Dark mind, p.10
Dark Mind, page 10
“I— What?”
“Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a conversation? Just leave it on the table and go.”
The man fumbled in his pocket. “So sorry to interrupt.” He set a few coins on the table and scurried away.
Nikolai swept the change into his palm. “My apologies, he was the last one.”
She studied the man as he moved across the diner, headed for the exit. Middle aged. Average height and dress, nervous disposition. Forgettable. Unaware that magic existed. In a few decades he’d be just another corpse in the ground. “What do you think of Mundanes? You’re usually nicer to them.”
“I usually want something from them.” He nodded to the man. “That one let me down. Never pick a coward for a timely job.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She frowned. What did she mean? There was something here, some niggling idea she couldn’t quite grasp. “What do you think of them . . . compared to Magi?”
He shrugged. “When you view people the way I do, it makes no difference whether they’re Mundane or Magi.”
“I’ve never cared much for Mundanes. I have at least a begrudging respect for Magi, even the bad ones. But Mundanes just seem so . . . mundane. Maybe it’s gotten worse with age. They live and die so fast and they’re so interchangeable with one another, but it’s always bothered me how they can look around the world, see all the magic inherent there, and say ‘that’s not for me.’”
“Like they snubbed something you cared about.”
“Yes! Exactly like that. But worse. It’s like people who say they can’t read. So learn! It’s not difficult! I cannot abide willful ignorance.” Just thinking about it made her angry. How many times had she repeated the master’s words in her mind as he read aloud? How many times had she pilfered his scrolls and hidden among the hay, studying the words and tracing her own in the dust? None of the other children had her interest in letters, preferring to chase each other around with sticks, and look where that got them—dead in other people’s wars, dead from disease, dead during childbirth—while she’d vanquished her enemies and made herself immortal. With magic, you could do anything.
Except now there was no ambient magic.
People could still be educated, but they couldn’t be Magi, not unless they were fortunate enough to be born into a family that practiced magic, not unless they were identified by the Collective and shipped off to the Academy, as Nikolai probably had been. Thanks to the Collective, most Mundanes didn’t even think magic existed anymore. Oh, they wanted it to, but without seeing it on a daily basis, what else were they to believe?
Suddenly the circumstances of her childhood, horrible as they were, seemed a lot more fortunate. She’d had a learned master. She’d had access to his scrolls. She’d grown up at a time when magic was prevalent. What would she be if she’d been born now? Against her will, she scanned the diner for women her physical age—all she saw were young women out on dates, as she appeared to be. The others were probably married, trapped at home cooking for their husbands and tending to their numerous children. She could think of few worse fates.
Nikolai placed a copper coin on the table and slid it toward her. “Penny for your thoughts.”
She took it, running her thumb along the edge. “My childhood wasn’t pleasant. I worked very hard to get out of the situation I was in. Perhaps I was born with a predisposition for magic, perhaps not—I have no way of knowing—but the fact of the matter is that I used it to gain my freedom. And when I’ve come across Mundanes in similar situations, even when I’ve helped them, even when I’ve felt sorry for them, I couldn’t help but think if only they committed themselves to learning magic, if only they tried harder, they wouldn’t be where they were. Yes, those who kept them in thrall were to blame, but it was just as much their own fault for not escaping. The answer was right before them. They just lacked the mental fortitude to take it. And now . . . now I don’t know what to think.”
Another patron approached and tentatively laid a coin on the corner of the table next to Nikolai.
As soon as he walked away, Medea hissed, “You said you were done!”
“That wasn’t me. Notice how he didn’t say anything? He just saw others giving me money and decided it was the thing to do.” He reached for the coin, then smirked and left it on the table. “Anyway, you’re right. If magic was that common in the old days, then anyone who didn’t use it got what they deserved.”
Her stomach knotted. The validation felt tainted coming from a man like Nikolai, who cared for no one but himself. Maybe she was more wrong than she’d thought. “But some people are just bad at magic. For all I know, Mundanes might have tried it and given up. And what of me? What if I’d been born now? What if I’d been unskilled despite my best efforts? What if I tried to free myself and failed?” God, where would she have been then? Her mind shuddered away from the thought.
“You would have found another way.” He said it with such certainty, but how could he know? How could she?
She twisted her hands under the table. “Have you ever been at the mercy of someone else? Totally and completely?”
“Person, no. Circumstance, yes.”
“Then you know what it is to feel helpless. To have no choice.”
Another couple passed by. The man tipped his hat at Nikolai and set a handful of coins on the corner of the table.
“Thank you, sir.” Nikolai leaned forward with a grin. “Everyone has a choice. Everyone. Even if that choice is to give up. When things get bad, only the strongest survive. You said you worked hard to get out of your position—that was a choice you made. You know I’m right. Determined people claw their way out no matter what. Pretend for a second that magic doesn’t exist. What would you have done?”
Unfathomable to think of it. Magic was her power, how she protected herself, but Nikolai was right. She wasn’t the type to roll over and die, no matter how weak she was at the start. Her vengeance was patient. She’d practiced in secret for years, biding her time until she knew she could win. “I would have learned the blade. Or poison, or . . . I don’t know.” Stabbed the motherfucker and burned the place to the ground. In hindsight, it would have eliminated many of the repercussions that followed.
Nikolai wore a smile. Not his usual smirk, but something else, something like pride. Two more people walked by and left money on the table. He didn’t spare them a glance. “You would have found a way. Not everyone has the will to make the hard decisions.”
She thought of those who’d taken her place, when she’d grown too old to be of interest. She hadn’t killed for them, only for herself, but that didn’t lessen their suffering or make it any more deserving. “Maybe not, but lacking will doesn’t make people worthy of their fate.”
“Yes it does.” He leaned forward with an almost manic energy. “I’ll tell you the real reason for your noninterference policy. Because deep down, you know that even if you put everything to rights for other people, without constant intervention they’ll just go back to where they started. People like their cages. They like being controlled. It gives them the ability to abdicate responsibility. That way, when their life is hard, they can point the finger at someone else and say, ‘It’s not my fault.’”
His words echoed far too closely with her own thoughts at the witch hunter’s accusations. It was one thing to be a cynic; it was another to have someone agree with that cynicism wholeheartedly, especially when you wanted to believe in something more, despite all evidence to the contrary. Nikolai was still in his twenties. Easy to be a philosopher at his age, before you’d had much life experience.
“Not everyone is like that,” she said without conviction.
“Just most people.” He nodded to the growing stack of change. “Look at how easily they copy others, without even knowing why. You’re focusing on the wrong thing. Magi or Mundane—it makes no difference. There are those who accept fate and those who craft their own destiny. You’re either one or the other. Do circumstances make it harder? Absolutely. But those of us with the proper constitution will always rise above.”
As if to emphasize his point, a man with an air of authority approached the table and introduced himself as the manager. He pretended to know all about Nikolai’s charity work and said their meal would be on the house. When he left, Nikolai shot her a knowing grin. “That wasn’t me either. By and large, people are sheep. And there’s only one use a wolf has for sheep.”
Nikolai leaned back in his chair. Medea would never admit it, but she was more like him than she realized. Why did she fight it so hard? When he’d asked her to imagine what she’d do if magic didn’t exist, the color had drained from her face and she’d begun to wring her hands. For a second he thought he’d misjudged her, but then her lip curled into a snarl and she spoke of blades and poison with beautiful contempt. Medea might be many things, but weak wasn’t one of them.
She’d continued to debate him—perhaps she simply enjoyed playing devil’s advocate—but he suspected there was more to it than that. He knew he’d won when she abruptly changed the subject back to the bald man who’d felt his telepathic intrusions, her body relaxing as she fell back into lecturing.
“Let’s call them magically sensitive Mundanes. As I was saying, the ambient magic is too low to supplement their lack of mana. When you probe their minds, they can feel something but have no means of identifying what, and so their brain probably makes sense of it in other ways—hair standing up on the back of the neck, skin crawling, the feeling of being watched, the perception of someone standing just outside of view.”
“Should I avoid using telepathy on them then?”
“Not at all. I’ve been wondering how to tackle the problem of you learning to read Magi without detection. It’s not like you can just practice in a Magi town. I mean you can, but you’d be arrested or driven out before you’d made sufficient progress. These magically sensitive Mundanes could be the bridge you need. It’s not like they can report you. When you can consistently enter them without adverse reactions, we will try your hand at Magi.”
And so he practiced. The more he tried, the more distracted or agitated his targets became. If alone, they often finished their meal and left in a hurry, with many a nervous glance over their shoulder. If they dined with others, they would flee to the bathroom, or feign illness as an excuse to leave the restaurant. It’s not like targets were easy to come by either. He checked minds all the way to the restaurant and back, and on some trips they still found none.
Summer gave way to autumn, and still the magically sensitive Mundanes felt his intrusions. Medea was no help, reciting passages from the library about approaching targets gently but unable to offer practical advice. He found himself getting testy. It’s not like he’d managed to make any progress with her either.
“You’re supposed to be the best!” he snapped one day in the library. “How can you claim to be the most powerful mage in the world if you don’t know a bit of telepathy? Why, out of all the magical schools, did you neglect this one?”
“I’ve told you why, and I’m trying my utmost to help you. Sooner or later we’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t want us to figure it out. You’re supposed to know. That’s why I came to you, the great and powerful Medea, knower of every-goddamned-thing-to-do-with-magic!”
She tensed. A small part of his brain whispered that he was supposed to be getting close to her, but the sign of weakness only spurred him on.
“Centuries traveling the globe, and this is all the information on telepathy you could find? I don’t believe it. Where are you hiding the rest?”
“You know I don’t hide information.”
He approached her, voice deadly. “Except your track record isn’t exactly pristine, is it? You blocked off half the library from me that first year.”
She took a step back. “That was a mistake. You know I don’t normally—”
“You know what I think? You didn’t even try. You don’t like telepathy, and so you spent your time collecting stuff on healing and plants, to the point of obsession—how many copies of Hekate’s Herbal Healing do you need, by the way?—and you neglected the one magic that didn’t interest you. What the hell good is your library if it doesn’t have what I need? What are you good for, Medea? Because right now, I’d be better off asking a Mundane for help.”
“Then why don’t you?” Her voice quavered, but it was unequivocally cold. She jammed several texts onto the shelf in front of her, heedless that they belonged elsewhere, and stalked to the edge of the alcove. “I’ll have you know those copies of Hekate’s Herbal Healing are different editions.”
“Well thank fucking god for that. Not like we’d need to throw out the old edition whenever the information was updated.”
She clenched a fist and stormed from the library.
9
PUPPETS
Nikolai’s anger fled almost as swiftly as Medea, and he woke the next day mired in guilt. How could he have done that to her? She was only trying to help. He was the one with the problem. If he wasn’t so stupid, he would have figured it out by now. He’d never be a master telepath. Such skill was beyond his reach.
In his sleepy stupor, it took several minutes to realize the source of the thoughts. He lurched to his feet and stumbled to the chest of drawers, yanking the top drawer open. His supply of Frog’s Fancy, the plant that kept his curse in check, had dwindled significantly over the past year. Every month he checked on the grove where the plants grew. The charred trees hadn’t recovered from his fire, and though he found new Frog’s Fancy plants sprouting on adjacent trees, they grew exceptionally slowly. Growth spells only caused the plants to soften and disintegrate. Medea, adamant in her position that she wouldn’t interfere with another’s magic, offered no solutions, save to say that accelerated growth spells worked best on plants with a fast life cycle.
He fumbled for a bottle of Frog’s Fancy but wrenched the lid too hard and sent it flying. The bottle seemed to fall in slow motion. He watched impassively as it struck the stone floor and broke into shards.
Half the bottle remained intact, slowly dripping fluid. He ought to care about this, but nothing mattered, so why bother?
Drip, drip.
He should probably pick it up.
Drip, drip. The antidote vanished into the crack between the stones. He really ought to do something.
He slowly knelt and stared at the broken bottle for a minute before gingerly picking it up. He dipped his finger in the solution and rubbed it over his tongue, the minty taste filling his mouth.
FUCK FUCK FUCK!
Towel! Where was a towel? If he could soak up some of the solution, he might be able to use it. No towels. He grabbed yesterday’s shirt from the hamper and mopped up what he could. If worst came to worst, he could soak it in water and try to make a dilute solution from the fibers. He lay on the floor and expanded his sense between the stones. Where he hoped to find a pool of liquid, there was only the dust and grime of centuries.
He rose and pressed his fists against the wall, head bowed. Magic burned from his arms to his hands. Another bottle down. How would he last the next few years, let alone centuries? It was all Medea’s fault! If she’d told him the significance of the plants from the outset, he never would have burned the grove. Now he was looking at sucking residue out of a dirty shirt. Smoke curled beneath his fists, bringing with it the scent of singed wood and the memory of that day.
He yanked his fists away from the wall, leaving two scorch marks behind. No. This was the same thought process that got him here. Medea had told him—albeit in a stupid, roundabout way that assuaged her conscience—but he’d chosen not to listen. And it didn’t matter that he hadn’t known what the plants were at the time. What mattered was that the outburst had cost him. Just as yesterday would cost him. He was supposed to be getting close to Medea, not driving her away. Guilt trips were wonderful tools when used well, but he’d laid it on without any reason beyond causing hurt. The brief satisfaction served no long-term purpose and was ultimately damaging. He had to work on that.
So, first thing—apologize to Medea. He might be right, but he could be magnanimous. She might even try to make it up to him.
Second—ensure the safety of his current stock of Frog’s Fancy. Glass bottles were too fragile. He’d have to switch to metal flasks. Medea was bound to have some in the lab. If not, they were easily purchased. Problem solved. It didn’t fix the supply issue, but he could tackle that later.
He dressed quickly and went to the lab in hopes of finding her. Medea stood at the back counter with a notebook, enchanting and cataloging more rocks. She didn’t turn or acknowledge his entrance, and he knew better than to interrupt her. He collected his ingredients and began brewing mana potions. They weren’t needed during telepathy training, but it was a convenient excuse to stay.
He waited until she’d finished stuffing the rocks into her pouch before speaking. “I want to apologize—”
“Today I thought we’d—” She’d spoken at the same time.
“Sorry. You go ahead.”
“You first.”
“I want to apologize about yesterday. I took my frustration out on you and that wasn’t fair.”
“I know, but thank you for saying so. It’s understandable that you’re frustrated. I’m frustrated.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know you’re stuck, and sometimes when you’re stuck, it’s good to try something else for a while. It allows your brain time to work on the problem, while simultaneously giving you a different goal to work toward, which—if you succeed—gives you a mental boost.”
He couldn’t hide his disappointment. “So you’re putting telepathy training on hold?”
“Not at all.” A slight smile graced her normally dour face. “I thought we’d put your current abilities to the test.”
