Bowing, Caretaker Undu retreated past them down the stairs. She didn’t look back.
“If she lowers my scores because of this, I’m not forgiving you,” Merecot murmured to Daleina.
“She won’t,” Daleina said. “It wouldn’t be fair.” She stepped forward. “I’ll go first.”
Merecot blocked her. “I will. She won’t be as angry at me, since I did keep the academy from burning down.”
“But you shouldn’t be punished at all—”
“I know. And I’ll speak up for you.”
“I’m not going to let her—”
The headmistress’s voice cut across them. “Predawn wanes. Come in before old age claims me and all that remains is bones.”
Both of them walked in together—with a little maneuvering and brushing of shoulders against the jamb—side by side.
At her desk, the headmistress was crowned in candlelight. An array of candles flickered behind her, the reflection of flames shimmering on the windowpanes. She had parchment on her desk, notes and maps, and a pile of half-eaten fruits and breads lay beside her, as if she’d been there and working for some time. Does anyone in this place ever sleep?
The spirits know I haven’t.
Daleina bowed, and Merecot, a second later, followed suit. “Headmistress Hanna, I take full responsibility for my actions—”
“And I for mine,” Merecot jumped in.
“I was attempting to practice, and I lost control,” Daleina said. “Merecot was merely trying to contain the damage I’d done. She stopped an accident from becoming a tragedy. I don’t think she deserves to be punished—”
“And you?” the headmistress asked, looking at Merecot. “Do you believe you deserve punishment?”
“I don’t,” Merecot answered. “And neither does Daleina. It was an accident. Daleina has difficulty controlling spirits. She’s easily overwhelmed if they come in either strength or numbers. It wouldn’t surprise me if the nearby spirits noticed this and came in droves on purpose.”
That was a bit more honest than helpful. Daleina shot her a less-than-friendly look. The headmistress didn’t need to know all of Daleina’s failings. It would have been far better if the headmistress hadn’t noticed her at all, at least not for two more years, until after she’d passed her exams and been chosen by a champion.
Headmistress Hanna folded her hands on her desk. “Accidents happen. They are part of how we learn. And you are here to learn.”
Daleina bobbed her head hard. “If my punishment could be more practice, I’d appreciate it. I’d rather not lose time in the classroom. We’re so close to midterm exams.”
“Yes, exams.” The headmistress tapped her fingers on a stack of parchment.
Merecot frowned and craned her neck as if trying to read the papers. “Are those mine?”
The headmistress pushed back from her desk, walked toward her window, and clasped her hands behind her. “Can you tell me why this academy exists?”
“To train those with the affinity for spirits to use their powers,” Merecot said, promptly and loudly, as if answering a drill.
“Indeed. Why?”
“So that the champions can choose the best candidates to become heirs,” Merecot said. “The queen must be the best of the best.”
“And why do we need a queen?” the headmistress asked.
Daleina glanced at Merecot. That felt like trick a question. Only a queen could touch all the spirits at once. After the coronation ceremony, her powers were magnified, her strength and range increased until she could impose her will on all the spirits within her borders. She and she alone could maintain the do-no-harm command for every spirit and keep the spirits from destroying everyone. “To protect the people,” Daleina said. “A queen must use her powers to ensure the well-being of everyone in her land.”
“It is an enormous responsibility, to be queen. It requires sacrifice, compassion, and wisdom. A queen must be morally unassailable. She must be strong of character, as well as affinity. It is seldom discussed, but the fact is that a bad queen can be as dangerous as no queen.”
Daleina wasn’t sure that was true. No queen meant certain death. Her village, writ large. It was the reason that every woman, regardless of level of power, was taught the coronation command—after a queen died, the spirits had to be, in essence, frozen so that they didn’t slaughter everyone before the next queen was chosen. Choose. That simple command suspended their bloodlust, their power, the forest itself. Drastic but necessary. To be without a queen . . .
“This academy exists not only to shape the kind of power required to be queen but to shape the kind of person required to be queen,” the headmistress said. “Your courses in history, politics, and ethics are of equal importance to summoning and survival.”
“With all due respect, Headmistress, we know this,” Merecot said. “Please just tell us our punishment so we can return to our studies.”
Daleina winced. She might know diplomacy was important, but Merecot still needed to work on it.
Headmistress Hanna turned from the window to face them again. “I took the liberty of requesting your records, after the incident last night, and I’m afraid I found a disturbing trend. Your papers and your exams over the last two years in history, politics, theory, and ethics . . .” The headmistress gestured at the stacks of parchments. “I believe you two have engaged in unethical behavior, repeatedly. Your work is too similar for any other explanation, unless you would care to offer one?”
Daleina stared at the headmistress as the words linked and unlinked in her head, her brain trying to make sense of them. The headmistress couldn’t mean . . . She couldn’t think . . . “We didn’t cheat. Not on an exam. Or a paper. Or anything. Ever.”
“I worked hard,” Merecot said. “I deserve my scores.”
“Merecot has helped me in summoning classes,” Daleina said, “but only during classes and practices, not during anything official.” Not much, anyway. Not enough to constitute cheating. Everyone helped one another.
Headmistress Hanna shook her head. “Summoning classes don’t concern me. I am concerned with your coursework in your other classes, with your written assignments and exams.”
This didn’t make sense. It was unfair. Untrue! “We study together, a lot.” Or at least Daleina studied with Revi and Linna. Merecot didn’t come to their study sessions. Still . . . “It makes sense that our answers would be the same. We learned at the same time, from the same books and same lectures. We discuss the lessons. We’re supposed to do that!”
Headmistress Hanna plucked two papers from two different stacks and laid them side by side. “First-year exams, history.” She pointed to answers, one after another. Leaning forward, Daleina read—she remembered this exam. She’d studied hard. Some of the answers had been obscure, and she’d been proud of herself. She’d even written to her parents and Arin, telling them how she’d done. They’d been proud of her, even sending her a necklace of whittled wood as a congratulations present. “And this, second year, ethics.” The headmistress drew out two papers and displayed them before Daleina and Merecot.
Daleina looked up from the papers. “You’re mistaken. We did our own work.”
“Test results don’t matter anyway,” Merecot argued. “It’s the power that matters. The spirits chose the strongest and the best. They won’t choose anyone to be queen who hasn’t mastered all six kinds of spirits. The greater the control, the greater the queen.”
“Power without ethics is a recipe for disaster beyond imagining,” Headmistress Hanna said. “And this sort of rampant disregard for the integrity of your own work concerns me greatly.”
No, this can’t be happening! She’d studied. She’d agonized over papers, pounded facts into her head, and pored over textbooks. All the notes that were drying in the kitchen were proof that she’d done her own work! Except that she’d be lucky if any of them were legible—her proof was charred and shriveled. Her stomach felt like a charred stone inside her.
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br /> “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t ask you both to leave this academy.” There was sadness in her eyes, Daleina saw; the headmistress didn’t want to do this, but she believed they’d both cheated. Daleina felt sick, the charred stone churning over.
“Because I am the best student you’ve ever had,” Merecot answered without hesitation. “Because I will be queen.”
“And you, Daleina?” the headmistress asked.
A thousand answers tumbled through her. Before she could answer, though, Merecot spoke again, “Because she didn’t cheat. I did.” Sauntering up to the desk, Merecot rifled through the pages and then flung them on the floor. They fluttered together like fallen leaves. “All of this . . . it’s a waste of time. The only thing that truly matters is the spirits. How strong you are. That’s how I chose to spend my time. Every waking moment, I’ve honed my power. See?” Holding out her hand, Merecot faced the window, and an air spirit slammed into the glass.
Daleina jumped back as the window shattered.
The spirit flew directly to Merecot’s hand and alighted on it. Merecot stroked its head as if it were a pet. “Aw, you broke a window,” Merecot said to the spirit. “We must fix it.”
Nodding once, the spirit flew to the shards of glass. It gathered them in its arms, oblivious to how the shards cut into its thin skin. Blood dotted the bits.
“Merecot . . .” Headmistress Hanna began.
Merecot held up her hand again. “I’m not done yet.”
More air spirits swarmed through the window, gathering the bits of glass. They held the pieces into place. And then fire spirits ran over the cracks, and the glass heated, brightening to a glowing orange. The cracks melted together, fusing back. With a flick of her wrist, Merecot dismissed the spirits, and then turned to the headmistress.
Daleina walked to the window. She’d never seen Merecot do anything like that. She’d never seen anyone do anything like that. She hadn’t even known it was possible. Reaching out toward the fused cracks—
“Don’t touch,” Merecot warned. “Still hot.”
She withdrew her fingers. There were streaks of reddish pink within the glass, where the air spirits had bled on the shards, and the healed cracks were still visible. It was far from perfect, but the level of power and control—“I used my time to practice, instead of wasting it with irrelevant nonsense,” Merecot said. “Is that so very wrong?”
“This”—the headmistress tapped her desk and the few papers that hadn’t been scattered—“is indeed so very wrong. And the fact that you admit it with pride and do not seem to comprehend the seriousness—”
“I have a gift, and I want to use it!” Merecot said.
“Why?” Headmistress Hanna asked. “Why do you want to be queen so badly?”
“Because it’s what I was born to do,” Merecot said. “It’s why I exist. It’s why everything that’s happened to me has happened. It’s my purpose, my life.”
The headmistress turned to Daleina. “Why do you want to be queen?”
Daleina swallowed and thought of her sister Arin. Her answer was the same as it had been on the day she took the entrance exam. That hadn’t changed. “To protect people.” But that sounded so weak next to Merecot’s claim of destiny and her display of power.
Merecot snorted. “Seriously? You’re parroting back that answer? Can’t you be honest with yourself at least about why you’re here? You aren’t as good and pure as all that.”
Daleina shook her head. It wasn’t about goodness, and she wasn’t trying to get the right answer. Whenever she thought about why she was here, whenever she closed her eyes at night, whenever she sat in the practice ring or listened to a teacher wax on about the importance of their studies, whenever she was so tired that she wanted to quit, she saw her village, except now the torn bodies were her family and her friends: Revi, Mari, Linna, Merecot, her teachers, the caretakers, her parents, her sister . . . It was their bodies she pictured in the wreckage. “I think not wanting people dead is a reasonable answer. Be honest: it’s your answer too, Merecot. You want to protect people too. You have this incredible power, and you want to use it to be everyone’s hero.”
Merecot exhaled so heavily that it sounded as if she were deflating. “Yes. Exactly. You can’t fault me for that. I’m not ‘unethical.’ I’m driven.”
Headmistress Hanna studied them both. Under her gaze, Daleina felt as if her skin were peeled back and her innards examined. The silence stretched for longer than a comfortable moment. “Merecot, you admit that Daleina was not involved?”
“She had no idea,” Merecot said.
Daleina opened her mouth and then shut it. She didn’t know how to defend Merecot when all of that was true. She’d had no idea, not even a suspicion, that Merecot had been stealing her work and copying her exams. Scooping up the pages, she saw more similarities—papers that looked nearly identical, research that matched point for point, analysis that followed the same logic. She’d spent hours and hours on all of this, and Merecot had just taken it, without ever asking or telling her—
“Then, Merecot, I have no choice but to insist that you repeat these courses, or leave this academy,” Headmistress Hanna said. “I cannot permit you to be chosen until this is rectified. You will also report for specialized ethics training, since those lessons in particular seem not to have made an impact.”
“Repeat all the courses? From two years?” Daleina clutched the papers. “You can’t delay her like that. Look how incredible she already is. She’ll make an amazing queen! With her as queen, we’ll all be safe.” She was aware that she should be promoting herself, that she was supposed to see Merecot as her competition, but it wasn’t fair!
“With her as queen, we’d all suffer.” Headmistress Hanna’s eyes were fixed on Merecot. “Do you understand, child?”
“I understand,” Merecot said stiffly.
“I don’t think you do. But your obedience will suffice for now. You are both dismissed.”
“Wait, surely there can be some kind of compromise.” Daleina made herself put the exams down, neaten them, then straighten them again. “She could do a special study with one of the teachers. She could retake the exams, on her own, and then you could judge. She could—”
Merecot laid a hand on Daleina’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Let’s go.”
“But, Merecot—”
“She dismissed us.” Merecot pulled her toward the door. “And the morning bells have already rung. You’re going to be late for class.”
Daleina hadn’t heard the bells. But dawn was streaming through the once-broken window and spilling onto the floor, shadowy lines in the light marking where Merecot had healed the breaks. She let herself be led out of the headmistress’s office, though she swore to return later, after class, and argue again. It wasn’t fair to ask Merecot to retake all of the classes. She was the best in the academy, albeit maybe not in coursework . . . “Why didn’t you ask me for help? I could have, I don’t know, tutored you. We could have studied more. . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” Merecot said. “I don’t regret what I did. I only regret that the headmistress blamed you too.”
“You’ve helped me plenty. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. I could have helped you!” If Merecot had asked for help in their other courses, Daleina would have given up sleep to help her. She could have had a separate study hour for her.
“You did help me. You just didn’t know it.” Merecot quirked her lips into an almost-smile. She hooked her arm through Daleina’s as they climbed down the stairs. “I want you to promise me something: you won’t believe what the masters say about you, what I say about you, what you say about yourself. We’re all liars. You have power within you. Enough power.”
“Not like you,” Daleina said.
“The way they teach here . . . It’s not right for me. I realized that a long time ago, but I thought I could stick it out, fool them, and focus on what I needed. I was wrong about that, I guess. But, Daleina, it�
��s not right for you either. You need to find what works for you. Practice as much as you can, even if it means burning down your room a dozen times. Don’t do what’s expected. Don’t just follow the rules. The spirits don’t follow their rules. Why should we?”
The other students were spilling out of the bedrooms and heading toward their classes.
Merecot stopped at their bedrooms and took Daleina’s hands in hers. “You might even do amazing, once you’re not in my very impressive shadow anymore.”
Automatically, Daleina began, “Your shadow’s not that—” She stopped. “You’re leaving? Merecot, you can’t! After all the work—”
“I’ve gotten as much as I can get out of this place. It’s time to move on. Learn someplace else. Someplace that will appreciate me more. Someplace that needs me.”
You can’t leave! Daleina wanted to yell at her, shake some sense into her, but Merecot was wearing her most mulish expression—which was saying something. There was no arguing with her.
She hugged Daleina, and Daleina hugged her back. And then with a smile that on anyone else would look forced, Merecot headed for her room.
Following her, Daleina watched her pull clothes from drawers and her cache of personal weapons, the ones she’d arrived with, from under her bed and stuff them all into a pack. “Wait, you’re going now? Right now? Don’t you want to say goodbye to everyone?”
“I’m not good at goodbyes. Tell them for me. Consider that paying me back for stopping your fire from completely destroying the academy, which you’d think the headmistress would have brought up as more serious than my academic issues.” Merecot shook her head. “She doesn’t have her priorities straight. But that’s no longer my problem. Try not to make it yours. And, Daleina, try not to die.”
Daleina felt tears in her eyes. “You too.”
CHAPTER 10
By the end of her third year at the academy, Daleina could summon all six kinds of spirits, as well as sense them at distances up to a quarter mile. By the end of her fourth year, she could control them. Sometimes. If she worked at it. And if she chose small, weak, not-so-smart spirits. Merecot had been right: without her acting as a safety net, Daleina was pressed to work harder. And she had. She passed her exams, year after year, and so did Revi, Linna, and Mari, as well as the others who had joined their study group: Zie, Evvlyn, and Iondra. Every night, all seven young women crammed into one bedroom after dinner to discuss magical theory, argue about the history of Renthia, and agonize over the next hurdle the teachers wanted them to leap. In the spring, that hurdle was their largest yet: champions looking for potential heirs were spotted at the academy. Two, to be specific, Champion Piriandra and Champion Cabe. Daleina had caught a glimpse of them as they were greeted by Headmistress Hanna.
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