I secretly envied Ms Asia, left to sleep comfortably in the morning, her business with the academy wrapped up yesterday, while Charlotte and I had to depart into the somber, post-rain morning for another road trip to Grimons. To balance out the unfair shares, I could breathe easier on the way, not having to mind my words or trying not to see the jiggle of my aunt's chest at every bump on the road.
Able to give my full attention to the ride, I began to see the upsides of automobiles. Maybe the General wasn't deluded, and they were actually a pretty great invention? At least when you had a qualified driver who knew the difference between brake and accelerator.
I crossed my arms, leaned back on the leather bench and rested my eyes, the steady, proven-reliable beat of the engine in my ears.
"From today on, the applicants are divided by department," Charlotte told me from across the cabin. "The Sword course and General course applicants will undertake fitness tests, while the Magic course has an exam on arcane theory. Nothing too advanced. I believe the topics covered are all familiar to you. I'm sorry that I can't give you more detailed hints, but my own ability is middling at best, and I never studied magic academically."
I glanced at the maid, surprised by the unsolicited reveal.
Until now, Charlotte had been very tight-lipped with personal information and never cast any spells in my sight.
"You're a caster? By your body language, I assumed you were a close-range specialist."
Charlotte smiled wryly. "You could tell?"
"It was clear you weren't an ordinary maid from day one."
"I was advised not to disclose my abilities, but you're a smart girl, Ms Hope. I figured you'd see through me before long. In that case, trying to hide my identity would send the wrong kind of signal. It's my personal wish to be an ally to you, not an enemy."
"Were you the General's choice then, or did the Bureau nominate you?"
The maid's smile turned more forced.
"So you already considered CI-involvement too…?"
The Bureau of Central Intelligence gathered information on foreign threats under the Ministry of War, which also had jurisdiction over the Royal Army.
In public, anyway. In truth, the CI didn't answer to the common people or their political representatives, but solely to the Royal House of Calidea. To support his majesty's policies, they weren't above dirty work like assassinations, blackmail, propaganda, media censorship, or smear campaigns.
"The King has never liked the RA or Mysterium having exclusive control of me," I said. "The only reason he hasn't locked me up in his cellar is that it would scare the rest of the country into an uprising. Even now, he'd never let me go anywhere far without his own man in—or a woman. And there weren't other real candidates."
Charlotte smiled. A smile so rehearsed you could've mistaken it as genuine, if not for the faintest shadow of dread in her eyes.
"I'm impressed. You're more aware of the political landscape than I expected."
"How could I not be, having been a political game piece for most of my life?"
A weapon effective against your enemies was just as effective against your friends. Half the Kingdom wanted me as their private pawn, and the other half wanted me dead, so that nobody could use me. If the General, as one of the Seven Heroes, hadn't asserted custody over me three years ago, who knew where I'd be now.
I didn't even want to think about it.
"Forgive me, Ms Hope," the fake maid said. "I'm not at liberty to disclose my exact standing or mission contents. It's nothing personal, but I'm sure you understand that people who don't do their job adequately in this industry can be easily replaced. Instead of a maid, you might have a butler as your aide, come tomorrow."
No thanks.
"You don't need to tell me anything," I said. "I can guess enough only by looking. You have martial prowess and knowledge of magic. So you can't be a novice or a standard field agent. Maybe a section boss. Maybe even a department head. But probably nobody too high up the ladder. Since the more people have, the more they're afraid to lose it, their life most of all, and the higher-ups have this funny idea that I could randomly kill anybody who displeases me. After all the futile assassination attempts in the past, they know I'm sensitive to hostile intent, so they chose somebody unthreatening, apt at playing harmless. Somebody young and not too jaded yet. From that characterization, we can also infer the likely reason why you accepted the job."
"How?"
"Young people don't end up as intelligence operatives in this country by choice. You had to fall first. You had to fall all the way to the bottom, and then fight your way back up to prove your worth. You read my file and felt related to my experiences. Because you're young, you still have a human heart, which insists on seeing me as an ordinary teenage girl, despite everything they say about me. A child isolated by her power, traumatized by the horrors of war, and sorely in need of empathetic human contact. So if only you play nice and build a steady bond of trust, you may gain a degree of control over my behavior and steer me towards the interests of the Royal House over the General and the RA. Well, how close did I get?"
For a time, Charlotte sat stiff and didn't make a sound.
"You're…You're mistaken," she finally said, shaken by a pit in the path.
"Am I?"
"I wasn't the initial choice for the mission. I volunteered."
"Why?"
"Because I honestly believed I could help you."
"Help me?"
"I first learned about you four years ago," she explained, hands clenched on the frills of her apron. "Frankly, I thought what was done to you was monstrous. Unforgivable. All the documents described you like a machine instead of a human being. A lump of functions responding to stimulation—nothing conscious and alive. It wouldn't be weird to hate all life and mankind for being so dehumanized. I couldn't see your path ending in anything but a tragedy. But I wanted a chance to prove to you that not all of us are like that. I wanted to show you there are more reasons to protect this country and this world than there are to destroy them. And, if possible, I wish you to find true freedom somewhere down the line. Life as a free person instead of a weapon."
"Why bother?" I asked. "I was only a harrowing report to you. Whatever I began as, I'm a monster who has killed thousands of people by now. Anyone else would've dismissed me as a lost cause. That the best way to save me was to put me out of my misery. So what made you decide this case was worth risking your life and career?"
"Because you're human, Hope," she answered. "That's all I needed to know. Whoever you were, you didn't deserve your fate. I'm even more sure of it now, after meeting you in person. You're not a monster. Working as a weapon was something they forced on you. Regardless of our past and deeds, we people always have the option to choose a better path. You have that choice too. At least, you should have."
I listened to the automobile rumble along the coarse country road.
The skies were gray and heavy. It might rain today or tomorrow. A sigh escaped me.
"You're too naive, Charlotte. You've made a very fundamental mistake in your assessment."
"And what is that?"
"My past plays no role in what I am, and I'm not a special case; no mage is human. Viewing us the same as ordinary people only because we outwards resemble each other is a critical mistake. Wizards are all monsters of cold logic. Spellcasting engines without heart or tears. The information we must process to wield our abilities robs us of the spare capacity for common human emotions. The reason I'm not full of hatred for mankind is simply that hatred holds no longer any sway over me. Everything about me, my feelings, memories, and sense of self, is enslaved to the magic. Not because I was engineered to be this way, but because this is the destination of all who reach far enough in their pursuit of the cosmic secrets. Ascension is impossible for people who can't transcend the burden of having a heart. They're overwhelmed by the immensity of the truth and self-destruct."
"Do you honestly believe that?" Charlotte asked. "Are you telling me all the feelings you've shown these past weeks, your behavior since you came into that house, it was all only—what, an act? Misdirection?"
"Neither. The person you've seen is both true and false."
"How does that make any sense?"
There was no way an uninitiated could understand. Talking about it was a waste of time.
But we had time to kill before our arrival at the academy, so I decided to humor the maid.
"Since we're on the way to a theory exam, let's talk theory. What we call thaumaturgy, or magecraft, is essentially self-deception made into a science. The magic won't happen unless the caster firmly believes it can happen. Naturally, you wouldn't begin an action unless you expected to get a result. So everything done, all these ceremonies and incantations and rituals and studies and catalysts and curves and graphs and bells and whistles, are, in essence, about reinforcing your faith in what experience and common sense insist is impossible. The deeper you immerse yourself in the details, the greater the level of verisimilitude, and thus the better the effect."
The maid stared at me, stunned.
"Are you serious?"
"The line between imagination and reality is knowingly blurred until it can no longer be discerned and becomes unimportant, even for the mage herself. But in the process, personal experience as a whole inevitably falls apart. Whatever feelings I express are genuine, but when I recognize them as 'feelings that I express,' with their own paths and causes, they are turned into a contrivance through cognition. This state is called dissociation, the first step to mastery. When you've taken control of even your minute subconscious processes and made them subordinate to your technique, what is left? All that you are exists only because you observe and allow it by choice. Then what is true and what is false? A meaningless question, when you have the power to make dreams themselves real."
"That's…"
"Crazy? Of course. How could you embody even a small sliver of infinity, as a finite being, and remain sane? I have only one piece of advice for you, Charlotte: do me a favor and don't try to understand me."
No more needed be said of arcane theory today.