“I am a trainee here, remember?” He drawled my words back at me mockingly.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought you were at some important mage house party at General Thaddeus’s mansion. With Natalya and her lot.”
His face quirked into a half smile. “What? Have you been tracking me, Elena? I didn’t realize you cared so much about my movements.”
“What? I don’t…” I spluttered to a halt, feeling a flush creeping up my face and cursing it.
“I left early to return to the Academy,” he said, apparently taking pity on me. “I wanted to get started on my study.”
I barely refrained from rolling my eyes. Like he wasn’t already ahead of the rest of us in every class. Well, maybe with the exception of Dariela. Perhaps he was determined to pull ahead of the distant Ellington girl this year.
I took a deep breath and gathered myself together. “No, I have not been tracking you. Coralie mentioned it. And only when I asked her about a particular house—which turned out to be the general’s mansion.” I gave him a loaded look. “I asked, of course, because it was the house where my pursuers ended up.”
Lucas frowned. “You don’t still think the general is involved in some sort of treasonous conspiracy against you, do you? I’ve already told you—the Council of Mages ruled you are to continue at the Academy, and he might disagree, but he wouldn’t cross them.”
“What then?” I put my hands on my hips. “Why was he having me followed?”
Lucas looked away from me, his face sliding back into its usual careful mask.
I narrowed my eyes and stepped forward, closing the gap between us.
“Oh no, you don’t. Tell me the truth. What do you know?”
Lucas looked back at me, and something that looked like guilt flashed briefly through his eyes. He paused a moment more before sighing and speaking.
“As you said, the general is hosting a house party at the moment. Those men could have been reporting to almost anyone.” He took a deep breath. “And they were most likely your official watchers, not anyone nefarious.”
I took a step back. “My…what?”
Lucas sighed. “Did you really think we would just let you go off alone to some small village for weeks? Right after Kallorway attempted to abduct you? You’ve had two mages keeping watch—from a distance—the whole time. They were there for your protection.”
I knew my mouth had fallen open, but I didn’t care.
“My…protection? Are you serious? Then why not tell me about them? Why force them to hide away for weeks?” I barely resisted the urge to start pacing, wanting to let off some of my pent up energy. “You mean they were there to watch me. To make sure I didn’t step out of line, or attempt to compose without supervision, or break any of your precious laws.”
“The laws are there to protect all of us, Elena.” Lucas sounded weary.
“Perhaps. And yet I can’t help but notice some seem to get more protecting than others.”
He shrugged. “Think what you like. The council rarely agrees on the motives for something. You learn to settle for agreement on the action itself. And if Kallorway had come for you again, you would have been grateful for their presence.”
“Would I?” I stared at him. “That’s funny. Because I seem to remember rescuing myself previously.”
“Elena.”
I looked away, knowing I was being difficult and obstinate. After all, I had thought the same thing—that if my attackers came again, they would come with more force. Only the irony was that it wasn’t Kallorway who was likely to attack me. So Lucas had sent me protection in the form of my enemies.
Maybe it had actually saved me, though. No doubt they had been unable to act while they were tasked with watching over me. It would have been far too suspicious.
The clatter of steps sounded, and then Coralie burst into the hall.
“Elena! There you are!” She faltered and slowed when she saw who I was with, looking back and forth between us. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting…”
“No,” I said hurriedly. “Not at all.”
Lucas’s eyes lingered on me for a moment, his face impassive, and then he nodded at us both and strode away.
“What’s he doing here?” asked Coralie. “I thought he was off partying with the rest of them.”
I shrugged. “He’s already started studying, of course. Our prince wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to get ahead of us all, Coralie.”
My friend regarded me with narrowed eyes, but I turned toward the stairs, and she trailed me without further comment.
We only made it up one flight before her natural buoyancy returned, and she started chattering about her summer, about the changes she had found in her home city of Abalene, and about our upcoming classes.
Her anxieties were all centered around combat—the class that was set to change drastically in second year. In first year we had trained in one of the dirt squares at the back of the Academy, slowly graduating from unarmed combat to staffs to swords. But we had never set foot inside the small arena that stood at the back of the Academy grounds.
The arena was used by the senior years who rotated through on different days. And in the arena we dueled with more than just blades. We dueled with a mix of weapons and compositions. Coralie wasn’t the only one who was nervous about it.
After we checked our rooms and dumped our bags, she dragged me along to the storeroom that supplied basic provisions for the trainees. The servant on duty there laughed and joked with her about trainees that wouldn’t stop growing as she collected a new set of white robes. Unlike the court, the Academy had a relaxed culture, and titles were rarely used.
Apparently it was the reason we were all supposed to feel so fortunate that despite having an unusually small intake in our year level, we had a number of year mates from important families. This time at the Academy was our chance to bond and form connections that would advantage us in the years ahead. A laughable concept in my case, of course, for too many reasons to count.
The servant turned to me with a questioning look, and I shook my head.
“I’m finished growing, I think—sadly. My old robes still fit.”
The woman made a sympathetic noise as she eyed my small stature.
“Never mind,” said Coralie, looping her arm through mine and tugging me out of the room. “You don’t need height to make an impression.”
At the meal that evening, the dining hall was half empty, many of the trainees not yet returned. But two welcome faces sat at our usual table.
“Finnian! Saffron! You’re already here!” Coralie bounced over and embraced them both.
Given the status of Finnian’s father, I had expected him, at least, to be at General Thaddeus’s mansion.
“Don’t tell me you’ve abandoned this fancy house party early, too,” I said, as I slid into a chair and looked around for the servers. I was ravenous.
“Are you surprised?” Finnian gave an exaggerated shudder. “It was full of Stantorns.”
Coralie chuckled, and Saffron wrinkled her nose.
“And don’t forget the Devoras twins and half their family. I wish we’d stayed up north instead of coming down early for it.” Saffron’s caustic comments surprised me, and I grinned at her. She had been withdrawn the previous year, only friendly with us because she seemed to follow Finnian’s lead in everything. But apparently she had opened up over the summer.
The two cousins came from the Callinos family, like both the Academy and University Heads, and had the dark gold skin and black hair that marked them as northerners. I had learned enough about the four great mage families during first year to know that Devoras and Stantorn were usually allied, but that Callinos was currently in a period of ascendancy—holding four of the ten positions on the Mage Council. It meant they equaled the combined voting might of the Devoras and Stantorn members—much to those two families’ disgust.
I got the impression the fourth family, Ellington, rarely held a
strong position among the others. A pity since they seemed by far the nicest house—with the possible exception of the aloof Dariela. Hopefully the Ellingtons were enjoying holding the current balance of power with their two head positions, a situation I was more than happy with, since they had voted in my favor the year before.
And I had more to be grateful to them for than just their votes. The Ellingtons working at the Academy—including the Academy healer, Acacia, and the head of the Academy library, Walden—had been kinder to me than the average mage. Walden, in particular, had spent untold hours assisting me to access and control my power.
While it had been Callinos who gave me their full support from the beginning, working tirelessly to protect me, they had done it in their quest for knowledge, not out of kindness. Finnian and I had only become friends part way through the year, and he was the first Callinos to view me as something other than a fascinating test subject.
I tried to remind myself I should feel grateful for their protection at least, but the thought sparked an entirely different gratitude.
“Oh! Finnian! I have to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what? Gracing you with my presence?” He winked at us, and I shook my head.
“No, for sending Beatrice, of course. Honestly, my family couldn’t be more grateful. I never dreamed—”
“Beatrice?” He looked at me curiously. “I heard she had a job just outside of Corrin, but it didn’t have anything to do with me.”
I frowned. “But surely it was you. Who else could it have been? She mentioned my having important friends, and I thought…”
The others all exchanged bemused looks.
“Were you sick?” Saffron asked.
I shook my head. “Not for me. For my younger sister, Clementine. She has…had,” I corrected myself with an amazed shake of my head, “…a weak system. She always came down with every little thing and got it worse than everyone else, too. Ever since she was a baby. It seems like a miracle she survived this long, but we didn’t have the coin for such a complicated healing. Not yet, anyway…”
I trailed off as Finnian shook his head. “I wish I’d sent her, but I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t even know you had a sick sister. It wasn’t me.”
“But…” I bit my lip. Who had known about Clemmy, then? Phyllida, the Head of the Seekers, had questioned my family last autumn after my powers first manifested. Perhaps someone had mentioned it…
But while Phyllida was a Callinos and had voted for me, we had never even spoken. Not really. Perhaps she had mentioned it to Lorcan, and he had…But it didn’t seem like the kind of thing the Academy Head would do. Not when half the time I was fairly certain he forgot I was a person at all.
“Ooh, a mystery.” Coralie grinned. “But a happy one, if she healed your sister. You must have more friends than you realize, Elena. Do tell us if you work out who it was.”
I forced a smile, and the arrival of the food distracted the rest of them, but I couldn’t match her optimism. It had been one thing to be beholden to Finnian, my friend. It was another thing altogether to owe an unknown price to an unknown person. A powerful person.
I shivered and reminded myself that Clemmy was worth it.
But my eyes fell on Lucas, and the memory of the way he had brushed aside my concerns came flooding back. I was far too new at this game of intrigue and power—and if someone was trying to play me, I had little doubt they would succeed.
The prince ate in silence with only Dariela for company, and I let my eyes linger briefly on the two of them. Since the tall girl was not only an Ellington, but also brilliant and head of the class, I wasn’t surprised she hadn’t been included in this exclusive party. Natalya and Lavinia saw her as a rival—and for more than class rankings.
But I could see nothing of romance between Lucas and Dariela. Little even of friendship—although they didn’t show any outward signs of rivalry or dislike either. But then perhaps I didn’t know how to read those signs, either. Perhaps Natalya and Lavinia were right.
Once again, I reminded myself that nothing Lucas did mattered to me. But for some reason I found it hard to laugh at my friends’ jokes for the rest of the meal. I had a mounting headache behind both temples, and all I wanted was my bed.
Chapter 6
I considered starting study early myself but going to the library would likely mean running into Lucas, so I let my friends convince me to laze around with them until classes started instead. We wandered the grounds and lay in the gardens in the autumn sun as much as possible. The new first years had started to arrive, and we watched them with interest, assuring each other we had never looked so young, anxious, and naive.
Of course, I had arrived downright terrified rather than merely anxious and had known nothing about anything—I couldn’t even read. But it felt good to pretend with my friends, so I refrained from mentioning it.
Coralie in particular had a morbid fascination with the arena, and we spent many conversations guessing at what our new combat classes would look like. We even poked our heads in when no one else was around.
I could see the structure from my window, but it had looked small from so high up. From the inside, it looked bigger than I had imagined. Sloped seating ringed the oval floor—far more than was needed for a single year level. How many spectators would be observing our bouts?
We strolled away in unusual silence, no doubt each contemplating standing in the middle of that floor facing off against one of our year mates. I looked back at it over my shoulder.
“It sort of shimmers. The air around it. And I can feel power. I don’t know why I haven’t noticed that feeling of power around it before.”
“That’s the shield,” said Finnian. “Since it’s used for training, they want to contain any uncontrolled bursts or poorly crafted workings.”
“We’re only supposed to be able to kill each other in there,” said Coralie glumly. “Not anyone else.”
Saffron patted Coralie’s arm. “No one has ever died training in the arena, Coralie.”
“There’s always a first.” Coralie sighed.
I felt an icy trickle down my spine. If the first trainee to die in the arena was going to come from our year, then I didn’t think it was likely to be Coralie.
The same thought filled my mind when I actually stood in the center of the arena a week later. Our first couple of days of lessons had been completed in one of the regular training yards, giving the other trainees time to compose a series of stored combat compositions in our afternoon composition class.
Redmond, our composition instructor, taught the basics of several simple workings, but I could tell that most of the trainees had been preparing for this moment and wouldn’t be relying on his examples.
Thornton had explained the parameters of our arena bouts in our first combat class. We would face off one against one, with both a sword and three prepared compositions. For a moment I had thought this might give me an advantage, but he had sternly informed me that I would also be limited to the use of three verbal compositions.
“As if she could do more, anyway,” muttered Natalya.
I stayed quiet. I had kept my strength a secret the year before as much as I was able, and if I was going to be limited in the bouts, then I didn’t see any reason to reveal it now.
“Why only three?” asked Calix, Natalya’s twin brother. “I certainly wouldn’t be foolish enough to go into battle with only three compositions. If we’re strong enough to prepare more, we should be allowed to do so.”
Thornton narrowed his eyes at him. Our instructor might be Devoras, and willing to weight the class against me, but he took his duty of training young mages to fight seriously. Something that had made a lot more sense to me after I had discovered that while one child from every common family was forcibly conscripted into the Armed Forces, it was considered the duty of every mage graduate from the Academy to serve a two-year term at the front lines. According to Lucas, it was the only way we had succeeded in holdin
g back the never-ending Kallorwegian attack for thirty long years.
“No doubt you would not enter battle with only three compositions,” Thornton said, addressing his words to the whole class. “But battles can be long, and your stores can be depleted. Thus why you need to be proficient with ordinary weapons as well. And sometimes attacks can come at unexpected moments, when you haven’t had a chance to rebuild your stores. These training bouts are not an opportunity for you to destroy each other, they are a chance for you to work on developing strategy. You need to learn to use the best tool in each situation, and to conserve your compositions for the optimal moments.”
Several of the students nodded thoughtfully while I told myself that it had been my imagination that his eyes lingered on me when he spoke of us destroying each other. The thought returned, however, when I looked across the arena floor at Natalya. Of course I would be facing her in my first bout. And of course we would have been chosen for the first bout of the class. I really shouldn’t have expected anything less.
Finnian had even assured me in a cheerful whisper that I should be grateful. It could have been Calix or Weston, who were both stronger and more skilled than Natalya. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel particularly reassured.
“Remember the purpose of the bout,” said Thornton, in a bored voice. It was the first time we had seen him since he had given us the information about the bouts at our first combat class of the year. No doubt he had been busy with the first years since then, our standard combat exercises overseen by several junior combat instructors instead. But apparently our first set of bouts in the arena were worthy of his attention.
“This is going to be fun,” Natalya said in a low voice, clearly not paying attention as Thornton continued his short speech.
“No lethal compositions are permitted. Even if you’re confident your opponent will block it. This is an exercise in strategy, not a duel to the death.”
I glanced over at my friends, and Coralie gave me an encouraging smile. I straightened my spine. I had fended off four separate attacks with my words the year before. I could do this.
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