CHAPTER Nineteen
The next day the skies were grim and overcast, reflecting back a dull grey sheen across everything. However, my own mood couldn’t be dampened by the weather and, in total contrast to the weak washed out colours of the world, I felt sunny and chirpy. Alex’s Palladium problem had been solved, Solus was on his way to doing my work on translating the Fae Fire book for me and I now had nothing to concentrate on or worry about apart from actually starting to learn some proper magic stuff and then getting the hell out of the academy.
I was overwhelmingly tempted to see if I could indeed find the spell book that would enable me to provide Mrs. Alcoon with her freedom a whole five years before it was theoretically due, however my current misgivings about the end result that such a project might entail meant that I was prepared to stick to my word and, at the very least, give the actual studying part a shot. Maybe I’d even work out how to reverse the spell on my own. It was amazing what one good night’s sleep could do to provide clarity, I thought, while wandering out to the back of the academy gardens for my postponed teaching session. Similarly, I’d managed to compartmentalise the annoying niggles about Corrigan and put them away deep inside me, including his knee-weakening kiss, at least for now. In fact, I was starting to wonder whether coming to the academy might be the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Even Mary seemed to notice the difference, as she commented when she caught up with me. “You’re just less prickly, Baldilocks. I don’t feel like you’re going to spontaneously bite the head off the nearest person any more.”
Of course, she put it down to her genius action of bestowing me with a nickname. Deborah, who appeared a few minutes later, seemed to think that it was more to do with the contented feeling of ‘lurve’, as she described it. However, even her insinuations that I was an all round calmer person thanks to the attentions of Corrigan rather than anything I had achieved myself, didn’t put a dent in my relaxed state. The events of the night before seemed a lifetime away and, by the time that Brock and Aqmar bounded up, all eager to begin round two, I was beaming in satisfaction as Deborah and Mary hurled themselves at each other, trying to catch the other off balance.
Aqmar grinned his usual boyish hello, whilst Brock smiled shyly. I set them off on the same exercise as the girls, and then stood back and watched. After a while, it became patently clear that the four of them were purely relying on luck, rather than skill or observation, to land their hits. I interrupted them all and got them to sit down in a row on the damp grass and pay attention. This had always been Tom’s failing too.
“You need to keep your body from betraying you,” I said seriously. “If your opponent pays enough attention, then they will know where you are going to hit next, and they’ll not only get out of your way but also have the opportunity to hit you back.”
“Aw, man. Baldilocks, this just the same shit that we do in Protection already,” complained Aqmar.
I frowned down at the teenager. “Well, maybe there’s actually a reason why you spend so much time on that sort of stuff.” I thought about Thomas and our t’ai chi chu’an lessons. Maybe we had more in common than we realised. “But if you get this right, then I promise I’ll also show you some attack moves,” I said relenting.
“Far out!” They all look pleased.
Momentarily amused at the impatience of youth, I began. “You tell me,” I said, positioning myself into a typical fight stance. “Where am I going to go next?”
“Right,” said Mary confidently.
“How do you know?” I inquired.
“Uh,” she dissembled. “I don’t, I’m just guessing.”
“Is it left?” asked Deborah.
I relaxed my body for a moment and gazed at them all in exasperation. “You can’t just guess. You have to know. If you don’t know, then don’t say anything.”
I returned to my initial attack position and asked again. “So, which way?”
They stared at me, blank expressions on their faces. Then Brock put up a tentative hand into the air.
“We’re not in school, Brock. You don’t need to do that.”
Slightly flustered he lowered his arm again and coughed. “Backwards. You’re going to go backwards.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Your centre of gravity,” he said, pointing at the lower part of my stomach. “It looks kind of, I dunno, off.”
“Well, let’s see then, shall we?” And with a sudden spring, I flipped backwards, twisting in the air until I landed on my feet in exactly the same position, only now two meters back.
The others broke out into spontaneous applause. I grinned at Brock. “Well done. Now you try it.”
The teenager stood up and took my spot in front of the others. He relaxed his body completely, in a way that I recognised from the philosophy of t’ai chi. However, a tiny muscle throbbed in his right cheek, giving him away. It was a minor tell, and one that not many would notice.
The others still weren’t sure, but I let them try first anyway. When I told him he was going to leap to the left, he appeared particularly deflated.
“It’s a tiny thing, Brock. Your cheek twitches on the right hand side so I know you’re going to head to the left. You just need to practice your facial expressions in the mirror as much as your body language and then you’re there. Not even Thomas will be able to work out which way you’re going then.”
Unfortunately it was completely the wrong thing to say. Brock brightened momentarily at my words, but then so did Deborah when I mentioned Thomas, making Brock sink down back into himself. I cursed my big mouth.
The session continued on for another hour and, as promised, I showed them how to do a few kicks and spins that really looked more impressive than they actually were, but that pleased the four of them no end. When we wrapped up, and started to head back for dinner, I pulled Brock aside, then let the others go off ahead.
‘What is it?” He asked anxiously. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, goodness, nothing wrong,” I reassured him. “But you’ve got to sort this thing out with Deborah.”
His gaze flickered down to the ground and he looked downright miserable. “She’s not interested in me, Mack. She’s only got eyes for Mage Thomas.” He spat out Thomas’ name as if it was a curse.
“But she doesn’t know that you like her in that way,” I said gently. “If you tell her, then she might see you in a new light.”
“Or she might never talk to me again.”
“Well then, she’s the idiot, not you. You can’t regret not doing something, Brock. You should only regret the stuff that you do actually do. At least then you’re in control. Believe me, you’ll feel better about yourself.”
He sighed. “But what would I do? What would I say?”
“Well, what is she interested in?”
“Mage Thomas,” he said huffily. When I gave him a stern look, he relented. “Fashion, make-up, that kind of thing, I guess. Which makes her sound like a bimbo, but she’s not, Mack, she’s really not. She’s sweet and funny, and always thinks of others. She’d never hurt anyone, not intentionally. And she’s really clever. When she’s thinking really hard, her nose wrinkles and when she’s happy, really happy, she lifts up just one corner of her mouth in a kind of half smile.”
I reached out and squeezed his shoulder. Yeah, he had it bad. “So is there anything at all you could do to get her attention?”
“I don’t know. I thought about getting her some flowers or something once. She’s got hayfever though.”
“You don’t have to buy her something. Usually it’s not what you buy a girl that she’ll like about you, it’s what you do instead. Something really thoughtful that’ll make her see you for what you are.”
“You’re right. But it’s coming up with that thoughtful thing that’s the difficult part.” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration.
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
We walked back. My efforts at matchmaking were about as successful as my own love life currently was, I thought ruefully. Cupid certainly didn’t have anything to be afraid of from me.
*
Throughout the rest of the week, everything continued on as if Saturday night hadn’t ever taken place. I felt like I’d somehow been dropped into a world of safe mundanity. Other than the fact that I was at an academy of magic of course, that is.
My Kinesis lesson went as usual. I entered the room, sat myself down on the edge of Slocombe’s little chalk circle and watched the same pebble again for hours whilst the mage stood as far away from me as he could possibly get without hiking up his black robes, and running away. I was aware of him flicking nervy glances towards me, perhaps in case I got upset and decided to pick up the little stone and fling it at him, but I resolutely remained in place, trying to focus. I’d done a little reading in a spare hour I’d had to kill at the library about how to begin with Kinesis and be successful. It didn’t help. No matter what I did or how I concentrated, the rock stayed determinedly in the same spot.
Evocation was much the same, although I hung back at the end feeling confident enough to brave a touchy subject with the teacher without losing my cool.
“So,” I started, as he was gathering up his things.
The mage shot me a terrified look. “Yes?”
“Do you know Mary? She’s a Level Four Initiate.”
He nodded and made to leave. However I took a leaf out of the Dean’s book himself and blocked the doorway. “She told me a couple of weeks ago that she was summoning a dryad.”
The mage smiled proudly, despite his obvious unease that I was trying to engage him in conversation. “Yes, she’s very talented.” He eyed me up and down. “I don’t think you’re ready for that level of summoning just yet.
I almost snorted, but managed to somehow keep it inside, choking slightly instead. I couldn’t summon a flea, I was hardly going to be able to manage it with something life-size. Besides, that wasn’t what I was after. “From what I know of dryads,” I said cautiously, “they don’t like it very much when they are far away from their own habitats. You know, their trees. In fact they find it quite painful to be away from them. Or so I’ve heard anyway.”
From the horse’s mouth, in fact. I’d had a long conversation with one that I’d come across in the woods in Cornwall on that very subject. She’d been very skittish and at first unwilling to talk, but I’d been equally determined to find out more about her and her people. It had become a bit of a personal challenge after John had given me an incredibly embarrassing dressing down in front of the entire pack when I’d been about thirteen and had mistakenly chosen a dryad’s tree to use for target practice. With enough persistence she’d given in and we’d ended up becoming friends of sorts. Well, no, that was a lie actually. She stopped running away screaming every time I approached her is what I really meant.
The mage blinked at me owlishly. “They’re only summoned for a very short period, Initiate Smith. They’re not in any distress.”
Actually I was pretty sure they probably were. When I said this to him, he muttered some comment about the ‘hippy arguments of tree-hugging humans’ and pushed past me. I let him go, although I wasn’t ready to drop the matter just yet. I figured that I could speak to him about it again the following week. And the week after. And the week after that. After all, that was how I’d gotten to know what dryads thought in the first place, so it was bound to work sooner later on a mage. Even if he displayed the same kind of nervous gazelle like tendencies as the dryad had. Sooner or later I’d break him down and get him on side.
Perhaps the most shocking event of the week however, was my Illusion lesson. I’d set off from the cafeteria after lunch, allowing for just enough time to get there. And then somehow, despite being sure that I could confidently find my entire way round the whole campus, I got lost. Again. It felt like I kept somehow missing the building. I’d walk past Divination and Evocation, and the groundskeepers’ little shed. There was the gap in the wall, which the wind blew through and could virtually yank you off your feet if you weren’t paying attention. And then I’d end up at the end of the buildings beside Protection, without ever seeing the Illusion block at all.
Knowing what was happening, that the mage who was my teacher was just playing with me or testing me or something again, didn’t particularly help matters. It was a particularly drizzly and cold day, and the raindrops kept landing on the back of my neck and dripping down uncomfortably against the skin of my back, whilst the tips of my fingers were starting to go ever so slightly numb. The idea of her sitting comfortably in the warm classroom sent shivers of irritated bloodfire heat through me. But, remembering my training, I counted to ten as slowly as I could, and pushed the flames back down again. Then, when I turned around to head back for another circle to see if I could find the door, I saw it. It was just a glimmer, an odd little hint along the edge of the cobbles that something wasn’t quite right and didn’t quite fit. I walked over and stood in front of it, then reached out with just my pinky and gently poked it. All at once, the glimmer enlarged in front of my eyes, bulging and elongating like those old magic mirrors you used to find at funfairs. After blinking a few times, I even found the door and managed to make my way upstairs without missing too much of the lesson time.
Gratifyingly, my Illusion teacher didn’t gratingly cackle this time when I found my way up to her. Instead she cracked into a smile and patted me on the shoulder. Even better, when I was finishing up dinner that evening, listening to the teens chatter about their day, Thomas wandered over, black robes swishing behind him. Deborah let out a small whimper of excitement when she caught sight of him. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted Brock’s shoulders slump ever so slightly. F*ck.
“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. “F*cking 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 getting 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*ck 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 f*cking 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.