Archive of Our Own

“Through here?”

“Yes, but—wait, Expositor, no, wait—”

“Wait for what, exactly?” Beau could feel herself shivering. It wasn’t cold.

There was a time when Beau would have pushed right past Astrid, but that damned mage had tears in her eyes.

Beau was sure of rather few things in her life. The fact that Astrid Becke, Archmage of Civil Influence, Volstrucker, protege-turned-usurper of Trent Ikithon did not cry was one of them. Not where people could see her, at least. But here she was, welling up like… well, like a normal person who just very nearly lost a friend. It gave her pause. Just a little.

“He is very fragile right now,” Astrid whispered. “You’re not going to like it when you see him. But you can’t fly off the handle. He needs…”

“A friend,” Beau said. “I can do that.”

“More than that,” said Astrid. “He is a danger to himself and others. Until that changes, you are his decision maker. You cannot trust anything he says. You cannot give him what he wants. You have a responsibility—”

“I am well aware of my responsibility, and I want to see him. Now.”

Astrid stared at Beau for a long moment, nodded once, and stepped aside to let her pass. Beau pushed open the infirmary doors and strode down the hallway. Astrid hadn’t given her the room number, but the last door on the left had a sign that warned NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT HEAD CLERIC’S AUTHORIZATION posted outside and muffled voices within.

Beau wanted to kick the door off its hinges, but that would probably qualify as ‘flying off the handle.’ She knocked.

The elderly healer who opened the door was thankfully one who had met her before—one good thing today—and he waved her into the room without challenge. It was bright, illuminated by what first appeared to be an oil lamp but actually seemed to have a durable Light enchantment inside of it, sterile white paint on nearly every flat surface, and two small brass-framed beds against the walls. Only one was occupied.

And there he was. He looked terrible, but he was safe and alive and surely that meant everything else could be figured out eventually.

Caleb, for his part, wept quietly. He twisted his wrists, held fast as they were in thick leather bands shackled to the rails of the bed. There was an angry red slash across his throat, fresh curative arcana shimmering at the edges of it, where it was still gradually cooling to raised pink scar tissue.

“What are we doing here, Caleb?” It came out half question, half lament.

“I don’t know.” Caleb’s voice was raspy, like maybe he’d damaged his vocal cords. His feet were unrestrained, and he writhed in place.

“Gonna have to do better than that.”

“Let me go,” he whined. “You have to make them let me go.”

“I… don’t think that’s a good idea just now,” Beau said. “I’m sorry.”

Caleb cried. It was still uncannily silent, but no less inconsolable. Like nothing she’d ever seen from him before, even on the really bad days. Beau could hardly stand to look at him. She turned to the cleric instead.

“Tell me what happened.”

If the old healer took her order as an insult, he didn’t let on. “We got to him just in time. A student walked in on him, and had the quick thinking to Dimension Door him here. It was terribly close, Expositor. Another thirty seconds and it might have been too late. In his current state I don’t think he would have returned even if we had diamonds at the ready.”

“Hm. Would you… would you give us a minute?” The cleric hesitated. “I won’t open the restraints, I just want to talk. I’ll call for you if anything changes.”

“Very well. I won’t be far,” he said, and bowed before leaving the room.

Beau slipped a hand into Caleb’s. It was cold and clammy and his fingernails were blue. “I’m not mad at you. Promise. I’m just trying to understand. Just… tell me what you were thinking?”

Caleb sniffled. “I don’t know.”

“You know, there was a time when I would have said, fine. If you really feel like you can’t be here anymore, do what you gotta do. Not my place to stop you. But now? How are we supposed to explain this to your students? What am I supposed to tell the others?” Beau checked that the cleric was gone, but leaned closer and lowered her voice anyway. “What am I supposed to tell Essek?”

"I don’t know,” Caleb said again.

Beau blinked against her own tears. “I’m not ready to bury you, asshole.” Shit, maybe she was a little mad at him. But Caleb just cried harder at that, so she grabbed a clean cloth from a basket on the nightstand and dried his face.

“Here’s the deal,” Beau said after a while. “Your Academy people are a little nervous because without knowing what upset you so much in the first place, they have no idea whether you’re going to suddenly get the urge to do it again. And as much as I hate to say it, they’re probably right. So you’re gonna stay here for the time being. We’ll figure this out. You won’t be alone—there’s healers, there’s Astrid, I’m here, and Yasha’s on her way. If anyone’s mean to you and I’m not around to see it, you just tell me and I’ll beat their ass.”

“...Okay.”

“It’s going to be okay, Caleb. But we could probably get you home and out of the cuffs faster if you could at least try to tell me why you out of the blue decided you needed to kill yourself.”

Caleb squirmed some more. “I don’t know. Really. I just… could not do anything else.”

“Caleb…”

It was a start, at least, but before she could say so, there was a soft knock on the door. It gently opened to admit Astrid and the healer.

“A note was found in his office,” Astrid said. “You may want to have a look.”

Beau turned back to Caleb. “Did you write something? Before?” He nodded. “How long before? Right that minute? Huh… Is it okay if I read it?”

Caleb shrugged, best as he could lying on his back with his wrists shackled at his sides.

“I’d like to see the rest of the office too, if that’s all right,” Beau said. “Someone needs to stay with him in the meantime. …And get him a blanket or something, he’s fucking freezing.”

The elderly cleric cleared his throat. “Of course, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea to leave him without your… personal support. He only just calmed down, and just barely at that. You’ll stress him when you leave.”

Caleb didn’t say anything, but his fingers tightened around hers. She squeezed his shoulder with her free hand.

“I won’t be gone long, I promise. Maybe I’ll be back before Yasha even gets here. We’re going to figure this out.”

Caleb was quiet for a long moment. “...If you say so.” He released her hand.

Beau had never considered herself a sentimental person, but fuck, it hurt to leave the room. Even so, relief crashed over her when the door shut behind her and she started down the hallway with Astrid, on her way to solve a problem. Finally a purpose. Finally a plan. This was the part she was good at.

…But now she felt guilty for feeling good about leaving Caleb.

“So,” Beau said, pushing that thought deliberately aside. “There’s no reason you couldn’t just bring the note here, so either you’re fishing for me to tell you shit he said or something else happened. Which is it?”

“Neither. There is a perfectly good reason I did not parade a faculty member’s blood-spattered suicide note through the halls of this institution. I can think of several, actually.”

“...Whatever.” They walked in silence for only a moment.

“...So, did he say anything useful?”

“Gods fucking damn it, Astrid.” Beau sighed. “Not really. He was kind of still a little too freaked out to talk. The restraints aren’t helping—I know, trust me, I get why, but still—I don’t think he’s going to say anything terribly enlightening until he’s had a chance to calm down. Which might be a while.”

There was a guard posted outside Caleb’s office, which was locked and further secured with an arcane ward that Astrid waved away as they entered. Beau took a deep breath as the door opened, realizing about a half a second early that she could smell the blood even from the doorway.

And there really was a lot of blood. A fuckton, if you wanted to be technical about it. If she hadn’t personally seen him alive, Beau would have thought Caleb really had died here. The huge dark red stain covering most of the surface of his desk also splattered the floor in front of it and there were even a few flecks on the opposite wall. It felt a certain way to break the threshold to the room, like what Caleb had done was purely theoretical outside these four walls, but the sight of the office painted with his lifeblood made the horrible reality tangible.

There were still papers stacked neatly at the corners of the desk, marred as they were. The bookshelves were neat as ever, containers of Caleb’s valuable spell components undisturbed. There was an inkwell with a formerly-white, now mostly red quill sitting in it. A half empty bottle of clear liquid, neatly corked, and a glass that had blood spray on the side wall and clear residue sitting at the bottom, smelling faintly of cheap spirits. The chair hadn’t even been pulled back from the desk, since the student evacuated Caleb via magic.

No signs of struggle, no plausible deniability. Caleb Widogast cut his own throat sitting in this chair, at this desk.

The note, as promised, lay on the desk, stuck to its surface with half-dried blood. It all fit on the one page, with Caleb’s signature at the bottom. No question it really was his signature—it had been a process to develop it after he decided to keep the name. Caleb never said as much, but he seemed a little proud of the script he’d settled on. It was neat and elegant and intentional, not unlike the gestures he used to pull magic from the ether. It was the signature that sealed his witness statements against Trent Ikithon, proved his ownership of the deed to his house, and marked his promise to the students of Soltryce when he accepted his employment contract. And now it was at the bottom of a suicide note.

To those it may concern:

There is no easy way to explain myself, but I shall try. I cannot continue in the manner that I have. All my adult life I have been a liar, a criminal, and terribly selfish. People far more generous than I have tried to see some type of good in me, and I convinced them that they did. They invested their time and energy in me, and as a result I have been afforded a position of trust, wealth, and privilege. But the truth is that I do not deserve it. I never have and I never will. I thought I could learn to live with the guilt of everything I have done, every innocent person I have harmed, but all I did was bury it in lies.

No doubt some of you will feel hurt by my decision, and for that, I am sorry. Please understand that this was not my intention. If I could stand to endure and spare you this pain for one more day, I would. I simply cannot. The person you are grieving for did not really exist. You wanted to think the best of me, and I constructed a false image of myself so that you could. If anything, I hope you will take heart in knowing that I am finally freed from the weight of that false identity.

I cannot undo the harm I have inflicted upon this world, but I can prevent myself from causing more of it.

Caleb Widogast
Bren Ermendrud

Fuck.

“I thought it certainly looked like his handwriting,” Astrid said quietly. “But you would know better.”

It was his. Smudged a little in places where the parchment absorbed the blood—the ink must have still been fresh—but unmistakably Caleb’s. He even signed his birth name, only a little smaller below his chosen name. Beau swallowed the knot in her throat.

“Something had to have happened,” she said. “Two days ago, he was at my fucking house going on and on about the classes he wanted to teach next year, and how he’s been working on a new spell, and how much he loves the kids. And look at the ink—he literally wrote this less than a minute before he picked up the knife. That’s not normal.”

“Since when has Bren ever been normal?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Something else wasn’t normal about the note. There—just along the corner—there was another sheet of parchment underneath it. Beau picked at the edge of the note with a thumbnail. The two pages separated with some effort. If she was careful enough, she might be able to pull up the note entirely.

“Is all of this exactly how he left it?”

“The weapon was removed, for security’s sake,” Astrid said. “But otherwise, yes.”

Beau pulled a little harder on the note, until it peeled away from the page underneath. A student’s Transmutation homework, half graded. The stack of parchment to the right had more homework papers. To the left, a smaller stack of assignments had margin notes in Caleb’s handwriting. He must have been right in the middle of working on them.

“Something happened to him,” Beau said again. “Unless there’s something particularly upsetting about… Alana Wright… and her grasp of magic bullshit.”

“There are those who joke about needing reprieve from students’ atrocious renditions of even basic spellwork by any means available, but Bren has never been one of them,” said Astrid. “And anyway, Miss Wright’s work is quite good.” Indeed, as far as Beau could tell, all the feedback in the margin notes on Alana’s paper so far was positive.

“I want to speak with the student. And see the knife.”

“What exactly are you hoping to accomplish, Expositor?”

“Just trying to figure things out. It doesn’t make sense that he would up and kill himself in the middle of grading papers. He’s a gods-damned nerd, Astrid. He fucking loves grading papers. And even if he didn’t, there’s no clear reason for him to do what he did.”

“Being a ‘gods-damned nerd’ does not mean one always acts rationally. When does it ever make sense for a person to take their own life? Desperation isn’t a clear state of mind. I agree that something must have set him off, but we’re not going to know what it is unless he decides to tell us. And that’s assuming he even knows himself.”

“I still want to talk to the kid.”

“No.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Astrid crossed her arms. “The student in question was very deeply shaken by this afternoon’s events. They witnessed a teacher open his own jugular in front of them. I will not let you cause them further distress by dissecting their experience while you chase nonexistent rabbits.”

“It could be important,” Beau pressed. “I’ll be nice.”

“You are a great many things, Expositor Lionett, but I do not think ‘nice’ is a capability you have.”

“Fuck you.”

“Case in point.”

“Okay, level with me here. Why are you stonewalling?”

“This isn’t helping,” Astrid said. “I’m genuinely surprised at you. I didn’t think you’d leave his side. What are you going to do if you find what you’re looking for? Run back and interrogate him about it? And if he doesn’t want to talk to you about it, what then? Meanwhile, you’re going to pick at a student’s memory, perhaps accuse them of lying, and make enough noise that the whole school knows every intimate detail of this entire affair before sundown. Will you be satisfied then?”

Beau bit off her protest. Of course she didn’t mean to do any of that. But she also couldn’t honestly say she’d never gotten carried away or accidentally attracted more attention than she intended. “...What do you want me to do instead?”

“Take him home. Be there for him. Maybe it is us that is the problem. Soltryce, I mean. Being so close to multiple Assembly members, being in this place, surrounded by so many reminders of our own education all the time. I… unfortunately do not know how to help him when he is like this. I was not… present… for his recovery the first time he lost himself. And even then, that was different. I do not think a cleric could just… magic him well this time. But you and your friends saved him once. Perhaps you can do it again.”

Beau swiped gathering tears from her eyes. “Maybe. But almost every time he got stuck in a bad place, it was because something scared the shit out of him. Something happened that freaked him out so much he would shut down and not tell anyone about it, and just spiral until we figured out what it was—and yes, sometimes that involved backing him into a corner and making him talk. And with how abruptly this happened… I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I know why, and whether we have to worry about it happening again.”

“You may have some sleepless nights ahead of you, then.” Astrid fixed Beau with a long, searching look. “It’s Henry Fisher,” she said finally. “The witness.”

“Fuck a duck.”

“In so many words, yes, precisely.”

Henry Fisher was one of Trent’s last victims. It was a small miracle he’d decided to come back to Soltryce at all—none of the other kids from his cohort did—and an even bigger one that he’d done so well in his first two years post-Ikithon. He probably wouldn’t have made it without Caleb’s door always being open to him. Caleb’s early days of teaching had often involved staying long after the official end of his class or office hours, and Henry Fisher was the student most often seeking his advice. The two were close.

And if Henry was the one who saw Caleb take a knife to his own throat…

Oh no.

“Is he being watched right now?”

“Of course.”

“I still want to speak with him. I won’t… I’ll try not to make things any worse.”

“What are you hoping to learn?”

That… was a good question, actually. If Henry knew what had caused Caleb to suddenly become so upset he wanted to die, he probably would have mentioned it when he first brought Caleb to the infirmary. But maybe something had happened. Maybe Henry had a reason not to disclose everything right away. Maybe he hadn’t unexpectedly walked in on Caleb at all, but their conversation had taken a particularly distressing turn, and Caleb reached for his dagger without taking so much as a minute to calm down.

That would fit everything she knew so far, except that it didn’t sound like something Caleb would do at all, and it involved essentially accusing a deeply traumatized student of manslaughter. Probably a bad idea, all things considered, and it didn’t even feel likely to be true. If that were the case, when would he have had time to write the letter?

“...There’s a lot we still don’t know. It’s possible he noticed something that we can’t tell just by looking at the space,” she said finally.

“Very well. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

Beau let Astrid lead the way in silence for a while, mentally rehearsing what she would say to Henry. You don’t have to speak with me if you don’t want to. I’m trying to understand what happened so I can better help Caleb. Anything you can remember, even a detail that feels small, could be important. Can you walk me through what happened? She should probably fit something along the lines of it wasn’t your fault in there somewhere. She toyed with Caleb’s going to be okay, but of course she didn’t actually know if that was true. Something else still bothered her too, even beyond the unanswered questions of Caleb’s motivations.

“What would happen to Caleb if I wasn’t here?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m Caleb’s guardian right now. Your healers have to get my approval before they do anything to him. If he doesn’t get better on his own, I’ll be responsible for keeping him safe while I figure out what to do next. He had to sign something telling you to contact me if something like this happened.”

“Correct.”

“What would you do with him if he hadn’t done that? If there wasn’t anyone to call?”

Astrid’s expression went stony. “I… imagine he would have been transferred to Vergesson by now. The staff there are trained better than ours for this type of case. They have the manpower for round the clock monitoring. Don’t look at me like that. There are legitimate professionals at Vergesson. He’d probably be very unhappy, but at least he’d be safe.”

Beau scoffed. “Your definition of safe is very different from mine.”

“They kept him alive for a decade, in arguably worse condition than this. I know you don’t like the idea. But you’re mostly angry with our erstwhile teacher, not the facility itself, and he isn’t there anymore. He isn’t a slime mold just waiting to leach out of the walls.”

You sure about that? Beau wanted to say, but they had arrived, and it hardly felt like it mattered anyway. Bigger priorities. You don’t have to speak with me if you don’t want to. It wasn’t your fault. I’m trying to understand what happened so I can better help Caleb. Anything you can remember, even a detail that feels small, could be important. Can you walk me through what happened?

But before Beau could knock on the door, Yasha emerged from Caleb’s room. “Oh, you’re here already. Caleb wants to talk to you. And so does this healer guy.”

“Mr. Fisher will still be here in ten minutes,” Astrid said.

Beau changed course and returned to Caleb’s room. He seemed to have stopped crying (mostly, anyway) and looked slightly less pale, having warmed up a little, but still fidgeted uncomfortably in his restraints. They probably reminded him of any number of very bad memories. Maybe Astrid was right. Maybe being at Soltryce would always be bad for him.

Caleb swallowed. “I… do not feel like I want to die.”

“That’s good,” Beau said. “Better than before?”

“Yes. I’m not sure what brought on the feeling. A little too much hopelessness for one day, I suppose. It will not… I don’t think it will happen again.”

Beau sighed. “It’s a start, anyway. But gods damn it, Caleb, did you have to do it in front of the kid?”

“I regret that more than anything. That was a mistake. I would not have done it if I knew he would see. You can tell him that, if you haven’t already. Bad timing.”

“I kind of see it as good timing, but point taken.”

“How is Henry?”

“I was actually just about to find out,” Beau said. She turned to the healer. “This shouldn’t take too long. If Yasha stays, can we let Caleb have his hands?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Expositor. He’s improving, but—”

“As the current guardian of Caleb Widogast, I am asking you to release him right now.”

The healer crossed his arms. “If you are going to assume custody of him and take him home, of course. But as long as he is under my care he is my responsibility. And I believe that given his prodigious arcane talent, he remains a danger to himself and others at this time. So, as long as Professor Widogast stays here, the answer is no.”

Beau seethed, but held her tongue. Something about not flying off the handle, right? And for Caleb’s sake, she could behave, no matter how much she wanted to punch the lights out of this craven, self important—

Caleb cleared his throat. “I would like for you to take me home, Beauregard,” he said haltingly. “I am tired. I want to sleep.”

“Very soon,” Beau said. “There’s just a few things I want to check out. I promise it will only be a few minutes. Maybe half an hour, at most. I’m really sorry.”

“There is nothing to find.” Caleb’s voice cracked as tears welled in his eyes again. “I know you are looking for something to have everything make sense to you, but it won’t. You know as much as I do, and I can’t tell you why.”

“What’s a Por’co variable?”

“What?”

“The last thing you did before you wrote your suicide note was praise Alana Wright for recognizing that Por’co variables were a better element than Coramar coefficients for aligning glyphs in the Disintegrate spell. Why did you decide to kill yourself right after that?”

“This has nothing to do with any of my students.”

“Does it? Because you didn’t even finish reading her paper before you decided to off yourself, and managed to do it in front of Henry.”

“I thought you were not going to interrogate him,” Astrid grumbled.

Caleb was fully weeping again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just want to go home. It is nothing to do with Alana, I swear. Please take me home…”

Of all the ways for that conversation to go off the rails. Beau supposed she had only herself to blame. “Soon,” she said again. “Very, very soon. I promise.” And she tore herself away from the bedside before she could change her mind.

“Wait, Beauregard, don’t leave me here—Please don’t leave—”

The door shut behind Beau and the cleric, silencing Caleb’s protest.

Fuck.

“You wanted something,” Beau said.

The cleric awkwardly cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. Well. An inventory was done of the professor’s personal effects. I thought you might want it. I have the record for it, and everything is cleared for release to you whenever you are ready.”

Beau gave the list a once-over. Nothing unexpected. Caleb’s spellbook, component pouch, a small handful of multicolored buttons, a healing potion, a sending stone, his transmuter’s stone, a different lucky rock, a symbol to the Arch Heart, interestingly enough, and his damned fucking stupid non-magical dagger.

The same dinky little knife he’d been carrying around as a street beggar, staving off hypothermia with cantrips.

She didn’t even know he’d kept it all this time. Now that he was a wizard on similar footing to the Assembly itself, she’d assumed he didn’t need to carry even a simple blade anymore.

“You can give the stuff to Yasha, and we’ll hold onto it until Caleb’s ready for it,” she said. “And before you say anything, I know I fucked up in there, but also—that really didn’t sound like the Caleb I know.”

“Do you think he’s lying?”

“Not exactly… hmm. Was there anything in his system when you found him? Like, potion-wise? Anything that could make him act out of character?”

“There was alcohol on his breath, but he didn’t show any signs of poisoning or anything of the like. We can examine him more thoroughly if you’d like, just to be certain.”

“Please do. Call me if you learn anything.”

“Just one more thing,” the healer said, shifting uncomfortably. “With your permission, we could give him something. To make him sleep. We have potions—it’s safe, painless, easy to shake him out of. He won’t even dream. It might be the best thing for him at this point.”

“I mean… you can offer, but if he says no, then I do too. I don’t think he’ll want it. He doesn’t have the best track record with inpatient treatment and I would bet money he’ll prefer to stay aware of himself—even if it means being more uncomfortable,” Beau said. “You are not to force it on him or trick him into drinking it.”

“Understood.” The healer bowed and returned to Caleb.

Beau and Astrid regrouped, not before arguing again about the futility of the whole endeavor. Obviously the situation was weird and didn’t quite add up, but maybe Caleb was just confused and couldn’t explain things clearly. And technically, they had learned something from Beau pressing Caleb. It wasn’t like him to panic and plead when she cornered him like that. Every other time, he’d either answered her questions as frankly as he could, even if it meant he had to force the words out as he shook with fear, or else he would just shut down and not say anything. Even so, Beau promised not to do the same thing to Henry. What was she going to say to him anyway?

All too soon Beau had a miserable teenager in front of her. He was sitting on a cot with his legs crossed, not having bothered to take off his boots, much to the chagrin of the junior cleric left to watch him. Beau dismissed the cleric and found herself at a loss for words. “You, um… don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.”

“Good. Leave.”

“Wait, I—I’m trying to help Caleb.”

Henry stretched out on the cot, looking at the ceiling instead of at Beau. “You can let that asshole bleed out for all I care.”

For the love of all that was holy, unholy, and in between. If only it were socially acceptable to grab this little shit by the shoulders and shake sense into him. Beau pinched the bridge of her nose. “Henry, you literally saved his life. I know you’re upset with him, and if we’re being honest, I am too. But I don’t think you actually want him to die.”

Only silence.

“If it makes a difference, he says he’s very sorry and that he never meant for you to see him do that.”

Henry sat up. “Bullshit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He absolutely meant for me to see him. He knew I was coming. We had a scheduled meeting. And then he saw me, looked me in the eyes, and slashed his own throat.”

Beau started pacing. “Okay. Slow down. Slow down. Order of events: one, you and Caleb make an appointment, right? How long ago?”

Henry shrugged. “Last week?”

“Okay, okay… you show up. Is he normal when you get there?”

“No, he reeked of booze and had a dagger in his hands.”

“What happened then?”

“I mean, what the fuck do you say to that? I kinda panicked a little and stood there like an idiot, and he looked straight at me and, well, you know.”

“That’s it? He didn’t say anything?”

“Just one thing,” Henry said. “Right before, he said ‘forgive me.’ So… yeah. He knew what he was doing, he knew it was fucked up, he knew it would fuck me up, and he did it anyway. Therefore, fuck him, fuck the horse he rode in on, fuck you, fuck off.”

That certainly changed the analysis. Up to now she’d been working under the assumption that Henry walking in on Caleb was a coincidence. Caleb had said as much himself. But what did it mean?

Option one: It really was a coincidence. Caleb just got so wrapped up in whatever was bothering him that he forgot Henry was coming. That would probably make the most sense. But given how hastily the suicide note seemed to have been written, it didn’t feel like he would have had enough time to get so distracted. And anyway, Caleb didn’t forget things.

Option two: Caleb was somehow mind controlled. He couldn’t stop himself because someone else was driving. But the real Caleb was still in there somewhere, and he had just enough remaining volition to apologize. But who would have done that, and to what end? Where were they, and why didn’t Henry see them? How could they have overpowered Caleb, possibly among the ten or twenty strongest wizards in the world, without leaving the barest evidence of a struggle? Caleb would have mentioned something like that if he could, so if that was the case he’d obviously been prevented from speaking up. But that didn’t seem right either. He sounded a little off when she talked to him, but not like he was actively being influenced.

“...Are you just going to stand there like an idiot?”

“What? Oh. Uh, no. Thanks, Henry, you’ve given me a lot to think about. Try… try to get some rest.” Beau turned on her heel and left the room.

As Beau rejoined Astrid to go look at the dagger, a terrible option three occurred to her. Caleb was lying. He did know Henry would see him, but whatever his reasons were, he thought they were more important than sheltering Henry. Circled back around to the possibility that maybe he tried to kill himself because of Henry. But again, why? He loved that kid more than life itself. Beau didn’t think it was likely Caleb would have children of his own at this point in his life, but the students he mentored were the next best thing. He would bend over backwards to avoid hurting one of them, especially someone already exposed to the worst of the world in Trent Ikithon.

Astrid had to dispel something like three magical locks before using a regular key to open the box where the dagger was stored. Seemed like overkill, but Beau supposed evidence was evidence, and it was hard to fault the Academy for actually being responsible for once.

“We had someone identify the enchantment. It’s powerful, but fairly simple as bladed magical weapons go—the edge is about three times as sharp as a non-magical blade could take and maintain its integrity, and it’s got a spell increasing the lethality of first strikes. You see this kind of weapon among hunters, specialized military, and assassins, because it increases the chance of killing in a single blow.”

Beau felt her stomach flip. “Oh, fuck, Astrid, you need to sound the alarm and secure this entire campus, like, now, if not sooner. Caleb didn’t try to kill himself, he survived a murder attempt. This isn’t Caleb’s knife.”

“How do you know he didn’t buy a new one?”

“I… don’t. But he still has the old one. It was on his person when Henry brought him to the infirmary. And I’m leaning more and more towards this being spontaneous, I really, really don’t think he was planning this ahead of time. I think it’s way more likely someone wanted him dead and make it look like a suicide.”

“You’re forgetting one thing, Expositor. Bren admitted to cutting his own throat, and Henry Fisher saw him.”

Beau, already halfway out the door, stopped. “I don’t exactly have an explanation. I have a few ideas, none of them good. But we need to talk to Caleb again. And look. If I’m wrong, you activate the school’s defenses for nothing. Everyone gets a little tense for a few hours and then goes home. But if I’m right, you’re going to want to know exactly who is on campus, how they got here, if and how they left. And every second that passes is one where they either get further away and harder to track, or get closer to their next target, or realize that Caleb didn’t die and come back to try again.”

Astrid cast the Sending spell. “Headmaster, I have received reports of possible… intruders of unknown nature. Recommend taking measures to secure campus, account for all personnel, and search for trespassers.” A moment passed as she listened to the response. “He’s not happy at the lack of specificity, but he’ll do it.”

They hustled back to the infirmary. Caleb was awake, having refused the sleeping potion as expected. No trace of poison or alchemy had been found in his body, only alcohol. Beau found herself, not for the first time, agonizing over what she was going to say. Well, more about what she was going to do.

“Caleb… I need you to be honest with me,” Beau said. “I love you and I don’t want to see you hurt. Which is why I’m really fucking sorry about this.”

Beau jabbed her fingers into the hollow of Caleb’s collarbone before anyone could protest. She felt his skin pull a little with the force of the blow, stretching at the site of the recently healed injury, and he let out a cry of pain. He reflexively tried to bring up his hands to defend himself, yanking on the shackles instead. But Beau was watching his eyes—and his pupils widened just a little more than was natural in the brightly lit room, and she knew she’d struck true.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But now you can’t lie to me.”

“I have not lied.”

Beau’s heart sank. If she was wrong, she just hit him for nothing.

“Did you try to kill yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get the knife? I know it’s not yours.”

“I bought it specifically for the purpose.”

“From where?”

“Pumat Sol.”

“Astrid, would you please message Pumat and ask? Don’t look at me like that, will you just do it, please? Whatever, I’ll check on it later. …Okay, Caleb. Did you know Henry was coming to your office?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you set an appointment with him last week?”

“I guess I did. I must have forgotten.”

“You don’t forget anything, Caleb. Why this?”

“I don’t know, I got distracted. I was a little busy wanting to die.”

“Why did you want to kill yourself?”

“I want you to think about everything you know about me and ask yourself why I wouldn’t.”

Was it really that simple? All of Caleb’s old demons finally catching up with him, on a random weekday, in a place where he was safe and happy and doing work he cared about more than anything? No, that wasn’t possible. When Beau thought of everything she knew about Caleb, it told her that he’d been through a lot, but he had plenty left to fight for.

“This charade has gone on long enough,” Astrid said. “Either take him home to rest or leave him in peace.”

Beau paid her no mind. “I’m sorry for hitting you. But I think… I think your memory was tampered with. Maybe Henry’s, too. I’d like to have someone cast a spell on you to be sure. If I’m wrong, I drop it and we go home. If I’m right, we go from there.”

She watched Caleb’s face cycle through betrayal, pain, rage, worry, and what seemed to be a deep regret. He leaned back against his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut. Probably trying to think of a way to express what he was feeling without the nerve jab forcing him to overshare.

“I want… to know for sure,” he said finally. “Do it.”

Beau turned to the cleric. “I’ll pay for the diamond dust.”

“There’s something else I can do as well,” the cleric said. “I can link your mind to his. If the restorative spell does reveal a false memory, you will know exactly what it was without him needing to explain.”

“Caleb?”

Caleb’s brow furrowed. “Only you. Nobody else.”

Beau nodded to the cleric. “Go ahead.”

The whole room went silent while the healer worked. At the moment the mind link activated, Beau nearly fainted from the wave of stress emanating from Caleb’s brain.

Holy shit, Caleb.

Guilt bled through the blanket of Caleb’s emotions, and Beau tried to cut off any semblance of negativity he might be receiving from her. Meditation might suck but she’d see if it paid off now, she supposed. Caleb’s mind went quiet in the meantime, trying to focus on the light of the healer’s magic, pushing away fuzzy memories of fear, confusion, chains, cold stone. She held his hand and squeezed.

Something cracked, like if the sound of breaking glass were a feeling instead, and Beau found herself shunted into Caleb’s vision, seated behind the same desk she’d inspected maybe an hour before. He was grading papers, and she could recognize Alana Wright’s handwriting.

Henry Fisher scribbled glyphs in a notebook, frowning. “I just can’t figure it out,” he said.

Caleb looked up from his own work. Beau couldn’t decipher the arcane patterns on Henry’s paper, but she could feel that Caleb did, noting correct structure, workable connections, even flourishes in a couple of places. It wasn’t quite complete, but everything already there should function more or less okay. What’s more, the next piece was fairly basic, and Henry probably knew full well what kind of variable he needed.

“It looks like you’re on the right track to me,” Caleb said. No, the problem was different entirely, and a familiar wave of sorrow and regret flooded his mind. Caleb was pretty sure he knew exactly where Henry’s difficulty came from. He set his quill down in the inkwell. “Henry, I don’t think the spell is what you’re having trouble with.”

“...Trent wanted me to learn it.”

“If it bothers you, we can always pick out a different spell. Nothing says you have to learn anything in particular.”

Henry scrubbed a hand over his face. “I do want to learn this one, though. It fits perfectly into my capstone research. But every time I start writing…”

“...You think of him.” Henry didn’t answer, but Caleb knew he was right. He hated that it still felt like Ikithon’s shadow was looming over this child, embezzling his talent and smothering his curiosity in hate and bloodlust.

And all at once the heavy silence was rent by confusion—four figures instantaneously materialized into the room—teleported, surely, but that wasn’t supposed to be possible with the school’s wards—but who—and how—and why—but before either of them could react, a wand crackling with arcana was pointed squarely in Caleb’s face, and Henry—wait, what about Henry—two of them had his arms pinned and a wicked-looking dagger held against his throat.

Caleb moved without thinking, taking his first instinct and summoning flame, and they could get their hands off—

The counterspell came like a bucketful of cold water. Caleb reached for his own counter, but an even stronger one rebounded from another of the intruders. Henry wrenched a hand free and continued the chain, only for his spell to be snuffed as well.

“I wouldn’t do that, Professor,” said the mage holding the wand, low and dangerous. “I have no intention of harming your young charge, but he does make for convenient insurance. Cooperate, and for him it will be like this never happened.”

Caleb’s brain screamed at him to keep fighting, but he slowly lowered his hands.

“Very good, very good,” the mage continued. “You have a difficult reality to accept, Bren Aldric Ermendrud. You are not leaving this room alive. There is nothing you or anyone else can do to change that. You have just seen that you will not be able to cast any spell. Be assured, we are perfectly capable of neutralizing any weapon you may have hidden away. No sound will travel outside of this room until we depart. You are going to die, less than ten minutes from now, and it will be a waste of your remaining moments of life to try and fight.”

Beau prided herself on being a quick thinker, but she could barely keep up with Caleb’s racing mind. He knew the exact contents of every drawer, chest, and container in the room, and cycled through the entire inventory with a frenzy. There was nothing that would help. Even assuming he could reach something quickly enough, he would never outmaneuver four powerful mages on his own.

“What you do have control over is whether Henry Fisher loses his life today. Yes, young man, I know exactly who you are, and you’ll stop struggling if you know what’s good for you.” The mage opened a bag of holding and pulled a small glass and a bottle of clear liquid from within. Setting the glass down on Caleb’s desk, he poured a generous serving. “I am going to ask you to do a few things before you leave us, Ermendrud. Every time you disobey me, the boy will pay for it.”

He pushed the glass closer to Caleb. “Drink.”

Caleb reached for the glass, finding his hand didn’t shake. It froze instead, the barest moment of hesitation before touching the glass. The ringleader snapped his fingers, and one of the other intruders slugged Henry in the ribs.

Caleb snatched the glass and downed it in one go.

“Quick learner,” said the ringleader, over Henry’s whimpers of pain and protest. He laid down a blank piece of parchment in front of Caleb, right over the paper he’d been grading. Another page, this one with a short letter written on it. “Copy the text.”

Caleb took his quill, eyes raking over the document. It took only a few lines for the plan to take shape. This was a suicide note. They were going to kill him and make it look like he’d died by his own hand. His brain raged, there had to be a way out of this, something to do, something to try, but right now his priority was Henry, so he picked up his quill and tapped the excess ink out on the rim of the bottle. For a long few moments, the only sound was the scratching of the point on the parchment and Caleb’s own heart pounding in his ears.

Caleb Widogast wanted to live. He wanted to live in the animal way that his body wanted to run or fight or do something, anything to slip the deadly snare he’d found himself in. But more than that, he was surprised to find that he did not feel ready to die. He’d lived so long without a future and now that he had one, he couldn’t stand to give it up.

It wasn’t a long note, and he reached the end of it too soon. His eyes burned and swam as he wrote the last sentence. But then it was done, and he set the quill back in the inkwell. The ringleader poured another glass of the alcohol nearly to the brim. Caleb chugged it, the burn in his throat choking him.

“Sign at the bottom.”

Caleb signed his own name. If he had to die, he may as well die as himself. There was a click of the fingers, a dull thump, and Henry cried out again.

“With your real name, you idiot.”

Caleb signed his birth name, right underneath his chosen one. Another glass of spirits. It had only been a few minutes, but the alcohol did its work, clashing with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Now his hands did tremble.

The original copy of the note went back into the bag, leaving only the one in Caleb’s handwriting. The ringleader reached back into the bag, this time producing a large dagger.

Henry started struggling with the assassins holding him again, twisting in their grip, even landing a bite on one of them. He earned himself a few more blows to the abdomen for his trouble. The ringleader watched them with disinterest, even as Henry’s head struck a nearby bookcase as he thrashed. The fray finally stilled, Henry’s arms pinned even more severely. The ringleader turned to Caleb, presenting the dagger hilt first.

“I think you know what to do.” It was disgusting, the way he grinned.

Caleb reached out and took the knife. Straight blade, keen edge, no serrations, a clear gem set into the handle, likely magical. A pretty good weapon, in his estimation. It had been a very long time since he’d regularly wielded one, but some things you never forget. Caleb knew how to kill a human.

Laying the knife’s edge against the side of his neck was the easiest thing in the world. It felt like it should be harder. Something, other than his own terror and dread, should stop him from holding cold steel against the most vulnerable part of his body, but nothing did. Only his pounding heart and shallow breath filled his ears, and distantly, distantly, the tearful, desperate protests of one Henry Fisher.

“Anything you’d like to say first?”

Please let us go.

Fuck you.

You won’t get away with this. Someone will figure it out.

Fuck you again, for good measure.

But Caleb didn’t say any of that, because he was not even looking at the ringleader anymore, but at the young man behind him. He’d promised to be a better influence on all of them. And Henry, smart and tough and remarkably conscientious despite everything, still needed someone he could trust. He’d never get over it.

“No—Professor, don’t—”

But there didn’t seem to be another way out.

“Forgive me,” Caleb said, and moved the knife.

The arterial spray told Caleb he’d done it right straightaway, even as he maintained the pressure and speed so the blade would make it all the way across to the blood vessels on the opposite side of his neck. If Trent were here, he’d call it a clean cut, despite the way it gushed blood all over the desk, the inkpot and quill, the suicide note, the homework papers, and plenty of the rest of the office besides.

He started fading before he even registered the pain. And fuck, it hurt terribly. Exsanguination could happen fast, but it wasn’t instantaneous. The knife clanged on the desktop, and Caleb slumped forward not far behind. Henry was screaming, but just sounded so far away. The mages holding him started to cast a spell Caleb was already too far gone to recognize, and his heart sank.

Of course they would not leave a witness, but Caleb was so stupid he hadn’t figured it out until it was too late. He’d killed himself simply because they said they wouldn’t hurt Henry if he complied, but now they were killing him anyway. And Caleb couldn’t even protest, because he’d cut through his vocal cords. It was all for nothing. Useless, worthless, even in his final moments. He hadn’t even tried.

There was a hand stroking his hair, almost gently, and a voice all too soft crooning in his ear. “Good, good, hard part done. You just fall asleep now, there you are…”

Fingers danced in front of his face in what Caleb very distantly recognized as a spell. He should fight it. Even now, his body wanted to live. He wanted to live. He wanted to live. But it was just so cold, his rapid pulse gone weak and thready, and his vision was going blurry and dark, and when the enchantment took root in his already oxygen-deprived brain, it was impossible to shake it out.

“Recently you’ve been feeling like the worthless scum of the earth that you are. You are a liar and a criminal, and you deserve none of the kindness that has ever been extended to you. You’ve been thinking this way for a while and even procured a weapon, just in case. You realized today that you absolutely could not take it anymore, and decided to finally remove yourself from this world. It is better this way for everyone. Pity the young man walked in on you at just the wrong time, now he has seen firsthand what a failure you are, even in death. No one else was here.”

There was a ripple in the fabric of reality, and they were gone.

It was so terribly cold. Darkness closed in. For some reason someone was rushing towards him, clamping a hand over the front of his neck.

“Fucking hells—why did you do that—let’s get you out of here—”

And the world finally went dark.

No sooner had Beau snapped out of the vision when Caleb shot upright in the bed, movement arrested by the shackles, wrists yanking painfully.

“Henry—”

“He’s fine, he’s okay, I just saw him, Caleb, oh my gods, he’s okay, I promise,” Beau blurted out. She could feel Caleb’s panic-pain-grief-guilt-relief-regret flood through them both, and she threw her arms around him. She could only hold him while he sobbed into her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said again. “Henry’s okay, you’re gonna be okay.”

Beau twisted to look over her shoulder. “Caleb didn’t want to kill himself. This was an assassination attempt made to look like a suicide. They forced him to cooperate by threatening Henry Fisher, and then cast Modify Memory on both of them to make them forget what actually happened.”

“It sounds like we’re past this point,” Astrid said awkwardly, “but Enchanter Sol has no record of selling this weapon to Caleb or anyone else.”

“That would be the memory spell,” Beau said. “He didn’t know where the dagger came from, so his brain filled in the gaps.”

“If what you say is true, I believe we can safely release Professor Widogast from both his physical restraints and legal guardianship,” said the cleric. Beau wasted no time unbuckling the cuffs from Caleb’s wrists. He needed help sitting the rest of the way up, but seemed no worse for wear as he wiped the tears from his own face and accepted a glass of water when offered. A weight Beau hadn’t even been fully aware of lifted from his psyche at his restored freedom, the looming threat of being recommitted to Vergesson finally gone. It suddenly felt intrusive to be hyper aware of his emotions, so Beau asked the cleric to drop the mind link.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” said Yasha. “If they wanted to kill Caleb, why did they change his memory too? Why would you do that on somebody who is already dying?”

“Divination magic,” said Caleb. “Not unlike the truth jab that Beauregard used on me. If all went to plan, someone might have cast Speak With Dead on my remains, or else communed with a deity to ask whether I really had died by my own hand. The way they did it, I really did write the note, I really did wield the knife, and I earnestly tried to make the cut fatal—not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was the only way to protect Henry.”

“That makes sense,” said the healer. “If I had attempted to determine what happened by asking the Platinum Dragon, I do not think we would have found the truth by asking three yes or no questions.”

“What they didn’t count on was Henry,” Beau said. “They didn’t anticipate he would be clear-headed enough to get Caleb to a healer in time to save him. Resurrection probably wouldn’t have worked because the tampered memory made him think he really did want to die. And I think they underestimated how much Caleb allegedly ‘forgetting’ the prearranged meeting would matter, because they didn’t provide a reason why he would.”

The healer wasn’t satisfied. “But who would do this, and to what end? If they were all mages strong enough to overpower the professor as quickly as they did, surely they could have ambushed him in the city somewhere, and not had to circumvent the Academy’s defenses.”

Caleb itched absently at the fading mark on his neck. “I cannot be certain, but I would guess they are Ikithon loyalists of some type. Volstrucker, maybe, since they knew Henry’s name, but perhaps some other type of warmage. Both the note and the implanted memory emphasized my dishonesty and criminal history. Modify Memory can’t make you believe anything you never would, so they couldn’t make me directly recant everything I’ve ever said against Trent—not to mention, that would be terribly suspicious—but they could attack my credibility, while making sure I wouldn’t be around to defend myself. If I get murdered in an alley, nothing about my story changes. If I decide I would rather die than live dishonestly, then people have room to question what I might be lying about. We’re coming up on the anniversary of the conviction, so it fits.”

Yasha looked ready to fly into a rage just then. “How do we find them?”

“Leave that to me,” said Astrid. “Locating and dispatching some rogue warmages is the easy part. If I get moving before they realize that Bren survived and recovered his true memories, they might not even feel the need to cover their tracks. In the meantime, I think the best course of action remains the same—take Bren home and let him rest in a safe place.”

“There’s one thing I want to do first,” Caleb said.

Henry Fisher, a little bruised and sore but fairly stoic about his physical injuries, was still very upset after his memory was restored. He agreed to speak with Caleb on the condition that somebody chaperone him. They decided Beau was the most logical choice, since having seen the restored memory it was almost like she had been in the room with them.

“A long time ago, I told you that I would lay down my life if I thought it was necessary to protect you or your classmates,” Caleb was saying. “I did not exaggerate. I am still deeply sorry you had to witness it.”

Henry crossed his arms. “Modify Memory only works on thoughts you reasonably could have. So on some level, you do think you’re a worthless criminal who should kill himself and leave everybody better off.”

Caleb shrank a little at that. “My low self esteem is not exactly a secret, but I will admit I never imagined it would put somebody else in danger.”

“Do you think the same things about me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I was the same amount of brainwashed by Trent as you were.”

“I cannot explain why I feel differently, but I promise you Henry, I think the world of you. You are brave, clever, strong, and responsible beyond your years with how you use that strength. I very much want you to not have to make the same mistakes I did to get to this point. And, if it makes a difference, even at my lowest, I want to keep trying to make things better much, much more than I feel like dying.”

“But you would do it again.”

“If the situation were the same? Yes, I would trade my life for yours every single time.”

“Why does that make me so fucking angry with you?”

Caleb smiled sadly. “I don’t think there’s a wrong way to feel. Maybe… it feels like I would somehow be making it your fault if I didn’t survive. But that’s not the case. You didn’t make me pick up the dagger, even if they used you to manipulate me. You did save my life. And I can’t thank you enough for that.”

Henry was quiet for a minute. “The one thing that stayed the same in the fake memory. ‘Forgive me.’ I… I don’t know if I’m ready for that. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe later. But not right this minute.”

“You don’t have to be—perhaps ever, if your feelings don’t change. I will still be here for you either way.”

It was unanimously decided that Caleb should stay the night with Beau and Yasha, and eventually they all settled on the couch with copious blankets and mugs of hot tea. The wonders of divine magic meant that Caleb’s condition had improved much more rapidly than he ever could have naturally, but his skin was still cold to the touch, so they bundled him up and stoked the fireplace. Yasha eventually dozed off right there on the couch, leaving Caleb to stare into the firelight and Beau to stare at Caleb where he was sitting between them.

“You know, I was thinking about what you said,” Beau ventured. “About the memory needing to be a thing at least somehow reasonable to you. …You know we don’t think you’re a fuckup, right? Not that this wasn’t incredibly brave and selfless of you, and it wasn’t at all your fault, but it was also kind of fucked up and I’m not sure you fully realize how much. You’re always gonna have someone who likes you better alive than not.”

“...I know.”

“I’m not just saying that. And, because I don’t think I’ve said it enough yet, I’m sorry for hitting you. And not listening to you. I know it all worked out, but if I’d been wrong, it would’ve been really shitty of me. You trusted me to take care of you when you couldn’t do it yourself, and I guess I acted more like a dog with a bone than your protector.”

Caleb sipped his tea. “I think I’m fine with that… I knew you would not let me be hauled back to Vergesson, or otherwise come to harm. Also, I do distinctly remember Beauregard Lionett saying the words ‘I love you,’ which not many people get to experience.”

“Tell anyone I said that and I’ll kill you for real.”

“That would rather defeat the purpose of this entire afternoon, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m serious, you asshole, don’t try me.”

“You were so determined to save such an asshole. People are going to think you’ve gone soft.”

“How dare you. I take everything back, you suck.”

They spent the rest of the evening giggling and trading insults, and the hellish day was finally, finally at an end. They found their way to rest, safe and warm and ready to face whatever the morning might bring.