4.06: Influx

“Remind me,” Magistus said, wrapping his coat tighter around his shoulders, “why are we out here, again?”

“Because there are four different memory potions I want to make that have ‘fresh snow gathered under a full moon’ as an ingredient and I refuse to pay for something so easy to get myself, just on principle.” I settled our buckets down and handed him a little shovel.

“Right, but why am I here, specifically?”

“Because you agreed to use your mighty muscles to help me carry this to the freezer before it melts, in exchange for some of my first batch of potions.”

“So you technically are paying for this, then, despite your principles?”

“Oh, just shut up and shovel. You doing anything fun for the holidays?”

“How can I shut up if you ask me questions?” Magistus flicked some snow at me. “It’ll be nice to relax for a bit. Magista’s excited to, I don’t know, go all Soap Opera on the family or whatever she calls what she does. Network with the cousins or whatever.”

“Sounds like Magista.”

“She’s my baby sister, I gotta love her. You doing anything special?”

“N-no, not really,” I said, trying not to make it obvious that I’d almost dropped my shovel at the news. The Magistae didn’t have any other siblings, I knew that. The Cottingly mage title went to the eldest child in a generation, and the twins usually claimed that Magista was the elder. If they’d switched their birth order… why? Magistus would be a perfectly competent legacy mage, but in terms of both interest and aptitude for politics, Magista was the obvious choice between the two. Why had they switched? Had they decided that Magista would be the mage for their mother’s family, the Brandts? Or something else? And why was Magistus telling me about it? I didn’t have anything to do with their family stuff.

“I haven’t seen my parents for awhile,” I continued the conversation. “Catching up with them will be nice. I saw my friends with the evacuation, but it’ll still be nice to see them again.”

“I don’t know how you can maintain friendships outside the school like that. I wouldn’t be able to.”

“Yeah, well, a bunch of your friends came to school with you, didn’t they? Max and di Fiore and all that.”

Magistus gave me an odd look. “You think we were all friends before school?”

“Weren’t you?”

Magistus shrugged. “I mean, we hung out with Max when our families went to the same events. That’s half of what those events are for. I don’t think I knew who di Fiore was until about a year before coming to school though, what with his… whole deal… and Clara, well, she was always there but a lot younger than we were, so.” His face darkened. “And it turns out we didn’t know her all that well anyway.”

“Yeah. Guess not.”

“Twelve really was far too young to let someone in,” he sighed, shaking his head. “The stupid, ambitious little idiot. I don’t know why they broke the rules for her.”

“It was a small rule adjustment, really,” I shrugged, patting down the snow in my bucket. “They would’ve let me in at twelve, if my government had let them.”

“You?! But you’re not, um.” Magistus froze for a moment, clearly seeking a way out of the grave his words were digging him. “I mean. Clara was, was academically really exceptional. Not that you, um – ”

I took pity on him. “Twelve is the minimum age that they’ll take cursed people on my scholarship,” I explained. “But they’re not allowed to approach us unless our curse causes some kind of danger or disaster. Why do you think all the witches who come here have a dramatic backstory?” I picked up my bucket. Ugh, snow was heavy! Why was it this heavy? “Clara’s family used that as the basis of their argument about why she should get in early, remember?”

“Huh. If you say so. But I mean, that makes sense for cursed people, as an emergency situation. Right? Some thirteen year old can’t stop lighting fires or whatever, you’re not going to refuse him help because he’s a year too young.”

“That requirement’s going, too,” I told him. “There was this whole campaign thing to change the laws. Anyone over the age of twelve in Australia and New Zealand can come, starting next term.” I turned so that Magistus couldn’t see the scowl on my face as we carried our buckets back towards the school. Being used as a publicity prop for that little reform still left a bad taste in my mouth.

“Huh. Guess this place’ll have a lot more witch initiates next term, then.”

“Not really. Curses are pretty rare.”

“Oh, are they? You’d know better than me, I suppose.”

No. I wouldn’t. I’d never noticed, never thought about it, but… I wouldn’t know better, would I?

Curses are pretty rare. I ‘knew’ that because I’d grown up a rarity, an anomaly. There hadn’t been any other cursed kids in my school, any witch book club or whatever. None, at least, that I’d known about – but I’d been hiding. Maybe they had, too. I could’ve been alone, or I could’ve been among dozens of witches, being told I was alone. I had no data. ‘Rare’ was an assumption.

I had no data because I’d never looked for it. I’d never sought out other cursed people, never wanted anything to do with them until I saw Kylie for the first time and saw that I wouldn’t be alone in a new and scary place. Even after that, it was always other people dragging me into meeting other witches. The coven had been Kylie’s project.

Were we rare, or were we just taught to think that, taught to hide? Had I been alone by circumstance, or choice?

“Hey. Kayden. You turn into a popsicle there or something? We’ll get frostbite if we stay here.”

Oh. I’d stopped walking. I headed for the portal. “I’m sure your big tough macho body can handle a bit of cold.”

“Hey, my body is awesome because I take care of it. Are you alright? That wasn’t a, a prophecy or anything, was it?”

“Huh? Oh, no! No. Kylie’s out of range.” I stepped into the school. “Well, she was out of range until now. Just lost in thought.”

“… Right. Anyway, the rarity of cursed people isn’t my point. There’ll still be an increase next semester. What’s the maximum intake age for cursed people?”

“Sixteen.”

“Right, then we can expect ten times as many as normal – the new normal, I mean – next semester.”

I nearly dropped the bucket. “Ten times?!”

“Well, yeah.”

“How… why?”

“Uh, math? From now on, the Australian contact – ”

“Taine Cooper.”

“Yeah, whoever – he’s probably gonna approach every cursed person at age twelve, right? So we can expect people to come in the semester after they turn twelve. Unless they decide to wait until fourteen, which some might, but that won’t affect the numbers if the rate is stable.”

“Uh, okay.”

“But that first semester, they’re going to approach everyone eligible, right? The thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and sixteen year olds that they haven’t been able to approach yet. That’s ten semesters’ worth of students. So ten time the new normal, and then the new normal.” He frowned. “Wait, the oldest ones would age out first. It’s nine semesters. Nine times as many, sorry.”

“So we’re just going to be inundated with Australian withes next semester?”

“They’ll be initiates, so not until the semester after. But it depends on how many teenagers in Australia are cursed, really, doesn’t it? If we expect cursed kid to turn twelve every four and a half years, then that’s one student in the first semester. On average. If we expect one to turn twelve every year, that’s four or five students next semester. A couple a year would be – ”

“Yes, yes, I understand how multiplication works,” I muttered, feeling like a total idiot for failing to realise this very obvious new consequence of the law change. A law that lets more cursed Australians be approached about Refujeyo would result in… more cursed Australians coming to Refujeyo. Obviously.

My bout of feeling stupid was interrupted by Kylie dashing around the corner towards us, face bloodless and eyes wide. I immediately dropped my bucket and looked for the threat, but she just grabbed my arm tightly.

“Kayden, check your fucking messages once in a while!” Her voice trembled enough to be hard to understand and her grip on my arm was quite painful.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It… it’s...” she blinked the tears out of her eyes. Magistus put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile. She took a deep breath. “Max had an accident in Miratova’s lab,” she said, much more evenly. “He’s with Malas.”

“He what?!” ‘Medical accident’ could mean anything, but judging by how shaken up she’d been…

“Go,” Magistus said. “I’ll get this to the freezer.”

I didn’t waste time replying. Kylie and I ran to the medical ward, completely ignoring the odd looks from the people we passed on the way. I burst through the door, dreading what I’d find –

To see Max sitting in one of the waiting chairs, looking perfectly fine, except for a small bandage around his mage mark. He looked up at us in surprise.

“Are you alright?” I asked, giving him a subtle once-over. I couldn’t even see any of Malas’ magic.

“Oh, yes. Just a broken arm.” He smiled at Kylie. “Really, it’s not that bad.”

Kylie narrowed her eyes at him. I hadn’t known that it was possible to glare at someone doubtfully, but she managed it.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I, ah.” He flushed. “I left a safety shield down, and there was some… concussive overspill.”

I mentally translated that into real words. “You mean an explosion?”

“Oh, no! It was entirely contained in my arm,” he said, as if this was reassurring.

“It is a mistake that brings people to me at least once a fortnight,” Malas announced, making me aware for the first time that he was in the room. “But I mut say, I’ve never seen two arm bones shattered into quite that many little pieces.”

“You said it was just a broken arm!” I snapped at Max.

“I didn’t lie! That’s a broken arm!”

“Yeah, broken into ten billion little bits!”

“Still broken!”

“Two hundred and forty seven pieces,” Malas corrected, like that was the important thing. “The upshot is that I don’t think Mr Acaonthos will be making that particular mistake again.”

“You, crewing up a safety protocol?” I asked. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

Max shrugged. “Sometimes, you’re going to turn away from a bench for less than thirty seconds, and it’d take longer to put the satefy shields back up and take them down again than the actual time you’re walking away.”

“They all make that mistake,” Malas said. “Once. I’m putting a notice through to Alania to ban you from lab work until that arm has healed. And you can’t go home for the holidays, of course.”

“What? But my arm’s fine!” He moved it about to demonstrate.

“Because my magic is holding the bones together. What do you think will happen the moment you leave my locus?”

Max paled. “… Fine. But I can do lab work just fi – ”

“Not until it’s healed. Doctor’s orders.” He narrowed his eyes. “And no dangerously extracurricular work, either. You’ve gotten yourself into enough trouble for one lifetime.”

“Hey, Lydia Nic – ”

“I wasn’t talking about the Nic Fionn. Spend your recovery time in the library or something. Come back in two weeks so I can look at that arm again.”

“… Yes, kuracar.”

“And don’t scratch up under that bandage,” he added sharply, as Max went to do just that. “The flesh there is very delicate even with my magic and you don’t want to scar your mage mark.”

“Oh, no. It’d be terrible if my mage mark didn’t look all pretty.”

“You do a lot of rune work, yes? Do you think it would be easier or harder to do that if you had to cut through scar tissue every time you wanted to extract ichor?”

“… Fine.”

Max and Kylie headed for the door. I lingered a minute. “Hey, Malas?”

“Yes?”

I pulled up my left sleeve. “What do you know about this scar?”

“Hmm. It certainly looks nasty. From when you got lost under the school, yes? Is it itching or painful?”

“No. I was just… well, you’ve said before that you can get a lot of information from scanning someone. I want to know what specifically made this one.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “Curiosity?”

“Kayden, it’s not… it’s not always a good idea to go out of your way to dig up traumatic memories. That’s the opposite of healing.”

“Well if I don’t know, I’m not going to be able to stop thinking about it. If you can tell me, I don’t have to try to remember the specifics, right?”

Malas sighed, and took a moment to scan my arm. “Sorry. There’s not much I can tell you, except that it wasn’t a clean cut or heal, which you already know.”

“You dan’t see anything more than that?”

“I can’t see back in time, Kayden. I can only speculate based on the current state of the body. Anything useful has long since healed. I wouldn’t worry about it; you probably fell on sharp rocks or something.”

“Yeah. Probably. Hey… how much do you know about healing potions?”

“Very little, I’m afraid. My particular skill set precludes me from ever really needing them.”

“Right. Well, thanks.” I rushed to catch up with my friends. They were nearly at our room, Max mid-rant.

“ – like he thinks that I’m going to run off and expose more dangerous school secrets any chance I get! ‘Oh, I see you’ll be here for two weeks, Max, don’t do anything dangerous!’ If they don’t want people to find the spell labyrinth, maybe they should hide it better. It was a whole year ago and he still thinks I’m going to – oh, there you are, Kayden.”

“Are we complaining about Malas?” I asked.

“Do you have any complaints about Malas?”

“No new ones.”

“Then we’re out of complaints, I guess.” Max frowned at his broken arm while I opened our bedroom door. “At least I don’t have to go home.”

“Just you and a bunch of library books,” Kylie said drily. “However will you cope.”

“It’ll be pretty awful for him,” I said, “since he can’t do any science.”

“He can’t do lab work. He can spend hours making weird maps and diagrams and stuff.”

“I really do need to do lab work right now, though,” Max said, sitting on his bed. “I need to figure out what went wrong today.”

“You skipped a safety protocol and we’re never gonna let you forget it,” Kylie said.

“No. I didn’t.” He grinned. “I’m always careful with the shields.”

“What did you do, then?”

He pulled something out of his pocket. “It’s not ready yet, but I did promise not to research behind your back any more, so…” he opened his hand.

He was holding an awl, the wooden handle stained with ichor and blood. Old runes, the kinds on the skepeton under the school and the tapestries of Duniyasar, were etched carefully throughout the wood and the metal spike.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It was supposed to be a weapon.”

“What?”

“Remember what Kylie said, after we, um…” He gestured to the cracked part of the floor. “If we can drain her spell through you, I thought there might be a way to drain other people’s magic using a similar method. I’m experimenting with a sort of… insta-fetish magical drain? It’s based primarily on Miratova’s old staff – ”

“The one that exploded and nearly killed you?”

“Yes, yes; that one. She used it as a magic sink, remember? But if I can use these runes to direct and ground the power without limit… well, in theory, what should happen is that I stab this thing into my mage mark, stick the other end against a grounding rune, and the magic pours out of my arm and destroys what it earths in.”

“And instead?”

“I stab this thing into my mage mark, stick the other end against a grounding rune, and the magic pours right back into my arm, apparently. I might have to be more careful and design some more limited prototypes to test every step instead of just trying to do everything at once.”

“And what’s the purpose of this, exactly?” I asked.

Max shrugged. “Science?”

I scrutinised his expression, but it told me nothing new. I went to exchange an exaxperated glance with Kylie, but for once, she didn’t look at me; she was watching Max, her face impassive. I considered probing for more information, ran the numbers on whether that would likely make me less confused or more confused, and decided not to risk it.

“Well,” I said. “I’m going to pack. Promise me that you’ll have the normal number of bones when the next term starts.”

“I promise nothing,” Max said.