After the attack in Twelvelms’ atrium, Cyan begins to forge an uneasy truce with Reilly Rowse through her keen interest in keeping him informed.

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Descriptions of violence
• Descriptions of blood
• Descriptions of animal injury, death and suffering
• Mentions of throwing up
• Implication of murder
• Descriptions of arson

Transcript

I still can’t sleep. There are things I should be doing. Useful things. But I can’t stop looking at you, there in your little crib. I keep wondering how long it will be until… 

It doesn’t matter. I’m certain Abadgnale keeps showing up because he thinks I’m not fit to care for you, and perhaps I’m not. Perhaps I’m not. 

[INTRO MUSIC]

You like my coat. It is very soft, I suppose. Your little fists, grabbing the edges of the sleeves as you sleep, it tickles me. 

You slept on it once when you very little. I wonder if you remember. I sang you my song, the song of my name. It’s the only proper selkie song I know. Well. That and the song my mother sang at night. But that was a song about how to unlock the door of my room, how to sneak through the house, how to open her basement, where I would find our coat locked in a trunk. It’s… it’s a pretty song but I can’t sing it. I can get a few sounds in, but my throat gets all stuck, after that. 

You don’t need to know about this, it’s not important. Or. Maybe it is important, but. It’s the sort of thing I should like to speak to you about when you’re older. I don’t want to scare you. 

Pointless endeavour, really. There are many frightening things I’ve said already. I’ve admitted to murder. I’ve talked about Felix and I nearly dying ourselves. Maybe Abagnale’s right and the whole story should be kept away until you’re old enough to understand it

I don’t know. Stewing in this isn’t helping. Where was I? 

I was telling you about the break in on Samhain, wasn’t I? You slept through most of it. Probably a good thing. Though I’m not sure how strong your grasp of English is. You only seem to know a few words. Or at least, they’re the only ones you say out loud to me. Maybe you can understand more of what you hear than what you can manage to say back to me, like with me and Welsh, and French. I don’t know. I don’t know much about babies. I’m trying though. For you. 

Well. Anyway. The dust in the atrium settled, and Felix and I could see a man lying there on the ground. He’d landed awkwardly, head first, so his neck was bent almost entirely under his chest, hiding his face. one leg stuck out side wards, the other curled under him. A pale hand lay perfectly motionless, the only skin we could see. 

The raven was still going berserk on the floor nearby. That’s what happens to familiars when their mages die. Abagnale explained it to me later. To form a bond with a familiar, a special ritual is performed, where abrasions are made on the soul of both the mage and the animal they have chosen. These abrasions are pressed together, and over several agonising days, healed. When it’s done, the familiar and the mage are bonded forever. 

It’s painful for them to be apart once the bond has been forged, but with practice, this can be done. Familiars can be excellent messengers when they’ve been trained to withstand the agony of being apart from their mages. It times of war, familiars made excellent scouts, because to the untrained eye, they could be any animal at all. 

For the mage, a familiar offers an extension of the magical power they possess. They can draw not just on their own strength, but that of their familiar’s, too. The benefits to the familiar are more nuanced. Their life is extended far beyond what would be expected of another member of its species. They become cleverer, and often larger. A mage can communicate with its familiar without speaking, understands their needs implicitly.

 Familiars almost always live until their mages passing, unless they’re deliberately killed. For either the mage or the familiar, the death of their counterpart is agonising. They experience it almost as though it were their own death. It’s been known to drive mages mad when their familiar’s are killed. But for the familiars, madness is a guarantee. With no language to soothe their grief of make sense of their experience, they become inconsolable. They die, either spontaneously, or by violently injuring themselves until their body finally relents. 

This was what was happening to the raven in the corner of the atrium. Its cries were piercing, agonising. My eyes were watering. Felix had his hands over his ears, a thin line of blood connecting his nose to his mouth.

‘Master Scarlett,’ said Abagnale. I don’t remember how he got down from the fifth floor, but it seemed to happen instantaneously. There was Taceo, too, breathing hard. There was blood around her mouth, staining her fur the colour of rust, matching the blood on her side. The gash Felix had been trying to close had healed; Abagnale must have done it, but I couldn’t remember. 

Abagnale said Felix’s name again. Felix threw up on the ground at his feet. 

‘It’s alright,’ said Abagnale. He rubbed Felix’ arm, but Felix shrank away from him, wrapping his own arms around his chest, breathing hard. 

‘Master Goodman?’ Abagnale said to me. 

‘Yes?’ 

‘Kindly escort Master Scarlett back to House Derwen. Taceo, go with them.’ 

I nodded. ‘Felix. Come on.’ 

Outside the main building, the other scholars had come out of their hiding places. As we walked past them, Taceo panting at our side, they called out to us. What happened, they asked. What did we see. Felix and I said nothing. 

We walked all the way back to House Derwen in silence. It was only when we got to Felix’ door that he said anything at all: ‘It was a Spicer.’

‘A what?’ 

Felix sighed. He shook his head. 

Quinn and Reilly burst out of Quinn’s bedroom. ‘What’s going on?!’ Reilly demanded. 

‘You,’ Quinn hissed. 

‘It wasn’t him,’ said Felix. He sounded exhausted. ‘It was a Spicer.’ 

Reilly scoffed. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ 

‘What’s a Spicer?’ I asked. 

Quinn and Reilly exchanged a glance. Before either of them could say anything, Felix threw up again. 

‘Oh Felix,’ Quinn sighed. She crouched next to him, pushed open his bedroom door. ‘Come on, let’s get you to bed.’ 

‘I’m not drunk,’ Felix groaned, forcing himself upright again. Taceo stepped forward, bumped her head against Felix’s hand. He hesitated, then sunk his fingers into her fur. He let out a shuddering breath. ‘I don’t know what was going on. We were—‘ he glanced at me again. ‘We were hiding for the Game, and then we heard all these banging sounds. We went to see what was happening. The entire atrium was destroyed and there was a man. A Spicer. I think he’s dead.’

Reilly gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘You— you didn’t…?’ 

‘No, I didn’t kill him, I just…’ Felix glanced at me again. ‘The man, he had a familiar, a raven. It was going to attack someone, I stopped it, used too much force. Cyan, he— he saved my life.’ 

Had I, I thought? 

Quinn looped her arm through Felix’s. ‘You should lie down. You’re going to make it worse.’ 

Reilly was looking at me. ‘What did you see?’ 

‘I— I don’t know. They were fighting, this guy and Abagnale, and his familiar, and Professor Sorrel and—’ 

‘Oh no, is Nèamh alright?!’

‘Nèamh?’ I repeated. 

‘Sorrel’s familiar! Is she okay?!’ 

‘Oh, I think so? She was fighting with the raven, but after Felix— then the man.’ 

Quinn glowered at me as she pulled Felix into his room. Glancing in, it looked extremely untidy. The curtains were drawn even though it was still light outside. 

‘Who would attack Twelvelms in broad daylight?’ Reilly whispered. 

‘A Spicer,’ Felix growled, slumping onto his unmade bed. Taceo hopped up beside him on the mattress. I was surprised at his ease in her company. He leaned against her side, breathing hard. 

‘It’s not a Spicer, Felix, there are no Spicers,’ said Quinn. 

‘I know what I saw,’ said Felix. His fingers knotted into Taceo’s fur. She licked his chin. He didn’t seem to mind the blood. 

‘I know what you think you saw, but—’ 

‘Fuck off, Brainy, now’s not the bloody time,’ Felix hissed. 

Quinn covered her face with her hands. ‘We’ll talk about this later. Everyone out.’ 

Reilly shuffled back out of Felix’s room. Quinn followed, pulling the door shut behind herself. She glowered at me. ‘You. Speak.’ 

I blinked at her. ‘Everything he saw was the same as what I saw.’ 

‘So you think it’s a Spicer too?’ Quinn demanded, raising an eyebrow. 

‘I don’t know what that is,’ I said. 

‘The Spicers are a group of mages,’ said Reilly, quietly. ‘Or, they used to be, anyway.’ 

’Spicers aren’t their proper name,’ said Quinn. ‘That’s just what parents call them when they tell their magelings stories about them to scare them into doing their chores.’ 

‘My father told me if I didn’t weed the garden they’d steal me from my bed,’ said Reilly, with a little smile. 

‘Mine too,’ said Quinn. ‘But that doesn’t matter. The real people who the stories are supposedly based on, they were this group of mages, the Cult of Respice Finem. But they’ve not existed for a hundred years.’ 

‘At least,’ said Reilly. ‘And lots of records say it’s probably even been longer than that. Most of them were killed at the fall of Avalon.’ 

‘Avalon?’ 

‘Wow, you really are clueless,’ said Quinn. She sounded almost impressed. 

‘When the Alliance was formed hundreds and hundreds of years ago, there were fourteen purlieus made to keep the mages safe from unmages. One for each coven, and two independent ones. Twelvelms was for learning and research, neutral territory for knowledge to be shared. The other was Avalon. That’s where the High Table of the Seven-Once-Twelve used to be, when it was actually the whole twelve. I mean, by the time it fell, there were only eight covens left of that original number, but—‘ 

‘Reilly,’ Quinn cut in. ‘You don’t need the whole lecture, Cyan. The point is Respice Finem hasn’t been a thing for a long time.’ 

‘So why did Felix say the man was a Spicer?’ 

There was a long moment of quiet. 

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. 

Quinn shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘No, I… You were just there. I… I don’t know.’ 

‘Why were you there? Why were you with Felix?’ asked Reilly. 

I glanced at his closed bedroom door. ‘We hid in the same spot. Stupid really,’ I said. I hoped he could hear me. I don’t know why I hoped that.

‘But you saved him?’ asked Reilly. 

I nodded, tentatively. 

Quinn shook her head again. ‘If the atrium’s really destroyed, they’ll have to explain what really happened, so I suppose there’s no point in doing this now. You should rest, too. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. And is that blood, on the back of your shirt?’ 

I’d almost forgotten the gash on the back of my head from where Felix had shoved me into the tunnels’ wall. 

‘Yeah, sorry.’ 

Quinn scowled at me. ‘What are you apologising for?’ 

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I retreated to my room. As I undressed and stepped into the little shower in my en suite, I realised my hands were shaking badly. My skin was itchy, like I needed to soak in the bath. A coil of dread wound tight in my stomach; what happened today would likely mean I wouldn’t able to soak, not until tomorrow at least. The water in the shower was a relief, but without my coat, it didn’t do much to soothe my skin. 

As I pulled myself into a clean pair of trousers, there was a knock at my door. I opened it. I don’t know why, but I’d been expecting Felix. Instead, Reilly stood staring at her own shoes. 

‘Hi,’ she said. 

‘Hello?’ I answered. 

‘I thought you might like to come to the library with me,’ she said. ‘Quinn’s in with Felix. She sent Taceo back.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ I put on my shoes and followed Reilly outside. 

‘Felix stayed with Abagnale for a bit when he was a kid,’ said Reilly. She chewed her lip. ‘I— I probably shouldn’t tell you this. I probably shouldn’t be speaking to you at all.’ 

‘Right,’ I said. 

’But you don’t even know what a Spicer is. How the hell could you have ben involved with what happened to Edward March?’ 

‘What did happen with Edward March?’ 

‘That’s the thing,’ said Reilly. ‘Nobody knows. He disappeared the day before the autumn equinox. Who does that? Runs off the night before they’re supposed to become a full mage?’ 

I thought about the ceremony, watching my blood soak into the dirt. The fear and the horror. But it probably didn’t feel like that if you grew up knowing what to expect. If you’d been waiting for that day your whole life. 

‘The thing is,’ Reilly went on. ‘I know Edward; he came up to Castle Derwen to study with me for the Twelvelms Entrance exams, he really wanted to be be here. He’d have been the first one in his family to manage it. He was so excited.’ Reilly sighed. I worried for a moment that she was going to cry, but she just shook her head. ‘But he was just. Gone. Him and his mother, too. It doesn’t make any sense.’ 

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. 

Reilly shook her head. ‘It’s frightening. Where would they go? Nobody has heard from them or seen them. Apparently they’ve even had unmage police people looking for them, had their photos on the unmage news. Nobody knows anything. It’s terrifying. It’s no wonder Quinn’s on edge. And Abagnale… She trusts him, he took care of Felix, but…’ 

‘But?’ 

Reilly shook her head again. ‘It’s complicated. Her grandmother, she’s— she’s never liked Abagnale. When he put himself forward to become Chancellor of Twelvelms, she tried to stop him.’ 

‘Why?’ I asked. 

‘Because he’s— well. When he was young, he was really experimental in his bionomy. Taceo, he made her his familiar by himself. it’s next to impossible to bond to a familiar without help, and for years everyone was very suspicious about it, especially because he was writing these papers where he was suggesting that the only reason there wasn’t an exhaurine for animals as well as plants was because we’d been misinterpreting this section of scripture and— oh it’s all really complicated, but he’s got a reputation for being reckless. For pushing boundaries. Grandma Howell, she’s never liked that. She’s always warned Quinn about Abagnale, told her to play her cards close to her chest with him, not to trust him. So when Edward and Mary disappeared, she— she told Quinn to be extra cautious with him. And then when we arrive, he thrusts you onto Quinn, and it’s… well. I can see why she’s having a hard time.’ 

‘It sounds like Quinn has a lot on her plate.’ 

Reilly laughed. ‘She always does. A lot of the covens, they elect the mages that go forward to represent them at the High Table of the Alliance. I love Derwen so much, I wouldn’t re-kin for the world, but I do think it’s a bit backward that our seat at the table is hereditary.

‘She’ll be good at it, when it’s her time to take the seat, but. I don’t know! It’s a lot, isn’t it? And she’s actually younger than both me AND Felix, you know? Her birthday’s only in August, less than a month before the autumn equinox. It’s mad she’s our warden.’ 

‘Abagnale said something about being a ward too.’ 

‘Abagnale didn’t even explain that?!’ Asked Reilly, horrified. 

‘I mean, he told me that’s what Quinn was. But he didn’t exactly go into detail.’ 

‘Well, it’s— when there are magelings who don’t have parents who can look after them properly, the leader of the coven will assign them a warden, and it’s tradition for magelings who are… uh. I don’t want to say significant because I’m not, really. I’m just clever. But that’s not the point. Anyway. Certain kinds of people, ones who are good at stuff, like me, or whose circumstances mean they’re… Well. If they’re like Felix. It’s tradition for the coven leader to place them in their own family. Coven leaders themselves can’t really be wardens because they have to spend so much time doing all the important Alliance stuff, governing magedom and all that jazz. So usually it falls to their heir. And Quinn’s grandma’s heir is Quinn. Who just so happens to be the same age – a bit younger – than Felix and I.’

‘So how long have you and Felix lived with Quinn?’ 

‘Um. I came when I was thirteen, that’s the age where— do you know about this?’ 

‘Probably not,’ I admitted. 

‘Well, if you’re a mage, when you turn thirteen you’re considered to be like, responsible for your own actions? You’re not a full mage yet and you can’t properly pledge yourself to your coven until the autumn equinox of the year you’re eighteen, but once you’re thirteen, you’re a parmage, halfway to being a full mage. You’re basically responsible for the consequences of your own actions. And my parents had noticed I was very clever and getting pretty good at magic, so they wanted to make sure that I was going to be in the best position I could be to get into Twelvelms. So they sent me to live with the Howells. And here I am, so I suppose they were right.’ 

‘They sent you away?’ I asked. 

‘I see them a lot, still,’ said Reilly, her voice oddly distant. ‘My father’s a mage, but my mother, she’s an unmage, so. They live in this little town in Ireland, sort of near to one of the purlieus that Fearna has over there, actually, but Dad’s Derwen. Mum needs to be near to her family. She’s got loads of nieces and nephews, and her mum’s, my granny, she’s— she’s not been well. So. It— it made sense to send me to live with Quinn.’ 

‘Right,’ I said. 

Reilly was staring at the path ahead of us, determinedly not glancing up at me. ‘But I mean, the situation’s pretty straightforward. It’s not like I’m Felix,’ she said, with a little laugh. 

‘Why? What’s his situation?’ 

Reilly sighed. ‘I really probably shouldn’t talk about it. But he didn’t come to Castle Derwen until he was fifteen. It was a whole… thing. He stayed with Abagnale for a bit, before, but. Yeah. He and Quinn have known each other a long time before that, so.’ 

‘Right,’ I said, warily. 

‘What about you?’ asked Reilly. ‘Where’s your family from? You’re unmage, right? It’s so weird that mages don’t have microwaves, isn’t it?’ 

I was quiet for a long moment, thinking about the blood twisting out of my father’s eye sockets. The mournful song my mother had sung as she left our little house and made her way to the sea and I knew absolutely I could not follow. I couldn’t. 

‘My parents died in a car crash,’ I said, numbly. 

‘Oh right,’ said Reilly. ‘I’m so sorry, I completely forgot.’

‘It’s okay,’ I squeaked. ‘It’s fine.’ 

‘You must miss them,’ said Reilly. 

I thought about the dark depths of the sea. My mother’s song rang through my skull, as I’d heard it through the floorboards of our home. 

‘I miss my mum,’ I said, finally. 

Reilly stopped walking. She turned to me and gave me an abrupt and very brief hug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered, when she’d released me. 

‘No,’ I said. ‘I… Thank you.’ 

Reilly blushed. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. 

By then we’d reached the steps up to the library. Predictably, there was nobody else inside. Most of the scholars were at their covens’ boarding houses, or were gathered on the gravel drive outside the main building of the school, the crowd Felix and I had pushed through as we’d left. 

‘Lady Otilie?’ Reilly called as we stepped past the empty study tables. A door at the back of the library creaked open. The willowy librarian emerged. She was wearing a dressing gown and slippers. 

‘Goodness me, Miss Rowse! With all the commotion, I forgot to lock the door.’ 

‘Should we go?’ asked Reilly. 

Lady Otilie shook her head. Her patterned headscarf was made of silk, tied elegantly so it draped over her shoulders. ‘I was just putting myself to bed. Just awful, isn’t it?’ 

‘Quinn and I were outside House Derwen for the Game, we don’t know what happened,’ said Reilly. 

Lady Otilie nodded. ‘Oh, but isn’t that Master Goodman? I heard a rumour he was in the atrium when it all happened.’ 

‘I didn’t see much,’ I explained. ‘Just. The body.’ 

Lady Otilie covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Oh I could hardly stand it, it’s just awful. That poor boy. A former student, you know.’ 

‘You know who it was?!’ asked Reilly. 

‘They’re saying it was Thomas Vane. Though of course, he’s not gone by that name in an awful long while.’ 

Reilly gasped. ‘Abagnale’s old apprentice?!’ 

‘The very same,’ said Lady Otilie with a sigh. ‘Though, you didn’t hear it from me. The poor, misguided boy. He was always troubled. I don’t think he ever quite recovered from losing Abagnale’s favour, all those years ago. What a waste.’ Otilie shook her head again. ‘Was there something you needed? I’d like to put myself to bed, the shock of it all… I’d studied with Thomas, you know? We were visiting scholars here at the same time, not long after I graduated…’ 

‘Oh, I— we’ll come back in the morning. I was just going to show Cyan some of the stuff about—‘ Reilly cut herself off with a squeak. 

Lady Otilie sighed again, shaking her head. ‘Ah. So the rumours of Thomas attempting to rekindle Respice Finem are still alive and well, then? Ironic, really, given the meaning of their name. ‘Consider the end’. And yet the idea of them never really seems to die, does it?’ 

‘The real Cult of Respice Finem has been gone since the fall of Avalon,’ said Reilly. ‘But Cyan’s got no idea what any of that means.’ 

‘Oh yes,’ Lady Otilie looked me up and down with fervour. ‘A Happener. How curious. How many years has it been since a Happener came to Twelvelms?’ 

‘Documented?’ Reilly asked. ‘At least a hundred years. But there’s rumours.’ 

‘We don’t trade in hearsay in this building,’ said Lady Otilie. ‘Not in the presence of a thousand years’ worth of recorded wisdom. Please, feel free to take what you need. Do hurry though. I am getting a dreadful headache. What a wretched day.’ 

Reilly nodded. She headed between the shelves. 

‘Right,’ she determined. ‘It should be somewhere along— aha!’ Reilly pulled a large book from the shelf. It was bound in dark leather, dyed blue. It creaked when she opened it. 

‘This is a record of the fall of Avalon,’ she said. She thrust the book at me, then continued down the shelves a little way before stopping again. This time, she pulled out a much smaller book. ‘And this is a translation of the core tenets of the Cult of Respice Finem.’ 

I spent the rest of Samhain and long into the early hours of the next morning, sitting on the floor next to my bed, pouring over the books Reilly had prescribed me. The Fall of Avalon was dense and dull, I could only stand to skim it. There were hundreds of pages describing the precise political situations which led to everything that happened, and then one extremely explosive and engaging chapter describing the fall itself. The whole purlieu, which at the time had several thousand mages living in it, was burned to ash. As far as everyone could tell, all the members of Respice Finem had been on the island when it burned, and nobody was seen to leave. 

The translation of the tenets of The Cult of Respice Finem was far easier to read than the account of the fall of Avalon. The Spicers’ ideas were simple; mages were supposed to be in charge of the world. The proof was in their power, they said; mages can perform magic; unmages can’t. Thereby a natural hierarchy presents itself: plain, inarguable, unavoidable. Mages were superior. Not only were they meant to be in charge of the world, they ought to be in charge of it. It was their duty. 

With the magic that mages possessed, they could heal the sick better than any unmage medicine could ever hope to. They could resolve conflicts bloodlessly, painlessly. They could solve all issues of hunger, over-farming, poor crop yields. They would bring down all false hierarchies; end feudalism, which was the power system of the day when the Cult of Respice Finem was still active. 

The name of the cult was explained by its last, and most poignant tenet. The tenet of death and rebirth. Life is a cycle, they explain. This is a belief that is common among mages; that upon death one’s soul is unbound and finds a new home, or perhaps commingles with other souls and splits and divides and becomes new but old all at once. 

The Spicers, though, they also believed this to be true of magedom. That to reach this point of power where they ruled over all and could share their gifts with everyone, there would first have to be a great reckoning. A kind of collective, societal death. Consider the End, they called themselves, because to them, the end is also the beginning. 

All the stuff about the political situations, about the states of each of the covens in the build up to Avalon’s fall. I’ve read it all again since, now I’m older and more tolerant of such writing, now all that stretches before me are days and days with nothing in them, except you in your crib, and these books on my shelves. 

Even though I’ve read those accounts of Avalon again and again, it seems to me that all it is that needs to be understood about it is that the Cult of Respice Finem did what they did at Avalon because they believed it would be the great reckoning which would mark the start of the end, which itself would allow a new beginning to unfold. 

It didn’t work, of course. Thousands of mages died during the fall. Every known member of the Cult of Respice Finem died too. The only survivors of that day were the eight coven leaders, who’d left the High Table as soon as the fires started to burn, and barricaded the door to Avalon from the Liminus behind themselves. 

The door to Avalon remains barricaded in the Liminus to this day. 

I remembered seeing that nailed shut door when Abagnale had first brought me to Twelvelms, through the Liminus. He’d been talking a lot, that night, and I don’t remember much of what he said, but I’m certain he hadn’t mentioned Avalon, though. Mostly he’d just talked about the Liminus, how it joined up all the secret towns where the mages lived, and as far as anyone could tell, it didn’t occupy any space of its own at all. 

The Liminus fascinates me. It’s an incredible bit of magic. Incredibly old. Older, perhaps, than any of the covens whose safe-havens it now connects. Whoever added those doors, it seems they were making use of something which existed long before they did. 

The magic that placed the doors there, it’s lost to time, now. There are loads of bits of magic like that. The magic of the Liminus; the magic that protects Derwen’s purlieu, Deva, from unmages finding it when they go hiking; the magic that hides Isla Sambuce from everyone, including mages who aren’t invited, even ones who have visited before. 

All of that, it suggests something intriguing to me. Compels me. It says something about what magic is. That whatever we claim, as mages, whatever institutions like Twelvelms insist, magic is something beyond us, bigger than us. It’s a part of us, yes, but a part of us in the way that salt is part of the sea, that carbon is part of coal. We don’t understand it; in big, important ways, we can’t. It is beyond what our minds are capable of comprehending. An eldritch horror which runs in our own veins. 

Since the fall of Avalon there have been lots of rumours about the Spicers. That some of them survived. That there are still pockets of them left, in their own secret purlieus, protected be ancient magic the rest of magedom has forgotten. I’ve heard some people claim that the leaders of the Alliance surrounded Avalon to them that day, that there were no fires, and the reason for the barricade was to hide that there was a new, independent island of mages that the Alliance had no way to broker trust with. 

The greatest conspiracy theory of all, the one which most people love to bring up at parties with a laugh and unserious zeal about their voices, was that there never was a Cult of Respice Finem. It was the Alliance that had burned Avalon. 

You ask why on earth they’d do such a thing, and the answer you are given – whether spoken aloud or written in a book – will always vary. Sometimes it’s because they thought the old experts were gathering too much power. Some people think that they invented something on Avalon which was out of their control, which had to be stopped. Some say there was some kind of magic plague and the whole island had to be quarantined. 

None of these explanations really make any sense, of course. But I understand why they exist. There were eight survivors of the fall of Avalon. Eight people who witnessed what happened that day. And not a single one of them outlined what they saw, beyond stating the basic facts. There was a fire. The coven leaders escaped. The door was barricaded. None must cross that way again. 

Of course people doubted that account. How couldn’t they? It’s almost like it was designed specifically for that purpose, isn’t it? 

But perhaps I’m being paranoid. 

Yes. 

Ah. The sun is coming up. You’ll be awake again soon. I’ve talked the whole night; I’ll be no use to you tomorrow. I’m sorry, little one. Abagnale is running me ragged. But he’s promised me you’ll be here another week, at least. 

Ach. I should sleep. I should sleep. A couple of hours is better than none. 

Maybe we’ll laugh about this when you’re older. 

Ah, I hope that. I really do. 

[END]