4.71: Faith in Leadership

The chamber felt different this time. The room itself was the same – huge, mostly empty, leaving us stranded in a vast space in the middle of the room, with an absurdly high table at the opposite end so that even at a distance, we were forced to look upward to see the hooded Council Masters – but the effect was less overwhelming with such a large group.

The Masters themselves were also less intimidating. The Grand Master was there at the head of the table, magnificent grey beard and oil-dark robes and all. Alania was there, her dragon-shaped spell glowing very faintly on her shoulder in the candlelight if you knew what to look for; Lord Solus was there, looking no happier about life in general than he had when he’d goaded me into threatening treason last time. I hadn’t noticed much about the other six, but so far as I could see they all looked like they were probably the same people.

But this time, they didn’t look ready to solemnly proclaim a decision about my friend’s fate. They mostly looked annoyed, like a bunch of office workers being held in a Friday meeting that could have been an email.

They looked down at us, and said nothing.

Cheryl stepped forward and bowed. “Grand Master. Esteemed Council. Thank you for seeing us today.”

The Grand Master glared down at her. “Ka vu – ?”

“Please, Grand Master, for the initiates?”

The Grand Master sighed. “Very well. You have an issue to raise, Miss…” he glanced down at something on the table in front of him… “Castor?”

“No, Grand Master. I’m here in an advisory capacity. This issue is being raised by my friends here.” She gestured to the three initiates, who all stepped back slightly as the combined stared of the Council trained on them.”

“Mr Talson,” The Grand Master said. “Miss Summer. Mr Aziz. Why are you here?”

The three initiates stared, frozen. Alan opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

With an expression and tone of voice that matched her ‘I’d like to see the manager’ haircut, Cheryl said, “My friends have some concerns about their safety and treatment at Skolala Refujeyo.”

“Then the appropriate person to address those complaints is their surveyanto,” a green-eyed, intense-looking woman at one end of the table said.

“Their surveyanto is part of the problem. They don’t trust him to resolve the issue.”

“Then they should get another surveyanto who they trust to do the job.”

“In theory, yes, but the problem is that there are no suitable candidates for that position. Which is why this has been escalated to far.”

The green-eyed woman turned her gaze back on the initiates. “You won’t accept any surveyanto, of the dozens of teachers in the school?”

“They all share the same disqualifying feature, I’m afraid,” Cheryl said.

“And what feature is that?” the Grand Master asked.

“Well, with respect, esteemed Council… they all work for you.”

After a few seconds of silence, Alania put in, “We also work for us.”

“Well, yes, but this is a Skolala Refujeyo issue,” Cheryl said. “It would be inappropriate to escalate such a small matter to another Refujeyo branch without at least discussing the issue.”

The entire Council bristled at this. I could see why; it took a particular kind of reckless arrogance to openly threaten to take an issue that hadn’t even been addressed yet to Politikala Refujeyo, and to imply in the same sentence that Skolala was subservient to them. It was true, but you weren’t supposed to say it, not to the people in charge. Especially right after telling them to their faces that you thought they were untrustworthy. I had no idea what Cheryl was doing, but I really hoped that she did.

“We don’t have time for this,” the intense-looking Master snapped. “Grand master, I move to nominate a new surveyanto for the initiates and let them raise their concerns through the proper– ”

“Ah, Demeter,” Lord Solus interrupted, “given the… general environment, I’m sure we can spare a few minutes for Miss Castor, apprentice to Tristan Arum, to voice her concerns. I’m sure this won’t take long, and with last week’s disagreement, one little meeting – ”

“Yes, alright,” the woman, presumably Demeter, mumbled.

“Maybe we could all save ourselves some time if we let Miss Castor and her friends actually get to the point,” Alania said. She, and the rest of the Council, looked at Cheryl expectantly.

“Of course,” Cheryl said. She smiled at the initiates encouragingly, gesturing them forward.

The initiates all still looked pretty overwhelmed, but Alan stepped forward, clearing his throat. “We, um, we have come concerns,” he said. “The Initiation is in a few weeks, and we think this probably isn’t the best environment for us. The Initiation is supposed to be a two way street, right? We’d be here until we graduate, but the school’s also supposed to protect and train us. Only from what we’ve seen, we don’t think we can trust this place to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“Do you have any specific concerns on how you’ve been treated, Mr Talson?” Alania asked.

Alan shook his head. “It’s not about how you’ve treated us.” He pointed to Kylie. “It’s about how you’ve treated her. She underwent the Initiation, right? And you’re just throwing her out, when she didn’t do anything wrong, because selling her off to some random town – ”

Several Masters spoke at once. “Whoah, nobody’s selling anybody off!” “Fionnrath’s claim on Miss Nic Fionn is not the responsibility of this Council, who acted merely to terminate our own claim on her spell.” “The handling of Fionnrath’s Destiny has nothing to do with your futures in – ”

“It does though, doesn’t it?” Helen cut in. “It does have to do with us. She was like us, and she agreed to your contract, and then you decided you didn’t want to uphold your end. So how can we expect you to honour your contracts with us? What’s to stop you guys from just getting rid of us if it’s convenient? No way am I going to get into a contract like that.”

“I assure you that there’s no risk of that,” Lord Solus said. “Miss Nic Fionn’s situation is unique.”

“I’m not a lawyer yet,” Cheryl said (surprising me with this completely new information that she was apparently training to be a lawyer), “but I’m pretty sure that the correct term for a ruling like that isn’t ‘unique’. It’s ‘precedent’.”

“It’s because of her curse, right?” Jamil added. “Helen and my curses haven’t done anything yet. The kuracar isn’t sure what they are. How do we know you’re not just gonna ditch us if you don’t like them?”

Alania shook her head. “I can guarantee that neither of you are carrying around secretly missing ancestral curses of great historical and political power. The chances of such a thing – ”

“What if they’re just dangerous? Or really inconvenient? What if the media of all of Australia is waiting with bated breath to see how this thing turns out and they’re really ugly and scary?” Jamil asked. “Instruktanto Cooper said, he promised, that it didn’t matter what the curse was. The school would do everything you could to help us and protect us. But you proved with Kylie that that wasn’t true. So if her curse being a political problem is enough to ditch her, what about all the problems our curses could cause?”

“This place was designed to help and protect witches,” Alania assured him. “There are plenty of disagreements to be had over Miss Kylie’s treatment, but I promise you, it doesn’t reflect anything that would affect you.”

“It is also not the subject of this meeting,” Demeter said. “The rulings of the Council are not subject to the whims of initiates.”

This place was designed to help and protect witches. I thought of the Lake of Inquisition, hidden deep in the heart of the school, teeming with magic harvested from those of my predecessors too difficult or dangerous to train, and were sentenced instead to drown. Magic taken and diluted and sold to me in the school shop, so that I could make potions and sell them to my fellow students. The energy, the ‘soul’, the life of my predecessors, bottled by me for fun and money as part of this system. An integral part of both the machinery that kept the school running, and its economy. I’d never really thought much on that before, or at least never felt much about it – one can intellectually know that a hamburger is made from a cow and still eat it without feeling any real connection to the cow’s plight, but here, looking at these cursed kids in front of me, hearing someone I trusted assure them that everything was okay, they could put themselves in the school’s power because the school was designed to help and protect them…

I felt dizzy and sick in a way that I hadn’t for awhile. At first, I assumed that Kylie’s magic was playing up again, but no. That was me. That was rage.

“You’re here to protect us, huh?” I snapped. “You think this place offers any fucking protection? Not just the school, but all of fucking Refujeyo is garbage at that. Your system picked Talbot’s master when he was young and confused and then threw him into an abusive situation where he had no recourse and no backup and no one to look after him. Your system promised me help and safety and then Malas lied to me for six months, letting me think I was a hair trigger from killing the people I loved, so he could do some stupid political grandstanding to make the law that brought these kids here in the first place. Your stupid fucking cultural elitist nonsense has ruined the lives of every legacy mage I know, pushing them all to do stupid and dangerous stuff for your dumb politics; Clara’s crimes are her own but don’t you dare deny that she wouldn’t have made them if it wasn’t for your system, and your system killed one of my best friends, and I don’t know a single goddamned student here who wasn’t traumatised by the Pit and anyone who wants any help or support on anything has to wade through a whole bunch of platitudes and lip service and random political bullshit and just hope that they attract the attention of someone with enough actual power to – ”

“Kayden,” Alania said firmly. “This is off-topic.”

“Is it? Because if the topic is how much these initiates should trust this place to look after them, I’d say it’s extremely on-topic. Let me give you the rundown, kids. If you stay here, you’ll get excellent healthcare. You’ll get a lot of very skilled teachers with a genuine passion for their subjects and a genuine passion for teaching. You’ll have access to some world-class facilities for just about any hobby you’d care to take up, and you’ll get a wide array of career and further education opportunities. What you won’t get is any sort of actual structured education. What you won’t get is protection or recognition for any problem unless you happen to befriend the right people or find a powerful enough mentor. What you won’t get is any kind of safety at all, especially if you make yourself even slightly inconvenient to – ”

“Kayden,” Hua said urgently to me. “This isn’t the time.”

“Really? I can’t think of a fucking better one. Run for the hills, kids.”

“Kayden,” Hua repeated.

I shut up.

“Wow, Kayden,” Talbot said, grinning like he was experiencing approximately sixteen Christmases at once. “Tell us how you really feel.”

“As accurate and passionate as some of your points might be, Mr James,” Alania said, not sounding upset about my outburst at all, “they’re not actually pertinent to the complaint at hand.”

I nodded. “I have a question. Last time we were here, I met someone called the Voice.”

“And one would think that that particular memory is something you’d take a little more seriously,” Lord Solus said pointedly.

I ignored the threat. “He had a powerful spell. A dangerous spell, like Jamil is worried about. So my question is: who cut his throat?”

The silence that followed was a lot more awkward than I’d expected. I had expected someone to brush the situation off by explaining that they couldn’t protect all students from absolutely everything. I hadn’t expected the entire table to get very quiet and avoid contact.

“Somebody’s throat was cut?” Helen gasped. “Who? When? Why?!”

“He’s alive,” I hurried to assure her. “Or, you know. Was last I saw.”

“Who’s alive?” asked a familiar voice behind me. I spun to see Instruktanto Cooper striding in, tattooed muscles rippling in the atmospheric dim lighting. He glanced around at the roomful of Council Masters and witches all staring at him in mild confusion.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “What’s going on?”