by Gage Lee
Ishigara awarded five ranks to Clem, me, and both of our clans. She then went on to explain in great detail the subtleties of the challenge’s broken scrivenings. The bouquet of jinsei light stayed above Clem and me for the rest of the class, a constant reminder to the other students that we’d beaten them all.
The other students’ hate weighed heavily on my aura. They were pissed to have lost the challenge, and even more pissed they’d lost to me. If I hadn’t had bigger problems to worry about, their anger might have hurt my feelings.
Standing up to Tycho and Grayson had been a nice boost for my ego, but it came with a potentially horrifying cost.
Reyes knew where to find my mother, and I wouldn’t put it past him to punish her for my defiance. I had to get word to my mother that she was in danger. She was a strong woman, far more powerful than she let on. With enough warning, she’d be able to escape from Tycho’s grasp before he could turn her new life into a nightmare. But if the sage’s people caught my mother off guard...
Best not to think about that.
The instant Ishigara dismissed us, I bolted down the scriptorium’s central aisle and headed for the door. My aura tingled with the angry pressure generated by the other students, a prickly weight that clung to my shoulders and back like a cloak of angry bees. It stayed with me long after I burst through the classroom’s doorway and took off down the hall.
I’d made a lot of people very angry that day and needed to get far away from them before they decided to do something about it.
“Jace!” Clem called after me, but I ignored her. She’d done enough for me—I couldn’t ask her to come with me on this fool’s errand.
The School kept all the initiates isolated from their family and friends during the first year of our training. It was a harsh reality designed to focus all our efforts on advancing from the foundational levels of core mastery to higher grades as quickly as possible. Some students clung to their family like a security blanket, and if they were allowed to speak to them, it could hamper their progress.
But that didn’t mean there was no way for the staff and upperclassmen to reach out to the world outside the academy’s grounds. Clem had told me she’d snuck into the administration offices to call her parents, and that’s what I intended to do.
The labor camps were harsh places that afforded few chances to save up for luxuries or frivolous items like fancy cell phones. My mother, however, had socked away every spare penny to purchase a prepaid phone for emergencies. She’d made me memorize the number and swore I’d always be able to reach her with a call.
I prayed that she’d kept that promise after Tycho had moved her out of the camps and into a new life in the exurbs.
“Wait up!” Clem called again.
If I’d known exactly where I was headed, it would’ve been easy to lose her the same way that Deacon had lost me earlier. Unfortunately, I only had a vague sense of where the administration offices were, and that wasn’t enough to get me there ahead of my friend.
“Clem, stop.” I’d stopped in a side passage away from the foot traffic headed for lunch to let my friend catch up. “You don’t have to come with me. It’s bad enough that we won the challenge together, but if you get caught helping me do this, you could get expelled.”
“I guess that depends on what ‘this’ is.” Clem crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the wall. “What kind of trouble are you getting me into now?”
“I need to reach out to my mother,” I said. “Once Tycho finds out what I did, there’s no telling what his family will do to her. I want to give her a head start.”
“You really think Tycho would hurt your mother?” Clem asked. “If you do, my family could help.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “If I involve anyone else in this, there’s no telling what Tycho will do. He’s a powerful man, and even if he isn’t a dragon, he is one of the five sacred sages. He can make a lot of trouble for his enemies.”
Clem considered what I had to say, but it was clear she didn’t see the same threats that I did. She came from a family of privilege who helped enforce the rule of law and order within Empyreal Society. She thought of the clans as tools that could help her, not as weapons that could be wielded against her.
“Just tell me how to get to the administration offices,” I said.
“I’ll do better than that,” Clem said and grabbed my hand. “Come on, it’s not far.”
She led me through a series of switchback passages that left me more confused than I had been when we’d started my race to the offices. The windows in the hallways changed as we charged down. The midday sun gave way to the pale pink of dawn and shifted to the deep purple velvet of dusk.
Before I could ask Clem what had just happened, she stopped and pointed at the door ahead of us.
“Here we are,” she said. “It was harder to get here than I thought, but we should be fine now.”
“The sun,” I said. “What happened to the sun?”
Clem rested her hand on the office door and furrowed her brow in concentration. There was a faint click, followed by a rattle, and the door swung open.
“It’s right here,” she said and nodded her head through the open doorway. Warm sunlight streamed through the office windows and poured across the heavy wooden desks. “Keep your eyes on the prize, Jace.”
Telephones, the old rotary kind with heavy plastic handsets and thick plastic dials, rested on the corners of the desks. I’d seen the ancient contraptions in the black-and-white movies my mother and I had seen in the run-down movie theaters set up to entertain the laborers. The movies had all been old, the films scratched and pocked with projector burns, but none of us had cared. Any escape from the endless drudgery of our daily lives was welcome.
“Keep an eye on the door?” I asked in a low voice.
Clem nodded and closed it behind us.
Based on the time difference I’d experienced traveling between the labor camp and the School the first time, I figured it was late at night for my mother. Unless the Reyes family had moved her far away from our old home.
“Stop worrying about what you can’t change.” I shook my head and lifted the phone’s handset out of the cradle. A strange, warbling tone emerged from the earpiece.
“You have to dial nine first,” Clem said. “Nine, then zero zero one, and then your mom’s number.”
The dial glided smoothly under my fingertip, but each revolution was so painfully slow I was sure someone would stumble upon Clem and me long before I finished dialing.
“Come on,” I pleaded under my breath. I was six digits in when footsteps echoed in the hallway outside the door.
Clem made a keep going gesture and peeped through doorway’s thin window.
She was right, I had to finish this. If I went to all this trouble and got caught before I reached my mother, I’d be in hot water with nothing to show for it.
The footsteps grew louder, and I ducked down behind the desk with the phone cradled against my chest. The last digits ratcheted down, leaving me with nothing but the sound of approaching footsteps.
The phone rang with a tone I’d never heard before. It was low and soothing, a bubbling noise that reminded me of a fish tank’s pump.
One ring.
The footsteps were so close whoever it was had to be almost at the door. In another second, maybe two, they’d come into the office and find Clem and me.
Two rings.
The footsteps had stopped, and a hand tried the doorknob. It rattled, and my breath caught in my throat.
Three rings.
“Answer,” I pleaded with my mother. “Please answer your phone.”
The doorknob rattled again, and a low voice muttered something outside the door.
Four rings.
“Hello?” My mother’s voice, scarred by static and distorted by thousands of miles of wire strung between us, brought tears to my eyes.
“Mom,” I urgently whispered. “Plea
se listen to me. Something’s gone wrong. You have to get away from the Reyes family.”
“What are you talking about?” She lowered her voice to match my conspiratorial tone, and her footsteps were just audible through the phone line as she walked somewhere. “They’ve been nothing but good to me. I know I said not to trust any of the Empyreals, but—”
“You were right,” I insisted. “I stood up to Tycho, and he’s going to be very angry with me when he finds out what I did.”
“Jace,” my mother said. “Are you sure about this?”
I considered everything that had happened and couldn’t see any way that I’d been mistaken. Tycho had flatly told me not to win any more challenges, and I’d gone and done exactly that. He’d be furious when word got back to him.
He wouldn’t hurt me; I was his golden goose, apparently. But threaten my mother to punish me?
Oh, yes. He’d definitely do that.
“I didn’t want to believe you,” I whispered. “I thought the Empyreals were different. Some of them are, but the rest—you were right. Please, you have to run.”
“I’ve saved some money,” my mother assured me. “And one of your classmates sent me some oboli. If you’re sure about that, I can afford to run. With what I have, I can hide for months in the undercity. Not even one of the five sacred sages will be able to find me down there.”
My heart sank at the thought of my mother returning to the undercity after escaping its clutches. She deserved the life in the exurbs, and I’d stolen it away from her. This wasn’t working out at all like I’d planned.
“I’ll reach out to you again when it’s safe,” I promised. I had no idea how, but I swore to myself that I’d make this up to her. I had to.
My only answer was silence. I caught a hint of my mother’s breathing, suddenly rapid and harsh, and what might’ve been a sob made its way through the earpiece.
Through all the dark times, through nights when my mother could barely stand the pain from her day’s work, I’d never seen my mother cry.
The sound shattered my knotted heart into a million pieces.
“You can’t,” my mother said. “I have to destroy this phone. They could use it to find out that you called me. They could use it to track me. I can’t let that happen.”
The reality of my situation hit home. I lowered my head until my chin touched my chest and wrestled with a sob that tried to escape from me. Through all of this mess, I’d always known I’d see my mother again at the end of the academic year.
That was no longer true. Once my mother destroyed her phone and fled to the undercity, there was no way for me to find her. To save her from Tycho, I had to sever all connection to her. It felt like tearing my heart out.
“Okay,” I whispered with a voice thick with unshed tears. “I understand. I love you, Mom.”
“Jace,” my mother whispered. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”
“I wish I’d never come here,” I spat, furious at the selfishness that had pushed me to take my shot at the Five Dragons Challenge. “I never meant to hurt you, Mom. I wanted something better for us.”
“I know,” she said. The sorrow was gone from her voice, and a steely knife edge of determination replaced it. “You’ve done more than anyone could have ever imagined would be possible for you. I’m so proud of you, Jace. Don’t give up on your dreams now. Fight for it.”
There was a raw fury in my mother’s words that I’d never heard from her before. It filled me with hope, and it stoked the fires of my own anger at the mistreatment we’d both suffered throughout our lives.
“Mom, I need to know something.” The questions that Hahen had asked me in his laboratory bubbled up through my thoughts with sudden urgency. “What did Dad do? Why were we exiled?”
“There’s no time to explain.” My mother’s voice was suddenly lost and weary. “I’m sorry, Jace, I really am. I have to get moving. I’ll always love you.”
A sharp click sliced through our connection.
“Security guard.” Clem popped around the corner of the desk and crouched down next to me. “He looked bored. Hey, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “The guard’s gone?”
“Yep.” She took the phone from me, hung it up, and replaced it on the desk I’d hidden behind. “You don’t look so good. You got word to your mom, right?”
“Yes,” I said. It was hard to explain how much that call had cost me. I wasn’t sure Clem or anyone else would ever understand. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said. “I heard they put out a big end-of-semester feast for lunch. We’ve got the rest of the afternoon to celebrate our big win and stuff ourselves on fancy food.”
The thought of eating around all those angry initiates snuffed out my appetite. Besides, I had more important things to do than overeat. I had to get ready for the fight of my life.
“You go,” I said. “I have work to do.”
The Struggle
FOLLOWING THE SURPRISE scrivenings challenge, we were all excused from our class for the week leading up to New Year’s Day. While we still had to attend the morning and afternoon core strengthening exercises led by cranky wardens who had to stay behind to keep an eye on us, that only took up a couple of hours each day.
We’d all earned a break, that was for sure. Our classes had been grueling, the Core Contest had left most of us nervous and exhausted, and a full week of rest and relaxation seemed like a great way to spend a vacation.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to rest.
We were halfway through the year, and my rankings had me firmly in the top ten of the Initiate class. If I wanted to stay in my current position, I needed to work hard and prepare for what was coming. When Tycho and the rest of the professors returned after the break, the torture I’d suffered so far would seem like a luxury spa vacation.
My goal was simple: use the vacation week to strengthen myself and push my meager techniques to a whole new level. While Clem and the rest of the students devoured a holiday feast fit for a king, I stole a few slices of sliced ham from the buffet, slammed the meat between two pieces of brioche toast, and filled the pockets of my robes with wedges of cheddar cheese.
I took stock of my advantages on the way to the exercise courtyard. I’d hidden a small fortune’s worth of stolen elixirs, pills, and serums in my room. That gave me enough raw jinsei to power through just about any challenge or test that landed in front of me. Of course, I’d have to be careful not to expose my power source, but I’d been doing that all year without anyone being the wiser. That was a secret I could keep for the rest of the year.
My hollow core let me rip aspects out of tainted jinsei at lightning speed, which was something none of the other initiates could manage. I wasn’t sure how I could put that to practical use outside of an alchemical laboratory, but I wasn’t about to remove any of my advantages from the tally.
Finally, the Pauper’s Dagger was an effective path that let me pull jinsei from the many, many rodents that haunted the building’s nooks and crannies. That was an obvious advantage, and I hoped I’d be able to expand on it.
Which is why I’d swiped the cheese.
There were no core strengthening classes until later in the afternoon, so I had a couple hours of privacy in the exercise yard to test my new idea. I hid myself in the far corner of the courtyard, sat down behind a towering topiary, and pulled the cheese out of my pockets. After I’d lined up the wedges in a neat line on the ground in front of me, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
There were far more rats outside than inside the building. They’d made small nests in the topiaries, taken over mole burrows, and even made homes for themselves in the eaves. I stretched my spirit senses out as far as I could, struggling to find the rats furthest from me.
I found one, a black-and-white spotted male, a hundred yards away. The little guy stopped in mid-run across the rooftop the instant I forged a connection between our core
s. One moment, he’d been out for a little exercise and scavenging, the next his soul was bound to mine.
My circular breathing kicked in out of reflex, and the air I pulled into my lungs left his nose as a current of beast-tainted jinsei that circled back into my aura.
“Come here, little guy,” I whispered. “I’ve got some delicious cheddar for you.”
I had no idea if the path of the Pauper’s Dagger let me communicate with the rats bound to me, but it was an idea I’d been toying with since my fight with Rafael. Those rats had saved my life with their warning. It was worth a shot to see if the communication went both ways.
The rat on the other end of the connection twitched its whiskers and quivered with indecision. While its tiny brain screamed for it to run far away from the human who’d bonded with it, its stomach wanted the cheese I’d promised it.
My excitement grew as the rat’s primitive mind churned against my own. The connection was stronger than I’d imagined possible, more intimate than ever before. My thoughts focused on the rat and I cajoled it to come dine on the cheese I’d offered.
The war between the rodent’s mind and body ended.
Its gut won.
As my new rat pal bounded across the roof in my direction, I reached out to his cousins. In the space of half a dozen breaths I forged solid bonds with nine more rodents. I summoned them all with promises of fresh cheese, and soon six rats, two mice, a shrew, and a squirrel were on their way to my feast. I felt bad that I hadn’t brought any nuts or berries for the squirrel and vowed to remember a wider variety of food the next time I played Pied Piper.
The little beasts formed an orderly line on the ground in front of the cheese as they arrived. Their tiny bellies rumbled, and their eyes were wide with lust for the bounty on the ground before them. Despite their obvious hunger, they denied their instincts and waited patiently for me to ring the dinner bell.
“Thank you for having such good manners,” I said once the last tiny shrew had arrived and taken her position at the end of the line in front of me. “You may eat.”