“Do you think it will work, Therese?” Irene asks me.
The question resonates in my mind. Slowly, I cock my head and raise an eyebrow ever so subtly. “Do you want it to?” I reply, answering her question. She doesn’t. Not really. That concept would be rather unsettling. But she wants something to show for her stay here, so evidence that she was here and she mattered. So she needs it to work. An understandable urge, though not one comes from an entirely healthy mindset. Then again, this school is filled with people who are barely adults, whose brains aren’t finished with their journeys, and we come in with some and get taught even more abilities beyond the scope of understanding. It’s like giving toddlers a pile of hand grenades, there is bound to be at least some trauma.
Irene stares back at me and sighs. “Probably not,” she answers honestly. She knows better than to get a lie past me, but the fact that she’s not trying to lie to herself is a good sign. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.”
I nod. “Be careful,” I add, unhelpfully. One should never be careful if they are trying to make an impact.
“No,” she shoots right back, almost immediately, “I need to be bold.” She’s learned. Good.
“It is getting late,” I say, “We can talk as we head back to campus.”
Irene smirks at me. “Wouldn’t want to be late to our first meeting of the year,” she says with a smile.
I give her a look that is all but a shake of my head. I would never be late. “Wouldn’t want to be here when it opens.” I stand up to head downstairs.
“Right,” she says, following suit, “I’m just saying, if we leave around now, we’ll be back on campus about a minute before the meeting is supposed to start.”
I ignore her. She’s clever, she’ll come to it eventually. Heading down the stairs, I get a text from Jason, asking whether we can meet up for ‘coffee’ before our early meeting. I reply that he’s on his own and over 21. He’s clever, too, at least with regards to certain strivings. I’m sure he will also find his own way.
Irene is continuing as she follows me through the lobby of Stephen R. Pemberton Memorial Library. “Which means, the only way we would be able to stay here and not be late to that is if Sierra is late. Wait, do you somehow know Sierra is going to be late?” she asks the key question. The question that she already knows the answer to. But she wants confirmation of what she already knows.
I smile a thin smile as I turn my head back to face her. To anyone who isn’t well familiar with me, it would be barely visible. To her, it is likely clear as day. “Perhaps,” I confirm for her.
She throws her hands up in exaggerated frustration. “Because of course you know some dark secret about her that tells you. Wait, do you have some kind of spy-things in her apartment? Ever catch anything…interesting… on that channel?” she asks, raising her eyebrows in a manner suggesting she means sexual things.
“You are terrible and I’m a worse person for knowing you,” I give her a non-answer.
She mocks offense. “Hey, that’s my line!” she jokes.
We leave the library and start to walk through the town. It’s shortly after six. The town is in the early stages of awakening. “So,” I begin, “The rundown?”
Irene nods. “Just these ones, or the rest of the school that I’m thinking about, too?”
I look at her. She’s entirely serious. Her list includes one or two people outside the advisees of Sierra. Interesting. “Start here,” I reply, “Then perhaps we can move on.” I do not know who else is on her list, and have yet to prepare mental dossiers on them, in all likelihood. Not that Irene needs to know that is my reasoning. “We are to see them in a matter of minutes.”
Irene nods. “Fair point,” she says, but I can tell in her voice that she knows that isn’t my only reason. Good. She starts her rundown of our group’s potential. “So Ike and Jase are old and won’t listen to us and are leaving anyways, so I’m not including them. Same logic, I’m not counting Ruth. She’s great, but more like Jase than Ike if you catch my drift?”
I do. Isaac is a political animal and adequate schemer, as much as he oft is loath to admit it. Jason is, well, very much not. A quality I’ve certainly come to respect and enjoy in our discussions. Irene has likely found that same quality in Ruth already, and given how often they hang out beyond the confines of classes, I suspect she, too, enjoys it at times. “The Sophomores?” I ask.
“Yep, I’m getting there. You got Charles, Logan, and Val.” Val, she calls Valeria. Definitely not a good start. Though that is a lesson she will need to learn herself, not one she will learn if I tell her. “So, Charles, is a bit of a nervous wreck. But, he’s also an actual genius and seems pretty good at picking up the magic side of things. If we can find a way to get to him and help him become more self-confidence, we should direct him on the path towards agency. Otherwise, he’ll probably burn out.” A solid evaluation. The only thing I would change is, whether or not we can get through to him, he should be guided towards being a Magisterial Agent. Having the nervous self-doubting version of him flame out as a Magister, or worse a Maestro, under our leadership would be problematic.
Irene continues. “Next we’ve got Logan. Logan seems like a dick. That’s ‘cause he is. But he’s also okay with being seen as the bad guy, which is useful. He’s not going to make friends with us, or probably even like us. He doesn’t do that much at all. But if we can get him to respect and owe us, then set him up elsewhere and help him out there, he could prove helpful.” Interesting. She just spelled out in near perfect precision my plan for Logan. She doesn’t have all the information I do, so perfection is not possible, but she did come quite close. Get Logan in Europe, under Marshal’s tutelage for a bit, then get him noticed by Alina’s rival Hilarie, he will simultaneously help Hilarie come to her power and help solidify support against her once she is in power.
Irene moves on to the last of the sophomores. “And then there’s Val. She’s beautiful, clever, brilliant, and completely untrustworthy. She’ll insist on tutelage when she figures out we’re doing it, because of who she is, but I don’t think we should give her enough to be a threat. To us or the Magisterium as a whole. We keep her close, teach her some, but not much. Enough to keep her from thinking we’re skimping on her. Then we don’t provide additional support structures so she will flail about as a Magister while we establish ourselves.” A good plan. I can honestly say it surprises me a tad. Not that she couldn’t come up with one, just that she wouldn’t. Not with what I suspect is either about to start happening or just started over the summer.
I nod. My eyes hold a hint of pride in them that I’m quite certain Irene can see. “I see,” I say, “And the Freshman?”
“I don’t know them as well, but I’ve got some scouting done. Alexander is useless to us moving forward, but will prove useful to the Freshman class as a confidant. Assuming he doesn’t fail out. Some tutoring, maybe. Get your not-as-secret-as-you-think Private Tutor buddy on it, she’ll be happy and he’ll stay in school long enough for inertia to kick in.” A fair assessment, best I can tell. “Michel is a gold star. Reminds me of our buddy Greg. Brilliant, already knows some of this shit going in, will need to actively find himself unable to do something before he’ll reach out to anyone for any help. So scratch him off the list.” An excellent conclusion, especially considering Michel is a plant trying to find Alina’s secret weapon. He went to the same private school as Alina and her buddies, was on course for an easy path to leadership, and gave it up to come here, even though there is no indication in his personality that he would want to do so. “Now onto the ladies, there’s Fadila. She seems perfectly okay, but my gut says there’s more there than her file says, and so I say we feel it out.” There is. The files leave out why she’s here. She’s hiding from a tower. She’s a killer, an assassin for her parents, and she has never felt trusted in her life. We give her our trust, she may in time prove more helpful and good for us than any other in the Magisterium. “Finally, we’ve got Patricia. I like her. Like, a lot. I’m not sure she’s gonna gel well with us, she’s like halfway between us in that she knows some people in a lot of places and she’s pretty good with interacting with people, but I think we set her up with either Ike or Ali and she could help them out in the future. We bring her in, we teach her the ropes, then we hand her off and let them figure out their whole teamwork thing.” Precisely correct. Isaac, not Alina, of course. Alina can handle people well enough, and Isaac has a nasty habit of forgetting that organizations and forces beyond the mystic exist.
I nod once to show some approval. We’re walking up the gravel to campus. “That sounds like a plan,” I say.
She knows my tone. “What did I get wrong? Or did I miss something?”
I shrug ever so slightly. “Nothing,” I say the half-truth.
Irene sighs deeply as we enter the quad. “Okay, what are we going to do differently?”
I let her see just a hint of a smirk. “Well, I know where Logan will be going. And I believe we should trust Fadila.”
“What did I miss?” she asks, more serious now as we reach the doors of the Alfred T. Dixon Grand Library.
“Absolutely nothing,” I begin, pause for dramatic effect, then add, “In what you looked into. I simply used… alternative means.”
“Alternative means?” she asks as we enter the building, “Like how you know Sierra is going to be late?”
I give a single chortle. “Not quite. That one required much less effort to figure out,” I joke. She does not get the joke. Not yet. But she’s clever. She’ll put the pieces together soon enough.
Jase comes up to us as we’re headed to the conference room. He’s visibly a little grumpy. Also visibly quite high. “I see how it is,” he mutters to me, half joking and half complaining, “You didn’t have time for me ‘cause you were too busy hanging out with your second sexiest friend.”
I look him dead in the eyes and, without flinching or breaking character, I reply, “Don’t be silly. I don’t have friends.”
It hands in the air a moment. Then, he bursts out laughing. Through the chuckles he changes the topic slightly, “I thought Sierra had got the common sense to push this stuff back. God, this is too early to be dealing with anything.”
I smile my thin, barely noticeable smile. He notices. I say enigmatically and entirely for my own benefit, “Well, Sierra and common sense don’t exactly go hand in hand.” Then, I add for Jason’s sake, “If it makes you feel better, circumstances have forced me to endure this sober.” I gesture towards Irene with the word ‘circumstances’. She pouts, exaggeratedly.
Jason pauses for a second. “Honestly? That does make me feel better,” he says with a smile.
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