Fifteen minutes passed, and it became apparent to Rawlins that he had failed. He considered trying again—some desperate move would be required to touch the man’s skin. But no…he was certain that the clay compound had made contact, which meant that there must have been a mistake or something defective with the ritual. He was now merely lobbing pebbles against a brick wall in the hope it would come down. He pressed on, more out of a social need to justify his appearance here, but he could feel the meeting winding down to its necessary conclusion.
As Rawlins wrapped up a point about the pro-social potential for arcane mechanical research, Greywall steepled his fingers and leaned forward. “Interesting. You’ve given me a lot to think about as we consider Max’s case. I thank you for your time.” He stood up, clearly signaling an end to their conversation, and Rawlins had no choice but to do the same.
But then Greywall paused, standing behind his desk, as if he had forgotten what he was doing. Rawlins was puzzled, expecting to be escorted to the door, but then he saw on Greywall’s face an expression of blank openness. His eyes, which had been pinched with skepticism a moment earlier, were wide and glassy. He did not speak.
It worked.Somehow the effect had taken hold on a significantlygreater delay than he had intended. Perhaps a significant miscalculation? How could he be off by an order of magnitude?
Time dilation.The mechanism he had built into the ritual, which would (hopefully) prolong its impact, must also be having a meta-effect on the elements of the ritual itself: The delay he’d calculated had been dilated and significantly extended. It was a painful oversight—one that Ellsbeth might have helped him anticipate, if they could have worked on it together. But at the moment, it didn’t matter. His window of opportunity was narrow.
“Let’s sit back down and continue our conversation,” Rawlins said. Greywall did so immediately. His irascibility had evaporated.
Rawlins cut straight to the point. “Maxwell Keene deserves to be paroled.” Greywall nodded, offering no disagreement, and Rawlins went on. “Paroling Maxwell Keene will help send the right message to the community. You will grant Maxwell Keene his parole, and it will be seen as a sign of your wisdom and lenience.”
Greywall gave a vaguehmmm,taking this in. “You will grant parole to Maxwell Keene,” Rawlins said firmly, needing to leave no room for uncertainty. “Now tell me what you think about Keene’s case, in your own words.”
“Seems like Keene is a good candidate for parole,” Greywall said, sounding like an intelligent but slightly absentminded man putting the thought together at that moment, one word at a time, like railroad tracks being laid out.
“That’s right,” Rawlins said. “And I’m not influencing your decision on this. You’ve decided, on your own, to parole Maxwell Keene.”
“Yes, I think so,” Greywall said. He fell silent for a moment, then blinked rapidly as the effect of the ritual wore off.
“Are you all right?” Rawlins asked. “You look like you got a little lightheaded when you stood up.”
“I think I did,” Greywall murmured, the edge of certainty gone from his voice.
“Thank you for your time,” Rawlins said, and headed out the door.
As he strode back to the car, Rawlins felt the buzz of exhilaration, making his ears hot despite the chill in the air. But it was not the clearheaded rush of triumph; even though his spell had worked, it was unclear if the period of susceptibility he had created was sufficient for hisideas to infiltrate. And the time-dilation slow release was totally untested; it had impacted the delay mechanism, but that was a mistake, and he had no clue if it was influencing the primary obscuration. Now he would have to wait a full week to learn the outcome of the parole hearing.
The more troubling question: Was it possible that Greywall might suspect him? The man was innately suspicious of arcane mechanicals, and was aware that Rawlins had come here to influence his decision. Could he put it together? The awkward handshake, the strange conversation, the (probable) gap in his memory. Rawlins imagined arriving home to find the police searching his house, tossing his papers; for god’s sake, they wouldn’t even need to search, the written ritual and materials to do it were right out in the open in his study.
He was exploding with the need to talk to someone, to try to sort out whether his anxieties were legitimate fears or not. But there was only one person he conceivablycouldtalk to. One person who would understand the arcane mechanicals involved, of course. One person who might understandhim,and his reasons for doingso.
But when he glanced at his phone, considering sending a text to ask if she could talk, he was reminded that she was already ignoring him. And he realized that even if Ellsbeth had once been someone he could be honest with, she wasn’t anymore. She was keeping things from him, which meant he had no choice but to keep things from her. And it wasn’t only that he couldn’t trust her; he couldn’t trusthimselfwhen he was around her. Desire clouded his decision making; he wouldn’t know where to draw the line. If he told her anything, he’d have to tell hereverything.And that was not only unwise, it was impossible, and unfair to ask her to take thaton.
This was his secret, and his burden to bear alone.
Ellsbeth
She hadn’t planned on going to the wine-and-cheese lecture at the graduate department, but then she looked at her phone and saw that it was four o’clock in the afternoon, and Ellsbeth realized that she hadn’t brushed her teeth that morning or showered in two days. If she went any longer without forcing herself to interact with the outside world, it might become altogether impossible.
She examined herself in the mirror before she got into the shower. Her eyes were watery and small in her swollen face. Her skin was sallow and pale, with recently discovered divots of cellulite clinging to her upper thighs. Her hair hung lank, several months past when it needed to be cut.
She had been tempted to text Rawlins, or better yet just show up at his house. It was almost a physical impulse, to get away from her computer screen and dank apartment, from the take-out containers building into a precarious tower in her small trash can, away from thoughts of obscuration and from scanned photos that had long since blurred in her mind into meaningless strips of light and darkness. She wanted physical exertion. She wanted a hand around her throat, a palm leaving the skin of her ass tingling and red. She wanted to leave her body completely, to disappear into the control of someone else. She wanted Rawlins.
But she didn’t want him to see her like this. Studying herself in the bathroom mirror, Ellsbeth tried to imagine the dazzling girl Rawlinsmight have seen in her, the flirtatiousingénuequick with repartee and shiny with confidence. She had been able to trick him for a time, masking her ordinariness with youth and cleverness and the novelty of something new, but as she looked at her naked form in the stark overhead lighting, she knew it was only a matter of time before his attitude toward her evolved into indifference or, worse, pity.
The second floor of thearcane graduate department was where the school’s endowment became visible. The carpet was clean and plush, the bookshelves lining the lecture hall were thick cherrywood, and the hors d’oeuvres were being passed by university employees in pressed white linen uniforms. The lecture was taking place in the room they called the Library, although the leather-bound volumes lining every wall seemed to have never been touched.
Several rows of chairs were already set up, but Lennox hadn’t arrived. Neither had Rawlins, and Ellsbeth realized it was possible he might not come at all, a thought that shocked her with a sting of disappointment. She hadn’t known until then how much her motivation to come to this lecture had been to see him, to make eye contact with him across a crowded room.
Ellsbeth took the glossy program she was handed when she walked into the Library mostly so she would have something to do with her hands; by the time she was settled into an aisle seat, the program was already mangled and folded a dozen different ways.Margaret Lennox (Harvard BS, Oxford MA, DAS) is the dean of the College of the Arcane Arts at Newlyn University. Prior to her position at Newlyn, she was the youngest-ever tenured professor in the arcane mechanicals department at Yale University. Selected publications:Perpetual Motion(Oxford University Press), “Conjuration Rituals as Means of Survival” (New England Journal of Mechanicals), “The Economic Impact of Arcane Conjuration” (NEJoAA), “Metallurgy as a Means of Standardizing Ritualistic Strength” (California Review). Rhodes Scholar, Percy Fellow, Taskosis Fellow, American League of the Arcane Gold Medal, President’s Council on Higher Education.
“The real question is what he’s going to do now.”
A few other members of the cohort were gathered near the bay window to Ellsbeth’s left, standing with their heads huddled together. Gracie, Rachel, and Mary-Abigail. “I mean, it’s not like he’s ever going to get a job. Hekilledpeople,” Mary-Abigail said.
“Well, come on,” Gracie said, “It was an accident. It wasn’t likemurder-murder.And you’re pretending they didn’t convict him in the first place because there was a witch hunt happening against arcane stuff in general. It’s not like that was Max’s fault. It was part of the zeitgeist. Magic maligned. He was a scapegoat.”
