Alix was loath to wear his Halicynth ‘uniform’ into the Burns. It was valuable, yes, but more importantly it was distinct. Even if he wasn’t going to be tracked just passing through the outer gate, nothing stopped anyone just following him via the distinct charcoal grey cut. In the end, though, he was more or less forced to—he simply hadn’t thought to bring any other normal clothes when being taken to Halicynth in the first place. They would have been destroyed along with the entire inside of his apartment.

It will be fine, Alix reasoned, With all this rain, I’ll have to wear my cloak anyway. That would hopefully throw off any mundane stalkers. Dressed so, Alix drifted down the—thankfully empty—Rookery and out into Lacurna. He’d spent all morning cooped up in his little room, doing homework and the like. It was now almost midday and almost everyone in the housing had emptied out. Yuhan herself had disturbed him to say that she needed to go somewhere, and that she wouldn’t be back until later. ‘That’s fine, I won’t be either,’ Alix had said, to which Yuhan hadn’t responded.

Electing to walk, Alix hurried through a route he thought would have little traffic. Rain meant very little in Lacurna; it was a common annoyance, rarely stronger than a continual deluge across rooftops and the eaves lining many roads. Alix kept beneath these when he could, but his oilcloth was covered in a layer of water before he reached the outer gate and momentarily shook himself.

Moment of truth, Alix. He suffered a short moment of anxiety as the Redjackets scrutinised him entering. But it was entirely unfounded. After coming within a certain range of the first portcullis, his headache flared in finger-thin point. The feeling—which came from his Nexus, Alix was certain—abated quickly. And then he might as well have been through the wall already. Step after step, the guards of the gate kept seemingly finding more important things to be looking at, or halting others instead of him. It would have been almost completely unnoticeable if Alix hadn’t been searching for—and worrying about—this exact ordeal.

It was as if Alix wasn’t quite there. A nonperson. He registered on some list that told the Redjackets he wasn’t part of the gigantic population they were tasked to corral. And so they simply let him through. If some official asked the Civil Guard for a list of people they’d let through that day, I bet I wouldn’t be one of them. Alix stepped into the burns having casually walked through one of the most secure checkpoints in all of Lacurna.

The way to his parents’ estate from there was easy. Despite there being no overhanging awnings, the tightly cramped—and often haphazardly leaning—buildings made it easy to navigate without getting too wet. People still huddled under cloth, but unlike in Cityside, they used shawls instead of coats or umbrellas. Alix didn’t fail to notice the Civil Guard patrols. Nobody did. They marched down the streets in threes and fours, glaring at anyone who looked their way. Keep your head down, Alix.

Trying to avoid stepping in puddles, Alix pushed open the slick gate to the Lanyura grounds and walked through a small garden to the grand front doors. The knocks rang through both the walls and his bones. Alix shivered at the cold. They ought to be here, right? he wondered to himself, could they be out somewhere—

The door opened with a wild swing. Theo stared up at him.

“Good day, Theo,” Alix offered in place of Theo’s traditional courtesy. Is something off? Alix couldn’t possibly remember the man being anything other than completely professional. “Is anything the matter?”

“Ah, no. Of course not. My deepest apologies young master. Please, come in. Take off your shoes and coat. Your father is out for some business. But your mother has had her study renovated. She is up there now.”

Theo appeared to have completely recovered from whatever strange affliction that had temporarily overtaken him. He politely took both Alix’s shoes and then his oilcloth coat, though something halted him again when he caught sight of Alix’s garments.

“Do you like them?” Alix asked, trying to fill the silence and reduce the butler’s suspicion, “I had them made for me just a few days ago. I think they might be a new trend.”

“Oh, of course sir, dashing.” The man shook his head and stepped away to store muddy shoes and cloak. “Please, let me tell your mother of your arrival.”

Alix only shrugged; there was nothing unusual about that, at least. He loitered on the first floor, passing through the dining room and drawing rooms, trailing his fingers across some new pieces of furniture.

Only, Theo wasn’t quick to return. Alix ended up at the base of the stairs, tapping his foot impatiently. What is he doing? Alix wondered. Ultimately, waiting for the servant to come and get him was unnecessary. Alix made his own way up the stairs. A slammed door drew his attention when he was nearing the top. He looked up to see Theo having just exited his mother’s study, hands clasped tightly. He leaned back against the door.

“Theodore!” Alix , voice now a mixture of concern and trepidation. The man jumped at the sound of his name, “Please tell me what’s going on? Are you alright? You seem slightly dizzy.”

And it was true; Theo looked lightheaded, or at least some other variation on ‘distinctly ill’. Alix hurried towards the man while he repeatedly opened and closed his mouth, no sound emerging. When Alix got near, he pulled himself up straight using a doorknob.

“Ah, don’t worry about me. I’ll take myself to lie down.” He swallowed. Alix watched the bobble travel down his neck. “Please step inside. Your mother wishes to speak with you.” But then right before Theo took his hand off the doorknob, he looked to Alix and in a whisper said, “This isn’t the money, but it might have to be enough.” Then he slipped something into Alix’s back pocket and threw open the doors to the study.

“Greetings, mother,” Alix said, watching Theo scamper off down the hallway but not being able to ask him about his strange behaviour. I’ll find him later, as well as look at whatever’s in my pocket now. But turning to face the room gave him whiplash at how different it was.

Isha Lanyura’s study was decadent. And not strictly in material wealth, but rather in grandeur and a sort of imposing quality that came from its arrangement. Because it was sparse. Alix’s feet stepped onto hard wooden boards instead of a rug. And no bookshelves lined the bare walls. The sole piece of furniture was a large, curving desk taking centre stage of the room. A high-backed leather chair sat behind it, swivelled around so that the woman sitting it faced out the back window.

Because what a window it was. Alix was speechless the moment he noticed it: a massive, stained-glass depiction of a crow in flight.

“Welcome, Alix.” Isha spun the chair around. Her eyes glinted in the harsh manalight. “I haven’t been expecting you at all.”

Immediately, her tone and posture struck Alix as just off. The doors hadn’t closed behind him, but they might as well be locked. Alix was chained down by the sharp gaze of his mother.

“Why not?” Alix responded to the strange comment, “I’m perhaps early to collect my monthly allowance, but that might just be due to my spending habits as of late.”

Isha’s smile stretched slightly wider.

“Because you disappeared from your home—the apartment in Gartmans district—six days ago, when its entire interior was burnt to a crisp. You should be dead.”

There was no sound for a moment. Absolute silence reigned as Isha held Alix within a vice-like grip made from his own uncertainty. She isn’t supposed to know where I live, Alix thought, terrified, But she knows. She knows enough to have been informed when I was taken to the Halicynth program. Someone had been watching—checking the next day, most likely. Because if you never see someone leave, and then suddenly their bed is ash, it would be very easy to draw the wrong conclusion.

“I’m not,” he said eventually, meeting her eyes, “And why did you track down where I live?”

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“Oh please,” she hissed, standing up and slamming an arm onto the thick desk, “You come here every month, demand money, then run away to your pathetic cubbyhole up in Cityside as if the first thing I did years ago wouldn’t be to find you. You think you’re so Mother-damned mighty for ‘making it in the city’. But you aren’t, are you? Else I wouldn’t see your ungrateful face here again every fucking month.”

She paused, briefly relieving Alix from the verbal tirade. This was an anger he had never before witnessed. Isha had never been so emotional either. I suppose that’s where I get it from then, he thought dryly, not crude lies, but the truth under layers of subterfuge and misdirection. You haven’t spoken kind words to me in almost three years.

“When you left,” she said, slightly more softly, “At sixteen or so. You were so incredibly naive. I convinced myself I was doing it for your own good, that you momentarily disagreed with us because you didn’t understand. But no!” She laughed—a cackling howl that put Alix on edge. “I wasn’t doing it for you, because I knew that you would never truly come back. It was because I am always loath to part with any sort of… asset.”

“So you stalked me,” Alix retorted, “You learned about me and my life when I didn’t want to be a part of yours. Because of some misconstrued belief that you own me. What kind of inane behaviour is that? And you’ve kept letting me back in, why?”

“I created you.” She said it with such conviction and dripping malice. “And you were a Lanyura for years with us, before simply rejecting your birthright.”

“I have always and will always do what I choose and what I choose only,” Alix shot back, “Your ‘business’ down here in the Burns is crime, Isha. That’s the birthright I rejected. And look how it’s going now, with Redjackets at every corner due to some botched assassination attempt.”

Alix’s hands went still. His mother stared at him blankly. She knows, Alix realised, She knows about the murder. She knows exactly why the Redjackets are here. And how she knew that Alix did as well. Because of my stupid mouth.

But instead of being triumphant like Alix might have expected her to be, Isha showed fear for the first time that night. Her face flicked through a few auxiliary emotions such as confusion and disgust, before ultimately settling on dread.

“The Praetorians,” she whispered, wide eyes locked onto Alix’s. “They got to you first. That's why the apartment—” she cut off, looking at him up and down. Then she laughed again, seeming to drown out every other sound in the world. “You even wear the mage-armour of Old Lacurna! Bravo, bravo! Doesn’t the Mother have such a flagrant sense of humour? That She would have my own child taken by the Crown?”

If Alix had been hesitant before, he was beside himself with doubt now. How does she know? How could she possibly know any of this? Unless…

Isha stood up on the table, her figure making a dramatic silhouette as a bolt of lightning flashed somewhere in the distance. “But the irony is, this makes the decision easier. Someone else already has you, Alix. The Praetorians do—whom I hate almost as much as the Crown himself. You’re worth more dead than alive. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Rain hammered against the stained glass crow.

Alix connected the dots. His headache spiked. Oh Mother-fucking-damn it.

Alix dove as a five hundred pound, solid wooden desk came sliding towards him. It was all he could do to hurl himself out of the way, desperately trying to avoid being hit. He saw it as if frozen: Isha standing at the other side of the room, hands outstretched as if she’d thrown the desk herself. A shining blue gemstone was tucked under a thumb in one hand.

The projectile connected with the side of Alix’s hip. Not directly, as he was close to dodging it, but enough to send him spinning into a back corner of the room. The brunt of the impact was taken in his forearms, grazing the skin around the elbows and disorienting him as he tried to push himself off the floor. Isha walked slowly, gloating.

“The Crowspawn are all mine,” she said, savouring the small triumph, “It’s so much bigger than you could possibly know. We control the markets, the agriculture, the apothecaries throughout the Burns. And I don’t need some loose end like you getting entangled in matters you don’t belong in.”

Alix had pushed himself up to his knees now, spluttering. Mother is a mage, he thought belatedly, wishing he were more surprised about her trying to murder him instead. She’s never shown magic in front of me. Why?

“Magic, how?” he choked out. Isha paused.

“You’re surprised I’m a mage? Well, what can I say? Maybe your Praetorian regime isn’t as selective as you might think. Or maybe just worse at its brainwashing.” She chuckled at herself while Alix continued struggling to stand.

What do I have, his mind raced, I’m winded, on the ground. A rogue mage stands over me. I cannot do magic. I cannot do magic. I cannot—

Alix felt another piercing pain in his brain stem.

Rolling to the left without thinking, he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye wooden panels burst apart right where he’d been. Isha frowned. Alix pushed shakily to his feet. I can walk. That is something I have.

“You’re doing something. I can’t tell what,” Isha murmured to herself. Glancing back at the ruined desk, she discounted it as a weapon. Then her gaze fell upon the wooden shards smashed up from the floor. Alix wasn’t in the state of mind to do anything but watch as they burst into flame, casting the chamber into a warm glow. The crow mural glinted mischievously.

“I’m not going to pretend that it’s an honour to be killed by me,” she mused, picking up the flaming debris with a metaphysical flex, “I’m sure you would have preferred to be killed silently, in the night, by the individual I sent for you only recently. Only you’d escaped them without my knowing, and so now I have to deal with it here.”

“At least an assassin would be a competent mage,” Alix shot back. The encroaching flames stopped.

“Excuse me?” Isha said. A dangerous lilt accompanied her voice.

Desperately trying to buy time—for something, anything at all—he continued talking. “An assassin would’ve done it in the first strike. No, being killed by you isn’t an honour, it’s an embarrassment.”

The flames were let loose, flying straight at his face. But he dropped to the floor, letting the flaming pieces collide overhead and rain down onto him. Hot cinders spewed down the back of his neck and the smell of burnt hair in his nostrils. But the spent debris lay scattered around him. A few larger pieces were still aflame, and the room was beginning to fill with smoke.

“Do yourself a favour and die already.” Isha was partially obscured by the smoke. But Alix could locate her by incessant footsteps. Slowly, keeping a low profile, he reached out to the nearest burning torch, using the back of his arm to put out a patch of flame which he gripped tightly. It’s now or never.

“Stop hiding!” A gust of wind rocked the room, clearing the smoke but doing little to push Alix off his collision course for Isha’s head. Flaming club raised behind his shoulder, the embers bounced off his coat as he swung it with all the force he could muster. She looked towards him at exactly that moment, eyes flicking over the last face she would ever see—

Isha raised a hand. The improvised club fell still and the fire extinguished. Alix stumbled as the weapon was wrenched out of his hand by an arcane force. She’d taken the entire energy of the flame, which she now built up while also extinguishing the remaining burning wood. Alix felt a massive, crushing hand wrap around him, lifting him up into the air.

He saw the furious contortion of his mother’s face one last time before her magic threw him directly into the window.

It folded like paper—or like glass, more accurately—crumpling in its wire frame as each individual fragment shattered. They rained around Alix as he was slammed out of the second story window. The whole world became kaleidoscopic, refracted through the myriad glass shards which were flying through the air and simultaneously biting into his skin.

There was heat in the rain. Light reflected by glass. Alix didn’t know how, but he came into consciousness on the cobblestones of the street below. A fall that should have killed him. When he tried to stand he found that it wasn’t difficult. And that neither were any of his bones damaged in the fall. He also noticed the puddles: still slippery beneath his fingers and intermixed with rapidly thawing patches of ice.

Get up, Alix. You’re not safe here.