and he was unsure how straightforward he could talk with the man. He decided to test the water. “Indeed. But it is even harder when it is your neighbor being tortured and even killed inside the walls of that bloody sweatshop.”
Ezekiel smiled. “You’re not wrong. It’s your passion, yours and Hannah’s, that will be our greatest strength in the fight to come. Don’t let it become our greatest weakness as well. This will take patience as well as power.” Ezekiel drew on his pipe again. “Which reminds me, when will you start your magical training?” His eyes narrowed on Parker.
Parker shifted awkwardly in his seat again. “Dunno if I will. Never was one much for magic. It might not be for me, you know? You have magic; I have tricks. Each has its strengths.”
As he finished his words, Hannah ran through the room looking like the beautiful noblewoman she had shaped herself into.
“See you, boys,” she yelled as she bolted out the door. Sal flew to the window to watch her from inside.
Ezekiel saw the smile and glow on Parker’s face. The two had something special, and Ezekiel was pleased that they had one another.
With his eyes still on the path she cut across the room, Parker said, “Besides, when we work together, I feel we have our own art. It is all the magic I need.”
CHAPTER TWO
Gregory’s palms sweated. They always did when he sat in class. He had always been a bookish kid, but everything felt wrong when he was in the Academy. He wondered for the millionth time if joining the ranks of future magicians was a terrible mistake. Everyone around him talked, and joked, and carried on, as students do, but all he could think about was the failure that inevitably lay before him. Secretly, he hoped he would be thrown out of the Academy. He could take a simple civil servant job and settle into a quiet life.
He glanced over at the seat next to him and wondered where Hannah was. Now that he knew her, a quiet life was almost certainly off the table.
Deborah, he told himself. That’s her name when she’s in class. Gregory had been spending more and more time with her and her friends who all referred to her by her given name. He knew that slipping up in public would be a fatal error.
August took the front of the room. His rotund form filled the space in front of the chalkboard. “As first years, you are all doing quite a fine job. But remember, you won’t all make it to the second year. One of the things we’re doing is making sure that we winnow out those who shouldn’t be magicians.”
“He’s talking about you, asshat,” a voice said from behind Gregory.
He turned to find Morgan, the good-looking, talented student, who everyone knew was destined to be a great magician, perhaps even Chancellor someday. The guy was naturally gifted in casting physical magic, and Gregory resented him for it.
Gregory thought about striking out, but instead, he remained quiet. He always remained quiet.
“Today,” August continued, “you will be attempting something new, and I will be watching and keeping track of your progress. On the tables in front of each of you is an object. This is nothing new. But here is the new task: Each of you must turn the object to glass.”
A murmur rose in the room.
August smiled. Waving his hands, he calmed the class. “If you are going to be productive members of society, you’ll need skills like this. So, stop your complaining and get to work. You have thirty minutes. Go!”
The room grew quiet, and Gregory knew that each of the students had already set off to transform their objects. All of them were dead set on making it to the second year; the most motivated of them were hoping that they might actually get picked for the Chancellor’s special unit of magicians who were working with him—the Scholars’ Program.
But Gregory knew the truth about the Chancellor’s special project. He was forcing students to power his great machine, and most likely killing them in the process. Luckily for Gregory, he was in no danger of being selected.
He looked down at the object before him—a little, wooden, carved elephant. The beast stared back, daring Gregory to transform him into a glass trinket. They may as well have asked him to turn the thing into a real elephant. He’d have been no closer at doing it.
Theory came easily to Gregory—it always had. On paper, the magic all made sense. But as usual, the notion of turning theory into practice escaped him, and Gregory didn’t even know where to start. Students around him cheered as metal balls, quill pens, and parchment were all turning translucent around the room. A few of them struggled, and Gregory was among the minority.
“Come on, shithead. Your dad’s the bloody Chief Engineer, and you can’t turn a little toy into glass?” Morgan asked from behind him.
Gregory flushed. He kept his eyes trained on the trinket and forced himself not to look back.
His mind turned from the little elephant to his father. Gregory was certain that the Chief Engineer would be ashamed to have a son who couldn’t do the simplest of magical manipulations. He tried to push all of this out of his mind, and then he realized that it was his father who should be ashamed. The man was making a weapon for the Chancellor.
A weapon able to decimate the earth.
How could he? Gregory wondered for the umpteenth time. But the elephant in front of him held no answers.
The door creaked open at the front of the room, and all the students looked up. The distraction was welcomed, by Gregory and the rest of the young men. In the doorway stood the most beautiful young woman the Academy has ever seen—with strawberry blond ringlets falling to her shoulders, and a smile that could end the Age of Madness.
“Sorry I’m late, Professor,” she said, loudly enough for all to hear. “My father needed me to vet my new attendants—returning to Arcadia has been a lot of work.”
August snorted and waved Hannah to her seat.
****
“What’d I miss?” Hannah asked Gregory, who was still staring down at the wooden elephant figurine.
“At my lab table? Nothing, and that’s the damned problem. All the others aren’t struggling, just me.”
Hannah nodded to the other side of the room. A girl was awkwardly twisting her hands over a big, old leather-bound volume. “Looks like Sally’s struggling, too.”
Gregory laughed. “Sally struggles to lace her shoes. So, that’s pretty encouraging.”
Hannah grinned. “Better than nothing. Anyway, these jokers might be able to do it, but none of them understand what they’re doing like you do.”
Gregory glanced around the room, and then, in a hushed tone, asked, “How’d the mission go?”
“Better than we expected. Parker was amazing up there. Once he started his shtick, everyone ran to him, as if they had been waiting to hear some better news. There are still some Arcadians who are suspicious of the Governor and the Chancellor. Maybe not enough to make a difference, but they exist. We need to find them.”
Gregory nodded. “And mobilize them.”
“Exactly,” Hannah said with a wink.
Professor August cleared his throat conspicuously. “Less talking back there and more magic. The Matriarch knows you need the damned practice, Gregory.”
Hannah placed her hand on the boy’s shoulder, trying to give him some encouragement.
<
br /> It was hard for the engineer’s son to believe it had only been two weeks since he had met Hannah. The day that she landed next to him in the assembly would be seared into his brain for the remainder of his days. Gregory had always considered his lack of friends at the Academy a curse, but that day changed everything.
It was a blessing.
More than just meeting the most peculiar girl in the world, the realities of Irth had been unveiled to him. For all of his days, Gregory, like most of the other kids in Arcadia, looked up to Adrien. The Chancellor was like a god to the kids, and most of them wanted to be just like him.
Since falling into the ranks of Ezekiel and his little band of rebels, Gregory had come to find out the truth about Adrien, and the work that he had done for decades to control the city. Not only was his childhood idol implicated by the new narrative, but with his father involved in the entire scheme, Gregory’s world had been completely turned upside down.
Thinking of the whole thing—both the hidden treachery of Adrien and the burgeoning rebellion he had cast his lot in with—made his stomach turn over. Gregory was no rebel, and looking down at the wooden elephant, he realized he was no real magician either.
“So, what do we do to this thing?” Hannah asked.
“This one is really quite difficult. It is physical magic, like fireballs or shaping the clay like we did in class a few weeks ago. It’s the same, but different. At root, and what the rest of them don’t know,” Gregory nodded at the class, “is that this magic is alchemy. It’s not easy. You see in theory, everything is—”
Gregory froze as the wooden elephant transformed into a glimmering glass creature right before his eyes. He stared at her wide-eyed. “What the bloody…”
“No big deal,” she said with a wink. Her eyes were dark black, which only made her look more beautiful. Gregory knew that the black eyes were an illusion, like her blonde hair. But there was nothing fake about the newly formed glass in front of them.
He looked up to find their professor, August looming over them. “Excellent job, Gregory.” He picked up the trinket. “And the detail was transformed exquisitely. Just excellent.”
Gregory cut his eyes to Hannah, who shook her head only a little.
“Thank you, sir. Nothing to it.” He flushed.
“Deborah,” the professor said, looking at her stone cup, “you should pay more attention to Gregory here. You might pick up a thing or two.” He looked back at the engineer’s son. “Your dad will be proud of you, son.”
As August walked away, Hannah beamed at her new friend. “Exquisite detail,” she said, mocking the professor’s tone.
Gregory looked down at the table embarrassed.
“Oh, come on,” Hannah said. “You needed that, and I need to keep a low-profile, so it’s a win-win. Now that he’s focused on poor Sally over there, it will give us some time to talk.”
Gregory shook his head. “It’s not that. I just... I need to figure this shit out.”
“I already told you, you’ve got it figured out.” She grinned. “Right before I cast magic, you were all, ‘It’s really quite simple, blah, blah, alchemy, blah, blah, smart shit, blah, blah… None of us can think the way you can.”
“But to be useful—” he started.
Hannah jumped in. “A. You’re a freaking genius. B. If you’re not learning, it’s because of these douche nugget teachers like Smiling Jack over there.”
“August.”
“What?” she said, cocking her head to the side.
He ran his hand through his hair. “His name is August, and he isn’t that douchey.”
“Whatever,” Hannah finally conceded without conceding. “But what you need is a real teacher. You should come over to our place tonight. Ezekiel and I are going to be training. You should join us.”
“Really? Sure!” His excitement was real, but as he said it, Gregory nearly shat his pants. He would be training with the Founder himself.
Class finally came to an end, and she watched as the other students filed out of the room. Hannah was pretty sure Gregory and she were safe talking in the classroom, but she second-guessed herself as she considered all the magitech around the Academy and Noble Quarter. It was better to be safe than sorry. “Let’s walk,” she said.
Gregory and she stepped through the door and walked silently out of the Old Main building. Winding through the busy afternoon streets, she led him to the Capitol lawn, the place where she and Parker used to sit. It felt weird being there with another guy, even though Gregory was nothing like what she was looking for in a man. Hannah’s mind flashed to Hadley, but she pushed the thoughts of him away. It had been weeks since she saw the dashing young mystic, and she had no idea when she would see him again.
“Listen,” she said, “we’re going to need to recruit more of the students to the rebellion. Our team is growing, but it needs to develop faster. We’re going to need all the firepower we can muster. Know anybody that would side with us?”
Gregory burst into laughter. “At the Academy? You kidding? They’re all a bunch of snot-nosed, rich kids.”
“Like you?” she asked with a smile.
Shaking his head, he said, “No, I’m different.”
“You can say that again.”
He grinned. “Screw you. The status quo works for them. Adrien provides exactly what they want. They’re happy to ride on their family names and work their way toward a job where they won’t do shit and not make a dick of a difference.”
Hannah laughed. “Such language. You’ve been spending too much time with Karl. But what about you? Why do you want to make a dick of a difference? Hopefully, a big dick of a difference.”
She expected him to blush, but Gregory’s face got as serious as death. For the first time, he looked less like a boy and more like a man. “Life has to be about something more than money. Until I met you, I thought it would be replacing my father. Now, I realize that Arcadia—maybe all of Irth—needs us. If I can be a part of that... well, that’s some freaking purpose.”
Hannah nodded and forced a grin. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. Now, about those new recruits? There has to be someone else who could be bothered to give a damn.”
Gregory shrugged. “Dunno. Let me think about it. Maybe Violet and Morgan?” He said their names with a smile.
Hannah punched Gregory on the arm. “Bastard. I think I’ll pass. With douche nuggets like them on our side, Adrien won’t have to do any work at all.”
Gregory smiled wider as he rubbed his bruised arm. “We’d probably be doing him a favor.”
****
Adrien looked over the letter, swirling the expensive ale of the mystics in a crystal glass. It was news from a paid associate of his from the city Cella to the north—and the message it contained had Adrien floating on air.
Everything was going according to plan. The airship was back on schedule, and they had nearly enough amphoralds to store the power necessary for its test run.
The recruits from Dean Amelia were still trickling in, and they grinned ear to ear when Adrien invited them to be part of his special group. They would be used for their magical abilities—that was the truth. He just didn’t tell them that their power would be drained and poured into the crystals that would power his warship.
And the letter confirmed that the final piece of the puzzle had now been found—the key to his weapon.
He had everything he needed, and yet something nagged at the back of his mind, some threat he hadn’t resolved. He was still paranoid—but for good reason. It was clear that Ezekiel was still at work in the city.
While nearly a month had gone by since the death of his Hunters, the last weeks proved that Ezekiel was putting a plan into motion. A group of Jed’s Disciples was torn apart in the noble district. Some prick from the Boulevard—a close friend of Ezekiel’s new student—had escaped from the factory and was now preaching open rebellion on the streets. These were opening moves in Ezekiel’s game.
Som
ething was afoot, Adrien just had no idea what. Ezekiel and his new puppet were out there, and if there was one thing that Adrien knew about the old man, it was that he didn’t give up.
Ever.
Pacing in front of the window in the auburn light of the setting sun, he walked through the possibilities.
Ezekiel could be raising an army. This seemed all but impossible. He had thought that the mystics would be his recruits, but Stellan, the head Guard, insisted that there was no such alliance. Although the mystics were powerful in their own magic, they were recluses. He had no doubt that the world could fall apart around the Heights, and the mindnuts would continue sipping their ale and meditating as the massacre happened.
But Ezekiel can be persuasive, Adrien thought.
