Fallen Magic

I’m sufficiently distracted by the mingled relief and guilt that I forget to worry about Enchantments results. I wonder how he managed to jump to the wrong conclusion, but the answer is clearer than I’d like: he trusts me. He has no reason to believe I’d hide things from him.

Am I breaking that trust? Am I betraying him?

I don’t think I am, but I don’t know if he’d see it the same way.

He assumes that my evident worry is because of Enchantments, just in time to remind me of the results. Hopefully he doesn’t spot in my expression that I only just started panicking about that.

It turns out to be one of my best subjects, though. Eighty-one percent on practical and eighty-nine on theory. I’m a little annoyed that I couldn’t have got a single mark more so then I’d at least be over ninety percent on one test.

Edward got full marks on both tests. Humphrey is the sort of teacher to publicise that in front of the entire class no matter how Edward seems to feel about that. Not that Edward gives any outward sign of caring either way to anyone who isn’t me.

“Well,” he says once the class ends and he’s finished taking what look like notes but are actually a mixture of pedantic corrections and scribbled diagrams which have little relation to the lesson’s content, “enjoy the Library. Actually – I was thinking – I could come with you, if you like? Or not,” he adds, seeing the look on my face.

“I’m sorry – I’d like it if you did, obviously, but I’m not sure Elsie – “

He flinches, and something in me flinches too at the sight of it.

“I’m sorry – “ I repeat, and then “I can ask her, if you’d like?”

“No,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

I do worry about it, though. Try to piece together why he’d be upset by it. I guess he figured that he was finally getting on reasonably with some of his classmates, and then knowing Elsie wouldn’t like his company – no, it’s worse, knowing that I declared that without even consulting her. That I don’t think he can get on with Elsie.

If it were just an expedition to find rare history books, I would invite him without a second’s hesitation. But with what it really is, that isn’t an option. Selfishly, I wish I had never gone for a walk that night and never found out Elsie was an oracle.

No. That’s not right. Leaving her to struggle alone would have been far worse. A little part of me that I’m too scared to listen to wonders just what would have happened if I hadn’t been there that night.

“Look,” I say once Elsie and I are safely outside the Academy gates. And then I stop, because there isn’t a good way to say what I want to say. I know I swore I won’t tell anyone, because your life and your freedom could be at stake, but I want to change my mind and tell the person you specifically don’t want me telling because I don’t want to lie to my friend. Would that be okay?

She saves me the trouble. “It’s about Edward, isn’t it?”

I nod. “I shouldn’t even ask. I’m not going to ask.”

“It can’t be easy for you to keep things from him, though.”

“It isn’t,” I say simply. Trying to explain why would be messy and emotional at best. Part of it is just that I’m still not a particularly good liar, part of it is that he is extremely paranoid and perceptive. But more than either of those things: if he does consider my keeping the secret a betrayal? Edward Blackthorn is not the type to forgive easily.

It would mean the end of our friendship. And I don’t know if I could survive that.

“Don’t pretend you’re not asking,” says Elsie.

“I mean it. I don’t want – it’s not right – “

“If you told him,” Elsie says carefully. “Could you swear by starlight that I’d be safe? That he wouldn’t tell his father?”

That’s the core of the problem, isn’t it? The reason I’m breaking Edward’s trust, keeping secrets from him, is that I don’t quite trust him.

I think, if I phrased it in the right way, he would keep Elsie’s secret for me. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s just hope clouding my judgement, maybe I’m just naïve. Maybe in the end Edward is like his father in the way that matters. Maybe he’d choose his father’s ambition over Elsie.

“I don’t know,” I admit reluctantly.

“Then that’s your answer.”

She’s right, and I hate it.

The queue for the Central Library is much the same as before: neatly dressed academics who don’t look particularly pleased at the pair of teenagers joining them. Elsie and I are suitably quiet, doing our best to fade into the background. It only takes a few minutes, thankfully, before we step up to the desk.

At which point the problems start. The receptionist who gave me the pass believing she was helping me against the evil Lord Blackthorn isn’t there, and has been replaced by a stern old man who glares suspiciously at the pass I present.

“This is three weeks old,” he says.

I nod.

“And… with all due respect. Do you really need access to the Library for a school project?”

I force myself to stay calm. “The Academy library isn’t up to date with the latest Malaina research, and I wanted to – “

“Listen. Whoever gave you this pass might have thought it was sweet that you were playing at being an academic, but – “

I’m surprised at the strength of the sudden surge of anger that hits me. He doesn’t know me. He knows nothing about who I am and what I want, and yet he thinks he can just write me off as a cute little girl pretending to be grown-up? I should show him what I –

I definitely should not do that. Charles First-King. Edwin the Just. Simon the Drunkard.

“Well, don’t just stand there all day.”

“We’ve shown our pass,” Elsie says with surprising sharpness. “Either let us in, or don’t.”

He hesitates, and that’s enough to snap me back to reality. That’s the opening: for all his bluster, he doesn’t have a legitimate reason to refuse us entry.

So all we need to do is persuade him that it’s easier to just let us in rather than antagonising him enough that he’s prepared to refuse us anyway. “Please?” I try. “We won’t cause any trouble. We’ve done this before.”

“Stars only know how you convinced anyone else to let you in,” the receptionist mutters.

My name and the story associated. This receptionist doesn’t seem to recall the legend of Tallulah Roberts, and for the first time I have mixed feelings about that. Much though I’d rather that story was dead and buried, he might be more likely to let me in if he knew.

“The Academy does have a partnership with – “

“I know that, girl,” he interrupts Elsie, scowling.

I say nothing. If I look too desperate, that’s conceding him power and possibly also making him wonder just why this is so important to us. If he turns us away… we’ll just have to think of something else.

But my read of the situation was accurate: he sighs and hands my pass back. “Go in, then, for all the good it’ll do you.”

“Thank you,” I say, swallowing my anger. We’ve got what we needed from him. That’s what matters.

It still hurts. It was being told I was playing at being an academic that did it, I think. Maybe that’s what I’m doing. Not now, of course, but all the time I’ve spent reading history books and researching obscure kings as if I were one day going to write history books of my own or make some great discovery.

But I’m not even sixteen, and it’s childish folly to think anything I do now will amount to anything. Maybe if I were Edward, but I’m not.

I don’t have time for moping. We have to find out everything we can about oracles before anyone finds out that I’m using the pass for purposes other than those for which it was granted. It strikes me suddenly how risky this is. I don’t doubt for a second that if there’s ever a formal record of me abusing my pass, Lord Blackthorn will find it and start wondering about the reason for my sudden interest in oracles.

Stars. Have I failed Elsie before I’ve even done anything meaningful to help her?

“Right,” she says, giving me a nervous glance. “Which way?”

It’s still worth the risk. No-one ever came to check up on us and which books we were using before. And besides this is the only idea I have left.

I hum to myself, trying to remember the floor plan. “This way,” I say with more confidence than I’m feeling, and set off up the stairs.

My memory is accurate, more or less. It only takes us a few minutes to track down the room which contains the Central Library’s collection on oracles. And it takes even less time to lose myself in the process of working through the shelves, figuring out what would be the most useful.

It’s mostly history books. I never thought I’d be disappointed by that, but I am. Not even a biography of Cassander the Second, who foretold much of the Second Civil War, is enough to tempt me. I do note with interest that his name wasn’t originally Cassander. It’s a moniker that was attached to him because of his price: he lost the ability to recall his own name.

Elsie and I share a grim look as I relate that little detail.

“I still haven’t figured out my price,” she says. “I haven’t noticed anything different, anything like that missing. My name is Elsie Morris. I am fifteen years old, and my birthday is the twelfth of the Snowdrop’s Moon. My parents are – “

I shake my head: for someone desperate to keep her power a secret, she’s being remarkably unsubtle about looking for her price in a public library room.

It’s quiet, thankfully: there’s only an elderly woman clambering up a ladder to fetch a book from the top shelf and a man paging avidly through a tome from the spirit-forest section. Neither appear to be paying us any attention. I feel as if I should hold the ladder still for the old woman, but that would attract the attention I’m hoping we can avoid.

Would it help if I set up a privacy ward? I don’t think so: quite likely all it would do is reveal that we have something to hide. And I don’t know how it would interact with the Library’s own ward network – most ward networks allow chalked-wards to be set up within their area of influence, but not all.

It’s Elsie who makes the first proper discovery: a faded book entitled A Study of Prophetic Tradition Among the People of Shadows. The latter phrase is an old term for those who share my dark skin, dating back to when their – our – population this side of the Ocean lived in isolated pockets far away from the rest of civilisation, a few hundred years ago.

It also reminds me of the term the fortune-teller used. She called me shadow-child. It’s likely she’s a prophet in the tradition of the People of Shadows, and this book could explain what that really means.

Elsie holds the book out to me. I shake my head. “You’re the one who met her properly,” I say. “You’d understand more of it than me. I’ll keep looking.”

And if the real reason I don’t want to read it is that I don’t like the uncomfortable feeling of being called shadow-child, thinking of myself as one of a People I know next to nothing about, then there’s no need to mention that.

Fortunately it doesn’t take me long to find exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for: an extremely large, heavy Encyclopedia of Oracles Past and Present, only thirty-five years out of date. It should list enough oracles that I have a proper sample to work with.

I get to work.