Chapter Thirty

Johan cursed his own mistake as he stumbled away from Elaine, unable to quite believe the scale of the disaster he’d caused. Jamal, for all of his faults, had never killed children; indeed, despite his boasts, Johan was sure that he had never killed anyone before the Leveller rally. Duelling at the Peerless School was heavily regulated and it was unlikely that any of the duels would be fought to the death. But Johan had killed ...

The screams of the dying children echoed in his head, mocking his failure. He hadn’t been able to do nothing, yet all he’d done was help the fire bring down the building, killing the children before Elaine could save them. He should have tried to levitate them inside, despite his fears of accidentally hurting or scaring them; they would still be alive today if he hadn’t failed them. Elaine had tried to save them, despite her limited power; he had killed them. It seemed impossible to avoid the guilt coursing though his mind. The kids had died and it was his fault.

He stumbled onwards, remembering the look of pure rage in Elaine’s eyes. He’d failed her too, failed the girl who was his first true friend – who might no longer be his friend now that she’d seen him murder children. She had taken good care of him, helped him to learn how to use the magic he’d been gifted with ... and, in return, she’d watched helplessly as he butchered children right in front of her eyes. He could have put out the flames – surely, his magic would have sufficed for that – but no, he’d had to show off. And the results had been disastrous.

I don’t deserve magic, he told himself, realising – finally – why the gods had denied him their power. Jamal wouldn’t have killed children; Charity would have been horrified at the mere thought. But Johan had killed ... and through not thinking about what he was doing, instead of genuine malice. It was no consolation to know that it had been an accident. He’d murdered the children as surely as if he’d strangled them all with his bare hands.

I should have stayed a Powerless, he thought. I might have been a prisoner, but I wasn’t a murderer.

He stopped, looking around at the devastation. The houses seemed intact, but windows had shattered and several doors had been blown inwards. He couldn’t tell if it had been random fire or the magicians breaking into homes, but it looked terrifying. The Golden City had been rebuilt with astonishing speed – and the Blight had been developed – after the incident that had marred the appointment of the Grand Sorceress; it was impossible to tell if someone would do the same for Falconine City. Maybe the ruined houses would be abandoned, left as a silent testimonial to the power of whoever had attacked the city.

A faint sound caught his ear and he stopped, trying to listen. Someone was crying ... Johan hesitated, then headed towards the house where the noise was coming from. The door had been blown open, leaving a pile of splinters on the floor just inside the house; the walls had been scorched with balefire, charring their surfaces. Johan paused at the door – the credo that one did not enter another person’s house without an invitation was strong, even though it was clearly not a magician’s house – and then stepped inside. The sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen.

“Um ... hi,” he called, as he stepped into the room. “Where are you?”

A table had been shattered, several chairs seemed to have been smashed against the walls ... and a pair of dead bodies were lying on the ground. A young girl, barely more than three or four years old, was beating desperately at her dead mother while crying. Johan took one look and knew that the mother was far beyond saving. Her neck seemed intact, but it was bent at an angle that meant that it had been snapped. No magic, according to Elaine, could bring back the dead.

He stared at the girl, then reached out a hand. She shrank back from his touch, cuddling her dead mother as if she could still help her. The sight made everything suddenly real to Johan and he felt his stomach heave. He turned away, just in time to throw up everything he had in the corner. The girl stared at him, no longer crying, as he retched. Somehow, he managed to retain the presence of mind to find a bottle of water and take a gulp, enough to wash the taste out of his mouth.

“Come on,” he said, reaching for the girl and picking her up. She felt light; none of his sisters had ever felt so light, but then he’d been younger when they’d been toddlers. “Let’s see if we can find someone to help you.”

He glanced into one of the other rooms and frowned. The devastation seemed much less focused in that room; a handful of pictures had been left on the walls. They all showed Iron Dragons, steaming madly as they made their way across the landscape. Johan felt an odd twinge of nostalgia – maybe he could run away and get a job on the tracks, well away from magic and magicians – which he pushed aside as the girl squirmed in his arms. Wearily, he carried her out of the building and looked around.

“So,” he said, to the girl. “Where can I take you?”

The girl eyed him, then burst into tears again. Johan patted her back awkwardly, looking around for someone – anyone – who might be able to offer advice. He saw no one until he looked at the house on the other side of the road, where someone was peering out nervously behind a curtain. Johan lifted his free hand and waved, then smiled in relief as the door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman.

“Daisy,” she said, looking at the girl in Johan’s arms. “What are you doing out here?”

“Her parents are dead,” Johan said, bluntly. The woman gave him an icy look, as if she hated to hear the word – or, more likely, didn’t want him saying them in front of Daisy. “Where can I take her?”

“I’ll take her, for now,” the woman said. “What ... what happened?”

Johan frowned. “What did you see?”

“There were explosions and flames and ... I hid,” the woman confessed. “I thought that we were all going to die.”

Johan passed her Daisy, then stepped backwards. “Some of the houses were targeted specifically,” he said, softly. Elaine might dismiss thrillers such as The Great Inquisitor as trashy fiction, but Jamal had enjoyed reading them – and Johan had borrowed his books, once or twice. The fact he hadn’t bothered to ask permission first was only a minor detail in his opinion, at least at the time. “What did they all have in common?”

The woman looked up and down the street. “They all worked on the Iron Dragons,” she said, finally. “Daisy’s father was a foreman at the factory.”

Johan nodded and walked away, leaving the woman to close her door and pray to all the gods that whoever was responsible for the devastation didn’t come back. Part of Johan wanted to walk back to Elaine and beg her forgiveness, part of him knew that he could never look her in the eye again. He had killed children!

Guilt was not an emotion familiar to Johan. He’d certainly been ashamed that he couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations, but he’d never felt guilt for any of the attempts he’d made to pay Jamal back for the way he treated Johan. Besides, they were all minor pranks, nothing too onerous for a powerful magician to face. What did hiding an insect in someone’s bed compare to turning someone into a pig for a day or two? But this was different. He would sooner have gone back to Jamal and offered to serve as his test subject, than kill children.

He fought down the urge to cry as he looked around. This part of the city seemed intact, but deserted; everyone was either hiding inside their homes or had fled to the mountains. Johan sat down on a rock in the middle of a crossroads and put his head in his hands. After the news reached the Golden City, they’d be demanding that he be hunted down like a dog. His father would probably lead the charge, frantic to wipe the stain of Johan’s existence off the family name. The thought made him laugh, laughter that broke down into sobs. He’d wanted to be free of his family, but not like this.

In the end, not being able to go back made the decision easier.

Elaine had insisted that he carry a notebook and pencil around with him at all times, claiming that it would allow him to note down his ideas whenever he had them. Johan had thought that she was mocking him at the time, but he’d obeyed. Now, he pulled the pencil out of his pocket and placed it on his hand, holding it up in front of his face. Tracking spells were complex, particularly when the caster didn’t know the person he was trying to track, but Johan knew that his magic was ... unprecedented. Maybe, just maybe, he could track down the person responsible for the devastation. If it cost him his life ...

... It was no more than he deserved.

And he wanted to prove himself. How better to do that than defeating a Dark Wizard.

“All right,” he muttered, addressing the pencil. “Point me to the person responsible for this.”

He closed his eyes, concentrating. When he opened them, the pencil was floating just above his hand and pointing to the south, towards the Golden City. There was nothing to show how far away the Dark Wizard was, but at least he had a direction. Johan smiled darkly and pulled himself to his feet, following the pencil as it led him out of town. If nothing else, he told himself, the Dark Wizard was in for one hell of a surprise.

***

“It was Hawthorne,” the Inquisitor said. “The witnesses said that he just appeared in the middle of the factory and started throwing magic around.”

Elaine shook her head, angrily. Right now, she didn’t care about Hawthorne, no matter how dangerous he was. She cared about Johan. And Johan seemed to have vanished. Where had he gone?

Her imagination provided too many possibilities, all of them bad. If she hadn’t lost her temper with him, he would have stayed with her. Instead ... Johan had fled her anger, determined never to return; Johan had been killed in the chaos or even committed suicide; Johan had been kidnapped by someone determined to duplicate his powers ... but, in the end, the precise details didn’t matter. She had to find him before matters grew even further out of hand.

“There are too many missing people here,” the Inquisitor reminded her. “I don’t have the manpower to spare for a search.”

Elaine gritted her teeth. She knew he was right. No one apart from Light Spinner and the Inquisitors themselves knew how many Inquisitors there actually were, but the Inquisition had taken a serious blow when Kane had devastated the Golden City. They simply didn’t have the numbers to cope with all of their responsibilities. Right now, the surviving Inquisitors had to track down Hawthorne before he could do something worse, not help her find a missing boy. But the boy was vitally important.

“Thank you,” she said, tartly. It wasn’t fair of her to lash out, but she couldn’t help herself. If she hadn’t been so angry with him ... maybe he would not have run off. As it was, she couldn’t see him anywhere. It wasn’t like Johan not to try to help, which meant ...

Her blood ran cold. Johan wanted to prove himself. What was to stop him going after the Dark Wizard himself?

He wouldn’t be that stupid, would he? Elaine asked herself. The thought was terrifying. An Inquisitor would hesitate to go after a Dark Wizard alone, no matter how powerful and skilled he was. Dark Wizards tended to have questionable grips on sanity, which gave them warped powers and a complete lack of scruples. But Johan was brave and determined to prove himself ... and, perhaps, blamed himself for the disaster.

He’s a teenage boy, she told herself, angrily. No teenage boy is ever stable.

She turned back to look at the Inquisitor. “Do you have any idea where Hawthorne might be hiding?”

“No,” the Inquisitor said, shortly. “We didn’t even realise he was in the city until the attack began.”

“Thank you,” Elaine said.

She turned and walked rapidly towards the communications office. Crystal balls and other methods of sending messages instantly would cost money – she fumbled in her pocket to make sure that she had enough – but she needed to provide Light Spinner with an urgent report from the city. Post would take at least two days to reach the Golden City. She had the feeling that the Iron Dragons were going to be busy bringing in disaster relief supplies from all over the Empire.

The office was closed, but she saw one staff member cowering behind the desk. It wasn’t a very good job of hiding, she noted, as she drew her wand; she could see him even when he stayed still. Tapping her wand against the door, she unlocked it and stepped inside, then lowered her wand in the hopes that she wouldn’t look too threatening. The thought made her smile, ruefully. If there was one thing she didn’t look, it was threatening. Very few people were scared of her.

“We’re closed,” a quavering voice said. “Come back tomorrow.”

Elaine had to bite her lip to keep from snickering. “I need to establish a link to the Golden City, now,” she said. She reached into her pocket and produced a handful of gold coins. “This is enough to pay for it, isn’t it?”

The staffer stared at her, nervously. “I ... we’re closed,” he protested. “I ...”

What would Dread do? Elaine asked herself. The answer was obvious; he would bulldoze his way through any objections until he got what he wanted. But Dread was a trained Inquisitor, with a voice that could compel obedience from even the most hardened of criminals. He’d once told her that it using the right tone was more effective than any charm. But Elaine didn’t quite have the nerve ...

She put the coins on the table. “I would take it as a personal favour,” she said, quietly. “Call the remainder of the coins your tip.”

The young man staggered to his feet. “I can’t,” he said. For a moment, Elaine was surprised; a civil servant refusing a bribe? That was as unprecedented as Johan’s powers. “The balls have been smashed.”

Elaine blinked in surprise. “Someone has smashed your balls?”

“They shattered, just before the first big explosions began,” the young man said. “I ... I can’t put them back together.”

“No, I suppose you can’t,” Elaine said. She searched her mind for options. “Do you have any inactive spares?”

The young man shook his head. Elaine glared down at the table, cursing under her breath. Crystal balls were fantastically complex pieces of art, each one produced by a trained enchanter; she knew the spells to make them work, but she couldn’t hope to put one together herself, certainly not from destroyed balls. But what had happened to them? Had the first pulse she’d sensed disabled them or had someone managed to work out a spell to take them out? If so ... the results could be disastrous.

Magic communications held the Empire together. Light Spinner would hear, instantly, of a revolt on the other side of the world and be able to take corrective measures. Without magic, it would take months to get word from one side of the Empire to the other. If the network shattered, the Empire would shatter with it. At the very least, it would take years to put the network back together again.

And chaos suits the Witch-King, she thought. It would make it far harder for Light Spinner and her few allies who knew about the Witch-King to track him down if the Empire was coming apart around them. All of a sudden, she felt torn; she wanted to go after Johan, but at the same time she knew that she had to warn Light Spinner. They needed to put contingency plans in place for dealing with a mass communications breakdown.

“Right,” she said, trying to sound like Dread. The look on the clerk’s face suggested that he was not entirely convinced. “What other options are there?”

The clerk swallowed. “You can hire a horseman to carry dispatches, or you can put them on the Iron Dragon and have them taken to the city ...”

Elaine passed him twenty gold coins. “I am going to write a letter,” she said. “You are going to take it to the Golden City, right to the Palace. I strongly advise you” – she tapped her wand meaningfully – “not to try to open the letter. The results would be unpleasant.”

The clerk stared at the money, his eyes going wide. Like the farmer, it was probably more money than he’d ever seen in his life.

“I will,” he said. He coughed. “I mean, I won’t open the letter.”

Elaine smiled. “Good,” she said.

She picked up a piece of paper and an envelope, then scribbled out a quick explanation. Light Spinner – and Dread – could extrapolate the rest, she suspected. The magic pulses she’d sensed might well have reached the Golden City. She sealed the letter, tapped it with her wand to make sure that no one could open it apart from the intended recipient, and passed it to him.

Once he took the letter – and the coins – Elaine strode out of the door. Whatever else happened, she had to track Johan down. The gods alone knew what he thought he was doing.