Short Story: Mage Tribunal

It's occurred to me that I always seem to be a in a perpetual state of "I hate my job"; every work day is a bloody horrendous Monday to me. The only thing that changes is how badly I'm feelin' it that day--today, I was liable to punch out the next person who looked at me funny. Or the next one to look at me at all.

I'd sent three errand boys to the nurse's before I even reached the main meeting hall. New record, I thought, with a slight grin. Humor was going to have to get me through this day--gods knew everything else was going to be against me.

I walked in and glanced around at the hanging flags like I always do, sparing a little sneer for Cernilia's. It was basically a bastardized Rubatoian flag--the same golden yellow and red-orange sunset on burgundy, but with an imperial crown above it, reigning the fact that Cernilia'd conquered our land over our heads. Even flags from that country managed to be real pricks. I passed on, giving a half-hearted wave to the mages from Minas Gerais, Gardenia, and the States. They weren't half bad people on a normal day, but today even they'd be on the council that voted on the way to punish me. I silently hoped they'd remember the help I'd given them with that nasty magical flu going around a few months back. But I didn't count on it. Anyone could be bribed or threatened somehow.

I took my seat at the center desk for the tribunal, and felt like the whole place had transformed into a courtroom. There was the semi-circular table on the dais, raised above me like a judge's bench, where in a few minutes my fellow mages would be playing Justice and jury. There were books of codes and statutes and laws on one end, full of precedents from past mage council cases, the resulting punishments and reasonings for them. I wondered if anyone had actually stolen magic from the Grand Mage with their bare hands before. Here was one for the history books.

The Prime Minister of Maximillia came in, escorted by various guards and advisors, and had a seat at the dais. I could hear out in the hall the hubbub of press reporters clamoring for the chance to follow him inside. This would be a real headline... I could only imagine poor Kate having kids rub her face in the article about her Mommy's crime. That, more than anything, made me feel lower than low. I sunk a little in my chair and tried to be inconspicuous as a few reporters and the rest of the mages filed in. Here it goes...

They all waited until each mage was standing beside his or her chair, and then sat, all as one, very formally. There was something kinda creepy, almost cult-like about all those adults thinking as one like that. Bad things tended to happen when people functioned on group-think. Things with torches and pitchforks, for instance. I tried my best to give them my most nonchalant, tough face and sat up in my chair to listen. This would be one helluva tribunal.

"This council will now convene for the hearing of Mage Cadenza Vega Madrigal, of Rubato," Mage Ronald Livingston of the Rochester Republic began. "The charges she is facing include the unethical theft of one Grand Mage Jean Pierre Denebola of Maximillia's magic, and assistance in the aforementioned man's murder. I also have come to understand that it was your husband and your ex-husband who ruthlessly killed Mage Denebola... is that not true?"

"Er... define what you'd consider 'ruthlessly'."

He gave me a severe look, shared by about half the others on the dais. I didn't relent.

"...Doesn't the fact that he practically tried to rape me, and that he wanted to exploit some poor, innocent young mage under my protection factor into this at all?"

Livingston's face was still fixed into that stern look with his bushy gray brows knitted together, completely unfazed. It was almost impressive. "Those are mitigating circumstances, Mage Madrigal, but there is nothing that excuses murder. You should have reported his actions to this Council and let us process him through the due course of the law."

I wanted to yell that if we hadn't taken his magic... if we hadn't killed or at least injured him beyond movement, I might not have even been sitting there to report this to them--that sitting around and waiting for the law to fix things wouldn't do shit. But they were such strict, by the book hardasses that I knew I'd just be wasting my breath. All I said was, "It was in self-defense."

"As we realize, Madrigal, but that does not eliminate the need to punish you for these actions. Otherwise, what is to stop mages from running around stripping one another of their powers? Where does it end?"

I'd expected this question. I'd expected it, and yet I still only had an answer I knew wouldn't fly. "...I didn't know I could do it... or that I was even doing it... it was... instinct."

"Instinct? Instinct!" this, from the prime minister of Maximillia, "Do you realize, Madame, that if we all just followed our instincts this world would be in utter chaos!? It is in controlling these urges that we can become civilized. I, frankly, say we revoke her of her position, if not sentence her to prison."

...Ouch. I was not on somebody's good side. Someone had better speak up for me or I was going to have to get out of this a messier way.

Thankfully, Mage Veronica Martinez of Castile chose that moment to chime in, "My country will not stand to see Mage Madrigal face such harsh punishment. She has an important partnership with our kingdom and is vital to the maintaining of the food supply for her nation. Put her in prison and the Charmed Fields project shall fail and thousands of people will be plunged back into starvation."

A murmur went through the crowd, and reporters started scribbling furiously away at this. The Council weighed her words, and Maximillia's minister shot me the dirtiest look I'd ever seen from a man with a manicure and wearing furs. His look was pure poison through a pair of pince-nez.

"Perhaps then..." Livingston began again, recapturing the crowd's attention with a sweeping glance and gesture, "...we must devise a less severe punishment, in the interest of the struggling nation of Rubato."

...Hey, ass, I thought, I'm sitting right here. I knew we were struggling, but did he have to say it to my face like it was an unquestionable fact of life? Condescending little...

Heads bobbed and nodded in agreement with his conclusion, while I grumbled over his word choice, Castile's Mage settling back in her chair with a relieved expression. She had definitely just earned her salary from the Queen for the day. She looked like a triumphant lawyer. And yet, I knew I had to be grateful to her. She might've just saved my ass--I couldn't phrase things in the same proper, diplomatic way she did and sound like I really believed it.

Since most people seemed to have concurred, Livingston sat down and folded his hands on the table as a sort of closing gesture, "Then we shall recess while the Council comes to a decision on the punishment. We shall reconvene in twenty minutes. Mage Madrigal, in that time, kindly do not leave the premises."

"...Course, sir."

He dismissed us and the group at the dais departed for a back room. The rest of us were left to chatter amongst ourselves and be hounded by reporters for comment. I decided to slip out to the restrooms before a particularly nosey-looking group of them started to approach me with pens at the ready.

When I'd slunk into the ladies' room and shut the door behind me, I gave the biggest sigh I'd breathed in a while. Somehow, the unimaginable amount of bad karma I'd racked up over the years hadn't come back to bite me this time. But I still didn't feel relieved. The Council might have thought that the only punishment I would face would be the one they doled out to me, but they didn't know about the voice... the voice of Jean that still crept into my head and made my eyes green and my stomach turn. The horrible dreams I had, the terrible, unsettling feeling of waking up to find my own hands had been wandering over my body as if controlled by another. I'd woken up yesterday to find one stroking my thigh and the other slipping aside one of my bra straps. I hated... I felt utterly sickened and disturbed to think how much worse it could get. This was far worse than any slap on the wrist or jailtime they might give me. It had to stop. I was half-ready to go visit one of the bloody insane spirit exorcists that lived around the canyons and dark hillsides in Agra. Anything to get this last trace of magic, of Jean, out of me.

There was still plenty of time left, so I pulled out my phone and started to call Ruin to bring him up to speed on the trial so far. He was not gonna be happy that they were punishing me at all after what Denebola did, but at least it didn't seem like things would turn out too badly. I didn't want to get him too worried or riled up. Maximillia had already been rumored to be considering war with us for a few days after the incident... we didn't need to add the pummeling of a whole room of mages to the list of reasons for it.

After I finished speaking to him, and saying hola to the kids... our sweet kids, I couldn't wait to go home to their smiling faces... I went and washed my face and stared for a moment into the mirror. Eyes were blue. I still had a trace of a smile on my face from listening to the twins happily babble through a song for me on the phone, and hearing Ruin's voice, and Marcus' excited cry of "Maeee!", and Kate's asking me when I'd get home. My little girl lookin' out for me... My reflection in the mirror looked normal. But I felt in my gut that nothing could be further from the truth. How had I gotten this screwed-up...? Nothing had made sense about me from the day Life first made me "half-gone" for the kids... had she done that for anyone ever before?

I didn't know the answer to that, but all it succeeded in reminding me of was that someday, soon hopefully, I had to find this "Ryan Marrone", Strength. I needed to know how to manage this.

Before I went back out, I conjured myself a shotglass of Vivianne's Finest tequila, "liquid courage", Pai would joke, and tossed it back in one gulp. I was gonna need it to face Livingston and his stern old schoolmaster face. That was a face that could've dispassionately driven gypsies into carts to be carried away during the purge. I resented a face like that.

Back in the hall, there were echoes of all the conversations going on in the meeting, and flashes of reporters' cameras. I snuck in as discreetly as I could between Stuttgart's giant of a mage and a swarthy guy in dark clothes I blended in with, Abdali's mage possibly, and took my seat. Things quieted down as Livingston and the others processed back in and took their seats on the dais.

"The Mage Council has reached a consensus," the old man said with finality. And so, again, a Rochesterian would pass judgment on a gypsy. History repeated itself in little ways. "Mage Madrigal, to repent for your crimes, you shall hereby be ordered to work providing spells for the nation of Maximillia until they can find a qualified new National Mage. You shall also pay the nation the sum of 200,000 zecca in return for the loss of precious magical heirlooms destroyed in the killing of Denebola, and cooperate with designated officials in experiments and investigations into this newfound ability you possess to steal magic. These decisions are final and cannot be appealed. This trial is now adjourned."

He slammed down a gavel and then rose to leave.

Around me, I was sure other people were getting up to leave too, but the sounds of chairs being pushed back and mages chattering as they were going were like distant noises to me. My head was still spinning around the idea of being at the beck and call of not only Olmo, but now Prime Minister Louboutin, and the... the experimenting. I could accept the fine for the money... but what were they going to do to me? There was no way they could hear the voice I heard, know the terrible way it made me felt. I worried they would only make things worse... or tip that delicate balance of living and not living as a half-gone woman into just... being gone.