Terrance nodded.
“Good. Now keep practicing.”
The proctor walked away, and Terrance used that as an excuse to go back to where Angelika and Adolfo were practicing, away from Johanna.
“Yokel’s got talent,” observed Adolfo. “No wonder Miss Snootypants is taking a liking to you.”
Terrance sighed and just grabbed the magic again. Adolfo was better than Johanna, but only in the sense that he lacked malice.
Adolfo saw Terrance’s face, immediately started apologizing. “I’m sorry, I won’t call you yokel. That was insensitive. And after your parents died too….”
Terrance decided to let Angelika handle Adolfo alone for now. He wished Frederick was here, but at the moment he’d settle for anyone with a sense of humor.
That was something he seemed unlikely to find. Johanna was an outlier, but there was a prickliness and ambition that spanned nearly the entire class. One unauthorized use of magic… yes, only the most self-disciplined would make it here. If Frederick had had any smidgen of magical ability, he would have been killed at an early age. And if both humor and magical ability ran in families, then lines carrying those traits would have completely separated long ago. The only one who had showed a hint of humor was Arnt, and for him it was more cruelty than cleverness.
Terrance, finally undisturbed, was able to brood. His thoughts were not much kinder to him than Adolfo’s nattering or Johanna’s bizarre aggressiveness. If magic ran in families — and the proctor, not to mention the studies from the Department of Genealogy, had certainly implied that it did — then why did he have so much magical ability? His mother had never mentioned any magical ability, and his father… well, his father had died before he was born, and no one had ever mentioned magical ability there either. Yet his brother Aaron had had enough magical ability to save their mother and attract the wrath of the Inquisitors.
It all made his head hurt. There would be enough time to think about that later.
With the cessation of thought came back the urge to use the magic he was holding, and that urge was stronger than ever. He let it go rather than be consumed by it, and as he came back to normal awareness he saw many of his classmates stealing furtive glances in his direction. A couple of them didn’t bother with subtlety and simply ogled him.
Today had been a disaster for his plan of sneaking in. He decided to simply sit on a bench until the next class: Self-Defense. He could only hope he didn’t have some dormant power that would set him apart yet again.
Self-Defense was taught by a man who, had he not been marked as both a mage and an instructor in Self-Defense, would not have attracted much fear or notice in the outside world. Slightly shorter than average, more muscular than your average scholar but less so than your average laborer, and with the mannerisms of a traveling showman.
He called over the largest boy in the class, one who was easily five inches taller and forty pounds heavier. One whose parents had been farmers or brick-layers, and who had clearly assisted them before discovering his magical gifts.
“Punch me,” said the instructor.
The boy hesitated, so the instructor said it again. Louder.
“PUNCH ME.”
The boy took a half-hearted swing that the instructor easily dodged.
“Like you mean it.”
The next one came faster and harder, but it missed the instructor again… and this time, the boy somehow ended up on the floor.
“As mages, you will not be working with your hands all day. You will still need to take care of your bodies, for when we do not draw on the mana field we are still as subject to natural forces as any other human, but there is simply no way you will build up the strength necessary to intimidate or even hold your own against your average physical laborer.
“And magic will do you no good- it would certainly be effective, but the usage would be unauthorized, and if we had to use magic every time a Mages' Guild member was attacked, then the Guild’s power would be quickly run down.
“That is why we’re going to train you to be smart. You have to be able to take down someone twice your size, or two people your own size, unarmed, without breaking a sweat. Then, and only then, will we teach you the sword. Some Mages abandon unarmed combat when they get their sword, but many of them will regret it.
“Then, once you have mastered both styles of physical combat… only then will we teach you the basics of offensive and defensive magic.
“Now pair up with someone around your size. We’re going to start you off on the basics.”
Johanna just happened to be right in front of Terrance at that moment.
“You’re smaller than me,” said Terrance.
Johanna shrugged, grabbed his wrist. Terrance tried to pull away, but Johanna stepped in with her body and planted one foot firmly behind his retreating foot.
Terrance toppled to the ground as he tried to retreat further, with Johanna kneeling on top of him and painfully twisting the wrist she had grabbed. With her other hand she grasped his throat, so that talking or breathing became difficult.
She lowered herself so her body lay on top of his, her mouth close to his ear. “You can play with Angelika, or little Adolfo,” she whispered. “You can even fight it for a time, until you see reason. But I want you to know that you’re mine.”
The rest of the class was in pairs, listening to whatever the instructor was saying. Most students were studiously ignoring his plight. Angelika turned to come and help him, but the instructor yelled at her to get back to her partner and pay attention to the class.
Johanna removed her hand from Terrance’s throat and he gasped for breath. He didn’t have any time to relax though, as the hand immediately went into his pants and went to work. He hated himself for the effect it had.
“My family is powerful,” she whispered. “Strong. And they want the best for me.”
Angelika and Adolfo kept eyeing him, but they were too scared to counter the will of the instructor.
“You’re the best, Terrance. I see why they assigned me to you now. My father says that you don’t have to like it, as long as you give us what we need, but I’m a romantic. I don’t want to lie like my parents do. I want you to like it. I want you to like me. I want you to like our children.”
Terrance tried to pull away, but he was thoroughly pinned. “And if I don’t like it? If I don’t give you what you need?”
She kept stroking him for a little while, and then suddenly grabbed and squeezed. His breath caught, and he inexplicably hardened even further where she grasped him. “I know humans, Terrance. You’ll give what we need. And I think you’ll grow to like me. I’m even starting to like you a bit.”
“Rotate partners!” yelled the instructor. He gulped when Johanna shot him dagger eyes, but he held strong in his instruction- possibly assisted by the proctor standing stone-faced beside him. After a few moments Johanna rolled off of Terrance and swaggered away to her next victim without a word or a look back.
Terrance slowly rolled up to a sitting position, just in time to see the biggest boy in the class walk in front of him. Terrance started laughing, because obviously life was playing a joke. Instead of bringing down the entire guild, he was going to be pounded into dust in his first sparring class.
But instead of beating him, the boy just reached out his hand and helped Terrance up.
Now that the hysteria was over, he could see that this was the boy who had been tossed on the ground by the instructor- who had at first been hesitant to even throw a punch. “We both got hard first matches, didn’t we.”
“That we did.”
Terrance tried to talk more, but the boy wanted to train. He didn’t want to be humiliated again.
So they trained. They punched wildly, dodged clumsily, tried to do a trip and half the time ended up tripping themselves.
And in that, there was a common connection Terrance hadn’t made with any of the other recruits, even Angelika. They both had uncommon strength in their own
way, but they both had something to prove. And they were both willing to work as hard as necessary to get it.
The instructor called to rotate partners again.
Before they switched, Terrance asked the boy’s name.
“Klaus.”
Klaus smiled and reached out his hand. Terrance took it. “Mine is Terrance.”
“Well met, Terrance.”
When he brought this place crashing to the ground, Terrance had a list of people he wanted to save. Wanted to spare. But that list kept getting longer.
12
The third class of the day was structured differently from the first two. Instead of actually learning things, they sat in rows and listened to the teacher talk in monotone. Nonetheless, Terrance was glad of the reprieve from having to deal with his classmates, and he might even learn some things that were tangentially related to his mission.
Most of the lecture this day was covering “the start of our society”, when the Mages cornered the great lizard beast and sealed it. Then they built a palace on top of it, to symbolize the city-state taming nature. Not a bad mythology, even if it over-glorified the Mages' Guild.
Terrance made a mental note to ask Frederick what the Justice Guild’s mythology was like.
“What was everyone doing before the great lizard beast?” asked Klaus.
The sons and daughters of mages snickered.
The instructor kept speaking in a serious voice, although his face showed an edge of embarrassment. “Chaos and disarray. Men and women scattered, not knowing where their next meal would come from, huddled in small groups, sometimes groups smaller than this classroom, hoping that the herds of beasts and the fruit of the earth would be kind to them. Fighting… so much fighting.”
“Then where did the Mages' Guild come from?”
“It was more an alliance… an alliance of mages from each group that worked together to defeat the common enemy. After that they banded together for the good of society, and the other guilds formed, and thus began our city.”
“And the other cities?”
“Every city along the two great rivers was planted by us. In the Southern Wastes, barbarians. Far to the east, the Ostenberge mountain range cuts off all travel. To the north and the west, a sea whose ships tell us little of where they came from.”
Klaus nodded, taking it in with a quizzical face.
Someone couldn’t stop themselves, let out a giggle. Apologized shortly after.
Johanna, for once, wasn’t making trouble; instead of paying attention to the class she was absorbed in a book. Not a bad idea. There were plenty of unrestricted books that even a trainee could access.
But the whole class hadn’t been lost on Johanna. As they made their way to Structure and Design, she sidled up to Terrance. “You may be new here, but you know enough to keep your mouth shut and not look stupid. Maybe tell that to your buddy Klaus.”
“We matched up randomly in Self-Defense.”
“Yea, just like we did.” She smirked, then walked away.
Why was it always her that was walking away, and not him? And why had he pretended to not like Klaus? Klaus was certainly a much better person than Johanna, even if he didn’t have much to offer with regard to Terrance’s mission.
But Terrance wasn’t here to make friends. Not in the usual sense. He was here to tear down the entire rotten edifice, and that required power. He had been so focused on surviving the first few days that he sometimes forgot that. The important part of any relationship here would be how useful they could be to him on his mission.
He started to analyze the situation but quickly shrank back from that line of thought. He wasn’t liking the answers he was getting.
Structure and Design was set up differently from the previous three classes. The teacher was in the center of the room, with a set of wooden blocks that he was stacking up carefully. The blocks were each no longer than a finger, yet they went up to his chest.
Unsure of what to do, the students began to circle around him.
When everyone had gathered, he pointed at the tower. “Very high, yes?”
He smiled as the class nodded along in confusion. Then he tapped the base of the tower with his foot, sending the blocks crashing to the floor.
“That tower was poorly designed. Very poorly. There were so many things wrong with it that we won’t even bother making a list- it would be too long! But the most important thing I want to drive home is that we didn’t consider all the possibilities. That tower would last as long as the initial conditions held… a solid floor, nothing unbalanced placed upon it, no shear forces like wind or my foot. The tower falls apart when any of those conditions change.
“That will be the point of this class- making things that survive. Anticipating what could change, and building to protect against it… while at the same holding down the cost by not preparing for conditions that would never occur.
“We’ll start with physical structures, since those are the easiest to understand, but we will move on to magical and social structures as we go farther into the course. Any questions?”
Terrance’s ears perked up. Social structures… like the Mages' Guild.
Here was the lead he had been looking for. If he could find some pressure that the Mages' Guild hadn’t anticipated, then he could make it as wobbly as the pile of wooden blocks.
The last class of the day was a rotation between departments. The first one selected: Inquisition.
Of course.
“At the Department of Inquisition, we have one of the most important, most rewarding jobs in the guild. It is also the most dangerous.
“You may think the Department of War would have that honor, but that is true only in times of war. And we have been at peace for many ages. Not that I denigrate the usefulness of the Department of War- without their presence, we would be attacked much more often- but the fact is that they do not face danger except in battle, while we face danger every time we track down and destroy an evildoer.
“These evildoers, these disruptors of our order… they rarely go down quietly. They do not release the magic they’ve stolen without incident. And yet, the Department of Inquisition continues to go bravely into their territory to strike them down.”
Terrance couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was this really what they told themselves? He understood putting a sanitized version into a book, but this man was saying all these things with a straight face, and no one was contradicting him or making a stir. None of those raised as mages seemed to even be reacting.
He couldn’t help himself. He had to poke a hole in this story they were telling themselves. “What if they do release the magic of their own accord?” His brother certainly hadn’t been given that chance.
The man nodded solemnly, as if the question was something that had been discussed at length by sages. “Back before our time, in the age of our forefathers, the Inquisitors really did seek to know the heart of every lawbreaker. They gave them the chance to release their power. And yet, many refused. Many more claimed to be giving it up, but they did not release the magic. Still others released the magic for a time, and then grabbed it again later. A very few gave it up for good, but they were nearly matched in number by those who used the extra time to fight and injure the Inquisitors.
“You can see the calculations made,” said the Inquisitor. Hints of strain started to break through his solemn presentation. This actually seemed to bother him. “Each Inquisition was made twice as long and five times as dangerous. Repeat offenders abounded, but due to the size of the department we seldom recognized them the first time they repeated, so the number of Inquisitions doubled. In total, we spent four times as long per initial offense, and our mages were in vastly greater danger per unit of time in the field. It was straining the Guild’s resources.
“And so, for the good of the entire Guild and the entire city, we have to kill a couple of lawbreakers who may eventually repent of their ways and give up magic for good. It’s painful, but it’s
how society can run.”
Terrance almost believed him.
On his way out of the Mages’ Guild compound, Terrance caught sight of a familiar face. He tried to turn but it was too late- the Grand Inquisitor had seen him.
“So you decided to join.”
Terrance was careful to not let his true feelings show. “Your advice was very helpful.”
“Well I’m glad to see you here. How’s your mother?”
Terrance couldn’t help but glare. This man was actually asking, in a normal voice, about his mother? “She’s dead.”
“I see,” said the Grand Inquisitor. “That does happen sometimes. It could be why Admissions didn’t flag you for me. Still, I’m glad you’re here.”
13
Terrance’s head was full of ideas, phantasms of plans, while he walked back to Wile’s shop.
He couldn’t focus on those for now. It was moving day.
Wile would need his basement for whatever apprentice he brought on to replace Terrance, and Terrance would benefit from living within the inner core, closer to the Mages' Guild. It all made completely logical sense, and both sides promised to visit as often as possible.
But it still felt like a goodbye.
Frederick was the most optimistic. “A new bar, Terrance. A new stomping ground. It’s a bit of a walk for me, but we’re gonna have a great time. Or we could meet up right after I’m done with my shifts; it’s close enough.”
Terrance grunted. Hard to do much else when you’re carrying a big stack of books.
That was most of what he brought: books. He brought a mat, a couple candles, and dozens of books. Between Terrance, Anne, Frederick, and Wile, they were able to take it all in one trip.
When the supplies had been unloaded and Terrance had the key, Frederick and Wile took their leave.
Anne spent some time arranging and rearranging the books in the bare room, a sad attempt at making it more homey. She tried lying on the mat while Terrance studied the books and thought, but she knew what would happen eventually.
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