As above, so below, was a precept taught to Mercurii boys on the first day of Magic Theory class: that heavenly bodies moved in lockstep with earthly ones, and invisible bonds wove together the whole of existence in a rhythmic dance. Ash remembered the day of that lesson clearly, twelve years later. He remembered the simple illustration Professor Vipond had drawn on the chalkboard depicting a scatter of five-pointed stars at the top, adjacent hexagons representing the subatomic fabric of everything at the bottom, and dozens of vertical lines connecting the two. That moment had stuck with him clearly all these years, because he remembered thinking, even at the tender age of six, that some part of the story was being left out. Some things between cosmic intention and material manifestation were demonstrably out of sync.
Like himself. Ashton Grenville didn’t belong in his own body.
He measured out the first of the premixed concoctions in a beaker—a half-pint. Portioned and added in thirteen grains of aurichalcum. Two-and-a-half pennyweights of powdered arum-lily.
Exact ratios were key. So was sequence.
You must be ever vigilant against your inborn nature.
It was Dad’s favorite admonishment. One Ash had heard so many times over the years that, in his head, it had become a silent mantra.
You must extinguish all trace of what you innately are.
Three-eighths pint of the second concoction, measured out in a second beaker, then added to the first.
The reaction gave off a pungent cloud.
Three-fourths pennyweight of adamantine. A half-dram of quicksilver.
The liquid started to bubble and froth.
“You’re certain it’s the correct formula?” came Scipio Grenville’s scar-throated voice.
Ash looked up from his task, caught sight of his own face in his dresser mirror: a porcelain mask. Dad behind him, a pile of ravaged flesh in a smoking jacket, occupying his mahogany wheelchair by the towering window, parked in a pillar of harsh orange sunlight. “I researched it thoroughly. You ask me that almost every morning. Why would my answer change?”
“Spare me your lip, child. You know as well as I do it’s not working as it should.”
“I haven’t grown hips or breasts.”
“You’re small and weak. Your voice hasn’t dropped. A few more years without better results and folk are sure to start asking questions.”
“I’m a late bloomer, probably. Some people are.”
Scipio grunted. “I don’t want to have to resort to glamors, illusion. The risk of discovery’s too great.”
“I’ve gotten far enough as I am.”
“The farther you rise, the farther you may fall. This promotion, this assignment to lead a critical investigation—these are opportunities you must not squander.”
Ash’s hand twitched. He set down a vial too hard, clinking it loudly against the tray. “When in my life have I ever squandered an opportunity? I’ve made opportunities where there were none.”
“Yet you remain a humble Frater in the halls of the Black Pyramid. The veils of the deeper mysteries are closed to you. Accomplishments you have; I can hardly deny you’ve exceeded my expectations, despite your disadvantage. But accomplishments, intellect, erudition are not all that’s required. You lack a man’s presence. You lack a man’s cunning. You lack a man’s will to power. Do you think Bram Baptiste lacks those things? Or any of the other young men who are your competitors?”
Ash twirled a glass rod through the finished elixir. Downed it in one gulp. It had a bitter taste. “You measure me by a different standard due to a technicality of my birth.”
“I beg your pardon, child?”
Ash knew by the look in Dad’s eyes he’d strayed onto thin ice. But having come this far for once, he felt too charged to turn back. “I’m the youngest Martial Magus in the history of the order. I’m the first Grenville to achieve recognition from the council in over a century. I’ve brought unprecedented honor to our house. If the Black Pyramid doesn’t value those things—if you don’t value those things—the failure isn’t mine.”
Scipio traced his scarred fingers over a goetian circle engraved on the arm of his chair. Barked an Enochian summons.
The empty beaker hit the floor. Shattered.
Ash’s skull exploded in pain, struck hard by his own hand.
He stumbled, braced himself against the dresser, overturning more labware. Alien laughter ricocheted through his brain—a nonsensical gibbering, too familiar.
“I dislike your implications, child,” Scipio growled.
Ash felt his body straighten. In the mirror, saw his own hands lift to wrap around his throat. His own face, glasses askew, wearing a weird tear-streaked smile.
Burn, boy, burn! cackled the imp—the only human words it knew.
“Beg my forgiveness, now,” his father warned. “Or I’ll have Creuch do worse.”
Ash was too pale—always hated how red his face got.
“Forgive me”—hated the smallness of his voice.
“I said beg.”
Ash’s hands clamped tight, clenching shut his windpipe.
The daemon hadn’t taken control of his legs. Ash staggered over to Scipio’s chair; sank to his knees; blinked through dizzying explosions of stars.
His breathless lips formed the word: Please.
Scipio’s fingers again crossed the circle. Another Enochian phrase.
The daemon released Ash.
Ash dropped forward onto his palms, sucked in huge gulps of air. Zoned out on the intricate patterns that formed the edge of the medallion on the Persian rug underneath him.
“Bitch,” Scipio slurred. “Will you never learn respect?”
Ash remained motionless, kept his head down. Waited for the creak-creak, creak-creak of his father’s wheelchair to dwindle in the corridor.
Alone—at last—
His fingers curled. Violently raked the fibers of the rug.
He pressed his forehead hard against the carpet, ground his teeth. Breathed harshly in. Out. In. Out.
Spent all his strength suppressing an urge to scream.
Several seconds later, with effort, relaxed his left hand; laid it flat against the rug.
A soft glow emanated from the sleeve of his sweatshirt.
He tuned his mana channels. Closed his eyes.
Opened his inner eye.
Beneath his palm:
Residues of life.
The rug itself—amino acids of fibroin, the silk of worms; plant dyes, indigo and larkspur; insect resin.
And among the fibers: skin flakes, hairs—yet more proteins, more amino acids.
Carbon; nitrogen; hydrogen; oxygen, in variate combinations.
Ash kept breathing, sank slowly to the depths of inhibitory gnosis; stretched his body flat, rested his cheek against the rug, let patterns flow through him at lightning speed—tallying, mapping. He’d discovered years ago there were decades’ worth of DNA in this rug. His own. Dad’s. Miles the tiger cat’s—Miles who had used to sit on Ash’s shoulders when Ash was a kid. Miles whom Dad had gotten rid of to punish Ash for some transgression Ash could no longer remember. Non-relative human DNA—some visitors’, probably mostly the Ostiaries’ who staffed the manor.
And deep, deep between the fibers, another set of DNA—not Ash’s father’s, but just as similar to Ash’s own.
She was long gone. But her pattern dwelled on in the dust.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
At the age of nine, Ash had started teaching himself piano.
Even though Dad had never allowed him to own a piano. Frivolous, Scipio had declared it. A pointless distraction.
What he had allowed Ash was a good laptop—a device Scipio didn’t at all understand, but which Ash had convinced his father would help the two of them gain the means to maintain their all-important deception, not to mention allow Ash to acquire skills from vast—and, among the magic community, largely untapped—public stores of mundane knowledge, giving him an advantage over the other Mercurii Neophyte boys. The study of alchemy, Ash had explained to Dad, had stagnated for centuries due to lack of input from the mundane sciences. By integrating mundane knowledge with his research and practice, Ash might well become a pioneer in the field.
The Internet wasn’t accessible from within Arcadia’s gates—nexuses, and magic in general, had a way of wreaking havoc with wireless signals—so Ash had convinced Scipio to have the Ostiary chauffeur drop him off at the Rowan University library two days a week, for seven years, till Ash had gotten old enough to drive there himself. At the library, he’d memorized and downloaded as much information as he could, about chemistry and physics and a host of other subjects.
One of which was piano.
Ash had taught himself where on a piano each of its keys was located. The names of the notes they generated, the exact frequencies. How the pedals were used to sustain or soften notes. He had learned the average height and size, the typical material makeup, the pressure required to depress a piano’s keys.
And, when he’d been alone in his room—Dad off napping in his chambers, or in the household library rereading the same anthologized penny dreadfuls over and over—Ash had pulled out the desk chair in his bedroom and sat; spread his hands, plunged himself into a deep inhibitory gnosis, and played.
He had shut out all sensory input from his surroundings. His inner eye open, his channels active, he had simulated the texture, the location, the size, the resistance of the interactive parts of a piano. The frequencies and amplitudes of the sounds it would yield.
When he’d gotten old enough to drive himself—and once Dad had started to slack off on commanding Creuch to monitor Ash every second he spent outside Arcadia’s walls, seeing as controlling the imp sapped a lot of Dad’s mana—Ash had wandered over to the College of Performing Arts one day after an hour or two at the library. Walked into the Wilson Music Hall like he belonged there; located an unoccupied practice room, sat down on the bench in front of the little Yamaha upright, and played “La campanella,” without missing a note.
A passing professor had knocked on the door, asked Ash who his teacher was. Ash had confessed he wasn’t a student. The professor had urged him to apply to the music performance program. Ash had feigned interest—walked away feeling strangely sad, like he’d just parted ways forever with an alternate version of himself bound for another, brighter life.
What Dad had never understood, would, could never understand, was that everything was connected. As above, so below—every educated mage in the West knew the saying by heart. By and large, they all put the emphasis on astrology: the notion that the stars in the heavens governed human fate on Earth below.
It had always struck Ash that the true meaning of the phrase, its full scope, was lost on most.
It wasn’t earth and sky alone.
Everything was connected.
Ash’s study of mundane science had reaffirmed what he’d always known by way of some visceral awareness: that things weren’t things at all. Not on a subatomic level.
They were vibrations.
And vibrations—like those of the strings of a piano—were music.
Music was literally the thing the universe was made of.
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