Jinx by Sage Blackwood

Sophie argue about. You think I’m as bad as them, Simon had said. And Sophie’d said, They think innocence is so charming when it’s on other people .
    There was a doorway at the other end of the temple, leading to sunlight and an open walkway beyond—Jinx could see more robes passing to and fro out there. He headed toward it, eager to find Sophie or someone who could tell him about his magic.
    “What are you doing here, little boy?”
    The voice rang through the stone silence like a dropped plate. The pens stopped scratching. A hundred pairs of eyes swiveled and fixed on Jinx.
    He looked up at the tall woman standing in front of him. For just a moment he thought she was Sophie, although she was too tall and had too much gray hair, and Sophie had never looked so stern and frightening.
    Jinx was not a little boy. Nonetheless, when he said, “I’m looking for Sophie,” he sounded to himself like a little boy.
    “Sophie who?” Her glare was making him feel little, and the hundred silent watchers didn’t help.
    The wizards mentioned in the magic books he’d read sometimes had two names. The second name was usually the same as Simon’s. Perhaps Sophie’s was too.
    “Sophie Magus,” he said.
    There was a single gasp from a hundred mouths. Only the woman standing over Jinx didn’t gasp.
    “If someone is called Magus, you would hardly expect to find them here ,” she said.
    Incredibly, a few of the scholars tittered.
    Jinx was getting really annoyed with these people. He wondered how Sophie could stand them, actually. Jinx liked reading as much as the next person, but he liked knowing what was happening outside of books too. There was a whole bright fascinating world beyond the temple doors, and they were sitting in here with their backs to it! Jinx didn’t think they deserved Sophie.
    He also had to admit that nothing seemed the least bit magical about them. He thought of Sophie, who objected to magic even though she liked it. And Sophie came from this place, where KNOWLEDGE IS POWER was written over the door. But Knowledge Is Power was a book of spells. It didn’t make sense.
    There came the sound of raised voices from outside—shouts, argument, and then dozens of other voices joining in, loud and angry.
    “What’s that?” the woman demanded.
    “Some sort of fuss in the market, Preceptress.” A man stood up. “I’ll shut the doors.”
    None of them rose to look—a fuss in the market didn’t concern them. It wasn’t in books, Jinx thought, as he turned to look out the door. A full-scale fight was going on, a mass of punching and kicking bodies that spread outward as he watched. Even the man who had gotten up to close the doors seemed curious for a moment and paused after he had shut one door—just as what Jinx could have sworn was a familiar figure stalked out of the mob toward the temple.
    The man closed the other door, shutting in the calm quiet. He returned to his seat with a shake of his head for the futility of marketplace humanity.
    “Why do you think you might find somebody in the Temple of Knowledge with such a name as Magus?” asked the Preceptress.
    “Maybe that’s not her name,” said Jinx. He thought about what he had just seen moving out of the crowd. “Er, I should go.”
    Suddenly the double doors were thrown open with such force that they banged against the stone walls, making a louder noise than the hall had probably heard in a century. A hundred pairs of hands covered a hundred pairs of ears.
    Simon was furious. Jinx took an involuntary step backward. He heard a sudden intake of breath, which wasn’t quite a gasp, from the Preceptress, and she said sharply, “Go for the guards.”
    Jinx heard pattering feet behind him as two or three people took advantage of her order to get out of the room. Everyone else stayed seated.
    “I just want the boy,” said Simon.
    The Preceptress gripped Jinx’s shoulder, to his intense annoyance. Her hand felt like the claw of a large