The Rogue

“Liar!” he shrieked. “I know you have it. You keep some to wean people off it. Give it to me!” His hands became claws and he hurled himself at her.

She caught his wrists and halted his charge with a gentle pressure of magic against his chest. He was already agitated enough without her adding to his desperation by wrapping him in magical force. She could see the flash of green cloth in the corner of her eye as Healers further down the corridor, having heard his outcry, hurried to deal with him.

Before long the man’s arms had been seized by two Healers and they began half dragging, half guiding him back down the corridor. A third Healer remained, and as she looked up at the man she felt her heart lift in surprised recognition.

“Dorrien!”

The man who smiled back at her was a few years older and tanned from plenty of hours spent in the sun. Rothen’s son was the local Healer for a small town at the edge of the southern mountains, where he lived with his wife and children. A long time ago, when she was still a novice, he had come to the Guild for a visit and a friendship had started between them – a friendship that could have become a romance. But he’d had to return to his village and her to her studies. Then I fell in love with Akkarin, and after he died I could not contemplate being with anyone else. Dorrien had stayed in Imardin to help with the recovery after the Ichani Invasion, but his village had never stopped being his true home, and he eventually returned to it. He’d married a local woman and had two daughters.

“Yes, I’m back,” Dorrien said. “A short visit this time.” He glanced at the drug-crazed man. “Am I right in guessing the cause of his problem is something called roet?”

Sonea sighed. “You are.”

“It’s the reason I’m here. A couple of young men in my village returned from market a few months back with it. By the time they’d used what they’d bought, they’d grown reliant on it. I’d like advice on how to treat them.”

She looked at him closely. Unlike Healers in the city, he was under no obligation to avoid “wasting” his magic on treating the drug. Had he tried to use Healing magic to rid the young men of their habit and failed, as she had with most of the patients she’d secretly treated?

“Come with me,” she said, then turned and unlocked the storeroom. As he stepped inside she followed, shutting the door behind her. He glanced around the room, eyebrows raised, but took the seat Cery had been sitting in without comment. She settled on the chair she had just vacated.

“Did you try to Heal them?” she asked.

“Yes.” Dorrien described how the young men had come to him for help, realising belatedly that they couldn’t afford a roet habit, and embarrassed to find they’d been caught up in a vice of the city. He’d searched with his Healing senses for the source of the problem in their bodies, and Healed it, as Sonea had done with the patients she had worked with. And, as she had, he’d had varying success. One of the brothers had been cured, the other still craved the drug.

“I’ve had the same result,” she told him. “I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s possible to Heal some people and not others.”

He nodded. “So what do you advise for those that aren’t?”

“They shouldn’t use the drug again, in case the effect gets stronger. Some of my patients say keeping busy helps them ignore the cravings. Some drink. But not in small quantities – they say too little weakens their resolve to avoid rot.”

“Rot?”

“It’s the drug’s nickname on the streets.”

Dorrien grimaced. “I gather it’s an appropriate one.” He frowned and looked at her thoughtfully. “If we can’t Heal away other people’s addiction, can we Heal away our own? Not that I have a roet addiction,” he added, smiling faintly.

Sonea answered his smile with a grim one of her own. “That’s a question I’ve also been seeking the answer to, but with far less success. So far I haven’t found one roet-using magician willing to be examined. I’ve questioned a few, but that’s not going to produce the evidence I need.”

“You need for what?”

“To convince the Guild this is a serious problem. Skellin’s plan to enslave magicians with roet could have been successful – could still be successful.”

Leaning back in his chair, Dorrien considered that. He shook his head. “Magicians have been blackmailed and bought by other means before. Why is this any different?”

“Perhaps only in the scale of the problem. That’s why it needs more investigation. What percentage of magicians could be affected by roet? Are the ones not affected going to become addicts if they continue using the drug? Just how much does it alter thought patterns and behaviour?”

Dorrien nodded. “What is your guess? How big do you think the problem to be?”

Sonea hesitated as Black Magician Kallen came to mind. If Cery was right, and Anyi had seen the magician buying roet, the problem could be very big indeed. But she did not want to reveal what she knew until she was certain Kallen was using roet and she had proof that roet was as big a problem as she suspected. He might have been buying it for someone else. If she claimed he was an addict incorrectly she’d look a fool, and if she revealed it before she had proven that roet was dangerous to magicians then it would look like she was making a petty fuss about nothing.

Oh, but I wish I could tell someone. She had not told Rothen. He would want to do something immediately. He did not like it that Kallen treated her as if she couldn’t be trusted. Rothen was always urging her to put Kallen under as much scrutiny as he put her under. So would Dorrien.

“I don’t know,” she replied, sighing.

Ironically, the one person she thought she could probably tell and trust to remain silent was Regin, the magician who had helped her find Lorandra. Ironic that the novice I once hated for making my life a torture is now a magician I’d trust. He understood the importance of timing. Though she had met with Regin to discuss the search for Skellin, so far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to mention Kallen.

Perhaps I’m even more afraid that Regin won’t believe me, and I’ll make a complete fool of myself. She smiled wryly. No matter how much I tell myself we are not novices and deadly enemies any more, I can’t shake the suspicion that he’ll use any weakness against me. It’s ridiculous. He’s proven that he can keep a secret. He’s been nothing but supportive.

But he often did not make it to their meetings, or arrived late and was distracted. She suspected he had lost interest in the search for Skellin. Perhaps he felt that tracking down the rogue magician Thief was an impossible task. It had certainly begun to feel that way.

With Cery forced into hiding, and his people unable to find any sign of Skellin, she was not sure how they could find the rogue – aside from pulling the city apart brick by brick, and the king would never agree to that.

The Foodhall was, as always, noisy with the clatter of cutlery on crockery and the voices of novices. Lilia let out an unheard sigh and stopped trying to hear what her companions were discussing. Instead she let her gaze move slowly across the room.

The interior was a strange mix of sophistication and simplicity, the decorative and the practical. The windows and walls were as finely crafted and decorated as most other large rooms in the University, but the furniture was solid, simple and robust. It was as if someone had removed the polished, carved chairs and table in the grand dining room of the house she had grown up in, and replaced them with the solid wooden table and bench seats from the kitchens.

The occupants of the Foodhall were as varied a mix. Novices from the most powerful Houses to those born of beggars on the dirtiest streets of the city ate here. When Lilia had first started magic lessons, she had wondered why the snooties had continued to eat their meals in the Foodhall when they were rich enough to have their own cooks. The answer was that they didn’t have time to leave the grounds each day to dine with their families – and they weren’t supposed to leave without permission anyway.

She suspected there was a feeling of territorial pride at work as well. The snooties had been eating in the Foodhall for centuries. The lowies were the newcomers. The Foodhall had been the scene of many a prank between the lowies and snooties. Lilia had never been a part of either. Though she had never said it aloud, she was from the upper end of the lowie group. Her family were servants for a family belonging to a House of reasonable political