Chapter 9 #2
“You mean they’ve given up looking for him?” I gaped at Zak, appalled.
He shook his head. “It isn’t as bad as that. They’re still looking. But I’ve always felt they could have assigned more resources to the search, and now they’re expending even less effort.” His expression turned dark. “If he’d been stalking mageborn youth, it would have been a different story.”
“He would have already been caught,” I muttered.
Discontented murmurs to that tune had been filling the city in the weeks leading up to the Shrouded Mage’s apparent capture. The talk had died down since, attention turning to the unexpected sealing ceremony instead. And that fact only lent weight to Zak’s theory.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I can accept all of that, even if I don’t like it. Unfortunately, it sounds all too believable. But none of it explains why you’ve been wandering around the lower city dressed like a commonborn trying to attract the attention of a violent killer!”
“I can’t just sit back and do nothing!” he said. “As mages we have a responsibility to use our power to help all the people of Ardann, not just other mages.”
“An admirable view,” I said tartly. “But I don’t see how getting yourself murdered is using your power to help anyone.”
“I never intended to get murdered.” His smile only made me narrow my eyes further.
“You have no idea how many compositions I have in my jacket right now. The Shrouded Killer hunts weak victims, but if I can come to his notice and lure him into making an attempt on me, he’ll find I’m not in the least weak. ”
“Oh really?” I asked, my voice heavy with irony. “Just like in that alley the first day we met, perhaps?”
Zak winced. “With one opponent it would be different. I wasn’t expecting to be jumped by three people at once.”
I slumped back against my seat. “There are so many things that could go wrong! What have you been thinking?”
Zak’s face tightened, and I caught something sharp and painful lurking in his eyes. I straightened.
“What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
He sighed. “I’m genuinely disgusted by law enforcement’s approach to this. I meant everything I said about that. But it’s also personal for me.”
“Personal?” My brows drew together. “I thought all the victims have been commonborn?”
“They have.” His volume dropped. “Do you really think that means it couldn’t be personal for me?”
His eyes met mine steadily, his expression laden. My gaze slid away, and I swallowed, unwilling to consider the meaning of the look that filled his eyes.
“So you knew one of the victims?” I asked instead, trying to work out how that could have happened.
But he shook his head. “Not directly.” When I frowned, he hurried on. “One of the victims was the son of a cousin of someone I know.”
I tried to follow his words, skeptical of what sounded like a very tenuous connection.
His fist clenched and then unclenched, his expression growing pained. “We’ve talked about our families, so you know my parents are academics. That’s why they’re so determined for me to follow their footsteps into the University. They love me well enough, and of course I love them, but…”
He looked up with a ghost of his usual smile.
“They weren’t always very present. If they weren’t physically at either the University or palace library, they were often lost to abstraction.
So I was raised more by the servants than I was by them.
Our housekeeper’s daughter took on the role of my nanny, and she’s always been a second mother to me.
It’s her cousin who lost his son to the Shrouded Killer.
She’s not needed as a nanny anymore, but of course she still works for our family.
Normally she lives at our family’s home here in Corrin, but she took two whole months off to stay with her cousin and his wife after it happened. ”
“And law enforcement hasn’t been doing enough to find the killer,” I said slowly, a number of things making more sense—including why Zak was so comfortable among commonborns. “So you thought you’d chase him down yourself.”
“Not quite that,” Zak said with a wince. “Nanny made me promise that I wouldn’t.” He grinned. “She knows me too well.”
I raised a brow.
“I swore I wouldn’t do anything to search for him,” Zak said quickly in response. “And I haven’t. But if he were to happen to find me…”
“That seems like a hair-fine distinction,” I said dryly, relieved that he’d been constrained from doing anything more active.
“And now you’re going to make me promise to stop even that,” he said dejectedly. “I just wish there was something I could do to help properly.”
“Apparently you’re the only one who feels that way among the mages,” I said sourly.
“I know there are others who care,” he said with feeling, his whole bearing becoming more animated.
“But it’s criminal the way so many mages ignore the plight of the commonborn.
Times are changing now that we have sealing ceremonies, but they could be changing faster.
At the very least, we should be running things more efficiently. ”
I hid a smile. He always got swept up in enthusiasm whenever his talk turned to systems that could be more efficient.
“Take your situation.” A martial light came into his eyes. “Your teacher should never have had the power to overlook you in favor of someone more valuable to him personally. If it happened to you—twice!—it’s probably happening in schools all over the kingdom.”
He didn’t slow down, properly worked up now.
“And taking the top student from each school doesn’t make sense.
Of course we need to spread out the places and make sure some are chosen from all regions of Ardann, but what if one school has two brilliant students and another has none?
We need a more centralized system, and one with better oversight. ”
My lips twitched, but I nodded. “I agree. How do you think it should be run, then?”
He frowned thoughtfully. “I would need to think about it more, to make sure I covered every possible angle, but I think the advanced schools shouldn’t cover a full eight years.
At some earlier age—sixteen maybe? Or fourteen might be better?
—local schooling should finish and teachers should refer all their best students to further training in a centralized location. ”
“Here in Corrin?” I asked, fascinated by the idea.
“That would make most sense,” he agreed. “And students should have a choice, too, about which stream they want to enter. There’s already a teaching college, so students could choose whether they go there or to the University.”
“Or to one of the merchant companies,” I interjected, and he nodded.
“There may even be other options. The nominated students in each stream could be trained together, and during that time, their trainers could weed out anyone who didn’t prove suitable after all.
Then those who made it all the way through the extra training would be sealed and progress to their chosen career. ”
I considered his suggestion. “That would be a good system,” I agreed. “Much better than the current one anyway. I know you were only a trainee until a couple of months ago, but have you suggested it to your parents? Maybe they could put the idea forward on your behalf?”
He snorted. “I’ve talked to them about it, but they just took it as an opportunity to push my joining the University. They say that if I make it through a university course, I can become a royal official and make all these changes I’m so enthusiastic about.”
“At the risk of agreeing with your parents on anything,” I said with fake meekness, “that’s actually a good suggestion.”
“But I would have to study at the University for years!” Zak cried. “Can you imagine it?”
“Actually I can. When you’re interested in the topic, you do quite well with your study.”
“It’s a fairly significant caveat,” he muttered, but I shook my head.
“You would be a much better official than most of the current ones. I’m sure of it.” My voice turned stern. “But not if you get murdered before you even make it to the University.”
He closed his eyes, taking a breath before opening them again.
“Is it really doing much harm for me to wander around the lower city dressed like a commonborn?” He gave me his most charming look.
“Especially if I have you with me. If the Shrouded Killer proved too much for me, I’m sure you would rescue me as easily as you did last time. ”
I snorted, but I knew him well enough to know that he must have utter faith in his arsenal of compositions.
He wouldn’t have put me at risk by walking around the city in my company otherwise.
Although he was probably expecting that if the Shrouded Mage noticed him, he would attack later, when Zak was alone.
So far, the Shrouded Mage had always attacked lone victims, and always males.
Personally, I put more faith in the unlikeliness of the killer targeting Zak when he had so many potential victims. And that reassurance galvanized me into one of my occasional bouts of recklessness.
“As long as you only wander off well-used roads when you’re with me,” I declared.
I had been studying so relentlessly that I welcomed a small thrill in my days—even if it was only playing with danger and not truly taking any risks.
Zak laughed delightedly. “I think you might be the only person I know who would say that.”
“Careful, or you’ll convince me I’m being foolish,” I said with a warning look. “I’m already aware I should be joining the general chorus and telling you not to make yourself bait for a serial killer. You make me sound like the only friend who wishes you ill.”
Zak grinned. “You love me too. You know it.”
I coughed, turning quickly away from him. He had spoken without thinking, and I couldn’t let him see how much his words had affected me.
He jumped to his feet. “I’ll go get our things from our locker.”
He disappeared from the room, leaving me to my frantic recovery attempts.