Wayward Page 10

  “But how did you campaign without access to the members?” said Alana, obviously rapt and not trying to hide it. If Cassia clenched her jaw any tighter it was going to pop. It had been a day since the election, which in her book was ample time to have stopped talking about it.

  Ollivan took a bite of his meal and answered with his mouth full. “Lev and Virgil handled the communications for me. They did an absolutely stellar job, I couldn’t be prouder. Grandfather, you ought to consider hiring them in your propaganda office.”

  Jupitus looked up like he hadn’t been entirely present. Cassia, too, tried to tune Ollivan out when he spoke, but she couldn’t manage it this evening. His presence was still too jarring. Yesterday she only ever thought of her brother as a relic of her family’s past. Now, here he was, holding court at the High Sorcerer’s dining table.

  “And your policies?” said Alana. “They must be extraordinarily compelling. I don’t remember a write-in candidate ever winning the presidency, do you, Father?”

  Jupitus gave no reply.

  “The policies,” repeated Ollivan, chewing pensively. It pulled at the ragged scar that razored down one cheek from his eye socket to his jaw. He had got it in a brawl; the one that had supposedly made him a murderer. As Cassia was leaving the Wending Place the night before, she had heard Kiva Mediova say, with a giggle, that it made him look dangerous. “Oh, you know, the usual. Parties and salons and a well-stocked bar. Opportunities to meet important people. The stuff that truly matters to the members of the Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers.”

  Cassia slammed her wine glass down a little too forcefully, and everyone turned to look at her. Gale reached for the carafe between them.

  “Allow me,” he said, as he topped up her glass.

  “Don’t drink too much, Cassia,” said Alana distractedly, turning back to Ollivan. “And your campaign managers disseminated all this without the whole Society finding out? How? Why?”

  “Isn’t that obvious?” said Jupitus, his voice a snarl. “So that we would have no chance to stop him.”

  Alana appeared to catch herself and nodded, tight-lipped. Still, she did not take her eyes off her son.

  Cassia spoke without meaning to. “You’re happy he’s home,” she said, stunned. She looked from her mother to Ollivan and back again. “Aren’t you?”

  Ollivan tried to glower at her, but Cassia was watching her mother, who spared her a glance before going back to her meal.

  Cassia had witnessed the year leading up to Ollivan’s banishment and seen just how much he had put their mother through. Screaming matches at four in the morning, when he had wandered in with his lip bleeding and his pupils blown. Accusations from her friends and colleagues – the people she would need to support her claim to the office of High Sorcerer – that her son had broken into their home, or caused a scene at their party.

  Now he had conned his way out of a punishment he’d well and truly earned – one their mother had agreed to – and Alana was not only impressed, she was also glad of it. They could fight, he could hurt her, shame her, threaten their family’s legacy, kill someone – and there was nothing he could do to lose her love. And perhaps that’s how a mother’s love should be, but Cassia didn’t recognise it.

  “Cassia, none of us wanted Ollivan sent to the Otherworld.”

  “Say banished,” snapped Cassia. “He wasn’t sent to the Otherworld like I was sent to Camden. He was banished for—”

  “And it was upsetting for all of us.” Alana raised her voice to cut her daughter off. Gale suddenly had no smiling looks for her; he was concentrating on his braised carrots like they might all forget he was there if he was quiet enough. “But your brother is back now. This is another chance, and I for one am willing to give it to him. I would like to see you do the same.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Ollivan, raising his glass in her direction.

  Cassia tried to catch her grandfather’s eye. He would be an ally in this, surely. But Jupitus, while still as surly as he’d been all evening, offered nothing to the discussion. He sat in silence and brooded. Perhaps he felt he had already lost, and letting anything Ollivan did rile him further would only prove who held the power, at least at this moment, in this room. If nothing else, Cassia had to admire her brother’s nerve for walking this line with him.

  She became aware that the table had gone quiet, and someone had said her name. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, how was your lesson today?” said Alana.

  “Oh.” Brilliant. Another topic Cassia hated. “Jasper didn’t turn up.”

  “He didn’t? Did he send word?”

  Cassia shook her head, and opened her mouth to say she’d sent a message checking on him, but Ollivan was quicker. Choking on a mouthful of wine, he spat out, “Jasper Hawkes?”

  Cassia raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Jasper Hawkes is tutoring you?”

  “Ollivan, what’s the matter?” said Alana.

  Ollivan had downed his knife and fork, and a peculiar confusion had come over his features. His eyes were hard. After a moment, he shook his head. “You should stay away from him,” he said steadily.

  “Ollivan, Jasper was a friend to you,” Alana said gently. Jupitus, suddenly attuned to the conversation, made a noise of agreement. “At a time when your other friends felt you didn’t deserve any.”

  “Because he didn’t,” Cassia muttered.

  “Yes, Mother, in my year or so of pushing boundaries and bending rules until my own grandfather saw fit to expel me from this universe, my only friend was Jasper Hawkes,” Ollivan said slowly. “What isn’t adding up for you?”

  “I won’t hear this nonsense,” cut in Jupitus. His steel-grey eyes met Ollivan’s identical ones. “Mr Hawkes tried hard to curb your tendencies, and this is the thanks you give him?”

  “He gave testimony to your grandfather after… what happened,” Alana said, her eyes on her plate.

  Ollivan’s lips had paled. When he lifted his wine glass to his mouth, his hand trembled. “I’m sure that he did.”

  Cassia laughed. Not a snort, a full-on laugh. It was too funny. “Oh, I understand now. It’s Jasper’s fault that you’re a lying, thieving, brawling, lying, drinking, heartless, violent narcissist.”

  “You said lying twice.”

  “The chicken is exquisite, how is it cooked?” said Gale in a voice several octaves higher than usual.

  “Cassia—” began Alana.

  “Alright.” Jupitus raised a hand, and the table quietened. He fixed his eyes on Ollivan. “You will not bring this circus to my dinner table.”

  “Me?” spat Ollivan. He was halfway to gesturing at Cassia when Jupitus cut him off.

  “There are to be rules if you are to live in my quarter, and if you break them, stars help me, should it take every drop of magic in the city, I will find a way to dissolve the magic of the Society charter, release you from your position as President and throw you back through the portal permanently, understand?”

  Cassia couldn’t believe the effect this had on Ollivan. At first, he cut in every other syllable to raise a remark or grievance, but by the time Jupitus was threatening to reverse everything his silly coup had achieved, he had gone still in his seat. His face cycled through several expressions as he beat back outrage, indignation, and pride. When he spoke, it was through a clenched jaw. His words were the last words she had expected from him.

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  Jupitus narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Alana took her son’s hand briefly and squeezed. It was a gesture of thanks, or pride, and it was exactly the wrong thing to do; Ollivan’s strained expression tightened further, and he closed his eyes.

  Jupitus cut to the chase. “First, you will pass every night in your own bed in your mother’s home, and you will be there by midnight.”

  “One o’clock,” chanced Ollivan.

  “This is not a negotiation. You will not leave the house without telling your mother where you are going, what you are doing and with whom. Not a servant, not an enforcer. Your mother. Then, every day, you will report in detail on everything you have done. I advise that you are not caught in a lie. My enforcers will be watching closely.”

  “Alright.”

  “If you can abide by these rules, without fail, then you will be allowed to stay until the end of your term as President.”

  Ollivan’s eyes widened. “And what happens then?”

  “Then you will return to the Otherworld and serve the rest of your life in banishment, as your punishment intended.”

  “What?” Ollivan was out of his seat. Cassia had thought she would enjoy this, and in principle she did, but the reality of hearing her grandfather lay down the law, and watching her mother do nothing, stirred a familiar helplessness inside her. “You’re telling me that I could be a model citizen for the next two years – one in a very prestigious role, might I add – and still you’ll be waiting to cast me out?”

  Jupitus stood too. He didn’t accomplish it with the explosive movement Ollivan had, but something about his calm slowness was equally powerful. “Would you prefer that I hand over the execution of your punishment to the Wraiths?”

  “Father—” said Alana, lifting a hand to grip Jupitus’s arm.

  He shook her off. “You may have coasted on the ambiguity of this… duelling evening, at which you killed one of their people. But do not believe that because Lady Wrike and the North were merciful enough to leave your punishment in my hands that it must stay that way. It would have been a much cleaner application of the Principles – rules I helped write and swore to uphold – if I had let them have your life. I did not, to save your mother from being forced to stand back and let them kill you. To save you, from breaking her heart worse than you already
had. But understand this: one word from me, and I promise you the Wraiths will not find the death of the man you murdered so ambiguous after all.”

  Ollivan stared at the table. A muscle fluttered in his jaw as he still continued to hold back his words. Cassia wished she were a Whisperer. She wished she could tell her idiot brother to back down.

  “You gave your grandfather no choice, Ollivan,” said Alana.

  “I gave him a very simple one,” said Ollivan with deathly quiet, “and I’ll spell it out again now. Banish me or believe me.”

  “It’s done,” said Jupitus firmly, sitting back down and cutting into his chicken breast, like Ollivan was one of his enforcers come to relay a message and then leave. “Be grateful for my leniency. It is not in my nature to offer it, especially to those who threaten the peace.”

  “Understood.” Ollivan’s voice was toneless. “Am I excused?”

  Jupitus waved a dismissive hand.

  “I’m going home,” he said, and then Ollivan transported himself away.

  11

  Ollivan landed in his bedroom, snatched a book from his desk, and threw it at the wall.

  A curfew. Reports on all his comings and goings. And all to be shooed back to the Otherworld at the end of two years. His grandfather had to be going senile if he thought Ollivan would abide it.

  It was not that the threat of being sent back had surprised him. Winning the election had been a first step, a temporary solution, one that would buy Ollivan time to come up with a way to have his banishment revoked entirely.

  Phase two had involved his best behaviour and a hope that, if he could keep in line just enough to rehabilitate his grandfather’s opinion of him, he could make the man listen. He could make the High Sorcerer realise he never should have banished him in the first place.

  But no. Jupitus had made clear tonight that his obedience would earn him nothing, and yet he demanded it anyway. He expected Ollivan to jump through his hoops to keep his life, just to take it away when he was done bending over backwards for the old man’s rules.

  He picked up another missile; a paperweight. This one he aimed at the mirror.

  It shattered with a soothing crescendo of angry noises, fragments of glass raining down on the carpet. The silence that followed rang even louder, and with a lungful of air, Ollivan cleared his head.

  So his grandfather was not yet sold on the idea of revoking his banishment. That was to be expected. Jupitus was proud. Being shown up by his nineteen-year-old grandson – who was a better Sorcerer at nineteen than Jupitus had been at his very prime – was a terrible insult, second only to exploiting an institution he revered in order to do it. But Ollivan couldn’t help it. Jupitus made it so easy. And anyway, undermining the election had been necessary, whether he got a kick out of the look on his grandfather’s face or not.

  And keeping up appearances was necessary too. He could still change the High Sorcerer’s mind. He had two whole years in which to do it. And if no other strokes of brilliance like the one that had got him home presented themselves, his good behaviour would be all the more important. It might be the deciding factor.

  Which was inconvenient, since Ollivan needed to sneak out tonight.

  He had wasted enough time. He had reunited with his friends, and caught up with his family. He had put his room back together the way he wanted it, with what belongings his family hadn’t disposed of – thankfully, his books had been boxed up and put away safety in the attic; several years’ worth of notebooks had vanished entirely, but he had already prepared himself for that. He had even made a decent start at squaring things with his voters, though he doubted Gale Garner was getting what he’d hoped for out of his first dinner invitation.

  But Ollivan had more immediate problems, and to fix them, he would have to bend Jupitus’s rules. Today I disarmed a trap I set a year ago that might have caused untold destruction had the spell been woken was not something he wanted to report in his evening run-downs of his activities.

  Jupitus knew he couldn’t keep track of Ollivan. Like Wraith magic – which allowed one to move faster than a bullet and pass through walls – and Changeling magic – with which a person could become a bird and fly away, or a mouse and slip in and out unseen – a Sorcerer’s talents lent themselves to losing a tail and flitting about unnoticed. It was bad etiquette to use a transporting spell to do so, and some places were warded against incoming bodies, even if they could not be warded to keep them in. But Jupitus could have no such ward placed on Ollivan’s room; his own enchantments made sure of that. Nor could he truly have Ollivan watched as he had threatened to, though he was sure every enforcer in the Heart would be instructed to be on the lookout for him. It had also not escaped Ollivan’s notice that his grandfather might have forbidden him from leaving the quarter, but had not. He might think of it later, and undoubtedly would if Ollivan gave him reason to, but for now he would go where he wished.

  No, Ollivan could not be stopped, but he could be caught. He paced the room as he weighed the risks. A headache started pounding at his temples as he pictured all the obstacles pressing down on him like shovels full of earth on a coffin.

  But Ollivan was a problem-solver, and problems were solved one at a time. Just tonight, for just this task, and then he would give his grandfather’s rules a try. At least until he came up with something better.

  To keep anyone from entering his room was too suspicious; a fact he had learned by the age of twelve. But he could appear to be sleeping should anyone check on him. He began to cast a glamour over the bed, then stopped; he could do better.

  Glass was still scattered across the floor from the mirror, and the book he’d been using to make notes on the applications of Tumanese silkworm venom lay face down in a corner, the pages crumpled against the floor. He left them. He set a chair facing the window and lit a single clara stone lamp, which he placed nearby. Then he glamoured his brooding façade into the chair; a version of himself looking out at the city. From the door, one would see only his shoulder, and his hunched shadow looming on the wall. If they got closer, and spoke to him, the glamour would only continue to glower out into the night as if they weren’t there at all. It painted a scene of a young man with a temper, who had stormed from his grandfather’s dinner party and now refused to talk to anyone. It was who they all thought he was, and it was infinitely less likely to raise suspicion than if they found him slumbering.

  And then he was gone.

  Not all Sorcerers could transport, and not all those who could, did. Ollivan blamed the way it was taught, which focused excessively on the mechanical details; how transporting was like being pulled into the earth by a thread tied to your destination; that you must be on or over land. What many who were new to the spell weren’t taught was that it took a relationship with one’s magic that was free of doubt, fully trusting, and perfectly humble. A Sorcerer did not transport themselves, magic did it for them, and if they forgot that for one moment and tried to take control, the consequences could be deadly.

  He transported straight into the President’s Sanctuary at the Wending Place. Only Successors could transport into the Wending Place, and only the President could transport into the Sanctuary. The details of the specific ward or spell that made it so had been lost to history, and it hurt his heart that so few members would ever care, so long as the bar kept admitting them and the corridors kept sprouting dark corners in which to steal heated moments with one another.

  There had been a night a year ago when Ollivan had risked the magic of the Wending Place. Looking back, it was a testament to the strength of his fury that his revenge had taken precedent over the safety of a piece of magic he revered and treasured. But tonight he would make it right.

  He lit the lamp on his desk and noticed for the first time the pair of chairs before it, no doubt so the President could conduct their tedious meetings with the heads of this and that committee who required something of them at all hours of the day. Ollivan wondered about what Sybella’s idea of an ‘adequate’ president looked like, and prayed to every constellation that it was one who let her take charge.

  In the Otherworld they had a superstition about the devil, a servant turned antagonist of their god; about how speaking his name caused him to appear. Ollivan couldn’t help but question his faith a touch when the silhouette of Sybella Dentley manifested suddenly across the room.