Fallen Magic

Maybe half an hour later, we’re standing outside Electra’s office.

“Ready?” asks Edward, hand poised to knock.

“As ready as I’m going to get.” Without several days to just lie on my bed, hiding from the world while I take everything in. I don’t have that luxury, though.

He knocks.

“Miss James,” says the enchantment-Electra, “is not in her office at present. Please come back later.”

For a brief second, I’m relieved about having that little bit more time. Then I wonder where she is, if not in her office. Edward and I share a grimace.

“Well,” I say. “I guess we’ll come back later then.”

We didn’t exactly make other plans for the afternoon, but I can’t face the thought of doing nothing relevant to this morning’s events. There has to be another next move, something I should be doing.

I don’t know what it is, though, and the consequences of a wrong move are terrifying. So I just return to my book. It does improve a lot when it passes beyond Philippa the Bright’s reign, at least, and the analysis of how even then the seeds that would lead to the Second Civil War were being planted is fascinating.

It’s unusual, though. I don’t remember a previous occasion when I tried to find Electra and she wasn’t there – though, to be fair, I haven’t gone looking for her outside of lessons that often. But maybe it’s different outside of term-time. What does she do when she isn’t working?

There has to be a perfectly innocent explanation. Her absence has to have nothing to do with this morning. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

We return an hour later, and the same thing happens.

“I’m trying to work out,” Edward says, “how long we can afford to wait before assuming the worst and telling my dad.”

I grimace. “A day? Two?”

He shrugs. “Maybe we’re being stupid, hiding it from him. Maybe telling him is the only way to prevent a worse outcome.”

“No,” I say, but there’s no real strength to it.

Another hour of reading, another return to Electra’s office. The same response a third time. A third hour would take us outside normal working hours, but I’m not sure to what extent Electra keeps to normal working hours. Is it worth coming back again today?

“We should – “ Edward begins, and then stops: Electra appears from thin air, leaning against the wall, expression carefully blank.

“You want to talk with me?” she asks.

My heart skips a beat. Charles First-King. Edwin the Just. The episode doesn’t have its usual force; at least I can understand it. I glance at Edward, who’s as tense as I am.

“Where were you?” he asks.

“I was working,” Electra replies. “Outside of term, I have no need to keep to regular office hours.” She crosses the corridor to her office and presses her hand to the door, which seems to dissolve at her touch. I hardly blink at it. “Do come in. My office is warded sufficiently that we may safely discuss sensitive matters.”

It feels like a mistake to follow her inside. That office is very much her territory; she has all the power inside it. But we’ve agreed on this plan and decided it’s the best one we have. That means no backing out now.

“I’m fine,” Edward tells me in response to my questioning glance. “Come on.”

He’s not fine, though. I know what a Malaina episode looks like for him, and he’s on the edge of one. But I have to trust that he can keep control. We step into Electra’s office, and the door swings soundlessly shut behind us.

She’s adjusting something on the ivory panel that sits on the wall: activating stronger wards, I presume. It’s only a few seconds before she turns to face us.

“Where were you?” Edward repeats.

“I was working. The specifics of what I was doing and where are not your business.”

“You have to – “

This isn’t the approach we agreed on. This isn’t an approach that will work on Electra. I’ve seen her face down Lord Blackthorn himself without a hint of fear; I don’t think anyone could really intimidate her.

I reach out to touch Edward’s hand, and he falls silent. “We’re concerned,” I say carefully, “about whether you were talking to anyone about what happened this morning.”

“I was not,” Electra replies immediately, sinking into the depths of her chair. “Nor will I, under any circumstances, without your permission.”

That feels… almost too easy. Edward agrees: “Why should we believe you?”

Electra shrugs. “Whether you trust me or not is your own decision.”

There isn’t much we can say to that. I expected her to speak in her defence, but I misjudged her. That’s worrying, considering how much rests on my understanding of Electra.

“What do you know,” I ask next, “about what we did today?”

“What do you know about it?”

“Enough that you can’t just pass it off as nothing special,” Edward snaps back.

Electra sighs. “Yes. That is the disadvantage of teaching a Blackthorn. It was, then, something special. Something that neither of you should by rights be capable of.”

“What was it, though?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

My heart sinks a little. It was a childish hope, that she would have all the answers and willingly give them to us, but it was a hope I had nonetheless.

“You have theories, though?” Edward asks.

Electra nods. “I will need to consult various sources to verify or disprove them. And, possibly, to conduct tests.”

“That would depend on what sort of tests,” I say. That’s what Edward and I eventually agreed on earlier this afternoon: only if we’re convinced they’re safe and understand their purposes.

“Of course.”

“Do you think it’s likely to be related to the anomaly in my magical signature?” I ask.

Electra blinks. “You know about that? Either you’re sharper than I gave you credit for, or I’m losing my touch.”

Once again she surprises me. I was expecting her to evade and deny, not to admit that it exists so easily. “You destroyed the device to hide it from me?”

“To hide it from that doctor,” she corrects. “There’s no telling what a man tasked with judging whether you were unstable and gifted with remarkably little understanding of the field he specialises in would have done with that knowledge.”

She has a point, I have to admit. I don’t like to think what the discovery of that strange thing about me then would have done to my prospects in the trial. Would it have been worse than the lack of evidence due to the destruction of the device? Quite possibly.

“But you never told me afterwards until… this happened.”

“There was never a good time, was there? With all you’ve dealt with since then, it would have been the height of cruelty to inflict that revelation on you at the same time. Besides, I wanted to have some idea of what it meant first.”

Edward breathes in sharply, as if he’s just figured something out. Which he has: “That’s why you agreed to teach Tallulah, isn’t it? I thought you wouldn’t value my owing you a favour quite that highly.”

Electra blinks once, slowly, almost cat-like. Then she nods. “The pair of you are going to be terrifying someday,” she says.

“If we survive that long,” Edward replies flatly.

“If,” she agrees. “I will do what I can to make sure you do.”

“Why?”

Electra laughs, with what seems to be genuine amusement. “Because you are my students, and it is my job to make sure you remain alive and sane, and perhaps learn a few things along the way. Not everyone has an ulterior motive for their actions all of the time.”

“That’s what someone with an ulterior motive would say,” Edward replies immediately.

“As I said: whether you trust me or not is your decision. But I have reached the same conclusion that I expect you have on the anomaly: it would be strange for it to be caused by something different, and equally strange for you both to have reached flow states independently. Then again, if anyone could reach a flow state through sheer force of will, it would be Edward Blackthorn. That’s not the compliment you think it is,” she adds in response to the pleased and surprised expression crossing Edward’s face.

“I suppose the first test is obvious, given that,” she adds.

“My signature,” Edward agrees.

Electra snaps her fingers and one of the devices she keeps on her shelves flies from its place to settle in the centre of the table. It doesn’t look much like the ill-fated one that measured my signature, not that I remember that in any detail. But I do remember the wire that wound uncomfortably around my finger then, and there’s no sign of that on this device.

It’s a perfect cylinder, about the size of my palm and only an inch or so high, and is made of a smooth dark wood without markings. Atop it rests something that shimmers slightly in the bright light: a thin sheet of some glasslike material.

“This isn’t the usual device for such measurements,” Edward observes, tone carefully neutral.

“I’ve found that generally inconvenient and unreliable for any sort of precision work. This is custom-made for my requirements. If you will place your hand on top of the device, please?”

Edward stares at the device in question for a long while before doing as instructed. There is no reaction, which shouldn’t have surprised me: few enchantments are touch-activated, nearly all require the channelling of magic. And indeed that is Electra’s next instruction.

“With which School?” Edward asks.

Electra narrows her eyes. “Of course – signature measurements of multi-School magicians tend to be more difficult. And I suppose channelling with each School was the very first thing you taught yourself?”

“My dad taught it to me, actually,” Edward replies. “But effectively, yes.”

She sighs. “Very well. I suppose we can take partial readings first. Siaril, if you please.”

Edward nods and closes his eyes. A few seconds later, I see the glass-like material begin to gain colour where his hand rests on it: a deep purplish-red with flecks of white, patches of different shades spiralling around and around in an almost hypnotic pattern.

“That will do,” Electra says. “Remove your hand.”

Edward does so, and the colours fall still immediately. The shape of his hand is outlined in a red a little deeper than the background, and the white flecks have been swept by the current towards the edge of the disc.

“The readings aren’t in the usual format, either.”

I catch Edward’s meaning after a second: they’re not in the format that he would understand. Maybe no-one but Electra knows how to interpret them. That is suspiciously convenient.

“Are you that attached to conventional methods?” Electra asks.

Edward winces.

Electra ignores that and studies the patterns formed by Edward’s magic for a second before pressing her own hand to the disc. The colours instantly vanish and the disc is restored to its original state. “Malaina, now,” she says, leaning back in her chair again.

Edward once again places his hand on the disc and closes his eyes. This time when the colours form it’s much faster. Blue instead of red, is the obvious difference, and much lighter shades. And if the current of colour before was hypnotic, now it can only be described as chaotic. Swift and unpredictable changes of direction, sky-coloured whirlpools and fast-growing flows of darker shades. There are still white specks, but they’re swept around so quickly I can barely see them.

But again the movement stops when he removes his hand. The pattern looks much the same as before, save for the change in colour; no trace is left of the chaos that created it. Electra inspects the patterns and then erases them once more.