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Horde Thief
Chapter 31
"Yes, can I help y-" The reaction the moment the doors of the apartment open isn't what you'd expected, given the circumstances. You're on the island of Manhattan, a towering assembly of skyscrapers and company buildings, and though the flat in front of you is a modest one, its location speaks to wealth. The man at the door is on the older side, with quick, clever eyes – unsurprising given his profession, and how seriously this realm appears to take the need for qualification to do almost anything. He looks at you, at Harry, and his question dies on his lips as his face goes suddenly pale. He recognises the grey cloaks on your shoulders – although yours is a simple glamour cast upon something far rarer.
His mouth works for a few moments before any words emerge. "Go…good evening. May I ask what brings Wardens to my door, I," his voice is shaky, a deathly fear of the symbols you wear overwhelming him, and Harry speaks before it can go any further.
"It might be better to do this inside, Doctor." Your ally says, his voice low and steady, distinctly unthreatening to your ears. The doctor, an odd word for a healer, you think, pales further as he recognises that it isn't a request.
He looks from side to side, eyes darting to check the corridor you'd walked along to reach here, then takes a step to the side, clearing a way. "Um, if you please." You file into the home, and he closes the door behind you with a soft click. Modest, yes, but you know what tasteful expense looks like. Comfortable looking furniture spread across the space, with several chairs set to look out across the lights of the city coming to life through the gathering twilight. Unfortunately, any appreciation you might have had for it is marred by the awareness of why you're here. The practitioner in front of you is suspected of violating those Laws concerning the minds of another. He doesn't look like someone who'd do something like that…but you'd long since learnt that appearances were often deceiving.
"Doctor Colin Andrews," Ser Harry says, drawing you out of your thoughts, and bringing the man you'd come to find up straight with a nervous squeak. "You clearly know who we are, but not, it seems, why we are here."
"I," he begins to speak, but isn't given the chance.
"I am Warden Dresden, this is Warden Waters," you'd asked to use the alias for this work, and though his superiors might disapprove of it when they find out, it's easier to fade into the background as Corlys Waters than Viserys Targaryen. "We have been sent to find out if you have violated the Laws of Magic." The man's face goes totally bloodless. "Do you understand the nature of our purpose?"
The silence is an oppressive presence around you, a weapon as potent as Dragonfear. The doctor swallows, nods shakily, then speaks in a bare whisper. "I understand, Wardens." He seems to visibly take control of himself with those words, forcing the paralyzing fear down to merely the terror of one whose future is very suddenly in doubt. "Is there," he swallows again, "is there anything I can do to help? If I can show that I've not broken the Laws…that would be good, right?"
"That depends," Harry says after a moment, his eyes sweeping the dwelling, followed by far more supernatural senses. Nothing appears to reveal itself, as he turns back to the doctor and nods. "But I think that maybe you could, yes. You're a Sensitive, correct?" The term was one Harry had explained on the way, a practitioner with a particular gift for sensing the emotions and sometimes even surface thoughts of others. Molly had apparently been one.
"I, yes, I am." He nods, a little more certainty in the words, and the desire to help on his part appears quite genuine.
"And you use that talent in your work, with your clients."
"I do." Andrews agrees, eyes crinkling as part of a small smile. "I was always talented, but this lets me do so much more. Like an entirely new layer of understanding, being able to know for certain what before I could only infer. And I checked, asked the Paranet, did everything I could to make sure it wouldn't break any of the Laws."
"And they quite correctly told you no, I expect." Harry says. "That isn't why we're here, Doctor, though it's related," The older man clearly looks like he wants to ask, but the presence of a Warden's cloak makes any words die stillborn. And it's not as if he wasn't about to be told, anyway. "The question we have to ask today, is if you've ever gone beyond sensing."
"What do you mean?" The question comes far too fast, both you and Ser Harry feel it, but here the Wizard turns his head and motions you forward a little. It's all the encouragement you need.
"We think you know, doctor." You speak levelly, without artifice. "You can sense their pains, their needs, their hopes, even if they themselves can't. Did you ever use more than words to answer them?"
"I," Andrews begins to reply hotly, but stops after the first syllable - and with that one only half-spoken. You watch as he grapples with himself, and then the fire just flows out of him in a long, shuddering breath. He takes a few steps, and sinks down into one of the chairs, fingers shaking. "I thought, no." He shakes his head, barely noticing as you both take a step closer, prepared in the event of any attack.
"Colin," Harry says, "I don't think you did anything deliberately. But we need to know how far you did go."
"So you can decide if I need to die," the man barks what only the charitable would call a laugh, the sound too full of disgust to be cheerful, and his face crumples. "Maybe I do." He presses his eyes shut, takes another breath, and starts talking. "It started…three months ago? Sensing has been enough for me for years, always enough, and I knew that there was a reason that it had to be. But one of the new clients they, they wanted to change. But they couldn't see and I couldn't help them. I tried using different methods, trying to help them understand in the only way we're meant to. Nothing worked. And then, one day, I felt them as close to that understanding as I'd ever found them. And I, I pushed. They understood. They're doing so much better now."
"It was just them, at first. I told myself, what I'd done was…it shouldn't be something I should do. Only if I had no other choice. But if I had let myself help one person, how could I stay true to myself without helping another? Nothing…I didn't control them, but it's like…making a sheet of steel into a true mirror. I thought,"
"You thought it was ok," Harry expression hardened as Andrews spoke, but now he interrupts. "Even though you knew how close you were, you thought it was ok. And you're almost right." He sighs. "Doctor, you know what you did was wrong."
"I do," the admission is a whisper.
"Do you know why?" That brought his head up, and yours around, as curious as the man in front of you was near desperation. Andrews shakes his head, and Dresden smiles sadly. "Magic, what we can do, doctor, only does what we believe it should. When you…pushed, you believed it was right. That it was right to turn the power you hold to that purpose. And when you start believing that that's right, it's easy to forget where the next line is. You said yourself, you've done it since, even though you resolved not to."
"But it can help. So many people."
"And at what point," you can hear the buried pain and anger in Harry's voice. "Do they stop being people to help, and start being things to fix?"
"Oh." Leather creaks under the doctor's fingers as his hands tighten on the chair, and he looks down at his hands as if surprised. "You don't just…break the Laws, do you? I mean, in some cases, yes. But for people like me, it's never something you set out to do. It just happens, doesn't it. Because we want to help."
"Yes." Harry says. "Not many people know that, Colin, and it's better that we keep it that way. It stops people from trying to bend the Laws. But it also means, that sometimes, we get to do this." He drops down into a crouch, not quite meeting the man's eyes.
"This is your one warning, Doctor Andrews. There won't be another," he gestures towards the door. "If you step beyond the bounds of sensing again, the Wardens that come here won't be asking questions. Do you understand me?"
The man stares at his hands, pale eyes very bright. "If I do this again, Warden, I don't think I'll want them to ask."
"Alright then," Harry stands, and nods to you. "We're done here, Warden. Let's go."
It takes less than thirty seconds after you're out of the apartment for you to ask Harry why he'd done it. At the question, he sighs, but explains in the manner of one who's done so many times before.
"The Laws exist for a reason, Viserys. No matter how much I disagree with how the Council applies them, there's a very good reason for them being there. What I said to the good doctor was true. If he kept on going down that path, or ever slips further, he'll have to believe that it's right to do so. And can you really say that that would be a good thing? Someone capable of rewiring another's mind, and with no reason not to do it." He stops for a moment as you step out of the corridor onto the staircase, and start heading up. "Binding the will of another, or forcing them to change, means you have to believe that it's right. Means that, no matter how good your intentions, eventually you'll not see a reason to stop at what the person wants or needs. You'll see a thing that's broken, not a person, and that's when you become a monster." The stairs flew by, and you had to rush a little to keep up as Harry's legs devoured them.
"But surely there's some way?" You ask.
"There is, sort of. The Doom of Damocles." He'd told you about that before, how he'd kept Molly from being killed instead of becoming his apprentice. But it required that a full wizard speak for the Warlock, and commit to training them. If their apprentice then broke the Laws, they died. And their master died with them.
Minutes pass, and Harry speaks again only as you step off the stairs towards a door that leads onto the building's roof. "Black magic is…tricky, Viserys. It can sneak up on you if you don't know what you're looking for, take harnessing the forces of creation and turn the process into just another tool. In a way, yes," he says before you interrupt, knowing you well enough by now to know what you were about to say, "it is one. But for us, how we use that tool matters. Because how we see the world defines how we use it, and if we use it more and more, in certain ways, it defines how we see the world."
"A feedback loop," you shake your head. "And there's no way to break it?"
"It's not…supernatural." Harry explains. "Not really. Changing it would require changing the person. Forcing them to change. And that would violate the Laws just as thoroughly as a Warlock does."
"But that man, he wasn't one." You point out.
"He wasn't one yet." Harry clarifies delicately. "And if you're ready, you're about to find out why the Council orders the Wardens to judge so harshly."
"The second location?"
"Yes."
You place a hand on his shoulder, bring to mind the image that Karrin had printed for you, speak a word, and the roof is empty again.
