The One Who Caught the Last Train
The moment the sparrow vanished, Harvey's face split into a delighted grin.
"See? Memory extraction really is the best."
His eyes glittered with zeal.
"Shall I?"
William said, "We'll do as Elder Perez said."
Thomas looked sick at the thought.
"Kill all of them?"
"Yes. Easier that way. Cleaner."
Alex wailed, "You can't!"
Harvey protested, "I told you I can do it. Please, leave it to me."
Of the three—Randal, William, and Thomas—Chris had always taken Randal for the least human, and he was certain the man would burn those four alive on the spot. To his surprise, Randal held back.
"Wait. Let me think."
He stepped outside and returned a short while later.
"Are you two still of the same mind?"
William said, "Yes."
Thomas still hesitated.
"I don't like it."
A tie. The deciding word passed to Randal, and Chris could already guess which way it would fall. He was about to lunge forward when Alice caught him from behind.
"Don't move. I don't want to watch you die too."
She seemed to have reached the same conclusion.
Randal lifted his staff.
"I'll do the killing."
Flame burst from the staff.
"No!"
"Please, spare us!"
"It wasn't me—I'm not the culprit!"
They screamed. They broke down sobbing and begged, clinging to life with everything they had.
Chris shouted, "Then extract their memories instead!"
The fireball flew without pity and swallowed Tony, Smith, and Faye. By sheer luck, Alex had been standing just clear of it.
"I'll handle that one."
Harvey stepped in and swept his staff. Black smoke poured out, on the point of wrapping Alex—and then the air clenched together into an enormous hand. The hand snatched him up and carried him out of the reception room.
"Agh!"
"Aaaah!"
"Mom!"
Screams filled the reception room. A moment later the acrid smoke of burning cloth and flesh choked the air, and the reek of scorched flesh took possession of the place.
"Mom, Mom, Mom..."
The voice calling for its mother grew smaller and smaller, and then it stopped.
Chris and Alice wept as they watched their companions burn. Catherine's face went white. So did Frank's.
For the mages, the matter ended when the suspects died. They didn't spare the bodies a glance. Their interest had already turned elsewhere.
William said, "Whose work was that?"
He seemed to mean whoever had taken Alex.
Thomas answered, "I don't know."
Randal said, "One thing is certain."
He pointed at the ceiling with one finger and went on.
"A high-ranking mage intervened."
"You sound as if you know who."
"No. I don't."
The three mages left the reception room still talking, and Peter and Karl followed. Harvey did not. He stared at the corpses and licked his lips with the tip of his tongue.
"I'll dispose of the bodies."
The greed on his face, fixed on corpses burned black until only their shapes remained, was sickening.
David said, "They have to be sent to the king."
"Isn't it enough to send Mark?"
"We have to show him that these are the ones who killed the prince."
"We caught the culprits. We don't owe him that kind of service on top of it."
"He's the king. And the elder said to send the corpses."
David waved his staff, and the three charred bodies rose into the air along with Mark's eyeless corpse. He left Lion Pavilion with the dead floating ahead of him. Harvey trailed after him to the very last, unable to give up, whining for the bodies.
A year had passed since they first took their rooms in Lion Pavilion. Chris was up from dawn, cleaning his room and putting his things in order. He owned so little that packing meant sliding his silver coins deep into the bag and covering them with clothes—a few changes he had bought in Stratton Village—and with that, he was done.
He went down to the dining hall, set the bag by his feet, and ate his last meal there. Alice had risen early too and was already eating. Once, nine of them had crowded the room with noise. Now there were only the two of them.
Alice looked at the bag.
"You're moving out today?"
"Yeah."
"They said we can stay a few more months. Wouldn't it be better to keep living here?"
Chris lifted his bread.
"The support gets cut. Meals and the rest of it. Staying or leaving comes to the same thing."
"The room's already paid for, though."
"It is, but... I don't want to stay any longer."
Lion Pavilion was where their companions had died. Traces of them had seeped into every corner, and every time a memory surfaced, it hurt.
"Ah."
A small sound escaped Alice. The pain was the same for her.
"I see."
Then she hesitated, watching his face. Chris asked, "What? Something you want to say?"
"I should have told you sooner, but I couldn't get the words out."
"What is it?"
"There's a last class today."
Chris let out a short laugh.
"They flick one spell at you and check whether anything happened. What kind of class is that? If they'd actually taught us, twice as many people would have sensed mana."
"Yeah. I think so too."
"So what about the class?"
"I didn't want you finding out during class..."
"Finding out what?"
The thought struck him all at once, and the bread slipped from his fingers. It hit the table, rolled, and dropped onto his thigh.
For a moment Chris stared blankly. Then his eyes found their focus.
"You—you sensed mana!"
Alice ducked her head like someone guilty of a crime.
"Hey! Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was sorry."
"Sorry for what?"
"Because I was the only one who sensed it..."
"Are you an idiot? Why would that make you sorry? It's something to celebrate."
Alice looked up.
"Really?"
"They say once too much time passes, sensing mana gets truly difficult. One or two people in ten years, I heard. And you beat odds like that. Congratulations. I mean it. If you make it big, look after me a little."
"I will."
"You're not just saying that?"
"I promise."
"Well, look at me. A solid backer of my very own. This is getting exciting."
"Thank you."
"What do you have to thank me for?"
"For congratulating me."
Chris laughed, embarrassed.
"We're comrades. Loser comrades. Of course I'm going to congratulate you."
Alice laughed with him.
"Right. We're loser comrades."
"When did you sense it?"
"After midnight, the night Mark died."
She paused a moment, then went on.
"I was so shaken I couldn't sleep. The later it got, the wider awake I was. Lying there with my eyes open all night seemed worse than meditating, so I started reciting the spell—and it felt as if fog had closed around me."
"So mana came to you as fog. If it was fog, doesn't that mean the mana was packed incredibly thick?"
"I don't know."
"That talent of yours is something else. A true late bloomer, right here."
Alice grew shy.
"Stop. The geniuses would laugh if they heard that."
Then the smile left her face, and she spoke in earnest.
"When you leave Lion Pavilion, do you have somewhere to go?"
"Mage David found me a job."
Alice's face brightened.
"Oh, that's wonderful. Where?"
"A smithy."
"Not an ordinary smithy that makes weapons and farm tools, I assume. A place that manufactures magic tools? Magic armor, that sort of thing?"
"Not quite that far. More like turning out half-finished goods."
"Sounds like a decent job."
"Our Lion Pavilion doesn't have many people left to look out for us. They're all dead..."
The mood collapsed all at once.
"Sorry."
Chris apologized.
"Good day for it, and I had to go and say something bleak."
They finished eating quickly, killed time in the reception room, and went to the lecture hall when the hour came.
The hall had the heavy gloom of a day of rain. Chris made a rough count of the apprentices. A little over two hundred, it seemed.
So the average held.
Those who had sensed mana came to about a third.
A short while later, William came in.
"Who sensed mana?"
Alice raised her hand and stepped forward. The apprentices she passed began to murmur, watching her with envy and jealousy tangled together.
"No one else?"
No one else stepped out.
William looked at Alice.
"Follow me."
As she passed him, Peter came forward.
"A notice for the losers. Out of generosity, you will be permitted to live in the dormitory for three months. Support such as meals will be cut off, but a roof to keep off the rain and the wind is nothing to dismiss. Be grateful."
He paused. He seemed to be waiting for a thank-you, or something like one. No one offered it. A thick misery and the weight of defeat drifted through the lecture hall like ghosts.
He clicked his tongue and went on.
"You have three paths. First, take a job at the Tower and do the menial work. Second, go to Stratton and look for work. Third, return to your hometowns."
Chris muttered inwardly.
There's a fourth path, too. You've already left home—wander the world and see it. You might even find the work you were meant for.
Peter declared the term at an end.
"Class is over. Dismissed."
The apprentices couldn't bring themselves to leave; something still held them there. Then one of them took a step, and the rest poured out in a rush. Chris went with them, somewhere in the middle of the crowd.
In the open ground before the building stood people who had not been there when they went in.
"Anyone who wants a job, get over here."
A red-nosed man said it.
"What kind of place is it?"
Someone asked.
"The kitchen."
"If I go there, can I learn to cook?"
"Two years cleaning, two years serving, two years washing dishes, two years prepping ingredients. After that, you can learn."
Someone else started recruiting.
"Anyone want to be a dormitory servant?"
That one drew little interest. No one wanted to fall overnight from the ones being waited on to the ones doing the waiting.
So that's why blunt old Juan was never driven out. Nobody wants the dormitory servant's post.
Honestly, Chris didn't want to be a servant either. Watching the juniors become mages—and they would never think of a servant as their senior—would ache.
Someone shouted, "Where's Chris?"
Chris raised his hand.
"Here."
The man who had called him crooked a finger.
"Follow me."
Chris left his cohort behind and went after him. The man was tall enough to be called a giant, and his legs were long to match, his stride wide. He walked fast besides, so Chris had to break into a jog to keep pace.
"Name's Charles."
Charles had thick eyebrows, fierce protruding eyes, and a coarse beard. Put kindly, he looked manly. Put unkindly, he looked like a bandit. The impression he made was intense.
"Yes. It's good to meet you."
He glanced at Chris.
"Must be a shame."
He seemed to mean the failure to become a mage.
"Yes. A great shame."
"No family name. Not nobility, then."
"I was a slave."
"Then I understand why you aren't going home."
"You're remarkably tall."
Chris had never seen anyone Charles's size. The man looked close to twice the height of a short woman.
"There are people in the Tower taller than I am."
"Oh, come on. Surely not."
"It's true."
He dropped his voice without warning.
"And if you ever see one of them, you run. No questions."
"Why?"
"Because that one will be a mage with a very, very, very foul temper."
Chris had had his fill of foul-tempered mages. He was sick to death of them. He nodded at once.
"I'll remember that."
Charles let out a booming laugh.
"Sharp, for a new hire. I like it."
"Thank you for thinking well of me."
"And good at flattery, too."
Chris smiled bitterly.
"It's what you pick up, trying to stay alive."
"Who was in charge of this cohort?"
"Mage Randal was the one who brought me in. Mage William handled the training."
"Rotten luck, this cohort."
"Was it?"
"Both of them are famous for their tempers."
He laughed that booming laugh again.
"Get along with your year?"
"No. Not really."
"That's a pity."
"Is it a pity?"
"When someone you were close with becomes a mage, the help comes from every side, open and quiet."
"Ah. I see. If I'd known, I would have been friendlier."
"Young ones never quite grasp it. They walk into the Tower with their shoulders stuffed full of pride, every last one of them certain they'll succeed. So they envy the ones who do. Resent them..."
He stopped where the road forked and pointed to the left.
"Follow the path paved in red brick, and our workplace is down that way."
A guideboard stood there.