***

I find Dara still asleep. I elbow him in the ribs until he wakes up, and tell him about the book, but he barely acknowledges me. He eats some food and goes back to sleep. Much as I want to pick his brain, I don’t push him. I remember how exhausted I was, after overusing my own magic.

I hate waiting when I want to talk about something. I’ve nothing to do – I left most of my comics back in the tube – and if I try thinking about my sister’s words, I just end up getting anxious.

I could draw, I suddenly think. I haven’t done that in years, after my art teacher saw me sketch and told me I lack basic technique. It sounds surprisingly appealing - what if I tried to draw the Else? Maybe it could help me learn magic? I should steal some art supplies. Or well, buy them with my stolen money.

Right now, however, I don’t even own a single pencil, so I’m left with my least favorite activity: think.

Am I doing something stupid?

Of course seeking a forbidden book of illegal magic is a stupid idea, but how stupid?

If I can still choose - do I really want to learn magic, or would it be better to get back to a normal life? I told myself I’d become a powerful mage, but I expected to fail, shrug and slink back to moms’ home in a couple of days at most.

Which one was the Lie, in the end?

On the other hand, even if sis can take me back – what about Daravoi? Does he still have a choice?

I’m just thinking in circles. I need to discuss this with Dara, but my oh-so-boring accomplice is still asleep. Tomorrow I’ll kick him awake after lunch, though, if necessary. I can’t wait another day.

What to do until he wakes, though?

Well, we’re going to have an important talk. We can’t do that in a hotel room, sober.

I let Daravoi sleep through the morning, leave him a bag of food and scribble him a note to wait for me and don’t do more shit, and then go buy some useful stuff. I even remember to get a pencil and a sketchbook on the way.

When I return to the rented room, I find Daravoi eating the grasshopper sandwiches I left in a bag, making a face. He looks sickly, with dark shadows under his eyes.

“I never felt this bad after using magic,” he says. “You didn’t look this bad, and you almost died.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure our wannabe robber feels much worse,” I say.

Daravoi winces. “Not sure how I feel about that. He totally had it coming. But…”

He leaves it hanging, as if he didn’t know how to end the sentence.

“Yes, it’s time we ask ourselves some really awkward questions,” I say. “The usual stuff. What do we do when we run out of money? Can you lick your own elbow? How do you feel about nearly killing a bad guy, and risk getting lynched for it?”

He doesn’t laugh, and I think it’s one of those times I shouldn’t have gone for humor. But people are so weird about when you should and you shouldn’t laugh about stuff, I’ve given up trying to get it right.

“Not sure I feel good enough for hard talks and life decisions now,” Dara mumbles. “Did you bring more food? Maybe something that is not fucking bugs?”

“Grasshoppers are a delicacy, you barbarian,” I say, wiggling my finger. I know people mostly eat algae and soy for meat outside Vorok, but insects are so much better. “And I brought something better than food, when it comes to making life decisions. A good selection of drugs.”

“How would that help?” he asks, as if trying to decide if I’m kidding.

“Do you really want to talk about your regrets and sad stories while sober?” I ask. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Dara sighs. “I can see how I need to be high to have any kind of talk with you. Not here, though. Having the cops called on us for intoxication would be extremely stupid.”

“Of course not here,” I answer. Not that I thought about the cops, honestly, but a cheap room just lacks the right atmosphere. “Remember that broken dome where you took me after I robbed the jewelry store? It’s out of sight. And it feels right to have this talk under the broken moon.”

***

It’s a long walk to the broken dome, but we can’t risk taking the tube – too many cameras, and I don’t dare use a Lie to disguise myself, when ThauCon could have my signature.

There are cameras on the streets, too, but they can’t be legally used for passive surveillance - a classmate way smarter than me said that when we skipped school. I’m not sure ThauCon is bound by Vorokan laws, but with a puffy overcoat, a beanie and a scarf - which is what most people are wearing anyway - good luck to any algorithm trying to spot me.

We cross the seedy neighborhood near the station, where we rented our room, make our way through the frozen canals of the old river port, and cross the bridge to the low city. Here you have parks and low buildings, instead of the tightly packed condos of the high city.

The glass domes covering the winter gardens look like mushrooms sprouting from the snowy ground. As a child, I thought they had to be new, because the glass is always clean and transparent.

They still look the same, but it gives me the opposite impression now: something so clean and well-built must be old. We don’t build that kind of cool, expensive stuff anymore - it’s hard to believe the city would spend any money on a public garden these days, and it sure wouldn’t use nanostructured glass.

I’m getting seriously tired of walking by the time we reach the abandoned neighborhood. Did we really slog on an hour-long hike in the freezing snow because I wanted the right atmosphere for a talk? How does anyone put up with me?

At least, the clouds have opened, and the half-moon shines above us, with its spiderweb of cracks radiating in the night sky.

Finally, we reach the broken dome with its skeletal park of dead trees. They look like bony hands, reaching for the moon.

“Happy now?” Daravoi says, collapsing in the snow. “We can’t even make a magical fire. We’ll freeze to death.”

“I’ve thought about that. You know I plan everything in perfect detail,” I answer, taking a thermal bottle from my bag. “It’s full of delicious, warm tea.”

“I hate tea, and you know it,” Dara says with a grimace.

I shrug. “I plan everything in perfect detail. Now you’ll either learn to like tea or freeze to death.”

I also offer him a bottle of rice liquor, and with a flourish, a Chill cake and some Bliss pills.

“You don’t look like the kind of person who does three different drugs in the same evening,” Daravoi says, surprised.

I shrug. “Drugs were the only good thing about high school parties. They help me focus. And I think you had a point, earlier. People find it easier to talk to me, when they’re high.”

“Black Liar’s ass, you’re weird,” he says. “But in a good way, mostly.”

Which is about as flattering a description as I ever got.

We eat some edibles, and I swallow a pill with my tea. I wait for warmth to spread to my chest, and for the sudden stilling of the thoughts ever-spiraling in my mind that comes with amphetamine. It’s one of the few useful skills I picked up in school: getting high enough to make my brain work, without getting wasted.

I look up at the moon. They call it broken, but it’s not, that’s a stupid exaggeration. The moon is whole, it’s the sky that’s cracked, and the Else shines through. The cracks are purple today. As I watch, small motes of light spark from the cracks and come arching down, until they disappear on the horizon. Demons, raining down somewhere near the equator.

Would I take the whole magic is evil thing more seriously, if I lived further south, and weren’t safe from demonfalls? My power is strange, sometimes scary. The Council forbids it, even to its members. But it’s hard to believe it can be evil.

And yet, mages did break the sky, and of the Three Moonbreakers, one was a Liar like me. Millions of people died for their actions, and demons keep falling, and the world gets more and more fucked up every year.

I sit against a broken, slightly curved wall - the base of a small dome, once, maybe a glasshouse. I look at the moon above.

“You think they ever stopped and said, should we go back, before breaking the Moon?” I ask, still looking up. “The Unmaker. The Black Liar. The Exiled. When they got to Selenopolis, do you think they had a talk, and said, yeah, we’ll do this, what could possibly go wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Daravoi says. “But if they debated it, sure as the Night they weren’t high.”

I visualize the three Moonbreakers, grim and engulfed in fire as they are shown in movies, and try to picture them getting wasted and rambling about the pros and cons of going to the Moon.

“Woah, guys,” I say, affecting a stoned tone, “we can get, like, godlike power. Let’s do this.”

I start laughing, Dara joins me, and we can’t stop for a while.

“It’s just that I didn’t really really mean to become a mage,” I say. “I thought I’d go back at some point. I thought this would be one more thing my moms would complain about, or my classmates would laugh about. Remember that time Korentis disappeared for a month and came back with silver tattoos?”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“It’s called slumming,” Daravoi says, “and you’re the worst rich kid ever.”

“Except I really like magic, it turns out,” I say, with the strange crystal clarity drugs give me. “I think… it’s the only thing I’ve ever been any good at. Also, I kinda like living outside society – it’s so much easier, it was so hard to behave like moms and teachers and classmates expected. So I kept taking one more step down the path of a mage, always sure this would be the last.

“I experimented with magic, because why not. When mommy asked questions, I ran from home, because I wasn’t ready to stop, yet, and the Council doesn’t let you practice the Path of Lies. I started stealing, because I had to eat. And taught you magic, because I needed a friend, and some help. And now I committed real crimes, and ThauCon knows my name, and I wonder how I got here. If I take more steps, at some point I’ll look back and won’t be able to find the way home.”

“the moment I touched the Else, I had no way back,” Daravoi says, biting into another edible. “I didn’t want magic. I had problems enough without being a mage. My family was dirt poor, we slept in the streets for a while when I was a child. When my parents died, I was adopted by an airship clan, but I was still an outsider, and the whole clan was running out of cash as I grew up. I got all the crappy jobs, and everyone kept telling me I had to make more money, to pull my weight – airship caravans can get mean, in bad times, especially if you’re not one hundred percent one of them.

“I… I knew something was wrong with me. I had dreams where everything was red, and the world broke into pieces. Sometimes I heard voices that weren’t there, or I would know when people were next to me, even through walls, even if they made no noise. I didn’t want to think about it, I pretended nothing was happening.

“But I started getting so angry. I don’t know if that was because of the magic. Or just that we came here to trade, and in fucking Vorok, everyone looks at me like I’m a filthy animal, because I’m Kalestran, and Kalestrans think I’m barely one of them, because my parents’ clan was destroyed in the war. One day I was angry, so angry, and then there was fire everywhere. Thank the Abyss, we were docked, so I ran, and never stopped. Not that the clan would take me back, anyway – not even my parents would want me. So, fuck you and your rich kid problems.”

He says the last words without anger, then he sits right next to me and puts an arm around my shoulders – which must be awkward, since he’s so short. I usually hate being touched, but my body feels pleasantly numb and heavy, so this time I don’t mind.

“You really think your family would turn you in?” I ask.

He laughs and squeezes me – I think it’s meant as friendly, but he almost breaks my bones.

“You don’t know shit, as usual,” he says. “People hate ThauCon in Kalestre. But you know what they hate even more? Mages. If they find a mage on an airship, they just push them off the cargo bay. Mid-flight. I’ve seen that happen to a girl. Her parents cried, but didn’t help her. Fuck, I considered running to ThauCon for protection.”

“What the Abyss,” I say, “Why do they… do they really…”

He shrugs.

“You really don’t know about Kalestre, do you? Are you that clueless because you’re Vorokan, or because you’re you? I should ask a normal Vorokan. Except they wouldn’t talk to me because they’re too racist. Anyway, Kalestre was rich once. Richer than Vorok, they say - no clue if that’s true or wishful thinking.”

I close my eyes, trying to focus on his voice. It’s hard to think about history in this state, but I feel this is important.

“Mages revolted,” Dara goes on. “The story goes that they had secretly taken control of Kalestre, and wanted to make a new Thaumocracy. My parents believed it firmly – I believed it, too. Now I’m not that sure, given how much stupid shit people make up about mages.

“Maybe it was more like the Zelenian revolts, people wanted out from the Alliance, and mages threw their lot with them. Some say the Black Liar was with them from the beginning, that it was his war. Some say he joined later.

“Anyway, the Alliance sent its armies – the regular ones and then ThauCon. They fought for six years. Then the Alliance got tired of hunting rebels and started bombing cities, and Kalestran mages begged for help. The fucking Custodians came down from the moon. The Exiled herself joined the battle, and they say the world broke and burned where she walked.

“And they fought ThauCon, and broke everything in the process. They couldn’t defeat the mages, but they destroyed the country around them - the survivors became the Faceless Army, you know, which did plenty of terrorist shit after the war.

“Didn’t you study it? It’s where they killed the Black Liar, just out of Kalestre City. Airships give a wide berth to the place of the final battle – they say he broke even time, that the battle never really finished, and if you get too close, you’re sucked in.”

Fuck, did we study this? I had a vague notion the Black Liar died in the Kalestran Rebellion. But even when I tried to study for tests, modern history always sounded boring and distant to me. And I never thought the mage wars could possibly be relevant to me.

“But that was… like, sixty years ago,” I say.

“The city of Kales is still a ruin,” Dara says, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. “I’ve seen it. Most buildings are literally charred. A few are still on fire - Elsefire, of course, they’ve been burning since the war. No one can live there - they say if you look in a mirror, demons come out, and nothing grows within twenty kilometers from the city. That one’s true – I’ve seen it from above, it’s just ash and glass. The Kalestran Republic has been a starving shithole ever since, and people blame it half on ThauCon, half on mages. But they can’t lynch ThauCon, so they do their best to lynch mages.”

“You don’t really have a choice, right?” I say. “You can’t go back to anything.”

“I can’t.” His arms slide down my back, in a more comfortable position, and he leans against my shoulder. “But you can. The world sucks. Rich people suck even more. But it’s not your fault, you’re almost good. Go home while you can, Korentis. I’ll get by.”

“Can’t you join the Council?” I ask. “Your path isn’t forbidden.”

He snorts. “The Council is part of the Alliance. Every part of the Alliance government I dealt with tried to fuck me over. I’ve heard stories of people disappearing when they join the Council. They say they need experiments. Or sacrifices. Never people from rich countries, of course. But who would look out for me? Not my family, not my government.”

Fuck, I must really be the worst rich kid ever, but I want to say that it’s not right, that he shouldn’t be homeless because of a war long finished, he shouldn’t be hiding in fear of deportation, there’s no reason his life should be so much harder than mine. I always knew I’m from a rich family in a rich country. I know about stuff like war and poverty, of course, but they happen to people in the news, not to a boy who’s sitting next to me – well, he’s basically hugging me by now – and who called me a friend.

“We’ll do more than get by, together,” I say, because I’m sorry your life sucks doesn’t cut it. “We’re powerful mages. But you need me, you can’t be a powerful mage alone, you don’t have the style.”

“It’s not a game, Kore,” he says, getting more rigid. “We’re not powerful mages. You’re a weird rich kid who’s read too many stories, and I’m a weird homeless kid who’s scared of being alone.”

Tentatively, I wrap my arm around his shoulders. It’s… strange, I’m not big on touching people. But this feels right, and he holds me a little tighter.

“But we could become powerful for real,” I correct him. “We just need that book. Without magic… yeah, we’re two homeless kids who aren’t even good criminals. But if we could practice our powers, if we could become stronger… you wouldn’t need to fear anyone anymore. I wouldn’t need to care about what people expect anymore.”

“As if I didn’t think about that,” he says, looking up at the Moon. “I’m so tired of bowing and scraping. Of hoping the police doesn’t see me, of never talking back to a clan member, running away from any trouble, because whatever happens I’ll be the one who gets punished. If I get in an argument, I’ll be the one who is wrong, and I’ll have to apologize and beg forgiveness, because they can cast me out. Fuck. My whole life was being nice and helpful or else.”

He's talking faster and faster, and his voice catches, like he’s going to scream, or cry.

“And now I have the power to burn anything, anyone, with a thought,” he says. “Being so powerful that I don’t have to take shit from anyone. Fuck, I like the idea so much, it scares me.”

“See? We both want magic, in the end. It makes sense,” I say. “Do you have any idea how to get that book? You’re all kind of criminal.”

“Maybe I know where to ask,” he says, doubtful. “But beside the risk of getting hanged on Memory Square… are you sure we should do this? Maybe… there are other possibilities. We can stop using magic. We can work on the caravans. Or buy a ticket to Landfall. I’m not sure I want to learn more magic.”

“Why?” I ask, completely lost. He just admitted he has no option, and he desperately wants the power magic would give him.

He clenches his jaw, and I feel his shoulders tensing under my arm. “Because I’ll kill someone, someday. That’s what my magic wants to do. Abyss, have you seen me with that gangster? I always thought I’d be better than all the bullies I met, if I were the one with the power. And look at what I did, the moment I could.”

“He was threatening us, and being extra-rude about it too,” I say. I think I understand his sudden rage better, now – groveling to a petty thief looks no big deal to me, it’s just one more act I have to perform. But for Dara, it’s different.

“Attacking the knife guy was incredibly stupid,” I say. “But honestly? I don’t think it was wrong.”

“What if I had killed him?” Dara asks. His arm slides away from my shoulders, and he turns to face me, his fists clenched. “What if I kill the next one? And then anyone who’s been an asshole to me? And then anyone I don’t like? I…. I’m not sure. I don’t know if all that rage was just me, or the magic, and I can’t tell what would be worse.

“And beyond that…if we keep doing this, dealing with criminals - the real kind, not the petty thieves - at some point we’ll have to fight again, and sooner or later, it will be kill or be killed. And we won’t have a choice, then. But we have a choice now.”

It makes no sense, but I understand. Drugs are amazing.

“I don’t want to kill anyone,” I say. “My magic is just illusions. I don’t think it could kill, even if I wanted.”

“You can still call Elsefire,” Dara says, “and that’s not even it. What if you make someone believe they have solid ground in front of them, and they step into the void - or in front of a train? What if you had made that woman with the gun believe the Uncle was attacking her?”

His words hang heavy in the silence. I take a long sip of tea. Yeah, I can see that with frightening clarity – I could do any of those things.

“I never really thought about that,” I admit.

“Told you, you’re the nice kind of weird,” he says. “But trust me. I’ve seen how it goes, dealing with dangerous people. It looks like you can draw a line, you can make a living without becoming a monster. It doesn’t work. At some point, you’ll need to do something bad to survive. But you can pull back now. Go home. I’ll stop using magic, go to a different caravan, and just work as an airship hand. Or survive as a regular, petty thief.”

“Could you? Just ignore your powers?” I ask.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” he says, sounding frustrated. “I want to find your book. To learn magic. I want to never beg or hide or look down anymore. I want to change everything that is wrong in the world. But really - do we have the right? It’s one thing to steal. Especially from you fucking Vorokans, that’s basically self-service welfare. But I don’t want to become one of the real bad guys. And if we try to find the book… like, we’ll probably end up dead in a ditch. Or hanged in Memory Square. But what if we actually find the book, and survive? What would we become?

“I don’t know what the Three Moonbreaker were thinking when they went to Selenopolis. Maybe they were already evil, or mad, by then. But I mean, they had to be regular people once, like us. I don’t think Keidesek and Ikejon ever said when we grow up, we’ll break the Moon and tear the Veil.”

That’s probably the longest speech he ever made. And he has a point, of course.

“But I want to find out,” I say. “I want to know what I could be. I want to know the hidden truth about magic - the truth about the Hidden Schools, the Order of the Broken Moon - and we’ll never know anything about them, if we go back to normal lives. I can’t take that. You say I’m nice. Maybe, but I’m not really good - I don’t want to kill people, or do more harm than good. But the idea doesn’t scare me as much as that of being ignorant, of going back home, and giving up my chance to learn magic.”

There’s a long pause – it’s hard to say how long, with all the drugs in my bloodstream. I talk to fill the silence, usually, because I don’t like it. But this kind of silence feels good – I see the moon above, I feel Daravoi’s head resting on my shoulder, and even if I’m not consciously touching the Else, I glimpse the possible futures, unfolding from us like a flower, an ever-branching spiral, and even before Dara speaks, I know the choice is made. We’d made it already, I see it now, we were just talking ourselves into it.

“I don’t think we can stop,” he says. “It wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t be able to take shit from the next asshole and pretend to be powerless. And you’d never willingly give up your magic. You like it too much. So, we’ve decided already. We can skip the rest of the feelings and admit it.”

I laugh and take a small swing of burning liquor. I don't drink much alcohol, but it just works best to celebrate.

“To us, then,” I say. “To the powerful mages we’ll be. And to regrets, and drugs, and the broken moon.”