Brewer Street was alight with life, every pub and bistro on the block was filled to capacity with students and visitors hoping to send the summer off with a bang.
I lingered at the entrance of the Colover’s, flinching as a I heard the din of a novice pyromancer popping off for a crowd of tourists. I shook my head and glared at him. Such a freshman thing to do…
I wandered in the pub. The noise outside threw me off my rhythm and suddenly I was second guessing my every instinct, despite my better judgement. I always preferred this spot because most of my peers found it drab, thus it wasn’t often very busy. Myself, I found the golden glow of sunstones lining the wall charming and the subtle smell of buckwheat and rye (and a hint of mildew) utterly nostalgic.
Haslow—rather, a man who looked nearly identical to him, according to my apprehension—sat drinking at a lonely booth in the corner of the pub, dressed in a shimmering kashmir suit. He seemed a stranger, and it took some time before I convinced myself it was truly him. I only recognized him by his fiery curls and the half-empty pitcher on the table. He certainly wasn’t dressed that part; he’d always hated dress clothes.
Haslow looked up, his face lighting up as our eyes met. Smiling with that wide, unforgettable grin, waved me to join him. “Perry, my boy!” he said, clasping my hand in an iron grip.
“Been too long, chap. I hardly knew it was you.”
“However long it’s been for you, it’s been longer for me.”
A wonderful compliment on any other occasion, however the eccentricities of studying sorcery were cause to take metaphor literally, more often than not. We’d last parted ways last summer for our ninth-year residencies. Mine was there in the Citadel, as an analyst for the Department of Internal Statistics. Haslow had opted to work abroad, observing Grahtzildahn, the Burning City of the Underworld. The research director worked directly beneath the Dean of the Citadel. Their research—classified.
“How old did you say you turned yesterday?” I asked, pouring myself a pint.
“Thirty-seven.”
“Isn’t that something. I recall being older than you.”
“Ain’t like it matters none,” my old friend sighed. “I still need my capstone, same as you. Board don’t consider time dilation as a valid cause for awarding a credential. Still, an extra three years in Hell looks damn fine on my CV—shows I got stones of steel.”
I raised my stein—Colover always skimped on dinnerware, mine was made of tin, Haslow’s was dried out sandalwood. “That, you’ve always had, friend. Glad you’re back.”
“Hah!” Haslow clacked his stein into mine. New wrinkles gathered around his green eyes. I noticed a faded scar on the bridge of his proud nose that hadn’t been there when he left.
We sat drinking and swapping stories for most the night. I was bothered by how my friend now carried himself. Where once he was outgoing and boisterous, he had become somewhat withdrawn—and still boisterous. I suppose three years studying hell in a time bubble has a way of wearing at a man.
I couldn’t fault him for that.
Approaching the tenth and final year of my studies, I’d been struggling with the passing of my youth into the next era of my life. Students of the Citadel spend so much time preparing for their lifetime of duties, but no amount of study nor practice prepares you for all the esoteric nonsense awaiting you at the other side of a diploma. Seeing how my friend, who had been with me through it all, aged so quickly tore away the newly grown scabs on my heart.
“How was your residency, Perry?” Haslow asked.
“Still finishing up, if you can believe it. It’s my last academic week once we’re back in the sky,” I said, finishing my first pint and pouring the second. “Dreadfully boring—compared to what you’ve been up to, I’m sure—but it has its merits. I’ve learned much.”
Haslow rolled his eyes. “Like what, wise ass?”
“Statistics.”
“Of what sort?”
“Oh, a variety.”
“God dammit!” Haslow slammed his fist on the table, rattling the silverware. He’d always had a temper, but this surprised even me. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. “I’m sorry—I’m under a lot of stress, I just learned what’s happening down in Valencia…” Rubbing at his eyes, he said, “Just, give me a specific example, would ya, Perry?”
Shamefully, I had forgotten all about the rebellion. It had nothing to do with me; I grew up on a wheat farm in the Valentine Outlands. So too, as a Citadel Apprentice, things like that seemed so distant, so inconsequential. For Haslow, a Wystran who’d grown up in the clans, the rebellion had everything to do with him.
“I’m sorry, too… I don’t mean to be difficult—”
“You never mean to.”
I barked a laugh, ale lodging into my sinuses. “Right on that front, chap,” I sputtered, coughing. “Fine, let me think—and blow my nose.”
I patted my vest, searching for my handkerchief. Haslow reached into his coat pocket, and handed me his—rather someone’s whose name began with “G”, by the golden calligraphy woven into the silk.
“A gift,” Haslow insisted, noticing my scrutiny. “Now—stats. Give it to me straight.”
“Right…” I held my chin in thought. I’m bloody useless without my notes. “Ah, yes! Did you know nine-percent of first-years stop attending lectures every academic year?”
“Gods in hell, that can’t be true. That’s what… eighty students?”
I nodded. “Just about. Most are dropouts—about four-percent. Others are training accidents—that’s another 3-percent—explosions caused by advanced spells beyond their practice, or poisoning themselves in alchemy class, what have you.”
“Now all the rules for underclassmen make sense.”
“Most folks don’t think about it.” I said at length. I found such topics genuinely troubling, and thus, emotionally draining. “With so many people packed in this city, locking themselves away to study day and night—hard to notice a missing classmate.”
“Unless you knew them.”
I nodded. “Righto, chap.”
Good friends are nigh-on-impossible to find in Phrygia, which is why I cherish the few I have.
Haslow leaned forward, a pall falling over him. “What about the rest, eh? What happened to them?”
“Oh,” I said, prematurely swallowing a mouthful of ale and choking on that, too. “Missing. No explanation… excuse me,” I rose, wiping my eyes with Haslow’s gifted handkerchief and fighting back another coughing fit. “I need the loo.”
Late summer nights on the Black Sea made for moody, foggy streets. If not for the street lamps, I might have asked Haslow to walk with me to my tenement. Where I was tall and lanky, and frankly easy to intimidate out of my spare change, my old friend was a few meters taller and much more imposing.
Alas, Haslow was sloshed and passed out at the table once the clock struck four. I wasn’t much better off, stumbling home in the dark. Really, I should have known better—I knew the statistics. But, inebriated so, I was more concerned with the glow of the full moon, reflected off the gentle waves of the sea, which I could see at the peaks of the hilliest avenue back home.
Usually, my nighttime commutes from the Department were no issue. But it was a rest period, and tourists and strangers from all over strutted about the streets, even during the wee-witching hour (which most wizardly students avoided like a superstitious plague).
During the eleven-day academic week, the Great City of Phrygia ascended into the clouds, held to the Earth with giant, adamant chains—free of tourists and strangers, free of disruptions and distractions. But within the three-day rest period, we returned to the Earth, floating in the middle of the Black Sea, open to the public. Gods help you, if you forget to disembark on day three.
I didn’t pay much attention to the shifty figures shuffling between buildings, diving into alleys. I tried not to think about the occasional distant scream, whether it was a drunk girl at a house party or someone truly in need. I just wanted to get home, to sleep away my final rest day of the period.
Back then, I tried not to concern myself with anything troubling. I wanted only to focus and to graduate—and to let loose every now and then so I didn’t go insane. I wanted magna cum laude, and I was willing overlook any complication, no matter how heinous.
That mentality is why people don’t notice when their classmates stop showing up for lecture. It’s why twenty-seven percent of students are assaulted during a nighttime commute, and no one even goes so far as to inform a constable about the disturbance.
My reflections congealed in the soup of my drunken, tired mind. The next thing I remembered was my mattress appearing in front of me like a linen covered brick wall, and my face crashing haplessly into the headboard.
Perriander Lafey stood on a dock in one of the portal towns on the coast. Staring into the glassy surface of the Black Sea, he hardly recognized himself. It was something about the look in his eyes; something absurd and alien to him lingered behind his shit-brown irises—determination, passion.
Perhaps even a splash of rage.
Questions rolled through his head like thunder. Who was this man staring back at him? Why did he look so much Perriander, if Perriander were horrifically disfigured.
That’s how he knew he was dreaming. He had analyzed a great many papers on oneiromancy, and many of them told of novices—or even sorcerers of a different vocation—who caught fragments of another’s dream, coalescing with their own so their untrained brains can make sense of it.
Perriander tried to think if he had ever met someone afflicted with such severe burns and facial scarring in his building, but came up blank. Perhaps this dream came from a drunken tourist, sleeping in the gutters.
Behind him, a great flutter of wings pulled him from his reverie. Perriander swung about, staring into the viscous fog. A dark angel emerged, seeming to manifest from thin air. Her skin was pale, white as alabaster and contrasted by her blackened mail and the massive set of ebon wings upon her back.
Her obsidian eyes burned in the gloom like the signal towers in the Kingswood.
Who are you?
The woman opened her mouth, as if to speak.
“Perry,” said a woman’s voice, pulling me by the teeth from a fitful slumber. “Wake up, you lazy sod!”
I opened my eyes to see nothing but scorching sunlight and nauseating blur. My head was on fire.
Thin hands jostled me, shaking me out of my stupor. I couldn’t have been that drunk… I rose slowly, wiping the sleep from eyes. Sitting on my bed was a gorgeous woman with big brown eyes, smooth olive skin, and long, auburn hair. She was about five years younger than me, in her late-twenties.
“Marta?” I ventured, still half-asleep and hoping I was still dreaming. “What are you doing here?”
“The constables are lining us up in the courtyard.”
“What?” I launched upright, those heavy pints rolling in my guts. “All of us?”
She nodded, handing me a set of gray study robes. “Whole building. Now get dressed.”
I looked down, immediately embarrassed as I remembered I wore nothing beneath my blanket aside from a canvas thong. “This is really not proper…” I grumbled, fiddling with the loose thread on the robes. “Why are you here? Did we—?”
“Gods in hell, Perry! No!” Marta rose, storming for the door. “I just came to check on you—like good friends do.”
How arrogant of me to ponder otherwise…
“Someone found a body…” Marta said, her hand hanging off the handle of my front door.
A pang of guilt flashed in the back of mind as I recalled latent thoughts regarding distant screams. Couldn’t be… people do that every night.
“What happened? An accident, maybe?”
Marta furrowed her perfectly groomed brows. “I don’t know. But clearly, they suspect foul play.”
“Wow…” I said, mindlessly reveling in the texture of my robes, which I had still neglected to don. “This is serious.”
“No shit, Lord Arturo,” Marta said, already halfway down the hall. “Get dressed, Perry!”
Marta de la Rosa was one of those people who left me scrambling and confounded whenever we met. As a fifth-year in the School of Siege Magic—the Citadel’s most prestigious program—you would think she’d have figured out the Citadel’s strict code of conduct by now. Being that she was sharper than the Lord Inquisitor’s silver blade, it seemed to me she simply refused to abide the stuffy customs of old men with beards.
As I dressed, my eyes lingered on the door, hanging ajar. The trail of her perfume still lingered in my closet-sized foyer, and I soon found myself half-dressed on the sofa, fantasizing about potentially fantasizing once all this nasty business was over with.
Lilac and gooseberries? Hmm, more likely lavender with elderberry… I’m no good with scents.
I was pulled from my delayed waking dreams by my door swinging open. A fat, angry constable with a thick moustache stood steaming at my threshold.
“Apologies, sir, I’m still dressing. I’m not feeling well this morning…”
A vein bulged on his meaty forehead. “It’s two in the afternoon, boy!” He scruffed me by the hem of my robe—which I was still struggling to fit my left arm through—and shoved me down the hall, down the stairs, and out the double-glass doors, prodding me with his blackjack.
Outside, the afternoon sun wreaked havoc on my senses. My eyes felt like they might just boil out my skull. Students and faculty alike were lined up single file, shoulder to shoulder and supervised by a half dozen constables, bludgeons drawn. I mouthed my thanks as I passed Marta and affixed myself to the eastern edge, next to our building’s administrator.
“Now that we’re all accounted for,” growled Constable Moustache, “we might actually get to the bottom of this.”
The admin cleared her throat. “Might I ask exactly what ’this’ is? We are on Citadel grounds—accidents happen every day!”
“I understand your concern, madame,” Moustache said, bowing and taking on a gentle tone that sounded like utter horse dung through his fat lips. “Trust that we know the difference between a training mishap and murder.”
Whispers rolled through the line.
“Murder? That’s ludicrous!” The admin bellowed. “I know everything that goes on beneath this roof.”
“In that case…” Moustache went on, “Care to explain the corpse in your boiler room?”
The admin deflated, flattening her lips. “I admit—that was a surprise, even to me.”
“Are there any students pursuing a credential in the necromantic arts living in your building?”
“The School of Entropy has its own dormitory.”
Moustache outstretched his arms, yelling at the rest of us: “Any would-be necromancers performing unsanctioned research? It’s a lot better for us all if you admit to it now!”
The line was silent.
“No smart remarks? No one’s got a wisecrack?”
“I’ve a got a question.” I said with the best of intentions. Every head turned towards me in mechanical unison, I could almost hear the imaginary squeal of hinges. Marta shot me a questioning glare.
Constable Moustache approached me, towering over me with all the menace he could muster. “I’m listening…” he growled, revealing his tobacco stained teeth and his tobacco-tinged breath.
I took a measured step back. My head was already spinning from the hangover, I didn’t need to add noxious fumes to the cocktail. “How can you be sure a necromancer was the culprit? Wouldn’t the body have—I don’t know—walked away?”
Nervous laughter issued the mouths a few brave souls. Moustache was none so please. “The ritual was unsuccessful.”
Clearly.
“But if you’d like to know…” Moustache continued, “I’m more than happy to show you. On the way, you can tell me where you were last night.”
I felt the horrified eyes boring holes in my intuition. I shrugged and gestured for Moustache to lead the way. He and his second walked me down into the boiler room, where I witnessed horror I wish I could forget.
A man lay splayed out on the ground. Burns covered him head to toe, as did grotesque calligraphic scars etched into him, post mortem. His eyes lay open, glazed over and cloudy—a token feature of flesh golems.
My hangover caught up with me—and in an instant I lost all that I had drank the previous night, exonerating me of any latent suspicion Moustache still held after hearing my convincing—and entirely true—alibi.
Had I not been so sick, I might have noticed, and duly pointed out to the good constables, the silk handkerchief clutched in the victim’s frozen, bloodied hand.