A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Damien

Month 9, Day 11, Saturday 11:00 a.m.

Damien left Harrow Hill’s old archive room, leaving behind the two administrative interns that he’d commandeered for the organization and cataloguing project still working through their respective boxes of dusty old records. The three of them had made great progress over the time since the term ended, but Damien couldn’t feel happy about it.

Damien walked past a room whose walls were covered in information about the Raven Queen and cabinets filled with files of civilian reports, professional profiles and projections, and engagement strategies to keep any team that might meet her alive and uncursed. There was only one man in the room, reading through the stacks of reports about potential Raven Queen sightings with lifeless eyes.

In Damien’s opinion, they didn’t really hope to catch her any more. Not after she had thwarted all of their plans so repeatedly and thoroughly. Not after the Red Guard had met with and refused to deal with her, despite the High Crown’s rage. Of course, the coppers couldn’t actively give up, but it was telling that none of the engagement strategies had them trying to incapacitate her. Any who met her were supposed to politely ask for her to turn herself in and defend themselves if necessary, but otherwise avoid angering her.

The coppers had plenty of other problems to struggle with, anyway. The next room was devoted to the team trying to figure out what was happening to the dozens of poor and homeless people that were disappearing. Considering that it was unlikely anyone knew about or reported the disappearance of the average homeless person in the Mires, the number of missing was likely much higher than that.

Damien smiled and exchanged some pleasantries with one of the frustrated coppers working within. He wasn’t technically authorized to know anything about ongoing cases, but his Family connections meant none of them tried too hard to keep confidentiality. Many assumed that he would work at Harrow Hill after he attained his Mastery and graduated. “No breaks in the case?” he asked.

The man squeezed his pen, rubbing his thumb over its grip as if he wanted to grind it away. “Plenty of leads, but all of them somehow come to a dead end. The only thing I’m sure of is that someone powerful, and probably wealthy, is behind it. If not for the fact that the Titans-damned Undreaming Order keeps rescuing these people, I would say the Raven Queen was behind it.”

Damien would have been more interested in the mystery, but there was enough evidence to be sure that the disappearances weren’t caused by an Aberrant. He made some commiserating noises.

“Tell your brother I need more men, or at least a stipend, to post rewards for civilian information.”

“I’ll tell him, but you know how it is,” Damien said.

“Goddamn penny-pinching Pendragons,” the man growled under his breath, his grip growing tight enough that the pen might actually break. “Does the High Crown think punishing us with empty pockets will increase our performance?”

It was dangerous to complain like that aloud, especially with the High Crown so sensitive to discontent recently. One never knew the hidden alliances of those who might be listening in, even if they were your coworkers. Damien made a noncommittal grunt and continued on.

When he got to Titus’s office, he stopped outside, adjusting his clothes and smoothing his hair. It was unfair how Titus always managed to look so perfect, without any of the stiffness or sheen that would have indicated a hair wax. Damien made a mental reminder, for what was probably not the first time, to look for spells that could style and set his hair. It was hard to remember things like that when his mind and efforts were devoted to so much more important problems. Maybe one day, he would go bald from the stress.

Damien shuddered at the nightmarish thought as his scalp tingled in distress.

Upon knocking and opening the door, Damien found his brother reading the latest edition of The People’s Voice, the simple publication run by the Verdant Stags, and which always featured opinion interviews with civilians. This issue was about the Verdant Stags’ latest expansion of their territory, which would only see more of their newspaper spreading everywhere.

As Damien entered and closed the door behind himself, Titus set down the paper. “The Ambassador to the Public has been urging me to shut down the Verdant Stags’ press. Unfortunately, due to the way the law is written, since the Verdant Stags are not selling the newspapers, but giving them away as free literature to people who buy other items from their owned or affiliated businesses, we have no actual recourse to shut down the press or charge anyone with a crime. Not unless they slip into the dangerous zone of suggesting insurrection or otherwise encouraging criminal action.”

“Have you found any of that?”

“Not directly, but we’ve noted a few issues in the last few months that skirt the line. They’re growing bolder.”

“But they have solicitors who will argue they’ve done no such thing,” Damien guessed. Even in the couple of weeks that he had been working at Harrow Hill, he’d gotten an idea of how the Verdant Stags were run.

“One already came to visit us. He insists that truthfully publishing quotations from citizens who might be angry or reckless is not encouraging criminal acts. And then he pointed out that clause at the back of every single issue that directly and specifically states that the writers of The People’s Voice encourage no reckless or criminal action, and merely hope to inform the people of events and the general sentiment toward those events, without adjusting the narrative for personal gain.”

That seemed like petty quibbling to Damien. “But the Verdant Stags choose what events to report on, as well as what quotes to publish. Surely that argument won’t stand?”

“Of course, not against the interests of the Thirteen Crowns. But it makes things difficult, when every person we arrest will have a solicitor holding on to them, kicking and screaming through as hasslesome a legal process as they can manage. And some of the judges…” Titus shook his head. “We need a change in the law if they want results.”

Some of the judges would rule in the criminals’ favor, either because they had been bribed, threatened, or simply believed in the cause of the Verdant Stag. Damien didn’t agree with that stance, but he could, increasingly, understand it. The Verdant Stags were undeniably a boon to those in their territory, and the people loved them. Who could blame them? They provided many of the services that the Crowns were supposed to, and more beyond that, without imposing nearly as much tax on the general citizenship.

One of Titus’s copper teams had recently met a team of Stags while out on patrol. Some civilians had used the green emergency flags to call in a gang squad to handle some emergency. When the coppers had tried to arrest the gangers, they had been beaten half to death. Not by the Stags. By the civilian bystanders, who took offense to the idea that the Stags might be kept from responding to the emergency.

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The thought of it filled Damien with a weary frustration, and he knew Titus was no different, though his brother’s frustration was tinged with anger. Damien wished he couldn’t understand the civilians, but some sickened part of him whispered that maybe they were right. He had probably been reading too many decommissioned and pseudo-seditious newspapers.

“The Verdant Stag is tricky,” Damien said, swallowing the rest of his doubts back down into that pit in the bottom of his stomach that was getting more and more full.

“This new organization run by the Raven Queen might be even worse.”

“The Undreaming Order?”

“Them,” Titus agreed. “They’re certainly growing even faster than the Verdant Stags.” He stood and moved to his office’s window, looking out over the grounds that were contained by a tall stone wall. “On the surface, they’re solely a charitable organization. But they worship the Raven Queen, and that should tell you all you need to know about them.” Titus turned to Damien. “They’re dangerous. What do you know about them, Damien?”

He replied quickly and easily. “They're going around doing charity work on a mass scale and preaching about some tenets of the Raven Queen. It’s actually a fairly ingenious…business model? Not exactly the right term for it, but you know what I mean. Everyone they help must pay on to others three times the help that they receive themselves, all in the name of the Raven Queen.”

Titus nodded. “However, it’s only the Raven Queen’s reputation that manages to keep things in order. They’re all working on an honor system, more or less.”

Damien shrugged. “I’m not sure a little loss here and there actually matters. With the exponential growth of the model, even if some people don’t pay it on, on a large scale it will be hardly noticeable. And a few visits by the Raven Queen to any notable offenders will probably be more than enough to keep the majority in line.”

“Well, what the public might not know is that the Undreaming Order is suspected in several crimes. Kidnapping, assault, arson, bribery, blackmail, and the list goes on.”

“But you haven’t arrested them,” Damien said, moving to stand at the other side of the window. “Which must mean that you don’t have any concrete evidence. Or you’re afraid of angering the Raven Queen?” At the idea of her descending to break her followers out of jail, he shuddered. If the Pendragon Corps couldn’t stop her, how were the coppers supposed to?

Titus tapped a forefinger on the window glass, his eyes trailing a raven flying over the wall. “Both, I suppose,” he admitted with a sigh. “But we cannot worry too much about the latter when we also don’t have the former.”

“What is all the charity for?” Damien wondered. “I mean, is she just trying to change public perception of her? Is it a front for something more nefarious? Or, like The People’s Voice suggests, does she actually care about helping people who deserve help?”

Titus opened his mouth, his lips twisting as if to scoff, but he fell silent for a long moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it worries me. This city is full of cracks, Damien. I don’t know if you can sense them, but they’re just getting deeper. This is yet one more fault-line. One good quake will rip the whole thing apart.”

Damien suppressed a shiver at the helpless foreboding in Titus’s voice. “Surely there must be something we can do to keep it together. That’s why the coppers exist, isn’t it?” Damien knew it sounded naive. He knew that, in practice it didn’t always work that way, but surely, when it counted most, honor should come first?

Titus leaned against the window’s edge and stuck one hand in his pocket, idly jingling the coins within. “The overarching problem is that the coppers don’t have enough funding. We’re expected to maintain patrols we don’t actually have the manpower for, in addition to investigating crimes both big and small, in a population that is growing increasingly hostile to us. I want to put my people through continuing education to increase their skillsets and ability to resolve conflicts with something other than violence and hard-line authority. I want to hire people who can only be enticed by more than the paycheck we offer. I want to implement better reporting and emergency response systems throughout the entire city.”

Titus sighed and pulled out a copper crown from his pocket. It was tarnished, and sat dully between his forefinger and thumb. “That’s what I want. What I get is funding on a level that means I can barely afford to keep the shifts fully staffed. When I complain, I am told that I spend too much on the pensions for our retired or injured comrades. I refuse to cut the pensions, Damien, I refuse.”

He squeezed the copper crown in his fist. “Pensions are the kind of support beam that, if removed, send the entire structure tumbling down. My men need to be able to rely on having a future when they get old, or if something goes wrong.”

“You could… The Westbays could afford to donate,” Damien suggested hesitantly.

Titus scoffed. “That is a slippery slope, and there is a good reason no Westbay has been foolish or desperate enough to do that since Lenore was first established. Father would disown me if I tried. Plus, if the High Crown felt that the coppers were becoming a privately funded army…”

“It might make him nervous. But if they’re not funding us, where is the gold going? It’s not as if tax revenue has fallen, right? Does the High Crown really not understand that we need more funding?”

Titus’s eyes grew dark, like rainclouds creeping in over a grey autumn sky. “They’re making a mistake. But even Father won’t listen.”

“Have they given up on retrieving whatever the Raven Queen stole, then? Something of Myrddin’s isn’t valuable enough to justify funding its retrieval?”

“Something of Myrddin’s? How did you know? Is that just common knowledge now, rumors spreading throughout the city?”

“I just made an educated guess,” Damien said. What he didn’t say was that guess was informed largely by Sebastien’s intense interest in Myrddin. His friend had been studying the man with the same intensity he reserved for an interesting new spell, and would actually look up from whatever he was doing if he heard someone talking about Myrddin in passing. Once Damien had the idea, it had seemed to fit so perfectly, and this confirmed it.

“If you can’t catch her,” Damien said, “maybe you should set up a meeting. She has shown she’ll meet with people, like the Gervins, for instance. In fact, don’t you have her ring?” At Titus’s sharp look, he rubbed the back of his head. “I heard that somewhere.” In reality, Damien had seen the ring in the Gervins’ safe when he and Sebastien…“explored” it.

Titus sighed. “She might be willing to meet, if we could somehow ensure she trusted us not to betray her, but that ring was a fake. We discovered that after we arrested Malcolm Gervin and confiscated the contents.”

“Fake?” Damien was more discomfited by this surprise than he would have expected, though he wasn’t sure why. “What happened? Did someone switch it out?”

“The way I see it, there are three possibilities,” Titus said, holding up three fingers. “One, the Raven Queen took the original herself, though I’m not sure why she would leave a fake in its place. Maybe some cruel joke.” His forefinger dropped. “Two, the Gervins never had the real thing in the first place. Ennis Naught gave them a fake, which, given the man’s history, wouldn’t be so surprising. But in that case, she probably didn’t know about it, seeing as she broke into Harrow Hill with a raven’s body just to ask him about it.” His second finger fell. “Three, the ring was real, or original, however you want to say it, but it was never a proper Conduit from the beginning. In that case, she would have cared about it for the sentimental value. Or maybe she didn’t know it wasn’t celerium, either. I don’t know which is more likely. But we can’t exactly call for a meeting and then give her a silver band and some broken quartz shards, can we?”

“What do you plan to do, then?”

“I would, in fact, very much like to meet with her, if only to talk. But I cannot imagine a scenario in which the High Crown agrees to anything of the sort. No, he would order us to lie to her, and then try to arrest or kill her when she showed up.”

“And you would fail,” Damien said succinctly.

Titus groaned, twisting and stamping his foot dramatically, like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. “Agh, even my little brother holds so little faith in our capabilities!” He straightened and sobered. “Well, that is, in fact, the most likely outcome.”

Damien patted his shoulder. “Cheer up. Your faithless little brother has ordered a delivery of roasted kebabs.”

“Street food?” Titus asked, his lips staying straight though his eyes lit up. “You know street food isn’t assured to be hygienic,” he complained, but he was already moving to clear space on his desk, motions fast enough to bely his excitement. “Did you get honey drizzled squid, or just more of that disgusting eel you like?”

“Squid. But…I can’t stay to eat with you. I’m meeting Sebastien and Ana for lunch.”

Titus looked up from his desk, his hands falling along with his expression. “You’re abandoning me?”

Damien grinned. “Allow me to repeat, I am your faithless little brother.”

“How is Sebastien? I haven’t seen him since that whole fracas with Frederick Pendragon.”

“Oh, good, good,” Damien said, inching toward the door. “Just doing genius things, as usual.”

“And Ana? I heard she’s been busy with the business recently.”

“You know Ana, she’ll rip apart a business opportunity with her bare teeth and then smile like a demure, pretty lady.” With that, Damien ran off before Titus could invite himself along to lunch.

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