A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Chapter 238: Beneath Walls of Stone

Damien

Month 9, Day 11, Saturday 11:15 a.m.

Damien picked up a paper from a scruffy-looking boy hawking at the corner, but refused the follow up attempt to sell him “high quality” foreign cigars. Damien didn’t consider himself an athlete or a prospective professional duelist, but he still didn’t fancy having his lung capacity reduced or having to take a lung-clearing potion to strip away tar buildup.

He frowned at the headline as he flagged a carriage. Osham’s premier was insisting that Lenore pay restitution for that attack a couple of weeks ago. And, of course, he wanted that done in the form of celerium and rare components.

Damien wondered how the Thirteen Crowns would respond. No one wanted to make an enemy of Osham, but at the same time, conceding to their demands would not only be admitting that they were behind the attack, but also showing that they could be threatened into concessions. Only a weak nation could actually pay them. The High Crown would either have to refuse outright or find some other, indirect way to appease Osham’s premier.

If Damien were the High Crown, he would try some kind of joint project to strengthen ties between their two nations, or an exchange program, or something. But Damien was not the High Crown, nor even the leader of his Family, which meant there was little use worrying about it.

There was construction near the restaurant that he was meeting Sebastien and Ana, causing a traffic jam. Damien hopped out of the carriage to walk the rest of the way, leaving the newspaper behind. The sidewalk was packed with other pedestrians, the flow of people moving slower than Damien would have preferred.

In front of him, two women were walking with their heads tilted close together. The taller one said, “He came by the house again. I saw him through the window this morning, before I turned on the lamp. He was standing out on the street just...watching.”

The shorter one hooked her friend’s arm in her own and pulled her closer. “That’s not okay.”

“I know—”

“No, listen to me. That’s not okay. You told him you weren’t interested, and now he’s stalking you!” Their conversation was louder now as they seemed to forget they were out in public.

“Stalking? I’m not sure I’d say he’s stalking me.”

“What about when he showed up at your work with flowers, and told everyone there that he was taking you out, even though you already said no?”

“Well—”

The short one kept talking, as if already anticipating her friend’s response. “What if he was doing this to me? Would you agree that he was stalking me, if I were the one telling this story? Would you be worried about me, knowing what you know about him? Think about it.”

There were a long few seconds of silence, and then the tall one said, “Okay, he’s stalking me. And I would be worried for you. But what do we do about it?”

Damien wondered if he should say something. His first instinct was to tell her to go to the coppers. Except, unless the man had been violent toward the tall girl before, there wasn’t much the law allowed the coppers to do. At best, they could visit him and give him a warning, hoping that he would be scared into rethinking his actions.

The short woman spoke as if to answer Damien’s thoughts. “His uncle is the owner of that construction company that just got a contract with the Moncrieffe Family. I’m not sure we can rely on the coppers to take your side.”

Damien ground his teeth together.

“And those bruises on my arm have already faded, so there’s no proof of anything, really,” the tall one said, nodding morosely as she absently rubbed her shoulder.

Damien brightened. A prognos could observe her testimony as well as the man’s and judge who was lying, which would serve as good evidence toward violence. It wasn’t their usual job to work on domestic disputes and other “small” crime, but Damien suddenly realized that it should be. He opened his mouth, but then closed it again, suddenly awkward.

Before he could come up with a way to insert himself into the conversation, a slender girl, probably younger than Waverly, sidled up to them. She slipped a small folded pamphlet, no bigger than a palm, into both women’s hands. “I overheard what you were saying,” she said in a low voice. “If you want someone to actually listen to your problem and take action to fix things, come to the Undreaming Order.”

“I’ve heard of you guys,” the shorter woman said with obvious suspicion.

“Then you know we keep our promises,” the girl responded confidently. She had a certain way about her—a conviction—that even Damien found compelling. He couldn’t help but believe her. Or at least believe that she believed. “All you have to do is learn a little about the Raven Queen and submit a request for help.” Rà????o฿Èš

“But you want payment, don’t you?” the shorter one snapped back.

“Of course we do,” the girl said. “Just like the coppers or the gangs want payment for their help. The difference with us is, you get to decide how you pay your debt, and to who. You even get to decide when to pay it. Though if you leave it unpaid, there is always a chance the Raven Queen will call it due.”

“Then it isn’t exactly our choice, is it?”

The girl shrugged. “That’s part of the deal. She’s never called in a debt from the flock due yet. If you want to be sure you can avoid that, pay forward the help you received immediately. We have a ton of different recommended ways to volunteer if you have no coin. Nothing is free, but the Raven Queen only takes what you can afford to give. They helped me, and they can help you, too. The protection of the Raven Queen’s wings stretch as far as the darkness does.”

Damien was so engrossed in their conversation that he almost tripped over the curb as they moved from crossing the street back to the sidewalk.

The tall one asked hesitantly, “What exactly can you do to help me, and what would I have to do in return?”

“We have several options of varying severity that we can use in a situation like yours, depending on the specifics. I think the most effective and efficient is a curse that will compel him to stay away from you. It’s not that hard to pay back. A few weeks of working in the kitchen or helping our cobbler make shoes during your spare time every day, that kind of thing. If you have a chance to save someone and you take it, that will repay a good chunk of your debt, too. You have to learn the Raven Queen’s tenets, but you don’t have to join the Order unless you want to.”

“...Why are you doing this? All of you, I mean.”

The girl grinned, her eyes sparkling with pride and satisfaction. “If you learn the Raven Queen’s tenets, you’ll understand a little bit. If you learn—really learn—about who the Raven Queen is, you’ll understand even more. I’ve paid back my original debt several times over now. I continue creating good in her name so that I might gain her favor.”

The three young women veered off in a different direction than Damien was going. He considered following after them, but when someone jostled him in the shoulder and cursed him for blocking the middle of the sidewalk, he instead continued on toward the restaurant. The conversation kept playing over in his head, especially the last bit, but when he found Sebastien sitting at a table on the balcony while a waitress tried to flirt with him, Damien’s thoughts returned to the reason for their meeting.

Or rather, the reason they had agreed to meet earlier than they told Ana—so that they could discuss sensitive topics.

Damien walked inside and told the host he was meeting a friend. “The reservation should be under Westbay, and I saw my friend up on the balcony.” He made to walk past, but the host fairly jumped at him in excitement.

“You’re Damien Westbay!?” the man asked, his voice tight with excitement.

Sebastien grabbed Damien’s arm and pulled him back against one of the support columns, and a moment later, a sphere of bright light bloomed above their heads, revealing Ana’s terrified face on Sebastien’s other side.. He was casting from the thirteen-pointed star light coaster, though he kept its distinguishing face tucked to his palm. He’d slipped his other hand into his satchel, and Damien saw the dull glint of a battle wand’s base gripped between his fingers.

It took almost fifteen seconds for the backup lights to come on.

By that time, many people had already succumbed to panic, rushing toward the doors, trampling on others, and screaming with the kind of terror that was infectious.

“My skin is maggots!” One man nearby shrieked. “I’m being eaten alive by worms!”

It took the coppers stationed within fifteen minutes to suppress the panic. They did so with silencing and stunning spells, and a good few bruises and broken bones when the magic ran out. “It’s all in your head!” their squad leader called out. “No Aberrant magic can actually reach through these walls and wards. The most they can do is make you think they have. The Red Guard personally warded this shelter with the most powerful magic known to man. We are safe as long as we don’t panic and start tearing each other apart.”

Sebastien had let his light spell go by then, and the three of them huddled close, refusing water as the coppers began to pass it out.

“Nightmare-type?” Damien asked, whispering so low under his breath that no one could hear it more than a couple of feet away within the echoing cavern.

“Probably,” Ana agreed.

“It’s not true, what the copper said,” Sebastien whispered back. “The Red Guard can’t ward against everything, every potential effect an Aberrant might have. That’s literally impossible. We don’t even understand how Aberrants themselves work, let alone half the magic they propagate.”

“They do the next best thing and cast stabilizing magic,” Damien said. “They ward against what they can and cast opposing magic to try and catch the rest. It works pretty well. Very well, usually. Their spells to resist change are probably the best in the world.”

Sebastien’s eyes narrowed at that, and his lips pressed together as if he were holding back words as his eyes scanned the ceiling. After a moment, he asked, “Why didn’t we feel the break event?”

Damien explained his thoughts from earlier, but hesitated before adding new ideas. “Or, a roaming Aberrant could have approached the city. Sometimes everyone misses them until it’s too late, if some stupid sorcerer breaks doing experiments out in his cottage in the middle of nowhere.”

“Or we did feel the break event, but we forgot it. If it’s a Nightmare-type,” Ana contributed, her voice low and her eyes dull.

They fell into silence for a long while then, outwardly if not within their own heads. Perhaps an hour had passed when a girl came to crouch beside them.

“You!” Damien said. It was that same girl from earlier, who had been inviting the young women to get her cult to perform a curse for them. “You’re with the Undreaming Order.”

The girl blinked, then smiled at him, though her eyes kept being drawn back to Sebastien. “I am. I’m here to offer you the services of a mind healer. We just purchased his services. He can help calm you if you need it, right now, or deal with long-term effects of the mental strain. We’re set up over there,” she said, turning and pointing. “We also have an Apprentice healer who’s gotten permission from the coppers to cast, considering the circumstances. She can fix cuts, bad bruises, and broken bones as long as the break is clean.”

“Thank you,” Sebastien said, “But we’re fine.”

The girl nodded, but hesitated before moving on. “Do you...remember me?”

Damien looked between the two of them. “You know her?”

“I do,” Sebastien said.

The girl smiled brightly, even more so than when she spoke about the Raven Queen. “He saved my life,” she told Damien.

“Wait, what?”

“It was nothing,” Sebastien muttered.

“Why don’t I know about this?” Damien asked.

“Because he didn’t do it for praise,” the girl said, full of conviction. With one last smile and nod at Sebastien, she left.

Damien turned on his friend. “What happened?”

Sebastien groaned and leaned his head back to thunk against the support column. “Why don’t you ask Titus? He’s the one who actually saved her life, technically. He paid the healer’s bill.”

“What!?” Damien asked, even more shocked and outraged. “When did you go around saving people’s lives with Titus?”

“He wanted to keep it a secret from you,” Sebastien said, unrepentant.

Damien tried to pester Sebastien into telling the story, but his friend refused, and eventually Ana snapped at him to shut up. A few hours into their stay, she dozed off, using Sebastien’s satchel as a pillow. Damien took the opportunity to talk to Sebastien again. “Why did you take us to this shelter, instead of the one to the south?”

Sebastien looked at him in silence for a moment, and then said, “There are parts of the map of the city that are a little blurry in my mind. I think they’re—at least some of them—Red Guard bases. This one was a lot closer to one of those blurry spots, and potentially the protection of their agents. So, I led us here. Just in case.”

The Aberrant was handled and they were let out of the shelter that evening, about an hour before sunset.

Ana rushed off immediately toward home and her sister. The Lilies had several shelters, and the Crown Family homes often had personal shelters of their own, so Damien was sure Nat would be fine.

As Sebastien and he walked through the grumpy, dispersing crowd, Sebastien stopped for a second. “I have a contact who might be able to get us some answers about all this,” he said.

Damien knew immediately that he was talking about answers about the Aberrant problem.

“I will go to them and try to get some information that will guide our next steps. Something actionable I can pass on to the higher-ups,” Sebastien added after a short pause.

Damien wondered if his “contact” was Professor Lacer. But if that were the case, Sebastien would have probably just said so, right?