Chapter 15 Uncomfortable Topics #2
Which claim is true? The words echoed in my mind as I began setting up the machine, inserting the calibration liquid into the test chamber.
Aspen had said that Leone valued truth over story, which was the source of his feud with Julian.
If he valued truth as much as Aspen believed, could I trust him as an ally?
Or was he compromised because of his potential involvement with Julian?
There was no reason why poison couldn’t have been stored anywhere in the House . . . even hidden in someone’s book.
“Have you started the test?” Leone asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“No, not yet. I have to calibrate the machine first with a pure substance—gold.” I pushed the buttons in the rhythmic pattern I’d discovered worked best for the machine.
Whoever had stitched the machine together was a genius ahead of their time, but given the mismatched collection of knobs and pins, it required patience to operate.
“Can I ask you about someone? There was a student here previously,” I began, testing the waters. Leone’s expression remained neutral, fixated on the observation panel in front of us, dials turning to indicate the calibration was in progress.
“Julian,” I said. His expression didn’t change. “I heard he died under tragic circumstances.”
“Yes, his whole case was quite tragic. A lineage acceptance who had no business being at Foresyth in the first place,” he said. I studied his reaction, but his features were relaxed, eyes steady. There was nothing to indicate guilt or remorse over the situation.
“Oh, so you two weren’t friends?” I asked, hoping my tone sounded innocuous enough not to raise suspicion. Maybe Aspen had been right—maybe there had been bad blood between them.
“We were academic counterparts. We disagreed on methodology, and our inclinations toward the truth. He favored story, and I favored facts. It was as simple as that. I told him he should stick to crafting puzzles instead of writing papers,” Leone concluded, as if that ended the conversation.
“But his death . . . it didn’t impact you?” I asked, hinting at the paper competition.
He paused, not taking his eyes off the chamber.
“Come to think of it, it did eliminate him from consideration for the Advisor role,” he said.
“But he was clear that he didn’t want anything to do with the Conservatory after graduation.
He had some morale scruples he couldn’t get past, so becoming an Advisor wasn’t his aim. ”
The machine beeped, indicating that the calibration was complete.
“Were there any topics you two were collaborating on?” I pressed, removing the calibration sample from the machine.
“Hmpf. We were working on similar papers, but mine won out among the Advisors.”
“Oh? I hadn’t heard . . .” I said absently.
“Why would you have? We found out a week before Julian died. Then my research trip to Dublin got postponed with all the chaos surrounding his death. No one knew, but it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that my paper won out. I don’t waste my breath on bragging.”
I turned around, rolling my eyes. Was there a man at this school who wasn’t pompous? But if the competition had favored Leone, that would remove his motive. So much for Aspen’s currency of secrets.
“You sure ask a lot of questions,” Leone noted.
“Oh, I’m just curious. Students dying isn’t something anyone should get used to,” I said, switching out the calibration tube for one of Leone’s test samples.
Leone nodded absently, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere, deep in thought.
“You said only you and Julian were next up for the Advisor role. What about Aspen?”
Leone scoffed. “Aspen is a second year—Advisor roles are reserved for graduates. And despite how impressive Aspen thinks his curriculum vitae is, he’s not eligible for another year.”
I furrowed my brow. That eliminated an academic rivalry as a motive for Aspen and Julian, but there was still the issue of Julian’s relationship with Sequoia, and the jealousy it might have stirred.
But Aspen’s theory on Leone seemed to hold true.
It seemed like Leone and Julian hadn’t seen eye to eye, either. But why would Aspen be helping me?
“Is something wrong?” Leone asked.
“No, no. The test is running as expected. Here, this is the spectrum of the first one,” I said, handing him the output with the spectrum lines.
It would be foreign to anyone but me, but I could teach just about anyone how to read it.
“I’ll just cross-reference them with my book, and then I can tell you the approximate age of the compounds in the sample. I can show you how it’s done.”
“How long will that take?”
“About an hour or so.”
“Very well,” Leone said, cracking open his book again. That was indication enough that he wanted me to do the analysis on my own.
We spent the next hour in silence—me pouring over the spectra of the two research samples, and Leone engrossed in his esoteric tome.
It was a comfortable silence for the most part.
There was a part of me—perhaps just my intuition—that urged me to trust Leone, and that almost disqualified him as a suspect.
But I couldn’t tell if that was just my bias, ruling him out because he was simply unsuspecting.
As it stood, I didn’t see a clear motive for why Leone would want Julian dead, unless I bought into the idea that it was still the philosophical differences between the two.
I couldn’t imagine Leone being that spiteful, or Julian that competitive.
But I couldn’t rule out Leone, or anyone else—not yet.
“It’s done,” I said, looking up from my notebook. “It looks like Sample B is a good five years older than Sample A, based on these spectral lines.”
“Map dowsing wins. Interesting,” Leone said, looking over the spectra I had marked up with my reference text. “I can use these in my research paper?”
“Certainly. I’d be happy to write up the methodology section for you,” I said, closing the lid of the analyzer.
“That would be very nice, thank you,” Leone said, opening his own notebook and jotting down the findings.
“Not to make this transactional, I would’ve helped you either way, but I do need advice on how to approach the Council,” I said, readying my own pen and notebook.
“Oh, that. Of course, I’ll tell you what I know,” Leone said, pushing up the bridge of his glasses and turning toward me.
“I’ve submitted a handful of proposals to them during my time at Foresyth, and about a dozen or so papers.
All but one has been accepted, with varying degrees of critique,” he started.
Curiosity flared—I wanted to press him about the one paper that hadn’t been accepted—but I held my tongue.
Better to focus on what mattered: getting my proposal approved.
Of all the things to worry about, publication ranked lowest. With any luck, I’d be gone from Foresyth long before that ever became necessary.
“There are two things you should know about the Council. Number one—they value academic rigor. If you have a hypothesis, you better be willing to defend it. They don’t like to waste time or resources on half-formed ideas,” he said.
“Fair enough, I wouldn’t either,” I agreed.
“Secondly, they value magickal devotion. They can see right through those who aren’t true believers.”
My heart sank. To me, magick had always been a parlor trick at best—a relic of forgotten histories, conjured by people who lacked the science to explain the world around them.
Would the Council sense that? Would they see through my skepticism and tear my carefully constructed cover apart, like a forbidden book marked for burning?
“I don’t know exactly how they do it—but it’s necessary and part of their line of work. They advise clients using magick, but if the clients don’t fully believe their methodology, it’s hard to take an Advisor’s advice. That’s why observance to the sacredness of magick is so important to them.”
“Is there anything I could do to strengthen my . . . observance?” I asked.
“There isn’t really a prescription for believing. It’s rather binary—you do or you don’t. But my best advice is to experience it for yourself. It’s sometimes difficult for me too. I gravitate too much to the facts of the matter,” Leone admitted.
And for the first time, I felt like Leone and I were two sides of the same coin. I searched the clear blue of his eyes and saw an intensity there I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps he only reserved it for the things he was truly obsessed with. But now he was sharing it with me.
“It’s why I’ve gravitated toward fencing.” He shrugged. “Because when you are faced with no choice but to fight—to believe in your own power over your doubts—that’s when something magickal can happen.”
I furrowed my brow, considering him. “That’s right, the others mentioned you’re a swordsman. Books, magick, swords—they are all methods of claiming power, are they not?”
“I suppose, but they are also conduits to truth.” His fingers feathered the edge of his book, index finger still jutting in the middle to keep his place. “You have to get out of your head, sometimes. Go and apply your learnings in the real world to find the truth.”
“Now you sound like Aspen.”
“Him and I don’t agree on many things, but about the practice of magick we do. It’s an application, an art. It’s true power lies outside of books,” his tone changed, becoming softer. “Magick is dangerous, but I believe it needs people like us, grounded in reality, in order to control it.”
I nodded. On that, at least, we were aligned: magick was dangerous—whether real or not.
Even the mere suggestion of it could drive people to reckless, even deadly, ends.
I had no doubt it played a role in Julian’s death.
The Meister wanted me to test Tarot in the waking world—to embody the archetypes, to trace the source of its power, whatever that might be.
If Julian’s unraveling was entangled with magick, then I needed to understand its pull—not just how it worked, but how others believed it worked.
Belief, after all, could be just as potent as truth.
And if I could decipher the shape of that belief, it might bring me one step closer to uncovering what truly happened to him that night.
“Thanks, Leone. That’s very insightful,” I said, stacking my books up in a neat pile. It was almost time for lunch. Nina was still out, so I’d have to call for Aspen to help get us out of here.
“And one last thing you should know. There’s a woman on the Council,” he said in the same hushed tone.
“She goes by the name of Ash-Shaytan Al-Ahmar—the red devil, in Arabic. She doesn’t appear at every Council meeting, but if she does at yours, you ought to be careful.
She wields a kind of old magick that even the other Council members are afraid of.
Superficially she’s a kind of guardian for the Council, but I suspect she plays an even more prominent role than that. Just be careful of her.”
“Ash-Shaytan Al-Ahmar. I’ll remember her,” I said, nodding.
“Just hope she doesn’t remember you.”