Gadfly

All the inmates of the Pocket, minus Shemman and Japha of course, sat in silence around the dining hall awaiting breakfast. I heard a stomach rumble loudly. It wasn’t me, but it might as well have been; my stomach too twinged in hunger. Two days ago, Granny had announced to the community the bad news: the portal was still inoperable, and she had no idea when it would be workable again. My father had followed up the announcement by immediately proclaiming that we would all have to begin rationing.

So when breakfast was finally served today, it was as we expected. Small portions of food that looked insubstantial and only served to whet our appetites. We all ate in silence, finishing too quickly. As if by instinct, I looked over to the doorway that led to the kitchen, but of course, no more food was coming.

People began drifting away discontentedly. As I began listlessly putting together a tray for the brothers, I noticed Liah following Bekah. I wouldn’t have worried about it if Liah hadn’t been trying so hard to look natural. I moved to follow them, but my father stepped into my way.

“Rakel,” he said. “Good. I was hoping to speak with you.”

I didn’t want to talk with my father right now. “Apologies, father, but I am in a hurry.”

“This will only take a moment.” He cocked his head in that way he did when a thought had just occurred to him. His tricorn hat slid to the side. “And what is the hurry? Is there a party in the Pocket I am unaware of?” His genuine attempt to make a joke.

“Er, no, but,”

“Please, just listen.” He lowered his voice, subconsciously straightening his hat. “We have talked in the past about your talent in magic.”

“Yes…” I said slowly.

“And how I hope you will some day take a prominent position in the mage community, like your grandmother does.”

This again. Despite my desire to follow Liah and Bekah, I couldn’t help but get drawn back into this old argument of ours. “Father, just because I can do magic doesn’t mean I have to be the leader here.”

“Mages respect strength. We always have. So like it or not, you will be looked up to by the new generation,” he said. The same tired old point.

“What new generation? In our community, there’s just me, Liah, and Bekah. All the other kids our age are dead or shipped off by the Empire, father. If there are other mages out there, I don’t know them.” My voice was rising. A couple of lingerers in the dining room looked curiously at us.

“Don’t argue, Rakel,” my father said with a weariness I had rarely heard from him. “I just…all I wanted to say is, please think of the community. Living in the Pocket will be a trial for us, quite different from living in the Empire.”

I slipped past him, and he did not try to stop me. Liah and Bekah were out of eyeshot, but I could guess where they had gone.

The “library,” as we called it, was a room we had discovered full of old books and scrolls. Most were written in a language nobody even recognized. Some were written in a very old variety of the common tongue that made my head hurt the one time I had tried to read it. And a very few were written in modern language. The community in the Pocket had been excited at first, but once we had realized that we couldn’t read most of the books, and the few we could were mostly technical manuals and children’s nursery stories, not many people visited it anymore. Not many, other than Bekah.

I entered the small library and immediately saw Bekah sitting on the floor, surrounded by books and papers. She was doing her best to ignore Liah, who was leaning against a shelf nearby, speaking. “No, really, I think you’re doing something great, Bekkee,” Liah said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Don’t call me that,” mumbled Bekah.

Ignoring the rebuttal, Liah said “I mean, I’m sure the mage community will really benefit from your scholarship on…” she picked up one of the books nearby, “The Wisest King and the Baby. Ooh, I remember hearing that one as a child! Great stuff, really high-quality nursery tales.”

I saw Bekah wilting, so I stepped into the small, cluttered space and placed myself between the two girls. “At least she does something with her time.” Liah was two years older and a whole head taller than me. As I glared up at her, she drummed the fingers of her left hand against her leg.

“Oh, I’m sure!” Liah said. “After all, we mages are dying out. I’m sure a child without any ability to do magic must have been so hard on your parents. Oh, I should say parent, singular, now.” She covered her mouth with her right hand. It just emphasized her cruel smile.

Bekah was on the verge of tears. It was true; she had never been able to learn magic. I didn’t think it was that big a deal, but I knew it meant a lot to Bekah. When we were young, I knew she would stay up late into the night, vainly trying to cast a spell. She would often go to bed crying after those nights.

I said “at least she’s doing something productive! Better than going around picking on people!”

“Picking on people! My, I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.” She drummed her fingers on her thigh again. “Although, my dear, I must say it is a bit rich for you to accuse others of wasting time. What exactly do you do during all those long hours with the two little murderers we have in jail?”

“They aren’t—what are you talking about?”

She smiled again in the way that never reached her eyes. I hated that smile of hers. “Did you really not pay attention in school? We covered the Aijalon.”

“Of course I didn’t pay attention to what the Empire told us,” I muttered, but my brain was churning. I remembered how easily Shemman had overpowered me. But he was in jail; he wanted to escape. I couldn’t blame him. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. But still…

I shook my head. I was letting Liah get to me. “I don’t care!” I said, feeling foolish. I grabbed Bekah’s arm. “Let’s go.” Turning to glare daggers at Liah, I added “don’t you follow us.”

Liah’s smile told me that in her mind, she had won. Whatever. I told myself I didn’t care as I pulled Bekah away.

**

“…And so that’s why I’m in a rotten mood,” I finished explaining to Shemman as I sat in the cell a few hours after our run-in with Liah.

“Why does she act in that manner?” Shemman asked.

“I don’t know. She’s always been like that.” I let out an enormous sigh and leaned against the wall of the room, opposite the cell bars. “She’s a born Mind mage, but she sucks at magic. The only spell she could ever learn lets her read minds, sort of. Cheater.” I looked at the brothers. Japha was playing with some pebbles, while Shemman sat cross-legged, looking back at me through the bars.

Shemman said “there was a boy in the monastery like that. Not with magic to read minds,” he hastily added when I raised an eyebrow, “but a bully nonetheless. He would beat Jepha and I, hide our possessions, and put dirt in our food. He had great talent in combat, so the instructors never restrained him.” He leaned on one arm, evidently lost in the memory.

“How did you deal with him?” I asked.

“I did not. On his first mission, he was killed by a mage.”

“Ah.”

“The magic rotted his body from the inside out. I hear it took him days to die. He finally starved when his stomach was too liquified to hold food.”

“Nasty.” I tried to brush it off, but the description had shaken me. There was a spell out there that could do that?

But the talk of missions and death reminded me of Liah’s comments. I gazed at Shemman. He was wiry but strong. His face seemed so gentle. Surely he wasn’t a killer. Right? I remembered how ferociously he had fought my father when he first arrived. How he had tried to take me as a hostage.

Shemman caught my gaze. “What is on your mind?”

“Ah! N-nothing!”

He smiled kindly. “You may speak your mind. I will not judge.”

“W-well then…” I took a deep breath. “Shemman. Is it true the Aijalon kill mages?”

“Only those of our people who enter the warrior monasteries, but yes.”

“Have you?”

He paused for just a moment before answering. “We are generally not permitted to take a mission in the field until we have slain in combat a mage who has been brought back to the monastery.”

“And…you have?”

“I have. Japha has not. I persuaded our instructors to allow him to accompany me on my first mission.”

I swallowed. “What kind of mage did you k-kill?”

“He was a thief. He used magic to enter houses, steal valuables, and exit undetected. The authorities only caught him when a robbery grew violent. The occupants were still inside; he killed the entire family, but the father dealt him a wound that allowed us to apprehend him. He was imprisoned in the monastery until I fought, defeated, and executed him.”

I tried to picture someone from our mage community using magic to perpetrate such a horrible crime. I just couldn’t picture it. Not even Liah, nasty as she was, would do something like that. “Well,” I said. “That guy couldn’t have been a true mage. A real mage would never use magic for a selfish end like that.”

Shemman nodded and said “now that I have come to know you, I think perhaps you are right.”

I really hoped I was.