After learning about Felix’s past, Cyan navigates the intricacies of what it means to be a mage, and some of the rules and theories surrounding magic…

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Descriptions of violent procedures performed on humans and animals
• Discussions of death and murder

Transcript

[SOUNDS OF RAIN] 

[CYAN HUMS, SLEEPILY] 

I must have drifted off. 

You’re still sleeping, thank goodness. How many hours did I get? 

Wait. Felix’s watch. Where is it? 

[CHAIR LEGS SCRAPE] 

Oh no, no, no. Where has it gone, where— 

[CYAN SIGHS] 

Oh thank Tegid. There it is. On the mantle. Thank goodness. Ah. Yes. Good. Good. 

He got this on our first trip to London, after we’d finished at Twelvelms. Felix liked it because you can see all the cogs, even though it made it difficult to actually read the time. It fascinated him, how unmages had made something so beautiful and elegant to solve a problem mages had always solved with magic. 

He had a pocket watch he’d been given as a gift after his Kingiving, and when we got back to the little flat in London that Abagnale had set us up in, he cracked it open to show me how it worked. Tiny birds’ bones and a shard of quartz. 

I’d never seen the pocket watch before that night. It had the Scarlett family crest on the lid. I didn’t ask, but I did wonder why he’d carried it around with him all that time. Why, when we’d been told explicitly to pack light, he’d thought to bring the watch with us.

I wonder if he has it with him now. 

When Felix re-kinned to Coven Derwen the summer after he turned fifteen, he made the decision to keep the Scarlett family name. I’ve never asked him about that, either. I should have. I should have done a lot of things. 

[CYAN SIGHS] 

I wonder if you’ll take that name, when the time comes. We’re still thirteen years away from that, of course, but I do wonder. You should get to choose your own name, like mages are supposed to. And if you wanted to honour the Scarletts in that, that should be up to you. But I hope you won’t be burdened by it, the way Felix seemed to be.

[INTRO MUSIC: This is the Twelvelms Conspiracy, Episode Nine, the Outcast] 

The night after Felix confronted me over what Quinn had told me about his past, I went down to the baths under the school, alone. There were no windows down there, but there was a large clock on the wall. I watched the hands turning by, phasing between my forms, hoping Felix would come. But he didn’t. 

When there was only an hour left until breakfast, I decided to go check on the bird. Yes, some part of me hoped I’d find Felix there, but I was not surprised he wasn’t. I was glad I’d thought to bring scraps for it. I hoped, strangely, that Felix would somehow know that I’d fed it when he couldn’t. I know that was silly. 

None of the others came to breakfast, which worried me, but when I arrived at Abagnale’s lecture theatre for Bionomy,  Reilly was waiting for me in our usual spot. She looked tired, but she smiled when she saw me. 

‘Where are the others?’ I asked. 

‘Did you not hear?’ 

‘No? Has something happened?’ 

Reilly sighed. ‘Wow. You must be a deep sleeper.’ 

My heart seized. ‘There wasn’t another break in?!’ 

‘No, don’t be daft. They’d have cancelled our lectures if there had been. Felix had a tough night, that’s all.’ 

I was about to ask what she meant, but before I could, Abagnale swanned into the room, Taceo hot on his heels. The exhaurine was set up on his stage again, as it had been for the first lecture he’d given us. Since then, he’d shown off a variety of fascinating instruments all used to measure and study the elixir in plants and animals. That day, next to the exhaurine, he’d set up the delicate silver scales and mirror which could be used to estimate the elixir inside of plants. 

Because it was the morning, and not under the light of the moon, Abagnale again could not offer us a full demonstration of the way the exhaurine worked, but he showed us an approximation with three identical tulips. One he weighed, the other he span, and the third sat, wilted on a small dish next to the scales, a tiny vial of shimmering liquid sat next to it. 

Abagnale lifted the mirror from the scales. Part of the surface was fogged. He poured the vial of elixir over it. The shimmering liquid covered the fog almost perfectly. ‘As you can see, the approximation of the quantity of elixir in the first tulip is almost exactly what’s shown here. Can anyone tell me why this might be useful? Miss Rowse?’ 

‘Well. You might want to know how much elixir a plant can produce without killing it, so you can breed more of that plant if it is particularly potent.’ 

Abagnale smiled. ‘That is certainly one of the reasons, yes. It’s very useful to know the amount of elixir various plants contain for a variety of reasons. It’s not common practice to take these measurements in most potion-making; rough approximation will suffice. But for potions which will be used to healing or the treatment of illnesses, like those made by our friends in Coven Sambucus, it is absolutely essential that the precise amount of elixir is measured every time a new batch is brewed. Can anyone tell me about Mace’s hypothesis of elixir’s function in potions? Mr Deluge?’ 

Deluge, a large, handsome bespectacled mage from Coven Aval, cleared his throat. ‘Mace proposes that potion-brewing serves a similar function to exhaurines.’ 

‘Well read, Mr Deluge. I’m impressed. Can you elaborate on Mace’s meaning?’ 

‘That the reason potions work is actually nothing to do with the recipes or the techniques. It the elixir that’s doing the magic and the intention being set by the mages who do the brewing.’ 

Tiny murmurs of conversation erupted across the lecture theatre. Abagnale raised his hand to silence everyone. 

‘Mace’s hypothesis is a controversial one. The regulations placed on bionomical investigation mean it remains firmly in the realm of speculation. It is entirely possible that he was wrong about elixir’s function within potion making. But let us speculate with them, for a moment. Let us presume, recklessly, perhaps, that that potions work because of the elixir contained within the plants inside of them. How many potions do we brew here at Twelvelms which contain not just plant matter, but animal, too?’ 

The room was silent. Slowly, Reilly rose her arm. 

‘Ah, Miss Rowse again. Fabulous.’ 

‘From my memory of our potion making classes so far, it’s roughly forty percent,’ said Reilly. ‘But that’s just an estimate.’ 

‘An estimate will serve is beautifully, here. Thank you, Miss Rowse. In The Lavendidian Book of Classical Potions, still considered the most important tome concerning everyday potion-making, roughly half of the recipes listed contain some animal matter. Forty percent of those potions brewed here. Roughly half of those in the Lavendidian. Broadly speaking, then, half the time we are brewing potions, we are brewing them with animal matter as well as plants. Fauna as well as flora.

‘Which returns us to Seren Mace, one of the greatest bionomists in history. The mage who annotated the ancient methods for building exhaurines, allowing the first new exhaurines to be built since the fall of Avalon. Seren Mace.

‘Mace suggests that potion making is not a distinct practice from practical casting at all. That, just as consuming elixir will lend a mage extra power, when a mage brews a potion, the magical effects it produces are the result of that mage’s intention and their innate magic, and the elixir of the ingredients brewed. 

‘Of course, it is a hypothetical and it would be recklessly dangerous of us to suggest otherwise, but. Given all of these factors. Would that not mean that one of magedom’s most taboo practices, the extraction of elixir from animals, not plants, is in fact happening in almost every household, as we speak? That it is in fact happening now, under the same roof we’re currently sitting under?’

The next long quiet was punctuated by rustling clothes, as though almost everyone in the room was shifting in place. Abgnale beamed, but he waved our concern away. The lecture moved on to consider other applications for measuring elixir, and alternate techniques for approximating it if you did not have a silver scale to hand. 

Afterwards, Reilly was bristling with excitement. ‘He’s just so good at discussing these things. I read Seren Mace’s exlixiran hypothesis of potion making years ago and I was desperate to see someone discuss these broader implications, but there’s no writing on it, not anywhere.’

‘Why is it such a taboo?’ I asked.

Reilly gave me an odd look. ‘It’s not just taboo. It’s the regulations that the Raeg puts on the study of extracting elixir from animals. To discuss extracting elixir from animals is to discuss extracting the life force from something that thinks and feels. It’s almost unimaginably cruel.’ 

‘But when a mage has a familiar, they can draw on the familiar’s power, can’t they? Isn’t that the same thing?’ 

‘No! It is not at all the same thing. Familiars and mages are bonded together. The connection is mutual, it’s not an extraction.’ 

‘What if one of them is dying, though?’ 

‘Yes, I suppose in that circumstance, the injured party would draw on the power and life-force of the other to sustain themselves. But that doesn’t happen very often. We’re very good at healing magic. It’s not like in the unmage world. If a familiar is hurt, we can usually help them. And in any case, if it was my familiar that was hurt, I would want them to take some of my life-force if it meant it helped them. I’m sure any mage would tell you the same.’ 

‘You know a lot about familiars,’ I said. 

Reilly smiled and shrugged. ‘It’s one of my favourite subjects. The bonding process is incredibly delicate.’ 

‘How does it work?’ 

‘Oh, it’s all very complex. The mage and the familiar both have to consume a little of one another’s blood, stirred into a draught of dreaming. Under the light of the moon, a thread of spider’s silk is  passed through the ribs of both mage and familiar, into the heart of the mage, first, and then the familiar. That is repeated seven times, binding them together. 

’They sew their hearts together?!’ 

‘It’s not as gory as it sounds! Both familiar and mage are asleep when it’s happening, anyway, they don’t feel a thing. When they wake, they break the threads, but the connection remains.’ 

‘Good god,’ I whispered. 

‘This is why everyone is so impressed with Abagnale and Taceo. To have bonded himself to a familiar without help is astounding. He would have had to sew himself to her before he drank his draught of dreaming. It’s really quite remarkable.’ 

I was not sure how to respond. It was remarkable, but not in the usual sense of the word.  I’d heard mages balking at the idea that unmages stitched together wounds,I’d assumed the making of a familiar was some kind of very complex, magically challenging process. Instead, it was violent.

‘Bonding with familiars is still one of the few things we have to do the old way,’ said Reilly, when I had been quiet for too long.

‘Like they do in Coven Sambucus, you mean?’ I asked. 

Reilly sighed. ‘I suppose, yes. There are a lot of mages on Sambucus who have familiars, a much higher proportion than in any other coven, yes. But I wouldn’t read too much into that.’ 

‘What do you mean?’ 

‘Well Coven Sambucus isn’t bad. They’re just more secretive and traditional than other covens. We all have things we don’t share. The project of Twelvelms is to provide this neutral meeting point between us, but of course every coven keeps things from the others. Some things aren’t meant to be shared.’ 

‘But they don’t just keep things from each other. The way Felix was raised he—‘ 

‘Ah. I had wondered. Quinn’s told you, then.’ 

‘Yeah. She did.’ 

Reilly sighed again. ‘I don’t agree with how Coven Sambucus raises their future consuls. But there’s no need to turn that into this whole thing the way that people do.’ 

‘What thing, Reilly? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t care about Coven Sambucus. I care about us, here and now. I care about Felix.’ 

Reilly frowned. ‘We all care about Felix, Cyan. But you must’ve heard people talking since the break in, the rumours that it was Thomas Vane?’ 

’What did Vane do?’ 

‘He extrapolated from Mace’s hypothesis in the exact way Respice Finem did, by combining it with Tegid’s theory of magical class.’ 

‘With who’s what?’ 

‘Oh, come on! I told you to read Tegid’s theorem weeks ago! Under Tegid’s theorem, mages are supposed to have the most magical power of any living thing on earth. The only thing more magically powerful than a mage is wild magic, which Tegid calls ‘pure magic’, or wandering souls. He even goes as far as saying that these come from the other side, ands all stories of deities are just descriptions of encounters with these wandering souls of pure magic.

‘Obviously there’s lots of problems with the specifics,’ said Reilly, ‘but the general idea is that mages can do magic because we’re born with more of it in our bodies.’ 

‘So what about Happeners?’ 

‘Under Tegid’s theorem, they’re the exception that proves the rule. Magic isn’t just hereditary. It’s a blessing granted to us by whatever the pure magic wandering souls are. Happeners are chosen, for whatever reason, to ascend the circumstances of their birth.’ 

‘Oh.’ I thought about what Abagnale had said when he’d brought me to Twelvelms, the implication that he was bringing me there to try to prove something. 

‘Yes. So obviously, if you combine Mace’s hypothesis with Tegid’s theorem, you get the basis of pretty much everything Respice Finem believed. Mages are at the top of a hierarchy because we’re meant to be. Which. If left unchecked. Leads to the assumption that everything else exists for mages to exploit. 

‘The Raeg wholly dismisses that idea, of course, that’s why there are so many restrictions around the study of bionomy.’ 

‘I don’t follow.’ 

‘Well, if there were no restrictions and they be as good as endorsing the view that mages were superior to all other living things, it would imply we should be able to extract the life-force of those everything else. Obviously it’s not true! And that’s why mages aren’t going about extracting the elixir of unmages because it might save a mage’s life! It’s why the study of extracting elixir from any animals, even fish, is completely prohibited. It’s why Mace’s hypothesis is so controversial, because it would imply that despite our best efforts, we are doing it anyway.’ 

‘So. All of that. Vane agreed with it? That’s why Abagnale disavowed him?’

Reilly sighed. ‘Yes. But. There are rumours.’ 

‘I’d gathered that, yes.’ 

‘Mm. Vane wasn’t Abagnale’s only assistant. There was him and a mage from Coven Aval, Archibald Greaves. That’s probably why Deluge knew about Mace’s hypothesis and what it suggests, even though it’s not widely discussed. Abagnale, Vane and Greaves went on a research trip. When they came back, there was only two of them. Greaves had disappeared.’ 

‘And I’m assuming nobody knows what happened to him, but they think Vane killed him.’ 

‘Yes. Not only that, though. They think Vane killed him by trying to extract his elixir.’ 

I frowned. ‘But Greaves was a mage. It doesn’t even work with the hierarchies you were describing.’ 

‘Indeed. It would be heretical, even by the standards of Respice Finem. Nonetheless, that is what the rumours say. They very rarely imply Abagnale was involved. But part of the stink that still follows Abagnale now is this pervasive idea that though he would never have encouraged such a thing, he might’ve let it happen.’ 

‘Why would he do that?’ 

‘Well he wouldn’t, would he?! He trusted Vane and Greaves before he left, to the extent that he advocated fiercely for them to be paid as proper assistants by the Raeg even though they were both freshly graduated from Twelvelms at the time and would otherwise have been considered interns. The reason people say it is blind prejudice. They think Abagnale’s spirit of enquiry is dangerous. They don’t like that he wants to explore bionomy as deeply as he does.’ 

‘But it’s a whole subject at Twelvelms. It’s compulsory for all first years to study it.’ 

‘Within the frameworks laid out by the Raeg, yes. And I must add that Abagnale abides by those frameworks! Even today when he was talking about Mace, he made it absolutely clear he didn’t endorse the theory, and did you notice he didn’t say it himself? He asked the class, and merely challenged Deluge on his responses. Abagnale plays by the rules, because he knows that the principle behind them is sound. He just disputes that this means we should not study these things. 

‘Abagnale has always held that Tegid’s theorem is close to nonsense, anyway. He’s not interested in bionomy because he thinks that we should build exhaurines to extract elixir from unmages, or something like that. He’s interested because he thinks what we know about magic is wrong. That what we understand about what it means that we, as mages, can wield magic in a way unmages can’t is more complicated than it appears. That maybe we’re not blessed by some unseen force, but a part of a system of things, like all other systems of things in the world. 

‘To me, that seems like the opposite of a dangerous idea. But I am in the minority, I think.’ 

Reilly had given me a lot to think about. A lot of it was strange and some of it was alarming, and I could not stop turning it all over in my mind. But I didn’t feel like I could formulate an opinion on much of it, and the more I thought about it, it felt like the way this information had come to me was designed to prevent me from doing so. 

It wasn’t that Reilly had explained things wrong or that she had approached the topic in a way that was deliberately obtuse, it was the nature of the information she had available to share. 

That evening, I finally read Tegid’s theorem for myself, and found it no more illuminating than Reilly’s summary of it had been. In fact, because of the early modern English it had been written in, I found it was a good deal less illuminating, actually. The same was true for everything else I could find about Mace’s hypothesis, but there really wasn’t much. There was an oracle mirror in the library we could use to find texts that contained information on specific topics, and everything it showed me related to Mace were obscure references and footnotes that pointed to texts that simply were not named. 

By the end of the week, I was starting to feel like I was going mad. And though Felix was talking to me in the daytime and treating me in a perfectly civil manner, he was not reaching out, and I could not bring myself to reach out to him, either, so I was spending my evenings in the baths alone, or else shut in my room, pouring over books, trying to understand a little more of the world I had been so gracelessly dropped into. 

Quinn noticed that something was wrong. She came to my room one evening, about ten days she’d told me about Felix’ past. I was buried in Reilly’s suggested reading on topics related to Mace’s hypothesis. Quinn raised her eyebrows at my nest of books and hurriedly scrawled notes. 

‘Personal project?’  she asked. 

‘Just trying to catch up on background.’ 

‘Ah,’ said Quinn. She sat down on the end of my bed. ‘Has Felix spoken to you yet?’ 

’He was at dinner with us, you saw.’ 

‘You know what I mean, Cyan.’ 

I turned my attention to my books. ‘No. He hasn’t.’ 

Quinn sighed. ‘I suppose it was a bit optimistic of me to assume he would. I did say he wouldn’t like that I’d told you about his past. I wasn’t expecting it to become this much of a barrier between you. I’m sorry.’ 

‘Don’t be. I’m still glad you told me.’ 

‘So am I. It’s challenging for Felix to discuss these things, I know. I had hoped my telling you would bridge the gap a little. Not that he is particularly open about any of it, even with me. If Felix hasn’t reached out to yet to you yet, it means he can’t. But it doesn’t mean he wants you to stop being his friend. You understand that, don’t you? It’s so clear you care about each other. Knowing his past shouldn’t change that.’ 

‘It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. I care about him, still. I just don’t know what to say to him anymore.’ It was absurd to put words to the knotty feeling in my chest. It was true; the reason I’d not reached out to Felix was because I had no idea how. He knew my secret, or at least, a part of it, already. He’d learned that without me wanting him to, and he’d shown up again and again. And I, useless, had done the opposite. I’d learned about his past and when he shut me out, I stopped knocking on his door, literally and figuratively. 

I stared at a sheet of my own notes, my handwriting an almost meaningless scrawl. 

‘He’s the same person he was before you knew what happened to him, Cyan. Nothing has changed,’ said Quinn. She smoothed her hair, dense curls shiny in the low light of my bedside lamp. ‘We all have secrets, Cyan. There are parts of everyone’s pasts that they’d rather the world didn’t know. It’s the strongest form of love, I think, to take those fragile pieces and hold them for the people we care about. So much of what I’m supposed to do as your warden is about that. Carrying the pieces of you which are too heavy for you to carry yourselves. But it’s also what friends do, I think. Good friends, anyway.’ 

I looked up at Quinn, agonised. She had no idea who I was or where I’d come from. She was doing a great, solemn duty by carrying pieces of myself that were forgeries, constructs, no more substantial than a sigh in the wind, and yet there was a real weight to them when I set them down on other people. When I set them down on Quinn. 

I got to my feet. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ I said, and then I took out my coat from where I’d had it stuffed into the bottom of my backpack, and I showed her what I was. 

[CYAN SIGHS] 

You know, most mages think selkies are a myth? There are some who think we’re extinct, but they’re generally considered to be a bit mad. I was careful, when I showed Quinn my seal form, that I would not scare her the way I’d scared Felix. Instead of horror, though, I braced for disgust in her eyes.  

For a long moment, Quinn ap Howell stared at me, huge and finned on the bed. Her mouth was hanging slightly open. And then, miraculously, she smiled. 

‘Cyan,’ she whispered. ‘You’re a selkie!’ 

I shuddered back into my human form. ‘Half a selkie, actually.’ 

Quinn blinked. ‘Does Abagnale know?!’ 

‘Yes.’ 

Quinn nodded. ‘And Felix. He knows too.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Why didn’t Abagnale say something?! Felix, I understand, of course he would keep a secret if it was asked of him, but. Abagnale. My goodness. You can do practical casting like an ordinary mage, Cyan, this is— my god! We need to tell—‘ 

‘We can’t. I don’t know why Abagnale chose not to tell you but he was really clear that nobody should know. Felix only found out by accident, and I had to tell you because. I. I trust you too much not to.’ 

Quinn blinked at me. She shook her head minutely. ‘Thank you.’ 

‘Abagnale said if anyone find out he’d brought me here, it’d ruin him. And from everything that Reilly was saying—‘ 

‘Does Reilly know too?’ 

‘No. She doesn’t. But we were talking about Mace’s hypothesis and Tegid’s theorem and—‘ 

‘Fuck. Of course. Of course. If anyone found out that Abagnale had brought you here, it’d prove everyone right for being cautious about him. Even my own grandmother is suspicious of Abagnale, and she is not a mage to be messed with, and Abagnale is her direct subordinate. She was central to his being appointed as Chancellor of Twelvelms and she still doesn’t trust him.’ 

‘Wait, what?’ 

‘Oh, I know. Politics is a nightmare. Grandma says it’s a good thing my father never had to take the seat at Derwen. He never had the head for it, apparently. I try my best but sometimes I wonder if I don’t take after him. I can follow all the botched reasoning that would lead someone like my grandmother to appoint a man she does not trust into a position of power over the very mages she hopes will go on to sculpt the future of magedom, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to me. Yes, he’s a mage of House Derwen and he’s a fabulously decorated scholar, and yes, her endorsement of him despite the controversies he’s been enrobed in for years does imply a kind of strength of unity in our coven, but why bother with all of that if she doesn’t think he’s worthy of her true confidence? I don’t know.’ 

‘I— she talks to you about stuff like that?’ 

‘Yes, of course, I’m the heir to her seat at the High Table. She needs me to understand her positions so that I can uphold them when I take over from her. Or undermine them, I suppose, if I want to. Either way, it benefits the coven for my actions to be informed and decisive, which means she’s been fairly open with me about her political reasoning ever since I was a parmager.’ 

This struck me as sad, but I could not work out why. 

‘She’s going to be so furious when she finds out about this. Oh no. What am I going to do?’ 

‘No, Quinn. She can’t find out. Nobody can. I don’t know what would happen to me. Please. You have to keep this secret.’ 

‘ Of course, of course. I just. How long can something like this be kept under wraps, realistically speaking? Felix has already found out by accident. It’s only a matter of time before this gets out. What was Abagnale thinking?! And to not share his plan with anyone, to not even let me in on it, when I’m suppose to be looking out for you. It’s madness! How am I supposed to do my job properly if I don’t know who I’m caring for?! It was one thing to entrust me with a ward I barely knew, another entirely to hide who you really were from me when he knew it all along. What was he thinking?!’ 

‘I don’t know.’

“Of course you don’t. In the names of all the gods. The idiocy of this entire situation, I— I can’t believe Abagnale found a selkie Happener. This is absolutely bonkers. Revolutionary!’ 

Of course, I was not a Happener. My father had been a mage. But I couldn’t tell Quinn that without telling her I’d killed him, so I said nothing. Somehow, though she and Felix had taken the news I was not entirely human extremely well, I could not imagine they would take knowing I was murderer as kindly. 

I think that’s why I started there why I began sharing my story with you, little one. So you’d know out the gate exactly who was speaking to you, decide there and then whether it meant my words still meant something to you. Whether it’s still worth listening to me at all. 

I hope you are still listening. I hope that wherever you are, you’re safe and warm.

Honestly I hope these stones are unnecessary and I will be able to speak all of this through with you in person. But that feels a foolish thing to hope, so let’s set that aside for now. Instead. Know I love you regardless. Know this is the best I can manage. Know that despite the things I have done, I will always keep trying, whatever that looks like. Whatever the cost. 

[END]