Fractured Magic: Chapter Seven

“Any food for you, sir?” a voice asked, pulling Aleksir from his thoughts. He turned from the passing crowds to find a server standing over his table.

“Nah. I told you, I’m waiting for someone.”

The server shrugged. It was a doubtful motion, a “suit yourself.” He probably thought Aleksir had been stood up, and Aleksir couldn’t even blame him. Not when he'd been here for hours nursing the same suspicion, the same glass of cheap wine. If it had been a date, he would’ve stormed off ages ago — but it was supposed to be a meeting, and standing up Aleksir’s boss was something one simply didn’t do. For it to happen, something must have gone wrong.

As soon as he had the thought, he felt it: a strange chill, like the brush of a blade against the back of his neck. Aleksir had grown up on the streets: he knew how it felt to be watched.

He didn’t immediately react. Instead, he checked his watch, fiddled with the menu. Then, subtly as he could, he glanced around: first over the other veranda tables, then down the street. Thanks to Gallontea’s vibrant nightlife, there were people everywhere — but when Aleksir looked, no heads turned quickly away, no shapes shrank back into shadows.

Another thing Aleksir had learned early on: to trust his instincts. He stood and threw his napkin down, complaining loudly about being stood up, and tossed some bills onto the table for the server’s troubles. Then he slumped away, hands in his pockets. Overall, he put on a good show. He wished Devikra could’ve seen it.

As soon as he hit the next intersection, he took off running. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but his boss had enemies in this city and paranoid was better than complacent. It was much better than dead. He wove through side streets and down back roads, and when he couldn’t run any further, he ducked into an alley. It was a dark, dead end — his first mistake. While e studied the alley’s back wall for an escape route, he spotted a windowsill he could haul himself onto, but the window itself was boarded shut and Aleksir hadn't the leverage to pry it free. The balcony above it, though — that would do.

Because he studied the shadows so closely, he noticed them shift right where roof met sky. He stared, hoping it had only been an animal, but he could make out a person-shaped patch of darkness outlined against the stars. Aleksir squared his shoulders.

“Come down and face me!” he called.

A chuckle drifted out of the shadows. Aleksir glimpsed a ghostly face, barely illuminated by the street’s pale lamplight. But just as quickly as it appeared, it sank back into darkness. Without taking his eyes off that spot, Aleksir inched over to a dumpster and wrenched the leg off an overturned chair. The wood gave with surprising ease, and Aleksir held it aloft like a bat.

“Coward!” he called.

Pebbles fell in answer, clanging and clattering all the way to the ground. Aleksir watched them, almost missing the shadowy figure that followed them down, melting out of the shadows like he’d been borne from them. As the stranger jumped from balcony to windowsill, from windowsill to ground, his easy grace reminded Aleksir of one of those slinky toys, ceaseless and certain: fall, drop. Fall, drop.

He landed on the balls of his feet, his boots making only the softest of sounds when they hit the ground. He cut a tall figure, slender and lanky and sharp like a wolf. He moved like one, too, stalking toward Aleksir with a lazy, loping prowl. In that moment, it struck Aleksir that he was the prey. With all the bravado he could muster, he asked, “Do you make a habit of running around on rooftops?”

“Sometimes it’s the fastest way,” the stranger said, grin too wide.

Aleksir waved his makeshift cudgel in warning. “Don't come any closer, wolf.”

The man’s grin remained. “If I’m a wolf, what does that make you?” He paced to the side, circling Aleksir slowly. Aleksir turned with him, protecting his back, and too late he realized he’d cornered himself. At the look on his face, the man laughed. “What’s the matter, little rabbit? I mean you no harm.”

The lamplight seemed to seek this stranger out, lighting on a handsome face — flawless, if not for the cold smile and colder eyes. It was the kind of face Aleksir had always been jealous of, arresting and unforgettable. He felt like he had seen it somewhere before, but when the man stepped closer, he didn't pause to think about it: he swung his cudgel right at that familiar face.

Only, the man dodged. He moved faster than Aleksir would've thought possible, faster than his eyes could even follow. He’d thought his aim was perfect, but somehow he hit air and stumbled. When he tried again, the man simply stepped out of Aleksir's range, his hands clasped casually behind his back. On Aleksir's third attempt, the man caught his cudgel mid-swing, halting all of Aleksir's momentum in one jarring instant. Aleksir had thrown all of his weight into the swing, so he stumbled when the wolf easily wrenched the wood from his hands and tossed it into the alley's shadows.

“Stop it. I just said I'm not here to hurt you,” the man said.

Aleksir was already looking around for another weapon. “Yeah, right.”

“You’re Aleksir Bardon, aren’t you? I have some questions, and word is you’re usually someone with answers.”

Aleksir paused at that, puffed up a little. He couldn’t help himself. “I might be,” he said. “An’ I might have.”

“Is it true you work for the Oracle of Damael?”

Aleksir paused again, a little too long. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Ah,” said the man, something like pity entering his voice, “Not a rabbit, then, but a little fly caught in Devikra’s web. If you’re close with her, then you must know about the commotion on Unity’s island this morning. What can you tell me about it?”

“Why should I tell you anything? Who even are you?”

The stranger stopped his pacing, his impatient back and forth. “Someone who would see Unity fall.”

Great. Aleksir was trapped with a lunatic and a radical — a dangerous one, at that. He eyed the gap in the alleyway the man's pacing had created. Aleksir stood little chance in a fight, but he was unmatched in a race. If he could just squeeze past, he'd be free. “Why? What did Unity do to you?” he asked, hoping to distract the man. But as if guessing Aleksir's thoughts, the man took a neat step to the left, cutting off Aleksir's escape route.

“How old are you, kid? Are you even eighteen?” he asked.

“I’m nineteen.”

“And what did Devikra promise you for your service? Wealth? Power? Whatever it was, it’s not worth it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aleksir snapped. He didn't like this man, didn't like the feverish gleam in his eyes or the way he showed all his teeth when he smiled. He didn't like being cornered. “You don’t know anything about her!”

“On the contrary,” the man said, infuriatingly calm in the face of Aleksir's anger. “I know her better than anyone. We worked together for a long time, after all.”

When the man stepped forward, into the moonlight, recognition hit Aleksir like a broken chair leg to the head. He remembered where he'd seen this man's face before: on Devikra's desk, in a grainy tintype of a smiling man with dark eyes.

“No,” Aleksir breathed, his heart thudding wildly in his chest.

The man tipped his head to one side, giving that too-wide smile again. It didn't reach his eyes, not like it did in the photograph. “I thought you’d already recognized me, given your little nickname — in Adondai, they called me cù-sìth. Among Unity, the Hound.”

“You're supposed to be dead.”

The man — the Northern Wolf, the hero of a thousand stories and villain of one — laughed. “I might as well be.”

It was Egil.

Egil had sought Aleksir out. Egil knew his name. “I can't believe it,” Aleksir said, hoping the wolf wouldn't notice the way his voice wobbled. But it was Egil, the star of the world's greatest stories. Egil, who was known for his wit, who even Devikra called perfect. Of course he noticed.

“Still afraid of me?” he asked.

“Are you kidding?” Aleksir asked, louder than he'd intended. Egil took a surprised step back. In his excitement, Aleksir didn't even notice. “You're my hero! As a kid, I lived off stories about you! I mean, I probably wouldn't even be alive if not for you! See, I thought that if Egil could get off the streets and do some good, I could too. I begged Dev to take me in, just like she did with you, and look at me now.”

“Running errands for the Oracle, speaking with a dead man in an alley? Quite the step up.”

Before Aleksir could respond, Egil shoved Aleksir into the alley wall. Aleksir squawked, nearly tripping over a pile of trash, but Egil caught him and helped him keep his balance. When he pressed a finger to his lips and pointed at the sky, Aleksir looked just in time to see a dragon fly low over the alley. It was probably blue, given its size, but the lantern strapped to its belly was blinding. While he blinked against it, Egil moved closer to avoid getting caught in the light. He even smelled powerful, like soft cologne and smoke. He was so cool.

“It’s just a dragon,” Aleksir whispered.

“A police dragon,” Egil whispered back, watching the last of its spiked tail vanish from sight before releasing Aleksir and stepping away. “Unity can’t know I’m here, and a secret meeting in a dark alley is cause for questions, don’t you think?”

“Do they know you're alive?” Aleksir asked, eyes wide. The accounts of Histrios were different, but they agreed on some basic tenets: that Egil had descended into differed, but they all agreed on one point: Egil ad died there. Aleksir hadn’t believed it, of course. He’d never believed any of the Histrios stories. “Don’t they know all that stuff about Histrios was just gossip? Devikra could talk to Unity for you, clear things up.”

“Gossip? You can’t pick which stories to believe, Mr. Bardon,” Egil said, his lip curling. “If you believe the ones that called me a hero, why not the one that calls me a monster?”

“Because you’re here, aren’t you? Alive? That means it can't be true.”

Egil’s next words chilled Aleksir down to his bones. His voice was deceptively soft, his words poison. “Don’t be naïve. Do you think the people of Histrios were lying when they said I slaughtered their families? Do you think that pain was just made up? Your Oracle — would she have put a bounty on my head over nothing? Ask her, if you still don't believe it. She was there; she knows what happened. If it was really just gossip, don't you think she would've cleared it up already?”

Aleksir shook his head, blocking out his words.

Egil only scoffed. “Good riddance to her, anyway. I don’t know what she told you about me, but we weren’t nearly as efficient together as the stories suggest.”

“You're a hero,” Aleksir said, stubbornly. Devikra's photograph of the softly-smiling hero was proof that version of Egil had existed, that he had been what the stories said, once. That version might still exist, and Aleksir wouldn't let him go so easily. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you really did all those things they say you did. Until you do, I won’t believe it.”

Egil looked Aleksir in the eyes. “Oh, I did it,” he said, but somehow, Aleksir still didn’t believe it. “Lost my mind, went on a rampage, all of it. Now tell me what happened at Unity today, Aleksir.”

“But — fine. I don’t know the details. You scared off my Unity contact before I could talk to them. That’s why I was at that restaurant. From what I hear, the King of Alfheimr’s gone missing.”

Egil's eyes widened. It was the first time Aleksir had seen him not smiling, smirking, or sneering. “Amos? How?”

“If you believe the gossips, Orean took him, and they did it with magic,” Aleksir said, wiggling his fingers on the word magic. It was meant to be a joke, but Egil didn't laugh. Magic was a thing of stories — but then, he supposed, so was Egil. “You don't really have magic, do you?”

“Mm, I can call down Atiuh's powers to smite annoying teenagers who ask too many questions. Do you want a demonstration?” Egil asked, his smirk back on his face.

Aleksir gritted his teeth and didn't respond. Egil was Egil, but he still didn't like that smirk.

“Of course I don't have magic,” Egil said. “What else can you tell me?”

Aleksir blew out a slow breath. “The Prince and Princess Nochdvor visited the island to talk to the Magistrates. The princess left, but the prince stuck around. Does he know you're alive? He's the one who was supposed to have killed you, isn't he? Leandros Nochdvor? Are you going to go after him? By the way, how are you even still alive?”

“Don't say his name!” Egil snapped. His hands had clenched into fists at his sides, and maybe it was a trick of the light, but the shadows in the alley seemed to gather to him, hang off his shoulders like a cloak. “Don’t speak of him.”

“I'm sorry,” Aleksir said, eyes wide. For the first time, he allowed the thought: maybe it really was all true. “I won't talk about him. But you...”

“I what?” Egil asked, when Aleksir didn't speak.

“Why are you here? Why do you even care about all this? Are you going to help the king?”

“Amos Nochdvor has nothing to do with me,” Egil said. “I already told you why I'm here: I'm here to see Unity fall.”

“What does that even mean?”

Egil tipped his head back, and for a moment his eyes changed, the whites eclipsed entirely by glittering darkness. His smile was a wicked, warped version of the one from Devikra's photograph, and Aleksir gasped. But then Egil blinked, and his eyes were normal once more. It must’ve just been a trick of the light. “It means that Unity is a cancer, a blight on this world, and I intend to purge it,” Egil said. “Even if that means tearing it apart myself, brick by brick. Even if it means destroying myself in the process. Either way, I'll be doing the world a favor.”

“You’re wrong,” Aleksir said. He was surprised at himself, at the way his conviction echoed through the alley. It gave Egil pause; he blinked at Aleksir, his stare hard but his eyes still normal. Human.

“What makes you so sure?” Egil asked.

“Devikra,” Aleksir said. When Egil scoffed, Aleksir hurried to continue: “I’m not in Gallontea because of whatever’s going on with Illyon. That was just a coincidence. I’m here because the Oracle had a vision and told me to warn anyone who’d listen.”

Egil held up a hand. Around him, the shadows dispersed. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Too bad!” Aleksir snapped. It stunned Egil into silence, his dark eyes wide again. “I listened to you go on about Unity, so you can listen to this! Dev says big things are coming. Bad things. It didn’t make sense before, but after today, I'm starting to get it: she saw Orean on fire.”

Egil frowned, faltered. “Because of Unity?” he asked.

“You know it doesn’t work like that,” Aleksir said. “She can’t see the why, just the what. But there’s more. She saw explosions in Histrios, riots in the North. She even saw red dragons in Lyryma.”

Egil blinked as if coming out of a daze. “Don’t be ridiculous. The red dragons have been extinct for centuries,” he said. For the first time that night, he sounded unsure.

“The Oracle is never wrong! Weird things are happening in Calaidia, weirder than alfar kings disappearing into thin air, and I don’t know what Unity did to you, but we’re all about to have much bigger problems!”

“We,” Egil said softly. “Don't include me in your 'we.' It sounds to me like Devikra will have her hands full.”

“And it sounds to me like if you don’t help, you’re going to make everything worse!” Aleksir snapped, making Egil flinch. He didn’t know what possessed him to speak to Egil this way, but now that he’d started he couldn’t stop. “I’m no politician, and I know Unity has its problems, but if you think destroying it won’t hurt everyone, everywhere, then you really are mad. People depend on Unity, like it or not. They could depend on you again, if you got over yourself and let them. I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re just selfish.”

Egil stared at Aleksir. The silence stretched between them, and Aleksir worried he’d gone too far. But then Egil's shoulders dropped, and the last of his cold arrogance drained out of him. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked. “If you’re so close with Devikra, you know nothing can be done. Her visions can’t be changed. It’s already too late for me, for Orean.”

“It’s never too late,” Aleksir said. “Not to stop Devikra’s visions, and not for you.”

“I wish I had your faith, but I’ve been down that path before. There’s no fighting what the Oracle has seen.” He smiled again, and it raised the hair on the back of Aleksir's neck. “Orean is going to burn, so the least I can do is make sure Unity burns with it.”

“Egil, please—”

Egil didn't wait to hear the rest, turning to leave. “Find Leandros Nochdvor; tell him what Devikra saw. But please, if the name Egil ever meant anything to you, don't tell him you saw me. Don’t tell him what I've become.”

And here comes our hero, back from the dead. Is Egil what you were expecting? :)

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