Ordinary Miracles, page 8
I had a suspicion that settling in this location was not necessarily fortuitous – the fact that there is a tunnel from St Paul’s to the building troubled me until Mr Hildebrand, the Nottingham college librarian-cum-archivist, pointed out that it had originally led to the banks of the Thames and was constructed as an escape route – although when, and who was escaping from whom, he wasn’t sure.
Sandwiching the hub of magic between somewhere as powerful as St Paul’s and a huge river like the Thames seems wise to me, because all rivers inherently have a lot of water Talent power in them. I suspect that it’s because they are the junction between water Talent territory and earth Talent territory that such liminal spaces – where one thing becomes another – have always fascinated me.
*
I sipped my coffee. It was delicious. “Is this coffee real or have you been tinkering with the flavonoids?” I needed to ask something that I was fairly sure didn’t have a scary answer. I’d had enough of being scared.
“It’s real,” replied Nadia, picking up her mobile, which had been buzzing like a demented bee for the last two minutes. “Okay, we’ll start tomorrow morning. Kat will show you to your rooms. We don’t want you to leave this building, and we have everything you could possibly need right here, so don’t try. Bye.”
She was already tapping the screen when Katherine ushered us out. “Your rooms are 412 and 414, and the doors are keyed to your esku. Just cast a light spell or something and they’ll open.”
“You have our esku registered here?”
“Of course.” She sounded surprised. “You two successfully jumped from Iksale 2 to Ikasberri in one go, which is almost unheard of; Sam here has enough power to melt a housing estate and you are a powerful, oddly previously undetected, and rather ambiguous, Dual Talent. You have,” she added with a portentous voice and a grin, “been noticed.”
That made me pause. A Dual Talent is someone who operates two Talents with equal power at the same time. “Earth and…?”
“Fire. Probably the rarest combination. It’s strong, but they aren’t a clean pairing.”
Sam is an air Talent, in case you were wondering. “Oh, I didn’t realise.” That was mild, considering how shocked I was. Even in that bland corridor and surrounded by all the skills there are, I still felt the world slipping away from me.
“Hmm. Anyway, your rooms.”
They could have been rooms in any mid-range business travellers’ hotel; fairly comfortable, fairly spacious and utterly characterless. Our bags, which we had left in the car, were already in them. It took maybe ten minutes to unpack and put everything away, and Sam was already waiting outside when I came out. By now it was mid-afternoon, so we headed for somewhere where more interesting stuff was going on.
7
While this was happening, life at the Nottingham college was getting rather more interesting than anyone really wanted.
Our college buildings are loosely attached to the archaeology department, but from the outside you wouldn’t know it wasn’t the Department of Media Studies And Reflexive Cynicism, or something like that. It has lecture rooms, study areas, workshops, a library – all the usual stuff, plus our own coffee shop. This was, with pathetic inevitability, known as The Leaky Cauldron. I believe it was originally called ‘The Coffee Shop’ by the dullards who are in charge of these things.
In the first week after Christmas staff and students tend to be unenthusiastic bordering on sluggish, as if two weeks away from buggering about with the fundamental forces of the universe is somehow tiring.
Each term brings a new set of lectures, and each requires particular equipment and specific materials. Some of these have to be brought from locations that are secure, or shielded, or at the bottom of a coal mine, so there tends to be quite a lot of stuff coming and going at the start of term.
That’s why nobody noticed yet another case being dropped off by an ordinary post office van, one of several that day. We don’t have broomsticks or magic carpets, by the way; I drive a battered blue VW (and no, I didn’t get it from Harry Dresden, and anyway, it’s not a Beetle); Amy has a converted Audi something; Clara has her poxy little Fiat 500 and Sam drives a Trumpchi which she brought with her from Hong Kong. It’s a terrible car, but she’s irrationally fond of it.
It was the job of one of the staff Ikasberri to take the deliveries to the appropriate departments and remove them from their protective cases. This one, I am meanly relieved to note, was someone who I didn’t really know.
The object didn’t explode in the conventional sense – no blast, smoke, fire, bits flying everywhere or anything like that. This was a magical explosion; well, not explosion. Oh crap, this is hard to explain. It’s the equivalent of a neutron bomb – no damage but a lot of dead people. Or in this case, unconscious.
Unfortunately the Ikasberri who triggered it was standing very close, and he was brain-dead in a heartbeat, the rest of his body failing before anyone found him.
Everyone in the building below Iksale 1 was rendered unconscious within seconds. Nobody was spared, and several people were injured when they blacked out halfway through walking or, in one notable case, standing on a chair to get something off a shelf.
Only the most senior grades didn’t succumb instantly because of the protective shields they habitually wrap around themselves. Students are advised to do that as well, but they listen with the same set of ears that they listen to advice about not drinking too much with, so…
Of course, we do have non-magical people in the college, mostly of a domestic nature – coffee shop staff, technicians, cleaners and so forth; they suffered no injury unless they fell over, but they were put into a dream-like state. To put it simply, everyone fell asleep, then woke up when the device discharged itself about ten minutes later. All that remained was a metallic cube about a hand span across with some designs incised into one face. This is what is known as a magia garraiolari, a ‘spell carrier’ – or ‘thaumatological effect transport system’, if you want that translated into jargon – which are about as common and unremarkable as a data stick, which is the thing they most closely resemble.
Nobody could work out where it had come from; it had been sent from a large post office branch in Leeds by somebody who didn’t show up on the CCTV and the staff couldn’t recall clearly. Nothing was missing from the college, nothing was broken for any reason other than the obvious, and nothing untoward had been brought into the building.
The department responsible for ensuring the safety of the colleges had a lot of explaining to do. This mostly consisted of shrugging, looking embarrassed and saying ‘beats the shit out on me, mate’. This was notionally Professor Weaver’s bailiwick, and he said he was bringing in a new man to oversee the staff and building security. The next day the colleges in Newcastle and Bristol were attacked in the same way. Guess which colleges the other two conduits went to?
*
We were constrained in the illusionary London office block while all this was going on. Nadia had introduced us to a Healer named Beverley Hinch, and reacquainted us with Katherine Duncan, our driver and, we now discovered, Nadia’s right-hand person.
I spent the first two days in the medical facility on the top floor at Central, just lying down. This wasn’t nearly as much fun as it might have been, because I was face down on a table with two technical types and Bev trying to work out what had happened to my shoulder. Or how. Or why. Or possibly which way the wind was blowing on Jupiter. I don’t bloody know. All I know is that it hurt and they said they couldn’t give me any pain relief because they needed to know what it felt like. Bloody sadists. The medical section looked and smelled like a small but well-equipped hospital, clean enough to make the average mysophobic nod appreciatively.
The room we were in – and I was heartily sick of – was like any reasonably equipped doctor’s surgery, so designed to be effective, efficient and about as comforting as the edge of an axe. The ranked medical equipment reminded me of the inside of the line of ambulances at Paddington. It made me uncomfortable, but thankfully nothing more. I tried not to think about it too much.
I was surprised to find that Sam wasn’t there to give me hugs and Indar. In fact, when I saw her at dinner on the first night she looked worse than me, and her thoughts were troubled and cloudy. God knows what mine were like.
The eatery was called The Popina, because somebody did Latin at school, and was halfway between a restaurant and a canteen. And because enhanced taste buds are not part of a mage’s mutation, the food was massively disappointing after dad’s cooking. Fortunately I barely tasted a thing. I think the first night it was roof insulation en croute with mashed polystyrene and boiled musket balls. I have no idea what the pudding was, but I ate it with my eyes closed.
Bev saw me to my room. “You need to sleep now.”
“I know,” I mumbled. I sat down to take off my shoes but flopped back onto the bed, as boneless as a jellyfish.
“Get into bed,” said Bev. On another day that might have seemed like an invitation, but tonight I wouldn’t have been able to raise a smile, let alone anything else. Bev is my height, Afro-Caribbean and slim, with the same sort of smoky sexiness that Clara has. I mean, you don’t look a gift… in the… er… I think I’ll shut up now.
She pulled off my shoes. “Come on,” she said briskly.
I wanted to move, I really did, but I couldn’t. I wanted Sam to give me some Indar, or coffee, or even a back rub, but she wasn’t there. In fact, I could tell she was already asleep, so far down that I couldn’t possibly reach her.
I felt tears wet my eyes, and Bev’s breath on my lips, hot and close, and power flowed into me like I’d got new batteries. This wasn’t Indar, this was something quite different, something I didn’t recognise, something that I’d never felt before.
Then I realised it was pure Healing energy. Using it on a whole person, rather than to deal with some specific problem, is technically impossible because there is no target for it. But that didn’t seem to bother Bev, even if it confused the hell out of me. I had no idea why she decided to deliver it by kissing me either. I started to feel fizzing hot and made to sit up, but she kept me pressed to the bed for another few seconds, then leant back, sitting next to me.
“Wow,” I said. “I mean, fucking wow. What was that?” I felt properly alert for the first time since Paddington.
She smiled, looking like a smug genie. “Fire. We’ve started to release a lot of things, but mainly your fire Talent. You’ve been operating at half strength for ages, only using your earth Talent. It’s like running a marathon on only one leg – and yet you still reached Ikasberri three years quicker than average.” She shook her head. “There’s something very odd about you.”
“Oh.” I won’t say I felt clear-headed and bouncy, but I could feel a liberating warmth flowing through me; my muscles felt loose and powerful. I couldn’t have run ten miles – ten metres is normally enough for me – but I did feel like I could a lift a bus with a thought. Well, a minibus anyway.
“Now go to sleep. I’ll get you up in the morning.” I opened my mouth but she slid off the bed and pointed a stern finger at me. “No jokes. Go to sleep. You’ll dream of fire, but it won’t trouble you. Goodnight.”
She left, and I was asleep within five minutes. I did dream, but I woke at 5am with my ‘tattooed’ shoulder hurting so badly it was an effort to withhold a scream.
A Healer arrived almost immediately – I hadn’t even managed to call for help – and he gave me some honest-to-god morphine. I crashed back into unconsciousness within seconds, too distracted to wonder why a Healer had been monitoring me so closely that the morphine was on its way down the corridor before I’d even woken up.
*
Day two was basically a repeat of day one, including most of the unpleasant bits, but by the end of it the not-actually-tattoos had been removed from my back. You can’t tell that they were ever there, apart from a small round patch that doesn’t look quite like the rest – Sam called it my reset button. By the end of the day I was feeling better, but ‘better’ isn’t a synonym for ‘well’.
We met at dinner, with Bev and Katherine keeping a weather eye on us, and I have to say that Sam had improved. Mind you, I’ve seen dead people who looked better than she had the day before. Once we’d finished eating – Vermicelli made with real worms and a sauce that owed more to cornflour than cheese – she wanted to talk.
“So, they sort you out?”
“Er…”
She looked at Bev. “You not tell him? Why not? You think he not big enough boy to cope?”
Katherine stirred, setting her spoon down with a slow, deliberate motion; if she had held up a sign that said ‘I Am Now Going To Say Something Important’ it couldn’t have been more obvious. “Mike was a two-part… er, problem. Not a problem really. Situation. Thing.”
I made a hurry-up gesture. “I know – emergent duality and being a conduit.”
“Er… no. Nearly, but no. Your duality was…” she broke off.
“A bloody nuisance,” said Nadia, putting her cup on the table and looking at me expectantly. Unsure what Mrs Uber-Witch wanted, I sipped my coffee, then nearly spat it across the table. It was disgusting.
Nadia looked at Bev. “That’s a fiver you owe me.” Katherine laughed and so, I was irritated to note, did Sam.
With a glare that had absolutely no impact on any of them, I stomped over to the servery, discarded my coffee with a feeling of revulsion, and got myself some tea. I sipped it carefully before I headed back towards the table. I normally find tea insipid going on flavourless, but this was delicious.
All the women were laughing together, and didn’t seem to have noticed that I’d left, so I found a different table over by the window, sat back, sipped my drink and closed my eyes. I could have done with a lot more sleep or Bev’s magic snogging. Instead, I had tea and a head full of smoke.
I heard a noise at the table and opened my eyes. There was a man sitting opposite me, looking at me very carefully. His gaze was disconcerting, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to read me or he wanted to see if I could do magic snogging too. I thought of asking what he wanted but I couldn’t be bothered. After two days of this shit I’d just about had enough.
“Michael,” he said, then held out his hand. “Patrick Fintan. Please, call me Pat.” He had a soft rolling voice, Irish probably, and looked to be in his fifties.
I shook his hand briefly. It was cold and rough and one nail was chipped. If this man wanted some wood cut he would use an axe not a spell, I thought.
“Yes?” Mum had tried to inculcate nice manners, which is why ‘what the fuck do you want?’ didn’t get past my teeth.
“I’m here to help.” I just looked at him. “I know you’ve had some troubles lately…” I didn’t answer. I wasn’t looking for talking therapy. “What with the crash and the whole conduit business.” I still didn’t speak. I just didn’t want to. I scanned my own mind, but this muteness wasn’t something that was being done to me. I didn’t know who this Fintan bloke was, so I didn’t trust him – in fact all I wanted was for him to just go away and leave me alone. I needed some peace.
He looked at me for a long second. “You aren’t really here, are you? Or, at least, not as far as I’m concerned.” He left a pause long enough for me to not answer in. “Maybe you should go to bed.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh, it does speak. Progress at last. Do you know who I am?”
“The bloke who’s getting in my face when all I want to do is sit quietly with a cup of tea?”
“Am I annoying you?” I didn’t answer. “So you don’t trust me?”
“I wouldn’t trust you if you gave me a personal reference from the Queen written in Richard Slater’s blood and countersigned by Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.”
“They’re both dead,” he replied, “or they are at the moment, in the Dalai Lama’s case.” I carried on looking at him, feeling increasingly hostile. He grunted. “Drink your tea.”
I pushed it away from me.
“OK, don’t drink your tea.”
“Why don’t you just piss off?” I said coldly, balling my fist. Fintan was probably a higher grade mage than me, but he was several inches shorter, older, and not so heavily built. I wanted to hit something. Or someone. I had no idea what was wrong, but I just wanted whatever it was to stop.
“OK.” He stood up, so abruptly it made me jump, looked across at the women and then stalked out of the room. He was replaced a few seconds later by Sam and Bev. Katherine had vanished but Nadia was still watching, amazingly not doing something on her phone. Her dark-eyed stare was disconcerting, and I couldn’t meet her gaze. For all that she’s quite attractive, in an idiosyncratic sort of way, I will admit that, at that moment, something about her scared me.
“You not okay,” said Sam. It wasn’t a question, and she felt agitated.
“Was Pat being intrusive?” Bev asked.
“No, he was being a pain in the arse,” I replied. The headache was coming back, and with it the eyes of the man who had been crushed at Paddington. Bev took my hand. The gentle flow from her drove the pain away, or back at least, but the core of it remained. My eyes closed, without me being involved in the movement in any way, and when I opened them Nadia, and an older woman who I didn’t recognise, were there as well. There were more tears, and a terrible sense that I had failed, or done something wrong. I felt fucking awful.
