Nick's List

It's about more than naughty or nice but wealth of spirit?

Disposing of the bad demons in the confiscated clay masks made for difficult and dirty work. Each crack of stone against clay sent up ethereal black smoke from the shattered masks leaving a bitter and sour stench as it dissipated in the winds.

I dared to hope that I had not added to the ghostly smog over Medusa's fair city, but had instead scattered the essence into the capable hands of nature.

As I broke the masks and softened the clay, I felt an unnatural resentment rising in my belly.

It occurred to me that I could have kept some small bit of this foul magic and used it. Such vibes improved efficiency in the user or turned the environs hostile–good for cursing an assailant. Employed judiciously, such energies could be particularly useful, such as to show that street mongrel Dust his place.

The pang of regret burned so hot in me that I knew I had taken in a bit of the wrong demon.

"Okay, Oliver," I coached myself as Jatham taught, "this is just resentment. You absorbed it much like the clay and you can disperse it the same."

I pointed to the place in my stomach where the resentment burned. It had a vile purple tinge and a miasma of rotten sauerkraut.

I pointed to the sun and drew some of the white golden fire into my essence.

It warmed me around that, swishing around the resentment in a sunwise way. I stirred it in, lightening the bruise tone to a lavender.

The lavender darkened to royal purple and filled me.

The working left me refreshed, restored: even enhanced. Satisfied, I ended the spell, feeling much better about myself until one of the boys came near.

I whispered under my breath in a voice more clearly that of my father and brother, "Dreadful urchin!"

The boy saw me and shrank at my gaze, then turned and ran.

I smiled at the rush of power, a smile too refined for thugs like Collen, but about right for cultured aggressors such as Dust or Mollard.

Something told me I had intoxicated myself in the cleaning, and only regretted that I had not saved more for later.

***

The entire world seemed much gentler and brighter–as though the oppressive cloud of spirit smog had lifted since my work with the masks.

On my way to the library I stepped into the meal room. "I shall have a mug of tea. Quickly, if you can for once."

The worker gaped at me.

The thought of my usual tea soured my stomach. "And leave some sugar in the cannister. All of it in the cannister."

"Yes sir, mister Oliver sir."

I rather liked that it didn't bother me not knowing the boy's name as he clearly knew mine. I had never had such sharp response to my requests.

The bitter brew burned at me. I conjured a chilling blast and slurped the frosty bitterness which satisfied something deep inside me.

The boy found something else to do.

"A man's drink, frosted bitter tea," Jatham opined. "And quite the air of command you've acquired.

I puffed out my chest.

"I wonder what made you so rude to your helpless friend."

"That boy is far from helpless." I slurped a bit more of my tea. "He takes what he needs, he outruns the bigger boys."

"True. Why then do you usually insist on buying food for him and his friends to steal?"

"I have a right to refuse such things."

Jatham sat down in front of me. "Then why do you let them do it, as a rule?"

"I suppose," I said, brushing the smudges from my glasses with a cloth, "That this boy is usually very polite."

"Today he didn't even get the chance to be polite."

"I was well within my rights."

Jatham puffed at his pipe. "You would have been within your rights to have called the guard, yet you never have."

"I simply didn't feel like indulging him."


"Why do you suppose that is, that today you felt so disposed?"

The answer lay in my lap and I blushed. "I suppose that I didn't purge the essences very effectively."

"Why do you suppose that is?"

"It felt good for a change, to be the important one." I placed my elbows on the table. "Does that make me corrupted?"

Jatham laughed. "They're not going to induct you into Mollard's team any time soon."

"What then? This isn't me!" I looked both ways. "Though, I must confess…"

"You very much like it. And the truth is you deserve that dignity."

"Then I am doomed to join Mollard?"

Jatham pinched my cheek. "Don't be such a simpleton. Unless you think carrying a cleaner made"I know very your friend–what was her name?"

"Sigrun? No, don't you say anything bad about Sigrun."

"Wouldn't dream of it. Or her Aunt and Uncle, themselves in their day very deadly."

"I know little of them."

"Know that they were sharp and hard. And that was part of everything you adore about them."

"But now I am full of hate. She will not want me around."

"Do you think it was easy to let that boy live?"

The boy, Perrin. Dust had cursed the urgan boy to a slumber, for him to kill. I only knew my complicity–my hand in the making of his magic dust of choking and sneezing.

"It took all her will." Jatham brushed something away. "Or the urgan sorcerer that had murdered her Aunt and Uncle. You think it easy to turn away from the sleeping bodies of those who murdered your family."

"But I am possessed."

"A trace. Sicrun was completely infused. Inspired."

I grabbed my face. I could not fathom. "I don't know if I can…"

"Well not yet."

Jatham seemed entirely too full of himself–he was wearing his beard today–leaning back in his seat like some kind of magistrate. "You think you know everything."

"I know more than I should, my boy," they said, smiling at my pique. "Professing to become a wizard, I've learned that the sum of all known knowledge is a scarf."

I harrumphed, wondering if I didn't have better things to do than debate with Jatham while we went quietly mad.

"It is as deep as a veil and far more easily seen through. Something you well know, present spirits notwithstanding."

I did. Jatham had never seemed so silly, but as I tugged at the threads of truth I noticed he had always layered clear thought beneath a red and green jester's cloak of the ridiculous. The difference rested between us–I reached up to clean my glasses.

He pulled out a book in some foreign language, with a suspicious lack of illuminations.

He waited.

"My boy, you know well how to read this. Look at the pictures."

I glared for a moment–seeing neither recognizable words nor illustrations– until I caught his gaze. But of course, this was not natural text. As if reading, I gazed past the glyphs, looking for the meaning in my daydreams.

My hand went about burying seeds in a sconce.

"I suppose we feed the soil because it earned our respect."

My stomach jumped in protest at the accusation.

A mocking half smile twisted Jatham's usually sweet face.

The insolent sneer felt oddly reassuring. I shook my head.

He turned the page, and … the markings runed to me of Collen, of giving him a winter coat stolen from my Father's dusty closets.

That bully boy Collen deserved a shovel in his face rather than a gift.

"It's not what he deserves, rather what you intend to plant."

"Dust isn't wrong about Perrin, though. He's nasty, always breaking pots and windows."

"Yes, Perrin's behavior isn't thorga, is it?"

Of course not. 'Thorga' denotes human in Perrin's language–a slur meaning 'glassmaker.' It doesn't sound so bad to humans, doesn't capture how our creations bedevil their rugged minds.

"I think you're beginning to see, aren't you my boy?" He sat back rather pompously. "How and why there is no point to doing anything, because it hasn't been done yet."

Sure, something needed to be done. But he didn't understand. "I'm not a leader. Nobody listens to me."

"Do you know how many centuries the birds sang before Mozart wrote his symphonies?"

I had read how the birds corrected the mistakes in the musician's ideas–they did not sing to teach us, though teach us they did. Meanwhile, those who practice the arcane–even those like me, who find their authority in a bottle of fireberry wine–learn to be ever more careful with their language. Even more than the aristocratic trueborn, magicians tune our words in the knowledge that something is listening. But speaking to people could not be the same, could it?

Jatham closed the book, bringing me back to the world. "There is a spell I want you to do. Nikklau's list."

"Another child's game?"

He closed off his pipe and tapped the ashes into a container. "A game? A refreshment. Possibly the most vital spell you will ever wield."

"Sharing toys can't be all that important."

Jatham put away his pipe. "Funny. This depends on how you define the word toy."

Oh, you know–toys. Your dresses and beards and robes and that pipe. All these ridiculous things we carry about–all of them, unimportant. "Well, if this list is important I'll go learn it."

***

Nikklau's List.

Not surprisingly, the spell didn't offer a list but required me to compose one, a list of all the people who least deserved a reward. And another of the people who deserved a boon.

On the dark list I put myself–I had been careless with the masks, and insolent to Jatham–and Mollard, and Collen. I didn't dare to list Dust, as he seemed… above me, somehow. I could think of nobody who belonged on the list of good people, which made me wonder about whether I had actually cleared the demons from the masks. I guess there was Sigrun, but she–like Dust–seemed somehow above. I put my father on the nice list, because that's what a boy is supposed to do, and because he had let Fihvyx into the college despite her obviously-not-human ears.

Then I took Fihvyx's quill–this would make the spell much easier–and invoked the spirit of Nikklau.

On the list of naughties, Nikklau marked out my name. Underneath my father's name, he wrote, "relieved of the dusty blue coat." And underneath Collen, he wrote "Dusty blue coat." It added the name of Mollard's chief servant, Dianin, and offered, "Relieve her of one hug." The quill traced the name of Dust and Sigrun, wrote things I could do for them–but without ink, I could not read these things.

The quill settled into its place.

I kept looking at my name scribbled out–did I belong on the other list, or perhaps–no, this wasn't for the self. More likely that.

I groaned. Father would never wear that coat, I knew–it had several moth holes and a general out-of-fashion-ness. I could take it and wear it and let Collen steal it.

I realized that I would be very uncomfortable returning to home, and researched a spell of protection against cold.

It took only a few minutes to find one, as the winters here in Balthispeare had always been harsh. The spell was subtle and squirmy and would take a bit to prepare. It might be easier to cast them here–

This is where I remembered the crumbly black lumps of enchanted stuff I had broken down before talking to Jatham. They would hold the spell for weeks, maybe months–certainly long enough to get home.

It took me three bowls of sand to cast the spell from the instructions; this would not be one I would use often. The sun descended into the horizon and the color faded to the same crusty black as the lumps. But aside from being a major headache the formula worked like a charm.

I sneaked into my father's closets. The thing flopped around even on my oversized frame, but Collen was a touch bigger (and often wore stolen clothes too large for him.)

I sneaked down to the food hall, stepping on the tails of Dad's coat.

Dianin stood at the table, taking the plates from Mollard's midnight snack, sniffling and wiping away a tear. "Now where are you going all dressed up?"

My cheeks burned. "This is my dad's coat, and I will need it for my walk."

She blinked. "I haven't seen anybody wear that style in… I daresay, you were not even born as yet. It looks fine on you."

I rushed forward to hug her.

She coughed in surprise and hugged me back before pushing me away, blushing and hiding her smile.

Not needing to embarrass her further, or ask her to cover for me as I had on Nikklau's Night, I nodded and pushed out the door.

I had no idea how to find Collen, in this city–the bully boys always found me, not the other way around. I sighed in frustration.

A noise as someone snuck behind the stairwell in the snow.

"You there, I'm looking for Collen."

"I'll lead you there, for a penny and a farthing."

"I haven't a one today."

The boy puffed out his chest. "Well why am I going to help you then?" He kicked a show-dusted rock and left.

Moments later a smaller boy with a black eye said, "I can lead you to him."

"What's the use? I haven't anything to pay you."

"You want him for some reason. I'm trusting he won't like it." The boy shrugged, and pointed to his eye. "All I need, if ya let the lug live, your silence."

I leaned in, "I don't even know your name."

"Come on, he's a deep sleeper even in these-kind nights." The boy led me up one alley and down another, places I worried I would never be able to retrace, and pointed me to one in particular. "You know, he likes to sneak up on people and tenderize them, Oll. So don't feel bad about what you're about to do."

That made me sad and a little guilty. As the boy disappeared into the night, I wondered if I was wrong going on a mission of mercy for this one.

There he sat, curled up under a crate like Sigrun had done her first day in town.

I walked to him, truly wondering if I should beat him or give him the gift, till I saw the boy there.

Snow in his hair, his face pinched, shivering in his sleep.

I snuck one lump of magic clay into each of his dirty paws, and watched the relief in his face as the shivers died down.

I smelled the peculiar mesquite of Jatham's pipe, but we were alone, just me, and Collen, and the two moons.

I took off my Dad's jacket and laid it on him, beginning to shiver more out of fear than the cold.

Then I turned to walk home.

Jatham's voice cut through the night. "You put him on the naughty list. Why?"

"Even Collen deserves a warm place to sleep."

Jatham handed me another lump of clay, that warded off the worst of the chill. "Two magic items and a jacket. You think you might be overdoing it?"

I nodded. "I don't know. I do feel…so much lighter."

Jatham hugged me to him as we headed for the college dormitory. "What are we going to do with you?"

I didn't yet know about mother would celebrate the decision to toss the ratty old jacket with a new one. Or wherher Collen would let Leopold keep half of his own breakfast, saving the boy from pickpocketing an angry highwayman.

All I knew was the crisp, clean air carried the sweet scent of my tiny deed adding Nikklau's perfume to the smog of our fair city. As I shivered in the chill air—Jatham did not charge our lumps so well—I felt better than I had. Stronger, surer knowing that while Nikklau had guided me I had followed.