“I know that. But you’re the only one of us who’s ever been able to see magic at all.”
“Except Álvaro.”
“Except Álvaro,” she allowed. But from the silence that stretched out in the wake of those words, he got the sense that for all Priya trusted Noam to come to their meetings, she didn’t trust him much further than that.
Dara gripped the seat of his chair, splintering wood scraping his palms.
A part of him wanted to tell her. Priya was ... quiet, she was discreet, she could keep a secret.
Only how much of this was Dara’s secret to tell?
“I’m worried about him,” Dara said, letting go of the chair and clasping his hands together in his lap instead. “Álvaro.”
Priya leaned back against the edge of Dara’s bed, gaze lifting from the origami bird to meet his. Dara had gotten good at reading expressions, living with Lehrer. Hers was guarded. She had a hypothesis as towhyDara was so worried, but she didn’t want to be the first to say it aloud.
That made two of them.
“You know I grew up with him,” Dara said, tugging his sweater sleeve down over his knuckles to start picking at a loose thread; when he tugged it taut, the weave bunched up, torqued around his wrist. Not for the first time, he was grateful Lehrer was notorious enough to be referenced by pronoun alone. “Álvaro doesn’t understand what he’s capable of.”
“And what is he capable of?”
Dara gripped the thread tighter until it cut into his skin. He should have known Priya would ask. She was blunt enough it was practically a character flaw.
“Genocide,” he said. “Among other things.”
Priya’s bird wobbled on her knee and tipped off, dropping to the floor. She retrieved it, straightened a bent wing with thumb and forefinger, and returned it to its perch. “I’m sure Álvaro is well aware.”
“He thinks he is.” Dara’s mouth twisted, a sour taste on his tongue. “But he doesn’t understand how personal Lehrer can make pain ... of course, maybe he wouldn’t care. God forbid Noam plays any role besides the hero.”
“Has a complex, does he?”
“Just a bit.” Dara made himself abandon his sweater sleeve, bracing both hands flat against his thighs instead. “Well. It doesn’t matter. He’ll survive, or he’ll realize he can’t, and we extract him.”
“Right,” Priya said. There was a gentleness to her voice now that hadn’t been there before. She even smiled at him, the expression small and almost sympathetic.
But it wasn’t pity, at least. Dara couldn’t stand pity.
“Okay. Magic.” He beat the heels of his hands against his knees once, punctuating the change in subject. “Surprise, surprise: just like everything else, understanding how magicworksmakes you better able to see it and manipulate it—to create wards, that kind of thing.”
Priya shifted. “So magic is its own thing, then. Independent of the virus.”
“No. Well—yes. It’s both. People spend so much time talking about the scientific aspects of magic that it’s easy to forget sometimes that it stillismagic. It’s still a little bit ... ineffable. That’s why in the quarantined zone we can see things like talking trees and three-headed rabbits and glow-in-the-dark rocks. Trees and rabbits and rocks can’t use magic the way witchings do, intentionally, but they can still be affected by it. When magic isn’t directed by a witching’s knowledge and intention, it’s wild. Unpredictable.”
“Like in Narnia.”
“Not really. But close enough. Think about—okay. Children. Young children who survive the virus and develop their first ability. Yours was pyromancy. Mine was telepathy.” Dara arched a brow. “Of course, I was four years old—it wasn’t like I was so well versed in neural firing patterns that I could decode them on instinct and develop telepathic ability that way. I was so young I’d only just started storing long-term memory. Tabula rasa: a blank slate. And yet I could read minds. Why?”
Priya opened her mouth, probably preparing to say something packaged and rote—natural affinityorgenetics—but then she clamped her lips shut. “I don’t know.”
“No one does,” Dara said. “After all, you can’t test it empirically. Just correlations. And if I’m an insightful adult—or like Lehrer, a manipulative one—who’s to say if that’s because I was born that way, or my abilitiesmademe that way? There have been some studies. We know probability of surviving the virus runs in families, although it’s not clear if that’s genetic or driven by class differences since wealthy families can afford better medical care. Our best theory right now is random chance. It’s arbitrary. A child is infected with magic, and however they firstusethat magic is what they get used to. It becomes a reflex. If they’re older, maybe they use magic to do something they’re familiar with, like Álvaro and his technopathy. But presenting powers can be anything.”
“So you’re telling me that magic is magic.”
Dara’s lips quirked up. “Essentially, yes.”
Priya flicked the bird off her knee; the construction flew about four inches before nosediving toward the floor. “All right, what else?”
“Every time someone uses magic, it releases energy. Kind of like how when you move your arm, that’s kinetic energy. Do you follow?”
