Fallen Magic

My dorm-mates decide we should have lunch together to celebrate my return, with much joking about more competition for the bathroom and the like. It’s nice of them, but it’s not what I really want to do.

They’re all surprisingly supportive, though, given the recent gossip; I’d expected at least one of them to be convinced that I’m unstable. That not being the case will make living with them a lot easier. I feel a stab of guilt at how little of an effort I’ve made to get to know them or spend time with them. But I have the chance to change that now, don’t I?

So I stay and talk with them throughout the lunch break, even though I just want to be alone with Edward. We don’t discuss the hearing much, but there’s plenty of talk about Edward’s knowledge of illusions.

“I’m just glad someone finally stood up to Felicity,” says Hannah. “Stars, I hate that woman. Barely knows the basics of her own subject.”

“Oh, absolutely. Did you know he was so good at illusions?” asks Lucy.

I shrug. “He’s a Blackthorn. Illusions aren’t even his specialism.”

“What is?” Hannah asks.

“He wants to be an enchanter,” I say. “It’s very suited to Siaril casting and solidly grounded in theory.” And if Lord Blackthorn could be said to have a specialism, I add silently, it’s enchantment.

“I can’t believe he’s so smart,” says Robin eagerly.

If this is what it’s typically like, I’m beginning to understand why Edward doesn’t spend much time with most of our classmates. “Like I said. He’s a Blackthorn. There’s nothing surprising about it with his upbringing.”

“Don’t mind Robin,” Lucy says, “she’s got it into her head that Edward is kind of cute.”

“I do not have a crush on Edward Blackthorn,” Robin insists, but her cheeks turn a faint scarlet. “Anyway, aren’t you and him, uh…”

Edward. Cute. I guess I can sort of see it, but it’s the last word I’d use to describe him. I’m so busy processing that it takes me a while to register the second thing Robin said. “We’re not dating,” I say quickly.

“Oh? Could have fooled me,” Hannah laughs. “The way he was when you were isolated. It was like he was a completely different person.”

I want to ask what she means, but then I realise she’s fishing for exactly that response and giving it will only fuel the theory that we’re a couple.

“Or do you not like him back?” guesses Lucy.

“Honestly, you pair of gossips.” Aisha rolls her eyes. “Tallulah, don’t feel you have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”

“Thanks, Aisha. But it’s fine. There’s nothing to tell. We’re friends, that’s all.”

“Sure…” Hannah drawls. Yeah, she doesn’t believe me.

“Wait, so he’s single?” asks Robin. “Not that it makes any difference to me, of course.”

No, this is worse. Because he’s definitely not going to be interested in Robin, but I doubt he wants me to tell everyone why. Maybe I should pretend we’re dating; that would be a lot easier. “I… guess so, yeah. He hasn’t told me about a girlfriend, anyway.”

“We should ask him to join us,” says Hannah. I don’t know if she’s serious or if she just wants to watch Robin squirm. “Where is he, anyway?”

I shrug. “Not here.” He was just ahead of us in the queue for food, but then vanished as we were searching for a table. “And I’d rather not gossip about him behind his back.”

“Fair enough,” says Aisha. “Where are you with classwork? My notes are decent if you want to borrow them.”

“That’s okay. Thank you. I need to make up two weeks’ practical work for Alchemy and Astronomy, but other than that I’m only a couple of days behind. Electra helped me keep up in isolation.”

“Sorry,” says Lucy, “I think I’ve developed a hearing problem. You didn’t actually just say Electra helped you?”

I laugh. “She did. Don’t tell her I said this, but I don’t think she’s quite as bad as she makes us think.”

“Of course,” Robin says. “If she was they’d never let her teach.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense! Why would someone pretend to be, well…” Hannah pauses, searching for the right word.

“Evil?” Lucy suggests.

I don’t know why either. I’m curious, but not to the extent I’d dare ask Electra about herself.

We set off for the afternoon’s lessons in good cheer. Alchemy is first, so I get to schedule catching up with the majority of missed practical work. That’s an hour an evening for the rest of the week gone, since Mary assumes I won't want to work on the weekend. I would have preferred doing it all at once at the weekend, honestly.

The final lesson of the day is Magical Law and Culture, which makes me realise just how much I’ve missed being in a classroom with a good teacher and an interesting topic to discuss. Today it’s how magic can cause inequality in society and whether magicians have a duty to stand against that.

Given who we have in our class it was always going to be a tricky one, especially when Edward, Mildred and I are dancing around each other.

Edward argues that magicians have a duty to make the Kingdom a better place for all of its subjects by creating new technologies and passing progressive laws. As a historian I feel obliged to challenge him on the idea that magicians should possess too much political power, which he accepts in good grace.

Things get more controversial with the debate on whether magic causes inequality in the first place. Mildred takes the stance that it doesn’t, because anyone can be a magician – in fact that means magic acts against inequality.

“Sure,” says Hannah. “Siaril is almost entirely inherited by a few wealthy families, and don’t try to pretend just anyone can afford the Arsinth ritual. That’s two out of five Schools that are restricted to the wealthy and privileged.”

“I read somewhere that Malaina is more likely to occur in the poor, though,” Elsie puts in.

Instant tension. Elsie didn’t mean anything by it, but with the students in this class and this morning’s hearing there’s no way to mention Malaina without tension.

“That’s not really the same thing, is it, though?” says Jake.

“Jake,” says Daniel, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder, “shut up.”

“We don’t tell anyone to shut up in this class,” Sam says quickly.

“Sorry.”

“Keep talking,” Edward says, an edge to his voice. “I want to hear this.”

I don’t. If it hadn’t been for Sam’s interjection just now I might have told Edward to shut up.

“Well, Malaina isn’t like the other Schools, is it?”

“There it is. That’s what you really think. Tell me why, then.”

Edward is trying to defend me, I realise. An attack on Malaina, in his mind, is an attack on both of us, and it needs to be shut down. Conversation and conflict, though, aren’t the same thing. A good strategy for the latter can be a disaster for the former.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jake asks, not seeing the danger. “They’re – “

“Okay, that will do,” Sam says, jumping to his feet and holding up his hands for silence. “Don’t mistake me – Malaina is an important topic that needs to be talked about, and we will discuss it in class. But today is not that day, particularly after recent events for some of your classmates. If we could return to what is the topic of today’s discussion… Aisha, what do you think? What impact can magic have on inequality?”

I eat dinner with Elsie and Elizabeth. The latter reminds me of the conversation we had that first day of isolation. “I told you you’d make it through this,” she says. “Now you know, too. We’re survivors. We’ll make it through whatever life and magic throw at us.”

I don’t know if I quite believe her, but I know I want to.

Elsie has less cheerful news: apparently Mildred didn’t take too well to her going to the hearing intending to speak in my defence. “She said I betrayed her. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I was just trying to do the right thing, to help my friend.”

“So was I,” I say without thinking. “Mildred can be…” There is no right word. “She knows how to take people apart with just words. Even when they don’t deserve it.” I hesitate. “Especially when they don’t deserve it.”

Elsie doesn’t look altogether comfortable with that. I didn’t expect her to be.

“And if she doesn’t want to be your friend any more,” Elizabeth adds, “then you have new friends right here.”

“Absolutely,” I agree. The three of us, friends. We make an unlikely trio, but I’m starting to think the best friendships are the most unlikely ones. After all, Edward Blackthorn is the unlikeliest friend I could have imagined and by far the best I’ve ever had.

I finally talk to him after we’ve eaten. We return to the meeting room we’ve used before. It’s probably larger than the one I’ve lived in for two weeks.

“So,” I say, deciding to start with the lighter topics. “I thought you should know Robin has a crush on you.”

“Who’s – oh! Robin Wilde. Siaril, our age, reddish-brown hair?”

“Yes. She’s one of my dorm-mates. How do you know her?”

“Siaril,” he repeats. “The Wildes are one of the old families, though she’s not on the best of terms with them. She’s nice enough.”

“Not your type, though?”

He laughs. “No. You didn’t – “

“Tell anyone? I might not be a Blackthorn, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep secrets.”

“Thank you.” He pauses, shifting his feet awkwardly beneath him. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.” I laugh. “No, I’m better than fine. You don’t realise how important little things are until they’re taken away. And there is no sweeter feeling than getting them back.”

“I’m happy for you, then.”

“Do you know – “

“What my dad did in the end? No. He never told me anything.”

I can see the pain in his eyes. This incident has made a rift between Edward and his father that may take a long time to heal.

Selfishly, I’m a little glad of that, because it means I’m less likely to have to see Lord Blackthorn again.

“Do you want to talk about the signature?”

I nod. “You understood what I was trying to tell you? I didn’t want to say it in front of Electra – “

“Of course. It wasn’t a malfunction, was it? Most magical measurement devices are pretty reliable.”

“I don’t think it was,” I say slowly, trying to recall the examination in as much detail as possible. “There was something unusual about me, that was giving the device strange readings. And then Electra… she didn’t want the doctor to know that. She didn’t want me to know that.”

“Oh – you think she caused the explosion? That’s… plausible, yes. How much do you know about magical signatures, anyway?”

“Basically nothing. But I’m sure you can tell me more.”

Edward nods and begins to explain. He talks like a textbook sometimes. Each magician has a unique magical signature, he explains; from it you can tell which School they belong to and which areas of magic they have aptitude for. In the case of Malaina you can also recognise whether they’re close to an episode or whether they’re mala sia.

Sensitives can see all this information just by looking at a magician, but the rest of us have to settle for enchanted devices like the one Doctor Wandsworth used. But while they don’t typically explode in use, it’s very difficult to interpret the readings they give to get anything other than the magician’s School and how unstable they are if Malaina, so they’re not widely used outside Malaina research.

“I could probably source one if you wanted,” he says, “but I’d have to go through my dad. And…”

He leaves the question unspoken, but we both know what it is: do you really want Lord Blackthorn knowing about anomalies in your magic if you have them? And I know what my answer is. “I’d… prefer it if you didn’t do that.”

“Anyway, it’s probably best that we get answers directly from a sensitive.”

“Which is a problem,” I add, “because it’s not as if I want to march into the palace and demand audience with the King to tell me what’s wrong with my magic – “

“Why are you assuming there’s something wrong?” Edward asks.

Oh. I have been assuming that, haven’t I? “I just thought…” I begin, not knowing how to finish.

The truth is that I think it’s because I shouldn’t really be Malaina. I haven’t survived trauma. I’m not a survivor like Elizabeth said I was, I’m just a lost and confused girl who couldn’t even cope with school.

That’s the one secret I haven’t told Edward.

I don’t want to tell him.

“Never mind. I don’t know anything about what it could be.”

He knows me well enough to realise there’s more to it than that, but he doesn’t press me. “Yes, I wouldn’t recommend going to the King, and it’s not as if there’s a whole array of other sensitives to choose from… I suppose there’s my mother, but…”

I blink a few times. “Your mother is a sensitive? I’m sorry – I just realised I don’t even know who she is – “

Edward shrugs. “She’s a sensitive, yes. Her name’s Sylvia Froment. I haven’t seen her in a decade.”

I don’t ask why, I just wait for him to explain more.

“I don’t remember her that well,” he says. “Her father was a minor Sirgalese lord. She was… very much not like my father. She used to throw grand parties, and he’d never even show up to them. But she loved me, she always had time for me.”

“What went wrong?”

“She was cheating on my father with our butler.” Edward shrugs. He doesn’t seem as emotional as you’d expect about that; it’s as if he’s reciting distant history rather than that of his own parents. “I can’t blame her, honestly. He’s always been married to his work.”

I agree with that assessment; I can’t imagine Lord Blackthorn ever being a particularly good husband.

“I can blame her for getting caught, though. The papers found out, and then he had to divorce her. He’s a Lord of the Kingdom and I’m his heir. She was never going to even get to see me unless he let her.”

“And he didn’t,” I breathe, adding another reason to my growing mental list of why I should hate Lord Blackthorn.

“No,” Edward agrees. “He didn’t.”

“Not even letters?”

“I never got any from her. I wrote a few times in the first year or so, but I don’t know if they ever got sent. I haven’t tried that hard to find her. She went back to Sirgal, so I’ve heard.”

“Do you miss her?”

Edward shrugs. “I did at first. Then I adapted. I don’t any more.”

“You should try and find her,” I say without thinking.

“And get her to look at your signature?”

“No – well, maybe, but no. She’s your mother, Edward, and you should have a mother.”

He just shrugs again.