She always seemed to phrase things in the form of a question even when she was certain, ostensibly out of a desire to appear unthreatening. （As if any of them would be threatened by something they were all required to study as first year students at university, if not sooner.）
“Academically, yes,” confirmed Dalton. “But for the Society’s purposes, we are less concerned with the results of such magic than we are with their construction. Which curses have proven most effective and why, that sort of thing. Mostly,” he said, his attention straying, as it often did, to Parisa, “how the disruption of luck can be used to unmake a man, unsettling him from the design—or rather, the lack of design—his path should naturally take.”
Parisa’s dark eyes held his for a moment. Dalton cleared his throat.
“Nature is chaos, magic is order, but they are not wholly unrelated. Bloodlines,” Dalton continued, “are a common carrier for mechanisms of unluck—genetic continuity. Very common that a curse will follow genealogy in some way or be passed on to progeny. That sort of magic is much more complex than it seems; anything with such lasting consequences requires a certain degree of sacrifice and loss to the caster.”
Reina’s commentary was rare, but sometimes necessary. “Why?”
The plants beside her slithered with glee, coaxing her to speak further. MotherMother soothe us with your voice it pleases us to hear you!
She crossed one leg over the other, irritated.
“Why?” echoed Dalton at her interruption, looking once again as if he wished he were left alone with his thoughts. “Because although magic and nature have different forms, they are not inseverable: magic has aspects of nature, nature has aspects of magic, and to take one away from either is a corruption to both their forms. It is the disintegration of naturalism itself. A man with a curse will upset the balance of things, warping the universe around him. Luck magic is a corruption as well; for any corruption to hold, the caster must accept, in some way, a fracture—a piece of themselves forever broken, in payment for the imbalance they have caused.”
“I don’t want to know why it’s necessary,” Reina said bluntly. “I want to know why it works.”
Dalton fixed her with a narrow glance.
“Sacrifice has magic of its own,” he said. “The decision to do something is itself a change, a rupture to the state of the world’s natural order. Would things happen in the caster’s favor regardless of interference? Yes of course, probability meaning that all outcomes are, conceptually, possible,” Dalton said, droning on methodically. “But to set one’s sights on one particular outcome is to necessitate a shift in some direction, enduring and irreversible. We study the realm of consciousness because we understand that to decide something, to weigh a cost and accept its consequences, is to forcibly alter the world in some tangible way. That is a magic as true and as real as any other.”
“Are you suggesting magic is some sort of spiritualism?” said Reina.
Mother is telling the truth!, Mother speaks truth!, she is made of it!
“Sometimes,” Reina went on gruffly, “you treat magic like a god, like an energy, and sometimes like a pulse. It’s an unscientific vibration when convenient, but we already know its behaviors can be predicted, and therefore purposefully changed.”
Dalton said nothing, waiting for her to make her point, so Reina persisted, “You make magic its own entity, but it has no autonomy of choice. No research shows that magic deliberately chooses how to honor the intentions of the caster—it simply does or doesn’t work, depending on the caster’s abilities.”
“So magic has no sentience of its own, you mean?”
Reina nodded, and beside her, Parisa’s expression took on some degree of contemplation.
“Magic is not a god,” Dalton agreed, “it is a tool. But it does respond discreetly to the distinctions of its user’s intentions, however subtle those may be. It is a matter not unlike general relativity,” he said. “Intent cannot change the foundation of science or magic as a whole, but we know from observation that its outcome can change relative to its use.”
“So whether an arrow hits its target depends on both the skill of the archer and the definable laws of momentum,” said Libby. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes and no,” said Dalton. “It is not so simple an equation. The rules of lethality are not limited by one constraint or two, but by many. When it comes to magic, the question is not merely a matter of the archer,” he explained, “but also of the arrow itself. Sometimes the arrow is made of stone, sometimes steel, sometimes paper. If the arrow itself is weak, even an immensity of skill can sometimes fail.”