The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(16)

What? “What?”

Howard repeated herself, the words the same as before. Lehrer had offered to tutor him. Defense Minister Lehrer, socialist revolutionary hero of the catastrophe, was going to teach Noam algebra? It was the most ridiculous thing Noam had ever heard. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, clenching them tight, as if he could cast off the insanity of the situation and see things more clearly. But when he opened them again, nothing had changed.

“I don’t understand,” he said, and goddamn it, his voice was quivering. “Why? Why would he bother?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. He’s a very busy man. But then again, he finds time to give private lessons to Mr. Shirazi as well. Perhaps he sees you as an investment.”

Noam frowned.

Interesting. So, Calix Lehrer had a good use for technopathy, did he?

What was he planning? And more importantly, was Noam smart enough to stay one step ahead of him?

“Okay,” Noam said. “But tell him if I’m doing this, I want a new computer. And I want to be allowed to keep my job at the corner store and to keep volunteering at the Migrant Center.”

Noam wouldn’t be one of those assholes who turned his back on where he came from. Besides, if Lehrer wanted Noam here badly enough to give him private tutoring, he’d agree. And if he agreed, that in itself would be useful data.

Howard gave him an arch look. “Tell him yourself. You start lessons tomorrow after lunch.”





In the archives of the Carolinian Ministry of the Interior: a documentary, never broadcast FADE IN:

INT. CAROLINIAN NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM – DAY

Focus on an exhibit displaying instruments of torture used in US witching research programs during the catastrophe.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

By 2011, over two million witchings had already died at the hands of the US government. Dr. Granley is a history professor at Duke University and a world-renowned expert on the catastrophe.

INT. DR. GRANLEY’S OFFICE

DR. GRANLEY

Especially powerful witchings—usually those with multiple abilities or unusual presenting powers—were enrolled in massive federal experiments designed to understand how witchings attain new powers, with a secondary goal of developing a vaccine against magic. The . . . the sheer sadism of these experiments cannot be understated.

INSERT – PHOTOGRAPH OF ST. GEORGE’S HOSPITAL

NARRATOR (V.O.)

One such hospital is famous, not only for particularly extreme cruelty but because of the famous witching who survived it.

In 2015, four years after the US began rounding up witchings for extermination or experimentation, Adalwolf Lehrer’s militia liberated the witching patients of St. George’s Hospital near the historical town of Asheville, North Carolina.

INSERT – PHOTOGRAPH OF ADALWOLF LEHRER AND HIS MILITIA, VICTORIOUS AFTER THE BATTLE FOR S. CAROLINA NARRATOR (V.O.)

Of the patients they saved, only one ultimately survived: Adalwolf’s own brother, the future king of Carolinia, sixteen-year-old Calix Lehrer.





CHAPTER FOUR

“I’m glad you’re staying,” Bethany declared over dinner that evening, with the decisive tone of someone who’d considered her thoughts on the matter carefully. “We need new blood.”

“Aw, sick of us already?” said Ames, smirking.

“I grew up with all y’all since I was eight. Of course I’m sick of you.”

Taye snorted.

Ames popped a hush puppy into her mouth. “Nah, you love me, B. You know it, I know it, even the new kid knows it. I’m lovable.”

“Since you were eight?” Noam interrupted before Ames could keep going—and she looked like she wanted to. “How young do people usually start?”

“I was nine,” Taye said helpfully. He wasn’t eating a proper dinner, just picking the red pieces from a bag of sour candies. He’d accumulated quite the pile next to his lukewarm potatoes.

“Seven,” said Ames.

Seven. No wonder none of them thought Noam belonged here. They’d spent their formative years studying Rousseau and physics; Noam had spent his taking shifts at the corner store.

He abandoned his dinner, propping his elbows up on the table and clasping his hands in front of his mouth.

Why was Lehrer letting him stay?

It was all well and good to talk about antibody levels and “dynamics,” but Swensson was right. Noam couldn’t learn additional powers. Not quickly, at least. He was little use to Carolinia as a soldier either, considering his record for undermining legal authority. Was technopathy just that good?

Of course, working for Lehrer wasn’t the same thing as working for Sacha. There’d been a big scandal in all the papers a couple years back, right after Sacha’d been elected. The two loathed each other, or so the gossip went. Lehrer thought Sacha too capitalistic, too eager to build Carolinia’s economy at the expense of the working class, that the only thing Sacha cared about was making peace with the notoriously antiwitching Texas and Britain. And Sacha kept trying to push through all these reforms: health care, pensions, lower taxes . . .

So Lehrer had threatened to step down as minister of defense.

Whatever Sacha thought of Lehrer personally, he’d backed off right quick after that. No one wanted to be the chancellor who made Calix Lehrer resign.