4.49: Innocence

“Will it work?” I asked. “Will going down that well get us where we need to be?”

The spellthing watched me from across the table, and sipped its tea. “I don’t know any more than you do.”

“Yeah, but did you, the real you, tell us anything we’ve forgotten about – ”

“Is the real me really somebody who tends to give useful and detailed instructions?”

“Listen, if I have any helpful disconnected memories about – ”

“Drink your tea.”

“No!”

“Then I suppose you’re resigned to remembering things the old-fashioned way.”

“Which is?”

“Seeing or thinking of things that remind you of them. Obviously.”

“Well, that’s extremely helpful isn’t – ”

My alarm jolted me out of my sleep. Right. I had classes.

I braced myself for a lot of people wanting to talk about my famous girlfriend, but after about an hour or so of brushing people off, they left me alone. It made sense, I supposed; most of the people I was actually close to had either probably already figured out Saina’s identity a while back, or didn’t know her or have any reason to care. And the random acquaintances were probably well used to my evasiveness from all the previous scandals and gave up quickly.

“Wow,” Kylie said drily as I mused about this with her after class. She didn’t even sit up on her bed or look away from her tablet. “It’s kind of impressive, in a way.”

“What is?”

“You’re the mysterious cursed human familiar dating the secret heir to the most powerful family in Refujeyo, and you’re still too boring for most people to talk to.”

“Hey, you’ll wish for my powers of being boring soon enough. Eventually, word about your cur – ” I choked on my words. Coughed. “What the heck? That didn’t have anything to do with what I was put under geas for! That’s just straightup not fair.” I supposed that talking about Kylie’s curse being Fionnrath’s Destiny was technically discussing the ‘nature of curses’, but come on!

Kylie opened her mouth to reply, but just then, Max burst in. “I talked to a metal guy,” he said.

“A… metal guy?”

“Yeah. You know. Guy who makes metal stuff. Machines and stuff.”

“A welder?” I asked.

“An engineer?” Kylie asked.

“Yeah, one of those. Anyway. He can make us a winch that can hold a person.”

“For…?”

“For the well! We don’t need to climb up or down a sheer wall. We can just lower ourselves in like you do a bucket.”

Kylie and I exchanged a glance.

“Max,” Kylie said, “that’s dumb.”

I nodded. “You’re going to have to have someone using the winch, lowering the full weight of – ”

“No, we wouldn’t! We’d use a counterweight!”

“It’s a well!” Kylie protested. “It’s going to be barely wide enough for one of us at a time! You want a second line with a weight down there? That can freely move past the person being lowered?”

“Also,” I added, “how are you going to use a counterweight?”

“Same way anyone does! You have a weight at the bottom, and – ”

“How?” I asked. “There’s nobody at the bottom to attach it. Are we going to lower something that weighs as much as a person from the top, to act as a counterweight? Are we just going to drop it and hope it doesn’t break the machinery, or swing into the sides of the well and smash the runes?”

“Fine. We won’t use a counterweight, then. We’ll use a motorised winch.”

“Which is illegal in the school,” I said. “How are you going to smuggle it through the medical ward?”

“No need! I’ll buy one from outside the school and pay someone to drive it overland to Duniyasar.”

Kylie shook her head. “I know I technically ‘own’ Duniyasar right now, but if we start having industrial machinery trucked in there, people are going to talk. The political – ”

“Ugh! You two really aren’t being helpful, you know that?”

“You’re being reckless,” I said. “Max Acanthos, not noticing the political ramifications of something.”

“We just think it’s important to get this right,” Kylie said. “Every time we deal with some spooky school thing, it kicks our arse and we nearly die. I just want to be prepared for once. We need to be cautious – ”

“We don’t have time for caution! In six months, just six months, you two are leaving, do you understand that? We have six months to save the world. That is not enough time. We need to move.”

Oh.

When we went to Fionnrath, we’d be leaving Max all alone. Magista was gone. We’d be gone. Max had plenty of other acquaintances, of course, but the people closest to him would all be gone.

I felt like an arse for not thinking of that before.

“We’ll get it done,” I assured him. “We just need to do it safely.”

“If you can think of a safe way to descend into an ancient magical well in search of secret knowledge, I’d love to hear it.”

“If only we had more time,” Kylie said thoughtfully. “Is there anything we can leverage to get the Council to let us stay, that we haven’t tried yet?”

“Malas seemed really pissed off by their decision when he learned about it,” I said. “Maybe there’s something he can do? He’s super important, right?”

“Magically, yes,” Max said, “but I don’t know whether he has any actual political power. Even if he does, there’s a limited amount anyone can do if this decision was made to protect a murderer from justice. He could run the entire Council himself and that wouldn’t – ”

“You’re not a murderer,” I cut in. “You always say that. You were saving Kylie’s life.”

“A killer, then,” he shrugged. “Either way, given Fionnrath’s claim over Kylie’s spell, I don’t think Fionnrath would accept that excuse. The power of any individual mage who might be on our side isn’t the issue; they consider Fionnrath’s Destiny non-negotiable, and me murdering Kylie's teacher gives them lever – ”

“You didn’t murder her!” I snapped.

“Fine, whatever. That’s not important. In terms of – ”

“It is important! I’m sick of hearing you put yourself down over being a fucking hero. None of us had any idea what to do in that tower, and your quick thinking and magical mastery got everyone out of there safe. Again. Just like you created a perfect familiarity link for us, and tore yourself to pieces over that, too, even though taking the risk was my decision. It was the teacher or Kylie, and the teacher was an evil murderous bitch, and you always talk about that whole situation like you did something wrong. Like you’re not proud of what you did.”

Max glared at me. “You think I should be proud of killing someone? Are you insane?”

“Well, you shouldn’t act like you’re ashamed of it or something!”

“Of course I am! Why wouldn’t I be? Wouldn’t you be?”

“No!”

“Then you either have no idea what you’re talking about or there’s something wrong with you, Kayden, because I can assure you that looking at someone, deciding to kill that person, and then manipulating them to be killable by your spell and then going through with it and watching them die in front of you, refusing to stop as they slowly choke, should absolutely not be something that anyone could be anything other than ashamed of. How are you so blasé about this? It should’ve taken you weeks to even be able to stand to look at me after that! But oh no, you act like it’s no big deal, just – ”

“Of course it’s a big deal! Saving your friend’s life is a big deal! We’ve all saved each others’ lives a couple of times by now, but you’re the first one to think it’s a bad thing!”

“That’s not – ugh! Kylie dying would’ve been a million times worse, of course, but that doesn’t make what I did okay! Sometimes, there are only bad choices! Sometimes, there’s a horrible option and an even more horrible option, and just because you avoid the even more horrible option doesn’t make the horrible option suddenly okay!”

“Yes! It does! I mean… okay,yeah, I’m sure that doing what you had to do to that woman was a more awful experience than anything I can imagine. I was mostly watching Kylie at the time, I didn’t have to, you know, doit. I get that, and I get that I’ll probably never be able to understand how that feels, but as awful as the experience was, it was still the right choice. And you always talk about it like you did something wrong. How can you expect to ever get over it if you keep – ”

“Get over it? Get over it?? Do you think this is something I should just be able to get over, Kayden?!”

“That’s not what I meant! I, I phrased that badly. I just meant, if you keep talking and thinking about it like you did something bad – ”

“Killing is bad, Kayden!”

“Oh, yeah? What would have been the good thing, then?”

“Sometimes there is no good thing!”

“But there’s always a best decision, and you made the best decision! And you always talk about it like it’s the wrong one! You know what it sounds like, every time you talk about that whole thing like you somehow regret it? It sounds like you’re saying Kylie isn’t worth it.”

Max shot me a glare that could strip paint. “You have no idea, no fucking idea, what you’re talking about,” he said quietly. Then he stormed out of the room.

The room was silent for several seconds.

“Wow,” Kylie eventually said. “You’re an arse.”

“I was trying to be supportive,” I said weakly.

“That was supportive? Remind me never to come to you for support. That was some of the most insensitively self-centred bitching I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Doesn’t it piss you off, too? I mean, you’re the one he’s talking about when he goes all ‘oooh, I did such a bad thing’ – ”

“No, I’m not. He talks about himself. The only one to mention me was you.”

“Same thing! He was saving you, so when he acts like – ”

“Have you ever lost anyone? Ever had someone die, and know it was your fault?”

“No, but – ”

“Then you have no clue what you’re talking about. You’re treating his feelings like they’re some, some regrettable injury he should heal from, that he keeps picking at. Like healing would be better, like – ”

“Well, aren’t they? I get why he feels bad about the whole thing, I get that it was awful, but it’s a bad thing he suffered through, not a bad thing he did. Of course he shouldn’t regret it! I mean, you don’t regret it, right?”

“Are you asking if I’d rather be dead? Of course I wouldn’t.”

“Then – ”

“But things are a bit more complicated than that, Kayden! Do you think I don’t miss her every day?”

“ – he doesn’t need to – wait, what?”

“She was my friend, and my mentor! She understood things that other people don’t, and without her I’d never be able to use the Destiny as well as I do. And I trusted her.”

“Kylie. She tried to kill you.”

“I know that! She wanted me to go to Fionnrath. She tried so hard to convince me; she really believed in a world where I could take the spell home and she could support and guide me and everything would be fine forever. And when she eventually accepted that that would never happen, she had to choose between me and her town. She chose Fionnrath, and betrayed me, and that’s not something I can forgive, but it doesn’t erase the rest of it. I can’t be completely glad that she’s dead, because I remember when she was my friend, too. And, hey, turns out I should’ve just listened and moved to Fionnrath, because we’re being forced there anyway! This time with a body count, and a bunch of trauma, and no local mentor to help us live among strangers! If I’d just listened and gone when she wanted, we’d all be better off, so it’s kind of hard to be all ‘ding dong, the witch is dead!’ about this!”

“Okay, but that local mentor you’re missing tried to poison you to death for political power. She’s the bad guy here.”

“Oh my god! You’re so infuriating sometimes! See, this is exactly why everyone finds you interacting with di Fiore so fucking exhausting. It’s like you just can’t accept that stuff is complicated. It’s like to you, people are good guys who deserve support and loyalty and anything bad they do is just a temporary misunderstanding, or bad guys who deserve rejection and hostility and nobody should be sad about their loss or like any part of them ever. That’s not what people are like! Yes, my teacher did something awful and unforgivable that I’ll never understand; yes, I still miss her and wish it had never happened, and yes, Max still feels bad about having to kill someone. That’s how it is, no matter what judgey arsehole bullshit you want to proclaim from your high fucking horse.”

“Okay, okay; I get it.”

“No, Kayden, I really don’t think you do. I kind of assumed you would, what with the thing on your school roof that got you sent here in the first place, but you really don’t, do you? You think max is being ridiculous by blaming himself.”

“He is being ridiculous by blaming himself!”

“Do you think you’ll be any better? When we fulfil the prophecy?”

“… What?”

“If we save the world, people will die. We still haven’t found a way to save Malas, for example. We don’t know exactly how to do this heart preparing thing; what if you have to do it? What if you have to choose to kill the man who’s been patching up your wounds for the past few years, to save the world? Do you really think that you’re not going to feel guilty, if you have to do that?”

“That’s… that’s different.”

“You’re right; it’s easier. Max acted to save one person, a life for a life. We’re going to try to save the world, a life for billions. So you should feel a lot better about it, right? Not feel guilty, not blame yourself. If you’re put in that situation, how easy do you think that’s going to be, to be happy and proud of what you did? How would you feel if someone you liked and trusted turned their nose up at your guilt and said that the mere fact that you blamed yourself meant that you didn’t value your friends’ lives?”

“That’s not what I said!”

“That’s exactly what you said!”

“It’s not what I meant; you know it’s not what – ”

“You’re been saying that a lot today. Maybe, for once in your life, you should either find a way to actually say what you do mean, or find a way to shut the fuck up!” Kylie leapt to her feet and headed for the door. Before opening it, she hesitated. “Just do me a favour, okay? When you finally pry your head your of your arse enough to apologise to Max, try to sound like you mean it? Just, just try to sound actually sorry, like you have even a little bit of an inkling of how much of an arsehole you’ve been. For Max’s sake. If we’re really, really lucky, he might even believe you.”