“Enough, Father!” Thomas cried, desperate to stop the man.
“Don’t you tell me—”
The steel edge of Thomas’s dagger hissed against the metal rim of the scabbard. The blade came up between them, stopping John Flarety cold. Thomas, knees bent in a knife-fighter’s crouch, never took his eyes off his father as he raised the blade. “I said,
enough!
”
John Flarety was staring, hatred naked in his eyes. Behind him, Thomas could see Bluster reaching for his truncheon. Neal was standing beside him, his mouth gaping.
John sneered at Thomas. “Why don’t you draw your sword as well?”
Thomas stayed in his crouch. “The hallway’s too narrow.”
“Thomas,” warned Bluster, stepping out of the study behind John. “Put the weapon away, lad.”
“Nothing has changed,” John said, his voice as cold and hard and unforgiving as stone. “You will not go back to the Academy. You will go to the bishop. You will beg his forgiveness, and you will enter his service.”
“No.”
“Then you are no longer my son.”
The words cut far deeper than Thomas’s dagger would have. Thomas felt the breath leave his body.
It’s not him talking,
he reminded himself.
These are not my father’s words.
John looked down at the dagger, then back to Thomas’s eyes. “Now get out of my house.”
Thomas didn’t move. “I want to see my mother.”
“She’s not here,” said Bluster. “She’s up at the nunnery visiting the nuns.”
“When is she coming back, Father?” asked Neal, stepping between John and Thomas.
John didn’t take his eyes off Thomas. “She didn’t say.”
Thomas heard the pain in his father’s words, buried deep under the rage, but there nonetheless. Thomas dug at it. “You hit her last night, didn’t you?”
“Father?” Neal’s voice had a scared, angry edge. “Father, did you hit Mother?”
John’s eyes went to his eldest son. “What happened is between your mother and me. No one else.”
“I heard someone get hit,” said Thomas, “and there’s no marks on you.”
Neal’s face started turning red, very much like his father’s had. “I’m going to the nunnery,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’ll go see her and find out.”
“It has nothing to do with you!” snapped John. “Leave it alone!” He spun on his heel, shouting at Bluster. “Will you get that vagrant out of my house!”
Bluster stared at John until the man stepped back, then advanced slowly on Thomas, his truncheon swinging at his side. “Lad?”
Thomas realized then that the dagger was still in his hand. He straightened up and let the blade drop to his side. He thought of saying more to his father, but John Flarety’s expression had not changed. Nothing short of murder was going to change the man’s mind, and Thomas knew it.
“I’ll come see you in the morning,” said Neal. “I promise.”
Thomas sheathed the dagger, then turned and walked away from the study. He forced himself not to look back. Forced himself not to do anything but walk. Out of the house and on to the road. Across the road and into the woods, following the half-remembered path he’d taken the night before.
Anger had control of Thomas and held him tight all through the woods and past the smith’s house. He waved curtly at George and Lionel in the forge, but didn’t slow his pace at all. He was in no fit condition to talk to anyone. His brain was whirling and any thoughts he tried to hold on to were torn away and lost in the maelstrom that filled his head.
He followed the path he had taken with George and Eileen two nights before until he came to the mill pond. The water looked deceptively shallow in the late-evening sunlight, but Thomas, who had swum in it for years, knew better. He stripped off his sword-belt, boots, and shirt, then dove in. The cold water shocked his body and his mind, tensing all his muscles and driving all thought from his brain. He forced himself further under, swimming as deeply as he could. In the middle of the pond he stopped and held himself still in the water. The light was green and murky. The water around him deadened all sound.
Thomas used to love diving deep like this. George and he would have contests to see who would reach the bottom first. It was nearly fifteen feet deep. Thomas remembered the way his lungs would ache as he struggled to reach the bottom and the time that he had nearly passed out on the way back up.
He floated in the cold silence. Slanting rays of evening sunlight played off the weeds on the bottom of the pond. Silvery movement nearby told him that there were minnows swimming with him. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the surface. The world on the other side was a blur, the sunlight bouncing off the still-rippling surface. Thomas stared at the shimmering light and tried to put his thoughts in order.
His father was being controlled by the bishop.
There was no question in Thomas’s mind about that. His father had
changed
. The rage he was showing was way beyond anything Thomas had ever seen. At his worst, John Flarety had been given to brief fits of yelling. Now though?
Despite the rage Thomas had seen that afternoon, despite John’s threats and violence, the image that kept coming back to Thomas’s mind was from the banquet the night before.
John Flarety had been rude at the dinner table.
It was a strange thing to dwell on, given everything else that had happened, but it was the point that drove home. John Flarety was always courteous and entertaining and if anything were to go wrong, his guests would never know it. Before, he would have been positively charming even if he had been completely furious.
In fact, it was his father’s charm that Thomas remembered most. Time and again, Thomas had watched his father talk people out of their moods. He had charmed everyone from grumpy fishwives to other merchants to angry suppliers. He could even persuade Lionel to listen.
Thomas remembered a day when he was thirteen. Two wagons needed new wheel-irons. John Flarety and Lionel had been bickering, and Lionel was in no mood to do extra work. Thomas had been visiting when his father came in, and was certain that Lionel would not change his mind, no matter what.
Thomas remembered his father’s voice, flowing like fresh, warm honey. He remembered feeling it fill the forge like something tangible, imagining that he could see it, wrapping around Lionel. By the time John was done, Lionel had forgiven him and set aside other projects to help.
What if I didn’t imagine it?
The pieces started falling together in a way Thomas found totally unacceptable.
Timothy could create a ball of light out of air.
John Flarety could persuade anyone of anything.
The bishop could tear apart a man’s soul.
And I saw it all.
I’m the only one who could see it.
Thomas rolled in the water and kicked hard upward. He broke from the water like a dolphin breaching the surface of the sea and hauled air into his starving lungs. His muscles, already reacting to the cold, protested mightily as he stroked towards the shore.
Thomas had spent four years studying logic and reason. Four years arguing with theology students about the nature of divinity, and whether the High Father was truly the prime mover for all things in the universe. Four years denying that anything like magic could even exist. Now, though, he couldn’t see what else it could be.
Small magics,
Timothy had called them.
He reached the water’s edge and stepped out into the cool air of the evening, wiping the water from his face and body with his hands.
If the bishop could steal the small magics, could tear them out of a man’s chest, what would happen to the person afterwards? Did they fall under the bishop’s control? Given the way John Flarety had been behaving, it seemed very likely to Thomas, which made Timothy’s fear all the more reasonable. Thomas wondered when the bishop had taken John Flarety’s magic and if his father had ever had the slightest idea what he had lost.
Thomas remembered the look on the bishop’s face when he had tried to take Thomas’s magic. The thought of being under the man’s control made him shudder even more than the evening breeze against his wet skin.
Of course
, Thomas thought,
now that I know this, what am I going to do?
Thomas needed proof. More than just words from a dying man that only he had heard. More than half remembered feelings or what he’d thought he’d seen and felt when he was beaten half-unconscious. He needed something tangible.
Thomas picked up his shirt and boots in one hand and gathered his weapons with the other. He started walking back towards the smithy. He would dry off by the forge, he decided, and he would sit there until he had figured out a way to find the proof he needed. Then he could tell someone.
His feet weren’t used to being bare, and the stones and roots that he had never noticed as a child now dug in to them with every step. By the time he reached the smithy, Thomas was limping. He was also quite positive that immersion in cold water as the sun goes down was just about the worst thing one could do to a still-injured body. He could barely move, he was so stiff.
He stepped inside the smithy and the heat washed over him like a wave, digging into the aching muscles and soothing the pain. Lionel was there, banking down the fires. The big smith saw the puddle forming under Thomas’s feet and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t tell me your father dunked you in the pond.”
“No.” Thomas found a stool in the corner and pulled it close to the forge. He closed his eyes and let the near-blistering heat suck the moisture from his body and clothes. “No, I dunked myself.”
“By the Four, lad, why?”
“I needed to clear my head.”
The smith’s eyebrows went higher. “Did it work?”
A half-smile quirked Thomas’s face. “Aye.”
Lionel snorted. “If that’s what it takes to be a scholar, I must say I’m glad not to have gone to school.”
Thomas said nothing, only revelled in the heat. The smith snorted again, and told him to close the flue when he was dry, and not to forget the dinner that waited for him inside.
Thomas waved at the sound of Lionel’s voice and abandoned himself to the heat.
Sit still, breathe, and listen.
It was an exercise he’d learned on the first day of his first philosophy class. The first step to wisdom, he had been taught, was to pay attention, and the first step to that was clearing the mind.
He inhaled deeply, the acrid smell of the forge filling his nostrils. The coals, which had spent the day roaring under the wind of the bellows, were quiet now, only occasionally crackling as they split under their own heat. Beyond that, he could hear the voices from inside the house; the evening birds giving their last chirps of the day; and further off, barely audible, the strains of a fiddle coming from the village inn. Thomas listened to it all, breathing deeply.
Images raced through his head: Eileen jumped the flames beside him. Timothy laughed at his expense then gasped for air beneath the wagon. His father screamed hatred at him while Bluster swung his truncheon at his side. The men beat him again, and again the bishop stood over him, trying to pull the magic from Thomas’s soul.
One by one the images came, and one by one Thomas set them aside, consciously turning his attention outward, to the sounds around him and his own breathing.
The heat was bringing a sweat to his body, and he embraced it gratefully, feeling the last of the chill and stiffness leave his muscles. He continued breathing and listening to the world beyond while the world within calmed itself. It took a long time, but in the end his mind was clear and all he was focusing on were the sounds of the forge, the noises from beyond the doors of the smithy and, he realized, the breathing of somebody sitting beside him.
He opened his eyes. Eileen was sitting on another stool, looking at him, her expression unreadable. He smiled at her. “Hello.”
She blushed. Thomas, not expecting that reaction at all, waited. After a moment, she said, “When Father said you were out here, I came to bring you your supper.” She pointed to a bowl of stew, sitting near to the forge to keep it warm. “The way you looked, I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Really?” Thomas had never done that exercise in front of anyone before. “How did I look?”
“Beautiful.” Eileen blurted. At once she blushed even more and looked away. “I mean, peaceful.”
Thomas realized that he was blushing himself, and that it was spreading to his bare chest. He quickly pulled on his shirt. “Aye. It’s a relaxation exercise. Helps you clear your mind.”
Eileen managed to look at him. “Can you teach me?”
Thomas hesitated. “Can I do it later?”
“All right.” Eileen watched him as he put his shirt on. “What happened with your father?”
The bishop is using magic to control him, and now he’s disowned me,
Thomas thought.
He really needed to speak the words out loud, but who would believe him? Eileen might humour him, but she’d never really believe him. George would call him insane. Their parents would call in the nuns. He wished suddenly for his friends back at the Academy. They wouldn’t believe a word, either, but they’d listen and offer answers anyway. All he’d have to say was, ‘Just suppose…’ and they’d be off on a wild night of speculation and logic games. Here, though, that wasn’t going to happen. He needed
proof.
An idea came into Thomas’s mind. It wasn’t a particularly good idea, he realized, but it was all he had. “Could you get George and bring him out here?”
“Sure,” Eileen stood up and went to the door of the smithy. “Will you tell us what happened?”
“As much as I can, aye.”
“All right.” She headed for the house. Thomas picked up the hot stew bowl and set it on the anvil. He started to pull up the stool, realized his backside was still wet, and decided to eat standing with his back to the forge. He had enough to worry about without George making fun of him.
The stew was delicious, and Thomas had it polished off before Eileen managed to drag George away from the table and back out to the forge. Thomas had also put the flesh to the bones of his idea. It still wasn’t a very good idea, but at least it was something.