“A mage?” Bella sounded surprised, but Jane was glad to note that she didn’t seem angry. At least, not yet. “You are a mage?”
Jane nodded. “Yes. An archmage candidate, to be more accurate. I’m sorry, Bella. I should have told you.”
“Yes.” Bella watched as the whirlwinds all gathered together near the broom, dragging every bit of dust and grime in the room into a single, easily swept pile. “We could have saved a lot of work, for one thing. Why hide this? It’s not like it’s illegal to be a mage, Jane.”
“No, but…” Jane did a short incantation under her breath. A bit of lightning sparked from her finger, dancing around the room in short staccato bursts. “Something like this is small compared to what I can really do, Bella. I’m… well, I’m important as an archmage. People want archmages. They want what an archmage can do.”
Bella raised an eyebrow. “And that’s a problem? I don’t get why any of this is an issue.”
Jane was surprised to feel her eyes watering. “Because I want to be Jane. I never got to do that before I came here. I was so enjoying the chance to be Jane. And now you have to tell people, and that’s all over.”
Bella really would have to tell people. Jane had been working a sort of legal loophole in keeping her powers secret. It was something she could risk because her aunt would be willing to bail her out of trouble if necessary, and because nobody would waste a resource like an archmage by punishing them too harshly.
But the law was the law. Now that Bella knew, she had no choice but to share that knowledge. Jane’s watery eyes progressed to real tears as she felt the world fall down around her.
A few seconds later, she heard a heavy sigh.
“I get it. I think.” Bella’s hand gripped her arm. “Come on.”
“To where?” Jane wailed. “Where are we going?”
“I think I can fix this for you, but only if you trust me. Do you?”
Jane’s heart lurched inside her, but looking at Bella calmed it a bit. She had only known the girl a few days, sure. Yet here Bella was, after a busy day of work, with wine. Whatever she had planned for that wine was for Jane’s benefit.
Just Jane. Not Jane the archmage. Bella had been trying to help little old Jane, the person who couldn’t do anything at all, for no reason other than that she liked her.
“Yes,” Jane said. “I do trust you.”
“Then come along.”
—
“If we are lucky, he’s still there.”
“Who?”
“It would take too long to explain, and if you knew, you wouldn’t want to go. You said you’d trust me, right? Just trust me.”
Bella had led them down so many winding streets that Jane doubted she could find her way home by herself. Now they were entering what felt like an older part of town, maybe the oldest part of town. The mossy stone buildings had been built right into the waterfront, looking almost like they had grown there. The river was particularly active here. Many buildings had a wheel of some kind hooked to them, even if some of those wheels were currently disengaged from any kind of visible drive.
“Here we are. And the door is still open. Thank goodness.” Bella dragged Jane up a few stone stairs and through a small door carved from heavy, dark wood. “Sadie! I have a friend who needs to see Xand, as soon as possible. Now, actually.”
“He’s busy, Bella.” Sadie kept her eyes on the paperwork covering her desk. Her hand made little movements with her pen here, then there, then over there, with no apparent pattern Jane could see. “It’s the end of his day. He’s probably getting ready to go home. He doesn’t want to talk about work things.”
“Oh, he does. This time I know he does.” Bella tapped briskly on the desk. “I’ll buy you two bottles of wine if he doesn’t say so himself.”
“Two?” Sadie repeated, finally lifting her eyes. “Good ones?”
Bella raised her hand as if making an oath. “Ice season stock. I swear. Do we have a deal?”
“Fine. You know where his door is. I’m not going to stop you from walking through it. But you better have those bottles for me, Bella.”
“Won’t need them. Watch.”
Bella grabbed Jane’s arm again and guided her down a hallway to another door that was very conspicuously shut. Blowing right past whatever leave-me-alone vibes the door was giving off, Bella burst into the room and crossed the floor. She came to a stop directly in front of a sofa, where a large, middle aged man was sitting and reviewing a document on a small folding desk.
“Bella, you have to stop doing this.” Xand rubbed his eyes behind his glasses before looking up at his new visitors. “Work time is for work. Planned work. That’s why I take appointments, you know. Now, who is this young lady, and why have you wrapped her up in your schemes today?”
“This is Jane, Xand. A friend. She moved into the vacant bakery near my shop. You know the one?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Xand’s eyes took on a more interested sparkle.
“I do. Lady Cecelia’s place, wasn’t it? Why did Cecelia let you use it? She’s never had any interest in the building before.”
“She’s my aunt,” Jane explained. “She thought it would be a good place for me to stay while I figured a few things out.”
Xand finally set the desk aside and rose to greet them. He was a huge person. He towered over Bella, who in turn towered over Jane. In their presence, Jane felt like the inmost doll of a nesting toy surrounded by giants.
“I don’t see what this has to do with me. So long as she has permission, she’s fine to stay there.” Xand turned back to Jane. “You are seeking gainful work?”
“I’m trying to be a baker.”
“Then she’s fine, Bella. There’s nothing for me to sign off on.”
“Xand is an interpreter,” Bella told Jane. “If you have some sort of legally questionable thing you want to do…”
“A legal question,” Xand corrected her. “‘Legally questionable’ is different. Please do not do legally questionable things.”
Bella ignored the interruption. “Then Xand is your friend. You can come ask him if the thing you want to do is fine with the town, and he’ll tell you. His word is binding, and he can make pretty big decisions all by himself.”
“I suppose that’s close enough to accurate to stand.” The admission appeared to pain Xand. “But there still isn’t anything for me to comment on here, Bella. This is all covered in a reasonably clear way in the law, and even if your friend somehow ran afoul of it, there would be forgiveness for that. We’d ask her to fix it, not punish her.”
“I get why you think that. But watch this.” Bella elbowed Jane lightly. “Do the thing.”
“What?”
Bella moved her finger in the same jerky way the lightning had moved, back in Jane’s bakery. “The thing. Do that for him. I’ll close the door first.”
“Are you sure?” Jane held up her finger and started mentally reciting the incantation. Chants worked worse that way as compared to when she said them out loud, which she hoped would help her keep a lid on how much power the spell could use. “Really sure?”
“I really am. Just do it.”
All the doubt and frustration on Xand’s face disappeared at the first spark of light from Jane’s fingertip. He watched the lightning dance across the room in awe, then crumpled back onto the sofa, rubbing his eyes even harder than before.
“Dammit. I was just about to go home, Bella.”
“And then I would have had to show up to the full court by myself tomorrow, Xand. This was the only time I could force you to take a look in private, and Jane wants to keep this quiet.”
“I’d wager she does.” Xand gazed at Jane in wonder. “Given you are Cecelia’s niece, I’m guessing you aren’t just a normal mage-in-training. You are something more. Is that about the size of it?”
“An archmage candidate. In good standing.” Jane swallowed hard. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for being exceptional.” Standing again, Xand approached her. “Is there any particular reason you are trying to keep this quiet? We don’t have any problems with magic in this town. You would have been welcomed for your gifts.”
“I…”
Jane struggled to find the words to explain exactly why she didn’t want to be welcomed for that part of her. It felt selfish, having everything she had and not wanting to use it.
To her delight, Bella jumped in.
“She doesn’t want to be an archmage here, Xand. At least not publicly. You know what people would do if they knew she was an archmage. There wouldn’t be a parade, but it would be close. She wants to be able to live normally, at least for a while.”
“Hmm.” Xand walked over to the wall and pulled down a heavy, leatherbound book. Opening it to a single dog-eared page that seemed to get a lot of use, he motioned Jane over to read it. “You don’t know the wording of this law, I expect. You probably should. It varies quite a bit from place to place.”
Jane knew the gist of it, but Xand was right that she was far from knowing the details. She came close and read the text in earnest.
The Law of Idle Fields
In Glenfall, the Law of Idle Fields is interpreted to mean that no resource of value should be left unused.
Generally speaking, any valuable resource that is brought to the town and is meant to remain there for a meaningful amount of time must be put to work. Buildings may not be bought and then left unoccupied. Fields may not lie fallow longer than needed to ensure good crop growth. Below an age of reasonable retirement, individuals are required to contribute to the town in ways that make the best use of their developed skills.
As is the common saying: ‘A tailor must sew, a king must rule, and a bricklayer must lay bricks.’
Since the strict interpretation of this law is impossible to enforce, each citizen must inform the government when they become aware of a valuable resource being allowed to go to waste. Each case is considered on its own merits as brought to the attention of our courts or interpreters. In the case that a wasted resource goes unnoticed, the owner of the resource may not be penalized.
“And now we know about my resource.” Jane’s eyes dampened slightly, despite her best efforts to keep them dry. “I’m stuck.”
“Not quite, I think.” Xand turned some pages and spent a few seconds reviewing certain paragraphs before closing the book. “The law is a little more complex than that, in ways we’ve let the courts establish over the decades. That’s probably what Bella had in mind when she brought you here.”
“Meaning?”
Bella’s voice was excited. “Meaning that a shovel is only considered idle if there’s a man ready to use it to dig. If not, it’s surplus. Otherwise you couldn’t store food or have spare tools for your work. There has to be a need for the resource.”
“She’s right. If there was necessary work that required an archmage candidate, this couldn’t be ignored. You’d be expected to do that work. But an archmage is a special kind of case.”
Jane felt a tiny sprig of hope trying to take root in her heart. “Really?”
“Tell me this, Jane,” Xand said. “If you had to put your powers to work on the town right now, what would you do? We aren’t under attack. The city isn’t burning down. What current, pressing task requires an archmage?”
Jane thought for a while. She could technically affect the weather, but not in any consistent way useful for agriculture, and the city wasn’t reliant on local rainwater anyway. She could cause mass destruction, but the city certainly didn’t want that, either.
“That’s right,” Xand said, after several seconds of silence. He made a few scribbles on a piece of paper, took it to a larger desk near the end of the room, and stamped it with an official-looking seal. “You are hereby cleared of your responsibilities to inform the local government of your capabilities. Unless there’s some catastrophe, you have no further obligation to inform anyone of your powers.”
“Really?” Jane’s eyes widened. “Nobody has to know?”
“Oh, I’ll be telling a few people who do need to know, but nobody who doesn’t have a professional interest in keeping it quiet, for your sake. It will be secret enough right up until we need you. Hopefully that won’t happen, but you understand your responsibilities if it does.”
Jane pulled herself together, straightening her back and trying to hide her glee.
“Of course. If my powers are needed, just call for me. I’ll do what’s required. I always would have, you know.”
“I don’t doubt it. My niece wouldn’t be friends with you if you were a bad person. She’s not very book-wise, but she’s more or less a genius when it comes to recognizing virtue.”
“Wait.” Jane scrunched her eyes at Bella. “This is your uncle? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Bella held up her hands defensively. “We didn’t have time! We had to catch him before he left for the day!”
“That’s true.” Xand folded the papers he had been working on, handed Jane the paper receipt acknowledging her new law-abiding status, and put on his coat. “I’m supposed to be home for dinner right now. I hope you two will see fit to accompany me. Bringing home my wife’s favorite niece will go a long way in explaining why I let a meal get cold.”