The woman squirmed, like a beetle impaled by a pin.
If Simon did nothing, what would happen to her?
Brenner raised his voice: “Who said that?”
Simon moistened dry lips with the tip of his tongue, and replied, his voice shaking, “I did.”
Brenner blinked at him. His brow crinkled. “Swoony?”
Simon flinched. The other patrol members smirked.
Simon drew in an unsteady breath. “I . . . I think maybe you’re overdoing things a bit? Perhaps you should . . . l-let her go.”
Brenner glanced down at the woman, as if suddenly remembering her existence. He glowered at Simon. “And why should I do that?”
Simon’s survival instincts were screaming at him to shut up now. The woman wriggled and clawed at the patrol member’s boot. He couldn’t see her face, but he could hear her rapid breathing echoing through the silence. “If you don’t release her, I’ll report you.”
A short, harsh laugh, almost a bark, shot from Brenner’s throat. “Report me? For what? Doing my job?” Brenner’s whip rustled and hissed in his hand, as if sensing the potential for conflict. He raised one gloved fist, the paper crumpled inside it. “This is radical anti-Foundation propaganda, bordering on treason.”
“It’s just a gossip rag.”
“It always starts with words, doesn’t it?” Brenner tossed the paper to the ground. “I’d watch your words carefully. If you defend her lies, you are complicit in them.”
“I’m not defending the Underground. I just don’t think it’s necessary to smash her face into the street.”
Brenner snorted and turned away. “What would a mailroom clerk know about police work? Go home, boy.” He drenched the word with all the lofty disdain of his two additional years.
Behind Brenner, the other patrol members watched coolly. One of them, a burly young man with a beard, kept his boot planted firmly on the woman’s back. A strangled wail escaped her throat, a pitiful sound.
Simon realized he was about to do something stupid. He strode forward, dropped into a crouch and pressed his palms to the cobblestones. His palms tingled with icy-hot pinpricks as he drew meta in from the earth.
Brenner’s smirk fell away. “What do you think you’re—?”
Simon thrust a hand out. Yellow light crackled and spurted from his fingertips, straight at the bearded Animist next to Brenner. The light was harmless, but it achieved its intended effect; the man stumbled backward, cursing and shielding his eyes against the flash.
The woman leaped to her feet and dashed away, heedless of the loose papers flying from her satchel.
Brenner’s whip flicked out, lightning-fast, and seared into Simon’s cheek. He fell, gasping, to the street. He pressed his hand to his face, and his palm came away glistening red.
Brenner’s shadow fell over him. Simon stared up into his ice-blue eyes and felt a tickle of fear at the base of his spine. He looked around. People were inching away.
Brenner grabbed Simon by his robes, hoisted him up, and slammed him against the nearest wall. Simon’s head bounced off the bricks. A burst of pain filled his skull, and his vision swam. “Swoony, Swoony, Swoony,” Brenner said, smiling tightly. “You wretched little toad. You’ve always been a thorn in my side, but now you’ve really done it. A criminal escaped our grasp because of your interference. I should arrest you on the spot.”
“Go easy on him, Bren.” The patrol member who had spoken—a pretty blond girl—yawned and inspected her nails.
His head snapped toward her, and he scowled. “Why should I?”
“Look at him. Poor thing is shaking like a wet rabbit. Let him off with a warning. He won’t do it again.” She gave Simon a syrupy smile. “You know better now, don’t you?”
Brenner’s scowl deepened. “Fine.” His fists tightened in Simon’s robes. “Say you’re sorry. Say it like you mean it, and I’ll consider letting this slide.”
Simon gritted his teeth. He felt sick with terror. He wanted to say something witty or rebellious, but his head was a blank. His cheek throbbed.
Brenner’s thumb pressed against the cut, grinding into the raw flesh. The pain was dizzying. “Say it.”
An apology leaped into his throat, and he swallowed it. “Let me go.” He squeezed the words through clenched jaws.
Brenner dug his thumb in harder. “One last chance.”
Simon’s vision had gone blurry. The pain stabbed through him, an insistent hammer, drowning out his thoughts. “I’m sorry,” he gasped.
Brenner twisted his thumb back and forth, as though trying to drill a hole into Simon’s cheek. “I can’t hear you.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he cried out, hating himself.
The pressure relented, leaving him dizzy and shaking. Brenner wiped his bloodied thumb on the collar of Simon’s robe, then leaned closer and whispered, too soft for the others to hear: “If you ever embarrass me like that again, I’ll do worse than cut you.”
He shoved Simon into a muddy puddle then turned to face his underlings, hands on his hips. “Let’s go. We’ve got work to do.” He mounted his horse, and it broke into a canter. His lackeys followed, disappearing around the corner.
Simon picked himself up slowly. His robes were stained with mud and blood. He didn’t see the woman anywhere.
With a trembling hand, he touched the cut on his cheek. His fingers glowed yellow, and the wound sealed itself shut.
Brenner had gotten more arrogant—and more dangerous—since his promotion. He’d always been cruel, but this was the first time he’d injured Simon. Or threatened him. What would he have done to that woman, if Simon hadn’t intervened?
He ought to report him. Of course, there was no guarantee it would do any good. Brenner’s connections would provide him cover, and his underlings would back him up. Still . . . he couldn’t keep quiet about this.
Should he tell Master Melth?
No. He’d go straight to Neeta.
His heart quailed a little at the thought. He hadn’t seen her since his humiliating fainting spell. But she was the only person he knew with the power to do something about this.
As he walked toward Headquarters, he glanced down at one of the scattered newspapers on the cobblestones, now stained with mud and boot prints—the paper that had so enraged Brenner. When Simon peeled a page off the street and gingerly held it up to the light, he could just make out the headline—OUR QUEEN: SECRETLY A REPTILE? The illustration showed a toothy, scaled, many-eyed monstrosity wearing a dress and crown.
Simon sighed.
Chapter Four
Simon hurried through the lobby. The Queen’s portrait glowered down, her eyes seeming to follow him. She might not be a reptile, but she didn’t seem particularly warm-blooded, either.
The monarchy had been around since the Foundation’s beginning, the crown passed from mother to eldest daughter. The Queen wasn’t involved much in governing, these days, but she persisted as a powerful symbol. Simon had only seen her once, from a distance, at a public gathering. The sight of her standing on a high balcony, peering down at the crowd, was still imprinted in his mind, though he’d been a small child at the time. Her sour expression had been precisely captured in the painting.
Neeta would be teaching her class around this time. He headed into the east wing of Headquarters, where most of the classrooms were located, and lingered outside a set of doors, peering in at the cavernous lecture hall. Rows of stadium seats surrounded a podium, where Neeta herself stood, holding a long wooden pointer.
She looked more or less as he remembered. Her long, glossy dark hair was tied back in a severe tail. A pale scar bisected the amber-brown skin of her cheek. She wielded the pointer like a weapon, tapping it against the tapestry-sized map on the wall. Her voice echoed through the room: “So, as you may recall from our previous lesson, it was Akeera Vel-Jeer, from Delga of the Sunari peninsula, who first discovered the existence of the Eldritch Realm. Incidentally, he also coined the term ‘meta’ in
reference to the living energy that flows through all things, and which Animists must harness in order to—Brown!”
A red-haired girl, who’d been slumped in her seat, jerked upright.
“This will be on the exam, so I would advise you to pay attention,” Neeta said. “Quickly, now. What are the classes of Eldritch creatures, ranging from least to most powerful?”
“Erm . . . imps, wraiths, shoggoths . . . ghasts, demons . . .”
“Ghasts are a species of demon, Miss Brown. And demons, as you may know, are among the most powerful and dangerous entities to summon. Ghasts cannot speak, but some demons can. They have their own language, and can learn human tongues, as well.”
A boy’s hand shot up. “When will we get to summon demons?”
“Not for a very long time, and perhaps not ever. Only Animists who achieve the rank of Master may do so, and it’s risky even for us, if we don’t make proper preparations.”
The boy groaned and slumped in his seat.
Neeta raised an eyebrow. “Getting bored?” Her lips curved in a tiny, grim smile. “Perhaps you’d like a demonstration?” She withdrew a vial of summoning ash from within her robes and sprinkled a circle on the floor to her left. She pulled a knife from a sheath on her wrist and methodically slashed her arm—Simon winced. A splash of blood fell into the circle.
She took a deep breath, pressed the palms of her hands together, and closed her eyes.
Simon—along with the roomful of students—watched as the air above the ash shimmered, then solidified into a semitranslucent, luminous green sphere, slightly taller than a person. The sphere’s bottom rested on the floor, encompassing the ash circle.
Neeta murmured a series of words. Smoke exploded within the sphere, swirling. A low growl rippled from inside the smoke. When it cleared, the students leaned forward.
Simon couldn’t clearly see the creature inside—only its outline, which resembled that of a person, but twisted. Wrong.
The ghast shrieked and rammed itself against the translucent sphere, pressing its hands and face against the inner surface so it bulged outward.
“Be glad for the barrier,” Neeta said. “Ghasts are hard to control. If the Animist’s will is weak, the creature may turn on its summoner. Its jaws are strong enough to crush a human skull in one bite. Its talons can disembowel an enemy with a slash.”
The ghast pressed harder against the wall of its prison, clawed hands scrabbling against the sphere. Through the semiopaque bubble, Simon glimpsed a pale, wrinkled, skull-like face, gaping mouth crammed with fangs. The students sat pale and sweating, backs rigid.
“You might notice it has no eyes,” Neeta said. “It doesn’t need them. It can locate you by your heartbeat, or by your smell. During my days as an apprentice, I had a talented and overambitious classmate called Andren who laughed off his mentor’s warnings and attempted to summon a ghast in his second year of study, just to prove that he could. They found his remains—what little there were—scattered across his room. A dash of brains on the bedpost. A bit of entrails in the washbasin. The rest had been eaten. His death is listed as a ‘summoning accident’ in the library’s obituaries.”
The ghast rammed its head against the barrier. The sphere quivered like a soap bubble on the verge of bursting, and the students recoiled in their seats.
Neeta made a waving gesture with one hand. “Dismissed.”
The ghast vanished in a puff of smoke. The barrier wobbled and disappeared with a pop, leaving only a smear of bloody ash on the floor. Neeta crouched and wiped it up with a hand towel, then straightened. “Now, as I was saying. The Eldritch Realm was discovered nearly five centuries ago, shortly after the formation of the Foundation—”
She kept talking for several minutes. The class remained silent, backs rigid.
The bell clanged. The fledgling apprentices, all between the ages of ten and twelve, hurried out, whispering among themselves. Simon caught a few snatches of conversation.
“Did you see that thing?”
“Hundreds of teeth—”
“—thought it was going to break through that bubble—”
“Is she even allowed to do that inside the school?”
Neeta’s teaching methods, it seemed, had not changed much.
Simon waited until the last of them had filtered into the hallway, then entered the classroom.
Neeta sat at a hulking desk, a pen in one hand, scratching busily away at a notebook. A polished bronze plate, engraved with the name Master Neeta Daneel, had been set into the wood of the desktop. Simon swallowed, mouth dry. He hadn’t seen his former Master in months. “Er . . .”
“Yes?” she said without looking up.
“It’s Simon. Simon Frost.”
Neeta froze. Her fingers briefly tightened on the pen . . . then she raised her head. Her dark eyes swept up and down the length of him in that cool, assessing way he remembered. “Your robes are filthy. What happened?”
Simon found himself straightening his back and squaring his shoulders, trying to look a little taller. “I, uh. I have something I need to report. It’s important.”
“Let me finish this. I’ll be with you in a minute.” She bent her head and resumed writing.
Simon’s gaze wandered to the bookshelf standing against the back wall, the rows of leather-bound volumes with titles like The Subtle Art of War and Ethics of Interrogation in gold letters. He noticed a thick green tome titled The Foundation: A Complete History.
Like all apprentices, Simon had been required to read it as part of his training. The book was as dry as month-old bread, the words tiny and densely packed. They told a thorough (yet somehow still vague and unsatisfying) account of the last five hundred years, ever since the War of Ashes ended and the Foundation was established. Historical records from the prewar era were spotty. There was a brief passage at the beginning, though, that he had been required to memorize word for word:
Before the Foundation rose to power, the Continent was composed of warring tribes and feudal states locked in constant, bloody conflict over territory and resources. Animists were mercenaries without honor, employed by the feudal lords to keep their subjects in line. The lords themselves were brutish thugs, exploiting the peasantry for their labor; those ordinary folk who were not blessed with the gift of Animism were defenseless, often treated as an expendable resource, worked to death, and then buried in mass graves. For much of human history, this was life.
Our first queen, an Animist of great strength and intellect, was repulsed by this cruelty and resolved to put a stop to it. The feudal lords were subjugated and united under a single banner, and a system of rules was established to prevent Animists from oppressing the ungifted or using their powers for crass personal gain. Thus, the Foundation was born.
Simon sometimes wondered if the world could possibly have been as bad as the book made it out to be. But he kept his doubts to himself.
Neeta set her pen down, closed her notebook, and nodded to a chair. “Sit.”
Simon obeyed.
She tapped her nails—neat, unpolished ovals—against the desk. “Well?”
She’d never been one for pleasantries. “It’s about Brenner. I saw him being rough with a citizen. He and his patrol. They threw her to the street and whipped her, just for selling a newspaper they didn’t approve of.”
“Which newspaper?”
“Does it matter?”
“Just answer.”
“Er . . . it was the Underground. It contained a rather . . . unflattering illustration of the Queen. There were some unpleasant rumors about my father, too.” He fidgeted. “I don’t approve of it. But still, the way they acted . . . it was wrong.”
She sighed. One finger continued to tap slowly against the desk. “Brenner can be overzealous. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s stepped over the line. But you must understand, Simon. Ideas are potent weapons, more dangerous than steel or Animism. A malicious falsehood is like a plague. It must be contained or it spreads
. I’ve seen what happens when such plagues are allowed to rage unchecked.”
“Master Neeta. Believe me, if you had seen this paper . . . no sensible person could take it seriously.”
“You might be surprised. The uneducated among us can be gullible.”
“Even so—”
“Let me ask you this, Simon. Do you believe that the Foundation is good? That it is necessary?”
“Well. Yes. Basically.” He worked for the Foundation. How could he say otherwise?
“Then trust it.”
“It’s Brenner I don’t trust,” he muttered.
“He will be disciplined. I’ll see to it myself. Occasionally, a swollen ego must be lanced and drained.” Before he could say anything else, Neeta spoke again: “I heard you’d been transferred to the mailroom. Does the work suit you?”
“It’s . . . tolerable. A little dull.”
She smiled—a strange, sad, wry smile this time. Her smiles were never fully happy. “The most important work is rarely the most exciting.”
“I don’t feel very important.” He hesitated. He’d come here to tell her about Brenner, not to plead his own case. Still, now that he was here . . . “I know you don’t think much of me. But . . . I really believe I’m capable of more, if you would just give me another opportunity. I want to be an Animist. A real one. Perhaps I could train as a Healer, or—”
“Healers need extraordinary levels of focus and mental clarity. Two things you don’t possess. Remember the rabbit?”
Simon remembered, though he tried not to think about it. “Then put me on patrol.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“I know I’m young, but Brenner’s not much older than me, is he? Patrol members don’t have to be like him. Let me prove that. I can do better.”
“Is the mailroom really so awful? Most common folk would consider the job prestigious. Many would feel honored to be in your shoes.”
His hands were balled into tight fists in his lap. “I know. Sorting letters is necessary, I understand that, but . . . I don’t feel like I’m helping anyone. Is it wrong, to want more?”
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