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“Hey, little witch, we need some help over here.”
If Olruggio hadn’t stopped to admire a display of beautiful lanterns—crafted by hand, not magic—in a shop window, he might not have heard the call. Something about it sent a dark chill crawling up his spine, and he snapped his head up just in time to see Tetia, trailing a little behind Qifrey and the rest of the girls, pause and turn toward the mouth of the alley.
And that pause was all that was needed for an arm to snatch out and pull Tetia out of sight.
Olruggio was sprinting before he had fully processed what he was doing. He shouted Qifrey’s name, but couldn’t tell if he had been heard before he skidded around the corner. There were two men trying to drag a writhing Tetia out of the other end of the alley.
“Witches are supposed to help people, ain’t they?” one was saying, trying to keep hold of Tetia’s hands so she couldn’t reach her pen—what the men surely thought was a fairy tale magic wand—while the other man held a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. “We can’t get through the mountain pass without a witch, so you’re gonna help us.”
The scene froze in firework flashes in Olruggio’s mind’s eye, highlighting the important details, illuminating the path he needed to take to get both himself and Tetia out unharmed. Two men, both bigger than Olruggio. Tetia’s wide, terrified eyes visible over the hand covering the rest of her face. The trash strewn across the alley from a garbage bin it looked like Tetia had kicked over in her struggle to get away. The flammability of the two shops on either side of the alley.
“Let her go!” Voice loud enough to be heard. Calm, authoritative. He would lose the upper hand if they saw he was panicked underneath.
Tetia tried to shout something at him, but it was muffled behind the hand over her mouth. Olruggio had to hope she trusted him to get her out of this.
“He can’t do nothing to us,” the man holding Tetia said to his companion. “They ain’t allowed to use magic on us normal folk.”
The look of confidence on his face faded as a hot dry breeze whooshed through the alley. Olruggio held the illusion that he was standing entirely still, his hands under his cloak drawing spell after spell without rustling the fabric.
Hot wind. The sound of crackling fire echoing along the walls. The smell of burning wood. A ray of false sunlight aimed precisely at the cobblestones under their feet, letting the heat rise from under them, hot enough to feel, but hopefully not enough to catch any of the spilled trash on fire. Smoke, wreathing Olruggio’s head, shadowing his features in a way he desperately hoped looked menacing enough.
Finally, he pulled a gloved hand from under his cloak, flames dancing over his palm. “You sure about that?”
He curled his fingers into a fist and pulled it back, ready to throw a punch as he stepped towards the men.
They fled, dropping Tetia unceremoniously to the ground. As the smoke cleared out of Olruggio’s eyes, he realized she was staring at Olruggio, eyes still wide with shock. Too late, he realized what kind of shape that smoke had briefly transformed his hat into.
The whole thing had taken moments. Just enough time for Qifrey to realize something was wrong. Olruggio heard his voice behind him, calling to Tetia. The girls flocked to her, and she gave them a watery smile, wiping her eyes on her sleeves, trying to reassure them that she was fine.
Olruggio shook the flames out and stared at his gloved hand. “I was gonna hit him,” he muttered, when he noticed Qifrey had turned back to him, now that he had made certain Tetia wasn’t hurt. Horror and shame twisted in his chest. “It wasn’t a bluff, I was ready to do it.”
Qifrey took Olruggio’s hand in his, pale fingers unwrapping the leather ties around Olruggio’s sleeve and pulling off the glove. He folded it neatly and tucked in back into Olruggio’s pocket. “No one got hurt. And those fools will think twice about trying to kidnap a witch again.”
No one got hurt, but it had been so close. If those men had stood their ground—
Olruggio couldn’t breathe. Some invisible band around his lungs constricted, refusing to let air in, amplifying the heartbeat pounding in his ears.
“Olly,” Qifrey’s voice, low and urgent with worry, broke through the thudding of his heart. His hand pressed against Olruggio’s chest, under the clasp of his cloak, the counter pressure against the vice around his lungs breaking the seal and letting air rush back in. Suddenly the alley came back into his awareness. The lingering heat and faint smell of smoke. The chatter of the girls trying to cheer Tetia up.
“Let’s get everyone home,” Qifrey said gently.
——
It was Olruggio’s job to write the incident report while Qifrey took care of his students. That was his duty as Watchful Eye. He had made the excuse and fled to his own atelier as soon as they had arrived home, afraid to see the wary looks he was sure the girls would give him if he lingered. He stared at the paper on his desk, wondering if it really captured the magnitude of his crime.
He was so absorbed in the horror of the memory of fear he had put into another human’s eyes, he didn’t even notice Qifrey had let himself into Olruggio’s atelier and was reading the report over his shoulder. He snatched it out from under Olruggio’s pen, smearing ink across the page, startling Olruggio so badly, he upset the entire ink pot.
“Olly, you can’t submit this!” Qifrey shook the paper at Olruggio. “Are you trying to get arrested?”
“It’s what happened!” Olruggio tried to snatch it back, but Qifrey dodged him.
“Since when do you tell the entire truth in your reports?” Qifrey held the paper up over his head, using his extra couple of inches of hight to keep it out of Olruggio’s reach like a child. Olruggio was half tempted to be childish right back and use his sylph shoes indoors, but the urge vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a bone deep exhaustion.
“I wasn’t careful. Someone could’ve gotten hurt ‘cause of me. Or I could’ve been seen usin’ magic to threaten someone.” Surely it all could have been avoided. If he had been quicker or more clever. If he hadn’t stopped to look at lanterns. He could have stopped it all somehow.
“No one got hurt. You did your best and no one got hurt.”
Qifrey put his arms around Olruggio, somewhat stiffly and awkwardly, but the shock of feeling that action at all broke through the panic trying to wrap itself back around Olruggio’s chest. Qifrey had always hated hugging. Olruggio had known that for as long as he had known Qifrey. He could manage for the sake of his students when he had to, but that rarely extended to anyone else. It meant a lot, that Qifrey would put aside his own discomfort to try to comfort Olruggio. Part of him felt selfish accepting it, but the other part would stay right here forever if he could.
“I almost hurt someone,” Olruggio murmured into the black fabric over Qifrey’s collarbone.
“But you didn’t,” Qifrey said, the gentleness in his voice a strange contrast to how tense his body was against Olruggio’s. “Anyone stumbling upon that scene would have seen exactly what I did: a teacher protecting his student from men who would have hurt her. You did the right thing.”
“It was illegal.”
“It was still the right thing.”
The real fear weighing on his heart slipped out, into the quiet space between them.
“What if the girls are scared of me now?”
“Oh, Olly,” Qifrey breathed out. “Don’t be foolish. Of course the girls aren’t scared of you. Tetia wants to bake you a cake for saving her, and you’re in here tying yourself into knots over almost punching her kidnappers.”
One hand found the back of Olruggio’s head, fingers stroking through his hair, and that’s what broke him. Something hitched in his chest, and despite his best effort to contain it, Olruggio’s breath came out in shuddering gasps, muffled into Qifrey’s shoulder.
Qifrey stroked his hair and murmured soothing it’s all rights and I’ve got yous in his ear, and slowly, the storm passed.
Olruggio felt his body start to relax by fractions, though he noticed Qifrey’s never did. He needed to stop being selfish. Qifrey had put up with the hug for long enough. He breathed in Qifrey’s clean, misty smell, the opposite of the smoke and ash that clung to Olruggio, ready to pull himself together and pull away.
In one more moment. He would let go in one more moment.