“Ruhspont?” asked Mariko.

“Rough Spout, a demonic acid spell.” The same one I had given to Maggie to keep her busy. I decided to cut off the obvious question. “I’ve seen it in action before in England. Simply a dreadful spell. You’re lucky to still have your arm.”

She glanced down to where I was still ministering to her hand. “Are you done yet?”

I didn’t answer right away as I checked to make sure I hadn’t missed a spot. With the fresh burns healed, her hand was surprisingly soft, except for some calluses I took to be from hours of holding a drawing pen. From the wrist up, she had lived a charmed life. It made her marred forearm stand out all the more. That was definitely the work of Rough Spout; demonic magic had a way of staying in human tissue long after any physical mark ought to have faded.

I must have stared longer than I intended, since she didn’t wait for my go ahead before she broke my grip and hastily rolled up her sleeve. “You see why I keep it hidden.” She scratched her ruined forearm through her jacket, looking utterly crestfallen.

I tried my winningest smile. “I was wondering why you wore long sleeves all summer. I was starting to think you were coldblooded.”

She had never really stopped crying, but my attempt at humor turned the spigot to full blast. Well, that was quite the opposite of what I had hoped for. She hid her face in her hands as she tried to regain control of herself.

“Mariko?” I wished I’d had the fortitude to just walk out of there. If I’d been able to feel sympathy for Haru, it was so much worse for somebody I gave a damn about. I didn’t want to be there, feeling her misery as my own. This wasn’t my fight. It wasn’t my fault either, since she had spilled the tea and hurt herself. Hell, I’d done enough by healing her.

I found that I couldn’t. I told myself it was awkward to get out of the beanbag chair, and that I slung a comforting arm over her shoulders to steady myself, lest I fall over. I didn’t quite believe it, but it was a concession to my devilhood.

“Does it hurt?’

“Sometimes,” she said. “It itches most of the time. Sometimes it burns like the night it happened.” She bit her lip and winced. “Like now. I think some of your healing magic hit the scar tissue.”

“My apologies.”

“No, don’t. That was a nicely done Minor Heal.”

“You’ve taught me well,” I said.

She put on a brave face for me. “Could you get something from my purse? You’ll find a bottle in the outside pocket.”

I nodded, forgetting my earlier excuse that I couldn’t stand easily. I couldn’t make out most of the label; the letters were English, but it was technical jargon. All I could understand was, ‘for muscle spasms. Take two to four per day, as needed.’ I retrieved a bottle of water from a minifridge in the corner while I was at it.

“You’re always so thoughtful,” she said, her voice gravelly. She took her pill and let out a relaxed sigh, settling into the beanbag chair.

I stayed standing, trying to be offended by her lies and slander. “It’s nothing special.” I was simply currying favor, of course. Of course.

“No, I’m serious.” She gulped, which seemed to get her tears under control. “Paul saw my arm once, when we...” She trailed off, before shaking her head. “I think it disappointed or disgusted him.” She looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “He never asked where it came from.”

“Oh, is that how it went down?” A knot of indignation formed in my stomach. “What kind of a lover wouldn’t want to hear?”

She winced. “I didn’t think much of it at the time. It was a lot to dump on somebody. I thought he’d be ready eventually.”

“Did you try to explain about your arm?”

She held up a single finger. “I offered to once, and I was relieved when he said no. I didn’t want to tell, and I could tell he didn’t want to hear it.”

“Strange, I’ve never known you to suffer in silence. You’re always going on about some moral outrage or slight. You even had sympathy for those demons in the movie.”

“You make me sound like some sort of a basket case.” She puffed her cheeks out in a pout. “It’s just random chance! You always see me at my worst.”

“At your worst? Chin up, my dear. There’s no shame in having a few scars.” I rolled up the sleeve on my left arm, revealing old wounds left by the spells of some lucky Wizard Corpsman. Well, not lucky enough to survive, but he left his mark. The school doctor had treated me for the scar tissue, but they were still plainly visible. “You see? We match.”

“I’m not that vain,” she said. “I don’t like it, but that isn’t the problem.”

Her hands were clasped together, but I could just make out the constant movement. The pills had done their work, but the slight tremor was still there. “It’s your art.”

She nodded. “The doctors don’t know much about demonic magic, but the prognosis isn’t good. It’s been more than six months, and there hasn’t been any improvement. It just burns less often.”

“What happened?”

She shook her head. “It’s a horrible story that you don’t need to-”

“Out of the question,” I said. “None of this evasion. Nothing you can say will shock me. Not after what I’ve seen.”

“I suppose you deserve to know,” she said. “What have you heard about the Taiwan Incident?”

“Is that really what everybody calls it?”

She shrugged. “That’s what they named it in the news.”

“I suppose it’s as good as any. Kiyo gave me a summary of what happened to you all there,” I said. “The students were sent there during the invasion of England, since there simply weren’t enough teachers around to teach the regular classes for a few weeks. They made it a field trip.”

She smiled more fully than she had in ages. “It was wonderful at the start. I love travelling, and Taiwan had been on my to do list for a long time. I was convinced that that was when Hiro would notice me, or I would finally work up the courage to confess. Kiyo and Yukiko thought the same thing.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“That clearly didn’t happen, or else one of you would have been engaged to him before I even arrived.”

“It might have. It was going so well, and then…” She flopped back on the beanbag chair and stared up at the ceiling. Seeing that it was going to be a longer story than I’d expected, I grabbed a chair and turned it backwards so I could lean forward. “We were assigned to work with a local Wizard Corpsman, Tan Che Wei. We didn’t know he was Holy Brother Gyrfalcon. There are so many of them out there; even before the fallout from the Taiwan Incident drove them underground, most of the members joined in secret.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“He had a terrible limp after he fought in Madagascar, so they wouldn’t send him to England to fight there. He taught all of us in Class 3-B. He wasn’t… enthusiastic about me being a pacifist, but he respected my arrangement with the Headmaster. He was such a breath of fresh air after I had spent all year constantly arguing with Mr. Maki.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

“Yukiko got drafted into helping Tan with some office work.”

“Of course they would use the CEO’s daughter for that,” I said.

She nodded. “She noticed a file hidden under a desk. It detailed incoming shipments of grains, ore and something only labelled ‘curios,’ with livestock being sent as payment.” She gripped her wrist as it began to tremble again. I had overlooked her troubles for months, but it was plain as day once I knew what to look for. “Except it wasn’t pigs or cattle.”

“We can skip ahead a little,” I said, noticing her anxiety. “Kiyo told me about this. The Holy Brotherhood was trading British refugees to the Far East Horde for demonic fabricata, and you lot uncovered it. It sounds like you foiled their whole operation.”

She nodded. “Tan Che Wei needed a leg brace to get around, but he was a skilled wizard. It took all of us working together to bring him down.”

That phrasing struck me as odd, coming from her. “Was? Past tense? I can’t imagine you condoning an execution.”

Mariko looked aghast. “No, absolutely not! Everyone else wanted to, after we saw those poor wretches in their cells, but we would be no better than him and his men if we killed him.”

“What went wrong?”

Her face fell again. “Hiro listened to me. I caught Gyrfalcon in a Spectral Web and Hiro punched him out. While our attention was turned towards helping those poor people, he woke up and grabbed a demonic fabricata wand.” Her eyes lost focus as she sat back up, clasping her trembling hands tightly in front of her. “He shouted, ‘Humanity First! Death to demonkin!’ and sprayed me with a horrible green liquid. I got a Svalinn’s Mercy shield up, but some splattered around the sides. I was never whole again after that. I barely talked Hiro out of killing him then and there. He’s in a prison somewhere now.”

“Wait, you were able to argue with Hiro after you got hit by a Rough Spout?”

She nodded.

“I’ve seen grown orcs sob like infants with less of a wound than that. You’re tougher than I gave you credit for.” Thank the Dark Lord she was too foolish to fight back, or she would have been a force to be reckoned with.

“You aren’t the first person to say that.” She gulped, clearly struggling to go on. “The Wizard Corps s-said I was brave, too. We all received a medal for valor.”

“It sounds like you all deserved it.”

She snorted derisively. “I don’t know about everyone else, but I keep mine in a sock drawer. I’d throw the darn thing away if I thought I could get away with it.” She closed her eyes and the tears flowed again. “I never wanted to fight anybody. It isn’t my place to decide who lives and dies. I sp-spent all those years learning how to draw. Before the corps drafted me, I took third place in a magazine contest. They said I was promising, but still rough. I know I could have made it, b-but now my hand is shot.”

“Then why are you still here? If you’re an invalid, they should send you home! Even the Horde would do that.”

“I tried to argue that,” she said, holding her head in her hands. “I’m good enough for them, though. I c-can’t hold a pen straight, but I can cast a spell.”

“Can you?” I asked. “If you twitch like you did the other day in class, you could be a danger to everyone around you.”

“It usually isn’t too hard to cast. I just forgot to take my pill that morning,” she said. “I forgot today, too. Even then, wizards are so rare that they say can’t even spare a conscientious objector with a tremor.” She stood up and began to pace. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. They won’t let me leave. I can’t graduate if I don’t learn combat magic and fight in the war games.”

“Seems to me they don’t have much leverage. If they’re so insistent on having you, what can they do? Throw you in a real prison?”

“This school is my prison,” she said. “I’m in their system, and I won’t get out until I get with their program, which I refuse to do.”

Something finally clicked. “Have you been here for three years? You’re always insisting you’re only two years older than me.”

She shook her head. “No. I kept my magic secret to dodge the draft, but I was found out. I joined around the same time as the others.”

“I don’t get why you’re so difficult. I assure you that there isn’t a devil in the Grim Horde who would hesitate to kill you.” They might have had some fun with her first, but she would inevitably meet her maker, since I doubted Our Father Below would want anything to do with her.

That stopped her in her tracks. “You always sound so familiar with devil magic and the Horde,” she said, her voice tinged with suspicion.

“I barely got out of England alive,” I said, hastily. “The island’s swarming with their soldiers. I’m here because I figured out how they think. Maybe it’s time for you to give in. It’s nice that you have your morals, but things would be much easier if you just went with the flow.”

“No!” She stomped over and jabbed a finger in my face. “The right things aren’t easy!”

“Doing what you think is right hasn’t profited you any,” I said.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Everybody deserves a chance to turn themselves around, even a Holy Brother or a devil. It is not my place to murder anybody and cut off that chance, so I won’t learn to kill. Right isn’t about gain, it’s good for its own sake.”

I wondered if she was in the Enemy’s camp. She sounded sanctimonious enough. That traitorous voice in the back of my head pointed out that seeking the easy path had gotten me enmeshed with Maggie’s schemes. The devilish path could trap you just as much as her morals.

I told that voice to go kiss a mammoth. If I would end up trapped regardless, I’d rather have my fun first.

“Everybody, huh?”

“Absolutely everybody,” she said.

What nonsense. She’d never say that if she really knew who she was talking to. Then again, Mariko had never been a practical woman. She might just have been idiotic enough to try and reform me. As if that could work.

“It fits you. You love doing things the hard way,” I said. “You want to find a nice man without letting him know you’re interested, you want to befriend merciless devils, and you would rather wear sweaters in August than let anybody know you’re miserable.”

The righteous fire that had animated her was snuffed out in an instant. She scratched at her ruined forearm. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“They were there,” I said. “They must know about your arm.”

“Yes, but I haven’t told them about my shakes. Hiro already thinks he failed me. He doesn’t need to know; it won’t make my hand any steadier.”

“I suppose we all have our secrets,” I said. “I can keep yours.”

“You do, don’t you?” Her brow raised, but if my little Freudian slip raised her suspicions, she didn’t comment. “You’re always there to listen to me. If you need to unburden yourself, I’m here for you.”

That almost sounded nice. A shame that it was impossible. “Here’s how you can repay me,” I said. “When you come to class tomorrow, braid your hair and look like you slept more than a few minutes. If anybody asks what’s the matter, just bloody tell them about Paul. You can leave out the part about me finding you in the woods, of course.” I paused. “In fact, I would consider it a personal favor if you did.”

She smiled thinly. “I think I can manage that.”

Thank Our Father Below for small favors.

Mariko hesitated a moment before taking my hand in both of hers. The tremor was still there, naturally. “Thank you, Soren. This has been an enormous load off of my shoulders.”

“Anybody would have done it,” I said. “Please, don’t mention it.” Please.

She shook her head, spilling her hair over her face. I could see why she usually kept it tied. “You’re one of the only people at this school who doesn’t make me feel like a bother or a decoration. The man I thought I loved wasn’t interested. So no, not anybody would have done it. I appreciate you.”

What an absolute fool. No wonder she had gone looking for a lasting romance with a man who only wanted a quick fling. She was an awful judge of character.