Chapter Text
An uneasy prickle started in Caleb Widogast’s spine the moment he found a quiet moment to himself. It began a few hours after he realized his parents were alive, so he dismissed it as a good thing. Despite his sins, his mother loved him. His father demanded he stay the night. They gave him a mattress in the attic and a quilt, although Caleb suspected they had none to spare. They both blamed Master Ikithon for brainwashing their son into almost murdering them, not Caleb himself. Caleb didn’t know if that was fair.
For now, he ignored the prickle and concentrated on spreading apple preserves on his sliver of bacon. In three minutes he taught fourth-level transmutation, but he didn’t want to leave the miracle unfolding at the table with him. The past two days had passed in a dream as sharp and beautiful as stained glass. For eighteen years Caleb thought his family dead. Their screams had filled his head in Vergessen. (He hadn’t heard any screams, after all.) Now they were alive. Ma and Da lived in Rexxentrum, in a small house in the Mosaic Ward where Ma took in laundry for a few silver a week and Da unloaded cargo at the docks, driven half crazy by three small children. Caleb’s brother and two sisters. Niklas shared Caleb’s gift with the arcane, but the eleven-year-old was spending breakfast trying to knock over his own water cup with Gust.
Ma put down the bread knife. “Bren, would you tell him to stop playing and eat his egg?”
Caleb didn’t deserve his miracle. His life had shifted out of control into something unfamiliar but priceless, wonderful, even if his parents kept trying to summon Bren.
“What is he going to do?” Da said. “Niklas! Eat your food.”
Ma laughed. “You didn’t have any older brothers, Leo.”
Niklas pointed Gust directly into his mug, and water flopped over the rim onto his plate. Caleb leaned across the table to tug Niklas’s threadbare sleeve. “After school today, let’s take some sticks down to the river and use that spell to race them.”
“Okay.” Niklas grinned.
“You have to eat your egg, first.”
“It’s slimy.”
“It’s good for you,” Ma said.
“Do you like them when they’re tougher?” Caleb said.
“What’s tougher?”
“Not slimy.”
“Yeah.”
“Only babies eat hard-cooked eggs,” said Annalena, ten. Niklas gave her the stink-eye. Caleb pulled the egg from its cracked cup and conjured flames under the bottom.
“Cool!” Niklas leaned over his plate to watch, snapping his fingers to mimic the glyphs. Happily, he didn’t conjure his own fire inches from Caleb’s sleeve. Caleb set the egg back and passed Niklas his spoon. “It’s got stuff on it,” Niklas said, wrinkling his nose at the runny yolk.
“Bren, you’re overindulging him,” Ma said.
“Clean it off on your napkin,” Caleb said. Niklas wiped his spoon and dipped it back into his egg.
Ma said, “If you two are going to the river this afternoon, would you pick up some milk from the Gossharts on your way home? There’s money in my purse. Annalena, would you find two coppers and give them to Bren?”
Caleb said, “Don’t worry about it. I have money.”
“How ridiculous. I have two coppers to give you. We’re family. You don’t ever need to pay me back.”
As alien and mesmerizing as it’d been going back to Soltryce as an adult, looking back into poverty from eight rungs up seemed far more comforting. He remembered the money dance. “I won’t be a drain on you.”
“You’re not a drain. You’re our son,” Ma said.
“You invited me to spend the weekend with you. I’ve eaten your food for two days without contributing.”
“That’s what family does,” Da said.
“I can buy you milk.”
“No, you won’t,” Da said.
“I insist,” Caleb said. I have to tell them I’m filthy rich. The money would make for a welcome surprise, but when rich people were not like us, probably got their money doing something bad, finding the right moment in an emotional maelstrom had been hard. They’d turned his world inside out. Did Caleb have to list his parents among the people he’d murdered, or didn’t he? He’d meant to end their lives. What about their young children? For the same eighteen years, his parents had mourned his absence. They’d taken his file from the sanatorium, and because of a vague note had thought him dead. Caleb said, “Anyway, we should talk about combining our finances tonight. I have a house and, you know, there’s a house for sale on the same street. It’s not going for much and it’s in a better neighborhood, near an excellent school. I’d like to work out a deal with the owner if you’re interested in moving.”
Silence rebounded around the table. Annalena stared at him in horror. Niklas perked up and Ma beamed, certainly at the idea of living close together if not in the same household. Da’s gruff expression contained all the wariness a massive expense like that deserved, though his blue eyes sparkled.
“Our son is such a kind man,” Ma announced, breaking the tension. Da huffed and gutted his cheese. “We didn’t know if Soltryce paid you enough to afford living in the city all by yourself, and I forgot to ask if you lived in a boarding house. We were going to offer you the attic.”
“They’d better pay him enough to afford a home,” Da said. He directed a thick, scarred finger at Caleb. “Also, I asked the butcher yesterday if she was hiring. If that school doesn’t pay you what you’re worth, Frau Swazi will give you eight silver a week to apprentice. Twelve silver after two years, if you’re a hard worker.”
“He’s a hard worker,” Ma said.
Eight silver a week. That was good money to his parents. They went cold last night because they pretended they didn’t need the quilt draped over his mattress in the attic. This morning, Ma tutted over his fur-lined coat. How could Bren afford such a thing? And his boots! Bren had better not be starving himself. She wouldn’t have it. Da had slapped Caleb on the shoulder, saying, “Leave him alone. A man’s allowed a vanity or two.”
“Come to think of it,” Caleb said, “I have milk at home. I’ll bring you some tonight.”
Ma smiled. “Oh, that would be wonderful. And I want to see your house! Maybe I can fix soup for supper and we can carry it over.”
“You’ll need a carriage. It’s two and a half miles from here.”
Da’s dark eyebrows hiked almost into his hair. “Do you live in the academy?”
“I live in the Tangles,” Caleb allowed. He didn’t say where.
“Whoa, you must be rich.” Annalena leaned back to appraise him with more interest. “I’m going to tell Jaya about that.”
“Now, sweetheart, bragging isn’t a good look on anyone,” Ma said.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said.
“Not you, Bren.”
Annalena grinned at Niklas. Da said, “It must be expensive getting from the Tangles to the Mosaic Ward. We can bring Niklas over another time if you want to take him to the river.”
“I’ll use my allowance,” Niklas said. “I have four coppers saved up from clearing snow. We can race sticks if I take a wain to the Tangles.”
Caleb said, “Soltryce is closer.”
“He’s not going to Soltryce,” Da snapped.
“No, not to attend class. I have a teleportation circle in my office that links to my house. If you want to come to the academy, we can all use the circle.”
Another silence bounced around the table, stitching over the place where Master Ikithon had hunted out Caleb and his friends. Ma clapped her hands. “Niklas! Annalena! Go get your book bags. Get your sister ready and meet me at the door. You’re going to be late for school.”
“Can Bren walk us?” Niklas said.
My name is Caleb, Caleb wanted to say.
Ma chuckled. “Do you have time to walk them? They know the streets, so you’d just need to go with them.”
Caleb said, “I would love to, but I have an early class. I’m three minutes late, myself. May I go with you another time?”
“Okay,” Niklas said.
“Shoo!” Ma whisked them from the table along with their younger sister, Erna. “We’ll get this settled, I’m sure. We’ve got time, now.” She beamed at Caleb. “I can pick up milk myself so you don’t have to waste money taking a wain back and forth.” Her soft, gently lined face tightened in youthful worry. “Do you like potato soup? I can’t remember.” She glanced at Da, eyes heavy.
“I’m going to love anything you make,” Caleb swore. He cleared his place and pulled out his chalk. “Do you mind if I draw a circle?”
Da gestured permission. He and Ma leaned from their chairs, staring as Caleb knelt and drew a portal to his office on the warped kitchen floorboards. Caleb waved. The impossible, cramped house where his parents lived jerked away and his own white marble office smacked into place around him. Caleb took a shaky breath as the world had changed under his feet again. The cord holding him together snapped, and the prickle spasmed into a humming rush. He counted the objects on his desk, again and again, until his mind stopped spinning. His cord rewound itself. Caleb took a deep breath, let himself out from his office, and sprinted up four flights to his 8 am classroom.
Caleb shouldered through the mahogany door and switched to Common. “Sorry I’m late.”
Greasy-haired, blond, manicured Mr. Welk smirked at him. “You’ve got to go to the front and tell us something interesting you learned last night.” The class tittered.
Caleb smiled. “Ja, okay. Fair is fair.” He took his tardy students’ traditional place at the blackboard, looking past thirteen young people into the chaos that had unfolded over the last forty-eight hours. A lifetime dropping into an abyss and clawing his way out, churning his guts to pulp, was overturned, but he didn’t need to unload his heart on sixteen-year-old children. What else had happened? Oh, he’d tried flirting with Essek. Heat fluttered under his collar. That hadn’t gone particularly well. He’d made a fool of himself, but it was Essek who’d figured out that the man and woman angry at Caleb for working at the school that’d destroyed their son were Herr and Frau Ermendrud. “Uh. I learned you can’t believe everything you read in etiquette books. I tried asking an elf on a date, but it went poorly. Don’t read The Ritualistic Art of Romance and Courtship in Elven and Drow Societies. That book is a liar.”
The class laughed.
Caleb squinted. “I think it’s still on my desk. Good, I’ll keep it out of circulation.”
“Did he say no?” Ms. Osag flipped her long black hair.
No, he asked why I said something obscene and then kept touching my face. Apparently talking about earrings is a euphemism--and not the one you’d expect. “I finally asked him the old-fashioned way as he went home. Out loud. He, uh. I’m taking him to supper on Yulisen.”
Someone cat-called.
“Thank you.” Caleb opened his satchel. “As I reminded you last week, today is a surprise exam. Please raise your hand if you have trouble understanding a question, and I’ll clarify what the headmaster means. Remember, this is theoretical transmutation. Don’t test your answer by casting it. If you blow something up, you’re paying for it.” He passed out the exam packets and turned to his aide, a skinny, twenty-four-year-old human graduate with blue-black skin and silver eyes. “Mr. Laulin, would you fly up to the roof and make sure Professor Janie hasn’t stolen our overlook? I’d like to use the time after our exam for some fun.”
Ino Laulin snapped a nod and headed for the door. He’d worked as a research assistant in the library for the past five years, where he spent his days helping various scholars find difficult texts. Ino had turned up during Caleb’s orientation with donuts and asked for a job.
Headmaster Margolin laughed. “What for?”
“I want to try something different, sir,” Ino said. He stared hard at the donuts.
“You’d take a pay cut.”
“That’s okay.”
Margolin shook his head. Ino hadn’t looked at Caleb during his entire pitch. Something about the way the young man’s eyes drifted off to the side when he spoke, and how kept a slight distance from them, seemed comfortable to Caleb. He accepted Ino’s offer. The headmaster looked between them, nose wrinkling. “A first year teacher and a librarian? Caleb, I can find you an experienced aide to help you settle in.”
“No, thank you, Master Margolin. Mr. Laulin, I will see you tomorrow.” Caleb stuck out his hand. Ino shook it, and Margolin tossed his arms in the air. Every day since then, Ino came to work in the same blue cotton robe he’d worn when they met. At first Caleb wondered if it’d been in solidarity with Professor ‘You can tell who’s the war wizard’ Widogast. Caleb refused to wear silks, but that was his choice. He asked Ino about the blue robe.
“It’s comfortable,” Ino said. “It’s not the same robe, though. I bought twelve.”
“Oh. That makes sense.” It didn’t, really.
“Thanks,” said Ino. He still hadn’t met Caleb’s eyes.
We make quite the pair, the badly dressed Soltryce professor and the man in blue. Oh well. Soltryce could use a little mixing up. The other students had tormented Caleb as a youth for his impoverished background, so seeing a venerable staff professor dressed in cotton and wool might do both sides of the divide some good.
Caleb finished handing out the exams. He sank into the ebony chair behind the classroom’s enormous scalloped desk and tried to ignore the itch in his head. He’d just opened his notes for the next period when the window opened from outside and Ino stuck his head into the classroom, face stricken. “Professor! You have to go to the roof!”
Caleb looked up. “Is someone hurt? Get a healer.”
“No—it’s—you have to get to the roof.”
“Is someone hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Get a healer!”
Ino held onto the sill. “It’s, sir, a crick.”
“Drow,” Caleb corrected. Why was a drow on the roof? They weren’t at war at the moment, although tensions still ran hot between the empire and Dynasty. Peace hadn’t erased the raid on Rexxentrum, or the lives lost. “Is there an attack?”
“No. There’s a drow on the roof.”
Essek? No, of course not.
Ino said, “He’s not attacking anyone. He’s hurt.”
Caleb glanced at the class. “Excuse me.” Their horrified faces followed him to the window as he climbed through after Ino. Caleb cast Fly on himself and followed his aide to Soltryce’s ivory roof, already pulling a healing potion from his pocket dimension. If Ino hadn’t told him first instead of going straight to the Crownsguard, the empire would have snatched the injured man and done who knows with him.
They crested the snow-laden gable, and bright sky enveloped Caleb in a searing brand. He screwed eyes shut against harsh sunlight lancing between white clouds and white snow. The drow’s dark shape stuck out on the frosted astronomy platform like spilled wine. He lay curled on his side. Caleb landed too hard, and his right ankle twisted out from under him. Sharp heat burst up his tendons. He limped to the man, heart dropping as he noticed the muddy stain soaking the snow under him. So much blood. Naked sun had bleached the man’s skin into dead white rings that flaked off to reveal twilight-colored muscle. Caleb scooped the man’s head into his lap. It wasn’t Essek. His heart twisted over and restarted. Caleb exhaled from his bones, then wanted to cry and throw up at the same time. Not Essek.
Someone, or many someones, had beaten the drow’s face into a swollen mask. Caleb worked his thumb into the drow’s cold mouth to pry open his jaw and dumped the healing potion down the man’s throat. Caleb shifted him onto his side so he didn’t choke. The potion bled from the man’s lips. Caleb held him and counted to ten, fifty, two hundred.
Dead. He shivered. Looking over the corpse, his heart sank further. A thick iron manacle clamped the drow’s ankle to the astronomy platform’s railing. Shallow cuts and bruises surrounded the cuff’s base where the man had tried to yank his foot free. Three puckered stripes circled the top. The man had tried clawing himself loose, but either passed out from blood loss or else stopped when the pain got too great. Whoever had killed him had stripped him, beaten him, and trapped him on the roof under the sunlight. Whether he’d died from exposure or bleeding, his death had not been fast.
Caleb lay the drow’s head down in the snow and sat back. He stepped off the roof in a pounding haze and followed Ino’s lead, grabbing his classroom’s window sill and swinging his legs through. His aide looked up from watching thirteen students do anything but take their exam.
“Is it a hoax?” Ino said.
Ms. Osag said, “Is there another attack?”
The kids shrank back. Caleb glanced at his students. He strode to the attendant’s chair next to his overlarge ebony desk and whispered into Ino’s ear, “Have Margolin summon the Crownsguard. There’s been a murder.” His aide hurried out. Caleb slumped against the chalkboard, hands shaking with what had, and hadn’t, happened.
“Are we under attack?” said Mr. Welk.
Caleb jerked awake. “No. You’re fine. The city’s safe. Believe me, I’d be on the front lines.” He held out his arms, showing off his sensible leather jacket, but the joke fell flat. “Whatever I tell you, the rumor mill is going to claim there’s a Xhorhassian invasion by third period. I encourage you to use your heads and sift out real information from alarmism. How do you know what to believe?”
“Don’t trust anyone who appeals to your identity. Nobody gets to tell you who you are but you,” Ms. Osag recited. Her brow furrowed. “What has that got to do with an attack?”
“What happened on the roof?” Caleb prompted.
“I don’t know.”
“Right. You don’t know. If someone tells you that you’re a patriot who needs to defend her country from foreign invaders, they’re trying to wind you up. You don’t know what happened until you see proof. We can talk about it some more during my office hours. In the meantime, pass up your packets, please. We’re doing the exam tomorrow.”
“Is someone dead?” said Mr. Welk.
“Someone’s hurt,” he allowed. Dead was such a tricky state when a powerful cleric and a few thousands in gold could undo the killing. If someone up top had the means to resurrect the drow, and the motive, they could.
Two royal officials who didn’t look like Crownsguard arrived a leisurely hour and a half later. Caleb gave them his statement, then crowded behind them on the roof while they transformed the drow into a handkerchief and cleaned the area.
“I know someone who can ask the dead questions,” Caleb said.
“We have resources, too, Mr. Widogast.”
“Who’s ‘we?’”
“My name is Gains. I work in the Hall of Civil Affairs.”
He relaxed. “Very well, then tell Astrid I know someone who can speak with the dead.”
Gains shrugged. “I will if it comes up.” She and her partner teleported. Caleb glanced at Ino, who hadn’t said a word during the entire process.
“What do you make of this?” Caleb said.
“I just feel bad for him,” Ino said.
Pleasant surprise rippled through Caleb. I knew I liked you. Growing up with stories about bloodthirsty, animalistic drow, few people in the empire would admit that out loud. “You don’t hate them.”
“I’ve never met one,” Ino said.
Caleb cast Send and reached through space for Astrid. “Someone named Gains works for you. Please make sure she interrogates today’s murder victim.”
“What are you up to now?” Astrid said. A slight smile tilted her voice.
So much. The world shifted out from under Caleb’s feet and he wavered, blinking in the light. I haven’t even told her about my family yet. He cast Send again. “Meet me for lunch tomorrow? I have an hour break at noon.”
“I would like that. See you tomorrow.”
Caleb told Ino, “You should go home and get some rest.”
Ino squinted at him. “Is that an option, or an order?”
“I, uh, assumed you’d be upset by what happened up here. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not upset,” Ino said.
“I am upset.” Caleb glared at the spot on the roof where a man lost his life not five hundred feet from the transmutation tower. He looked around. “There’s good sunlight here, and the roof is tall and secluded. If you’re going to murder someone, this is a good place to do it. Except, this isn’t a convenient roof. There are a thousand other buildings in Rexxentrum less well guarded than Soltryce. Someone put him here because it was convenient for them, and they could do it without getting caught.”
“Do you want me to go home?” Ino said.
“No, but I’d let you go if you wanted.” He finished his train of thought. “Someone at Soltryce killed him and put him up here.”
Ino stilled. “Do you want to tell the headmaster?”
“I wish that would solve the problem. Everyone at this school got here because they are well-connected. If Margolin cared about well-connected murderers, he’d have hired someone else to teach transmutation.”
“You were a mercenary, though. War is different.”
Caleb slouched. But Ino followed him back to the transmutation tower, where Caleb spent his remaining three classes with half a mind on the drow. It would have taken Caduceus less than a minute to ask the man who’d taken him up the roof, what the person or people looked like, and if he’d known them. Come lunchtime, Caleb sent Astrid another message. “What did you learn? Who was he?”
“He didn’t want to speak with us. I can’t blame him. If drow killed me and then asked me about it, I wouldn’t answer.”
Well, that was a problem. Ino had stuck around, so Caleb shared the news with him by default.
“What are you going to do about it?” Ino said.
He wanted to say, ‘I’m not going to do anything about it,’ but that meant letting the murderer walk around free at school. Caleb wasn’t fit to judge anyone. He’d done a lot worse as Master Ikithon’s apprentice than what a faceless killer had done to the man on the roof. Yet Caleb had been a brainwashed child soldier. Even at his worst, he’d never hurt people just to hurt them. Whoever murdered the drow was very much unlike Caleb, in a bad way. They were a sadistic, organized murderer. They were dangerous. They had abducted and slowly tortured someone to death, and they might do it again.
The prickling edged up his spine. Caleb said, “I’m going to find out who killed him. I have a friend in the Cobalt Soul who might help.”