4.74: Uncompromising

Wait, she was accusing Max of what? I opened my mouth to protest, but Hua put a hand on my arm and shook her head, sharply. I stayed quiet.

“Mr Acanthos acted in self defense – ”

“You’re the one who called him a murderer a few minutes ago,” Cheryl said mildly. “Do you think you’re the only person who thinks that? Now, as I said, I don’t have clearance to read the reports and confessions surrounding that incident, so you’re going to have to tell me – was Parveen Surya in danger, out there? Do you believe that she was deliberately dragged into a dangerous situation? More importantly, do you think her family, and their friends, believe that she was dragged into a dangerous situation?”

I set my jaw and resolutely didn’t protest that Saina had insisted on coming along, despite Max’s protests. Much as I wanted to correct this outright slander, I had to trust that Cheryl knew what she was doing. I had absolutely no idea what she was trying to accomplish, but it seemed like Hua did. And Hua was smart.

“Nobody would seriously believe that this school is deliberately trying to kill members of the High Crone’s family,” Alania said. “This school is dangerous, and sometimes people put themselves in danger. There’s nothing unusual about that.”

“Not on its own,” Cheryl said, “but there’s been talk from some people finding the timing interesting. I mean, there are these new witch laws, which – ”

“The purpose of this school is to help and teach those with magic,” Malas said, suddenly sounding wary. “Bringing in an assisting witches is our primary purpose.”

“But there is such a thing as capacity,” the Grand Master said. “Politikala Refujeyo have a point there.”

“Capacity? This school is full of empty rooms. We have enough capacity for – ”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” the Grand Master snapped. “And weren’t you told to be quiet?”

Several seconds of tense silence followed, giving me a chance to puzzle out what the hell was going on. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what any of this had to do with the initiates deciding whether to leave, or with Kylie and me going to Fionnrath. I glanced up at the Council, looking tense. At the other witches, mostly looking confused (although Talbot seemed to be following this part fine and was still grinning, enjoying the show). To Malas, clearly ready for a fight.

And then it struck me. These people had very different interests.

I knew that the law in Australia, and presumably its future in other nations, was Malas’ little project. It made sense – more witches at Refujeyo meant more spells, meant more power. Of course Refujeyo would want to pull as many of us into their system as possible, right? So of course Refujeyo would be united in pushing for anything that made approaching young witches easier.

Except… more witches, and therefore more spells, didn’t mean more power for Refujeyo. It meant more power for Skolala Refujeyo. Politikala and Sekura Refujeyo didn’t own the Pit, didn’t sell spells packaged with education; Skolala did. There was no real reason for anyone outside Skolala Refujeyo to be interested in the witch intake of the school, and even for Skolala Refujeyo, it was a balancing act – they weren’t exactly lacking in spells. They had too many spells, a dangerous amount, although they hadn’t realised how serious that was yet.

I glanced around at our little coven again. Seven random students and a Politikala apprentice who’d walked in here and caused, it seemed, massive problems for this Council. That couldn’t be a thing that happened regularly; these people were clearly used to making their rulings and not having them challenged, or at least only challenged by other high ranking mages. Fiore, Malas and Alania had all assured us at some point that they’d try to deal with the whole Fionnrath situation, always assuming that people like them were the only ones who could. But the only ones who seemed to have made any actual headway were three initiates, who had no rank or influence at all in the system, advised by an apprentice who didn’t even go to the school. Why was this such a big problem to them? Why was this new?

Because, I realised, their system wasn’t built to deal with this kind of attack. The vast majority of students at Refujeyo were picked and vetted, either by their own families as legacy mages, or the school itself, pulling in wealthy commonfolk with potential who could be trusted to be grateful for the opportunity and play by the rules. The system was set up so that the only people who got in were people who had both self selected and been selected to want to play in the system, and even if they rebelled or misbehaved they’d do so while invested in the system.

And when it came to outsiders, they trickled us in one at a time and surrounded us with insiders. I remembered how much of a novelty it had been when Kylie and I had arrived at the school; two witches in the same year? From the same country, even? Not impossible, but a novelty worth commenting on. I remembered how difficult it had been to meet Talbot; not forbidden or anything, just… difficult. The teachers wouldn’t help, the initiates generally didn’t interact with other students unless they had preexisting relationships (such as with legacy families), and honestly, I probably wouldn’t have tried if I hadn’t already been friends with Kylie. Kylie had done most of the networking to put the coven together, and to bring in the three new initiates, and even with the unusually high number of witches, it had been a chore every step of the way, and she’d succeeded only through sheer stubbornness.

This was a shock to the Council because they weren’t used to dealing with this sort of problem. Problems came in the form of groups who worked within the system, where the Council had the natural advantage, or in the form of individual outside rebels, who could be pressured into conformity, or isolated or, if they were particularly annoying and tenacious brats like me, tricked and put under geas. The Council had been shocked because they hadn’t predicted this, even though they knew about our coven. (Understandable. I hadn’t been prepared for this, either.)

But the politicians of Politikala Refujeyo had probably seen the writing on the wall. Greatly increasing the number of witches coming into the school, and therefore into mage society, wasn’t all that big of a deal – society changed all the time, and we’d surely be all nicely assimilated by the time we graduated, anyway. But it probably wasn’t something they were enthusiastic about. It probably wasn’t a move they supported. They lived in a system where the same families got democratically voted into powerful positions every year, where who you were and what rules you played by mattered. A handful of wealthy commonfolk children entering Politikala Refujeyo every year probably wasn’t a big deal, if they played nice and minded their betters. Sure, you’d get the occasional politician who missed out on getting a cushy job because some random outsider got the votes, but not a big deal. The occasional witch wasn’t a problem, either; people like Cheryl probably wouldn’t become all that successful in a system so lousy with nepotism and cronyism anyway, but even if she did, witches in the system were rare.

Until the current intitiates started graduating, anyway. Until Malas’ law was adopted in other countries, spread across the world, and the intake of witches jumped from one every few years to a dozen or so per year.

And that was what the Grand Master must have meant with his euphemism of ‘capacity’.

Still, Cheryl’s claim of civil war seemed a bit of a stretch. An influx of witches and a politician’s daughter getting into danger were both problems, but they weren’t a declaration of war, even if they happened close together. Even the most paranoid politicians in Politikala Refujeyo couldn’t reach that conclusion, could they?

Cheryl spoke up again. “So you can see why people are a little tense over the fact that you’ve just decided to hand ownership of Duniyasar over to the town of Fionnrath.”

Baffled silence greeted this pronouncement, until somebody in the Council said, “who said anything about the Surya girl going to Fionnrath?”

“Um,” Kylie broke in, “Saina, Parveen I mean, doesn’t own Duniyasar right now. I do.”

The entire Council turned to look at Alania, who put her head in her hands.

“She’s your student,” Demeter pointed out. “How did you not know this?”

“I did. I forgot. I didn’t think it was important.”

“You didn’t think it was important that one of your students owned one of the seven Points of Power?!”

“It’s a temporary transfer of ownership! They’re friends; Miss Surya was just loaning it so that Kylie can train her prophecy. The term should be coming to an end soon, anyway. How much longer do you have it for, Kylie? A couple of months?”

“Ah, actually, we renewed the term of ownership for another year and a day. It’s… it’s a really good place to channel the Destiny, and Saina said that if I didn’t end up going to Fionnrath, I’d need it.”

“You renewed ownership? When?”

“Yesterday.”

“The same day that your familiar became the kuracar’s apprentice,” Lord Solus said. The Council glared at Malas.

“Hey, I knew nothing about this,” Malas said.

They glared at me.

“Um, me neither,” I said.

They glared at Kylie.

“This whole thing was Saina’s idea, not mine,” she said. “Apparently she’d been talking with someone whose boss worked for her mum or something – ”

They glared at Cheryl. Cheryl inspected her fingernails. “You can see why certain people might be a little upset,” she said. “If you decide to give the High Crone’s ancestral home to another nation for an entire year. After acquiring ownership of it through her daughter and her daughter’s friend network. At your school.”

“Miss Nic Fionn can return ownership to Miss Surya before she leaves,” the Grand Master said.

“I could,” Kylie said, “but why should I?”

Demeter plastered on what she clearly thought was a gentle and nurturing smile. “Miss Nic Fionn, you have to understand, the political implications – ”

“Call me Nic Fionn one more time,” Kylie said, “and I’ll name my familiar’s favourite runecrafting pen ‘political implications’ and ram it up your arse.”

The Council stared. The coven stared. I stared. Cooper and Malas stared.

“I don’t know why you think I give a damn about your political problems when you’ve spent the past several months fucking up my life in order to solve them. I hope you have more political problems. I wish you every political problem in the world. What’s your goal here, exactly? To make me hate all of you enough that I decide to go to Fionnrath of my own volition so that I never have to see this school again? You’re supposed to be school administrators. How can you be like this?”

Cheryl cleared her throat. “Ah, yes, well said. Anyway. As you can imagine, there are rather a lot of people who are quite protective of miss Surya’s legacy, safety and reputation, so while I’m sure there’ll be a lot of disagreement over her level of culpability or victimhood, none of the possible conclusions are particularly favourable to – ”

“You said civil war,” the Grand Master said. “None of this will bring anybody to war.”

“I may have overreacted,” Cheryl conceded. “But you are going to have a lot of internal stability. If you send Kylie away, you’ll want the initiates to quit and badmouth this place until no country in the world will want to send their witches here, because the alternative will be much bigger problems. You could expand the witch laws worldwide with just a few grumbles. You could give ownership of Duniyasar to Fionnrath for a year with a little offence and some side eyeing. But both?”

Ah. So that was where this was going. It wasn’t a question of big wars and big threats, once you cut through Cheryl’s theatrics. In fact, there were three things that Skolala Refujeyo wanted – they wanted a continued good relationship with the other branches of government. They wanted to expand their ability to approach and gather witches worldwide. They wanted to sweep the whole Fionnrath problem under the rug and get rid of a politically complicated spell by sending Kylie to Fionnrath.

They could only have two of those things. So, which was the most convenient to sacrifice?

Causing any unnecessary tension between the branches of government was, of course, completely out of the question, even I could see that. I looked at the Council, who had stood firm behind their desire to send Kylie away and had just experienced what a bad idea bringing in a lot more witches probably was for them. I looked at Malas, who had invested a lot of time and effort into expanding their right to approach witches, and who had been against sending Kylie away from the beginning.

Malas glared at the Council. The Council glared at Malas.

Malas stepped forward, and started to speak.