CHAPTERTHREE
The car arrived on schedule: a sleek black vehicle with tinted windows and cushioned seats. Durham sped past, a blur of ancient brick buildings and glittering neon nightclubs paving the way to the government district. They passed the old stadium, lit up for some event or another. Here the streets were peppered with green-uniformed Ministry of Defense soldiers. Not too many, not enough to frighten, but enough for Noam to get the message:don’t try any shit.
Noam tugged at the sleeves of his new sweater to pull them down over his wrists, little linty flecks detaching to float down onto his thighs, and avoided his chaperone’s gaze. They weren’t far from Noam’s neighborhood—although that was probably a firebombed shell by now. Best way to stop a virus spreading, after all, was to burn everything infected to the ground.
In that neighborhood, people lived two families to a home and boiled swamp water for drinking. He knew every person who lived in the bookstore, from old Mrs. Brown to the family downstairs with six kids who never slept. There was mold damage on the ceilings and a rat nest that came back no matter how many poison traps Noam set out.
The government complex was nothing like that.
It used to be an old tobacco warehouse, then was repurposed, and repurposed again, renovated year after year before magic made the world fall into ruin. During the catastrophe it had been a barracks. Then it became a courthouse. Now it belonged to Chancellor Sacha. The brick walls smelled like history, remortared so many times that they were more mortar than brick. The people here dressed so well they had a new set of clothes every day of the week—and the more important they were, the better they dressed, all the way up to the ministers, with their crisp suit jackets and papercut collars.
These were the people Noam’s father had spent half his life trying to undermine.
Now Noam was one of them.
Level IV, they’d told him in the hospital, was the highest rank of the witching training program, practically a factory for generals and senators and future chancellors. They said it was modeled off the same training Adalwolf Lehrer gave his militia before they overthrew the US government in 2018. They said this was the seat of all real power in Carolinia, that Noam’s blood test made him the perfect Level IV candidate.
Noam reckoned he’d stay the perfect candidate right up until they remembered he was Atlantian. Then it’d be all,thanks for your timeandconflict of interest.
“Wait here,” Noam’s chaperone said and disappeared through a heavy wooden door. Noam was alone.
It was a cool night, autumn perched on the blade of winter, quiet even in the center of the city.Someone’s magic, Noam thought—and shivered.
He sat on a bench and braced his hands against the seat, leaning his head back. In that strange silence, the seconds stretched out like dark molasses. Noam imagined he could feel radio waves arcing over the city—a cobweb trawled by government spiders and their all-seeing eyes. He thought about his father, about that same sky curving over his now-dead neighborhood, and shut his eyes.
He ought to feel more than this. He hadn’t cried over losing his father since feverwake three days ago, and now it felt wrong to be upset, as if he had the chance to grieve and missed it.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” a voice said from behind Noam’s left shoulder. His eyes snapped open.
Him. It was him. The doctor from the hospital.
Only he wasn’t a doctor at all.
“You,” Noam forced out, and Minister Lehrer’s mouth twitched into a small smile.
“Me. Enchanted to make your acquaintance properly, Mr. Álvaro.”
How the hell hadn’t Noam recognized him before? His grandmother’d had a photo of Calix Lehrer hangingin her house.
This time, Lehrer was unmistakable. In his military uniform, tawny hair combed back, he could’ve been freshly clipped from a newspaper photograph.
The air caught in Noam’s throat, oxygen suddenly something he could choke on. Reading about Lehrer, discussing him in history class and over the dinner table, wasn’t quite the same as seeing him in person. The uniform made him seem even taller.
Which, fuck, Noam was still sitting in the presence of thedefense minister. He started to get up, but Lehrer touched his shoulder and gently pressed him down onto the bench again.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Next time perhaps we can stand on ceremony, but today, I think, exceptions can be made.”
Lehrer stepped forward and sat on the bench beside Noam, both feet flat on the ground, his shoes so shiny they reflected the lamps overhead. The wind caught his hair and blew strands of it loosely across his brow, making him seem less formal, though he still didn’t seem human. He looked the same as he did in that photograph Noam remembered, like he hadn’t aged a day.
Impossible to believe he was over 120 years old.
Noam was too aware of his own breath, exhaling as quietly as he could.
Lehrer was... well.Legendarycame immediately to mind. At sixteen, he’d survived the catastrophe. At nineteen, he overthrew a nation. At twenty, he was crowned king.
Now, even though he occupied one of the most powerful positions in the world, Minister Lehrer could walk into the courtyard of the government complex utterly alone, without bodyguards, and not spare a thought for safety. He was untouchable, more myth than man. To look at Lehrer was to see a man who was everything Chancellor Sacha was not: Revolutionary. Principled.
Witching.
