4.99: Those We Love

“You know,” Kylie said, “there’s another reason why this secret message might have been handed off so clumsily. With a fake birthday present and everything.”

We were sitting in one of the tunnels leading to the Lake of Inquisition, safe from prying eyes, puzzling over Gertrude’s articles. I frowned at her. “There is? Kylie, this is from the best legacy mage kid in – ”

“Usually, yes. But look at this. There’s some attempt to conceal a message, but not up to her standards. And if she’d wanted it to be intercepted, like you suggested, then she would’ve just sent it through the mail, right? They’re trying to incriminate you as an accomplice to Cheryl via your commonfolk friends, so they have to be reading your mail, right? She went via Magistus, to you, meaning she probably didn’t want it intercepted, but it’s not nearly up to her standards of subtlety. You know what that tells me? That tells me that this was rushed. She wanted you to have this as quickly as physically possible. She sent it to you, not me, because she wasn’t thinking of some long term plan for us; she heard, or figured out, or whatever, that you were in danger, so she sent you a potential escape plan on very short notice. That’s what I think.”

“Meaning that we may not have any time at all. They might show up to arrest me for this stuff at any minute.”

“Yes.”

“Then we have to move. We’re out of time on this whole saving the world thing. We need to go, grab what we need, and – ”

“No. If we charge down there right now, without proper sleep or planning, we die. We need to pack, plan, be in good physical condition.”

“They could come for me at any moment, and I can’t do anything locked up awaiting trial! We don’t have time!”

“Then we buy some. Calm down, Kayden.”

“Buy some? How?”

Kylie took a deep, calming breath, and then let it out. “We’re going to use Gertrude’s plan. You’re going to stay safely here for an hour or so, while I go and see Alania. I’m going to explain to her that I want to go to Fionnrath, and I need her help dealing with getting out of my existing contract with Refujeyo. That’s what the Council wants anyway, so there shouldn’t be any complications, but I’m going to tell her that I want to stay for a couple more weeks so that we can both wrap up our various affairs and you can sort out your apprenticeship with Malas. Then, in… let’s say, twelve days… we do it. In twelve days, we save the fucking world.”

“Only two weeks? You could probably push until the end of term to – ”

“Maybe. But with all the tension around this whole thing and with most of the people involved presumably believing that Cheryl is actually a terrorist and you were involved in hiding her, I don’t think we should give anyone time to get impatient. There are going to be people in the government who would want you locked up more than they want to placate some random Scottish town they probably look down on, and some of those people might be involved with your case, or at least close enough to it to identify you. The articles that Gertrude sent didn’t name you or talk about Fionnrath’s Destiny, but she clearly knows what’s going on and she’s a new apprentice, so we have to assume that a lot of sekuranti know.”

“And you think if we delay too long, then even if the people framing Cheryl and I do want us to do this, other people might get restless and complicate the matter.”

“Yes. Faster is better. Nice and neat for everyone.”

“And two weeks gives us time to prepare and actually get a chance to say our goodbyes. Pushing anything we don’t actually want to do to the last couple of days, if we’re actually fulfilling the prophecy on day twelve.”

“Exactly.”

I nodded, and took a calming breath of my own. “Twelve days. That’s so little time. But, well, I think any concrete deadline would sound like too little time.”

“Yeah,” Kylie said. “And, well, at this point…”

“At this point, there’s no sense in being nervous or hesitant or anything, because there’s definitely no going back.”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll escort you back to the school corridors, in case the protections around this lake stop you from getting out by yourself, then hang out here for an hour or so, just in case they’re showing up to arrest me at this exact moment, while you go and talk to your surveyanto. And then…”

“Then there really will be no going back.”

“Yeah.”

The hour long wait was interminable. Probably unnecessary (what were the odds that people were trying to arrest me right that minute?), but there was nowhere better to be and I didn’t want to spend a night being intimidated and interrogated by cops before Malas awkwardly forced them to let me go in the morning in light of Kylie’s new agreement, so I sat there and played minesweeper on my tablet while I watched the clock tick down. I did not win very many games of minesweeper.

There were some upsides to this whole plan. I was going to actually get to say goodbye to my friends without being suspicious. I could wrap up personal affairs and soforth without issue. That was more than I’d expected. I’d been preparing to have to act like things were totally normal with everyone right up until I tore the heart out of the school right under them.

After an hour, I made my way back into range of the school intranet, read Kylie’s ‘all clear’ message, and started making plans.

There were so many people to say goodbye to. Where was I supposed to start?

That question turned out to be easy, actually. I didn’t go looking for anyone, really; I automatically just headed back for my room. I sat at my desk. I picked up a pen, to write letters. Letters to Chelsea, and to Melissa.

And to my parents.

I stared at the white paper in front of me. What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to put down, to make anything better, to make anything make sense? Chelsea and Melissa at least had some vague idea of what was going on; they knew about Max dying, and they knew I was going to have to do some dangerous thing eventually, but… my parents? I’d hidden everything dangerous about Refujeyo from them, right from the start. To them, this was going to come out of absolutely nowhere.

After we fulfilled the prophecy (in twelve days, by the Points, only twelve days!), I didn’t know what the law would do to us. It was possible – likely, even – that I might never speak to my parents again. That this letter might be the last words that they ever heard from their son.

What was I supposed to tell them, to make any of this okay? What was I supposed to tell them to make any of this remotely comprehensible?

And it didn’t help that I couldn’t actually say anything. I couldn’t be sure that my mail wasn’t being read, and I couldn’t tip off the school that these letters were anything more than ‘hey, I’m moving to Scotland and I love you’ notices. I was already isolated from my family at Refujeyo, so the only real difference that moving made was that Fionnrath probably wouldn’t let Kylie (and therefore me) leave during the holidays. That warranted some emotion in a letter, but not the kind of goodbye I wanted to write. Not the kind of goodbye that all four of them deserved.

I tossed my pen aside with a frustrated sigh and went to find Saina instead. In her room, under the protective gaze of her two bodyguards (did they know about me being suspected of helping cheryl? No, they couldn’t; there was no way they’d let me near Saina if they did), I awkwardly explained that I’d be moving to Fionnrath with Kylie.

Saina studied me for a long moment, arms crossed, before saying, “Is this why you were so weird earlier, about missing me and all that?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“You could’ve just told me then.”

“I didn’t want to say anything until Kylie had actually cleared things with Alania Miratova. I mean, if she couldn’t get Kylie out of the contract, and we were staying…” I shrugged.

“How long until you leave?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks?! By the Points, that’s no time at all!”

“I… I know. I’m sorry.”

“Well then,” she said. “I suppose I’m going to have to start scheduling regular visits to Fionnrath. In the meantime… we still have two weeks.”

“Y-yeah.”

The air between us was charged, but neither of us wanted to actually do anything with the bodyguards watching. After some awkward conversation and a single kiss, I left.

In twelve days, I was going to destroy the world of the girl I loved. I was going to throw her society into political chaos and pull her nice secure future from her hands. I was going to tear her boyfriend away from her without warning, and without any real, proper goodbye. And all I was going to leave her with was the question of just how long I’d been lying to her.

She’d be fine, of course. Even when the Pit was destroyed, she’d still be the High Crone’s daughter. And she’d understand why I did it, once the deed was done and the danger could be explained. Surely. She had to. She was a good person.

I still felt like dirt as I walked away.

I met up with Kylie on the walk back to our room. She looked as despondent as I felt. Who had she been talking to? Had she talked to Talbot yet?

We walked in silence.

Kylie opened the doorway to our room, looked up, and froze. I followed her gaze, then quickly hustled us both inside and slammed the door, safe from prying eyes. There was a janitor in our room, just standing there, clearly waiting for us.

“Hi,” he said, and I recognised the voice.

“Max,” I said.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“You’re not supposed to talk to us,” Kylie said quietly, staring at the floor. “Do the others know you’re here?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then maybe you should leave.”

“Gladly. But this is important. I heard that you’re leaving?”

“Wow, your information networks work fast,” I said. “Kylie only had that meeting, like, two hours ago.”

Under the layers of brown cloth, I couldn’t see him frown, but I heard it in his voice. “If we want to see something, we see it,” he said, sounding puzzled. “But you can’t just leave. If you get to Fionnrath, they’ll never let you go.”

“Aww, you care,” I said.

“Of course I care,” he said.

I smiled.

“The fate of the world is at stake.”

Oh. That. “We’re not abandoning the cause,” I assured him. We had to arrange the whole Fionnrath thing to buy us enough time to deal with the spell overload problem. That’s all. We’re going to do our jobs.”

Max visibly relaxed. “Right. Excellent. Well, then. Sorry to bother you. I should…” he went to step around me.

“Wait,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“Are you… happy?”

“Am I happy?”

“Being a janitor. I know you’re probably learning mysterious secret magic or whatever. Is that good?”

He cocked his head. “I don’t have any frame of reference to answer that question.”

“Right. Of course. What… what will you do, if we fail?”

“I urge you to endeavour not to fail. The world is at stake.”

“Yeah, but if we do…”

“You already know the answer to that question. We’ll have to try again. But this is the best chance at destroying this thing we have ever had, and I don’t think we’re going to see a chance half this good again. As time passes, the task gets harder; if we have to try again, the next candidate will have to be stronger than you, luckier than you. And that’s unlikely.”

“So you’ll probably be forced into more direct action, more physical action.”

“Yes.”

“Blowing everything up and probably starting a magical war.”

“Yes. No matter how bad such a war would be, there would be a lot of survivors. It would be so much better than the alternative.”

“Wait,” Kylie said, still not looking at Max. “Would there be time for another candidate? I thought we were running out of time here.”

“We are always running out of time.”

“How long do we have before this thing is born?”

“This has never happened before. The estimates are… vague.”

“Guess!”

“Currently… we believe that this abomination will be born in approximately one hundred and fifty years.”

Kylie looked up. We stared at Max for several seconds.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”