Cecilia was getting sick of hospital food. First the Auroch, and then a psycho mage who stabbed her. Neither incident put her close to death, but she didn’t appreciate the hassle. If she wanted chaos and carnage, she’d have stayed with her aunt in Adelaide.
Though, it was the training in Adelaide that prevented Cecilia from getting killed. The assassin had a poor grasp of Vulpecula-class magic; that constellation created illusions, but if a mage didn’t change the illusion’s environmental cues, an observant person would spot them straight away – which is what Cecilia did. All those hours spent staring at illusions among reality made her receptive to the slightest uncanny details.
Cecilia had dodged the first couple attacks, but no matter her reflexes, knives pretty much guaranteed an injury. She got slashed and stabbed a couple times before kicking the assassin in the crotch. Breaking his thumb let her toss the knife away, and Detective Mages, surreptitiously passing through the area, restrained the man.
She’d kept telling the DetMages and paramedics that she was fine, that it wasn’t that much blood, but they found the Priority Persons tag in her pocket and, after initial shock, whisked her away to St Vincent’s hospital.
They’d treated her wounds and made her stay for a few nights. Whenever the door to her room slid open, she caught a glimpse of a silhouetted figure waiting outside her door like a phantom. Nobody acknowledged the figure, so she couldn’t be certain if it were a hallucination.
Cecilia used to have sleep paralysis on a semi-regular basis. She’d wake up, be unable to move, and often see a gaunt humanoid figure with a crescent-moon posture—as if an extreme case of scoliosis—standing at the foot of her bed, always the left corner. The frequency of paralysis sharply decreased in recent years, likely due to a new bed, new house, and new lifestyle. But the notion of a “haunted left” lingered in her psyche.
She wrote with her left. Played tennis with her left. Southpaw. Held her pipe in her left digits.
Her pipe had neither been replaced nor repaired. She’d looked into the latter, but it wouldn’t be a seamless restoration, and she didn’t care much for the wabi-sabi trend gaining prominence in Adelaide. Either something was or wasn’t, in her view. As a result, she hadn’t smoked since the start of the semester.
Over the years, Cecilia had smoked tobacco, weed, opium, and that new product being moved around. The name, the name? Hard to remember. Dilpredilind? Nicknamed Dill, or Omi, like “to omit” something. Rough stuff, Dilpredilind. Left a rotten, lingering taste in your mouth, and made your tongue feel thick and heavy, tar-like, not worth the long-lasting and highly-pleasurable, really enjoyable, like rising-to-the-heavens good, the kind of feeling that made you think an aneurysm then and there wouldn’t be a big deal, with cliché phrasing about being better than sex, better than ten units of sex—that kind of high.
Cecilia didn’t have a spoon problem, never had, always having an innate insulation from addiction. Plus, a lot of the ones that were supposed to be fun, like alcohol, only made her go supernova. Dilpredilind was the first substance with early inklings of an addiction, for Cecilia, so breaking her pipe might’ve been a blessing.
Semantics, but “breaking her pipe” could be “getting her pipe broken”, on account of there being a chance Eleanor Wilson had done it during their scuffle.
But, if she had to break a pipe to meet Eleanor Wilson, so be it.
‘Everyone needs a doubles partner,’ Cecilia’s aunt used to intone.
Aunt Alice hadn’t sent a message through the hospital yet, though Cecilia waited for one. A few days later, after Cecilia had recovered enough to be discharged, the “message” made itself known when the door opened; the silhouette outside the room turned, stepped inside, and clasped both hands in front of themselves. They wore a featureless mask. A Faceless Carrier. With a monotone, masculine voice, the Carrier stated he was going to deliver Cecilia to Vandagriff.
The positive aspect of the Faceless Carrier’s presence meant all affairs of identity and financials had been handled, but the negative aspect was that those things had been handled. Cecilia wouldn’t have to deal with the administrative hassle, but the notion of Aunt Alice’s intervention weighed heavily on her mind.
Cecilia had paid for a train ticket to Melbourne, and she’d gotten a scholarship with Vandagriff. She had enough money saved to be self-sufficient, albeit frugal, during her studies. But, she knew Aunt Alice kept an eye on her, patient, waiting for a chance to get a foot in the door, which may as well have been getting a foot to Cecilia’s throat.
Of course, Cecilia would emphasise that she didn’t leave Adelaide because of Aunt Alice, and she’d be mostly telling the truth. She favoured lies of omission, giving morsels of tasty truth while hiding the true feast.
‘Where’s my coat?’ Cecilia asked the Carrier, who tossed a beige trench coat onto the bed.
‘The contract issuer was aware of your fondness for the article.’
From anyone else, that’d be charming. Upright in bed, Cecilia struggled into her coat. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘I am contracted to bring you straight to Vandagriff Mage Academy.’
‘Can we stop somewhere on the way?’
‘That is not in the contract.’
‘Well, can you at least get something from the vending machines?’
The Carrier seemed to think, mannerism little more than a tilt of the mask. ‘I cannot.’
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
‘Are you trying to stamp my passport? I’m freakin’ starving.’
‘The contract issuer forewarned that you, the package, may be disinclined to engage with me, the Carrier, and may attempt to distract or disorient—’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Cecilia’s head thumped back into the thin hospital pillow. ‘Fine. Whisk me away.’
#
For a decent while, gossip at Vandagriff centred on Cecilia Harkenfield, which didn’t displease her. She’d already developed a reputation, being from Adelaide, surviving the Auroch crash, and now this. With a bit of effort, she’d be able to leverage her reputation in exchange for post-Academy job opportunities.
But first, a bit of therapy.
Cecilia liked therapy. Who didn’t? She’d visited therapists before and liked lying on couches or the floor and rambling about anything on her mind. She figured it wasn’t unlike spring cleaning for the mind. She couldn’t talk to herself, and she rarely had confidants, so she resorted to either church confessionals or therapy. The former was too dark and cramped—and was predicated on sin—so she preferred the latter.
‘I met a guy named Lorcan Callothier,’ Cecilia said, already lying on a couch, about two-point-three seconds after entering the therapist’s office.
Taken aback, the therapist checked his papers. ‘A-Are you Cecilia Harkenfield?’
She craned her head back, around the couch’s armrest. ‘Sorry, I was hoping to jump straight into it.’
‘We can. I just thought…’
‘No, no, you’re right.’ In this way, Cecilia learned the therapist was Lucas Owen, a name she promptly forgot.
‘Can I get back to this guy?’ Cecilia said, not waiting for an answer. ‘His name is Lorcan Callothier. He found me in the hospital. Everything he wore was black because he was in mourning. I know mourning clothes are supposed to be dark, but this guy was head-to-toe in black. Shoes, socks, slacks, shirt, tie, jacket, hair. I could’ve sworn his eyes were black.
‘He was—is—in mourning because his dad died before the start of the semester. He taught here, mathematics I think. So this guy, Lorcan, literally hasn’t changed out of his suit, and it smells like it. He must’ve been a sight walking around the hospital, smelling like death, looking like a grim reaper.
‘He finds me, introduces himself, and says that his dad was murdered. By the, uh, the Hunter-Yao gang.’
Cecilia’s chest constricted. She swallowed and carefully moved from couch to floor.
During transit, the therapist squeezed in the question:
‘The Hunter-Yao gang?’
‘You know them?’
‘I—yes.’ The therapist crossed his legs. ‘Why did Lorcan want to talk to you specifically?’
Cecilia paused. She knew the sounds and cadence of avoidance, of omission, and the therapist had caught himself before saying something about the Hunter-Yao gang. He repeated his question.
‘I was on the Auroch when it crashed,’ Cecilia answered. ‘So was Victoria Fornax. Lorcan wanted to know if I’d seen anything: Defining features, birthmarks, voices, that kind of thing. I didn’t, and even if I had, it wouldn’t have been relevant because the Hunter-Yao gang didn’t attack the Auroch.’
‘Naturally, I wasn’t there, but…wasn’t it them?’
Cecilia ground her teeth. Sudden tension hurt her wounds, and she winced. ‘It’s not their style.’
‘Talking through trauma can be useful, but if this subject is making you—’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ She breathed in and out, tried to relax. The therapist asked about Vandagriff, like how studying and socialising went. ‘I have a habit of talking with the Adelaide dialect when I want to be left alone.’
‘Does that work?’
‘Depends on how persistent the person is.’
The therapist laughed. ‘I might ask you to teach me someday.’
‘I do this other thing with a friend where’—she smiled to herself—‘when one of us wants to play tennis, we make a swinging motion from across the room. If the other person responds with a serve, we play.’
‘That sounds nice. It’s good to have a friend you don’t need words to communicate with.’
‘I love her.’
The therapist paused. ‘Romantically?’
‘Unequivocally so.’ The declaration came easily to Cecilia, but how Eleanor felt remained a mystery.
Cecilia wanted to spend more time with Eleanor outside of the Academy. Unfortunately, she’d so far been interrupted by concussions or knife wounds. Hopefully after she recovered, they could organise something. ‘I think I want to go ice skating,’ she blurted. Being on the ground in a therapist’s office focused Cecilia’s addled thoughts, and she began to grasp why Eleanor meant so much to her. Since her arrival in Melbourne, Eleanor was the first person who didn’t care about magic. She vocalised a version of this thought.
‘Are you not interested in magic?’ the therapist asked.
‘It’s not about personal interest. My parents were involved with mages. Then my aunt raised me around magic. In fact, she’d made her fortune through magic-based inventions. That wealth got me a magic tutor.’ Cecilia exhaled, and without conscious decision, uttered her tutor’s moniker:
‘Pig-Iron.’
The therapist cocked his head. ‘Pig island?’
‘Yeah, pig island—what, no? Does this room have a heater?’
‘It’s not on. I can help with your coat, if your injuries are—’
‘I’m fine.’
Cecilia’s trench coat didn’t leave her body. Well, she didn’t shower with it, but she kept it just outside the door. One day at her old boarding school, after PE class, some girls thought it’d be funny to steal the coat, along with her other clothes and towel, while she showered. It was less funny when she stepped from the shower, discovered the prank, left the change rooms, and walked across the oval, nude before her all-girl peers, steam rising from her shoulder and head in the brisk morning air, and proceeded to beat the culprits bloody. Her reputation at the boarding school compared to Vandagriff was…different.
‘I didn’t mind studying magic when it had a purpose.’
‘Goals are good. What was yours, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Cecilia scratched her dry scalp. ‘Lorcan Callothier asked me about the Hunter-Yao gang because they killed his dad during a train heist.’
‘…I get the sense you have an unhealthy fixation with them.’
‘If you were starving in a room with a bag of sugar, would you starve or eat the sugar?’
‘What does…?’
‘Do you know anything? About the gang, I mean.’
‘I don’t think I should discuss them.’
Cecilia struggled off the floor and sat against the couch. ‘Why? Client confidentiality?’
‘Sort of.’
Cold, harnessed intensity suffused Cecilia’s gaze. ‘Who did you speak to?’
‘Like I said—’
‘I’m not asking what you talked about. I’m asking who. It might help me get over them, if I can think of them as humans.’
The therapist huffed, hands raised. ‘Paul DeVeen. Sorry to disappoint, but he’s not a big player among—’
‘He’s the gang’s administrator. Thirty-eight years of age. Anyone else?’
The therapist cocked a brow. ‘No, and I only talked to Paul for one session.’ He recrossed his legs. ‘I understand that you care about the gang—’
‘I do not care about the Hunter-Yao gang.’
‘I apologise. Poor choice of words.’
Cecilia’s gaze unfocused, intensity dissipating until she had a vacant stare. She hadn’t cared about much since her parents died. And whenever she did, it went wrong. That’s why she bothered listening to what Lorcan Callothier had to say; she could tell they’d gone through the same thing.
‘You asked what my goal is: Destroy the Hunter-Yao gang in its entirety. That’s my answer. That’s my only goal. And I know the exact constellation of magic that will let me do that.’
Cecilia stood. Though of no great stature, she seemed to tower over the therapist, an intensity of being so great as to fill the room. ‘Tell me when you spoke to Paul DeVeen, and where.’
Cecilia rubbed the hem of her coat between two fingers, dreaming of the day the fabric would be drenched in Hunter-Yao’s blood.