by Helen Harper
“So, Initiate Smith,” Thomas said, drawing out the syllables, “I hear you finally had some success today.”
The others turned to me, their eyes widening.
I shrugged. “Some,” I acknowledged, unable quite to keep the grin off my face.
“Well done.”
I could tell that Thomas meant it genuinely and my smile broadened.
“You should join me tonight for a drink, at the local pub in an hour or two. It’s very close to the academy.” His eyes flicked over the rest of my table. “I’m sure a few of your friends here will be able to tell you how to get there.”
I swear that every single one of their faces flushed red in unison at that point. Trying to give them some measure of dignity, I avoided looking at them and stayed fixed on Thomas. “I’d love to,” I said, simply.
He inclined his head, and then strode back off again.
“You’re so lucky,” breathed Deborah, quivering.
“Why?” snapped Brock. “Who wants to hang out with a teacher?”
She sent him a dark look then turned her attention back to me. “If I could just find my yellow skirt then I’d come and join you. Rules be damned.”
“Well, it’s not so much ‘rules’,” I replied to her, “as the law. You’re under age.”
“Pah! Rules schmules.”
“Have you still not found that piece of fabric yet, Deborah?” asked Aqmar.
Her mouth twisted. “No. And I’ve looked bloody everywhere.”
Oops. I really had meant to have sorted that out by now and returned it to the laundry room.
Aqmar snickered. “That’s probably because it’s so small, you’d need a magnifying glass to find it anyway.”
She punched him on the arm and the pair continued to bicker. I glanced thoughtfully over at Brock, who still looked miserable, the cloud of an idea forming in my head. I excused myself, then drifted over to the laundry room to see if this time I could find my jeans. I scouted up and down a couple of shelves, before eventually realising that they were sat there, in plain sight, next to pile of orange robes. Picking them up, I stroked the soft denim lightly, then jogged up to my room and stripped off the robes, changing quickly. Both my t-shirt and Deborah’s skirt were still under my bed so I retrieved them together. I sniffed the t-shirt, and it didn’t seem too bad, so I pulled it on over my head. The skirt, however, I took back down to the laundry room and shoved into a washing machine, and added a bit of powder before turning it on. Then I headed out.
The academy gates opened automatically for me when I reached the end of the driveway. Well this was a whole lot easier than when I was trying to sneak out without being noticed, I thought wryly.
I wandered down the quiet country road, wondering where in the hell I actually was. It didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that an entire five years’ time could pass me by and I still wouldn’t be any the wiser as to which part of the country I was in. I figured it was probably a deliberate act on the mages’ part. Even though it was still technically winter, the night was only just starting to edge in, with the sky turning a dark purple and the stars only just beginning to appear. There was hedgerow lining the single lane country road. Yep, it could be pretty much anywhere.
Before too long, the twinkling warmth of what I presumed to be the local pub began to appear up in front of me. This was a true country inn; the sort that townies would travel miles and miles for, in order to enjoy an ‘authentic experience’. What the owners of it thought of their more regular clientele from the academy I could only begin to wonder.
As I neared the building, the letters on the old-fashioned hanging sign began to become more legible. ‘The Ball and Chain’. Hmmm. Would that be the crystal ball and the mages’ slavery chain, then? I snickered quietly to myself, before entering. Thomas was already up at the bar, hunched over a pint of something amber-coloured and frothy. He looked odd out of his robes, in that strange way that teachers always seemed to do when you caught them out of their natural environment of school. I beckoned over the barman and requested the same as Thomas was having, then settled down myself. It felt damn good to be out of the academy – and without any other tasks or problems or counselling sessions to have to worry about.
“Hey,” I said, aiming for light and friendly. Clearly, I could do chatty small talk with the best of them.
“Hey,” Thomas greeted me back. Well, at least he wasn’t much better.
The barman set the brimming pint in front of me. I took a sip and then leaned back on the stool, eyes closing momentarily in pleasure. Yeah, Corrigan and his mates could keep their champagne and caviar lifestyle. A pint of beer and a bag of pork scratchings would more than do me. I sipped again and sighed and sighed happily.
“So, do you come here often?”
I looked up at Thomas and then realised what I’d just said, and began to snort with laughter. He grinned back at me and batted his eyelashes dramatically. I snorted harder, fighting to retain control of myself then clinked my glass against his.
“I actually try and avoid it as much as possible during the week,” he said seriously once I’d managed to calm down somewhat. “It’s generally not a good thing to be here when the students are.”
I eyed him carefully. “So, given the chance, you wouldn’t, er, you know, liaise with a student?” Thinking of Brock, I figured that the least I could do was to be absolutely sure that Thomas was immune to the charms of Deborah.
“Liaise?” He looked remarkably offended. “Is that what you think of me?”
“No, no,” I protested. “It’s just…” I blew air out the corner of my mouth. “It’s just that one of the girls likes you, you know, in that way, and one of the boys likes her, and I want her to like him, but…” my voice trailed off.
He stared at me. “Fucking hell, Mack. Less than three weeks and you’re already fully embedded in teen drama town. Do you not have anything better to do?”
“Hey, I need some distraction and entertainment if I’m going to make it through the next five years.” That thought depressed me. “Sorry, let’s change the subject.”
Thomas was silent for a moment, as if considering something very deeply. Then he tightened his grip on the glass, and twisted round to look me in the eye. “No, let’s not. Look, Mack, I really am sorry for how I treated you when you arrived. I’m not proud of it. You’re in a shitty position and, other than a few rather spectacular blow-outs, I think you’re doing really well.”
I smiled at him, but didn’t say anything, curious about where he was heading.
“Not only that, but you’re helping the kids out with those Protection lessons. The Founder knows I’d love to be able to teach them the way that you are. Of course, we’re bound by the curriculum the Dean sets out.”
“You sound bitter about it.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are things that I definitely wish were different. But the Dean’s really okay.”
I must have looked skeptical because he stared at me seriously. “No, really I mean it. He is good at his job. He cares about his students and about his teachers. But he doesn’t like the Arch-Mage and you’re kind of His Magnificence’s pet project. So it probably wouldn’t matter what you did or who you are, he’d want you out of here.”
“That’s just not fair,” I pointed out.
Thomas laughed. “Come on, Mack, surely you know by now that the last thing life is, is fair? Has it never occurred to you that maybe it suits the Arch-Mage just as well having you here? He’s not an idiot, he’d have known what you’d be like and how the Dean would react.”
“What I’d be like?” Careful, Thomas, I thought irritably. I might kind of like him now but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still piss me off.
He rubbed his forehead. “You know. All angry at the world and stuff. By keeping you here the Arch-Mage gets to exert a little power because he knows you’ll piss off Michaels. It’s His Magnificence’s way of putting him in his place without anyone gettin
g hurt. It’s pretty clever really.”
Just the tiniest flicker of bloodfire in the deepest pit of my gut answered Thomas’ words. “No-one gets hurt? Are you fucking kidding me? There’s a harmless elderly woman stuck in bloody Tir-na-Nog in a coma!”
Thomas put his drinks down and his hands up, palms facing towards me in a gesture of peace. “Yeah, and you’re not the kind of person to sit back and wait for five years, or however it long it takes to graduate, before she’s released from stasis. So if you were the Dean, what would you do?”
“What do you mean what would I do?”
He sighed. “Imagine that your first reaction to being threatened or put in your place isn’t to violently attack someone. Put yourself in the shoes of the Dean being made to look after a student who you don’t want and who you know is just there to remind you that you’ll never be the man at the top. What do you do?” There was a faintly desperate edge to Thomas’ voice.
I thought for a moment. Killing the student would probably be the easiest, I reckoned, but seeing as how that might not be an option… “You would do something to make the student flunk out. To prove that you were right all along that they should never have been there in the first place.”
“Yes,” said Thomas patiently. “And how would you do that?”
“Well, I guess I’d just sit back and watch them self-destruct. Or attack another mage. Or destroy a priceless painting. Or fail every single discipline.”
“And in case those things don’t work?”
“Then I might do something to help them along a little bit, I suppose. Something to make them look really bad. Like…,” I threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t know. Help me out a bit here, will you?”
“Where does every student have to go no matter what they are studying?”
“The cafeteria?” I asked, feeling rather stupid.
Thomas stayed silent.
A dawning realisation hit me. I was having an epiphany. And not the good kind. “The library,” I said slowly. “You’d plant a trap in the library. Like maybe having an area that’s off limits. That’d make that student think there were some dangerous spells there. The kind of spells that would help them get little old ladies out of trouble. And then that student would go looking for a spell book to help them out with that, and when they found it you’d appear out from behind a corner and accuse them of cheating or lying or being dishonorable or whatever.”
“Bingo.”
I felt slightly sick. “That fucking bastard,” I whispered.
“But you’ve not done it though, have you? You’ve shown that you’re a more honourable person than that.”
I wondered how much of that suggested honour was down to the fact that it just hadn’t occurred to my dim-witted brain that I could even find such a book until Solus had pointed it out. What if I hadn’t been quite so preoccupied or quite so thick? The little flicker of bloodfire was burgeoning and growing, licking its way along my veins with an ever increasing ferocity. Blood roared in my ears.
“Whoa, Mack, calm down.” I must have looked about ready to murder someone, because Thomas stood up off his stool and reached out for my arms. “Seriously, calm down. I’m telling you about this for a reason.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” I snarled.
“Because I like you! I didn’t want to, but I do. So I don’t want you to do anything stupid and I do want you to get your little old lady out of the state that she’s in. So calm the fuck down,” he reiterated.
I stared at him, realising that I’d pushed my bar stool back and was now standing and facing him. Thomas’ hands were gripping my upper arms with surprising strength and I was dimly aware of the barman watching me steadily from behind the polished mahogany counter, wary in case I was about to kick off inside his little domain. I took a deep breath and started to count in slow measured steps, the flames licking their way around my heart and squeezing it as I did so.
“You need to see things from the Dean’s point of view,” stated Thomas in a calm even voice. “He’s been in charge of the academy for virtually three decades, churning out happy mage after happy mage. And then the Arch-Mage comes along, completely usurps his authority and plants you in the middle of things. Of course he’s going to do what he can to maintain his little world.”
The flames retreated from around my heart, and I began to push them back down into my stomach, feeling the after-burn akin to having eaten the richest, spiciest, creamiest curry within the walls of my chest. “He’s a fucking power freak,” I snarled, bitterness mingling with my slowly receding fury.
“Is he?” asked Thomas, quietly. “Or is he just trying to protect the traditions and the students of an institution that has been around longer than even Cambridge or Oxford?”
“I’m no danger to the students,” I snapped, as the fire twisted its back inexorably through my veins and arteries.
Thomas’ grip eased slightly. “But he doesn’t know that.” He sighed. “You grew up with the shifters. There’s a long history of tension between our two groups. Yes, things are better now than they have been in the past and there are treaties in place to prevent any, uh, problems from occurring that might upset the delicate balance between us, but that doesn’t mean that there’s still not a lot of residue antagonism hanging around.”
I held the mage’s gaze. “We work together. I mean, the shifters and the mages work together. To stop bad things from happening.”
“Yes,” he said gently. “But the enemy of my enemy isn’t necessarily my friend. And the new Lord Alpha has a lot of the Council worried. He’s got more control than previous Brethren leaders, and more respect. That has them concerned. They don’t want the shifters to become any more powerful than they already are, because that would inevitably take away some of the influence from them.”
“I’m not a shifter,” I pointed out, finally pulling away from him entirely and sitting myself back down.
Thomas moved backwards, and re-seated himself too, and I sensed, rather than saw, the barman also relax and begin to start wiping down the sticky remnants of previous patrons at the other end of the bar.
“You’re right, you’re not. And that makes you even worse and even more dangerous. We don’t know what you are. You’re not a shifter, and it’s clear that you’re not a mage. But you can fight like a deranged ninja on steroids and you do have magical powers. It’s only natural that the Dean would feel nervous about having you here. You go postal, and it’s him who would get the blame for not controlling you, not the Arch-Mage for dumping you with us in the first place.”
The heat had settled down back inside me to a dull thrum. “So what do you suggest?”
Thomas shrugged. “You bide your time. Be good. Keep trying at your lessons, keep making friends. Smile at the Dean when you pass him. And I mean actually smile in a friendly fashion, not with that look that you get that suggests that you’ve sighted your next meal and you’re about to start gnawing on their flesh.”
“I don’t look like that!” I protested.
Thomas just smiled. “Then, the Dean will realise that you’re not a threat and the Arch-Mage will realise that forcing you to stay here is pointless. And you’ll be let go.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Do you think they’ll let Mrs. Alcoon go, or is that all bullshit?”
“They’ll let her go,” he said confidently. “It’ll just be when no-one else is paying attention any more, that’s all. You have to understand what a huge loss of face it is for His Magnificence that he screwed up so royally and had someone so patently unthreatening and completely lacking in power put in enforced inhibitory stasis in the first place.”
“They weren’t aiming for her.” I picked up my glass again and drained it, laying it back down again sadly. “It was me they were after.”
“So you see why the Dean might be afraid of you then. No-one’s ever done that before – avoided having such a powerful spell take root. No-one who’s human, anyway.”
“I’m human,” I said in a small voice.
Thomas grinned at me. “Of course you are.” He motioned over to the barman. “Come on, let’s get as humanly drunk as we possibly can.”
I raised my empty glass in agreement. Sounded like a plan.
Chapter Twenty
When I awoke the next morning, bed sheet twisted round my legs and a weak winter sun filtering in through the tiny window, my mouth felt as dry as parchment. However, otherwise I felt reasonably fine and congratulated myself silently on no other appearances of a hangover. Thomas and I had continued on until the wee hours, when the barman had begun noisily and pointedly washing glasses and tidying up, encouraging us without words to hurry the fuck up and go home so I figured I’d had a lucky escape to not be feeling any worse than I was.
“Still got it, Mack,” I muttered to myself, then swung my legs over to the floor, wincing at the cold touch of the floorboards whilst pulling myself upright. I walked over to the sink and twisted on the tap, letting the water run for a moment or two, then cupped my hands to scoop up some of its delicious wet frigidity into my mouth.
I bent down to pick up my (for once) neatly folded robe from the floor where I’d left it when I had changed before going out, and felt a sudden lurch of oily nausea flicker its way into being in my stomach. I straightened up somewhat dizzily, swallowing down the unpleasant feeling, and then the pain in my head kicked in, slowly at first as a dull ache, building up with unerring swiftness into a thought shattering pain. Groaning, I ran my hands over my head, barely registering the half inch of soft downy hair that now covered my scalp, and pressed down on my temples. Another ripple of bilious queasiness shuddered through me. This was most definitely not good.
Somehow managing to dress myself appropriately, although it seemed to take a lot longer than usual, I stuffed my feet into my shoes and stumbled down to the cafeteria. Surely some food and some shots of stiff black coffee would set me right.
