It Ends in Fire

by Andrew Shvarts

  “Should I?” I ask.

  I hadn’t meant to be cutting, at least, not that cutting. But now the edges of Marius’s smile twitch, and I can see the strain to hold it up, the anger inside, the quiet menace, the wounded pride. He reaches out, patting my shoulder a little too forcefully. “Right, then,” he says. “Of course. You do whatever you think is best for you. I’m sure you’ll make all the right choices.” Then he turns back to the others, gesturing to the opposite end of the ship. “Come on. Let’s go see what’s going on below deck.”

  The three of them walk off, with the bearded boy shooting me a particularly livid glare over his shoulder. I turn back to Fyl, and she’s staring at me with her jaw hanging wide. “You didn’t have to do that,” she whispers.

  “No, but I wanted to.” I shrug. “I didn’t like how he was talking. I didn’t trust him.”

  “Yeah, but that was… I mean… he’s…” Fyl blinks. “Wait. Do you genuinely not know who that was?”

  “Should I?”

  Fyl stares at me like I just said I’ve never heard of the moon. “Oh. All right. Wow. So the bearded boy is Dean Veyle, son of Dorothea Veyle. You know… of the Veyle Trading Company? The wealthiest merchant family in the Republic?”

  “I’ve heard of them,” I say dismissively, even though I’m almost certain I bought my clothes from one of their stores.

  “The tall girl who looks so bored she’s going to die? That’s Vyctoria Aberdeen. The headmaster’s niece.” Fyl’s voice drops low, conspiratorial. “Rumor has it she’s a genius and already a master Wizard. Hope we don’t end up in her class.”

  “The fancy one, with the gold-headed wands,” I ask. “Who’s he?”

  “The one you just insulted? That’s Marius Madison,” Fyl replies. “As in… the son of Deckard Madison? Grandmaster of the Senate? The most powerful man in the Republic?” She must see my expression change, because she nods. “You do know Grandmaster Madison, right?”

  Oh, I know him, all right. Grandmaster Madison, the leader of the government, the Wizard at the top of the Wizard food chain. The man who wrote the Humble Servitude Act, the man who ordered the raids on Laroc and Hellsum, the architect of the Dissident Labor Camps and the Purge of Sithar. A man with his hands soaked in enough blood to drown an ocean. Just hearing his name makes my ears burn and my heart pound. Grandmaster Madison is the greatest enemy the people of the Republic, of the world, have.…

  And his son is right there. Right there. Walking away from me with his back turned, none the wiser, no one protecting him. I could kill him right now. I could draw my Loci and send a spear of ice through his heart, cleave off his head with a whip of thorns, send a gust of force that’d splatter him against the mast. It would be so easy to do. So easy. And so satisfying.

  But I can’t. I have to play the long game. I have to remember the mission. So I force myself to turn away, to let Marius Madison walk off, to gaze out at the endless dark ocean. Keep it together, Alka, I tell myself. Think of the mission.

  “Are you all right?” Fyl asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say, and I hope she can’t see how tightly I’m gripping the railing. “Just… ready to get there.”

  Fyl pops a little watch out of her suit pocket and checks it. “Well, you don’t have to wait long. We’re almost there.”

  I blink, because there’s nothing but ocean in front of me, and I don’t know much about Blackwater, but I know it’s on an island. “Where?”

  “You really don’t know anything, do you?” Fyl grins, leaning up on the railing next to me. “Watch closely. You’re going to like this.”

  There’s a rush of wind as the boat accelerates, the giant waterwheels turning faster, the flames in their engine cylinders flaring and crackling. A massive horn at the front lets out a low, mournful wail and then… it’s like the world wavers and melts. The stretch of ocean in front of me shimmers like an oil slick on a lake, rippling and distorting. All of it warps, the air, the water, the sky, wavering like a painting drawn on the side of a bubble. It’s an illusion, I realize, on a truly massive scale, and I have just enough time to gasp before it vanishes altogether, burning away like a tapestry set to flame.

  Then it’s right before me, where just a second ago there had only been empty ocean. An entire island, at least fifteen miles long, that had been hidden behind a massive illusion spell. I can see dark beaches and stony crags and a sprawl of ominous, sheer rock. And resting at the center, like a blade driven into the earth, is a towering five-story manor, the largest I’ve ever seen, lit up by hundreds and hundreds of multicolored lanterns. The walls are made of cool slick stone, the pointed rooftops lined with twisting spires and looming gargoyles. I can see stained-glass windows and elegant balconies, gilded awnings, and marble columns. Dozens of smaller buildings flank it, a whole campus: dormitories and libraries and a round five-spired church.

  It’s terrifying. It’s awe inspiring. And as much as I hate to admit, it’s beautiful.

  Behind me on the ship, students let out whoops and cheers. With a booming rumble, fireworks blast out from behind the manor and explode above us, dazzling blue flowers and lances of dancing flame, topped off by a shimmering green dragon that screams across the sky. Next to me, Fyl grins, her whole face lit up and tears in her eyes. I suppose I can understand it. For these Wizards, getting to Blackwater is a moment that’s been built up their whole lives. But all I can think about is that manor, so massive and ancient, hidden in the dark. What’s waiting for me when I get there? What have I gotten myself into?

  Fyl must sense my tension, because the smile fades off her face. The other students are all still celebrating, clapping and dancing, raising glasses and laughing. There’s no sign of Marius, not now, and no one seems to even notice the two of us at the end of the deck, looking back, lost in thought. “It’s funny,” Fyl says quietly. “Everyone’s so happy now. But the next time we’re all back on this boat, two years from now, headed back to the mainland… only two-thirds of us will be here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there are three hundred students in every incoming class, but just two hundred or so graduate.”

  I cock my head to the side. “They drop out?”

  “Yeah,” Fyl replies with a shrug. “Or they die.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Then

  I am thirteen years old when I finally learn my purpose.

  My company of Revenants is staying in Hellsum. Well, in the fields outside of Hellsum. Whispers found us an abandoned estate, its brick walls rotted and overgrown with vines, the fields around it long fallow, probably since the drought of 723. Whoever lived here is long gone, which makes it the perfect hideout for a bunch of rebels on the run.

  The others have taken up rooms in the main manor house, but I’ve claimed a little wing of the Humbles’ quarters. It’s quiet up here, and private, and no one can bother me without climbing up a rickety flight of stairs first. I’m sitting there by myself, idly carving my name into the wood with one of my knives, when I hear the tapping of Whispers’s cane in the hall. “Alka,” she says, from the other side of my door. “We need to talk.”

  The door creaks open and Whispers steps in. She’s a Marovian woman of more than fifty years, her straight shoulder-length hair graying, her face ruddy from the long walk to see me. Her blue eyes meet mine, and I glance down with an instant discomfort. Even when I’m angry at her, she can’t help but command my respect. A lot of that comes down to her look: a tall, angular woman in a frayed soldier’s uniform, a sword at her hip, a blackwood cane in her hand, and expressions that range from stern to dour.

  “What do you want?” I ask. There’s no one else in the rebellion who’d dare talk to her that way, but then again, there’s no one else in the rebellion she’s raised like a daughter. Not anymore.

  “It’s time we talked.” She paces across my room to rest against a chair. “It’s time you learned the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “Abo
ut you. Your purpose. Your destiny.” She swivels the chair around and takes a seat. “Tell me, Alka. What makes a Wizard?”

  “A Godsmark.”

  “Is that all?”

  Yes? I think but don’t say. After all, the Godsmark is what separates Humbles from Wizards. No one knows how they’re made or what they really are; it’s kept secret even from most Wizards. Once a baby has been granted the Mark by the Senate, it’s brought by its parents to the High Temple in Arbormont at no older than six months. The high cleric takes the baby in, and some kind of ritual happens, and when he comes out, the baby bears the Godsmark. They say that in the ritual the Five Gods themselves descend and bless the baby, marking it with their blood, granting it access to their realm, to their Glyphs, to their power.

  They also say that a third of babies who receive the Mark die within a week. That doesn’t sound very blessed to me.

  Whispers clears her throat sharply. “A Godsmark makes a Wizard, yes. But so does their education. Tell me, Alka. What do you know about Blackwater Academy?”

  “Blackwater?” I wrack my memory. “It’s some big fancy academy where all the rich Wizard kids go to learn magic, right? And it’s really secret and hard to get to, and no one knows what happens there?”

  “Yes. That’s all correct.” She nods. “Blackwater is one of the most important bastions of power in the Republic. It’s a repository of knowledge, of secrets, of magic. And above all else, it’s an incubator of power.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “There are other schools of magic,” she explains, “But they are for lesser Houses, for common Wizards, for churning out city Enforcers or weary bureaucrats. The Wizards that matter, the Wizards that lead, the senators and clerics and merchants, the elite? They all go to Blackwater. And it’s a place that, until now, has been utterly closed off to us.” She pauses, and I feel my stomach knot with tension. “Alka Chelrazi… we need you to infiltrate Blackwater.”

  My mouth goes dry, and the room suddenly feels very cold. “Why?”

  A flicker of annoyance dances across Whispers’s face, like it should be obvious. “You’ll be a spy in the heart of their empire. You’ll learn their secrets. You’ll position yourself within their elite. You’ll rise through their ranks undetected. You’ll learn everything.” It’s rare to see her smile, but now she does. “And when you’re done, you can burn that place to the ground.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.…”

  “Think of it this way,” she says, and I can tell by the way she leans forward that she’s moving to the hard sell. “You’ll walk out of there as skilled as any Wizard in the Republic.”

  I breathe in sharply. I’ve spent the last three years frustrated in my magic, limited to the basic Glyphs that Pavel could teach me, stuck at the level of a beginner. I’ve lost hours, days, weeks, months, trying to do more and failing, bursting out of the Null with aching hands and blistered skin and tears in my eyes.

  I glance at my knives. Glyphs. Real Glyphs. Advanced Glyphs. As skilled as any Wizard in the Republic.

  “How am I supposed to get in there?” I ask at last.

  “There is a girl a year older than you, Alayne Dewinter of New Kenshire. She was given a Mark at birth as a reward to her father, the first of her line. Three years from now, she’ll be invited to attend Blackwater,” she says. “You’ll intercept her on the way, kill her, and take her identity. Her letter of admittance and your Mark should be enough to get you into the school. No one there will have met Alayne or will know that you’re not her. New Kenshire is half a world away, and she’s never even set foot on this continent. As far as everyone at Blackwater will know… you will be Alayne Dewinter.”

  “Won’t her parents eventually come visit?”

  “Her father is an old man in poor health, his mind and memory clouded. Her mother has been removed from the equation.” Something dark and frightening dances across Whispers’s eyes. “For all intents and purposes, Alayne Dewinter is on her own.”

  “Still…” I say. “It seems too easy.…”

  “That’s because you haven’t seen the years of work that have gone into this,” she says curtly. “This is a plan a decade in the making, Alka. Dozens of our best operatives have given their all… even their lives… to set it in motion. Everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve suffered, has been for this.” She leans forward and puts her hand on mine, and I jerk back a little because her affection is so rare. “You’re the only one who can do it.”

  She goes, the door creaking gently shut behind her, leaving me alone with the weight of everything she’s just laid on me. She knows I’ll say yes. I have to. No matter how angry I am, no matter how scared, no matter how badly I just want to curl up into a ball and never get up, I have to now.

  For Sera.

  I pick up my knives, turn them over in my hands, hold them with a new sense of purpose. “Alayne Dewinter,” I whisper, saying her name for what will be the first of a million times, tasting it, trying it, letting it run down my tongue. “You’re mine.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Now

  The ferry drops us off at the island’s southern tip, on a long wooden dock that juts out like a tongue. My mind’s whirring with each step as I scan every detail, trying to commit it all to memory. The docks, about forty feet long, lead to a rocky beach. No visible defenses. No cover, either. Plenty of room to land a ship full of Revenants, but nowhere to hide when we do. I know I’m getting ahead of myself, that I ought to be focusing on just getting in without blowing my cover, but I can’t help it. Planning an invasion’s easy. Fitting in with this lot… that’s the hard part.

  “Well, we made it to Blackwater,” Fyl says as we step onto the docks. “And we managed to make enemies of just three of our class’s most powerful students.”

  I can’t help but smile. “It’s a start.”

  The docks give way to a long, windy road leading up the hill to that towering manor. It’s even more impressive up close than it was from the boat, as big as a castle and twice as fancy, its polished stone surface shining in the moonlight. The road that leads up to it is lined with lampposts, and each lantern burns a different color: flickering crimson and ocean blue and blazing white and even a dark obsidian flame that strikes my eyes as deeply wrong. I can hear music playing from somewhere, a rousing rendition of Marovia’s national anthem, and as the wind blows through the trees around us, their leaves sigh and sparkle. Is it always like this? Is this just how they live?

  I take a step forward, toward the road, and then I see them. Dozens of young men and women, waiting at the end of the docks. Their features are varied, Marovian, Velkschen, Sithartic, and Kindrali, but they all wear matching beige uniforms, and they watch us with expressions at once expectant and apprehensive.

  Servants.

  Humbles.

  I suck in my teeth. Of course they’d have a full staff of Humbles here. Wizards this rich can’t go to the bathroom without a servant to wipe their ass. Even here, in a place that oozes magic out of every brick and stone, they’ve still got Humbles to do the dirty work. Why bother going through the effort of using magic when you can just throw a body at it? Why bother doing something yourself when you can force someone else to do it for you?

  My vision flares red. I turn to Fyl, but she’s actually smiling at the sight. “Finally, some help. I was getting really tired of having to do everything for myself.”

  I smile again, but this one’s forced. It’s a harsh reminder. Fyl might be friendly, but when it comes down it, she’s still one of them.

  One of the Humbles spots me, her eyes lighting on my own. A pretty girl, tall and willowy, with pale skin and jet-black hair up in a neat bun. She approaches me slowly, her amber eyes flitting up to meet mine and then back down, her expression guarded, hard to read. A long horizontal scar runs the length of her jaw. There’s something off about her, something I can’t quite put my finger on, like when you’re trying to remember a word but it’s just
out of reach.

  “Welcome to Blackwater, my lady,” she says. Her voice is low and husky, not quite what I expected. “May I take your bag?”

  “I can carry it myself,” I say, before I can think better of it.

  She pauses uncertainly. “I don’t understand,” she says. Her eyes meet mine, cautious and curious. “Have I displeased you? Would you prefer another servant?”

  “No,” I say, “It’s not that… it’s… I…”

  Fyl cocks a skeptical eyebrow my way. “Do you not have Humbles in New Kenshire?”

  “No, we do, I just…” I take a deep breath and collect myself. The mission is what matters. Not my feelings, not what’s right. The mission is to be Alayne. And what would Alayne do?

  Sera’s words echo in my ears, like always. Find the truth behind the lie.

  “I was just feeling a bit overwhelmed. I wasn’t prepared for such a magnificent sight.” I shove my bag forward, into the Humble’s hands. She hoists it onto her back, straining just a little. “Lead the way.”

  “Of course, my lady,” the girl says, and we walk forward, up the cobblestone road to the manor. Back on the boat, the night air was cold, but here I just feel the soft warmth radiating from all those magical lanterns, like I’m sitting by a crackling fire. Fyl lags behind, chatting with some scrawny red-haired boy who shouted her name, so I keep pace with the Humble girl instead. “Where are we going?” I ask her.

  “To the grand hall. The Welcoming Banquet has been set up for the incoming class,” she says. “Don’t worry. I will make sure your bag gets to your room.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” I glance around to make sure no one else is listening. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  She arches an eyebrow. “We don’t typically share our names.”

  “Well, I’m from New Kenshire, where we do things differently,” I say, because I can just maybe force myself to give this girl orders, but the very least I owe her is learning her name. “I’d like to know who’s carrying my bag.”