Duality by Rowan Erlking (classic books for 13 year olds txt) 📕

Omoni noticed that too and frowned. He looked to the red haired woman. “Did you?”

She snorted. Her arms were folded across her chest, looking smug. “I wouldn’t bother.”

The bell still didn’t ring.

Omoni looked to the two Perri performers. They merely shook their heads, speaking with thick Perri accents. “We no cut a up people. Messy.”

With a chill, Bernum hunched down lower. He knew there was something familiar about those two Perri performers. They were sand dancers—a nomadic assassin clan that had maintained an intense hate towards magicians for centuries that he had heard about from the teachers. Occasionally those people had made attempts to assassinate magicians from his school, it being so close to the border there. But a sand dancer so deep into Maldos was unheard of. Peering back up at all the circus performers, Bernum realized that he had just fallen in among the largest gathering of the most unsavory of all unsavory characters. He had to get himself and Malkia out of there, fast.

“Maybe your other magician did it,” hinted the red haired woman.

Bernum held his breath, his heart rapidly thundering with terror. Those low…

Omoni snorted. “No. I already checked with him. He’s clean—”

“He’s a magician, and a good liar,” the woman replied as if biting out the words. “Who’s to say he doesn’t know a spell that can confound that bell of yours?”

Stiffening, Omoni replied, “Because he is not that good of an actor. I know he’s hiding something. But he was honestly surprised when he heard the steward had gone missing. So I will ask you one last time—”

“I bet he knew that witch you killed,” the KiTai warriess snapped back.

The merchant halted in his words, his eyes flickering dangerously towards Bernum’s chest.

Nodding, the red haired woman continued. “That’s right. Don’t you know anything about him?”

Omoni exhaled, thinking. “You think he knew that witch?”

The performers nodded.

“He did tell me he was sent here to cause me trouble,” Omoni murmured to himself. “He recognized the bell rather quickly, and he did seem interested in my wife.”

“Who wouldn’t be,” murmured one of the performers. But someone smacked him on the side of his head.

Merchant Omoni turned, gesturing to the guards to follow him. “This isn’t over. I still think you people had something to do with my missing steward rather than that demon-ghost, but I will look onto that so-called magician intern. I think he and I need another little chat.”

Bernum ducked quickly behind the hay bales, watching Omoni and his men march out of the tent. He braced his back against the pile, trying to keep the sound of his breathing down, even as the performers talked among themselves. The local workers were the only ones Bernum understood, though that was enough.

“So it was the ghost that got the steward after all,” one said.

Another hissed low. “Don’t be stupid! Of course it was that blue-eye! He sucked the man dry and the others scattered his dust all over the city. No one will ever find him. No proof.”

Sucked him dry? The steward was dust? Bernum swallowed down the scream that was rising in his chest. He had been that close to being dust also. The Blue Lord had not lied. He was not a Sky Child—they at least left bodily remains of a corpse…unlike Cordrils.

Cordrils…

Bernum blinked. White demons. Of course. It wasn’t a ghost roaming the city. It was a white skinned, white haired energy-sucking demon. But why did Malkia summon a Cordril?

He heard several other local workers cross the hay-strewn ground to the tent flap. They went out, murmuring that they ought to stick together for safety. Bernum crawled closer to the tent flap where he peered over the blocks again. Most of the foreign performers had split up. Bernum could see his chest, but he shook his head after considering crossing the distance to retrieve it. They shouldn’t know that he was there.

So, creeping backwards, Bernum made his way to the tent flap and crawled out. When he was outdoors, Bernum looked around at the street lamps and the crowd that was departing into their carriages to go home. He bowed to one then summoned his chest with a quick recitation and a stomp of his foot. The chest didn’t bump along at all this time. It lurched up from the ground as the stone and earth parted for it, sealing up whole once it arrived. Bernum lifted one side by the handle as he bowed to another staring passerby who eyed the muck splashes on Bernum’s performing robe. The young magician started down the road, going home.

In the night, the sounds of people turning in, horse carts rattling away, cats meowing on high walls and dogs barking at them; Bernum made his way with heavier steps. He didn’t quite expect to feel so weighted by the things he had overheard, but he found it almost impossible to climb one hill before he cursed aloud at how badly things had gone—and after just three nights in Jonori City. Stealth was what he needed, but those wretched foreigners were ruining everything. How could he wait for that demon to take care of Omoni now that his cover was about to be blown?

“There it goes!”

Booted feet tramped over the cobblestone, getting nearer. Bernum looked up, turning to see what was going on.

Five white-suited constables charged around the corner. Their hand-guns were high, though some had their nightsticks in their fists. And in the distance, leaping from one embankment wall to the top of a parked cart then onto another cart that was traveling down the road, Bernum saw a white figure of a man—tall with shining blue eyes. The demon glanced over at them as the police fired shots into the air, calling out like crows. Bernum staggered back with stares as the group charged up the road after the demon. And the demon leapt off that second cart, climbing up onto a low fence. He then scrambling up onto a flat rooftop. He was coming closer, giving Bernum a focused look at his shape, though not at much else. Strapped on its back Bernum saw an enormous two-handed broadsword, a gun holster at its hip and even a long bow strapped across his chest, though there was also a small crossbow on him. Whatever the demon really was, he was armed like a hunter.

“Hey, you! Magician! Get out of the way or help us!” one of the constables shouted at Bernum.

Bernum took another step back, pressing himself to the wall and pulling his chest with him. The blue-eyed demon paused, looking straight at him, even narrowing his eyes with inspection—but then he ducked as the constables shot at him. Bernum saw the straw-light hair of the demon flap up as the demon lighted off the roof, going over the other side to get away.

A Cordril. He had seen an actual Cordril. It seemed even more amazing than that Blue Lord in the circus.

The police shouted after the demon, chasing into that yard. Some called to cut it off in another street. Bernum watched, panting and peering after them. He shook his head. With a turn, he continued up the hill, heaving his magic chest off the walk once more. As soon as he reached the crest, he rested again, peering after the echoing sounds of the chase, the cracks of gunfire getting more distant.

Bernum heaved his chest up yet again and dragged it along the road until he was nearly three-fourths of the way to his apartment. Leaning his back on the wall once more to rest, he kept tipping over—falling straight into darkness. There were hands—one slapping right over his mouth so that he couldn’t scream.

“Get your hands off me!” Bernum kicked out, “Demon! Let go! I’m not your enemy for pity’s sake!”

“That’s nice to hear, but I’m no demon.”

Someone uncovered a lantern in the pitch-blackness. Bernum blinked at the glow that illuminated a foreign face with coffee colored eyes. The man looked like he could be Hann. His eyes were that almond shape and his hair was a fair shade of brown, sticking up like he had styled it with cream to make it clump. But he was dressed in a flamboyant rainbow-trimmed suit with his chest hair exposed in an open, low cut vest. A small monkey was perched on his shoulder.

“You…” Bernum shoved back from him. The back of his scalp straightway smacked against the stone they seemed to be encased in. “You’re the…”

“Wizard,” the man said with a mocking smile. He then stuck out his hand. “My name is Aldovio. Aldovio the Amazing.”

Bernum just stared at the wizard’s hand until he took it, giving it one shake. “Bernum.”

Aldovio’s smirk curled up more. “Bernum what?”

Rolling his eyes, Bernum replied, “Bernum the Pharmacist’s son.”

“Is that all?” the wizard asked, sounding dismayed. He turned from Bernum, picking up a plate of food he had been eating from. There was a small travel chest in the small cave with a rolled-up down comforter sitting next to it. A short folding stool sat next to that. “You Maldos are so unimaginative. My full name is Aldovio de la Morovina. I have traveled the world and heard a variety of appellations, the most imaginative coming from the southernmost countries, though in Jatte it is tradition to give their children three given names before tagging on a rather boring work title. The most unusual names tend to come from Perri though. They are rather enchanting, really.”

He stabbed a piece of meat from off the plate and stuffed it into his mouth. Bernum just stared at him before he set down his magic chest to sit on.

“Look, I was just heading home,” Bernum said, “What do you want with me?”

The wizard looked up. “I want you to do a job for me.”

Rolling his eyes, Bernum peered around at the darkness, wondering if there was a way out. The place seemed to have been hollowed out like a rabbit hole, only there was no tunnel. “A job. Great. Well, your pals already tried to hire me to get their documents—and I will tell you the same thing I told them when the spell didn’t work.” Bernum leaned in. “The documents and the chest they are in, are obviously stuck in a room that has been be-spelled. There is no way for me to take them out by magic.”

That only got him another smirk from the wizard who then stabbed a small boiled potato off the plate. He stuffed it into his mouth. While chewing to one side, the wizard nodded to himself. “Yes. I understand that. But you see, you must realize that by now you are…how do those in Brein Amon phrase it? under the gun. I’m sure you know that Omoni will soon figure out you are related in some way to the woman he wants to keep. That gives you very little time to act.”

Bernum stiffened. “You have been talking with them.”

The wizard smiled broader. “Of course.”

He continued to eat, humming a little to himself in enjoyment, though he passed one piece for his monkey. It clasped the chunk in its tiny hands, gnawing