The Hand We're Dealt - Chapter 21

Willem Reinders had never considered himself a particularly lucky man.

He'd been born the third son of a small house of practitioners in the Netherlands, which already limited his options. The family trade was magic, after all, and as much as he loved studying the art... magic did not pay for a home, food for your family, nor did it satisfy the tax man when he came around.

Some people thought they could use magic to make money, but from the tales he knew – friends and family alike – it was almost always a losing gambit. Unless one had the very specific spells required for a given enterprise, a more standard job was almost always the easier option.

Moreover, even for the jobs that fit magicians, they were usually public affairs and... few people took well to seeing a cart loaded with a levitation spell. Or lamps lit with a flame spell. No, if the job was basic enough that a basic spell could do it, then it was usually more effective to do it by hand than by magic.

For instance, he'd once attempted to use a low-powered wind spell suitably tailored to the confines of his family's library to dust the shelves.

He'd attempted that once.

And never again.

Such spells required a rare level of precision in their mathematical construction and were useless for anything else after you built them. And tested them. And got them wrong a dozen times, resulting in throwing around priceless ancient grimoires using an uncontrolled gale.

He hadn't been able to sit for a week after that, and he'd deserved it.

“Stop ruminating and finish getting ready, Willem,” his wife called out, their second child on her hip. “You said the young master is going to be showing himself today.”

“I have his full confidence, Amelia,” he assured the woman with more certainty than he inwardly felt as he scrutinized his reflection in the polished steel mirror that had been given as one of the many welcoming presents for his new home.

A home which, in a scant few years, he would own outright.

Not the land, Henry Bell would retain those rights as the 'second owner,' as he'd called it. The exact details of the agreement were labyrinthine in nature, the man was truly a magister of some insight to come up with such a scheme, but his house would be his, and that is what mattered.

His, and his family's, for however long they wished to live on the island.

“Very well, then,” Willem took a deep breath as he ensured his clothing was free of wrinkles one last time. “I'm off. You'll be taking Avery and Lawrence to the market with you?”

His lovely wife scoffed. “There's little choice in the matter if I want to get the shopping done. Still, some of the older women of the village will watch Avery while I see to things.”

Willem nodded and bid his wife goodbye once more, setting off at a trot while the ground crunched beneath his boots. It was a new design, from what he understood, the brain-child of a Scottish engineer who the young master had contracted to design and create a limited network of gravel-filled roadbeds bounded by paving stones on each side.

The words of Henry Bell hung in his ears as he remembered the man smiling as he watched John McAdam direct the laying of the first roads.

“Macadam, he's calling it. I call it genius. A civilization is built on roads, don't you know Willem? Connecting people, doing commerce... you can't make that sort of thing happen on goat trails...”

Willem didn't really understand it, once all was said and done, but even given Henry Bell's age, the young man still paid his salary, every month on time, without fail. It had been a little over two years since that first bag of coins had been laid before him, a triple-sized one, and a boy he'd have called a child in any other context had simply grinned and called it a 'signing bonus.'

The green-haired girl who accompanied him had not liked her master being so liberal with his money, he knew that much from the look she'd given himself. Even if she'd never turned that frown on Mr. Bell, the gentle reprimand she'd uttered had only made the young man laugh.

“Don't worry, Emerald. I have faith in Reinder's abilities. Besides, he has a wife and a child coming along. He needs to set up his household. An unhappy woman at home will risk poor results in his lessons.”

His lessons.

Teaching. A dream come true in many respects, Willem thought as he walked along in the cool morning breeze. Even if it was the same ocean blowing in, the air tasted different than his childhood... but close enough to set him at ease.

“If this is a dream, I pray I never wake from it,” he chuckled, giving a nod and tip of his hat to a few of the Hunters he saw out and about.

Swinging swords, running drills like their more mundane militia counterparts, some loading paper rolls with gunpowder and shot then storing them carefully in leather satchels.

A few of those bags he'd personally enchanted.

Even if it wasn't his specialty, binding magic to keep something dry and prevent moisture from leaking in was easy enough work. A common thing added to the covers and spines of spell books for obvious reasons.

The men – and women, which still struck him as strange – had given him the evil eye over the work in the first few months, but once word had reached back after a fight with a stray devil in a rainstorm that had failed to foul their powder... well, that was all that was needed. Their distrust was not entirely gone, but he'd been welcomed to a local bar afterwards, and his wife had received a number of women-folk to help with their first child.

“They're practical people, Willem. Trust doesn't come easily for them and, when it does, it must be earned. Do your work, mind your business, don't question their ways, and you'll be a part of the community soon enough.”

Walking towards the school-house, he glimpsed a number of his students – many yawning and half-awake – trudging into the well-appointed building. At the door was a young woman with tied-back white hair, sitting in a chair with wheels upon it. Her skirt's awkward lay gave tell to the reason, even if the wooden leg was convincing enough at first glance.

“Ms. Sumi,” Willem nodded a greeting, parting with his hat and overcoat as he stepped inside. “All present and accounted for today?”

Kelly Sumi gave a small nod, the light catching the eastern yellowish-tint to her skin. “Little Peter's gotten over his cold, so all of my charges will be present today, Mr. Reinders. I've made sure one of the older boys tutored him in the lessons he missed. You'll have no trouble there. Just the usual rambunctiousness.”

Willem scoffed. “They'd best keep a civil tongue in their mouths today, Mr. Bell is set to arrive just before lunch.”

Kelly hummed and nodded, smiling. “Ah, yes... today is the day, isn't it? All ready for the inspection?”

“Perfectly,” Willem nodded, his fingers itching to help as he watched the woman wheel herself behind her desk at the front of the building's hallway. “Both the regular lectures and the magical instruction.”

“Well, you'll be pleased to note that my report will be relatively clean on the misbehavior side of things. Nothing like the fireball incident the last time Mr. Bell came around,” Kelly gave him an impish smirk. “A bit of mischief here and there, as children do, but not even a chair to replace in the last few months, let alone any injuries to recover from.”

Willem nodded, relieved at that.

Even if the young master of the island had seemed utterly convinced of his innocence before ever stepping foot back in the school house three months ago – as if he'd read the day's entry straight from Willem's personal journal! - it had still been an anxious three weeks waiting for the headman's axe to decide to fall or not.

Brian had been the one to copy the spell's formula down on the sly from a text an older girl had limited access to, the idiot boy.

His eyes lingered on that same young man, now a half a year older, as he walked by and seated himself. Most of the scars weren't visible, but Willem knew the skin along the boy's left arm and much of his left breast to still be smooth and hairless from his last medical check.

A small, admittedly petty, part of him resented the boy for requiring Willem's own presence at the inspection. A stupid orphan child grasping beyond the dragon's hoard of knowledge and luck he'd already been handed, taking up yet more of his time to ensure none of the magic lingered in his seared flesh.

A life saved twice-over by Henry Bell. Once in pulling the boy out of The Quarantine after his mother passed due to illness and another when he did not die from infection after his injury.

He does a poor job of thanking the young master for it.

Willem pushed that thought away.

As well as the thoughts regarding the handful of negro students clustered to one corner of the room. Not all of the blacks' children on the island, of course. Just five whose parents had wished them to attend his classes. Both mundane and magical. There was a school on 'their side' of town catering to the rest, though. A larger affair with a negro headmaster Henry Bell had contracted from New York and a similar group of educators.

Honesty forced Willem to admit he did not think they would benefit from the classes to the degree Henry Bell hoped they would, but... the young master was of Egyptian descent, and the Arabs did things differently.

If nothing else, his quarter-century on this Earth had taught him to argue as little as possible with the wealthy.

And Henry Bell was very wealthy.

“Be seated,” Willem called out, his voice taking on the specific basso timbre of an educator speaking before a crowd of students. “And be silent. I'll have no horseplay today of all days. You will be on your absolute best behavior for Mr. Bell's visit or it will be my pleasure to dis-enroll you before you leave the building for the day.”

As expected, the group sat straighter, their posture snapping into place from their normal lax slouches.

“We will begin with a review of your numbers and letters, then move on to a new mathematics lesson. After which, we will cover another section of your history text. You will be required to read aloud today, so I would ask that you steel yourselves appropriately.”

And, with that, the day began in truth.

…

“I'm pleased with their progress,” the young master of Staten Island smiled and nodded over their shared lunch, catered by a restaurant down the street from the school.

Willehm didn't allow his relief to show. “There are some areas for improvement, but – yes – even the blacks are performing adequately at the moment.”

“I'm in talks with another set of magicians to possibly expand the school,” the young man continued, and Willem felt his spine straighten. “Young men, like yourselves, with no prospects to inherit. A Sicilian and a Romanian. At least, those are the most certain, though they have yet to make any firm commitment.”

“I see, that is... good news,” Willem admitted, busying himself with dabbing a napkin at his mouth.

It really was.

In magical societies, seniority almost always begat power, and power begat leadership. Or, at least, the presumption thereof.

Unwillingly, Willem felt his mystical senses slide over Henry Bell again...

...and felt nothing.

At the beginning of their association, when Henry Bell had become – for the first time – more than simply a name on envelopes and payment transfers and a promised ownership of a home and an employment contract... when Henry Bell had become a person...

“You're not a magician, are you?”

“Hah, no... I am not. I fancy myself a sorcerer, in actuality.”

It had been a bit uncouth to simply ask, but he'd been... startled, perhaps? At the very least surprised by the fact that the individual who was contracting him to teach magic – among other subjects – did not appear to have any magic himself.

But such things did happen, he understood.

The only child of a storied line coming out, for lack of a better term, as a dud – an heir without magic – but retaining the wealth of grimoires and traditions that had built up over centuries... it was a sad thing, certainly, but he could see the logic in such a person wanting to see magic as a whole prosper. Funding a school with inherited wealth was hardly the worst thing a child could do when disinherited of his family's true legacy by fate.

And, bluntly, it wasn't his business.

Especially when his pay came in on time, his home was build sturdy and warm, and he was left more than enough access to funds and materials to continue his own research and experimentations.

So he put the matter aside.

Only for it to become a persistent itch in the back of his mind.

Because as convenient as it was, that story didn't quite make sense as time passed.

Magic items appeared frequently enough that they could be an inheritance, but they seemed new. Polished and fresh in a way that didn't match up to their age if an older relative had created them before passing.

So perhaps he purchased them instead.

But then there was his frequent travel between where his 'master' stayed – the young man was careful to never let that slip, or the name of the older man – by way of some magic apparatus. And that required magic, certainly. Which Willem, for the life of him, could not envision an experienced master practitioner taking the time and energy out of his own studies to facilitate.

Yes, sufficient funds and material resources could facilitate a great many things, there was no doubt of that.

But there were limits.

An elder's pride was one of those.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Henry Bell could have bribed a down-on-his-luck magician who'd been run out of Europe for instruction. A sick and weak old man who required a younger soul to care for him. If the wages were paid with knowledge that a magic-less child could never use, then so be it. But then... if the man were weak, infirmed, or otherwise without resources... could he truly afford the magical power that was required to transport someone across a vast distance?

One in ten magicians had the power and mind for such a thing, that was true.

But Willem knew there was a scope and scale to these things, too.

One in ten magicians would have the ability to cast a spell to move them across some distance without crossing the intervening space, if they knew the spell. But provided they were thrice-lucky in having access to the spell and being armed with sufficient power and mathematical skill to work the necessary formula on the fly...

His older brother could cross a distance of fifty meters.

Fifty. Meters.

A bit more since they had last spoken when he'd come to America, perhaps. But no more than an additional meter or two at the greatest extent of his growth.

So one in ten of one in ten – one in one-hundred – could actually make the spell worth using in anything but close-quarters combat.

A distance of perhaps kilometers?

Those magicians unfathomably lucky to possess a sacred gear – one in some thousands, maybe – were exempt from Willem's calculations. They were aberrations, possessing the deep wells of magical energy which were only otherwise seen in ancient century-old masters of the craft. But even then, there were limits in all things on God's Earth.

But even if the enigma that was his employer had sent him totally wrong-headed in his suppositions...

Say, for instance, that there is an artifact which occludes the young master's magical power from my senses. Then say that he has a sacred gear which grants him enormous reserves of that same power. And finally that he is a once-in-a-generation prodigy who learns faster and more deeply than any save Merlin or Solomon themselves!

Take for granted all of that as truth.

All of it.

And it would not be enough given what he knew.

A question he had pressed simply out of a long-held need for caution and secondary plans once the first failed. Should the woman Emerald, his liaison to his employer, to take ill...

“May I inquire as to where the young master retreats, so often? If you should ever be indisposed and I need to send him urgent word on some matter?”

Emerald turned a piercing red gaze upon him, displeasure creasing the young girl's face as she cleaned her weapons, fresh from the dueling arena in the Hunters' quarters. For a moment, he thought she would rebuke him and, negro female though she might be, she was surely some manner of mistress to his employer. Willem was learned enough in the ways of the world to know that a close-held woman's word might supplant a wiser man's in some situations.

But she yielded, reason weighing against emotion in her gaze.

“In such an instance, see Tyler Drake, the Hunter's Guild's Guildmaster. He will know how to send a message to Master Henry. Even with the distance being over a week's travel, he will appear shortly should the matter be judged urgent enough.”

He didn't remark upon the slip.

Willem himself only noticed it hours later, staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep to come. Unbidden, his mind flexed and spat out the elementary equations required to solve for an answer he had been avoiding.

A week's travel.

Assuming fast-travel by ridden horse instead of by carriage, which would be implied by the urgency of his question, would put the distance that Henry Bell covered via magical device at over a hundred kilometers. Well over.

The confluence of such math meant he must have erred somewhere in his observations.

So he had written his father a very, very carefully-worded letter asking for a transcription of any book the family might have – or the parts of such a tome – which involved the magic of apportment or transfer of a living person through space. Willem had framed it as a puzzle he'd come across in a tangent from his own research and, with a healthy financial contribution, received an answer some months later.

Despite the fact that Henry Bell's affairs were still none of his business.

At that point in his investigations – even if they were only a collection of observations and suppositions – a damnable curiosity had taken hold of him. He would either find some sort of answer to satisfy himself or he would resort to a direct questioning of the young master, consequences be upon his head regardless.

In the end, there hadn't been much.

Their family did have the spell in question, as evidence by his elder brother's relative skill at it, so a copy of it was included. The fact that it matched the one he'd put into his own papers some years prior told him that, at the very least, his math was based on good foundations. Though that merely intensified his ultimate need for answers.

The other set of pages he'd received copies of, in his sister's neat penmanship, was a series of observations from his grandfather's grandfather's journals. An old and powerful monster of a man who'd been under contract by the Medici to produce certain alchemical reagents for the papacy's devil-hunters and exorcists.

He had also been the Reinder's last practicing sorcerer.

“You're not a magician, are you?”

“Hah, no... I am not. I fancy myself a sorcerer, in actuality.”

It was a claim he'd disregarded as a joke, for the most part. Sorcerers were... 'rare as hen's teeth,' as the American saying went. They still existed in theory, but since the destruction of the Kolleezje fan Tsjoenderij before the birth of his own father, he couldn't remember a serious mention being made of one.

...and yet.

...and yet, there was the solution to his quandary.

“-and I have been blessed to witness a powerful fellow from the East visiting today. With none of the explosion of power and magic which magicians use to instantaneously translate themselves from place to place, it is possible for a master sorcerer to rely upon nought but a known destination point and the flow of a ley line.

...

“Such things being catastrophically dangerous, though. The scale of the magics involved is nothing to be trifled with and would tear apart the unwary or unprepared who made the attempt. It is a mark of the highest form of mastery of a particular bent of a sorcerer's art to be able to throw oneself a great distance across the span of the Earth.

...

“As the channeling of ley lines is not my area of expertise, I can only further record that it is a skill refined by those who have learned to tap and draw power from the lines themselves. Such individuals, from what few words I could glean from our visitor, are gifted by Our Lord with many esoteric skills the further along which they attune themselves to the essence of power within the Earth.”

What those skills were, the remainder of the passage did not say.

And he dared not ask for the full papers to be translated lest he give away more than he intended in the asking. Henry Bell, no matter what his nature or power, was his employer and the holder of a contract for an indefinite term that allowed him to house his family and feed his children.

There were limits he would go to in search of answers.

But... he now had the most vital clue.

Because sitting there, chatting over innocent topics such as the future of a handful of orphan children studying magic, he now understood what his senses were telling him.

Henry Bell still felt like 'nothing' before him.

But it was not the nothing of an expansive plain stretching out to the horizon where nothing of note existed like the eastern steppes of the Russian Empire or the great western frontier of America now being reported. No, it was not 'nothing,' in truth.

It was standing upon a great chasm and mistaking that emptiness for 'nothing' when it was, in fact, filled with a vast sea of power perfectly at rest.

It reminded Willem of days spent in his youth sitting upon the banks of the English Channel on those rare days where the tumultuous waters laid flat as glass and the skies were perfectly clear. The reflection of the sky upon the water and the water upon the sky fooled the eye without a point of reference and led one to believe that there was nothing beyond the shore's lapping waters.

If one were out upon the ocean on one of those days, beyond the shoreline and all landmarks, simply staring into the 'nothingness,' then that would be the same feeling he recognized sitting this close to Henry Bell, Willem supposed.

If a sorcerer attuned themselves perfectly to a leyline, he guessed, then the energy of their own magic would become colored by that same power. And so Henry Bell was not absent of magic, as it turned out. No, instead he was merely the same color as his surroundings, so infused with the energy of the island that he was indistinguishable from it. He still did not know how powerful the young master was...

...but he was certain beyond words that the young man was a master, now.

His curiosity was sated.

...

Perhaps Emerald was correct, in that I trusted too easily.

Practitioners, if Willem Reinders was any example of the lot, were a nearly terminally-curious lot. But, at the same time, the magician a few years my senior had stopped short of true betrayal. That was why I'd sought out a magician with a habit of journaling his daily experiences, after all.

When he'd made the choice to keep his papers private after his investigations into my abilities, I'd done him the same courtesy and told Emerald to stand down as well.

“-so I'll be leaning on you as the senior-most educator on this little campus I'm building as we expand to offering classes catering to different subject matter and age groups,” I explained, smiling at Willem Reinders pleasantly as I finished off a glass of cider to go with my meal. “What regrettable incidents have occurred under your watch have not been your fault, yet you've still dealt with them as your responsibility.”

The man's chest puffed up slightly at my praise.

“I value that in my men under my employ,” I continued. “Quiet competence and the patience to earn a place in the community and the respect of their peers. Not to mention a certain ability to keep one's mouth shut regarding things that are not their business.”

If his face paled a bit and our mutual laughter was a bit awkward on his end, well... it was good he received the message.

“To that end, you'll be receiving a raise once the other magicians arrive to begin teaching. Your duties will be expanded to include a bit of supervisory authority and they'll need training besides,” I waved the matter away. “So it's only common sense to reward you for such tasks outside of what you were originally employed for.”

I paused, pointedly. “At least... if you're amenable to such an arrangement?”

Willem nearly bounced from his seat as he nodded in agreement. “Of course, of course! Why, I already have a few ideas about how we could make the expansion a bit easier-”

I nodded and listened. It was slower, staffing out the necessary positions in this manner than simply hiring the best that was available, but I had resolved to take the long view in such things. The talisman at my hip containing a blood red shard of power was enough insurance at the moment to make me think of resting in the shade of trees that I was just now planting.

Really, I was glad that I didn’t have to wipe the man’s mind or, worse yet, kill him.

~~~

At any rate, though, this chapter is a little later than I wanted it. There was a local event in my area that I ended up attending a little last-minute, so that ate a bit of my time over the past two days. Both in actually attending and making preparations for it.

Still, I have rewarded your patience by making this chapter a bit longer than normal. Not super-crazy length or whatever, but an extra thousand words or so.

Here is Henry Bell from the eyes of someone 'normal' in the magical community.

He's scary, yes... but it takes some time for people to understand that given his training and knowledge is so out of pace with everyone else. Ah... but when they do...

Heh. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys the chapter and has a great weekend. Thank you again for your patience and support.