A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Siobhan

Month 9, Day 12, Sunday 3:00 a.m.

For some reason, Siobhan couldn’t force her mouth to form the words of the question she really wanted to ask. Instead, she said, “Thaddeus, you are a special agent, correct? I am unsure of the exact nature of and responsibilities carried by that title within the Red Guard. Why were you involved with this Aberrant incident? You are not on an emergency response team; you have a position at the University. Was there some special reason for you to be involved today?”

Thaddeus raised an eyebrow. “You do not already know the Red Guard’s structure and policies?”

Siobhan let out an unladylike snort. “There is more that I do not know than what I do.”

He paused, as if surprised, but then nodded sagely. “A sentiment only grasped by those who know enough to realize the scope of things. Still, I am curious. Did the Red Guard not exist when Myrddin was alive?”

Siobhan peered into the darkness of the tunnel ahead, which seemed particularly eerie beyond the edge of light created by Thaddeus’s floating sphere of light. “No? They were established around eight hundred years before the current era, significantly after the time that people speculate Myrddin died, correct?” She frowned, wondering why he would ask such a strange question. She turned to him. “Unless you know something I do not?”

“No. As I said, I was merely curious.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Was that some kind of…test? Even if the timeline worked and I could have gotten some clues about the Red Guard from Myrddin’s writings, consider how much would have changed between the Red Guard of then and today. I could be sure of nothing, let alone the specific role of a special agent.”

He sucked in a deep breath and rolled his shoulders as if to relieve some tension. “To answer your question, I usually get called in to assist if the Aberrants are particularly strange and understanding their anomalous effect is difficult. It is not my job, true, but I am knowledgeable enough to make an initial assessment and recommend the best follow-up procedure.”

Siobhan wondered what, exactly, said follow-up procedures might be. How much of it dealt with ensuring the safety of the world, and how much with managing the processing of Aberrant components? Perhaps, to the Red Guard, those were the same thing.

“I am also sent out sometimes if a team needs a great deal of extra power applied in specific ways. And sometimes, I participate on a voluntary basis, out of personal interest.”

“You have given me three reasons. Which was the cause for your involvement this time?” Siobhan asked, avoiding a damp spot on the floor.

“You should know I cannot give confidential information,” Thaddeus said, but she knew him well enough to detect amusement in his voice. Thaddeus had a wry, subtle sense of humor that she suspected most people were completely oblivious to. He was surprisingly ironic and sarcastic.

“You cannot, or you do not wish to?” Siobhan asked mildly, with pure curiosity.

He let out a huff. “This Aberrant required my presence for none of the above reasons. Or, perhaps, the last one. I do find the situation quite interesting, though I might not have gotten involved of my own volition.”

Curiosity flared up in Siobhan like a grass fire—sudden but soon futile as it realized there was nothing else to consume. She wouldn’t ask for the details. Sebastien might have been able to, but the Raven Queen couldn’t.

Looking at the ground, Thaddeus’s lips lifted in a tiny, pleased smile, but he didn’t volunteer anything further.

Siobhan edged slightly closer to the question she wanted to ask. “How many Aberrant incidents have there been in the last twelve months? In Gilbratha specifically,” she added.

“I am aware of four.”

“Oh.” That was one more than Siobhan had been aware of. ‘Were there no alarms for the fourth?’ she wondered. Aloud, she asked, “Is that usual?”

“Four is perhaps a little fewer than average. Especially considering that two were very low powered, from thaumaturges with Wills yet to reach even the Apprentice standard. But Aberrant generation rates are certainly not consistent. An area can go for quite a while without one and then suddenly get bombarded. It happens frequently enough that it has become a bit of a superstition among the Red Guard.” He turned to her and added, “There is even a theory that the stress of experiencing another’s break event makes one more likely to break themselves.”

Siobhan’s insides twisted a little. “Is that a true theory? One backed by reasonable evidence?”

Thaddeus gave a small, sideways-tilted nod that might have, in someone else, expressed uncertainty. But Siobhan could see the spark of mischief was still in his eyes and knew otherwise. It was true.

“How long does the increased risk last? Forever? Or is it like Will-strain, and subsides with time?”

“That is difficult to test properly,” he said. “It is unethical, you see.” The spark of mischief grew stronger. “I believe the increased risk is temporary, but I could be wrong. One can only look at the data over time to see the correlation.”

This was all the encouragement Siobhan needed to ask the question she had wanted to all along. She spoke before she could second-guess herself. “Are the overall incidents of severe Will-strain and Aberrant formation increasing?” Her heart thumped in her chest, sending blood rushing through her ears, and she stealthily blew out a deep breath to compose herself.

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Thaddeus stopped walking, which did not help to calm her.

He pushed his lower jaw forward and back several times, then flexed his hands. Staring at the floor, he asked, “Why would you ask that?” in a deceptively mild tone.

Siobhan swallowed. She had never seen him so discomfited, and this kind of reaction seemed abnormal. He had some idea of the answer, obviously, or the question wouldn’t have affected him so. “I have reason to believe it,” she said softly, relieved that her voice didn’t crack.

Thaddeus was silent for a bit, though the flexing of his hands and jaw had stopped. He started walking again and reached into one of his jacket’s inner pockets. “Were there less Aberrants during Myrddin’s time?” His tone was conversational again, but this did nothing to alleviate Siobhan’s tension.

Would he skirt around actually answering her question until the end? Would he take her to the Red Guard and have her ask her question again, but to someone like Captain Aisling? Or would he lie? Because at this point, if he told her there was nothing to worry about, she was sure that would be a lie.

His jacket gave a small tearing sound, like he had fumbled a button or tie and instead impatiently managed to rip a seam. “Did it seem harder to lose control badly enough for Will-strain or a break event in those days?” he asked, walking ahead of her into the dark.

“Again, I do not know,” she said, following him. ‘Why do people seem to keep assuming that I know things about Myrddin’s time beyond what I could learn from one of his journals? Aside from the one I own, Thaddeus has read along beside me the whole time, and yet he still keeps asking these insinuating questions.’

Thaddeus paused as they came to a intersection and waved for her to take the lead.

“It does seem likely, based on the trends that I have seen,” she admitted. “But the frequency could be on some kind of wave cycle, rising and falling again, rather than an ongoing increase.” It was the first time she’d had the idea, and the possibility comforted her. She hoped he would say that was how it worked. Or at the very least, that there was some way to stop the rising tide.

The light orb Thaddeus had been casting winked out.

Siobhan began to turn, feeling uneasy, but before she could face him, a sudden spike of outright terror slammed into her. Blood and flames flashed behind her eyes. The image was accompanied by a skittering and scrabbling just behind her right ear, but somehow also in her brain. She sucked in a breath so hard and sharp she choked on it and jerked away into the wall, still trying to turn and look back to face the skittering thing.

But instead, she saw Thaddeus. He was barely illuminated by the faint glow of a spell launching a few inches from the end of his fist. His fist, which was gripping a bracelet of strange, thick glass beads and outstretched toward her, while the other hand held his Conduit.

There was just enough time for his eyes to widen before the spell hit her.

Instead of slamming into her dead-center, as it might have if she hadn’t flinched away, the magic caught her right arm and a bit of her side. The glow flared slightly as something rope-like grasped around her arms and tried to constrict her torso. But the magic was more than that.

Spreading from the point of impact, her body went painlessly limp, as if the flesh were asleep. It reminded her of the few times she had gotten stuck at the boundary between waking and sleeping, and no matter how she tried, the commands from her mind were ignored by her slumbering flesh. It had been terrifying then, and it was terrifying now, as she fell into the rough stone wall and began to slide down.

She struggled against the feeling, using her left leg, which was farthest from the impact and least affected, to try to shove herself away from Thaddeus. Instead, she stumbled from the combined resistance of the ephemeral bonds and her body’s sudden lack of balance. The dead flesh felt heavier than it should have been.

A flash of helpless fatigue reached her mind, but it was not strong enough to bring her down. With an effort of pure Will, she grasped enough control to turn and try to shamble away.

Before she could take a second step, Thaddeus tackled her.

She crumpled like a soggy noodle, and his weight crushed most of the air out of her. Her attempts to struggle were about as effective as a bug under a boot, and only half as coordinated. “Why?” she choked out.

Thaddeus’s breath hit her left ear as he responded, and the rumble of his strained voice passed through his chest and into her back, where they were pressed together. “I do not want to kill you. If you do not know, if you cannot know, then I will have no obligation to do so. Luckily for the both of us, I am good at memetic spells. Hold still, do not fight, and it will be over quickly.”

If she had breath to do so, Siobhan might have laughed at the insulting absurdity of that statement.

The paralysis spell fell away, the rope-like bindings dissipating, though the sleep-dead effects lingered. Perhaps Thaddeus thought she would listen to him and comply. Perhaps he thought she had no chance of escape, even if she struggled. Or perhaps he simply had no choice, as he could not cast his memetic attack against her while also maintaining the paralysis.

Siobhan bucked and twisted, and though she did not throw him off, she managed to turn around to face him. She smashed her palm up toward his face, though she could barely make out his features. She had heard that you could kill someone by shoving their nose bridge back up into their skull.

She didn’t want to kill Thaddeus, either, but when a much weaker prey animal fought against a predator, they had no chance of survival if they weren’t prepared to fight to the death.

Her hand slipped off and away, but his grunt and the warm, metallic splatter of blood that dropped onto her chest and neck told her that she’d at least hurt him.

Her hands scrabbled wildly for his left arm, grasping it and following it down to the fist at the end. She grabbed the strange bracelet and tore at it like a rabid dog, even reaching up to bite at it when it refused to break and scatter apart in her hands. She had a guess as to what it was—rare components, encapsulated inside reinforced glass beads, for the spells that even Thaddeus Lacer could not cast entirely without support. If she could get it away from him, she might have a chance.

Thaddeus cursed and punched her in the side of the head with the hand gripping his Conduit.

Stars burst across her vision, but entirely failed to light up the darkness. Her ear rang, and she whimpered involuntarily.

“Just stop!” Thaddeus bit out. “I won’t kill you.” He cast something, and the stone softened under her like a thick pudding, some of it reaching up as if to bind and entomb her.

In desperation, she pulled on her shadow, which had almost no definition against the surrounding darkness, lifting the entirety of it up to hover beside them, attached only by a thin string. She made it as cold as her Will could achieve, as cold as the dark side of the moon, as cold as the disappointment of Thaddeus’s betrayal.

Then she formed it into a spike and slammed it into Thaddeus’s left ear, as if driving a nail into his brain.

He jerked away as if he had been physically struck.

His knees lost the security of their hold around her hips, and she bucked to throw him off. She scrambled out of the hole in the stone her body had sunk into and scrabbled away, at first on her hands and knees, but quickly back to her feet. The adrenaline coursing through her made her light and strong, helping to shake off the lingering sleep from her limbs. She threw herself forward, knees high and steps landing on the ball of her foot, for maximum speed.

She drew her shadow around her like a cloak, profoundly grateful for this spell that had been with her so long—almost since the beginning. Thaddeus’s reaction to her shadow’s attack had probably just been an automatic, instinctive reflex to jerk away from the invasion of his ear, but that was enough. It was the chance she had needed. It would have to be enough.

Thaddeus muttered a low, angry curse, and then went silent.

Siobhan let her shadow’s trailing end billow out to fill the entire hallway behind her as she fled into the darkness of unknown tunnels as if her life depended on it. Hopefully, it would blind Thaddeus as he tried to follow.