by Juliet Kemp
“Oh,” Cato said. “You’re not – who I expected.” He sat up a bit. “Who are you, then?”
At a guess, Cato was a bit shorter than Tait, with dark hair; more than that, Tait couldn’t currently see. The candles were slightly behind Cato, no doubt deliberately, throwing his face into shadow.
“I’m Tait.” Tait had thought about how to introduce themself; whether to try, as they had with Reb, not to talk about what had happened, or to be entirely honest. They hadn’t come to a decision, but here they were, and they had to say something. “I’m from Teren. I’m, uh, a sorcerer.”
“A Teren sorcerer,” Cato said, slowly. “Really. Are you, by any remote chance, the Teren sorcerer who summoned a demon outside Ameten which is currently causing some concern to, among other people, the Teren Lieutenant?”
Oh, shit.
“I – how did you know?” Tait blurted, then, too late, “But I didn’t.”
“Well, mostly, I knew because you just told me.” Cato sat up and swung his legs onto the floor; stood up and came over to Tait, turning so the candlelight caught both of them.
Close to, the first thing Tait thought was: but he’s pretty. From the reputation Cato seemed to have, Tait had half expected some grizzled scowling sorcerer, like every storybook illustration of a villainous wizard; despite knowing fine well that was all nonsense. Cato was maybe in his late twenties, a little skinny, perhaps, his short dark hair shining a little red in the candlelight which from this angle now outlined his sharp, curious features. Tait blinked, and Cato gave them a little smirk. Tait, to their slight horror, became aware they were blushing, and hoped like hell that the candlelight wasn’t enough to show it.
“Also,” Cato added, “just yesterday evening I was hearing all about this terrible demon business from the Teren Lord Lieutenant, and it seemed like an obvious guess.”
“Reb took longer,” Tait said, without thinking, then cursed themself again when Cato’s eyes narrowed.
“So you’ve already been to see Reb, have you? Well. How about you sit down, and tell me all about it. From the beginning.”
Cato sat back down on the edge of the bed, and Tait looked around, more than a little off-balance now, for a chair. A stool shot over from the other side of the room, scattering floor-detritus in its wake. Tait gasped, and Cato smirked again. That was a lot of power, and applied in a way Tait didn’t even know how to approach. How did Marek magic even work?
“Sit down. Tell me a story,” Cato said.
Tait sat, slowly, and tried to marshal their thoughts.
“We’ll take the ‘summoned a demon’ bit as read for now,” Cato said, “though I may want to hear more about that later. How about after that?”
“I banished it,” Tait said, gloomily aware that if Reb hadn’t believed them, Cato was hardly any more likely to.
“You banished it?” Cato repeated.
“I thought I did.” Tait stared at their hands. “I suppose… I did, though. I’m sure of it.”
“The Lord Lieutenant says it’s still running around out there.” Cato sat back, looking thoughtfully at Tait. “If you thought you banished it, why did you run away?”
“Because they’d make me do it again.” Tait might as well be honest with Cato now, right? There wasn’t much to lose.
“Call a spirit?” Cato said. “Was that a surprise to you?”
“No, but…” Tait struggled for words to explain everything that had happened in Ameten. “I didn’t expect what they… I didn’t think about it enough beforehand,” they said in the end, miserably.
“Hmm.” Cato scratched at his chin. “Very well, let’s leave that for now. But you said you banished it, and the Lord Lieutenant says it’s still out there. That’s… interesting.”
Tait frowned, and risked looking up. Tait couldn’t read Cato’s expression.
“But you believe the Lord Lieutenant,” Tait half-asked.
“Not necessarily,” Cato said. “What did you do after you ran off, then?”
“I thought I’d come to Marek,” Tait said. “Because you don’t use blood, and you don’t use spirits, here.”
“Well, there is the cityangel. But you’re right that it works differently. Go on.”
“I mean, I could still use blood-magic, but…” Tait rubbed at their forearms. “But that’s limited. So I wanted to come here, but I – the Academy don’t like people to leave. I figured they’d be looking for me. So I went to the mountains. I grew up there, and people there – they wouldn’t necessarily turn me over. Maybe. I thought I’d stay there a while, let things die down.” That had been a very unpleasant few days, hiking at night and sleeping in the day, constantly terrified that they’d wake to find an Academy sorcerer standing over them. “Then when I got up there, there was this bunch of Marekers, looking to go over the pass to Exuria, with a bunch of trading stuff – huge packs, they looked like travellers – but they’d just found out it was dragon-bear season.” Tait rolled their eyes. “Dunno how they’d missed that when they were planning it.”
“Ah, the Exuria traders,” Cato murmured. “Of course.”
“And I thought – Marek. And the cityangel. I hadn’t thought of it before, but if I was in Marek, the Academy couldn’t send anyone after me. No spirits can come into Marek. And maybe even I’d be able to do sorcery again, if a Marek sorcerer would teach me.”
“And you were low on other options,” Cato agreed. “Yet you didn’t go straight there?”
Tait shrugged. “No money, and you can’t get passage down the river for free. I’d have been obvious on the road, and you can’t get through the swamp less’n you know it proper. But I said to the Marekers, I’ll come with you, keep the dragon-bears off, keep the journey down the river after nice and smooth.”
“But you couldn’t do magic,” Cato said. “What if a dragon-bear attacked? You were just going to let them die?” He’d leant forwards a little. A few locks of hair had fallen forwards over his eyes, and he brushed them back impatiently.
“Blood sorcery,” Tait said. “Like I said, I wasn’t about to summon another spirit. The Academy would find me, if I did that.”
“The academy,” Cato repeated. “You’ve mentioned that a couple of times.”
“The Academy of the Court,” Tait said. “In Ameten. They teach sorcerers.”
“Right. Huh. So you went up into the mountains prepared to open a vein if you met any dragon-bears or fell off any cliffs.” He sounded a bit mocking.
“Didn’t fall off any cliffs,” Tait said. “Did meet a dragon-bear.” They knew they sounded defensive.
Cato’s eyebrows shot up. “You did? What happened?”
“Like you said. Opened a vein. Translocated it.”
Cato’s eyes widened. “And you were still upright afterwards? That’s a hell of a lot of power to pull from your blood.”
“I felt a bit off afterwards,” Tait said, with serious understatement. “But we got through. I got through.” They’d needed a lot of support from Bracken, but after just saving everyone from a dragon-bear support was readily forthcoming. Though it was just as well there hadn’t been another one immediately afterwards.
“Lucky thing they don’t hunt in pairs,” Cato said.
“How do you know?” Tait demanded. “You’re from the mountains?”
“Not a scrap of it,” Cato said. “Never left Marek in my life. Never wanted to. Only ever seen a picture of a dragon-bear, which was plenty alarming enough for me. I’m making assumptions from the fact that you’re not a blood-drained corpse halfway up a mountain somewhere. So. You fought off a dragon-bear, which, well done,” he sounded genuine, “you went to Exuria and back with these Marekers, and then downriver. When did you get here, then?”
“Yesterday,” Tait said. “Then, this morning, I asked after sorcerers.”
“And they sent you to Reb, of course, because everyone makes horrible faces when they talk about me.” Cato sounded pleased. “And Reb… ?”
“She
said there’s a demon roaming Teren looking for me, and kicked me out,” Tait said, suddenly desperate for this to be over. They hadn’t the first clue what they would do next, but going over all of this, waiting for Cato to kick them out, was becoming too awful. “She said she wouldn’t apprentice me. She didn’t think I was telling her the truth.”
“And were you?”
“Yes!” Tait said. “But… I don’t know. I thought I was. Maybe I was wrong.” They took a shaky breath. “I’ll go. I’m sorry.”
“No!” Tait startled a bit at Cato’s vehemence. “Sorry. No. Don’t go just yet. So Reb sent you off with a flea in your ear.”
“She told me to go back and sort my own mess out.”
“Is she going to turn you in?” Cato asked. He frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought it of Reb, to be honest.”
Tait shook their head. “No. She said not, but… I don’t know if she told the truth.” They were a little reluctant to accuse Reb of lying – it surely wouldn’t endear them to her fellow-sorcerer – but Cato seemed to want all the details.
Cato tilted his head slightly, eyebrows drawing together. “Why not?”
“I got back to my room, and there’d been someone looking for me. The Teren sorcerer, staying at the White Horse. And it was a Teren person, the barman said. But then, I didn’t tell Reb where I was staying, and I did tell her my name, so… But I don’t understand how else anyone could have known.”
“If Reb said she wouldn’t tell, she wouldn’t tell,” Cato said, shaking his head. “Reb drives me absolutely up the wall on a regular basis, but she’s honest.” He grimaced. “Unpleasantly so, at times. Must have been someone else. One of your Marek trading-expedition, maybe? Deliberately or otherwise, mentioning their Teren sorcerer friend?”
“Maybe,” Tait said. “I don’t know.”
“So what did you do?”
“Left money on the table and went out of the window,” Tait said.
“And came to find me,” Cato said.
“I didn’t know what else to do. You’re the only other sorcerer in Marek.”
“No longer entirely true, even if we don’t count your good self, but I take your point. And so, you want to apprentice to me, do you?”
Tait hunched their shoulders. “I guess you won’t have me.”
“I don’t know,” Cato said, frankly. “On the one hand, you are clearly in trouble up to your neck, and I am very nervous indeed about how Beckett will feel about this. On the other hand, it would piss Reb off, which is nearly enough reason to do it all by itself. And, unlike Reb, I think you’re telling the truth about what you thought happened, whether or not you screwed it up. Although I’d like to know…” He paused, then shook his head. “Anyway. You can’t stay here and not learn Mareker magic, and I’m not that keen to send you back to Teren to choose between slicing yourself up and getting eaten by a demon eventually, regardless of what happens with this particular one. I don’t mean to be rude – well, not very rude – but it doesn’t sound like your spirit work is up to much, and there’s a hard limit on blood-work.” He paused, then said, lightly, “That is, if you limit it to your own blood.”
“Yes,” Tait said, with emphasis. “Reb asked me that too. Yes.”
“Well then.”
Tait’s shoulders sagged. “I could just – not do sorcery,” they said. “Here, or in Teren. Just – stop.”
“Really?”
Tait looked up, but as far as they could see, Cato’s expression was just one of curiosity.
“Do you really think you could give it up?” he asked. “Because I sure as hell couldn’t.” He snorted. “And I am in a position to be moderately certain of that, though that’s a story for another time.”
“Maybe,” Tait said.
“I suspect not,” Cato said. “But you can’t do your sort of magic here. Beckett won’t stand for it. I work with spirits, sometimes, but… well, not the way you do, let’s leave it at that for now.” He seemed to be thinking of something else, then shook his head briskly. “Anyway. You want to do magic, you want to stay, that means learning our magic.”
“Who’s Beckett?” Tait asked. “You’ve mentioned them twice now.”
“The cityangel,” Cato said.
Tait blinked. “The cityangel has a name?”
“For about the last two months they do, yes. It’s – another story for another time, perhaps.” Cato chewed on his lip. “I’m loathe to make a decision without some kind of conversation with them, to be honest, but I kind of hate talking to them…”
“Hello,” someone said from behind Tait, and Tait screamed.
“Shit,” Cato said. “Tait, it’s fine. Probably.” He put out a hand, and Tait grabbed onto it, white-knuckled, beyond embarrassment at this point. “Beckett, you arse. What do you think you’re doing?”
Someone stepped forwards from just behind Tait’s right shoulder, and Tait took another gasp. Cato’s hand was warm in theirs, and reassuring. Whoever had just walked in – appeared? Tait hadn’t heard the door – was tall, taller than Tait, and slightly angular, and their pale head was smooth. Their expression wasn’t human.
“You wanted to speak to me.” Their voice wasn’t human, either.
“Most people knock,” Cato said, sourly.
“I am not people.”
“Yes, well. Beckett, this is Tait, a sorcerer from Teren who wishes to learn Mareker magic. Tait, this is Beckett, Marek’s cityangel.”
k k
Cato was impressed that Tait hadn’t just passed out cold when Beckett appeared. They were clearly in a high state of nerves – understandable, in the circumstances – and it hadn’t been very considerate.
But then, being considerate wasn’t Beckett’s style. It wasn’t usually Cato’s, either, but – well. Tait was easy on the eye, no question, and Cato was shallow. He found himself liking Tait, too, even if they were far too naïve. Whatever Reb might have thought, Cato was confident Tait wasn’t lying about the business with the demon. They believed they’d banished it, and Cato couldn’t see how you could make a mistake on the matter. Which raised some interesting questions with regard to what exactly was going on, and whether someone else might be lying instead, and if so, who. Plus, Cato would quite like to know what was going on with this Academy in Ameten, and why Tait had left in such a hurry.
But that could wait. Right now, Beckett was standing in Cato’s room, and Tait was staring at the cityangel with their mouth open, looking terrified.
“You wanted to talk to me,” Beckett said again.
“Right. Well, Tait wants to learn Mareker magic, and since you are, as it were, the source of Mareker magic,” not quite true, it was more like Beckett mediated it, but close enough, “I thought, best not agree to such a thing until I’d asked you about it.”
“You did not ask about Jonas.”
“You knew Jonas already. And you like him. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
Beckett blinked, once, slowly. “Why?”
“Why what?” Cato asked, deliberately obtuse. He wanted to buy as much thinking time as possible, plus Beckett’s conversational style irritated him and perhaps if he irritated Beckett back, Beckett might change. Unlikely, but one could hope. As long as he didn’t irritate Beckett enough to be cut off, which apparently was a threat Beckett was now willing to make.
“Why does this one wish to learn Mareker magic?” Beckett asked, unperturbed.
“You realise that means working with Beckett, right?” Cato asked Tait. “You might want to reconsider.”
It was an exaggeration; before this year, Cato had never once encountered Beckett in person, and even in the last month or two, it didn’t happen often. Well. Not all that often. Certainly not most times Cato used magic, thankfully. Cato was optimistic that as the effects of Daril’s idiocy wore off, it would happen less often. He could quite happily never see Beckett in person again, as long as the cityangel kept doing their damn job.
Tait swallowed, and kept on looking a
t Beckett. Well, that showed they were a sorcerer, right enough. Cato was more or less inured to it by now – and went to great lengths to resist the effect – but to sorcerer eyes, Beckett was compelling. It wasn’t anything as straightforward as a glow, or something you could put your finger on. The cityangel just – was – magic, and it drew you in.
Tait licked their lips. “I summoned a spirit in Teren. A demon. And I thought – I was sure – I banished it, but someone from Teren says I didn’t.”
Cato shut his eyes. Granted, Beckett was probably going to work the whole business out anyway, sooner or later, but admitting it up-front might not be the best plan.
“I know,” Beckett said.
Right, maybe it had been a good idea, then. Getting caught in a lie was almost always an error.
“But I don’t want to be summoning, or bleeding myself, anyway. Even without what the Academy wanted me to do,” Tait said. And that was the second mention of this academy and their plans. Cato really needed to follow that up. “Marek magic, everyone talks about it like a, a relationship. That sounds better than what I’ve been doing in Teren.” The words were awkward, but Tait’s tone was painfully honest.
“You wish to learn Marek magic,” Beckett said.
“But if you don’t want me to, if… I’ll leave,” Tait said. “I know you have to protect the city, and… if I’m bringing a demon here, I’ll leave.”
“No demon can come here,” Beckett said.
“If Tait got rid of the demon,” Cato put in, “then either there’s no demon coming, and that part’s a lie; or someone else has summoned it. Either way. Not really Tait’s fault.”
Tait looked at him in surprised gratitude. Beckett didn’t react. After a moment, they tipped their head to one side, a very human gesture. Beckett had definitely picked some things up during their unplanned stay on the human plane, beyond this sodding irritating habit of turning up in person.
