The Magic Scholar
Jean-Pierre Ochelimet, who devoted his life to the study of magic, lost that life to an accident in 1830. Henry Joris Russell took up his work, and in 1873 he took his own. Now it is our turn to learn Type 1 Magic.
Take up the book of magic. Imagine. And cry out.
The passage drifted through my mind.
It was not even part of the main text, and yet seven pages had been spent on it, the same lines rendered in ten languages in all. The body of the book was written entirely in Frauvian; the preface alone had been set down in the imperial tongue as well. It was the only passage in any book of magic that I could read, and so I had read it hundreds of times over, until I could recite the whole of it without so much as a glance.
Even so — why had the author written a preface like that? Why have it translated into every language there was?
"Ritation."
A soft rush of air.
"Lowitation."
Another — then three more, quick and thin.
Worrying at it would never let me know what he had truly meant, but I was free to guess. And so I decided to take it this way. Now and then, when learning turned truly cold and lonely, when opening a book began to seem a foolish thing, remember the sages overhead, and their hands patting your back.
"Levi—"
Dawn broke over the back alley. Sunlight pushed through the overcast and fell across my whole body.
"Hey."
Quiet.
"Hey. You little shits."
Still quiet.
A dim sky. Silence settled over a cellar tucked somewhere off the back alleys, and in that hush the dark seemed to thicken. Remi sat sprawled alone in a chair, eyeing five youths — boys and girls — held stiffly at attention. The stillness was deep enough that, if you listened, you might have heard an eyeball turn. He didn't care for it. Had they answered, of course, he would have cared for that even less. The five knew as much to the bone, and so they lowered their heads in a show of obedience. That, at least, left their boss satisfied.
Remi wagged a finger back and forth, playing the clown.
"Tick. Tock. Tick. Ding! All right, time's up. Two whole days, and you still couldn't drag in a single beggar — which means, I'm sorry to say, that it's your suppertime."
"......"
"What's the matter? Why aren't you hurrying off to market?"
"...B-Boss."
The youngest girl took one step forward. The other four startled and shot her looks that said to shut her mouth, but she took another step all the same. There was no holding her back now.
Remi answered in a gentle voice.
"Mm? What's the matter?"
"I, um... I can skip dinner tonight."
"No, no! No need for that at all. We've got plenty of money. Three meals a day, maybe not, but I promised you two — morning and night — and I said I wouldn't let you starve."
"No. I-it's all right. I'm the one who couldn't find him. Only... could I have just tomorrow off?"
"Why?"
"I can't sleep... I feel like I'm going to collapse."
Remi answered without letting go of his smile.
"Mm. That won't do."
"Wh-why not?"
"We had a deal. Join our side, work with us, and I'd feed you and house you and see to the rest. A promise is a promise, so you've got to work. Isn't that right?"
"...You never said it would be like this."
The youngest set a faintly trembling fist against her chest.
"You said we were still kids, and that we'd band together and live. You said we'd help each other until those Federation bastards finally pulled out. You said that, and you held out your hand."
Moisture gathered in her voice. She was still young; even after living through a war, she had not learned to govern her feelings, and the indignation rising in her was a hard thing to bear. The others held their rigid stance and prayed, inwardly, Please. Leave it there. But the youngest raised her voice all the same.
"But this — this! You're nothing but thugs! The very kind we hated most, the ones who used the war to steal homes and money and families!"
The tirade poured straight into that smiling face. There was not a single curse in it, and that was what made it cut so deep.
"This job — you said all we had to do was take one book, so I thought it would be easy. I thought if we hit him, he'd just hand it over. I thought that would be the end of it."
But the boy had resisted to the very last. Not like her, who on the evacuation road had failed to endure her hunger and traded a doll — a gift from a friend — for three lumps of bread.
"That beggar kid is about my age."
"......"
"Honestly, calling him a beggar is a joke. If you hadn't held out your hand to me, I would have been the one standing there. I was beating myself! Just to scrape together two meals a day—!"
At last the tears fell, heavy and fast. Her breath came short, and her whole body shook. Only after she had steadied it a few times did she realize she had spilled nothing but raw feeling, all of it out of order. She was just about to meet Remi's eyes and bring the words to an end.
A palm came flying.
The crack of it split the air. The rest of the gang squeezed their eyes shut. The girl's body left the ground; her head snapped around, and still that was not enough — her whole frame tumbled hard across the filthy floorboards and crashed there.
That was what it meant, to be struck across the face.
When the gang opened their eyes again, Remi was still smiling.
"Hey. Youngest."
No answer. She would be listening, though.
"And where do you get off playing the good one all by yourself?"
So he sneered with everything he had. The laugh — harsh, delighted — filled the cellar.
"Youngest. Poor little youngest. I bet this is what you thought. That you, at least, were pure. That you, at least, never lost your humanity in the middle of a war, and were kind to other people. That you, at least, were innocent. Hmm?"
"But here's the thing."
"You just haven't done a damn thing, youngest. You've never once thrashed around trying to stay alive. Don't you think it's a little late to grow out of being a brat who figures bread drops out of the sky if you just stand still?"
"In case you've forgotten, the Empire started this war."
"You'd better drop the tragic-heroine act. Nobody cares what a saint you are. Thrash all you like — we still won't get so much as a toehold in the Federation. Why? Because we come from a nation of war criminals, and we've got the blood of imperialist savages in us!"
By the time he finished, the sneer had already become a roar of laughter. The youngest lay where she had fallen and wept, and the gang closed their eyes and bowed their heads.
They would rather he had been, just as she had said, nothing but a thug. But he was a man who knew how to get things done, and whatever his methods, he made certain the gang ate twice a day. Among people at the very bottom, nothing is more meaningless than sorting one another into good and evil. And so only one thing mattered here.
There was no lie in what he had said.
"Ah. That was a good laugh."
When the laughter left him, a dreadful blankness settled at the corners of Remi's mouth.
"Youngest. You're right."
He went on.
"The search ends here. Whether the bastard's grown wings or what, we can't fucking catch him. Doesn't matter if he's that good or you're that useless — pushing any further looks like a loss. James?"
The young man whose name had been called jerked his head up.
"Uh — yeah. What?"
"Starting tomorrow, you take the youngest and collect like usual. And educate the kid more thoroughly."
The young man nodded.
That accounted for two of them. The other three looked to their boss, bewildered.
"You three come with me."
"Where...?"
"Where do you think? The garrison. There's a beggar mage wandering the middle of the city — of course we ought to rat him out to the soldiers."
"Huh. You actually saw him use magic?"
Remi grinned.
"Two hundred pounds if he can work magic. Fifty even if he can't. It's not as if that money comes out of the officers' pockets. There's a commendation walking around out there — which side do you think is the one hurting for it?"
The Frauvia Federation Army garrison in Lehman. A drizzle was falling in earnest, and the place was thoroughly idle — which was to say, no different from any other day. Forming ranks, running drills, going out to patrol the streets: that was work for the common soldiers. The officers had nothing to do. It was also why their bellies kept swelling, though not one of them was with child.
The civilian-led purge of magic had more or less come to an end some two years prior. From then on, officers seldom left the camp on any business of duty.
"The imperial bastards don't even put up a fight. If it were me, I'd have clawed my way into learning magic and caved an enemy officer's skull in from behind."
Talk had reached that point. After the Imperial Army's advance was successfully halted, the Federation's occupation of the Empire proceeded without a hitch. No figure fit for a legend — no war hero, no leader of the revolution — arose on either side. To make matters worse, eight in ten of the officers at the Lehman garrison had been sent out separately after the war's end. Salaried men, in other words, and so the boredom ran all the deeper. One circumstance piled upon another, and the result was that a reported sighting of a mage drew considerable interest inside the camp, even though the informant's credibility sat at rock bottom.
At the entrance to the camp, a potbellied officer stood before the gang, who had snapped to attention. Aides flanked him. He alone held an umbrella and left their shoulders to soak, and the sight of it looked thoroughly arrogant.
The officer spoke, a crease drawn between his brows.
"Captain Carnot. So. These are the ones who say they saw magic used?"
"Yes, Captain Carnot, sir. We—"
"Tsk."
The moment Remi opened his mouth, the officers' faces curdled. Their eyes lifted as if they were looking at beasts. They plainly loathed even trading words with him.
"Give these things the courtesy due a person, and they just..."
The gang had lost the lead without quite meaning to, and there was nothing they could do but listen in silence.
The answer came from the officer standing at the captain's right.
"So they claim."
"Is that so? Well, well. We'll have to root him out at once. Ready a search detail."
"Yes, sir."
"And. You. Alley boss. What was the name again?"
This question, too, was not addressed to the man himself.
"Remi, was it? No surname? Ah. Right."
Having taken the rough answer from his officer, Captain Carnot nodded absently.
Meanwhile Remi was cheering to himself. Being treated like something foul was nothing new; it was always like that. A captain, no less. Once an officer of that rank had taken the bait, a mere beggar's resistance would cease to mean anything. The victory was already plain.
While Remi let out his silent whoop, the captain leisurely assigned his people.
"You'll be going around with this one. An elite, so follow along and don't make trouble."
The words were hardly finished before the officer at the captain's left stepped quietly forward. Sleek black hair spilled loose over the epaulets of a dark green dress uniform.
"A pleasure. Second Lieutenant Dorothy Oslo."