Chapter Seven: Surprise Frenemies

+++++Ezra+++++

As Fenrik worked himself into a feverish delirium over his latest project, a project that seemed to occupy his every waking moment and (if Ezra had to guess) involved constructing a 'pure' soul crystal from scratch, Ezra found himself going on frequent treks across the city. Some of these excursions took him up into the Old City, where Mr. Gladion's base of operations was. There, between a restaurant and a smoking parlor, that were obvious fronts for gray market alchemy and prostitution, respectively, Gladion had a perfectly respectable crystal shop that was an obvious front for less respectable crystals.

Regular crystals were rated on a scale of 1-8 for clarity and A-HHHg for color, with A being colorless and B-H cycling through the colors of the spectrum, with more letters added for intensity and an optional lower-case letter added for a secondary highlight color. Clarity and size determined a crystal's strength, whereas color determined what sorts of arcane energies it was most efficient at storing… it was all very tedious and technical, but the gist of it was that magical crystals called arcanoids (not to be confused with arcanite) were mined out of the ground as cloudy pastiches of color that weren't good for much, but that a sufficiently talented alchemist could separate and clarify the different colors of crystal and large, pure, clear crystals were expensive because they took big chunks of arcanite and a lot of alchemical talent to produce, but they could store more energy for longer.

Soul crystals were the same as magical crystals, except they had to go through an additional step of being placed inside a being's body to be 'tinctured', where they would siphon off life essences and be somehow transformed to act as efficient conduits for spiritual energies. The largest and clearest crystals required the body of a sapient creature to be processed, and these were the only sort that could act as conduits for the sort of soul worth putting in a person's body.

To Ezra's knowledge, Fenrik had been too annoyed and embarrassed to go to Gladion for another soul crystal, but he had no problem sending Ezra up to Old Town to peruse through what was in stock to look for 'diamonds in the rough', so to speak. Gladion still had the best prices and still extended Fenrik his discount and the sorcerer was burning through the crystals for whatever reason… and Ezra had eventually deduced that he was attempting a new approach to creating his own soul crystal so he would never have to rely upon Gladion again. In fact, if he could do it cheaply enough, he could chase the borrenkin merchant right out of the market.

"More crystals, is it?" Gladion's man asked. They were all borrenkin in Gladion's operation, except for some of the manual laborers and servants, who were urmal - they were the only race that approached borrenkin strength-wise and they could be made to work for cheap.

"More crystals," Ezra said. He heard a floorboard creak and looked up to the little plate of treated glass between the back of the store and the front. Somebody was watching him from the other side, probably Gladion himself.

Ezra rifled through the pile of small crystals - four to a brownback, which was a pretty good deal. And Ezra had found that he could spot color highlights a lot easier than most people, even Gladion's expert gem-sorters - his dark welding goggles somehow brought even the faintest highlights out. He passed over two with obvious highlights because they were only clarity 4, and then picked up a five and a six with subtle highlight refraction. If he picked out good crystals, Fenrik would be pleased and, even if he got drunk, as he seemed to be doing a lot, he was unlikely to get irrationally angry and pulse pain at Ezra.

"Why these sixteen?" the crystal dealer asked.

"Because it's four for a brownback and Sorcerer Fenrik's given me four brownbacks…"

"No, I mean why these sixteen…"

"Because I think they're pretty," Ezra said with a smile. The man glared at him, but Ezra could swear he heard the rumbling chuckle of Mr. Gladion through the wall.

From there, he hopped on his bike and made his way back to Fenrik's city house. This was a pretty typical errand and, if the weather was good (as it often was) and the constables didn't give him a hard time for riding an odd bike (which they usually didn't), Ezra could usually ride back to Fenrik's neighborhood in East Shore and poke around the public library for thirty or forty minutes before he'd risk the old man's ire for being late. The head librarian seemed to think Ezra was a struggling student (which was true, in a sense) and would let him wander the stacks and soak in books until somebody complained about it.

+++++Ezra+++++

Other days, he went to the Etudium Mystikal St. Arbalest, usually to borrow or return hard-to-find books or to deliver or retrieve consults from Fenrik's colleagues in the college. St. Arbalest's was several times the size of St. Quillia's for a few reasons, mostly because the young men were given a few extra years of magical instruction (since they'd be expected to become magical scholars or mages of great import) and because there were lots of laboratories - most of the faculty were nearly as mired in obscure research as Fenrik of Westval was… in fact, Fenrik had once been on the faculty but had walked out because he hated teaching and the college administration insisted upon him teaching one term per year, as if he didn't have better things to do.

"He's sure about these elaborations?" Sorcerer Ekra-tava asked.

"He triple-checked the sigilics, sir," Ezra said. Ezra had checked them, too, and possibly made a minor correction or two. He couldn't do magic, but he could read sigils well enough. Better than Fenrik when he was sleep-deprived and cross-eyed from gazing into crystals for hours on end.

Ekra-tava flumphed, which was about the scriben equivalent of a doubtful 'hmm'. The scriben were a strange race - ancient construct creatures who'd been around when the humans and borrenkin first invaded the continent. They were humanoids made from leather, parchments, stone and wood carved into the shape of human or animal bones, bits of unidentifiable metal, and whatever other odds and ends their creators had seen fit to add. Nobody knew who'd made them or how, not even the scriben, and the strange arcane script that bound their enchantments into a coherent life-form was indecipherable, even to the scriben themselves.

The scriben were an immortal race - they could repair themselves to a considerable extent and, obviously, didn't age as people did, but they were also a slowly-dying race. When their bodies suffered enough damage, whether through accident or misdeed, their enchantments would fail and the scriben would collapse into an inanimate heap, never to return. Professor-Sorcerer Ekra-tava was interested in the sorts of advanced sigilics that might mimic the enchantments of the ancients and allow the scriben to reproduce.

The wooden masque that served as Ekra-tava's face turned toward Ezra, and the voice behind it said: "You may go."

Ekra-tava was more personable to Ezra than most of the faculty, which meant he was brusque rather than outright abusive when he wanted Ezra gone so he could delve back into his studies. Ezra was happy to go - the earlier he left the more likely he was to run into Anise - or so the theory went.

On beautiful autumn days like this day, Ezra didn't mind his life so much, and he had to remind himself that it was only a matter of time before Fenrik pulled himself out of his current monomaniacal obsession and got back to heaping abuse upon Ezra. That he was still consigned to a little chamber every night (though he'd rigged the lock so he could leave when he liked), that his meals consisted of porridge and table scraps, that he enjoyed even fewer rights than the urmal, and that it was only a property crime if somebody decided to assault or kill him for any reason whatsoever. It was a beautiful day, but it was a beautiful day in a life that could do with many improvements.

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The St. Arbalest's campus was a beautiful place - grassy, tree-dappled hills brilliant with the colors of autumn and sweet with the smell of fallen leaves. Dark stone buildings jutted up from the grounds like medieval spires and gothic mansions, their roofs black slate or green copper, long walkways stretching through the hills beneath intricate stone arches, and the tawny autumn sun casting everything in a light that reminded Ezra of old sepia photographs… or new sepia photographs, since that was about the state of photography in Medias. Students sat on benches or under trees studying, and sometimes the professors would hold class in any of the little mossy amphitheaters outside. And, beyond the little dark wall in the middle of the leafy green was the archway that led to the St. Quillia's campus where Anise went to school.

St. Quillia's was about a third the size of St. Arbalest's, both in student body and overall area, but that still made it perhaps a quarter of a square kilometer, most of it lightly-forested hillside just like the men's school. Ezra pedaled his bicycle, autumn breeze in his face as he cruised toward the pink-marbled, blue-ivied building of St. Bastia's hall, hoping to catch Anise between classes. He'd given her the directions for the potion a week ago and she'd said she'd help, but he hadn't been able to catch her either of the times he'd stopped by the place since then. Today, though, he spotted her walking with the slim, dark girl who everybody said was some sort of magical genius. Well… Fenrik said she was 'unusually adequate', but he had a generally low opinion of sorceresses.

"Anise!"

She looked for him in completely the wrong direction, but her friend laughed and turned her to face Ezra. He rolled to a stop and made what he knew was a winning smile from practicing it for hours in the mirror. There was something… different about Anise. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but she looked somehow more intense and more at-ease than usual at the same time. On the off-chance that she'd forgotten about the potion or decided to blow him off, he'd brought her a present, courtesy some pawned junk from the storage room that Fenrik would never miss.

"I got you something…"

For some reason, that made Anise's friend frown. Was it because he was a thrall? Strange…

He handed it to her - two crystals from Gladion's wrapped in a little cloth. Small crystals but clear and with subtle highlights, he'd bought them for a quarter of what they were worth. Hopefully, that would remind her…

"Oh! The… Uncle Fenrik's potion!" she said. "I'll go get it!" She dashed into the dormitory, nearly bowling a golden-ruffed kao-alta girl over.

"What's gotten into her?" the girl said, adjusting her sunglasses.

The other girl, Anise's slim, allegedly-brilliant friend, regarded him coolly. "That potion isn't for her uncle, is it?"

"It is," Ezra said. It was a pretty plausible lie. "He's utterly obsessed with some project."

"Hmm…" she said, which was the human equivalent of a flumph.

The kao-alta girl frowned at Ezra. "Aren't you his demon-thrall? You shouldn't talk about your master like that… I could get you in a lot of trouble…"

"Don't," Anise said. She marched back out and pushed something into Ezra's hand - something wrapped in the same tan cloth he'd given her the crystals in. "Ezra's a good person…"

"It isn't a person…"

"Enough, Vitrupi-Grace," the slim girl said. She looked Ezra in the eye… or into his dark goggles, at least… and seemed to be mulling over something of great importance. "Once I activate this, Anise's uncle will have about two hours to use it."

"Can't he just… right…" the kao-alto girl said.

"Do. You. Understand?"

Ezra nodded. "Thank you."

+++++Ezra+++++

Ezra pedaled back across the Wen's Ridge Bridge as fast as he could, the smell of industrial fumes, old fish, and city waste barely dulling his excitement. He had the potion. He was tempted to just find a quiet, secluded nook to drink the potion in and let it do its work, but he had two hours. He had time to stop by Fenrik's city house to pick up his things - ten brownbacks he'd squirreled away by pawning off storage room junk the old man hadn't touched or thought about in years, the crystal lamp Anise had made him, and a broken pocket watch that he thought he might fix up and sell for a few more bills. Otherwise, he'd be a fugitive with nothing to his name.

He coasted down the bridge ramp and hopped off his bike to cross over to the roundabout walkway, where all of the foot traffic and carts going toward the fancy parts of East Shore went. Ezra suspected it was meant to keep the riffraff out of sight along the promenade, where Fenrik's well-heeled neighbors liked to stroll in the afternoons. If you took the main road, you were likely to get blasted by a carriage or, worse yet, obliterated by a street car. And if you took the promenade, the constables would find a reason to bust you. He passed the news stand and the herbalist stall along the way and was about to hop the steps and get on the walkway when Gladion's borrenkin stooge grabbed him.

Ezra could tell he was Gladion's man because, first, he was borrenkin and, second, because Gladion sat in the little café not ten meters distant looking on with great interest, the little leaves in his hair shivering in anticipation…

Two things occurred to Ezra: either Gladion intended to abduct, assault, or murder him without Fenrik's permission… plausible, since they weren't in Old Town where Gladion and his colleague Stomen Blose would be the first ones suspected… or he intended to abduct, assault, or murder Ezra with Fenrik's permission. Ezra wasn't sure which was worse, but both were pretty bad.

The borrenkin tried to grab Ezra by the neck, wound up grabbing him by the shoulder, and hoisted him up into the air, Ezra's bike clattering behind him. Ezra kicked, which did absolutely no good, and then bit down on the man's big bark-crusted hand, instead. Fortunately, he managed to bite a relatively soft mammal bit, his teeth sinking into the skin and drawing bitter blood.

The man shouted, a deep, croaking borrenkin bellow that brought Ezra perilously close to soiling himself. Instead, he bit down harder and felt the grip loosen. He squirmed loose, yanking his canvas backpack from where it had snagged on the tree-man's bleeding fingers. Ezra nearly tumbled to the street… he was on the borrenkin's broad shoulders and the man was flailing about to get him.

Now… Ezra wasn't especially strong, nor was he even especially agile. But he was fast, and his reflexes were frankly absurd, far faster than they'd ever been back on Earth. He steadied himself, ducked a flailing branch-arm, and then leapt over the other arm, finding himself atop the news stand's unsteady roof.

"Hey! Get off of there!" the paper man shouted.

Ezra didn't need to be told twice. He scrambled across the little tin roof, denting the corrugated metal beneath his footfalls, and leapt to the fire escape on the nearby brownstone. The borrenkin… plural borrenkin now, for Gladion had signaled for more goons… lumbered after him, knocking the post at one corner of the news stand over. Papers spilled everywhere, some of their loose pages flapping into the breeze like tabloid seagulls. The paper man shouted more, and Ezra climbed.

Clang!

For a moment, he dangled fifteen feet above the plaza stones, his shabby-shod feet flailing uselessly in the air. Then he slammed back against the brownstone building, the wind nearly knocked from him. He made it up two more rungs, his palms scratching and burning against the rusty iron, and found himself dangling from seventeen feet up…

Clang!

The ladder slammed back against the building and Ezra nearly plummeted right off his palms burning under his grip as he clung on for dear life. The borrenkin thug was attempting to shake Ezra loose or else pull the ladder right off of the building and, in either case, he was perilously close to succeeding. A rusty iron bolt cracked against Ezra's head from above and, moments before the whole fire escape ladder wrenched free from the building in a rain of rust flakes and old bolts, Ezra hauled himself to the nearby balcony and dashed through the open window.

"Hey!" the woman inside shouted.

"Sorry!" he shouted. He wasn't really sorry - it had just come out. It was Gladion's fault, not his.

He tore through the building, past cozy middle-class apartment rooms, down a flight of stairs, through a sweltering kitchen that smelled of glorious, golden bread… he thought about grabbing a knife, but there was no time. Somewhere behind him, a borrenkin man cracked through the front door.

"Where the fuck is the boy?" he bellowed. A young child started crying.

Ezra lucked across an alleyway exit at the back of the kitchen and struggled with the latch to the door as Gladion's goon stormed through, knocking over kitchenware and shelves of ingredients… the chef did not sound pleased. Ezra dashed into the alleyway and nearly brained himself by slipping against the slick scum on the smooth concrete. He steadied himself and sped back toward the street, only to run right into Gladion's urmal coachman.

Fortunately, the man wasn't a goon used to casual criminality. While the broad lemur-man visibly considered whether to apprehend Ezra, shout for help, or turn the blind eye, Ezra made the decision for him. He blew past the man, sprinted for a passing streetcar, and hopped aboard. The chaos receded behind them and quickly resolved with a pair of constables and their prymen companions arriving on the scene to arrest Gladion's men or at least scare them off. Ezra sighed in relief.

"Tickets are two par," the streetcar driver said.