4. Sam Commonwealth
Sam: Commonwealth
The relics of the dead are, to begin with, mere objects. But an enchanter may transform them, elucidating their power, amplifying their original significance and casting it to a particular purpose. This is how a relic becomes a token.
—Humberto Vivar, Practical Tokens
It is difficult, when your life has been abruptly cut short by a detestable scoundrel, to ignore that scoundrel and pretend you are at peace.
Perhaps some can do it, but not me. I’m not the forgiving sort.
No, I could not forgive Simeon and the Cisneros Society.
I could not forgive what they had done to me, nor could I tolerate what they would do to others. I intended to stop them.
Does this strike you as futile? Impossible, even?
I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so. The dead are hardly in a position to redress past wrongs.
And yet…could it be that you underestimate us?
Consider carefully: What really are you without the dead?
Where would you be without us? How much of what you hold dear do you owe to us?
All magic comes from the dead. That is what you must remember as you admire the fashionable figures of society, beautified by a dozen artful tokens, and as you walk beneath a hundred blazing city lamps, brightened by the workings of enchantment, and as you dodge misfortune yet again, protected by the charm in your pocket.
Without the dead, the fashionable figures would be utterly forgettable, and the city would be as dark as a coal mine, and your luck would be as dismal as the most unfortunate beggar’s.
Your world is made beautiful, fortunate, and bright by us.
Who appreciates this generosity? No one.
Instead of expressing a fitting gratitude for the dead, society lavishes attention and awe on mere middlemen, those crooks made powerful and wealthy by the process of extraction, the swindlers who by their plodding alchemy transform the material of the dead into objects of desire: enchanters.
Nowhere is this unwarranted acclaim more evident than at Massachusetts Commonwealth University, the country’s premier institution for the study of enchantment. My murderer’s place of education.
Simeon stayed at the Manse until the early hours of Friday morning and eventually returned by carriage to his dormitory at Commonwealth.
He slept four hours, and then, with the same detestable impermeability that allowed him to sail through every manner of adverse circumstance, arose looking fresh as ever. It was enrollment day at Commonwealth.
Enchanters are so certain of their importance, the air of self-congratulation follows them everywhere like an odor, a perfume by turns alluring and asphyxiating.
At the beginning of the term at Commonwealth, the air hangs as heavy as a fog.
The faculty strut to class with ponderous frowns, resigned to the sacrifice of bestowing their knowledge upon undeserving students.
The students flit from place to place with self-important busyness, the first-years vainly attempting to conceal their disorientation, the second-years cool and confident, and the third-years comfortably smug.
Everything is as it should be: soon they will graduate, and take their places in highly paid posts throughout the nation, and from then on their pockets and reputations will profit from their training here.
The campus has changed little in its two hundred years.
It is perched by the sea, between Beverly and Manchester, some twenty miles north of the city of Boston.
On this day, the first of the term, it looked much the same as ever.
Four brick monoliths with black shutters and glinting windows anchored the corners of the main quad.
Between two of them, the stone behemoth affectionately dubbed “Pebbles” disgorged students who had arrived to enroll in their fall courses.
Across the lawn from Pebbles, ochre banners emblazoned with the university’s crest fluttered cheerily from the columns of the portico of Waring Hall.
Young men crisscrossed the green along brick pathways, coattails flapping in the breeze that swept in off the ocean, carrying salt and sunlight and the fading reminders of summer.
They wove through the campus like ants, all of them in black coats and black shoes, looking so alike to one another that they might have been distant kin, or the infantry of a well-heeled army.
Like any other institution of its kind, Commonwealth has its darlings: the young men who have already won the allegiance of their fellows and who go on, predictably, to make a name for themselves in the greater world.
Their success is assured, their popularity mere affirmation of what everyone knows to be true: some men are favored from birth with talent and fortune.
Simeon Trench was unquestionably one of those darlings.
Have you noticed that sometimes, the more detestable the man, the more popular he is?
So it was with Simeon. As he made his way to Pebbles, he was surrounded by a bevy of admiring fellows.
They hung on his every word, striving to earn a hearty laugh, or just a wink of the blue eye, or a nod of the buoyant curls.
He walked with assurance, smiling slightly, watching with pleasure as the men around him tried with all their might to humor and impress without appearing to try.
One of them opened the door to Pebbles, and Simeon coasted in as if riding a wave, down the oak-paneled hallway and through the double doors into the main hall.
The room was crowded: peopled by young men, to all appearances, but more like a mob of yapping dogs in volume and tenor.
They stood in three disorderly lines, chattering and laughing, studying paperwork, and darting occasional sharp glances at one another.
Commonwealth only accepts students who have, at seventeen, passed a stringent entrance exam; the cost of the program is steep; and, needless to say, only men are admitted.
As with any group that excludes others from its membership, there was a certain conviviality among them: a sense of self-congratulation, a sense of triumph at being in that did not, at the same time, preclude the necessity of ensuring a place within the pecking order.
Every man in the main hall was measuring himself against his peers.
Simeon joined one of the lines, his cluster of admirers following.
They drew glances from the men nearby: looks of admiration and curiosity and recognition that Simeon absorbed with easy indifference.
One boy from a neighboring line, failing to catch Simeon’s attention with an eager wave, went so far as to abandon his place so that he could join Simeon’s group farther back in line.
Curiously, one young man paid them no attention at all.
He waited directly ahead of Simeon in the queue, and instead of turning to gawp along with everyone else, he stood rigidly, staring straight ahead.
The eager boy who had joined Simeon’s group elbowed him by accident in the course of some desperate bid to draw a laugh, but still the young man did not turn.
I considered him more closely. He had an appealing face, verging on handsome.
Brown hair, fashionably chin-length and swept back under a black hat.
A trimmed black beard with a tidy mustache.
His eyes, deep-set, had a soft and innocent look to them.
He held a piece of folded paper in his hand, and I could see that he carried three tokens: a silver tiepin with a running fox, a pair of spectacles, and a very fine fountain pen.
No—I was wrong. The fountain pen indeed belonged to the dead, but it wasn’t a token; no doubt it was his source of dead worth for casting.
So just the tiepin and the spectacles. He continued to stare ahead, even though the men behind him with Simeon were growing downright raucous.
Do not be mistaken about the limits of our powers.
It’s true that we can see what happens in the living world, all without leaving the spirit realm.
Tied fast here, we watch and listen, traveling without obstacle, following not in body but in sense.
We see and hear and even smell, if the wind carries pungent airs the right way.
But we cannot see beyond the visible. We cannot discern thoughts or sentiments.
We cannot perceive the cunning beneath a sweet smile, or the terror behind a cool stare.
And we cannot see past enchantment. We see the magic wrought by tokens in the same way that you, an ordinary living person, might notice someone wearing a wig: glance quickly and the wig is practically invisible; look closely and the wig is almost certainly perceptible; but even with close inspection, the wearer’s true aspect is difficult to discern.
Is the wig hiding messy curls, or thin white strands, or a bald pate?
In this case, I could see that the young man’s spectacles altered his face, and I could see that the tiepin altered his frame; but I couldn’t see how.
Well, almost every young man wants a broad pair of shoulders and a chiseled jaw.
Here there was nothing new. The odd thing about this young man was that he carried no other tokens: nothing to sharpen his wits and assist his powers of memorization; nothing to quicken the faculties required for mathematical appraisal.
Was he so ignorant as to believe he didn’t need them?
Here, where the foremost enchanters of the commonwealth were made?
As he took a step forward in line, the young man unfolded the square of paper in his hand. It read:
Clem Quinn, First Year
1) Introduction to Medical Enchantment
2) Spirit Casting
3) Fundamentals of the Spirit Realm
4) Philosophy of Deathways
5) Access to the Spirit Realm: A History of Portals
6) Advanced Appraisal