Chapter Text
“You can’t keep me here,” Penny said as soon as the man stepped through the door. He folded his arms and tried to look more angry than freaked out. Frankie always said Penny underestimated how intimidating he could be, especially when you make your muscles go all bulgy.
The man - a short white dude, glasses, balding - paused. “Ah,” he said, “You’re one who’ll want to tell me about his rights. Rest assured, you don’t have any here.”
That confirmed Penny’s theory that he was some kind of arrested, but not in a reassuring way. “Fuck that. I’m a citizen.”
“Of the United States, yes. But you aren’t in your country at present. Actually, you aren’t on the planet Earth at all.”
“The hell are you talking about?” This office was a nice one, full of fancy shit, but ordinary. Penny had explored every corner as he was pacing around for the last hour and he hadn’t found anything unusual. “Are you gonna tell me we’re on a spaceship?”
The man didn’t look amused. “That’s absurd.” He crossed the room to take a seat behind the broad maple desk. “Please, have a seat. I’m Director Rowe, but you may call me Everett.” Penny glanced around warily, but he couldn’t see any trap in that, so he sat across from the desk. It was a comfortable chair, he’d give these cops or whatever they were that much. “I suppose you might say we’re on another planet, though planetary system is really the correct term. Artificially created, of course, as a way station between universes. Welcome to the Library of the Neitherlands, Mr. Adiyodi.”
“Uh-huh.” Penny shook his head, still waiting for the joke. Some cops did this, try to loosen you up before they started the questioning. “And you’re a librarian? ‘Cause I’ve met librarians. Glasses, sweaters, always telling you to shush.” Rowe smiled like he’d been given a compliment. “Not the people I’d expect to hold someone against their will.”
Rowe’s genial expression turned serious. “We may conform to certain stereotypes, but don’t let appearances fool you. No one in this building is without defenses. You would do well not to try to leave.”
It took effort for Penny to hold the man’s eyes steadily. “Not sure why you’d think I could leave. I thought we were on another planet?”
He’d already tried, as soon as they’d left him here, closing his eyes and picturing his apartment in as much detail as he could, right down to the half-eaten box of pizza he’d left on the counter before heading out on this stupid robbery. Nothing had happened. No blip.
The mind-reading didn’t work on Rowe either, but Penny had seen that before. There were always people he couldn’t read. His landlady, Beatriz, said they had strong wards, like the kind Penny had to learn if he wasn’t going to go crazy from all the thoughts around him. But the other thing, the blip… Penny was used to that not working the way he wanted it to, sure. But not once in the six months since he’d gone to sleep in his bed and woken up in Detroit had it just failed to work at all.
Rowe smiled, but it was less friendly now. “Let’s skip the games, shall we?” he said. “You’ve obviously noticed that we are a magical organization, that we can block you from casting. And we are aware of your talents. That’s why we picked you up. The Library has a mandate to enforce magical law. You broke one such law when you robbed that jewelry store and took a particular gem.”
He’d told Frankie this was a bad idea. “That guy was never going to be able to sell something so ugly.”
“No, probably not,” Rowe said, “especially since he had no idea what it was.” He held up a hand. “Let me save us some time. You and I both know that an Emmerson’s Alloy Repellent is a useful tool, but it’s still a common magical toy. Sought for by petty hedgewitches but not of any real significance. And we can also skip the part where you tell me all about your friend who got in over his head and needed the protection. Or that the owner of that particular shop had two domestic violence charges the courts had dismissed and deserved what he had coming to him.” Penny just gave him a look. He wasn’t about to justify himself to this co - librarian. He had his fucking reasons. “I’m sure you’re right.” Rowe glanced again at the folder on his desk. “The fact is, were you any other magician, we might not have bothered with you. We prefer to let local magical communities police themselves. But in your case…“
He raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for something. Now Penny could sense the trap, even if he didn’t know what the man wanted him to do to spring it. “In my case, what?”
“You are a Traveler.” Penny stared at him, and for the first time, the man looked surprised. “Your talent? It’s part of the psychic discipline?”
“Right, yeah, I can sometimes read minds - “
“Yes, but you can do so much more than that!” Rowe sat up, exasperated. “Have you honestly never met a magician who explained this to you?”
“I don’t spend much time with ‘magicians.’” There was Frankie, and Beatriz, who claimed to be able to talk to animals - Penny might have thought she was just a crazy cat lady, but she’d saved his life, helping him with the psychic stuff, and he couldn’t argue with those results. Otherwise, Penny avoided hedgewitches. He had enough of his own problems.
Rowe sighed. “I see we’re starting from the beginning. I’ll have to find someone to catch you up, but for now - Travelers have magic embedded at the genetic level, and that makes you extremely powerful. You can read minds, enter the consciousness of others, transport yourself across worlds, and even bring people with you. Just like my associate Gavin brought you here.”
Gavin had appeared in the store just as Penny was picking up the Emmerson’s - and Penny owed Frankie an apology, because holy fuck was it not fun when someone was just suddenly there where no one had been a second earlier - and grabbed his arm, and without warning they’d been here. It had felt like what happened when Penny blipped from place to place, the swoop in his stomach and behind his eyes, but worse, because it had been outside his control.
He wasn’t about to give Rowe the satisfaction of asking about it, but he must have let some curiosity show, because the man said, “There are many things we could teach you here at the Library. How to actually use your psychic gift without it overwhelming you, for instance. Very few Travelers master that without help and the results when they don’t aren’t pretty. The ways they find to quiet the thoughts of others tend to be quite permanent.”
Penny had gone pretty far down that path before he met Beatriz, and even with her help, the concentration it took to shut out the voices left no room for anything else. Rowe was a smarmy dick and Penny didn’t trust him for a second, but it was still soothing to be around his quiet mind. It almost made the offer tempting.
He shook his head. “I’m good,” he said. “No offense, but I don’t think libraries are really my kind of places.”
“You seem to think I’m giving you a choice.” Rowe paused, then smiled jovially, like a friendly dad in a movie. It didn’t work on his face. “Well, I suppose I am, in a way. Your crime will be addressed either way, but a man of your talents can choose the form that will take.”
Goddamn it, he was a cop. “What choice?” Penny asked.
“We can place a tracker in your body. A Mark. That’s the typical punishment for most crimes under our laws. It will limit your ability to cast for the period of your sentence. It’s a brilliant solution, really. No imprisonment, nothing so inhumane. Of course, there would be consequences were you to cast a spell beyond what the tracker allows, even involuntarily.” He paused. “Traveling in your sleep, for instance, uses powerful magic. The Mark could cause you to explode.”
“Explode?” Penny shot to his feet, almost knocking over the chair. “Because of something I can’t control? The hell is wrong with you people?”
“Oh, calm down. You wouldn’t die. Mostly likely just lose a limb.” If Rowe was intimidated by Penny looming over him, it didn’t show. Penny opened his mouth, but Rowe’s face went hard and his hands came up in a complicated twist of fingers… and Penny slammed back in the chair, air knocked out of him, invisible bonds around his wrists and ankles. He tugged, futilely, but there was barely any room to move.
None of the hedgewitches he’d met back in Florida had magic like that.
“I am trying to be patient with you, Mr. Adiyodi,” Rowe said, voice quiet over the roar of anger in Penny’s ears, “but you need to understand the position you are in. This isn’t a negotiation and you have no recourse. You can accept the Mark for ten years, assuming you survive that long, or you can sign a contract.” He flipped open the folder and drew out a form. “Service to the Library for the length of your sentence. We will train you in the skillset we require, and you will work for us. Once your contract ends, you will be free, with all the benefit of the knowledge you have gained. We would be pleased if you chose to remain with us after that, but you will be under no obligation. How does that sound?”
“Like signing my life away.” The chair rocked when he strained against the bonds, but his wrists didn’t move from their locked-down position.
“Ten years of it.” Rowe shrugged. “Not an unfair trade against the possibility of going mad or exploding.” He looked like he was waiting for some reaction, and when Penny just continued to glare, he sighed. “While we would prefer you agree to work for us, the Mark brings its own benefits. Once you are on our radar, you would be providing us with additional visibility into your community. I believe you have other friends with gifts?”
It was a laughably transparent threat, but… Frankie. Beatriz. Even those hedge girls with the shop down by the beach. These Librarians would use Penny to monitor them, maybe trap them into some “crime” if they decided their skills were useful. Unless Penny left Florida, left the only people who gave a shit about him, but then he’d be forced to keep moving for a lot more than ten years.
He wanted to tell the man to go fuck himself. Really, really wanted to, just to see the smug look wiped off his face. But that was pointless, bound to a chair and all. “What kind of work?” he asked. “I’m not killing people for you or anything like that.”
Rowe’s expression of shock was almost believable. “We are an order of scholars, not assassins.” Penny just stared at him, and after a moment he smiled faintly. “Well, we wouldn’t waste someone with your skills that way. I know you haven’t been given the best impression, but the Library is the center of the magical world. We monitor and control the flow of magic across dimensions, and we ensure that it is safe. You would be helping people.”
“I’m not the helpful type.”
“And yet you’re sitting here because your friend made a few bad enemies and needed protection. We will take care of his situation, of course. Consider it a signing bonus.” An odd expression crossed Rowe’s face. “You’re young, Penny. I think you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do.” He tapped the form. “So?”
Penny tugged his arms against the invisible bonds - and nearly punched himself in the face when their grip was suddenly released. He wasn’t so sure Rowe didn’t laugh at that. He took the contract and scanned it, frantically looking for the trap, but the whole goddamn situation was the trap and nothing in particular stood out. Ten years of magical and mundane labor. He tried to think through the options, find something else, but all he could feel was those invisible bonds, and all he could see was his friends in trouble because of him, and all he could hear was the possibility of going mad or exploding.
He reached for the pen and signed his name, then pushed it back across the table.
Rowe smiled. “Welcome to the Library, Penny.”
***
Dean Fogg’s office looked like something out of a book.
The walls were wood paneled and furniture was heavy and dark. Light from the long bank of windows to her right reflected off the collection of strange objects on every available surface. It was these that kept catching Julia’s eyes - little items, the display of magnifying glasses in multiple colors and the array of globes lit up with sparks and a row of small silver balls that seemed to be hanging suspended in the air - all just slightly off, so that Julia’s brain, raised on Fillory and Hogwarts and Earthsea, kept lighting up with recognition and thinking magic.
It was a part of herself she’d shut away years ago, sometime between her last DnD campaign in high school and her first meeting with her pre-law advisor, and every time she heard that voice, it was like waking up once again.
Margo, the alarmingly blunt girl who’d escorted her to the Dean’s office after her last test, had warned her that she could be turned away. “Happens to the kids they bring here all the time,” she’d said with a kind of world-weary confidence that Julia found odd in someone not much older than her. “They fail the written, they fail the practical, the Dean takes one look at them during his interview and decides they don’t have potential after all. And even if you get in, there are all kinds of tests. You could flunk out at any point in the first year.” She’d paused to cast a speculative look over Julia. “Though you don’t really seem like the type for that.”
“I don’t fail tests,” Julia had said, and Margo had said, “I just bet you don’t.”
The Dean, a middle-aged man in a nice suit, was not noticeably impressed. He ignored her for the first few minutes she was there, more concerned with finishing his sandwich and flipping through the stack of papers on his desk before finally extracting a long form filled with tiny print and pushing it in her direction.
“It’s a graduate degree,” he said. “Three year program. If you choose to enroll, we’ll take care of informing your family - “
“I do!” He paused, raising his eyebrows, and Julia laughed nervously. “I mean, I would like to accept your offer,” she said. “To enroll at your school. If you want me.”
He smiled faintly, seeming to see her for the first time since she’d entered the room. “You wouldn’t have made this far if we didn’t want you as a student, Miss Wicker.”
The tension riding in Julia’s chest since Margo left her at the door eased. “Good,” she said. “Because I really want to be here. I mean, I - I always thought, maybe, when I was younger - “
“Most of our students do.”
All those days doing magic tricks with Quentin, figuring out the gimmick of them instantly even though he surpassed her in sleight-of-hand; nights on sleepovers lying beneath the table, drawing the map of Fillory and imagining a world that had things in it other the perfectly appointed apartments and business dinners and endless glasses of scotch that made up her parents’ lives. The deep conviction she’d had as a child that life could mean something more, a conviction that had faded over the years as Julia had seen her father’s brilliant mind warped with drinking and Quentin sink again and again into sadness and told herself, I won’t let the disappointment destroy me too.
But now the world was full of magic again.
“Did my friend get in?” she asked. “Quentin Coldwater? I haven’t seen him since after the written exam.”
“You weren’t supposed to speak to him even then,” the Dean said, only mildly reproachful. “Your friend did pass the exams. I believe he will be the next one I see.” He glanced at the stack of forms on his desk pointedly. “The next in a very long list.”
“Right. Sorry.” Julia grabbed the consent form and the pen he handed her and signed her name at the bottom with only the faint discomfort any pre-law student would have at ignoring the fine print. Former pre-law student, she reminded herself, surprised that she didn’t feel even a twinge of regret at putting aside all the time and effort she’d invested in her college career. “I’m in,” she said.
“Wonderful. One of the older students will escort you to your dorm, and your class schedule will be delivered by morning.”
Julia stood up and gathered her bag and coat, thinking that she ought to ask the kind of practical questions she needed answers to, like how was she going to get her things from the city and was there a place her phone would work so she could call James and explain… something, she had no idea what, but instead what came out was “What do we do with it?”
The Dean had already gone back to his lunch, but he raised his eyes at her question. “With it?”
“Magic. I mean…After I learn everything you can teach me, what do I do? Are there magical careers? Do we, I don’t know, do we… save the world?” She laughed a little, to show that she knew she was being silly.
The Dean didn’t laugh. He set down his sandwich, studying her as he wiped off his hands. “Do you see these globes behind me?” he asked. Julia’s eyes were drawn again to the seemingly ordinary items lit up with what were clearly magical sparks. “Those lights represent all the people in the world who are performing magic right at this moment. That’s how we find the students we recruit to this school. All of you were once just a spark on that globe.”
“Oh.” There was a cluster of lights on the eastern coast of North America. At some point before this incredible day, Julia had caused one of those lights to flicker. The panel at her practical exam had already mentioned this, but for the first time it really sank in that Julia had performed magic before she’d stood up with them all looking at her expectantly and made golden sparks flicker from her fingertips. She wondered what she’d done.
“We look for potential,” the Dean went on. “Many of the people we bring in to test don’t pass. Their power is too limited. Others leave the school for various reasons over the course of the next three years. They lack the work ethic or the courage or the self-reflection to master a magical discipline. And of those who make it to graduation…” He sighed. “The truth is, many of your fellow students will never do much at all with magic. Perhaps it will provide a little extra warmth and light against life’s despair, but mostly they’ll use it to avoid ever holding down real jobs. I supposed I can’t blame them for that. They lack the passion to do anything more.”
“I see,” Julia said quietly. She told herself it didn’t matter, but something about the light in the room seemed to dim with his words.
“I cannot say what you will do with your magic, Miss Wicker.” The Dean hesitated, then added, “But I will say this. Your spark on that globe was one of the brightest I’ve seen. You do not lack power. And your test scores were the highest this year. You instinctively grasped not only the mechanics of magic, but the underlying logic and theory. You do not lack intelligence.”
“Thank you.”
“That may not mean anything,” the Dean went on implacably. “I cannot say if you will have the courage or the passion to accomplish more than most of my students have. But I can say that the potential is there. What you choose to do with it is up to you.”
“I won’t disappoint you.” The words spilled out of her, making her feel ridiculous.
The Dean looked startled, like he couldn’t see what he had to do with any of it, and then he nodded slightly, eyes warming. “Then I look forward to seeing your career. Now, if there’s nothing else? I really do have a lot more of you to get through.”
In the atrium outside the Dean’s office, Margo was leaning against the wall beside a tall, lanky boy. On the boy’s other side was Quentin, who jumped, eyes wide, when he saw her.
“Jules,” he said, and then the other boy, to Julia’s bemusement, set one finger on Quentin’s lips to shush him.
“No talking to each other until you’ve both seen the Dean.”
“Sorry,” Quentin muttered, turning bright red, but his eyes still sought out Julia’s. She gave him a discreet thumbs up.
We’re in, she mouthed, and Quentin’s face lit up.
“Come on,” Margo said, pushing off the wall. “Eliot’s got to wait for your friend, but I’ll take you to see where you’ll be spending the next few months until you get your discipline.”
Julia gave Quentin a last little wave and followed Margo out into the hallway and down the steps to the campus lawn. Brakebills spilled out in her view, exactly like any other college campus, except that everywhere there were students spinning objects above their hands, students making colors and lights in the air, one student floating up to touch a tree branch far above her head.
“It’s pretty wild at first, but you’ll get used to it,” Margo said. “Someday this will just be what the world looks like.”
“I’m sure,” Julia said, trying to sound sophisticated, but she couldn’t imagine she would ever think of magic as ordinary.