#pgts

Thaddeus’s eyes traced over the page again. There were no additional sketches, but there it was, written out plain, along with a description of intent that was ingenious and filled him with dread.

Perfect! This will keep those fools in town from pestering me with blame and favor every time I need to collect some small thing or another. Lucky that I didn’t bury the body in the dirt as I’d considered—this use is much better attributed to it. I’ll disguise myself with it!

Better that it look as unlike me as possible. Away with the dark hair, then. Make the skin even paler—and the hair, so blonde as to be platinum. Not one person on the street could scarcely do a double take when they see me, like with glamors or illusion. This will be a full transformation, immune to the pitfalls of such tricks. 

Then, farther down the page:

Shame about the eyes. Every time I try to control the color, the transformation won’t take; the eyes are the link for the full of it. If I truly want my eyes to be some color other than my own, I’ll need to cast the very type of illusion I’m hoping to avoid! Well, so be it. The color is common enough.

This—Myrddin’s false body that he had been tinkering with—didn’t look like Sebastien. It was Sebastien. Thaddeus had thought the body based on someone, and maybe that person had been sampled by someone and... created—but with that change, Myrddin had, seemingly naturally, exactly created Sebastien himself. Except for the eyes, which were the ‘link’.

He saw them again, in a flash: Sebastien’s black eyes, unusual for his ethnicity. Then Siobhan’s.

As they continued through the book, Myrddin contained the transformation within an amulet. Then he detailed his successes with what he called his ‘avatar’, and the joys of going about life unrecognized. He explained that the transformation was too perfectly anchored, letting through scars and patterns of age when he would rather it didn’t, but trying to force the disconnections of these ‘links’—like the eyes—made his body ‘reject’ the transformation.

Then Myrddin mentioned, offhandedly, later in-between some other topic of thought, that he would keep the amulet within his journals for safekeeping when he wasn’t using it. Better to keep others from being able to utilize his avatar.

When Siobhan begged off due to exhaustion, she was as imperious as ever. Thaddeus—acting on instinct—offered a drink, again, in his place. She smiled sweetly and declined, and he returned to his cottage alone.

There was a trick to walking the line between thinking and not thinking. Thaddeus had learned how to sleep on that line; how to sprint and leap on it. He had needed to. Sometimes, however—rarely—very, very rarely—that acted against him. He had become, occasionally, extremely rarely, gullible. Or, rather, prey to his own blindnesses. If there was something painful, after all, something not good, then he had learned how to avoid it without even letting himself realize that he’d avoided it.

He does, eventually, overcome it; his curiosity was a furious hunger, after all. He couldn’t stop thinking about Myrddin’s ‘avatar’, the body he’d made thousands of years ago. Could someone have sampled that? Had Myrddin died in it, leaving behind a false body to be misidentified? That could be why he’d disappeared. But was it possible that blood from that body would have created the body, rather than Myrddin himself, given the substance of the ‘links’ between them? Thaddeus had examined that page as closely as he could, but he would need to examine it for hours longer before he would understand a glimpse of the process at work.

But there was something else. A different connection. He stared out his window, into the darkness, not drinking from his coffee, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he found what bothered him.

Everything except the eyes. The avatar’s amulet was kept in one of the journals...

Siobhan had stolen one of the journals. If the amulet had been inside, she could have used it.

The mug almost slipped from his fingers. He caught it, but scalding liquid splashed everywhere. He hardly noticed the pain; he placed the mug on the table anyway and flicked a cleaning spell at the waste. Then he sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

‘Don’t dismiss the thought because you don’t like it. Examine it. Look for evidence, without bias.’

The first thought was easy: Sebastien and the Raven Queen had been in the same place, at the same time. The break event. That had been substantiated by, not including Sebastien himself, who would in this case naturally lie... nothing. The Raven Queen couldn’t be divined, and neither could Sebastien after she had...

Assuming Sebastien’s version of those events couldn’t be trusted, there was no evidence to suggest that the Raven Queen had cast the spell on him. Certainly not the way he’d said she’d done it, which had always sounded impossible to Thaddeus, which had made him intensely curious about the Raven Queen. He’d believed Sebastien out of hand. What reason would the boy have to lie?

Thaddeus interlinked his fingers. His elbows heavy on the kitchen table.

She carried the device Sebastien had designed. When she had freed prisoners from the Pendragon Order, Sebastien had been attacked in the street. No—Damien had said that Sebastien had said he’d been attacked in the street. The only thing that was clear was that he had been attacked.

Could it be possible?

No, there was too much power disparity between them. The Raven Queen was a Master at least, and Sebastien had tested at six hundred thaums. It was possible he could have been underperforming, but if so, he was a master actor.

Thaddeus remembered Sebastien’s eagerness to learn, the glint in his eyes. The look on his face when he’d threatened to bite off his own tongue, if only to safeguard the life and friendships he cherished. There would be no reason to lie about that. Would there be?

What would Siobhan gain from being Thaddeus’s apprentice? To worm her way in to his good side?

If so, she was a master at it. Playing him for a fool like she did everyone else. The one time he... the one person he...

Thaddeus forced himself back. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ If Siobhan, the Raven Queen, was pretending to be Sebastien, it would be a grandiose performance—and for what purpose? Sebastien didn’t only exist for Thaddeus’s sake, but for his friends and his other classes. He had struggled with transmogrification for gods’ sake. Could she really have faked that? Well—who knew her capabilities? Perhaps she could have.

On the other hand, what if Sebastien was pretending to be the Raven Queen?

The thought was nonsensical, and not only because in this constructed universe, Sebastien would be a fake identity, a false name and body. And yet—connections formed regardless. So Thaddeus followed them.

If Sebastien was the one pretending to be the Raven Queen, then it would be a person of six hundred thaums putting on these feats of greatness. Was that possible? He wanted to say no, but recalled each time he’d left doors open on his understandings of her abilities. The shadow-familiar spell nothing but an illusion, superstition no more than rumor.

Could Sebastien have rescued those people from the break event, knowing instantly how to perform the requisite spell? Well, yes, because he had already known the spell. Bad example.

Could Sebastien have terrorized those Pendragon Order members with the shadow? Yes; Thaddeus himself had already postulated that the after-effects of that attack had been nothing more than a mental break. The terror of that event could, apparently, be attributed to the darkness philter potion that the Raven Queen had invented; if Sebastien had invented that potion—a second-term student recklessly experimenting with alchemy—then he certainly could have accidentally included any manner of side-effects. And that was something he would do.

Could Sebastien have become immune to divination? Rather—could he have been immune to divination all along? Certainly there had been no reason to discover so until the break event. When the coppers had been scrying for the Raven Queen, he had only been in class...

He had been in Eagle Tower when the Raven Queen’s blood sample had been decimated.

Could Sebastien have—what else—have killed a Red Guard defector with nothing more than a glance? No, he couldn’t. And Thaddeus couldn’t invent any manner by which he could have done so.

Was that enough?

He found himself breathing hard. He realized he had been racing from thought to thought, bursting open doors in search of an answer he wanted. He had found one, and he stood in its doorway, heaving from the effort.

With dread, he looked back at all the open doors behind him. He had found more answers than questions.

Could Sebastien have stolen Myrddin’s book? The way that Siobhan had described it, yes. Trying to gain sponsorship for a professor, then forced on the run by her father. Given the book—quite possibly, the avatar amulet—when all of the city was searching for her. Given, quite possibly, a means of disguise, right when she needed one.

Sebastien had applied for admissions only a week or so later, seemingly from nowhere.

Thaddeus settled his Will. He drew a long, calm breath, and retreated down the hallway of doors. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’

Was the Raven Queen manipulating him, pretending to be Sebastien, in order to fulfill some grand, dark purpose? Or was Siobhan wearing a disguise, and learning as much as she could as quickly as she could, in order to keep up the Raven Queen lie?

Or was Sebastien his own person, from unknown provenance, descended from—or designed off of—a long-dead Myrddin construct?

Of the options, the one with the smallest amount of assumptions to make—the smallest amount of impossible things to accept—was the second.

Truth was ephemeral. It was solid and unchangeable, but at the same time it was amorphous and impossible to hold in hand, like water or air. Just because there was a truth did not mean that Thaddeus could rely on it. Reason stated that it would make the most sense to assume, not that the Raven Queen, an ancient spirit with unknowable powers, had possessed Siobhan Naught from thousands of years ago, but that a desperate girl had clung to a means of escape, and had flung herself into theatrics and lies.

But where had the divination ability come from? And how had the Red Guard defector died?

Those were the answers he needed.

#

By the time school started again on Monday, Thaddeus had learned very little. But he had learned. And he had thought.

The Red Guard’s files on the incident at the warehouse district stated only that there had been a mixture of magical effects. When reading it not as an intentional effort, but as something illusory or unintentional, it became less of a strict impossibility to Thaddeus. No, it was not a theatric like the shadow-puppetry, but it could have been an accident. In fact, it made more sense as an accident, a combination of random magical forces rather than something intricately designed.

It had disappointed him somewhat to realize so. And energized and scared him. And shored him up.

The truth was always worth having.

In the world of this truth, then Siobhan would be like a cornered dog, lashing out, biting and scratching with every resource she could get her hands on. She would be a child being treated as a capable adult, scrabbling to make up the difference. In the world of this truth, she would have found shelter, safe harbor, hope in her university life—just enough hope to cling to, with both hands and dug-in nails. 

In the world of this truth, she would need his help, but may take great risks—for example, injury, pain, consequence—rather than become vulnerable enough to accept it.

Still. The truth was always worth having.

Thaddeus didn’t wait for Sebastien’s class period. He found him at breakfast in the cafeteria and said, “Siverling. My office.”

He thought he saw a flicker of fear. But Sebastien finished his final bite of oatmeal, bid a wave to his friends, and followed Thaddeus to his office.

If Sebastien was Siobhan wearing Myrddin’s amulet, then he—she—knew that Thaddeus knew that the amulet existed. She was too smart to hope idly that Thaddeus wouldn’t have put it together himself. And yet Sebastien followed, albeit wordlessly, down the halls of the university.

He remembered Sebastien’s eyes, at the kitchen table in his cottage. His refusal to tell Thaddeus the truth, at risk of pain and injury, because of how desperately he’d wanted to keep his life at the university.

Thaddeus had asked if Sebastien was helping the Raven Queen with Myrddin’s books. If the two were the same, then that nod he’d received still counted as the truth.

Thaddeus gestured Sebastien into his office, then closed, locked, and activated the wards artificed into the door behind them. Then he activated his additional wards, and his soundproofing—not just muffling, but soundproofing, the plopping thump of all noise vanishing from the leaks and vibrations of the stone walls. All of the spell arrays were built into his office, leaving him free from the need to constantly cast while they conversed.

Sebastien stood straight and tall. His hands clenched on the strap of his satchel, eyes even and strong. Siobhan’s eyes.

Thaddeus leaned against his desk and crossed his arms. Watching him. Her, perhaps.

Sebastien wore that same aggression that he often did. Knives facing outward, pride as a method of self-defense. A survival mechanism that Thaddeus deeply recognized.

He considered Siobhan, assuming that the Raven Queen really was just an elaborate disguise and not a creature from Myrddin’s time, wearing that disguise with the same self-assuredness. An even look to her eyes, proud and knowing. It could easily be as pulled up and weaponized as this look was.

The silence had drawn out long. Sebastien swallowed—the second appearance of nerves, after the tightness with which he gripped the strap of his bag.

Thaddeus said, “Siobhan Naught.”

Less than a flinch: a microexpression, the faintest twitch in the lip.

Sebastien said, “What about her?”

“Did you know that she was trying to gain admittance to the university when her father stole the book?”

He nodded, a sharp movement. “That’s common knowledge at this point.”

“Isn’t it interesting? The Raven Queen has proven herself to be, potentially, Grandmaster level herself. Why try to gain sponsorship for the university?”

Realizing that Thaddeus was genuinely asking, Sebastien gave it some thought. “The obvious answer is that she didn’t want the sponsorship, and only wanted a pretext by which to steal book.” 

Thaddeus said, “Assume she had no designs on the book, and her father stole it on his own volition.”

Sebastien’s eyebrows flicked closer together, but he continued. “Maybe she was trying to form a relationship with [that professor] in particular. Maybe she wanted to infiltrate the university, but lacked the money.” He half-shrugged. “Maybe she just wanted to attend.”

“A Grandmaster as first term student?”

He hesitated slightly, then said, “Who says... I mean, is it possible she isn’t Grandmaster-level? What if she really is a novice thaumaturge?”

“If she is a novice—or, was, at the time that the book was stolen—then she would have needed resources. Money, a place to stay. A way to learn magic, or at least enough to become the Raven Queen of today. But you’re right,” Thaddeus nodded. “It is possible that the Raven Queen is—or, was—a novice. When you look at the things she’s done, the things that we definitely know that she has done, they are all quite simple. With a few exceptions.”

Sebastien nodded. He opened his mouth to ask a question, then closed it, and his eyes flicked to the door.

Thaddeus bore into those eyes. Black-dark and deep.

“Assume she has those resources,” Thaddeus said. “Money, a place to stay. A way to learn magic,” he added slowly. “By now, she would be a second-term student, let’s say.”

Sebastien read meaning from Thaddeus’s unbroken stare. He saw it in the way the boy straightened a little, shoulders back, and the muscles that fluttered at the corners of his jaw.

“How do you think she would have caused that crater in the warehouse district?”

His breaths came a little faster. Just a little.

Sebastien swallowed. “No second-term university student could cause something like that on purpose.”

“On purpose? So they could do it by accident?”

He opened his mouth again, then closed it. With a sharp inhale, he said, “Professor Lacer, what is this about?”

Unfortunately, Thaddeus was becoming more certain. He did not want to be, but he was.

Thaddeus said, “If Siobhan Naught was a novice thaumaturge, and has been learning sorcery since then, then she’s been learning at a prodigious pace. If she was not a novice, and has been a Grandmaster all this time, then she has been slowly ramping up the abilities she’s displaying, for unknown reasons. If she is a Grandmaster, then what she’s doing, she is doing with intent, to deceive, for her own machinations. If she is a novice... then she is a victim of circumstance. Doesn’t it behoove us to know which one?”

“You would treat her the same either way,” Sebastien said without hesitation. “The High Crown would. The coppers would. It would be worse, actually. If she is a novice, then it seems to me like it would be more beneficial for her if nobody assumed she was a novice. As it is, everyone’s too scared of the rumors to move against her. If she was a novice and everybody realized that, it would be the end of her. ‘Victim of circumstance’ or not.”

“What you say is true, except for one thing. Do you know what you got wrong?”

Sebastien’s eyes narrowed slightly. After a moment, he shook his head.

“I would not treat her the same either way. If she is a posturing Grandmaster, then I would treat her as a peer. Potentially, an enemy, although I hope not. If she is only a novice, then I would treat her as a student. As a victim who deserves leniency.”

He frowned. “If she was a Grandmaster and heard you say that, then she would be incentivized to pretend to be a novice. It’s a self-defeating argument.”

Thaddeus shook his head, and glanced off to the side. “It would be against her nature to pretend to be lesser than she is.”

He realized that as he said it. He saw, in his memories, Sebastien’s eagerness to learn. His pride, the way he hoarded knowledge and snapped at its thieves. His ravenous hunger, his need and drive to be the best. The Raven Queen could possibly disguise herself as his apprentice, for an entire year, in order to achieve some abstruse goal. Siobhan would not, and neither would Sebastien.

Thaddeus met his eyes again. “How could the explosion in the warehouse district have been caused by a second-term student?”

Sebastien hesitated. “I would rather- if you only called me here for a conversation- I have class.”

Thaddeus stood from his desk. He stood taller than Sebastien, though not by as much as other people. He did not take his Conduit into his hand. Sebastien tensed as if Thaddeus’s motion had been an explicit threat, and his breaths grew faster. His fingers twitched toward his jacket pocket but he didn’t reach inside.

Thaddeus said, “If Siobhan Naught is a second-term student, then it would only be a matter of time before she makes a mistake while trying to keep up her façade. Someone more powerful than her would be able to help shield her from the consequences of such a mistake. Perhaps from making that mistake to start with.”

“You... don’t think she has people like that?”

“I think she does, but doesn’t see that she does.”

Sebastien frowned. Still tense. Still keeping an eye on the door, like a thief ready to get away at any moment with a loaf of bread.

“Then again,” Thaddeus continued, “it is unlikely that she is a novice thaumaturge. She caused that explosion in the warehouse district, a free-cast spell far beyond the capabilities of any Master or lesser sorcerer. A Grandmaster doesn’t have allies more powerful than them to shield them from their mistakes; they are powerful enough to cause and wether their own circumstances. A novice needs help, and should be smart enough to take it when offered.”

“Nothing is offered for free,” Sebastien muttered, glancing away.

“If a Grandmaster was found to be infiltrating the University, she would be arrested, if possible. If a novice was found to be fighting for her life on the streets of Gilbratha, she would be very, very much in need of an apprenticeship with someone who can protect her. Someone who knows everything she is involved in. Someone powerful enough to help.”

Sebastien didn’t meet Thaddeus’s eyes.

Thaddeus removed his Conduit from his pocket. Sebastien tensed, and watched as Thaddeus set it down on his desk. Not out of reach but far enough to make his intentions clear.

“Let us think, then,” he continued intensely. “And estimate how that explosion in the warehouse district could possibly have been caused by a second-term student. It could mean the difference between ally and enemy.”

Sebastien’s breath hitched, slightly. “It’s... it’s possible... if she’d purchased some kind of explosive, maybe some kind of... disintegration thing.”

“From the Haze War,” Thaddeus supplied. “That much has been confirmed by the coppers.”

“Then... if it was in the bottom of her bag, along with potions of random types and... maybe a spacial-distortion spell array...”

Everything clicked. “Then it could easily have caused a distorted magical backlash when it went off, interacting both with the spacial array and with whatever battle potions she may have kept on her person.”

“It’s possible,” Sebastien said. He hunched in for a moment, then stood straight, his shoulders back. A reflex, a reaction to his own uncertainty.

Her own uncertainty. Perhaps.

“That would make sense,” Thaddeus mused. “In that case, only one question remains. If Siobhan Naught was a second-year university student, how do you think her divination protection functions?”

Sebastien ticked from anxious to frightened. Which ticked over into anger.

He snapped, “If Siobhan Naught was a second-year university student, then it wouldn’t be in her best interest for anyone to guess how her divination protection functions. If she was only a student, then I think it would probably be one of the only things keeping her alive. If she was a university student—if Siobhan Naught, the Raven Queen, was apprenticed to one of the most powerful thaumaturges in the known world and who was rumored to be in the Red Guard—then I doubt it would do her any good for him to know that she was.”

Fear supplanted Sebastien’s anger the moment he finished talking. True fear, shivering through him, like a prey animal caught in the gaze of a predator.

And Thaddeus Lacer became certain.

He watched Sebastien—Siobhan, wearing Myrddin’s avatar—freeze to the spot, and he realized what he’d done. He had thought he had his apprentice’s best interest in mind, but he had only gone searching for the truth. He had forced, had pried that truth out of Siobhan’s chest, and now she cradled the hole he’d wrenched there, knowing she was trapped and waiting for the killing blow.

Thaddeus took a long, deep breath. He stepped back and leaned on his desk again. He knew that he was intimidating; he did it on purpose. He knew how to control a room to his whim, demanding competence, demanding what he wished with the force of his Will alone. It had become one of the only ways he interacted with the world, and he’d forgotten that it was one of the worst ways to interact with someone he truly cared for.

It’d been too long since he’d had someone like that.

Siobhan watched him through her own dark eyes, between a pointed nose and light eyebrows that had been designed by the ancient thaumaturge Myrddin as an immaculate mask.

Thaddeus said, “Siobhan. Take off the transformation.”

She flinched, then stood tall. “Why?” she snapped. “So you only have to kill the Raven Queen and not your apprentice? That isn’t how it works. I am both of them. It might be more accurate to say I am Sebastien—it might be a fake name and body, but it’s the only way I get to be myself. Siobhan is wanted by the entire country—the Raven Queen isn’t even real! It’s like you said, illusions, magician’s tricks, smoke and mirrors! The only thing keeping me alive is rumor and superstition, and even you, of all people, fell for both. The transformation doesn’t work without an application of my own Will, and you can’t force me to use it. If you’re going to kill me, you’re going to have to kill your apprentice. I’m not giving you the satisfaction of anything else.”

Thaddeus raised one eyebrow as Siobhan panted. Her hands shook slightly.

Gently, he said, “I just want to talk to you. Not Myrddin’s avatar.”

She hadn’t expected that. She let out a long, shaking breath. Still, however, she refused.

Finally, she said, “Sebastien... is me. Basically. It’s not a mask... it is a mask. But I’ve taken ownership of it. You... are... talking to me. They’re both me.”

Knowingly, Thaddeus said, “And you keep a measure of safety if you don’t transform. So long as you’re Sebastien Siverling, it won’t be as easy for me to take action against you and get away with it.”

‘Not as easy, but still easy,’ Thaddeus thought. He was conscious enough not to say that out loud. Siobhan was smart, however; he was certain she thought the same thing.

How easy it was to conflate Siobhan and Sebastien. Every reckless action, every glint of eager learning, every moment of pride. Thaddeus had been afraid, on some level, that the world of this truth would bring with it the death of Sebastien Siverling; on the contrary, he only found that his apprentice made all the more sense to him.

However, it did bring with it an entirely new realm of problems.

He realized that he trusted her. He believed her, at least mostly; enough to continue forward. Believed that she was Sebastien, and not the Raven Queen; that she was his apprentice, and not a scheming Grandmaster. As a point of fact, as unthinking reflex, he had immediately adopted her problems as his own.

Deep in his mind, as he considered her problems and her dangers, he brushed too close to the wrong side of a line. He twirled his thoughts away from the dangerous edge, and he said some words that skirted along the circumference of his vow.

“You are my apprentice,” he said, solidly. “I’m not killing you, arresting you, or turning you away. You are still my apprentice, and I want to help you. I will help you. I want you to tell me everything that you’re comfortable telling me; I’d rather you tell me everything. And.” He paused a moment, to emphasize the gravity of his words. “You already know that I’m in the Red Guard. You know that I’ve taken vows, though you might not know what they are, exactly. You know that there are vows that compel immediate action whenever their triggers are heard or seen.” He sighed through his nose. “I am your mentor above all. If there is anything that you believe that a member of the Red Guard would act upon... then that is not relevant to our relationship. Do you understand?”

Siobhan nodded, dark sobriety in her eyes.