The Nine Bishops

Mika’s guildmates turned out to be surprisingly sympathetic. There were good reasons for anyone to withhold information about possessing a Bishop’s medallion. Having one could get you killed. For people with no interest in participating in the tournament, immense wealth could be gained by selling a stolen one.

That made Mika wonder about K again: she had been looking for a medallion during her encounter with Mika, and in the end, she had gotten her hands-on Bishop Steel’s medallion. Whether she had bought it or gained it through honest efforts, Mika had no way of knowing. Now, she was to face Master Beng in the tournament. Though she’d seen a glimpse of both mages’ magic abilities, Mika had no idea what exactly they were capable of.

She was particularly interested in her master’s skills. The only time she’d seen them was during her first training exercise and when he used magic to do simple things. His strain was wind. She had no clue how many of the formulations he had mastered. In fact, all she’d heard of his reputation was from his close friends, Doc and Roxanne, and even they had revealed little.

In contrast, Mika had learned practically everything about the capabilities of others in her guild, gaining insight first-hand while working on contracts with them or just listening to them tell old stories. Mika figured the six mages in her guild were worth more than fifty in another. Most mages had elemental magic strains, but those in the guild possessed unique combinations.

Roxanne’s strain was her own composition and rather strange, making use of Manipulation and Transformation. She could alter her own age and fitness levels and even become other people altogether. If she was able to make eye contact with a person, she was able to transform into that person. She could alter her clothes, too. It was a deceptive form of magic, but her personality was kind and lighthearted.

Roxanne typically stayed at what she felt was her prime age—thirty—when interacting with others. Doc disagreed with her on the best age: he liked her better when she was older.

The two had chemistry, so much that Mika found it odd that they weren’t in a romantic relationship. Roxanne was a master of her magic, and could apply it almost all the time, except when sleeping. Even after all the time she’d spent training with Manard, Mika still was not as well conditioned.

She’d learned about Doc’s magic when she asked to shadow him on one of his medical contracts. Doc said yes, with one stipulation: she had to serve as his assistant. Mika was delighted to be given such an opportunity, because she wanted to learn more about human anatomy. Mika helped him in a second-class contract in which he performed open-spine surgery on a boy mage who fell while climbing a tree and was partially paralyzed.

The issuer was the father, a low-class merchant who had taken his son to see surgeons but could not afford to fix the boy. He put up a desperate contract, offering all he had for someone to make his son walk. Doc did not hesitate to take the contract, though he could have earned more. As a freelancing mage, he did whatever he wanted.

During the surgery, Mika observed and handed over tools as he requested. Doc explained what he was doing, surgically and magically. Mika learned that Doc’s strain was time. Like Roxanne, he used Manipulation and Transformation, but in an entirely different capacity. He had the ability to turn back time in a certain space.

When Mika broke her bones during training, Doc was reverting all her injuries to a time her bones weren’t broken. Doc could also freeze time for short periods. But his magic did have limitations. He couldn’t revert a person’s age and was constrained as to how far back in time he could revert something. In the case of the boy’s injured spinal cord, Doc still had to perform surgery because he could only revert the boy’s body to its state immediately after the fall, which was better than nothing.

After the three-hour surgery, Doc was able to get the boy back to the point where, after physical therapy, he would be able to walk with crutches. Because it wasn’t one hundred percent successful, Doc refused to take the man’s coin. The man was insistent, but Doc continued to refuse. So Mika and Doc returned to the guild with no gain, not having technically completed the contract.

Pudge’s magic was the most obvious, because he used it daily with his food. Mika learned from Tink that it went further than that; Pudge could duplicate anything he could pick up. Mika mused about what would happen if he duplicated a person. “Don’t ever ask Pudge about that,” Tink warned her. “He’ll get very angry.”

In response to Mika’s raised eyebrows, Tink defaulted to the one explanation they both understood: “Everyone has a dark past.”

Finally, there was Manard. Mika had trained with him every day that both were free. Now, she knew him better, and worse, than everyone else in the guild. She knew his strain and what formulations he was capable of. But she still knew nothing about his past. Unlike Pudge, Manard’s history was written all over him in the form of scars. Behind those scars was a gentle man, but Mika had yet to learn his story.

She asked all her guildmates, and they all said the same thing: that only Manard had the right to tell Mika his story. That left her frustrated, because, after all, the man couldn’t talk at all. Once, she even asked him directly while they were together, and he shook his head and pointed to the ground, meaning it was time for training. Even if they’d sparred all day, Mika hardly ever saw him outside of the training times.

Manard, as she’d discovered that first time she’d pierced him, was a wood strain mage. He had mastered all of the formulations. He could transform his arms into roots, cause trees to swing at Mika, and even regenerate by regrowing his limbs. Mika had tried everything she could think of to defeat him. At first, she’d struggled to control her magic for extended periods, quickly growing exhausted and collapsing. That was one of the main reasons training sessions came to an end.

The other reason was that, every time Mika made gains, he would amp up his magic and knock her out. The man seemed unstoppable, able to counter whatever she threw at him. Mika could never get him off his feet, which were always deeply rooted into the ground. After a year of this, Mika realized she was never going to beat him until she was able to exploit his weakness.

She noticed that every time she fell from exhaustion, he would ease up and stop the training. That gave her an idea for how she could knock him off his feet, the way he had done it to her hundreds of times. One day, she decided to fight until she was “too exhausted”. Mika fell to the ground as usual. Manard, not suspecting she was faking her exhaustion, let up and let his guard down.

Then Mika re-engaged. In the blink of an eye, she made an ice whip long enough to reach him and made the ground under him slick with ice. Mika’s cheap trick had the intended effect. Manard’s feet were wrapped up in Mika’s whip and pulled out from under him. When Manard hit the ground, Mika took it as a victory, though she hadn’t come close to defeating him. He simply got up, then had roots grow up and tie Mika down so she couldn’t move.

Mika lay there helplessly as Manard walked up to her, loosened the roots, and gave her a hand up. Manard was smiling. As she got to her feet, he clapped and bowed low, signaling that she had won. He then simply walked away, as he always did when training was over.

Back at the guild, Master Beng said, in passing, “So Manard tells me you finally managed to defeat him.”

Mika didn’t think that was the case at all, but that she had merely been successful at cheating. She immediately sought Manard out and begged him to keep sparring with her. He agreed, of course, but when Mika asked why he had told Master Beng that she won, he pointed at her, put a thumb up, then pointed to himself with a thumb down. He left Mika with that hand signal to ponder.

Perhaps I was the winner there, Mika decided after some thought. The training wasn’t about whether she could defeat Manard outright, but rather to teach her there is no such thing as fair in a fight. It struck Mika that this was a valuable lesson, now that she was one day from fighting with her life on the line. There is no such thing as cheating in a fight to the death.

Mika never did truly defeat Manard. When Mika told Zaya of her inability to defeat him, Zaya vehemently protested her participation in the tournament. She argued that if Mika couldn’t defeat a nobody like Manard, she had no chance of defeating the other mages in the tournament. Manard’s record seemingly backed up Zaya’s opinion of him: he had completed one hundred and forty-two fourth-class contracts, thirty-eight third-class contracts, six second-class contracts, and not a single first-class contract.

Mika knew there was something behind that history. He was surely capable of completing any first-class contract, but he never took one on. There had to be a reason for that, and Mika was certain it was linked to his past.

***

After Mika’s apology to her guildmates, they gave her space. She went into her room to review everything she had on Tobias Zan. But in her exhaustion, she fell asleep and once again dreamed of her father, as she did every night.

Mika had learned what was possible through those dreams, in which she had unlimited energy and seemingly unlimited potential. She always seemed more powerful there than she was in reality. Like Manard, her father was nearly impossible to defeat, but he was always on the offensive, while Manard was typically on the defensive. Their different magic styles helped Mika grow. She did her best to apply what had happened in her dreams to her training with Manard.

It was a father-daughter relationship of sorts, though a very strange one. Mika had never told anyone about the dreams, though she sometimes wondered whether a second perspective might give her some insight. But she didn’t feel that she could reveal to anyone her identity. Keeping that secret might be the one thing that could keep her safe from the king.

Nik, of course, knew without her telling him. Since he hadn’t done anything to compromise her anonymity, Mika increasingly believed he had to be on her side.

Mika was fighting her father as usual but, suddenly, she hesitated—and in that moment was instantly killed. She woke to find Tink shaking her, hard.

“Mika get up, we have to go!”

“Why, what’s going on?” she said, bewildered by the sudden transition.

“Master Beng’s fight is happening in, like, ten minutes!”

Mika shot to her feet, glad Tink had woken her. Mika planned to watch every fight, and the one that excited her more than her own was Master Beng’s.

“We don’t need to go to the center of the city to watch,” Tink told her, leading Mika to the roof of the guild house, where chairs had been set up for a viewing party. All the other guild members were already there, staring at the sky—and, surprisingly, so was Zaya, who waved to Mika and motioned for her to sit next to her. As she took her seat, Mika looked up, too, and saw the broadcast being projected in the sky.

No matter where she looked in the sky, she could see a picture of the fighting area. Mika was fascinated by this magic and wondered what strain it was and who was responsible for it. She knew every person in Seemos could see the same sight, no matter where they were.

At the moment, the broadcast was showing a timer going down: 5:43 … 5:42 … 5:41 …. When the timer reached five minutes, the broadcast switched to an image of Bojo Jack, wearing a red suit and a massive red top hat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, mages and Filth, I welcome you to the first round of the 396th annual Bishop’s tournament. As you know, I am your announcer, Bojo Jack! But enough about me. Let’s introduce our contestants. Representing the War Eagles, with over one hundred first-class contracts completed, we have Master Lawrence Beng!”

The picture switched to Master Beng, who appeared not to have moved since the morning and was still deep in meditation.

“His competitor will be none other than Bishop Steel’s nominee. Fierce purple eyes. No allegiance to any guild. We will just have to find out what this woman is capable of, won’t we? Just thirty seconds remain until the fight begins. So get comfortable, and get ready to kick off this tournament!” Bojo boomed ecstatically.

The shot switched to a wide view of the entire arena. Master Beng was meditating on one side, while K stood opposite, already engaged with her sword. A countdown clock appeared between them, and Bojo started counting down from ten.

As the countdown dropped past five, Mika’s heart pounded. Master Beng was making no attempt to move, and Mika began fearing for him. She wondered if he had fallen asleep. The countdown reached one and Bojo yelled: “Fight!”

In the blink of an eye, K dropped her sword, fell to her knees and clutched her throat. Bojo attempted commentary on what was happening, but he was as baffled by the scene, as were the spectators. All the while, Master Beng continued to sit there, meditating. In less than thirty seconds after the fight began, K had fallen forward, facedown on the ground. Whether she was unconscious or dead, Mika had no idea.

As K hit the ground, Master Beng stood up without a word and left the view of the broadcast. The whole city seemed hushed, left speechless at what had just unfolded. Finally, Bojo found his voice, tentatively.

“Well, I don’t know what to say, folks … but it appears that Master Lawrence Beng of the War Eagles is the victor of round one.” He paused, then seemed to regain his entertainer’s composure.

“Well, after an unexpected turn of events, I guess we will go straight into the second round!”

Mika couldn’t focus on what he was saying now; all she could think about was how quickly Master Beng had won. She was happy for him, but it also forced her to realize that Master Beng was in a different league entirely. Even if she made it that far, there was no way she was going to be able to win against him.