by S. W. Clarke
“Oh, no. No, no.” Terry gestured toward the door, his face never leaving the microscope. “This room doesn’t exist for non-mages. There’s no door at all.”
I realized the moment he said it that a shift had occurred for me.
Before, I’d always had to work to see anything magical. The academy. The fae market. The inn near Farina North’s home. But I had seen the door to this lab as though it were as real as any other door. I had seen it instantly.
This knowledge sat warm in my chest as Terry went about conducting a second more test on the key. He dipped it in a beaker of liquid, dropped a single droplet of a fizzing solution in it.
A moment later, he shrieked. I mean, full-on falsetto.
Turning around, Terry held up the key like he’d just plucked it from a magical chest. “This,” he whispered, “is orichalcum.”
The liar’s key was made out of the rarest metal on earth. Which meant the deceiver’s rod was, too. And the chain, and the blade.
It was orichalcum, and I carried a bit of it in my pocket.
Our mission completed, I managed to talk Aidan into a visit to the campus’s underground food court with Terry. “The least we can do is buy the guy a meal,” I said with a shoulder-bump. “Come on, I’ll pay.”
So we ended up at a 50s-style diner, all of us seated together in a secluded booth. Terry managed to squirm his way next to Eva, who was too polite to object to how tightly he was pressing her to the wall.
When the food came, he set into eating his burger and fries with finger-licking ferocity.
Meanwhile, Eva touched the small jukebox on the table. “Wow.” She lifted her fingers away, rubbing them together. “So that’s why it’s called a greasy spoon.”
Jericho and I—the only two Americans who weren’t consumed by food—laughed. She wasn’t wrong.
I leaned past my milkshake. “So Terry, are you a hundred percent sure it’s orichalcum?”
“A hundred and ten percent,” he said through a huge bite of burger. “It’s totally unlike any other material on Earth.”
I swirled my shake. “I heard it’s extracted from the ground with magic.”
“Yes, yes.” Terry nodded, burger sauces dripping onto his plate. “Nearly impossible for a mage who’s not proficient enough. So basically it almost never happens, because the stuff has to be broken in order to be extracted.”
“And how is it broken?” Aidan asked.
“Heat,” Terry said. “Lots of heat. Its melting point is almost an unthinkable temperature.”
Aidan and I met eyes. I knew we were thinking the same thing.
The Shade had been a fire witch—the most powerful one who’d ever lived. If anyone could melt orichalcum for a weapon, it would be her. And whoever had sundered the weapon must also have heated it. Another fire mage, most likely.
“I also read that orichalcum glows when two pieces of it are placed near one another,” I said. “Uh, Terry?”
He was two-strawing his milkshake; all of us watched half of it disappear in one long, long sip. With a sudden jerk back, his hand went to his forehead, and he groaned.
I tilted my head. “Brain freeze?”
“So…painful.” His hand dropped away a second later, and he went right back to the milkshake for another equally long sip.
When he’d reached the dregs and the sound of his sucking resounded through the diner, I cleared my throat. “So, how about that glowing?”
Terry glanced at Eva apropos of nothing; she’d firmly fixed her eyes on the students passing by through the picture window. Then he returned his attention to me. “Yes, it does glow. That’s one of its unique characteristics. And”—he raised a triumphant finger—“it draws toward itself.”
Jericho set both elbows on the table, leaned forward with clasped hands. “What was that?”
I was leaning forward, too. So was Aidan.
Terry picked up a fry, bit it off. “If you break orichalcum apart, it’ll naturally draw itself back together. From a pretty good distance, too.”
“How far?” I said.
He shrugged. “You know, there have only been a couple documented cases in history of a scientist actually possessing a piece of orichalcum, much less being able to break it…”
“How far, Terry?” Jericho said. “Guess.”
He finished the fry, gave a thoughtful chew. “Maybe fifteen or twenty meters.”
“Holy shit,” I said, leaning back with a pleather squeak into the booth. My palms found the sticky tabletop. “You’re my new best friend, Terry.”
This meant the key would guide me. If I got close enough to the rod in the labyrinth, the key would draw itself toward the other piece of orichalcum.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was better than the big pile of nothing we’d had before.
I could tell Aidan was thinking the same thing from across the table.
“I just met you, Clementine,” Terry said, eyes almost unabashedly flicking to Eva. “I hardly think I qualify as your best friend.”
Under his adoring scrutiny, Eva pressed a button on the jukebox. She beamed at all of us as an old ballad came on over the ceiling speakers. “It actually works.”
Today I’d learned something about Eva. My roommate was the picture of grace in all things, but especially in the face of awkwardness.
After our meal, Terry saw us off the campus. After hugging us all, he waved to Eva like he would a toddler, shrinking down. “Goodbye, fine-boned, blemishless fae!”
Eva waved back with her best smile, but a strange furrow crossed her brow when Terry said blemishless. It struck me as akin to embarrassment, or shame.
When we were out of earshot, Loki said in my arms, “I think that guy wanted to wear Eva’s skin.”
I snorted. “Like Buffalo Bill?”
Eva came close while Aidan and Jericho walked ahead. “What did Loki say?”
“He was remarking on what a nice and so not creepy guy Terry is.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “That. Surely you’ve experienced it too, Clementine.”
I had. A few times, mostly back in my old life. “Sorry I didn’t come between you and Terry in the booth. I should have.”
She set a hand on my arm. “Things like that are never easy, especially in the moment.”
“You handled it perfectly.”
She shook her head. “Oh gods, you think?”
“I do think.”
We went silent as we walked, and then her head jerked up a little as though she’d come to a conclusion. “I say we make a pact,” she said.
“A pact?”
She half-turned to me, her lavender hair whipping past her face as we walked. “Let’s look out for each other. Not just in booths on college campuses, but always.”
The moment hit me with an unexpected clench of the chest. I suppose we had been looking out for each other for a while now, but never in so many words. Never explicitly like this—a pact, a promise.
I stopped, and Eva stopped with me, facing me. Loki hopped from my arms, trotting ahead to meet up with Aidan and Jericho; he knew when to give me space.
“What do you think?” Eva said.
I smiled at her, pressed her escaped hair behind her ear. For once, I didn’t feel an urge to run away. Not with Eva. “Okay,” I said. “How do we seal our pact?”
“Just like this.” She remained where she was, her ears reddening in the Indiana cold. “With words.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Back on the parking garage roof, we parted to four different places in the world. Jericho went home to Ohio. Aidan left for London. Eva went to Vienna. And Loki and I returned to the academy.
We promised to reconvene in the new year, to discuss the orichalcum key and all its implications. All of which I was sure would be swirling at the front of my mind for the next three weeks.
And Eva and I, who had just made our pact, hugged until I thought the tip of my nose would freeze.
Back at the academy, Loki and
I walked along together under the bare trees. He’d insisted on walking himself overtop the snow, his paws leaving clover imprints.
“So,” he said, “you and me again.”
I smiled at him. “Don’t sound so thrilled.”
“Least you could do as my eternal slave is light me up while we’re outside.”
I obliged. And so we passed through the empty grounds, a witch and her flaming cat. When we arrived at the stables, Farrow had been cleaning Siren’s hooves. She straightened with a jolt. “Your cat’s on fire, Clementine.”
I glanced at him. “Yeah.”
Loki sat, tail curling around him, and began licking his shoulder.
Farrow stared a moment longer, then went back to Siren’s hoof. I grabbed the broom and began sweeping out the aisleway.
As we worked, I said, “So, winter recess. What antics should we get up to? How about we tinfoil Umbra’s office?”
The quartermistress didn’t slow in her work. “Tinfoil?”
“You know, cover all her furniture and knick-knacks in it.”
She snorted. “Maeve would be thrilled, I’m sure. Or we could go back to my place, wash off the horse, and eat apple pie while we drink coffee. What do you prefer, Loki?”
Loki gave a sharp report of a meow.
Farrow pointed her hoof-pick at him. “The familiar has spoken.”
As a long-standing faculty member, I’d have thought the quartermistress would live in one of the better tree-lodgings. Bigger, fancier. But no, when we came up to the landing of the place she inhabited, she led me into a two-room space. Entry hall, living room, bedroom.
“Cozy,” I said, removing my boots and jacket at the door.
She shrugged, passing down the hall and disappearing with Loki hot on her heels. “It’s standard.”
In the living room, Loki had already climbed onto her couch and curled amidst a faux-fur blanket. Around him, the living room spread in soft fall colors—the taupe couch, a reclaimed, sanded piece of wood for a small table, various paintings adorning the walls. No frames, just painted paper.
I approached one. In it, a horse grazed in a summer field. “That looks like Siren.”
“If it hadn’t, you’d have broken my novice painter’s heart.” With a snap of her fingers, the quartermistress set a fire burning in the magical fireplace. With a second snap of her fingers, she conjured a pot of coffee and two slices of steaming apple pie. “Hungry?”
I settled in next to Loki, and Farrow sat in an armchair across from us, one leg crossed over the opposite knee. She tapped her fingers on her ankle. “You’re getting quite good on Noir.”
I eyed her over my plate. “You think?”
“You know you are. I’m afraid you’re not progressing at fire riding at all, though.”
“You don’t mince words, do you?”
She gave a small smile. “That’s my fault. Not yours.” Then, “Rathmore told me he evaluated you recently.”
My eyes dropped to my food. I lowered my plate for Loki to lick at the whipped cream dabbed on the side. “He did, one morning when he was feeling benevolent.”
“He said you have the instincts for the art.” She went on tapping her ankle. “But he’s uncertain about your temper.”
I set the plate down on the coffee table with a loud clink. “My temper?”
Her eyebrows rose as she glanced at the plate, then up to me. “Yes.”
“Rathmore is…” I searched for the right words, my gaze traveling around the room. Despite the single pleasant lesson we’d had before recess, my opinion hadn’t really changed. “He’s…”
“Wholly disagreeable?” Farrow offered.
“That’s the one.”
She laughed, picked up the coffee carafe and poured. She took a sip with both hands around the mug. “You aren’t the only one to think so.” She paused. “Did you read his profile in Witches & Wizards?”
I groaned. “Am I the only one who hasn’t?”
From beside me, Loki murmured, “Yes,” between licks of cream.
“Did you know,” Farrow said, “that his mother was a witch?”
I went stiff. Stared at the quartermistress.
“It’s true,” she said. “A quiet woman, not one for the spotlight, despite her husband’s renown.”
“Her husband’s renown?” I echoed.
“A masterful fire mage,” Farrow said. “Tristan Rathmore. Still teaches at the college in Edinburgh as a professor emeritus.”
I sat back on the couch. “He married a witch?”
Farrow shrugged. “It wasn’t so odd a thing, though I suppose for a man of status like him it was looked strangely upon. Witches have had a long and decided history of slander in the magical world—so profound, in fact, that it carried over to the human world.”
Something about Farrow’s words plucked a string inside me.
“You referred to his mother in the past tense,” I said.
Farrow’s eyes lidded. “Yes. As to your feeling about Rathmore being disagreeable—or whatever worse word I’m sure you had in mind—it might provide some form of explanation to know how his mother died.”
“How did she die?”
“In the legacy of most witches in modern times,” Farrow said in an unusually low, mournful voice. “She was murdered by the state fifteen years ago.”
“For what?”
Her piercing gaze found mine overtop her mug. “For daring to be a witch, of course.”
During those three weeks, I did get my hands on that issue of Witches & Wizards, thanks to the library’s magazine subscriptions. It wasn’t hard to figure out which one; Rathmore’s solemn face darkened the cover.
The subtitle read: The Prodigal Son Disappears.
I took it to the common room; I knew Loki was asleep in my dorm, and I wanted to be alone while I read this. Not because he might make fun of me, but because I might make fun of myself in his presence. After all the complaining I’d done about Rathmore, I felt like a little bit of a hypocrite.
There in front of the fireplace, I tucked into the sofa and flipped it open to the middle, where a full twelve-pages had been devoted simply to understanding Callum Rathmore, son of Tristan Rathmore, and perhaps a greater fire mage than even his own father.
If, the writer said, he hadn’t turned away from the family’s traditions.
The profile began with background on his life. He had been born in Edinburgh to the high-profile dynasty of Rathmores, where his father had been a professor for twenty years. His father had been “bewitched” by a young witch, a graduate student at the college, and a few years later they’d wed in what had been a minor scandal.
Rathmores didn’t marry witches. Especially not in the ‘80s, when so few of them remained thanks to centuries of slander. Especially not when that witch avoided attention, when she eschewed the tradition she’d married into.
They had one child. A boy.
Callum was only ten when his mother was taken and imprisoned by the state for her supposed involvement in a fringe group that sought to undermine the state’s control, to take down their prime minister.
Treason. She’d been accused of treason, and swiftly executed after a questionably short trial. The means of execution? Fire magic.
I lowered the magazine, stared at the barren hearth before me. Rathmore’s mother had been killed with fire magic, which explained so many things. His feelings toward my magic, his reaction when I’d hurt Jericho, his intensity when we dueled.
Did he hate the very element he’d been born into? The one he’d gone on to master, to control beyond even his father’s abilities?
I lifted the magazine, kept reading.
His mother’s death, the writer said, had shaped the rest of his life. Where before he’d been an assiduous student, Rathmore became willful, tempestuous. Sullen. He was a masterful mage, a skilled horseman, a deft blademaster. He could thump any of his classmates in a sparring match. His dark handsomeness could have won him any girl.
He could have done many things. It was expected that he would ascend to a position on the Mages’ Council, like his father and his father’s father. But shortly after uni, he’d disappeared for two years.
When he reappeared, he had mastered fire riding. He aligned himself with nothing and no one for a time, until he and his father had a tentative reconciliation. He took a visiting position with the university in Edinburgh for a semester before disappearing again.
He came here, I thought. That was where he had disappeared to.
But why Shadow’s End? It might be because Umbra didn’t stand with the formalists—the state—and Rathmore saw some merit in that. Maybe he hated the tradition that had killed his mother.
If I were him, I would.
I couldn’t imagine him aligning with the formalists. Not after what they’d done to destroy his family.
Though the writer claimed he’d “disappeared,” she’d managed to contact Rathmore for an interview, in which he’d said, “Publish whatever you like. I’m sure you have all the facts of my life from my father—and you can decide what you think is true.”
That was it. That was the entire interview.
The profile closed with a two-paragraph look into the future. With the Shade amassing power and her army’s incursions growing ever more common, the world needed mages like Rathmore more than ever.
He could make a real difference, she argued. It was a dereliction of his duty, of his heritage, not to help the magical world when it needed him most.
She closed with this: Callum Rathmore isn’t just Tristan Rathmore’s prodigal son, but the magical world’s. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime mage, born in an extraordinary time. Will he return to his place on the Mages’ Council? That’s to be seen.
“What absolute bullshit,” I murmured.
