4.76: A Tightening Leash

Two days before the holidays, Jamil asked me to take him back to the lake. We used one of my rock climbing lines to keep him anchored in the water while the tentacles did their work.

“You feel any different?” I asked him after he’d dried off and we were heading back to the main school.

He shook his head. “I don’t.”

That wasn’t surprising, I supposed. I hadn’t felt any different, either.

“You probably think I’m being a coward,” he said, “just sealing this all away instead of staying for the Initiation.”

I shook my head. “I know people who went through the Initiation for the wrong reasons,” I said. “One of my best friends went through the Initiation because he was less scared of the Pit than he was of telling his family ‘no’. All you can do is try to make the right decision for yourself.” Sometimes I thought I’d gone through the Initiation for the wrong reasons. Why had I done it, again? I hadn’t wanted to say goodbye to my new friends, obviously, but… no, I’d been angry at the school, angry at Malas. Felt like walking away was cowardly, somehow. Like Jamil felt, I supposed.

Two days later, the holidays arrived. I wasn’t looking forward to them.

They were going to be the first time I saw Chelsea and Melissa since Max, Melissa’s boyfriend, died.

It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. It was easy to forget that time passed in places even when I wasn’t there – Melissa, like me, had had time to grieve. She was still in pain, like I was. Thoughts and conversation randomly turning to him, like I was. But neither of us were a complete wreck. We had fun together. Reminisced about the good old days. I tried to climb a drainpipe that had been easy when I was eleven and now immediately collapsed under my weight, forcing us to have to flee before Mr Williamson came outside to see what the racket was about.

No, the thing that put a damper on this holiday was that I started feeling drained and listless after being separated from Kylie for only three days.

This was… not a great development. I’d been expecting it, of course; we knew that with a human familiar to dump its excess magic into, Fionnrath’s Destiny had been waking up more and more of itself, presumably keeping pace with what I could adjust to safely handle. We knew, from how I reacted to other magic that entered my body, that I was shouldering more and more of Kylie’s magic over time. So it was reasonable to assume that the amount of time we could be apart before the lack of magic flow started to wear on us would decrease.

It was reasonable to expect it, but I certainly wasn’t happy to have it confirmed. What if this kept going? Animals didn’t handle magic as well as humans did; animal familiars couldn’t shoulder nearly as much of it as I could.  We had no precedent for this kind of thing and no idea of how far it would go. What if we got to the point where we couldn’t be separate for more than a day? An hour? What if this feeling started to hit us the moment we were out of range of each other?

I pondered this while I ate poached eggs on the fourth morning, hoping (in vain) that they might fill the emptiness inside me left by the absence of magic. If we found a way to break the familiarity link between us, would I ever feel normal again? This empty link didn’t feel the same as having no link – this was a starvation for a type of hunger that hadn’t existed ith no link – but would not being a familiar feel empty, too? Would I ever get used to it, if we broke the link?

I was supposed to spend the day helping the girls build something, but I didn’t think I’d have the energy. Better to just go back to bed after breakfast, probably.

Somebody knocked on the door. My mum bustled past me to answer it, not looking at me. (I hadn’t bothered hiding my beard this holidays, and she spent as little time looking at my face as possible. She hadn’t saidanything, but…)

“Is Kayden in?”

I perked up. That was Instruktanto Cooper’s voice.

“We’re in the middle of breakfast right now – ”

“I’m here,” I said, coming up behind her. “What’s up?”

It was obvious from his expression that the answer wasn’t going to be good. “Kylie’s in hospital,” he said. “You’re needed.”

The earth dropped out from under me. “Fionnrath’s Destiny?”

He nodded.

“Let’s go.” I didn’t even bother to grab my stuff. Most of it was commonfolk clothes, and if I forgot anything important I’d just rebuy it.

“Kayden, where are you – ?”

“Sorry, Mum; it’s a medical emergency. They need me right now. Tell Dad and Chelsea and Melissa that I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer, alright?”

Mum followed us to Instruktanto Cooper’s van. “A medical emergency? Go and see your friend of course, but what use are you in a medical emergency? You’re not a doctor!”

“It’s complicated,” I said, climbing into the van.

“And your son’s a healer’s apprentice, actually,” Instruktanto Cooper said as he started the van. “Have a good day, Mrs James.”

And we drove off, Mum staring after us, looking baffled.

“Technically I’m not Malas’ apprentice for another week and a half,” I told him.

“Yeah, but we didn’t exactly have time to explain, did we? Okay, here we are.” He stopped the car in the valley and got out.

“That was fast!”

“I took some not-completely-safe short cuts. Come on.”

As soon as I entered the school, I felt Kylie’s magic rush back into me in a dizzying wave.  The sheer volume of it stunned me for a second, and I grabbed Instruktanto Cooper’s arm for support.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got a hold of it now. Let’s go.”

We made our way to the hospital ward, and Malas waved us behind the curtains surrounding Kylie’s bed. She was asleep. She had one of those oxygen tubes under her nose, was hooked up to about five different monitoring devices, and sweat beaded on her forehead.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

Malas shrugged. “That’s difficult to predict. But now that you’re here, we can find out. These machines are only precautionary; she’s not in too bad a condition yet. I put her under to try to halt the homeostatic fluctuations before they hit a full cascade. I’ll wake her up now.” He left, and returned a moment later with a syringe full of something that he injected into her IV. A couple of minutes later, Kylie’s eyelids fluttered.

She looked fine. Her magic inside me felt normal. That was good, right? If it was going to kill her, it’s be agitated or something, right? I’d feel it, right?

“Kayden?” Kylie mumbled. She as looking at me, blearily.

“Hey there,” I said. “You’re okay. You… are okay, right?”

She glanced at Malas, then Cooper, looking more and more confused. “What happened?”

“You were overwhelmed by the power of your spell and went into the early stages of homeostatic cascade,” Malas explained. “Fortunately, your father called us instead of the commonfolk emergency services, and Taine went to retrieve you. It’s my medical recommendation that you and Kayden remain within range of your familiarity link as often as possible from now on.”

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

Malas magically scanned her. “I’d like to keep you here for medical observation for twenty four hours,” he told her, “but I see nothing immediately alarming.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

“Needless to say, I think you should both remain on campus for the rest of the holidays. A homeostatic cascade is a serious issue and even if everything seems fine, you should be close to medical professionals. Some cascades happen within minutes, some take weeks, so we shouldn’t be too fast in saying you’re in the clear.”

“Mmm. Okay.”

“Is she okay?” I asked Malas. “She seems groggy.”

“She’s groggy because she woke up from a medically induced coma about sixty seconds ago. Come on, I’ll walk you through the treatment of homeostatic cascade recovery.”

Helping someone recover from homeostatic cascade, as it turned out, wasn’t at all complicated. Malas treated it the same way he’d treat somone recovering from a fever – fluids, rest, and monitoring to make sure the situation didn’t get worse. While he explained basic, fairly obvious stuff to me, I couldn’t help but think of the last time I’d seen him. Of the way he grinned so unnervingly at the Council. Of how they all flinched back.

“Hey,” I said. “I, uh, don’t think I ever thanked you.”

“Hmm? For what?”

“For convincing the Council to change their minds.”

“Oh. That. I don’t think I’m the one you should be thanking, there.” He grimaced. “We may have dodged a bullet, approaching that Cheryl girl a few years too late to admit her into the school.”

“The Council, um… they seemed to be frightened of you?”

“Of course they are.” He turned his inhuman, glowing gaze on me. “Aren’t you?”

“Um. Should I be?”

He shook his head. It was a shake of amused disbelief. It wasn’t a ‘no’.

“Why are they scared of you?” I asked. “I mean, they kept saying you’re a civilian, so you can’t do anything political to them, right? And you wouldn’t physically hurt anyone. Right?”

“Kayden, I would not be physically capable of hurting the Council,” he pointed out. “These muscles are for lifting incapacitated patients, they’re not trained for combat. And the combat applications of a pair of spells specialised for healing are, obviously, not particularly broad. Alania alone would beat me in a fight, not that she’d ever need to, because the Council have some vry good security guards ready to be called in at every meeting. They could kill me quite easily if they wanted – all they’d have to do is drag me outside.”

“Then why – ?”

“Who controls a castle, Kayden? The King, or the cook?”

“Um...”

“And what if the King is a handful of ‘elected’ officials constantly dealing with people jockeying for their positions? And the cook is also the high priest?”

“The… what?”

“Kayden, I know you’ve taken some magical history classes, and you’re dating the heir to one of the most prestigious families in Refujeyo. Surely you understand the cultural importance of inherited spells, before the founders locked theirs away in a show of faith in this new type of system.” he gestured vaguely around to indicate the school.

“So they’re… what? Worried you’re gonna start a coup or something?”

“Of course not. People who want to be powerful politicians don’t devote their lives to being a high school nurse. The council aren’t worried, just insecure. You’d think that the smartest mages in the world would have better things to do than obsess over their fragile egos, but apparently not.” He handed me a bag of saline solution for Kylie’s IV. “The thing about people with new power is that they always fear people with old power, even if the traditions of the old power don’t translate to actual power. And you know what they hate even more than old power? It’s when old power proves itself by doing something spectacular, something new, something that new power can’t pull off no matter how much they’ve tried. It makes them feel small. Makes them feel challenged, even if they hadn’t been. Something for the familiar of Fionnrath’s Destiny to keep in mind. Especially if you’re going to keep hanging around politicians and playing dangerous games.”

“I don’t see how any of that was dangerous.”

“You don’t? Alright. Come on, I’ll show you how to hook up an IV bag.” He refused to let himself be drawn back into the topic of politics as we worked, sticking firmly with medicine. Which was probably for the best; Kylie’s recovery was a lot more immediately important than what a bunch of politicians worried about. I was sure I’d see Alania around but if I were lucky, I’d never have to deal with the Council as a whole again.