4.98: In Another Life

I lay on the beach, on what had been dry sand, but the tide was starting to come in and the crest of every wave kissed my bare toes. I lay me head in Saina’s lap while she carded her fingers gently through my hair. Some way down the beach, I could see Hammond, trying to give us space while also keeping us in sight to fulfil his bodyguarding duties. I tilted my head up to look at Saina instead. She was haloed by the sun, the glare making the sparkle of her externalised spell almost invisible.

“I love you so fucking much,” I told her. “Do you know that?”

She giggled. “Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?”

“It’s not coming from anywhere all of a sudden. It’s just true.”

She shuffled back a bit and bent forward to kiss me. “I love you too, Kayden,” she murmured in my ear before sitting back up.

“I’m going to miss you,” I couldn’t help but mumble. Whatever they did to Kylie and me after everything, I didn’t think I’d ever get to see the High Crone’s daughter again. Whatever time we had left, I had to treasure it.

“Miss me?” She cocked her head. “Is this about after school? Kayden, I’m getting married, not going into exile. We can still be friends.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And I’m a couple of years from graduation yet, at least.”

“Yeah, I know.” I tried to smile. It clearly didn’t work, because Saina just looked more concerned.

“I know you wanted to give this whole thing a shot even with the marriage, but if it’s actually bothering you, I completely understand if you’d rather find someone who – ”

“No, no!” I sat up and took her hands. “No. Every minute with you is a treasure. I don’t want less minutes just because I can’t have all the minutes. Anyway, like you said, after you get married we can still be friends, right?”

“Exactly. But again, if it’s not enough to – ”

“It’s fine. Really.” I’ll be leaving you before you have a chance to leave me, anyway.

“I love you so much, but I have responsibilities.”

“I know. I get it. You really don’t have to justify anything. Besides.” I leaned in close, like I was sharing a secret, and whispered. “That fiance you’ve bagged for yourself? I know you two don’t see each other this way, but. Prime catch. Look at him standing there in the sunlight, all big and muscly and sensitive. That’s one sexy fiance.”

Saina glanced at Hammond standing some way up the beach and burst into giggles. I looked between the two, struck suddenly by the memory of Josh’s party. By how surprised Josh had been, when I’d said that Saina and I would have to break up when she was married. About how he’d just assumed that that wouldn’t be an issue for Hammond.

It occurred to me that I’d never actually discussed that issue with Hammond. And I wasn’t sure that Saina had, either. Maybe, in another lifetime, I might try to tentatively probe that issue. In another lifetime, where I wasn’t burdened with a different destiny, where we had any hope of a future together. But not this one. There was no point.

“I’m thinking of seeing a therapist,” Saina confessed, once she had control of herself again.

“Oh?” I asked, trying to make it a polite ‘tell me whatever you like’ oh, not an intrusive ‘I demand all of your secrets’ oh.

“Yeah. How’s the guy you see?”

“Dr Peterson? He’s good. Great, probably. I don’t have a frame of reference, but he’s helped me a lot.” The truth was, I hadn’t actually seen Dr Peterson for a while. Not since I’d started my apprenticeship, at least. What would be the point? What was I supposed to tell him? ‘Oh, I’m really stressed right now about the possibility of failing to destroy the school and upset the entire mage world.’ If I talked to him about my problems, I’d be lying more often than not, which wasn’t helpful for either of us. There were only so many times that we could talk about my hatred of being caught in the rain since my Inititation, or my lingering concern over the fact that I had no idea who did and didn’t know I was trans and my life story plastered all over the internet was a time bomb of drama waiting to happen the second some friend I didn’t realise was transphobic decided to google me on impulse. I couldn’t even discuss my nightmares, because they were mostly the spellthing in my dreams giving me grief over not having saved the world yet. And I hadn’t even had those dreams for ages. Not that I remembered, anyway.

On the way back to my room after our date, I ran into Magistus. “Oh, hey, Kayden! I was looking for you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah. Gertie sent me something to give you.”

I frowned. What did Magistus’ sister have to give me?

He dug a package out of his pocket and handed it to me. It was wrapped like a birthday present, my name on the tag. This, if anything, raised further questions – it was nowhere near my birthday, and Gertrude was the last person in the world likely to mix up a birthday. What was this?

“Uh, thanks,” I said.

“No problem.” He touched my shoulder companionably, then immediately drew back when I flinched. I didn’t mean to flinch – I knew he wouldn’t use his magic on me, he’d promised he wouldn’t, despite our disagreement on the whole ‘you can’t just go around influencing the emotions of nonconsenting people’ issue. He wouldn’t. But.

Magistus stepped back. “Uh. Well. Have a good day, Kayden.”

“You too.”

I went to my room to open the package. Inside wasn’t a present. It was a handful of… newsletter articles? They were printed up like newspaper articles, but I didn’t think the content was for public consumption. The first was a short piece about tensions with Fionnrath, suggestions that some sort of deal went through. It didn’t mention Fionnrath’s Destiny by name, but I could read between the lines; there were only a limited number of things that Refujeyo could have that they were trading with Fionnrath to borrow. Negotiations were going worse than I would have suspected; either Fionnrath were desperate not to wait out Kylie’s lifespan to get their spell back, or Refujeyo were being really cheap when it came to ‘renting’ the spell from them.

The second article was completely unrelated to the first. It said that Cheryl Castor had been arrested on suspicion of deliberate tampering with the Pit, presumably with the intent of injuring or killing students of the school that she was (according to the article) bitter about having been too old to attend. With her master and partner in crime Tristan Arum also behind bars, their trials were pending. This was bad news on its own, but as I kept reading, it got worse – the article claimed that Cheryl had received aid from the locals in certain towns in Australia, and the population of said places were being investigated for possible collaborators. The article made it clear that while Refujeyo could not persecute commonfolk for this, they were nevertheless being investigated due to their relationships with certain mages, in order to root out mage colluders with Tristan and Cheryl.

My hometown was on the list.

The third and final article that Gertrude had sent me was about some kind of government change, a few people resigning from high positions and others replacing them. I didn’t recognise any of the names.

Okay, so. Several questions.

To start with, what was Gertrude trying to tell me? That wasn’t too hard to figure out, really. Some kind of political restructuring was going on (a bunch of high-ranking politicians didn’t all get replaced at once if nothing was happening), there was still tension with Fionnrath and giving them their prophet would obviously be the easiest way to make that go away, and the Inquisition was investigating the possibility that I’d helped an alleged terrorist avoid the law. I hadn’t, and in theory they shouldn’t have anything to prove I had, but they were in control of the narrative here. And I couldn’t help but remember when Kylie and I had been interrogated about Cheryl’s whereabouts. Had that been some kind of setup? Had we said anything that they could twist into something incriminating? They were framing Cheryl in the first place, so I didn’t have high hopes for the truth meaning anything.

Anyway. Sekura Refujeyo was gunning for me, for some reason, and Kylie’s situation offered us a possible out. If Kylie went to Fionnrath, I had the right to follow her as her familiar – I’d have to, for both of our sakes. I was pretty sure that being convicted of terrorism would legally override that (it’d be a pretty stupid system if familiars could just do whatever and nobody could do anything about it), but if Refujeyo had to choose between locking up some kid for giving a dangerous friend a place to stay, and resolving this whole Fionnrath thing by giving them their prophet back, they’d back off and take the second option. It was what they’d been trying to do by expelling Kylie without cause, and here was a way to do it without all the political and PR mess that had made them back down the first time.

So that was the message. A problem and a way out. The question was, was the way out Gertrude’s plan, or Refujeyo’s? Was Gertrude telling me, “Here is how you’re in danger, here’s a way to outsmart Refujeyo,” or was she telling me “Refujeyo is creating this problem for you in order to force you and Kylie to do this?” Was I being warned to go, or warned not to go?

Of course, there was a third option – that Gertrude wasn’t warning me about the government, but contacting me as part of the government. She could be on their ‘side’, rather than mine – she could be in a position where she didn’t see two ‘sides’ in this at all. She was my friend, but she was also a sekuranti apprentice. Maybe she was just playing messenger for them.

But then why the secrecy? Unless they… wanted to… trick me into thinking she was contacting me secretly, or something? Come to think of it, this whole thing wasn’t remotely good spycraft. Melissa had slipped me Cheryl’s key in a far more subtle way than this. Normally I’d think nothing of that, not everyone was great at secret messages, but this was Gertrude, master socialite. If she wanted to get me a message secretly, she’d find a way. A disguised birthday present at the wrong time of year, handed to me by her brother? Not particularly secret. But there had been an attempt at disguising this, or she could’ve just sent me these in a normal envelope. Or, I dunno, a letter, telling me what she wanted to say in plain language.

Gertrude was good at this kind of thing. She’d done it badly. Presumably on purpose. Which meant…?

I didn’t know. I didn’t have enough information.

Max would’ve skimmed the contents of this package once and told me exactly what it meant. But I wasn’t Max.

I wasn’t Max, but I had been doing this for a few years now. And I knew my friends. I knew that Gertrude was a million times better at this kind of thing, and she knew I knew that, and her master and coworkers quite possibly didn’t know that. So… what if the clumsy handoff was part of the message itself? Like, she’d been told to ‘secretly’ get this information to me in a way that made it look like she was doing something they didn’t approve of. But she wanted me to know that she was under orders, so she did it in a way that I would know was out of character, but they wouldn’t.

Yeah, maybe. That did fit. Except that it meant hypothesising a big conspiracy out to manipulate my behaviour, and we’d been down the ‘maybe it’s a big political conspiracy’ path before, and the truth always turned out to be way simpler than that.

Well, except for when we discovered the robed sect of school maintenance zombies that actually were conspiring to guide our behaviour. That one had been true. But two separate conspiracies manipulating us for completely different reasons was a bit much.

Also. What was I supposed to do with this? Did it matter whether Gertrude was telling me to go to Fionnrath, or whether she was warning me that Refujeyo wanted me to go to Fionnrath, or whether Sekura Refujeyo had told her to warn me that Refujeyo was going to Fionnrath but make the message appear subversive? There were only two avenues here – take my chances against whatever they could drum up against me, or go to Fionnrath. Whose plan it was didn’t change our options.

Come to think of it. Why send this package to me? This should be a message for Kylie. Kylie was the one they wanted, the one who had to make the choice. And sure, they might be using threats against me to manipulate her choice, but it was still her choice. Why tell me about it? Gertrude was an excellent judge of character and personality. She had to know that Kylie would take this kind of threat to me much more seriously than I would. She was far more protective of my than I was of myself. If she wanted us to go to Fionnrath, she should’ve sent this to Kylie.

Was that why she’d sent it to me? Was this part of the ‘do your job badly’ part? Did she want this to fail, want us to choose not to go to Fionnrath? We couldn’t go anyway, of course; we had an eldritch magical baby god to destroy, but Gertrude didn’t know that.

If she didn’t want us to go, what other option did she expect us to even take? What else was there to do? Just stay and hope it’d blow over?

Of course, there was another option – that I wasn’t expected to do anything at all. Gertrude might be playing some political game with someone else entirely (she did love her political games), and she’d sent me a badly disguised message because she’d wanted them to read it and know she was doing it, because she wanted them to… think she was plotting something with me, somehow… because that would help her do something? Something I didn’t have the context to predict? So it really had nothing to do with me at all?

Maybe. In which case, I didn’t need to do anything in particular in response to this; maybe she wasn’t trying to tell me what to do at all.

It didn’t matter. The information, assuming it was accurate, was what it was. Sekura Refujeyo would complete their investigation, and if they decided that they wanted to find me guilty then they would find me guilty. Fionnrath existed as an escape route, except that it didn’t. Because we had a god to slay. We had a world to save. We had to stay in Refujeyo and out of prison to fulfil the prophecy. And Sekura Refujeyo worked fast.

Meaning that our timetable needed to step up. We needed to get the heart soon.

We weren’t ready. But however ready we were… it was just going to have to be ready enough.