A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Chapter 213: Simple Math and Complex Suspicions

Thaddeus

Month 8, Day 21, Saturday 10:30 a.m.

Despite Thaddeus’s attempts at efficiency, paperwork and in-depth after-action reports still took longer than they had any reasonable right to. It consumed almost two hours before he could depart the Red Guard’s main field base. By that time, he already had his next steps firmly in mind.

Using his fame and his identity as a frequent consultant for the coppers, it was fairly easy to get access to the records at the city’s archive. According to what little information they had on him, Sebastien Siverling was an orphan of unremarkable parents. Other than his date of birth, his records were nonexistent until he came to Gilbratha.

Harrow Hill didn’t have much more, except for what Thaddeus already knew. The boy was easily influenced by those he considered his friends and had repeatedly put his safety at terrible risk for them. And he had met the Raven Queen in passing on the same night that Newton Moore broke.

Thaddeus was about to replace Sebastien’s records and leave when Titus Westbay slid around one of the record shelves. “I heard you were visiting, but you didn’t come to see—” He broke off as his eyes trailed over the label on the file in Thaddeus’s hands. Thoughts raced behind his eyes for two seconds, and then he said, “Is something wrong?”

Thaddeus remained silent for a moment, considering his words. “I have reason to be concerned for my apprentice. I am merely…ensuring there is nothing I have missed.”

Titus shifted on his feet then smoothed his hair back. “I did a private investigation into Mr. Siverling, as well.”

Thaddeus’s eyes narrowed.

“I was worried he might have bad intentions toward Damien!” Titus hurried to explain, holding his hands out as if to stop Thaddeus, though Thaddeus had not moved at all.

“Why bring it up?” Thaddeus asked. “You must have discovered something relevant.”

“Well…I don’t know about that. Perhaps if you were more specific about the reason for your concern?”

Thaddeus closed the file and put it neatly back in its place. “What do you know?” he asked, his voice low and his words slow.

Titus swallowed. “Oliver Dryden, who is sponsoring Sebastien’s way through University, is inappropriately interested in him. Damien was worried that Sebastien might be being taken advantage of. Fortunately, Dryden doesn’t seem to have managed to act on his interests, and Sebastien is at least moderately wary of him. Sebastien has friends at the Silk Door, and grew up poor, but until now he’s kept himself alive by practicing small, illegal magic as he traveled through small towns rather than prostituting himself.”

Titus ran out of air, took a deep breath, and continued to spew everything he knew. “Mr Siverling is an orphan, and was taken in as a small child by a man who taught him some magic. No known blood relation. That man later died in a fire that Mr. Siverling suspects was arson. I don’t know a lot of other details about Mr. Siverling’s past, except that he experienced some severely traumatic events which he doesn’t like to discuss. If you’re concerned that he’s scheming for influence and power, you can put those worries aside. He strongly prefers to achieve success through his own merits alone and face obstacles head-on. He’s got an abrasive mouth and he gets irritated easily, but he’s excessively kind to those he considers weaker than himself. And…”

Titus looked left and right, cleared his throat, and added. “When he was little, he used to collect newspaper clippings of you and pretend you were his father!”

Thaddeus took a moment to process all of that. He reached up to press on his eyes, pushing back the pressure building behind them. For once, he found himself at a loss to say anything. “Okay. Tell me more about Oliver Dryden. And the man who took Sebastien in. And the arson.”

“Well…I really only know anything more about Lord Dryden. I think he’s infatuated with your apprentice. I have reason to believe he’s hired prostitutes to impersonate Mr. Siverling, and when I confronted him, he had a rather strong protective reaction for the boy. I don’t believe he means your apprentice any harm, per se, but Mr. Siverling did come clean about some wariness toward the man. He isn’t oblivious to Dryden’s manipulative nature. Damien was hoping that his friend could come to stay with us over Harvest Break, so that he would not be forced to sleep at Dryden Manor.”

Thaddeus pressed harder on his eyes. Why had Sebastien never mentioned any of this to him? It was just like the underpowered Conduit situation all over again. Was Thaddeus not trustworthy in Sebastien’s eyes? Was he not reliable? Or was his apprentice too ashamed to tell the truth, perhaps? Thaddeus took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Alright. Thank you for informing me. I must be off.” He nodded to Titus and brushed past him, striding toward the exit.

“Ah? Sure. But wait, what’s going on?” Titus asked, turning belatedly to follow Thaddeus.

“It is still unclear. I will inform you if I need further assistance.”

“What? Wait, there has to be a reason for this. Did Dryden do something? Did Sebastien say something?”

Thaddeus ignored him, and as soon as they were among others who might overhear, Titus was forced to shut his loose lips. The man was delayed by his subordinates stopping him to talk, and Thaddeus exited and got into a carriage alone.

As the suspensionless, uncushioned carriage rattled beneath him on a path back toward the base he had just left, Thaddeus pondered.

He had examined the boon the Raven Queen had given Sebastien extensively, and based on his observations of her own anti-divination magic during the meeting that morning, he strongly suspected they were exactly the same. Which meant that, during the short period of time they crossed paths, and without Sebastien noticing, Siobhan had cast complex magic on the young man. But how?

Thaddeus had considered it before, but he ran the questions through his mind again, searching for some new revelation now that his understanding was deeper.

It seemed that, from a distance, she had placed a long-lasting anti-divination ward on Sebastien while somehow avoiding any physical traces of its existence. The sheer implausibility of this, verging on impossibility, was part of the unfathomable reputation that led so many to find her frightening.

It was also possible that it was no ward at all. At least not by the definitions of modern sorcery. Changing a person’s intrinsic nature to give them some of the unconscious magical qualities of a beast was not totally unheard of, but to do so so late in life, and without any other obvious side-effects or physical mutations…doubtful. No, perhaps impossible, and likely even harder to accomplish than the first option. On top of that, Thaddeus was no magi-zoologist, but he could think of no beasts with that precise effect.

More plausibly, Siobhan had somehow shared her own abilities with Sebastien, likely through some kind of binding magic. Perhaps she was even actively casting the ward on the boy from a distance, whenever some kind of alarm alerted her to the need. But how would she have done so without Sebastien’s knowledge? Either there was some deeper intrinsic connection between the two that allowed her to give such a powerful boon to Sebastien without the young man realizing he had accepted anything or given up anything in return, or something else was going on.

Of the two options, Thaddeus leaned toward the idea that some deception had been perpetrated. And Sebastien was very likely complicit.

Back at the Red Guard base, Thaddeus took a few hours to pour over all of the information they had compiled about the Raven Queen’s actions and abilities. Their intelligence was more thorough and accurate than what the coppers had put together, but held no particular revelations. He noted that she was rumored to never sleep, and had given boons of a similar nature, though the details were unclear.

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Thaddeus’s gaze grew distant as he remembered the spell Sebastien had been developing the previous semester. A blood magic binding spell that would allow someone or something else to sleep in his place. From what Thaddeus remembered, the spell had been strangely advanced for a first-term student. Truly, it would have been more realistic coming from a Journeyman. Furthermore, it used principles none of Sebastien’s professors would have taught him, since Thaddeus knew that he himself had not.

The Red Guard’s investigation had also confirmed that the Raven Queen very likely did use various different physical forms. How she accomplished this was uncertain.

Some suggested that her body was merely like a pair of clothes, a chosen acolyte that had agreed to host her for a time. But all of them looked fairly similar, which was suspicious. Based on the flesh-molding blood magic that she had used to heal—even giving one man a thumb-shaped forearm in a bit of perverse humor—Thaddeus guessed it was well inside her displayed capabilities to moderately adjust her physical form.

Again, he considered that if he had no reason to believe otherwise, he might suspect that the real Siobhan Naught was long dead and her body devoured by the denizens of the Charybdis Gulf.

However, such a capability, along with her proven mastery at outclassing all traditional divination, meant that she could probably travel the city freely, one woman amongst the many. In fact, someone naive like Sebastien might have met her without even knowing who she was.

It was growing dark already, and, somewhat stymied for epiphanies, Thaddeus returned to the University. He could sense the signs of excessive sleep deprivation and stress sending his thoughts spiraling in unproductive loops, so he forced himself to sleep. In the morning, he found that Sebastien was gone from the dorms, though this in itself was not particularly alarming. Many students flouted the rules over the weekend, with or without approved absences from the dormitories.

Still, something about not being able to see Sebastien set Thaddeus on edge.

Thaddeus was forced to go to a faculty meeting where his colleagues argued about inanities, ate mediocre pastries, and tried to get Thaddeus to volunteer for extra work in various forms. After that, he was stuck in back-to-back consultations with his students, several of whom in the upper terms were signed up for the exhibitions. By the time he was finished, it was already late.

Scowling, he walked to the administrative center, along the way frightening several student couples who were having romantic moments along the gently lit cobblestone path. He ignored the administrative desk attendant who tried to flirt with him every time he visited and pulled Sebastien’s records.

Sebastien’s file was not as thick as some of the worst troublemakers, but still thicker than average. His professors, in general, had taken special note of the young man, perhaps as a courtesy to Thaddeus.

Most of the notes were consistent. Sebastien had trouble socializing, but had made friends with Damien’s group, as well as a few others, namely Tanya Canelo and the unfortunate Newton Moore. He had many “fans” among the other students, though he interacted with them as little as possible. And his Will’s capacity was growing with abnormal speed, leading several to worry that he might be pushing himself to the breaking point. The healers had even left a note about him being underweight, and several prescriptions for anti-anxiety potions.

Thaddeus slowed down and read those notes again. Sebastien had started the first term barely over two hundred thaums. But his most recent test placed him at six hundred eighteen.

Thaddeus commandeered a piece of paper from the administrative desk and did the math. Generally, Will-growth followed a fairly simple equation that most students would be able to compute by the time they gained their Mastery.

He stared down at the results, then scratched his beard.

Either Sebastien had been lying about his capacity at the start of term, couldn’t bring his full Will to bear because of a sub-par Conduit, or had been working himself to the bone ever since. Or…he was one of the few humans with a calculable smidge of extra talent. Like Thaddeus.

Thaddeus realized his heart was pounding and took a deep breath to calm himself.

But even for Thaddeus, to make that kind of advancement, he would have had to practice almost six and a half hours per day. Extensive studies had shown that the safe limit for active casting was only six hours, ideally to be completed over an eight to twelve hour period. One could safely surpass that on occasion, but to do so on average was dangerous. It was possible to extend the six hour limit slightly with special treatment and a rigid program meant to maximize physical and mental health, but it still required a lifestyle without other mental stressors or distracting efforts.

And Thaddeus knew that Sebastien’s life did not even come close to such conditions. No University student did.

For a normal student, the growth Sebastien had displayed would have required eight hours per day, and they would likely already be dead.

Thaddeus considered that maybe Sebastien had already mastered that light-based healing spell Thaddeus had translated for him, somehow cutting the average initiation time for an adult to pick up their first success within the gestura’s movement-based magic from about two years down to a few months. Still, the results should be fairly negligible, because the effects were diluted throughout the entire body, not only focused on the mind. And in addition to that, the very act of casting that spell would be considered time spent actively casting.

It was possible, Thaddeus supposed, that this allowed Sebastien to eke out an extra half hour of casting per day, but not enough to reach eight.

Perhaps, instead, his apprentice’s first measurement had been well below his true capacity. By over one hundred thaums. Otherwise, Sebastien was a monster. Likely even more so than Thaddeus. And Thaddeus knew well that he was a special circumstance.

Thaddeus stared down at the wooden grain of the table for a while, tracing the natural pattern with his eyes. The former explanation was more likely. Thaddeus knew that. But he was unable to put aside the small possibility of the latter. He put the scattered papers of Sebastien’s file back together and returned it to its place among the student records, then walked through the darkness to the transport tubes.

He made his third trip in two days to one of the local Red Guard bases, like a bee returning to the hive. He was careful to keep his mental agitation out of his body language. Anxious fidgeting was a sign of weakness.

The other agents tried to gossip with him about the Raven Queen, now that news of their meeting had spread, but he waved them off. Something of his mood must have leaked through, because none of them persisted.

Within the records, Thaddeus began an in-depth search for information on Sebastien’s parents. Several times, he had to use his relatively high-level access authority to get paperwork magically transferred from one of the non-Gilbrathan bases, and the administrative agents were becoming increasingly irritated with his demands for instant fulfillment. Such magic was not without effort or cost, and they were beginning do doubt his assurances that this was an emergency.

He searched for anything on Sebastien’s parentage, either in the Red Guard’s internal records, or suggesting that they might have been recruited by one of the major countries. Osham would be the type to have done something like this.

Unfortunately, Thaddeus found almost no information about them, and what did exist was merely mundane census records pulled from a small village. By all accounts, they had been completely normal citizens who just happened to have died to a beast attack, along with several other casualties on that same day. There was not even enough information about them to find anything suspicious. The only strange thing was that there were no records of what had been done with their child after their death.

The unnamed man who had, according to Titus, taken Sebastien in had never formally adopted him. This was not unusual. Especially if he had hoped to use the young boy as a source of unpaid magical labor.

Thaddeus was aware that the last name Siverling was vaguely notable, but from what Thaddeus could find, Sebastien’s ancestors had been illiterate commoners, and the spelling of their surname had changed several times over the generations before reaching the current iteration. They were not even interesting enough to have a connection to the original Siverlings, who had once produced several proficient thaumaturges.

Thaddeus’s fruitless research lasted well into the morning hours, but unwilling to concede defeat, he sent out a disguised Red Guard messenger to inform the University that he was taking an unplanned personal day.

He scoured birth, death, and marriage records, as well as various confidential reports for any mention of programs dealing with children or experiments to enhance magical aptitude. He looked up articles about arson and strange fires. He even strained his bloodshot eyes combing for mention of anyone with unusually fair coloring, or magical side-effects that resulted in strange pigmentation.

Evening was approaching by the time Thaddeus was finally forced to concede defeat.

To learn more, he would need to speak directly to a source.

As he made his way back to the University, his weary mind mulled over the purpose behind Siobhan sending him on this fruitless hunt. The only reason he could think of that she would have gone out of her way to bring attention to the connection between herself and Sebastien was because she wanted both Thaddeus and the Red Guard to keep a closer eye on him.

Maybe Thaddeus was searching in the wrong direction.

Siobhan had insinuated that she was a danger to Sebastien, but based on everything Thaddeus knew about her, he sincerely doubted it. The only reason he could think of for her to do that, then, was that Sebastien was in danger. Siobhan hoped that he would discover it and protect the boy.

But why would Sebastien be in danger? What did she know that Thaddeus did not?

His first inclination was to ask Sebastien, but he quickly changed his mind. He had an inkling that Sebastien might lie about it. And, in fact, might have been hiding something for quite a while. It would be best to gather as much information as he could, and then spring the trap around his apprentice.

He could reach out to Siobhan herself, but it would take time for her to respond, and Thaddeus was not willing to wait.

First, he would speak with Damien. The foolish boy was one of the few that Sebastien confided his harebrained schemes to. And if he knew any secrets, Thaddeus would pry them free.