Fallen Magic

“…hear me?”

“Is… fetch someone?”

Elsie blinked, and opened her eyes. She was lying on a cold, hard tiled floor. There were people gathered around her, concerned. “I – I’m fine,” she stuttered. “I must have just fainted.”

It wasn’t herself she was worried about, despite the fact she’d just experienced her clearest and most intense vision to date. It had been all she could do to drag herself from the dining hall to the bathroom before she collapsed.

She pulled herself up into a sitting position. She felt more or less fine now, at least physically, other than a slight headache. She recognised the people around her now: Hannah, Lucy and Aisha. Tallulah’s roommates. Good people, even if Elsie didn’t know them well.

“What’s the time?” she asked. How long had it been? Did she still have a chance to prevent what she’d seen?

“Uh… about eleven and fifty?” Hannah guessed.

She didn’t know when it would happen. How long would it take them to make it through the crowds of mourners to the tunnel entrance? At least twenty minutes, possibly up to an hour. Maybe she was already too late. Maybe if she ran to the Abbey now, she could –

She gripped the sink and dragged herself to her feet. She could stand, at least. That was something. But what could she do? The two women had moved quickly, brutally, in her vision. One of them had a knife. Elsie was a magician, sure, but she wasn’t a fighter at all. And if she didn’t get there in time she had no way of tracking them.

No, if she was going to save Edward and Tallulah she’d need help from someone she could trust. Someone who would listen to her, and believe that she really had foreseen the danger. Someone she could be certain would do anything to protect them.

An answer came to mind. She didn’t like it. But what choice did she have?

“I need to go,” she said. “Now.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asked Lucy, taking her arm to support her. “We don’t know what happened to you just now. You should probably get checked out by a nurse. What if it happens again?”

“I – it was just a fainting fit,” Elsie lied. “I get them sometimes. But I’m fine now. Really. Thank you all.” She tore her arm away from Lucy and was out of the bathroom before the other girls could stop her.

“Who are you?” asked Hannah, peeking her head out from the bedsheets.

Progress, Electra thought. “My name is Electra. I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Hannah said flatly. “Cool name, though.”

“Thank you,” Electra replied. “Do you know the story of Electra?”

“Yeah. That’s why I like it.”

The mythical Electra had murdered half of her family. She had that in common with the fourteen-year-old girl hiding in the bed besides which Electra sat. Then again, from what she could tell, both families had it coming. “I used to like the story, too. That’s why I chose this name for myself.”

“Used to. What changed?”

Electra shrugged. “I realised I wanted to build something. And revenge – the sort of thing the story-Electra does – doesn’t let you do that.”

“No. But it stops you getting hurt. They’re not going to hurt me any more.”

And Hannah’s family had hurt her. Electra hadn’t seen enough to know just how much, but she’d also seen enough abused children to know the signs. Hannah had all of them.

“You’re right,” Electra said. “They can’t.”

“No-one is ever going to hurt me again.”

Electra didn’t react outwardly, because she’d done this sort of thing enough times to know never to react. But internally, she noted that point with concern. “You can’t do what you did to them again. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. If I kill too many people, they’ll say I’m a monster. Even if I only hurt bad people.”

“If you kill too many people, you will be a monster. Mala sia. And once that happens, you won’t be able to tell who the bad people are any more.” She was only becoming more concerned. Honestly, with the sheer brutality of Hannah’s Fall, most people in Electra’s position would have killed Hannah in her sleep and put an end to this.

Electra refused to give up on anyone. Not while there was still hope.

“So if I go looking for more revenge, good people will get hurt?”

“Yes. And that includes you.”

“I’m not a good person,” said Hannah.

“What makes you – “

Electra stopped, because she felt something unexpected. The mental equivalent of the twang of a bowstring snapping back into place after an arrow was released. One of her alert wards had been disabled, and the contingency she’d attached to make sure she knew when that happened had activated.

“– think that?” she finished.

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“Good people don’t kill their families,” Hannah answered.

Electra paused, pretending to think of a response, but really she was processing what could have happened to trigger that. She only had two active alert wards, and the one in her office system had a lot more contingencies than just this one. This had to be the ward she’d set in the tunnels that connected the Academy to the Abbey Royal.

“A lot of people would say that. But those people never had to live with a family like yours. I’m not saying it’s okay to kill people, because it isn’t. But – it was the only thing you could have done.”

She ought to check that out. But she also couldn’t leave Hannah, not now, not when so much depended on her making a real connection with the girl and this was the first real progress she’d made towards that in most of a day. It was probably just one of the Royal Magicians finding an alert ward where one wasn’t supposed to be and removing it, anyway.

She’d finish this conversation and then investigate.

The King was crying.

Lord Blackthorn couldn’t blame him. Not when he’d just lost his favourite daughter. His heir.

He didn’t know how to comfort someone who was crying. He’d tried it with a young Edward, a handful of times, and had eventually realised that he couldn’t do it effectively and delegated the task to Elspeth.

There was no logic you could use to persuade someone that their world hadn’t just fallen apart. That things could ever be fixed. That they’d ever get back what they’d lost.

So he said nothing. Just stayed there, on his knees, doing his best to appear a sympathetic figure.

He and the King were alone in the room, except for servants. This was meant to be the King’s weekly security briefing, but the King was clearly not in a fit state to be briefed on the latest Sirgalese plots that had been uncovered and Lord Blackthorn’s growing suspicion that there was a Thalian agent somewhere quite high up in the Ministry of Intelligence.

“I am... deeply sorry for your loss, Your Majesty,” he said. He wanted to snap but you still have a country to rule. But that wasn’t the way you spoke to the King, especially not when he was in such a vulnerable state. He knew that one wrong word here could be disastrous.

“You don’t know what it’s like, do you?” the King asked. “To lose a child?”

“It’s not something that I have ever experienced, thank the stars.” He thought of Edward. Thought of his son no longer being there. And that, he could understand. Maybe it wouldn’t break him, losing Edward, but it would hurt him more deeply than he’d ever been hurt before. And what purpose would he have then, if his son would never live in the world he was trying to build?

“Then I pray that you never will have to.”

“Thank you. I will pray for the health of your surviving children, and your newborn granddaughter.” He didn’t mean that, because there was no time in his schedule for prayer. But it was what you were supposed to say in these situations, and with the King he made concessions to what you were supposed to say.

The King sighed. “What good does it do? Prayers won’t bring her back. Nothing short of the Mages Returned could.”

Lord Blackthorn was rescued from having to find an appropriate response to that by a sharp knock on the door. He fought the urge to spring to his feet and see who it was. This wasn’t a place where he could do that. “Are we expecting anyone, Your Majesty?”

The King shook his head and wiped his face with a handkerchief. “But we may as well see what they want, I suppose. Let them in,” he ordered.

One of the servants opened the door. Lord Blackthorn rose slowly and turned his head slightly towards the door, just enough to see who it was without turning his back on the King.

It was one of his own people. Rogers, he recalled after a second. Rogers bowed very low, and said “Forgive me for interrupting, your Majesty. I have an urgent message for Lord Blackthorn. Code Silver.”

His heart skipped a beat. He had a classification consisting of twelve different colour codes for different types of emergency, and a set of rules for when he could be interrupted for which alert. Only two colours allowed interrupting him when he was with the King. Red, which meant a national crisis roughly equivalent to a sudden declaration of war on Rasin. And silver. Which meant that Edward was in danger.

“Your Majesty,” he said, doing everything in his power to remain kneeling. “I ask your permission to leave your presence to deal with this emergency.”

“You have it,” said the King at once. He sounded almost relieved, that now he’d be left alone to his grief. Lord Blackthorn spared him not another thought; he had a tragedy of his own to prevent.

“Explain,” he said to Rogers, the moment he was out of the audience room. He was already hurrying out of the palace, cursing the anti-teleportation wards, and sending a respond immediately pulse to Edward’s emergency ring.

“No confirmed reports, sir,” said Rogers, jogging to catch up. “But a girl with one of your coins came to the Royal Magicians’ building about five minutes ago claiming that your son and Tallulah Roberts are in danger. We’ve confirmed that they both left the Academy at ten and fifty-five, no word on their current location yet.”

He could track where Edward was from the ring, as he’d done before. But best to gather information in other ways first. “Who is the girl? Did she give any more information?”

“She said her name was Elsie Morris, and she refused to say anything further except to you personally.”

“You’ve taken standard containment procedures, I assume?”

“Yes, sir.”

Too little information, too vague, but at least there was a clear next step, just as soon as – there, he was out of the Round Palace and a moment later outside of its anti-teleportation wards. He pivoted on the spot and reappeared a moment later outside the building the Morris girl had come to. It was maybe another half a minute to get to the room where she was being held.

She looked afraid. He had even less time to assuage her fears than he usually would. “Where are they?” he asked.

“The Abbey. I don’t know if it’s happened yet. But they’re with two women, and the women open the tunnels. They make Edward and Tallulah drink something from a vial. I don’t know what it is, but it means they can’t fight back. And then they drag them into the tunnels.”

“I – what do you mean, you don’t know if this has happened? How – “

“I’m an oracle,” said Elsie. “I saw it in a vision.”

She had a secret. One that Tallulah Roberts knew, and was keeping from him at all costs. That fit together. Also raised concerning questions about Tallulah’s loyalty, but that was a problem for if Tallulah was even alive at the end of this. It seemed believable.

“Describe the women to me.”

“I – I can’t. I only saw it faintly, from a distance. I only know they’re both blonde, and one of them is young – not much older than me.”

“Do you know where they were being taken?”

Elsie shook her head.

He forced himself to take a moment to breathe. He had to make the right decisions here, not just any decision that didn’t feel like wasting time. “Do you know how your visions interact with causality?”

“In the usual way. It can be averted. If – if there’s enough time.”

“Give me the coin I gave you.”

She produced it from a pocket and pressed it into his open palm. He channelled a little magic into it and observed the pattern of white light that danced across it for a second. Genuine. She looked just as he remembered as well. Most likely she was being honest with him, but he couldn’t rule out anything.

Either she was an oracle, or she was part of a conspiracy against him. Whichever it was, that made her valuable. No response from Edward’s ring, which made it seem as if the danger was genuine. As if it was already too late to prevent what the girl had seen. He sent another pulse of magic, searching for its location. A couple of seconds later, he had a rough direction, which if his mental map of the city was accurate was at least close enough to the Abbey.

He dragged Elsie out of the building, paying no attention to her demands to know what he intended to do. Once they were outside, he teleported again, taking her to a secure room within Blackthorn Manor that was warded to allow for just this sort of eventuality.

Then he set off for the Abbey.