Rough Magic

by Jenny Schwartz

  Henri frowned at his colleague. “Mutation is the wrong word. An unexpected variant.”

  “I’m a mutant.” It sounded so much like something from a movie in the pre-apocalypse world that I began laughing.

  “Ignore her,” Digger said to the baffled and slightly concerned elves. “I expect she’s imagining herself as a superhero.”

  Henri’s look of confusion had me choking on my laughter, which at least meant I sobered up. Bending over to catch my breath, I picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. “Sorry, old human joke. So. You’re offering to answer any questions I have?”

  Raul nodded. “Also, I have a question. Why isn’t Nils with you?”

  Digger’s trigger finger twitched. “Why ask after Nils in particular? Why not any Faerene?”

  An inquisitive gull landed on the railing and sidled toward our group.

  Raul shrugged.

  “We did wonder,” Henri said. “Why a human guard and not a Faerene?”

  I had an answer for that, the same answer I’d given Rory, and one which echoed Henri’s earlier comment. “I’m a Fae Council member. I shouldn’t need a guard in a Faerene city. So why suggest Nils should be here?”

  “Istvan and Rory can’t be,” Henri said. “But Nils could perhaps be spared from the North American Territory, and he is one of the strongest magicians in your mate’s pack.”

  “My pack,” I snapped. “Our pack.”

  The gull squawked and flew away, down to the jetty.

  Henri’s eyes widened fleetingly before narrowing. “As you say. It would be according to pack protocol for the alpha’s mate to have a high-ranking guard during a critical time, such as this.”

  “Dorotta?” I suggested.

  “Not as strong a magician, and physically not capable of following everywhere, as an elf is.” Henri alluded to the size disparity between a dragon and me.

  They weren’t giving me any useful information. Instead, they were chasing it. They wanted to know why a human accompanied me. Unfortunately for them, I could be equally vague. “Dorotta has other duties. Digger was available to accompany me.” I allowed a beat of silence, enough to indicate that no further information was forthcoming. “Regarding the Fae Council, what is expected of me?”

  I could have asked what people’s opinion of me was, but they would dance around that direct question. Asking what I needed to do with regard to the Fae Council was exactly what they’d claimed Jakov had asked they assist me with.

  “You’re a seat warmer,” Raul said. “Your role is to be seen, but to be silent.”

  I stared at him. Why had he asked about Nils?

  As a former assassin, Nils had operated in the shadows. Was there a message there, that a councilor stood in the spotlight, while what couldn’t be acknowledged was done in the shadows and would never be admitted to?

  “Thanks for the advice,” I said curtly. “I should be able to manage that.”

  The two elves frowned suspiciously at me. My tone had been level, but the words were ambiguous. They couldn’t decide if I was sincere or sarcastic.

  If I’d been alone here at Governing House, they’d have had an easier time manipulating me. I owed Digger for being older and more cynical.

  I also trusted Istvan. I mightn’t like his friend Piros, the Faerene spymaster and my fellow councilor, but because Istvan trusted Piros, so did I—to some extent. I trusted the red dragon enough that if I desired political advice, in person, he was who I’d go to.

  “Nils is my cousin,” Raul said abruptly.

  Digger whistled, soft and incredulous.

  “You doubt my word?”

  Digger deliberated for a few moments. “I doubt that family feeling prompted your question.”

  He and Nils were friends. What had Nils confided in him?

  I gave my shoulders a shake. It didn’t matter. “We’ll tell Nils you asked after him. Is there anything else?”

  Raul shared his glare between Digger and me. “Nils is the one who chose to separate himself to join your pack.”

  Abruptly, my opinion of Raul, and by extension, Henri, crystallized. Nils hadn’t told me much of his life on Elysium, but it was enough to know that he’d been ostracized for his career as an assassin. That his family or clan now had a use for him on Earth didn’t mean that they got to play a loyalty card that they’d torn up years ago.

  “Goodbye.” I glared at Raul.

  Neither of us moved. From my perspective, the elves had joined Digger and me, so they were the ones who should leave.

  Henri put a hand on Raul’s shoulder. “We’ll leave you to enjoy your day.” He bowed without reiterating that I could call on them for assistance.

  Raul muttered something that might have been goodbye.

  I watched them re-enter Governing House.

  Digger surveyed our surroundings. “If all Faerene should support the Fae Council, then anyone here ought to answer your questions honestly.”

  The door closed behind the two elves. By the time they reached it, they’d recovered their fashionable, slinking stride rather than the brisk march of army training.

  “People will be listening to us,” I said to Digger, and whoever was eavesdropping magically. “I don’t know any privacy spells.”

  The corner of his mouth indented, a minor tic that indicated hidden humor. “Nils would.”

  I punched his arm.

  To the east sprawled the bazaar, separated from Governing House by a plaza and a row of official buildings. We had intended to visit it. Digger was curious to see the heart of Faerene commerce and all its different peoples, and I’d wanted to view the damage to it and the recovery effort from the rough magic.

  Instead, I looked out across the port. The jetty at Governing House was for people. Further down, the docks focused on loading and unloading cargo.

  I flattened my hands against the stone railing, leaning lightly into it. “It was easy to procrastinate on the farm. If there was something I didn’t want to do, there were always other chores that needed doing.”

  Digger didn’t call me on my revisionist history.

  True, there had been work aplenty, but there’d also been duties like helping Dr. Sayed in providing medical care for the town that I hadn’t been able to avoid. The distinction was that I hadn’t tried to avoid that duty. My role as a healer had been clear and self-chosen.

  In comparison, my life with the Faerene was complicated. I had a number of different roles. People’s expectations of me and my own sense of duty and loyalty pulled me in conflicting directions.

  I pushed away from the railing that edged the square. “We don’t actually have to visit the bazaar.”

  “True.”

  I sighed. “I should work on my journal.” Weather-wise, the day was perfect. “You can look around.” One resolute shake of his head rejected the suggestion. I smiled ruefully. “Okay. I’d feel better if you were close by, ready to see through schemes.”

  Henri and Raul’s approach had at least introduced some doubt into my mind about Digger’s perception of me as a visionary and Rory naming me a verity. I hadn’t seen the truth of the two elves’ military background.

  “Writing reports seems like a Governing House type job,” Digger said.

  There’d been a narrow desk in our suite’s sitting room.

  “Oh joy. Bureaucracy,” I said for the benefit of anyone listening. They didn’t get to know what was in my journal. My private thoughts would be staying precisely that: private. Which was why my journal was with me in my backpack.

  My hand cramped as I wrote up our spelunking expedition, the djinn, and activating the orb and spindle together.

  Digger sat reading in a chair by the door. Istvan had employed the best of translation spells when he and Rory first met my family, and that had paid off since the rough magic. Unlike transient translation spells, Istvan’s had taught Digger and the others to speak Fae and to read and write it. If Istvan had gone for a lesser spell that needed sustai
ning, my family wouldn’t have been able to talk with their Faerene neighbors during the moratorium on magic.

  As it was, Digger was reading a record of Fae Council meetings.

  Osana hadn’t been able to refuse my perfectly reasonable request for a copy of the council’s minutes, although by the manner in which her mouth thinned and her shoulders hunched, she’d wanted to. Fortunately, notwithstanding the view of the Faerene in Governing House who thought that my role on the council was to sit and be silent, as a councilor I warranted the bare minimum of information freely available to all Faerene.

  I closed my journal and regarded the wall slate. I had to accept that any conversation held here in Governing House could be overheard. I still wanted to talk to those at home.

  “Henri and Raul are spies,” I said to Digger.

  He bookmarked his place in the Fae Council minutes with a finger. “Yeah.”

  “But not Piros’s spies. They’re Jakov’s. The waiter confirmed it.” I’d asked the waiter who’d come to collect our breakfast dishes about the two elves. “If every Fae Council member has people spying—”

  “Intelligence gathering.”

  Because this was Digger and he didn’t nitpick, I paused to consider his point. Possibly he meant that Henri and Raul’s actions were acceptable and that they weren’t enemy operatives. They were allies who’d taken the wrong approach to acquiring information about me so that their councilor could make better decisions.

  “Every community indulges in politics,” Digger said. “Don’t romanticize the Faerene. They might be united to survive the Migration, but they’ll also be positioning to gain an advantage for their own in the future.”

  I dug my fingers into my knotted shoulder muscles. I had a tension headache lurking. “Istvan said something like that, back at the beginning.”

  Digger quirked an eyebrow. “Which wasn’t so long ago.”

  The Faerene Apocalypse was less than a year old. I smile, ruefully. “Yeah.” I stared at the slate. “I’m going to call home. The clerks’ room. Someone can tell us what’s happening.”

  He came and stood by the desk. The slate would show us both to whoever answered.

  That turned out to be Urwin.

  The centaur greeted us briefly. “Rory thought you’d call. First, how are you?”

  “Good,” I said.

  Digger nodded.

  “Good,” Urwin echoed me wearily. “We’re over-extended here. The clean up is asking as much of us as the real-time disaster response. But at least the magic sickness is gone. Rory said to tell you that all those you love are fine. He is on the west coast dealing with an ice bloom.”

  Urwin’s speech was too hurried for me to interrupt with a question. I could learn what an ice bloom was, later.

  “Istvan is in talks with the elves up at the Great Lakes. Someone created a water monster. He dissolved it, but two naga died. A human township was affected. Casualties unknown.”

  Beside me, Digger shifted his weight. The magistrate hall knew the details of Faerene deaths but not humans’?

  The ugly, pragmatic part of my brain whispered that naga were rare, especially on Earth, while there remained a billion humans. In terms of species survival, whoever created the water monster would suffer a harsher punishment for the damage dealt to the naga population, and humans like Digger and I who learned of the case would have to be satisfied with the harsh punishment despite the human cost being overlooked.

  “What about the Huh?” I asked.

  Urwin rubbed his eyes. “Oh, that’s good news. Well, could-have-been-worse news. The Huh all survived. Those in Florida, Dorotta translocated in and released them personally. I saw a report that the other Huh villages around the globe likewise survived. Suffered, but survived. And no zombified humans.”

  The back rail of my chair groaned as Digger gripped it. He didn’t know of the Huh or their uncontrolled necromancy. Urwin’s comment about zombies came out of nowhere for him.

  I swiveled to grip his wrist. “It’s okay.”

  “Uh, sorry,” Urwin apologized from the slate. “I didn’t think.”

  Someone knocked at the door.

  “You’re tired.” I sympathized with him.

  Digger answered the door. With him blocking the doorway, I could barely glimpse the nymph messenger.

  “Quossa has time to meet with Amy, now.”

  “Urwin, sorry. I have a chance to meet with Quossa. Can you tell Rory, when he asks, that we’re fine?”

  “Of course. Be safe.”

  The slate went blank.

  I grabbed my backpack and shoved the journal into it.

  “Quossa is at Carob Tree Grazing Garden,” the nymph informed Digger.

  “Carob Tree Grazing Garden,” I repeated.

  “Would you like me to guide you there?” The offer was polite. Her tone of voice said, say no.

  I was about to ruin her day. I didn’t have time to spend getting lost on our way to Quossa. “Yes.”

  Chapter 12

  The nymph messenger set a fast pace as she guided Digger and me to Quossa. Perhaps she had a busy schedule we were interrupting or perhaps she just didn’t want to talk to us.

  To my surprise, she led us out of Governing House and across the plaza.

  Digger never fell more than two steps behind me.

  In ten minutes we’d gone beyond the busy center of town and were among the narrow ring of suburbs.

  Our unnamed messenger and guide halted. “If you carry on straight down that road and turn right at the first corner, the grazing gardens begin there. You’ll see Quossa.”

  “Thank you.”

  She bowed her head to me, gave Digger a cautious look, and departed as swiftly as she’d brought us here.

  We continued on down the street and turned right as instructed. After five houses and a carriage house, the urban landscape became bucolic and the street unpaved. Chickens clucked and wandered among gardens which were a mix of field grasses, herbs and the occasional tree, all flourishing despite the winter season. The presence of elves tending the gardens and fretting around a fallen tree suggested they were responsible for the gardens’ fecundity.

  Quossa grazed near a medium-sized evergreen tree, presumably the garden’s eponymous carob tree.

  Digger and I sat on the low stone wall that separated the garden from the street. Whilst Quossa could graze while using magic to shape sound waves to speak with us, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a hundred other demands on his time. I asked why he’d prioritized my request to speak with him.

  He chewed a mouthful of fragrant herbs and grasses. “Istvan is not the only Faerene who believes in balance. You have suffered because of us, and we continue to injure you. You are a youngster and we should be nurturing your maturation in life and in magic. Separating you from both your husband and your mage partner in a time of crisis is nigh on unforgiveable. But you must be here, and if Rory or Istvan stayed with you and people suffered and died in their territory, the suffering would be laid at your feet. So, the least we owe you is teaching and to hear your concerns.”

  He pulled at a clump of grass. “Why do the djinn concern you?”

  I boxed away Quossa’s perspective on who I was and my position in Faerene society. This was my chance to talk to a scientist about the djinn. Submitting a written report—which I intended to do, for the record—meant my concerns regarding the djinn might be dismissed for days or weeks. I thought the djinn and the clues they offered to Earth’s magic ought to be a current consideration.

  “Initially, when we stood on the outskirts of the djinn, Digger and Jarod saw the core of it as a dust devil, a vortex of dirt like a small tornado. I saw that, as well, but barely for a few seconds. Once I concentrated on the djinn, and although I didn’t try to observe it as magic or via magic, my perception of it changed. It became the sort of active contradiction of reality that the ancient mages’ name for it implied. Thunder shadow.

  “At its core, I saw light and sha
de as links interlocking in a chain that tangled and knotted. My physical vision wasn’t impaired even as it was temporarily altered, but my other senses thought fog surrounded us. The touch on my skin, the feeling of sound being both muffled and too close.”

  Digger added his part, uncoached. “I didn’t sense fog. I saw a dust devil that started to approach as we dropped into the cave. Perhaps because I’d been told it was a djinn, my instincts were happy to duck away from it.”

  I nodded. “I preferred to evade rather than approach it, too. Leaving Istvan to lead it away was awful. We didn’t know how it might affect him. What I know directly is that the djinn didn’t follow us underground. Using the term ‘follow’ suggests the djinn has agency. I don’t think it does, in so far as it’s not intelligent, but it is active. I could sense it on the surface while we were belowground. Nils called it chaotic magic. Neither Rory nor Istvan disagreed.”

  I leaned over and picked a sprig of rosemary. Crushing the narrow, waxy leaves released the heavy scent and a stickiness against my fingers. I concentrated on the sensation. Rosemary was for remembrance, but what I remembered was so very strange. “When we emerged from the cage, the djinn was right there. We emerged into the core of it. We felt it differently. Digger?”

  “For Jarod and me we didn’t see the dust devil anymore. It was eerie without visible cause. A feeling like walking into an ambush. There was a wind.”

  I smoothed my hand over my hair in unconscious tribute to that wind. “While directly inside the djinn, Rory went blind. Nils lost his hearing. Their senses returned when we escaped the djinn’s inner field of chaotic magic. I was so scared for them, that I believe it affected my reaction to the chaotic magic. I can imagine that if I’d been calm and prepared for the djinn, I’d have experienced it differently.”

  Or maybe not. “Before the apocalypse, I was a college student who intended to become a psychiatrist. I never tried hallucinogens personally, but I knew people who did, and I’d read some studies. What I experienced with the djinn felt like a trip, a warping of reality that had the potential to open me to something other.”

  Digger put a hand on my knee, recalling me to the present. “That intense?” His eyebrows drew together in a V of concern. “You didn’t say anything.”