The Inquisitor's Apprentice

The flames began to catch and swell, licking their way up the backdrop. As Sacha watched, he realized that this was just a diversion — Morgaunt was rearranging the chessboard so that Wolf would have no choice but to make the moves he’d planned for him. But it didn’t matter. The theater was a firetrap, and it was packed to the gills. Any decent human being would race to save the innocent bystanders from the flames — even if it meant leaving Morgaunt free to commit some other crime. There was only one thing to do, even if it was exactly what Morgaunt wanted them to do.

He raised his head, cupped his hands around his lips, and shouted, “Fire!”

At first no one noticed. Then the band stopped playing. Then Sacha saw the white circle of a woman’s face staring up at them. Her mouth opened, and her eyes grew wide with terror, and she started screaming.

It took a while for the people around her to react. The audience was still too focused on Houdini’s mortal struggle. But now the licking flames were beginning to eat at the backdrop. A few more people caught sight of them, and then a few more. Gradually they stopped worrying that Houdini was about to drown and started worrying that they were about to get burned alive.

Onstage, a fireman grabbed the ax next to the Water Torture Cell and smashed the plate glass, freeing Houdini — and several hundred gallons of water, which actually came in pretty handy under the circumstances. Houdini rose to the occasion. And so did Edison, in his own decidedly odd way. In seconds, Houdini had cast off his manacles and begun pushing, dragging, and carrying people toward the exits. Edison, on the other hand, had eyes only for his etherograph. Instead of running for the exit like everyone else, he tried to save his precious prototype.

All the while, Sacha and Antonio were making the slow, painful climb down to safety. Antonio reached the bottom first and helped Sacha down the last few rungs. Finally they were both standing on solid ground. They turned to find their way out through the rising flames — and found themselves face-to-face with a burly fireman in full battle dress.

“This is no place for kids!” the man exclaimed. “Let’s get you out of here!”

Sacha went limp with relief, half collapsing against Antonio. But then, right before their horrified eyes, the man changed.

There was nothing you could put your finger on, no clear moment when the man stopped being himself and became someone else. But Sacha could see the magic flaring and spitting around him. There was no mistaking that steely blue flame — or the hard-as-steel voice that emerged the next time the fireman opened his mouth.

“Come along, boys!” Morgaunt sounded almost cheerful — and Sacha didn’t even want to think about what would make a man like Morgaunt cheerful. “I’ve got a job I need your help for.”

He marched off, and Sacha and Antonio were forced to follow him, though Sacha couldn’t have said for his life whether it was magic that compelled them or sheer physical terror.

“Is that Morgaunt?” Antonio whispered.

“Yes.”

“And he’s the one who summoned the dybbuk?”

Sacha nodded.

“Then I guess it’s him I should have been shooting at.”

“Where is that gun anyway?” Sacha couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. “It could really come in handy right about now.”

Antonio looked shamefaced. “My mother took it. She wanted me to stay home and cry like a girl instead of doing what a proper son should.”

“And right she was,” Morgaunt interrupted, shocking both of them. “Your father was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got caught in the machinery. Only a fool would throw away his future to avenge an accident.”

Morgaunt stopped speaking to clear his throat. It was painful to hear his voice coming from the fireman’s body. It forced its way out of the man like a grindstone relentlessly pulverizing every obstacle in its path.

“Ah,” Morgaunt said as they turned a corner, “there he is.”

They had found Thomas Edison, alone and defenseless, desperately trying to drag his etherograph to safety.

“Can I help you with that, Mr. Edison?” Morgaunt’s voice sounded enough like the fireman’s voice to fool anyone who didn’t know better, and he was already reaching out to relieve Edison of the unwieldy etherograph.

“Careful!” Edison told him. “Grab hold of it here, at the base. and watch out for—”

But Edison never got to say what he wanted him to watch out for. As he bent over the machine, Morgaunt raised the fireman’s ax and hammered the flat of it down on the back of Edison’s head, knocking him senseless.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” Morgaunt said in a satisfied tone. “That man talks enough to kill a horse.”

He kicked Edison just hard enough to make sure he was unconscious. Then he hefted the inventor over his shoulder and started walking back into the heart of the fire. Sacha’s body followed against its will, and he could see Antonio moving jerkily beside him.

When they got back to the stage, Morgaunt dumped Edison in a heap. With a careless flick of his hand, he forced the two boys to sit beside Edison. And then he took Antonio’s knife and sat down to wait as comfortably as if he were in his own library.

The fire raged around them. They were at the heart of the conflagration, pinned between the canvas backdrop and the heavy red velvet curtain. The curtain was a tattered fringe of blackened rags by now, and the backdrop was a translucent web of fire that shed smoldering cinders onto the stage with every puff of overheated air. Sacha’s lungs felt like they were on fire too. He wondered how long it would be before the smoke lulled him into a final, helpless sleep.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked, more because he felt compelled to say something than because he expected an answer.

Morgaunt grinned. Or rather the fireman’s mouth twisted into a cruel grimace that looked utterly alien on his honest Irish face. “Inquisitor Wolf, who else?”

“What if he doesn’t come?”

“He will. He’ll come charging to your rescue just like the little do-gooder he is. And if he doesn’t we can just sit here until we burn to death. It’s all the same to me. Actually, I think it could be quite interesting. Haven’t you always wondered what it feels like to be burned alive? No? But then of course you’ll be dead when it’s over, so you won’t remember it. I imagine that will make the experience educational.”

“But what’s the point of killing me if you can’t frame me for killing Edison and use that to run Wolf out of the Inquisitors Division?”

For the first time ever, Sacha saw a look of surprise on Morgaunt’s face.

“But killing you is the point,” Morgaunt answered when he’d regained his composure. “You mean you really haven’t guessed? Has Wolf kept you in the dark that completely?”

Sacha stared, open-mouthed, as Morgaunt continued.

“From the moment I heard about the boy who could see witches, I knew you were a danger to me. And when I saw your Inquisitorial Quotient test, I knew you were even more dangerous than I’d imagined. A Mage-Inquisitor who can actually see magic? That would be a disaster worse than ten Maximillian Wolfs! No, Sacha, from the moment you went to work for Wolf, there were only two possible outcomes: I would control you, or I would kill you.”

Morgaunt paused. he looked down at Antonio’s knife, still in his hands, and seemed surprised to see it there. Then he gave a rueful shrug of the fireman’s broad shoulders, set the knife down on the floor beside him, and turned back to Sacha.

“I admit, I was quite taken with the idea of using your dybbuk to bring Wolf down. I even hoped your dybbuk might be a sort of dry run for doing one of Wolf. But as you’ve had reason to discover, the dybbuks of Mages aren’t exactly the most biddable of magical beings. I thought yours would be more manageable since you haven’t come into your powers yet. My mistake.” Morgaunt gave Sacha a peeved look that would have been almost funny under ordinary circumstances. “I should have known what I was in for the minute the wretched creature stole your mother’s locket.”