Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I turn to Quin and wish he could somehow see me. I want to say he can have genuine relationships, that he will. That we will. But . . . in the end, don’t we only have stolen moments? In the end, isn’t this just one of them?
The memory begins to fade, and I gaze sadly at Quin before heading back through his beautifully recreated memory to the woods where the next door waits.
Iwatch quietly from afar as Quin canes his way out of his dance academy one late evening and spies Chaos slipping down an alleyway, gaze darting like he’s up to no good. Quin hesitates, hands his cane to his aklo, and tells him to meet back there later. Bolstering his pained leg with magical winds under his long winter cloak, he masks himself and follows Chaos through a narrow, icicled street and down icy stairs to the pathway beside the canal.
There in the distance, huddled by fires under a bridge and around little fissures of warm air opened by an earth shake, are the homeless and the sick. Their coats are threadbare, and their hands blue from cold. Chaos, a mere few steps ahead of Quin and unaware of his presence, sighs—and slips on ice toward deathly cold canal water.
Quin turns his hand. Wind pockets Chaos and helps steady him, giving Quin time to grab him by the arms. Chaos turns his hooded head over his shoulder to see his saviour. He blinks and then laughs. “Maskios!”
“That’s not my name.”
“Who are you then?”
“What are you doing down here?”
Chaos finally shifts out of Quin’s hold and faces him. “Did you follow me?”
“You looked like you’re up to something you shouldn’t be.”
“That’s not an answer. Are you here to stop me? Or help?”
Quin looks from Chaos to the people huddled beyond. “Why not. I’m a criminal, after all.” Laughing, Chaos lifts up on his tiptoes, grabs Quin’s hood, and pulls it up for him.
“Follow my instructions.”
He takes Quin’s hand and drags him along under the bridge. There, he puts Quin in charge of his apothecary pouch and moves down the long line waiting along the wall.
“Why not use a medius spell rather than all these simplex ones?”
“Have you not heard how sharp the blade of a guillotine is?”
“I’ve seen . . . I mean, you’ve never used medius spells before?”
“Only when I’m sure I’ll get away with it. The local luminist loves to—”
As if summoned, glowing white robes appear at the other end of the underbridge, a spiritual bell ringing accompaniment.
“Live virtuous, modest lives. Follow the rules of the linea, and be reborn as linea. Pay homage at the luminarium.”
Chaos grabs Quin with a yelp and crouches out of sight, huddling in the dark behind a brazier.
“Why are we—”
A palm stops Quin’s mouth. Quiet.
Finally, when the luminist is gone and the sound of his bell has become faint, Chaos lets out a long breath of relief and drops his hand. He pauses upon catching Quin’s gaze. “He and I don’t see eye to eye,” Chaos says. “If he sees me, he’ll tell Father.”
When they return to their work, the next in line is a child—a young girl, thin and weary, with a rash of red rings over her pale skin. Her mother holds her close. “Is it plague? Is she going to—”
“It does look fearsome, but I’ve seen this before. Do you play in the woods?” Chaos asks the girl. “Did you touch a plant that looks very similar to strawberry vine?”
She nods, and Chaos smiles.
“She’s touched thistleweed. Harmless—it’ll fade on its own eventually. But . . .”
Soon after she absorbs his spell, the rash is gone and her skin is restored.
By the time Chaos reaches the end of the line, it’s past midnight. As they move back up to the street, Chaos sags suddenly, exhausted. He shivers in Quin’s arms when they catch him. “Windy.”
“Let’s sit a moment.” They rest, and Quin subtly ceases the wind supporting his leg.
Across the canal, the luminarium glows brightly with magic under a sky full of stars.
Quin’s gaze fixes on the sight for a long moment, until Chaos’s bow towards the glow draws his attention. “The way you were with the luminist, I thought you didn’t care about the Arcane Sovereign.”
“I distrust the idea that if we follow linea rules we’re reborn as linea, and I have definitely—repeatedly and shamelessly—broken linea rules. Bowing seems redundant. And yet . . .” A shrug. “Just in case.”
Quin takes this in. “I’ve told myself over and over that I shouldn’t do certain things. And yet, I keep doing them anyway. Telling myself not to seems pointless, but still. I keep trying and failing.”
Chaos nods. “Are you trying and failing to reform your criminal ways?”
“As successfully as you are.”
This, Chaos finds amusing, but he soon sobers. “I wish I could practice as a vitalian. There’s so much I don’t know, so many spells I’ve only heard about. Even more I haven’t.” Then, abruptly, Chaos springs off his perch and races off.