4.86: Practical Justice

“It, uh, it… what?”

“Well, that was a fairly major political complication that was quite neatly resolved by simply giving up Kylie. Now, governments don’t tend to take drastic actions in petty revenge, but they do have a tendency to work to eliminate dangers. Your friend proved herself to be the kind of troublemaker who could create a lot of dangerous situations in the future, so it makes sense that they’d want to deal with that.”

“Yeah, it… yeah!” I frowned at my juice. I knew they had done that, obviously, but hearing someone else explain it made it… difficult to believe. These were the people in charge of the school. Alania was one of these people. She wouldn’t actually stand for this, right? “Um,” I added after a second. “Are you sure that makes sense?”

“Have you already forgotten what they did to you, when you posed a much more minor threat?”

That was… an excellent point. “But Cheryl didn’t really cause any dangerous problems, though. I mean, she threatened worse PR for the school than I did, through the initiates, but the fact that they even agreed to reverse the decision about Kylie shows it couldn’t have been that important. I know people are worried about this whole thing being the catalyst of some war with a  bunch of independent magical nations if they think that Refujeyo stole Fionnrath’s spell or whatever, but how much of a threat do they really pose to Refujeyo?”

“The threat to Refujeyo isn’t really a relevant question,” Fiore said.

“It’s not?”

“No. Fionnrath can’t do much against Refujeyo. Any group of ally nations it could rustle up before Refujeyo could mount a defense couldn’t do much. But if Fionnrath was to start international trouble, how do you think Scotland would respond?”

“I… uh. Is Fionnrath part of Scotland? Technically?”

“According to the commonfolk, yes. So you can see how it would be a problem if a little town in Scotland started taking military actions on its own. Perhaps in concert with a couple in China. And a city in Mexico. And some very important actors in Egypt.” He sipped his tea. “Do you know why the location of Refujeyo is kept secret?”

“It’s to stop politically important kids from getting assassinated, right?”

Fiore rolled his eyes. “Ostensibly. But it’s not difficult to gain access to Refujeyo. That Nic Fionn woman got here. We invited your parents in for a tour, and they’re not even part of mage society. Its location is secret because it has to exist somewhere, and the two options for that are a physical mage nation locateable on an international map, or an extremely large and powerful group within another nation that conducts its own affairs and is significantly bigger and more powerful than its parent nation. Both of these are extremely dangerous things to just insert among commonfolk societies. The entire purpose of this place is to avoid magical wars that would affect the comonfolk, after all.”

“I thought it was to collect magic and, you know, protect them from witches?” I asked. “I mean, that’s the official reason, right?”

“Of course. But why do that?”

“To… you know, stop dangerous curses from infecting the world, and…” I trailed off. That was my nonmagical upbringing talking, speaking of curses as some kind of spreadable corruption that sinners were susceptible to becoming vessels for, like Refujeyo was some medical response quarantining witches for the good of the uninfected. But that’s not how Refujeyo viewed spells, was it?

“Quite some time ago,” Fiore explained, “a very powerful seer foresaw that a great war would come and consume the entire world. More than fifty per cent of humanity would perish to blade and magic and fire, to terrifying weapons never before seen, that such weapons would scar the land and seas and render portions of the planet uninhabitable for generations. Now, commonfolk are perfectly capable of creating massively destructive weapons on their own, but not quite that destructive. The greatest damage in this war would be done by magic users, their spells and their creations.

“See, while witches had apprentices and masters and their own communities, while small witch societies did exist and very powerful witches could meet as equals and have more in common with each other than their commonfolk brethren, most magic was held in the hands of people who were simply members of mostly nonmagical communities. An Egyptian witch was Egyptian first, an English witch was English first, and should England and Egypt somehow be forced into a desperate war against each other… well. I’m sure you can foresee the problems created by a war that swept the entire globe. The seer was very powerful, and foresaw this with plenty of time to prepare. So, they discussed the matter with powerful colleagues from all around the world, and together they proposed a solution – remove themselves, and as many magical brethren as they could, from the board entirely.

“The commonfolk went on to have two great wars, and created horrible weapons for them, but nothing that could cause a fraction of the damage that all-out magical warfare would have in such an interconnected world. And Refujeyo’s primary purpose is to ensure that it never will. So, if we put ourselves in a position where the smaller nations ever do feel cornered into starting something that the commonfolk will notice...”

Huh. Okay. Interesting. “But… if it’s that important to keep Fionnrath happy, then why did the high Council reverse the decision to send Kylie? Why not just take the PR hit?”

“Oh, I’m sure they did something else to avoid the possibility of war. There are various ways. My guess is that they probably paid Fionnrath an absurd amount of money to rent their spell for one human lifetime. But this whole fiasco proves that Cheryl is willing to do drastic things without thinking about the consequences, and is politically skilled enough to pull them off. So it would make sense for her to be targeted.”

“Are they going to kill her?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Definitely not.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked. “I mean, if they’ve framed her and Tristan right, then they’ll both be found guilty of putting six people in danger and hurting one of them in what could’ve been a fatal way, on purpose. Under the Law of Intent, that’s triple the maximum punishment. That has to add up to a death sentence, right? If they decide they want that?”

“Oh, definitely,” Fiore agreed. “The Council could demand death and absolutely get that granted, if they wanted. That’s my point.”

“I don’t…”

“Do you remember how they were able to put that little leash on your tongue?”

“They just called the Voice in to do it.”

“And why did you let them?”

“I, uh… I waived my right to a trial and agreed to immediate sentencing to protect the rest of the cov – oh.”

Fiore nodded. “Tristan and Cheryl will to absolutely anything to avoid this going to trial. The people on the High Council got there because they are extremely good at making use of people. You’ve seen Alania’s talent for coercing useful indenturement from criminals.”

“You’re talking about Clara.”

“I am talking about Clara.”

“But that’s… Clara was guilty. Alania wouldn’t do that to innocent people.”

“You’ve always given her far too much benefit of the doubt, but whether you’re right or wrong is irrelevant. This frame job is happening, meaning she’s either on board or heavily outnumbered. Do you think the rest of the Council aren’t as clever as her? It wasn’t Alania who trapped you for that geas. Anyway, even if she is the saintly beacon of justice you seem to think and somehow does outvote the rest of the Council, do you think she’d let your framed friend die instead? Don’t worry, Kayden. Provided your friend doesn’t do something abominably stupid like attack the sekuranti who eventually apprehend her, nobody’s dying in all this. The council will just put her and her master in a situation where they’re more useful and less dangerous. Of course, it’ll be slightly more difficult with you throwing her name around, but I’m sure they’ll manage.”

“With me what? I haven’t been throwing anyone’s name around.”

Fiore cocked his head in that stupid indulgent uncle way he had. “The only reason I know the names of the perpetrators is because you told my nephew about her. The High Council were keeping their names quiet.”

“Well, that one Inquisitor told me, so it couldn’t be that important,” I mumbled.

“An Inquisitor? What?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

I thought about Cheryl, the woman who’d spent years refusing to even talk to the mages to discuss apprenticeship. Who’d taken her time to pick her master, and made sure that her contract had escape clauses in case her spell didn’t awaken. Who took such delight in skirting the rules and finding loopholes in everything, in telling authority where to shove it when she thought authority was wrong.

I thought of Clara, forced into a one-sided apprenticeship with Alania that she’d probably never be released from. I didn’t pity her; she’d gotten off pretty lightly, for someone who’d nearly killed their teacher and tried to frame their friends for attempted murder. I hadn’t appreciated how lightly at the time. Cheryl was cleverer and more dangerous; whatever they did with her, she’d be a lot more restricted. And the high Council had the power to restrict people as much as they wanted. I had the evidence of that inside me, stilling my tongue whenever I tried to talk about the nature of curses.

Plastic crunched in my hand. I’d crushed my empty juice bottle, apparently. “I’m not going to them do that to her,” I said.

“I’d be interested to know how you plan to stop it,” Fiore said.

“I’ll think of something. Prove her innocence.”

“That might be doable,” Fiore said.

“It might?”

He nodded. “Hard to say without more information. We need to build her case; her personality, social networks, abilities. If they say she used her spell, then we need to know specifically how that spell operates, if possible. There might be a case to build there, and I think I know someone who knows Arum’s lawyer. Might as well try.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to help?”

He gave me a perplexed frown. “Why do I not want my government framing random political opponents for serious crimes to strongarm them into perpetual servitude under the threat of death? Is that a serious question?”

Well okay, it sounded like a dumb question when he put it like that.

“Well,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Justice is justice. That aside, are you doing alright?”

We finished up the meeting, and I left in search of somewhere private. I could go back to my room, but my next task was a little noisy and I didn’t want to bother Kylie if she was in there. Normally, I’d go to one of the outdoor locations that people hardly ever went to, but that would mean leaving the maximum range for our familiarity link, and going outside it for too long still made me nervous. Duniyasar was still withing range, but the last time I’d been there, Max had died. (Anyway, opening the portal meant bleeding all over the hospital doors, and I was pretty sure that doing that as an apprentice would result in an extra thorough hygeine lecture.)

But I’d been thinking, and had a fantastic idea. There was somewhere I could go. Somewhere completely private where no one would stumble on me, and even out of the range of the school intranet, but still within range for the familiarity link. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.

I headed for the Lake of Inquisition.

Sitting in one of the tunnels that opened into the cliff overlooking the lake, I pulled out my tablet and got to my next task – listening to the meeting I’d just had.

I hadn’t recorded Fiore for any nefarious reason. I wasn’t planning to blackmail him or anything. He just liked to play games and had a way of sneaking things past you and controlling the conversation. He always assumed he was a lot smarter than any student, meaning he was pretty easy to manipulate if you knew what he thought and what he was after. But if you didn’t know those things, he’d run rings around you.

At least, he’d run rings around me.

I took a couple of minutes to make sure I was calm, not angry or defensive or feeling anything else that might affect my ability to decipher what the hell that whole meeting had been about, and then I pressed play.