by Amanda Twigg
“She’s hardly that,” Ossek said. “How can she have any loyalty to the Hux clan after what Griffin’s allowed her to become?”
I might have denied my name for safety, but that means nothing. I am loyal. It didn’t surprise Landra to feel the truth of her reaction. Always a Hux.
Pedra narrowed her eyes.
Shelk. I shouldn’t have thought that.
This was awful. She tried to recall all the information she had garnered from auras, and it made her realize how much trouble she was in. Rocking forward onto the balls of her feet, she readied to run and fight. The old woman posed as great a threat as Preston ever had.
“Let me take a good look, now I know more,” Pedra said. She leaned on her staff and set her magnifying glass to the edge of Landra’s aura.
Not felt this naked since Thisk rescued me from the shower.
“Hmm. There’s plenty of Bexters out in New City,” Pedra said. “Strong blue auras. Good, solid edges, but no lines of imagination. There’s too much variation in this girl’s coloring for her to be from their seed.”
Ossek waved his glass. “I thought we’d established that. Why are we wasting time?”
“Her coloring might have shades of Hux, but there’s something else going on here,” Pedra said. “Something unusual. Does she have magic?”
Chanda shook his head. “It doesn’t seem so. The test baffled her, and she hasn’t produced so much as a leaf on her elba plant. Can you see power in her aura?”
“Not clear. If there are hints of magic, they’re trapped. She’s more binding stripes than I’ve ever seen, like she’s known more trouble than one life can bear.”
Stay out of my Soul, old woman. Doesn’t my past hurt enough?
“Swamper!” Ossek said, his prejudice weighting the word with disgust. “What do you expect? They’re all desperate.”
“Good point,” Chanda said. “Underlevel recruits come in traumatized.”
Pedra nodded. “But her troubled Soul isn’t why your brought me. There’s something more.”
“Told you,” Ossek crowed.
Landra squirmed and sank her sorrow beneath trivial memories, like the cereal she’d eaten for breakfast and a favorite nursery rhyme. No! Not that. Dannet sang that rhyme.
“There’s darkness here beyond reason,” Pedra said. “Whatever the girl’s aura looked like before, it’s twisted beyond help now. You say she’s not managed to grow an elba? I’m not surprised.”
“She killed the seed,” Ossek said.
Chanda sighed, his face slackening with what looked like disappointment. “Well, if she can’t find magic, we should send her back to the underlevel tonight.”
Not when I’m this close to the midlevel. Not without a fight.
“Tell us more about what you see,” Ossek said.
Landra rocked meekly on her feet, feigning compliance. She was still rocking when a spike erupted from Pedra’s aura and darted toward her face. The attack made her stumble backward and raise her hands.
“You mean that thing?” Pedra asked. “This girl has the sight.”
Chanda shot to his feet. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as shelk floats.”
Gods of the mist. No secrets left. Let it play out and choose the moment to run.
“I told you,” Ossek said, slamming his drink down hard enough to make liquid splash up. The girl moved when I gathered power in the garden room. Didn’t even wait until I released the bolt. She knew it was coming.”
“I did have doubts,” Chanda said, “but if this is true, the girl could be useful.”
“Or dangerous,” Ossek added.
I am that.
“Why did you hide your ability to see auras, girl?” Pedra asked.
Humble. Innocent. She clasped her hands over her belly. “I didn’t, Lady Templer. I mentioned it to Lord Chanda when he found me in the underlevel, but he didn’t believe my words.”
Pedra shot the Templer a questioning glance.
“It sounded farfetched,” Chanda said. “With no Soul sight births recorded since exile, who’d have thought to find a reader in the slime? I’m still not convinced. If she can see auras, why is she finding magic difficult?”
“They’re not the same thing,” Pedra said. “Soul sight isn’t magic. It’s an extra sense, and no matter how much abuse a Soul takes, the vision stays. Switching it off is like choosing not to hear. Now true magic, that’s different altogether. Soul power reacts to the heart and can be grown or destroyed.”
Landra wanted to spit and scream. Soul sight isn’t magic? Would have been good to know that sooner. She reached back in her memory, searching for moments of power. She’d lit fires, but only by waking magic that already resided in tools. Then there was the hethra, but she had needed the Collector for that. Only stretching her aura to protect fellow soldiers seemed like true power, and she wasn’t certain of that anymore. Flaming shelk.
Had her years of fear been for nothing? She’d had no one to ask about her unusual trait. Slips during her formative years had brought derision and abuse, so she’d stayed quiet and carried the burden alone. Part of her wanted to rejoice in not bearing a flaw that made her less of a soldier, but another part of her panicked. She’d come to the temple assuming she had enough magic to succeed. That seemed unlikely now.
“What will you do with her?” Pedra asked.
Good question.
The three Templers exchanged glances.
“I still say kill her,” Ossek said.
Bastard. Time to act vulnerable. Landra fell to her knees. “Please, Templers, don’t hurt me. All I want is to survive. I’ll do anything.”
“Lying again,” Pedra said. “I can’t tell which of her words are wrong, but there’s deceit here.”
Shelk, woman, you’re a threat. I was going to kill you last, but now you’ll have to go first.
“No one’s doing any killing,” Chanda said. “If the girl really has the sight, she can be used as a weapon.”
Pedra huffed. “Her Soul is troubled. I can’t predict what she’ll do.”
Stop reading me, woman. Troubled? I’ll show you troubled.
Landra masked her plotting beneath painful memories and let her darkness flow. She dredged up her past in a way she’d never dared before, and anguish washed through her aura in a wave of hurts. She thought of her stolen life, relived her kidnapping, and remembered the abuse inflicted by the brothers. An echo of fear shook her body, but she didn’t stop there. Feel this, old woman. She recalled her ill days in the cavern when she’d longed for death. On top of the physical remembering, layer upon layer of emotional hurt settled around her in a cocoon of misery, with Thisk’s desertion as the final blow. A wail escaped from her throat, and she gripped her stomach. She didn’t need to pretend anguish. It had never felt more real.
“Oh no!” Pedra said, her hand covering her mouth. Tears streamed down the grooves of her face, the buds on her staff closed tight, and her aura wrinkled with dark bands. “Stop. Please stop.”
“What’s wrong?” Chanda asked, easing the old woman into her chair.
“I…” Pedra said, unable to finish her thought, but a hint of color returned to her cheeks. “The girl’s broken.”
“Maybe she is,” Chanda admitted, “but this has to be worth a try. Just think how useful a sighted Templer with a Hux face could be.”
Yes, just think. A willing Soul reader could sway negotiations, reveal plans, and coordinate attacks, all without the Warrior leadership ever knowing. But if you think my face will help, you’ve missed the mark.
“There’s a planning meeting next cycle to ready our main attack,” Chanda said. “With Pedra’s training, she could uncover enemy defenses.”
“Or betray us,” Ossek said.
Pedra used her recovered strength to point her staff toward Landra. “Not if she finds her magic. That would bind her to us.”
The Templers fell silent and stared.
Landra could only hear fire crack
les and see the floor before her knees, but she felt an oppressive weight of magic settle upon her as she awaited judgment.
“We’ll send her back to Enlightenment training and see what happens,” Chanda said.
“And if she fails to find magic?” Ossek asked.
“We dump her back in the underlevel and let the swamp filth kill her for us.”
Ossek and Pedra nodded their agreement, but Landra formed a plan of her own. If she took news of an imminent attack to Father, would he let her come home? The thought warmed her, but a greater purpose took hold. If I uncover details of the Templer plans, I could save my people too. She wrung her hands, feigned compliance, and kept her misery fresh to hide her plotting.
“Good, then it’s agreed,” Chanda said. “We give her until the end of candidate training to find magic—or she’s gone.”
The meeting ended, and Gertha escorted Landra on the journey back to the candidate level. As her foot met the spiral staircase where she’d planned her escape, she glanced down. Not yet. The climb up was quick. Yep, definitely a spy now.
Chapter 36
“Shelking slugs and demons of the mist,” Dennark said over the breakfast table. “Thought we got rid of you for good, Hux. Jex made up some story about you being taken in the night.”
The engineer ran into the dining hall, still belting his robe. His stride bounced with a healthy man’s vigor, and his cheeks had filled out. “Lanya, they told me you were here. I can’t believe it. Last night… I heard Gertha come in.”
It was as easy to read Jex’s face as his aura. Embarrassment flushed through his skin in a familiar pattern. “Don’t worry,” she said. “There was nothing you could do.” Been in that position myself and did nothing for Rhias.
“So, you did get taken,” Dennark said. “How did you escape the underlevel?”
“I don’t have time for stories. Aren’t we due in the garden room soon?”
Maddon snatched a pastry. “You haven’t looked at the board. Lessons got swapped, so it’s meditation next.”
Typical. Ossek gets a sleep after talking through the night but not me.
Jex’s aura juddered as if he struggled to rationalize her return. “I know you skip some classes, Lan, but I have to go. Can we catch up later?”
“No need. I’m coming too.” She sprang to his side as if nothing was wrong. Recent events had fired her with a new determination to grow her magic. If she was going to uncover temple plans, there was no other way.
The engineer’s lopsided grin fell into place, showing something between uncertainty and delight. “That’s great. You can tell me what happened on the way.”
Landra thought of ways to spin the story into acceptable versions of the truth, but in the end, she turned his questions aside with a wave of her hand. “It doesn’t matter what happened. I’m just glad to be back.” It was true, in part.
The meditation room turned out to be one of the few communal areas on the narrower side of the candidate floor, looking out over the temple forest. She entered expecting to find rows of praying priests, so a single line of empty, white chairs came as a surprise. Discovering the room had no ceiling brought even greater shock. Being this close to the magical canopy, it felt like she could reach through the pink shield to touch the sky.
“Find a place, close your eyes, and commune with the mist,” a Templer said, his dreamy voice suggesting he’d drunk too much scute.
Landra chose a spot near the middle, rather than hide on the fringe. The uncharacteristic selection garnered a confused frown from Jex, but he took the place to her right and leaned in to whisper.
“That’s Templer Grafton. Gossip says he’s the most relaxed tutor on the candidate level. Toby heard Ossek moan that all the man does is watch people breathe.”
The remaining candidates filed in, with Toby chasing in last. Bleary eyes and a creased robe gave him a look of the newly woken. Once everyone was seated and the door closed, an unusual quietness ensued. Thick walls insulated them from the clamor of the candidate floor, leaving only soft breathing sounds to fill the void.
She relaxed back and found the chair tilted at a perfect angle for gazing over the treetops. Her gaze focused on the transparent canopy above, and she imagined the sky beyond as blue, rather than hazy pink. It triggered memories of wind ripping at her clothes, forest stretching to the mountains, and Thisk. We walked beneath that sky, trained, and learned the hethra.
Her throat closed. Could she reach the hethra here? The Collector wasn’t close, but magic twisted in the air with more power than any one knife could hold. Faint music started, and a drifting smell buzzed her nose. The serene ambiance lulled her into a peaceful state, so she closed her eyes, submitted to the calm, and visualized…Thisk?
The forest, the ranger hut, Hux Hall—each visualization came as a memory rather than a magical vision, so she rolled her shoulders to ease the tension from her muscles. As her efforts increased, deep longing only pushed the connection further away. If she could view Thisk once, she sensed it would calm her Soul and strengthen her will. He’d abandoned her in favor of Warrior-kind, but she understood why. Duty bound him, and she liked that. He was her island amidst quicksand, her shelter in the storm.
No matter how far she ranged, all attempts to locate him failed. She drew her sorrowful Soul back, only to snag on the ranger’s familiar pattern, not five rings away. Thisk. My real tutor. Friend.
The ranger’s weather-beaten face crystalized into brighter focus. A Warrior Hall emblem appeared on the wall at his back with blue banners draped on either side. She wanted to bind her connection to him and never let go, so she offered her Soul to magic as she’d done only a few times before.
Thisk twitched beneath his crisp uniform as if storm ants crawled inside his pants. “Second-year cadets,” he said, “our subject today is strategy. Take out your books and copy the city map from the board.”
Classroom teaching? Surely not. That’s not you, my old tutor. You’re wild and dangerous, a creature of the remote lands. Seeing you like this feels like a betrayal. Are you injured?
Her heart pounded against her ribs, threatening to kick her from the vision. The ranger looked misplaced beyond words, with only cracked boot caps offering hope that the man she knew still lurked inside this tutor’s façade. She smelled his forest scent, heard his rumbling tones in her Soul, and saw lines of strain furrow his dark face.
She wanted to shout. In her mind, the hethra was a viewing tool rather than a communication medium, but with her senses aroused, could it be more? If she could talk to Thisk and tell him of the impending attack, how many soldier lives could that save?
Thisk? Can you sense me? Are you there? Templers are planning an assault. Please hear me. Please.
The ranger reached beneath his cloak to free trouser material from his arse. His aura swam with frustration rather than recognition, and he never looked up.
Shelk. Gramps? Landra suspected connecting with her great-grandfather might be easier, but then she discounted the idea. A ghost ancestor couldn’t serve her needs today. She needed a flesh-and-blood soldier who resided in the real world.
Thisk?
“Who is this?” a voice reverberated in her head—not the ranger.
Her consciousness snapped back into her body faster than lightning could strike. It hadn’t truly occurred to her that she might succeed in contacting Thisk, let alone that another person could intercept her thought. Her body trembled, but her mind remained clear and focused. With discovery threatening her existence, she needed to warn Thisk now. Opening herself wide to magic, she launched a final desperate sending.
Thisk, if you’re sensing this, please understand that Warrior-kind faces a temple attack. You have to prepare. I’ll come and report if I can, but it might not be possible. I—
“Lanya?”
The call was real and not from Thisk. Landra opened her eyes to view Jex through tears. He stood over her with the pink temple canopy framing him like a halo.
She shuddered and drew in a ragged breath. The hethra dispelled as the real world made itself known. Toby’s snoring hammered in her head, and the magic berry smell made her want to retch.
“We have to go,” Jex said. “I thought you were asleep, but Templer Grafton says you were meditating wrong.”
“Wrong?” The word blurted out, and her speech slurred. But I wasn’t meditating at all.
She turned to locate the Templer and met his wide-eyed gaze staring back. No hint of recognition showed in his jittery aura, only confusion and fear. His plain disapproval made her attempt to stand. She was ready to run, but her body felt too light to control. Jex hauled her up and started to walk her out.
“Please don’t come back,” Grafton said as they passed.
Landra recognized his voice and froze. The man had spoken in her head during the hethra, and now she feared that he’d overheard her message to Thisk too. Gulping breaths heaved her chest against her robe. Oblivious, Jex nudged her forward again, so she exited the meditation room without knowing how much trouble she was in. Just as she’d found her purpose, Landra realized that her time in the temple was likely up.
“What did you do?” Jex asked once they were alone in the corridor.
“Nothing,” she answered, but her thoughts disagreed. She knew what she’d done.
I gave myself away.
Chapter 37
In her remaining days on the candidate floor, Landra hugged her aura tight and her thoughts tighter. With Pedra and Templer Grafton close, danger crowded in like a closing trap. Every minute felt precious, like it could be her last. Would they really send a soldier spy back to the underlevel? Not likely, and she couldn’t imagine being allowed to stay in the temple either. That didn’t leave any good outcomes.
She bumped into Grafton a few times over the next days, but he avoided speaking and curious wrinkles betrayed his confusion. Random aura swirls showed his uncertainty, like he was fitting pieces together to complete a puzzle. She didn’t want to be around when the final section slotted into place.