Over the next week or so, no convenient leads dropped right into our laps. I was getting really sick of trying to solve mysteries on basically no information. Maybe this was why most people went to teachers or the police or whatever, instead of trying to do this kind of thing themselves, but all the mysteries I was currently dealing with were either ‘you don’t want the school staff to know you’re making trouble’ mysteries or ‘Saina doesn’t want her family to know about this’ mysteries, so we were just going to have to deal with it.
I was eating lunch in the cafeteria one day, pretending to care about the maths assignment I was sort-of working on at the same time, when I noticed that Max and Magista had walked in together. They were holding hands and talking about something apparently lighthearted and funny, and I noticed them both scan the room before stopping near the buffet table. The scan was subtle; if I hadn’t been around Max so much, I wouldn’t have even noticed it, but I knew what Max looked like when he was looking for people. They kissed, then Magista gave a little wave and left. Max turned to get his food, and… relaxed? Maybe I was reading his body language wrong.
The exchange wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t often that I saw them together, but the pair had regular dates so I assumed all that was going well. And I knew there was a pretty heavy social and political component to their arrangement, so coming here to accidentally-on-purpose be where specific people could see them kiss (which is what I had to assume was happening) sounded like the kind of thing they’d do. But I remembered just how uncomfortable Max had seemed around his ‘uncle’ the moment the man’s back was turned. Had he been uncomfortable around Magista? Max didn’t like politics, and I knew that was part – a big part – of why he’d started dating her, but was she helping him, or…?
I liked Magista. I did. I didn’t think she’d hurt Max on purpose. I did think she had the tendency to assume other people were as into her little games as she was, and might get carried away, and I knew that Max was the type to get involved with things he didn’t like just to keep the peace.
It wasn’t any of my business, of course. I was Max’s friend, not his keeper. Just because the last time I’d taken my eyes off him he’d nearly died in a magical labyrinth didn’t mean I had any right to butt into his romantic life. He didn’t even like me knowing about his past or being anywhere near his family, let alone this. It was absolutely none of my business.
So I followed Magista out of the cafeteria, hoping to catch her alone for a quic chat. I didn’t know what I was going to say, just… make casual conversation, I supposed.
The corridor outside the cafeteria wasn’t very crowded, and I tried to catch her eye, but she mustn’t have noticed me. Her eyes skipped right over me and she turned down a side corridor. I jogged after her; we were almost at her room when I caught up. “Hey, Magista! Can we talk?”
“Kayden!” Her face broke into a wide, friendly smile. “We missed you at the party. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Prior arrangements. You know how it is. Look, I just wanted to ask you about – ”
“Sure, sure. Come on in.” We’d reached Magista’s room; she waved me inside. I’d only meant to catch her for a moment out in the corridor; going into her room for this felt kind of… weird. Like I was coming into her territory. But I couldn’t exactly insist that we hang out in the corridor; she was already entering, and asking her to come out again would be weirder. I followed her inside.
“Sit, sit. I’ll make tea.”
I’d been here before so the room layout wasn’t a surprise. Dorm America had a little table and chairs in the main part of the room and the space behind an unused bed had been turned into a kitchenette. I’d kind of gone off tea since a spell construct had tried to use the rules of tea drinking hospitality to trap me in the Pit during my Initiation, but there wasn’t really a polite way to tell someone not to make you tea, so I sat while she went to do so.
Nor was there really a way to start the conversation while she was making tea. The layout of the room was such that I was seated pretty close to the door and the kitchenette, behind one of the far beds, was mostly hidden from me by one of the stone walls dividing the beds. (If I were really paranoid, I’d point out that that was a great setup for poisoning guests with tea, but even I wasn’t paranoid enough to think that a friend of mine was going to poison me. I wasn’t the Heiress of Duniyasar.) My options were to get up and follow her further into the room, which was kind of a rude thing to do in someone’s bedroom after being told to sit down, or shout awkwardly across the room and around a stone wall. Instead I sat in impatient silence while she heated the water with her magic (which was fortunately very quick) and filled the teapot.
Then, instead of bringing the teapot to the table to stew, she waited for it to stew in the kitchenette.
For the entire three freaking minutes. While I tried not to shift impatiently or be too obvious about the glances I was shooting the door, fully aware that Magistus or di Fiore could come in at any moment and I’d have to awkwardly extract myself without getting our private conversation.
Then Magista picked up the tea tray, slid easily over the bed in her way as if she wasn’t carrying multiple delicate object of uneven weight including one of dangerously hot water, and set it down. She poured our tea, handed me a cup, and sat opposite me.
“You wanted to ask me something?” she said with a smile.
Even sitting down, Magista was taller than me. This wasn’t exactly a surprise, but the table between us was small enough that I definitely felt myself looking upward a little to meet her eyes. Stupid genetics. I opened my mouth, realised I should have spent the last three minutes planning what I actually wanted to say, and ended up going with the stupidest and most awkward phrasing ever. “What are your intentions towards Max?”
Oh my god. Really? That’s what I was going with? I sounded like an eighteenth century farmer protecting his daughter’s virtue. What the fuck.
Magista, however, looked delighted. “Oh! Is this a shovel talk?” She leaned forward and grinned excitedly. “I’ve never had one! Usually it’s Magistus getting defensive on my behalf… go on, say your piece.”
“What? No! No, it’s… I just… That’s not what…”
“Calm down, Kayden, I’m just messing with you. Although, some friendly advice for your next shovel talk, you’re going to want to sound a lot more direct and serious than this. This isn’t intimidating at all. Come on, look me in the eyes and tell me directly.”
Looking her in the eyes meant looking upward, which didn’t sound intimidating at all. But I was kind of getting pissed off, so maybe that would suffice. “Stop fucking around, Magista. Max is my friend, and I don’t want him hurt.”
“That’s a good start. Good tone. Although your position is weakened by not really having much to threaten people with… although I guess the next time you give this talk to someone it won’t be me, so you can threaten people with me and Magistus.” She sipped her tea. “Maybe some insinuations of your past accomplishments would help? I don’t think the familiarity mark is going to assist you in this kind of thing, but catching Clara was pretty big. You can use that to imply what happens to people who hurt your friends.”
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I’d be annoyed that she wasn’t taking me seriously, except that I was kind of sounding like an idiot. I didn’t come here to be confrontational, but that didn’t seem to matter. It was becoming obvious that the direction this conversation took wasn’t going to be up to me.
“Have you seen her around recently?” Magista asked.
No, no. Blustery distraction and forced subject changes were my gimmick. She couldn’t have them.
“That doesn’t matter. I’m worried about Max.”
“Why? Did something happen?”
“N-no, not really. I just… look, he doesn’t like politics and stuff as much as you do, alright?”
“I noticed,” she said, sounding vaguely amused.
“Right, and he’s kind of been pulled into a lot of stuff. You’ll look out for him, right?”
“I look out for all of my friends, Kayden.”
That wasn’t a promise. “Right, but you and him – ”
“I’m surprised that you of all people haven’t noticed how ruthless he can be. You’re the friend he used as an experimental test subject to boost his own reputation.”
“What?!” I put a hand over the familiarity mark on my arm, which was a useless gesture since it was somewhat larger than my hand. “No, he – that’s not how it happened!”
“Oh? He didn’t risk your life and Kylie’s on a science project?”
“No, that’s – ” I took a deep breath, forced myself to calm down. Telling Magista what had actually happened would break so many promises of secrecy and probably be a really bad idea, but I coulndn’t let her walk around with this impression of Max, either. “I volunteered. I was the one pushing for the experiment, actually.”
“Uh-huh.” Magista didn’t bother to hide the doubt in her voice. She sipped her tea.
“It’s true! You know how cautious Max is; do you really think he’d ever – ”
“I know that he was all set to come here as an initiate and work with us, and as soon as he laid eyes on you and Kylie he just had to help you out and room with you instead. Which is fine! You and Kylie are great. It’s just a little strange, isn’t it? And after nearly a year and a half with him, I’m sure you thought you were volunteering and pushing for the project, but – ”
‘Max wanted to room with us to get away from you because at that point he didn’t like you very much’ was the opposite of a diplomatic answer. Instead, I went with, “So you think Max is some secret genius who somehow figured out the secret to human familiarity before even coming to school, took one look at Kylie and me and said ‘oh, he’ll be able to handle her spell without dying, this is perfect!’ and then took almost a year and a half to actually do anything about it? Come off it, Magista.”
“I’m not saying he had everything worked out back then, but if he had the inkling of the theory and the important traits are visually distinguishable – ”
“Yeah, well, they’re not.”
“If you say so. He’s always idolised Instruktanto Miratova, though, and would’ve been pretty excited about coming to learn from her. If he could even guess your compatibility by just looking at you, he – ”
“Would’ve brought the theory to her right away and done smaller, safer experiments with her about it, not run off on his own to nearly get us killed! Which, again, wasn’t what happened.”
Magista sipped her tea again, watching me. “So Miratova didn’t run this project? You guys went behind your surveyanto’s back? I bet she was pretty ticked off about that.”
“She threatened to expel us,” I admitted. “It was all very tense.”
Magista grinned. “I wouldn’t worry about her doing that.”
“I know. Then the school doesn’t get Max’s prestige and she can’t monitor Kylie and my health.”
“Exactly.” She put her teacup down. “Sorry about everything I just said. You and I both know that Max is a good person. My whole point is, most of the school has no reason to know that. Max might not be as interested in politics as his family would prefer, but this is the image he’s saddled himself with; a ruthless, if very intelligent, scientist, who won’t hesitate to endanger his less politically powerful friends in the pursuit of knowledge. It’s a pretty useful image, actually, but it’s not something I think he wants to handle alone. Although I’m sure the fact that he tried to destroy your link and clearly failed to do so tells anyone who bothers to look close enough that he has a lot less control over the situation than he’d like them to believe.
“How do you know – ?” Look close enough. I glanced down at the mark on my arm; a normal, standard, familiarity mark… with three long slashed through it, and obvious attempt to cancel the link. The familiarity runes were complicated enough that the cancellation wasn’t really visible to someone who wasn’t properly inspecting the mark, butthey were obvious if you looked for them. And I had no idea if Max wanted that bit of information to be public knowledge… damn it, how many people had noticed already? I was going to have to start wearing long sleeves again.
“So what, exactly, are your concerns about our relationship?” Magista asked.
“I’m not concerned about your relationship,” I protested, while feeling concerned about their relationship.
“Hey, remember, this is a shovel talk! Be more direct!”
“Are you going to take this seriously?”
“No, not even a little bit.”
I sighed. “Look. I know you like doing the social stuff. I know you like it and Max doesn’t and he’s letting you act in his stead with some of his social stuff, and that’s probably good for the Cottingly reputation or whatever, it’s none of my business and I don’t care. But I also know you’re kind of…”
“Hmm?”
“… Good at talking people into things. And Max is very busy now, and I don’t want him… I don’t want him to get hurt.”
She frowned. “You’re worried I’ll clutter up your friend’s schedule with too many parties?”
“I guess? I’m… more worried about things going wrong. If things, I don’t know, change? Then – ”
“Come on, Kayden. If things end badly, I’m not going to go on a revenge rampage and ruin your friend’s life.”
“I wasn’t implying you’d – ”
“Yes, you were. And I understand why you’re worried about him. I’m just surprised you think so little of him.”
“What?”
“Do you really think we haven’t gone through this? Protocols for changes or the end to our relationship? You’ve known Max for nearly a year and a half, now; have you ever known him to be anything less than meticulously thorough about any kind of relationship? We both know exactly what to expect from each other, and if Max falls head over heels for some pretty girl next month and wants out, that’s something we’ve discussed and have protocols for.”
“Or if you fall head over heels for some boy.”
“Oh, that’s not going to happen.”
“You like girls?”
“I like lots of people.”
It was an obvious avoidance of the question, and I should have accepted that and moved on, but before my brain could interject my stupid dumbshit mouth pushed on with, “I mean, do you only like-like girls?”
Genuine annoyance flashed in Magista’s eyes, but her tone was light when she said, “I don’t ‘like-like’ anyone. I’m afraid that my dear brother stole all the hopeless romantic energy while in the womb.”
I tried to lighten the tone. “Well, that was really mean of him, not leaving any romance for you. How unfair.”
This… did not work. Magista’s face froze and twisted for just the briefest moment before relaxing into an amused smile that would have looked completely genuine if I hadn’t watched Max put on one of these false masks dozens of times. She laughed lightly, sounding totally relaxed, but I’d seen the change – somehow, something I’d said had really pissed her off. “Oh, I got my revenge,” she said, apparently happily. “I stole all the ‘really cool friend’ energy in the womb. It evens out. That aside, Max is a big boy and he can look after himself. And if you trust his judgement this little and really want to bbysit him, might I suggest that next time, you talk to Max instead of going behind his back to secretly micromanage his life? I’ve met his family, and I know he really, really hates it when people do that. I think your White Knight thing is cute, but I doubt that Max would agree.”
“That’s… not my intention.”
“No? Well, everyone has the best of intentions, don’t they. Are you sure you even know what yours were when you came here?”
Not remotely sure. “Um. That you for the tea, Magista.” I put down my completely full cup and stood. “I should go.”
“Thanks for stopping by! It was great to catch up; we should do it more often.”
I left. I closed the door, walked down the corridor until I could turn a corner out of sight of aid door, then leaned against the wall, heart racing for some reason. I wasn’t sure why. Magista had been perfectly friendly, hadn’t she? I’d upset her, but she’d recovered quickly. So why did I feel like I’d just made a lucky escape? She hadn’t threatened me or anything. Had she?
And why did I feel like, even though she’d answered all of my questions, I’d come out of that conversation having learned a lot less than she had?
This is why I hate politics.