Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists)

by Giacomo, Jasmine

  Bayan thought of the impossible battle he’d fought against a foreign magic that shouldn’t have been able to exist in the empire’s heart. Could that happen again? Was the empire truly vulnerable to a Tuathi attack at any time? Surely the emperor felt the same concern. “How has he embraced my idea?”

  “In the next score of days, a dozen Raqtaaq students, a dozen Bantayan students, and another dozen mainstream imperial students will arrive on campus. Duelist scouts have been combing every city in the Bantayan and Raqtaaq lands for the last season, gathering together everyone who possesses elemental magic. They’ve found so many, they’re holding them in temporary barracks in the cities and assigning them to different waves, which are scheduled to arrive here on campus every threescore days until no new students can be located. Bayan, this campus is about to be awash in new duelists.”

  Bayan frowned. “Every threescore days? But it takes at least two seasons to pass the basic prep forms! If you try to cram four different classes of newniks into the same dormitories, they’ll burst the walls!”

  “I’m sure Headmaster Langlaren will find somewhere to put them. But the emperor insists on a tight training schedule. He’s hoping that the rush of so many culturally diverse students at once will not only give them all a natural support group, but that the mainstream imperials will accept their presence more quickly.”

  Bayan nodded, seeing the emperor’s wisdom. “Are all these waves of newniks going to be so perfectly balanced, with a dozen each of the Raqtaaq, Bantayan, and mix of Waarden, Dunfarroghan, and Akrestoi?”

  “Until the balance can’t be maintained, yes.”

  Bayan blew out a big breath. “This’ll be something to see, won’t it? Good luck; you’ll have your hands more than full.”

  “Actually, I had hoped to ask for your help, especially with the first wave.”

  “My help?”

  “I’m Raqtaaq, appointed by the emperor. You’re Bantayan and a hero of the empire. You have a holiday and everything. The two of us together can present a united and accepting front to all of the… newniks, is it?” Kipri stumbled over the unfamiliar term. “The more work we put in with this first wave, the less effort we’ll need to expend on later arrivals. And I really want to get this right.”

  Bayan could guess that Kipri had half a dozen reasons for wanting his job to go smoothly. “I’ll be there. Just let me know when your first meeting is.”

  Kipri gave him a broad, relieved smile. “I will. It really is good to see you again, Bayan.”

  As they parted ways outside the meeting hall, though, doubt crept in. Yes, all the students on campus knew of Bayan’s role in saving the emperor’s life. But he had no idea how a group of young Bantayan teenagers would perceive him. Had they even heard of him back home?

  As he headed back to the barracks to tell Eward and Calder about Kipri’s arrival and the imminent flood of newniks, Bayan found himself briefly wishing for the obscurity he’d labored under when he first arrived on campus a year and a half ago. Life’s much simpler when no one expects anything from you.

  The Lost Secret

  In the afternoon light, the mansion on the rise overlooking the crystal waters of Wisnuk Bay seemed part of an idyllic Akrestan painting. The gardens, grounds, and outbuildings were arranged as if by a meticulous artist seeking the best visual layout.

  Kiwani t’Eshkin, pack on her shoulders, walked through the market center of the port town of Tetbese and breathed in the scents of her childhood. Though the rattles and clashes of wagons and crates and the raucous cacophony of hawkers’ cries could be found in any large town in the empire, only those on the coast brought with them the smells of the sea and the fishing trade, and only those near Wisnuk Bay were softened by the peculiar but welcome citrus scent of waskukone’yen, which was the crop of choice on numerous farms in the area. It had been Lord Eshkin’s idea to produce the flowers en masse and market them to as much of the empire as they could reach before their signature scent faded. To Kiwani, the smell of the waskukone’yen was the smell of success.

  Or it had been, until she learned that the couple who had raised her had purchased her from her real parents, and the price had been their freedom from indenturement. As Kiwani began the uphill walk to the outer gates of the Eshkin estate, she felt her teeth grinding. Relaxing her jaw with a few stretches, she tried to focus on the future. Tomorrow, she’d seek out her birth mother. Tomorrow, she’d finally find the closure that Sint Esme had promised her, and then she could return to campus and once more perform her magic safely and in massive quantities. One day, she would be the empire’s best-known duelist, and her name would be spoken for centuries to come. It was her life’s goal. She’d hated the sight of Bayan merely because she feared his smaller magical ability would hold her hex back. Now, she pinned all her hopes on his ability to teach her how to force Savantism, so that her skills—her entire reason for being—would never be questioned.

  The gate guards were surprised to see her—and on foot, no less—but they let her pass with a murmured greeting and a bow. On the way to her old room, Kiwani passed the doormaid, the seneschal, a pair of pages, and a chambermaid with her arms full of folded linen. The chambermaid’s surprised apology for not having her room ready caused Kiwani’s stomach to twist; to all of these people, she was a lady of the house, their superior. She told the chambermaid not to interrupt her duties, but just to leave the clean linens outside Kiwani’s door. She hadn’t come home to revel in the past. There was no past to revel in anymore.

  Once inside the large, ornate suite that had been hers, Kiwani let her pack slide to the rug-strewn floor and opened the large shutters behind the cream divan.

  “Kah? Are you there?”

  The hexbird had somehow known when to avoid attracting attention during Kiwani’s journey. While she’d traversed towns and cities, he’d spent his time in the air or exploring alleys for scraps. The bird fluttered onto the sill as if he’d been awaiting her call from the roof. He croaked a greeting at her, then eyed the rest of the room.

  Kiwani wagged a warning finger at the hexbird. “No. You leave my things alone, Kah. I’ll get you something to eat from the kitchens—” Kiwani realized that she probably shouldn’t barge into the kitchens and take whatever she wanted anymore, since she didn’t technically live here. “—In a while.”

  Picking up her dusty pack, she headed into the bedroom, passing the brightly lit art room where she had used to paint bay scenes when her family visited from Akkeraad. She plunked her travel bag onto her bed, then sat beside it, letting the memories soak in.

  Eleven years ago, she’d been getting ready for bed when her mother had told her that Grandfather had died. Her first kiss had been at the age of eight, when an enterprising stable boy had climbed the vines that clung to the wall outside her window. She’d thought it great fun until he’d snicked a lock of her hair off with his little knife.

  She spotted her two favorite childhood treasures on the bone-inlaid surface of her vanity table: a squat pink glass jar and a cloth bag with secret pockets. She moved to the vanity, perusing the contents of the bag’s pockets: her own lock of hair, demanded back from the stable boy; a shell that had grown around a small stick; a small glass fisherman’s float with a vivid green butterfly inside; a ring with a flat circle carved from a pearl turtle shell—No, from its egg. Bayan had said the prized nacreous substance came from turtle eggs.

  Thinking of Bayan, she raised her pinky finger toward the silvery ring, but Kah fluttered over her vanity and pecked it from her hand, flying to a tall bedpost.

  “Kah!” Kiwani leaped to her feet. “You give that back!”

  Kah flew to another bedpost, further from her reach.

  “Kah, please. That’s mine. It’s important to me.”

  The hexbird only croaked at her around the ring.

  Kiwani felt the urge to stamp her foot, but she ran through a quick meditation sequence in her mind instead. Calmer, she said, “All right, keep the ring. But don
’t damage it. I want it back.”

  Kah flew out into the main room of the suite without any further comment, and Kiwani rolled her eyes. Hopefully he would stay away from her meeting with her real mother tomorrow. The last thing she needed was a pesky bird messing up a happy reunion.

  ~~~

  Bayan shifted on the silk chair in Master witten Oost’s lavishly appointed private classroom, not paying attention to the lesson on researching the backgrounds of one’s clients. Three days, and Bayan had yet to find the explanation behind Sint Koos’s illusion. He began to wonder if the sint was just fooling with him. He hadn’t told his hexmates he’d gone to see a sint, hoping to surprise them with both the question and the answer all at once, but now he wondered whether he might need their help to figure out what Koos had told him.

  What does the image mean? Binding an emotion to magic can’t simply be a natural effect of time, can it? We don’t have that much longer until our Avatar exams—my hexmates will never achieve Savantism if they top out before then. At least we’ve each managed all six avatars. I hope our innate magical strength gives us enough time to figure this out.

  Tarin’s doodling caught his attention. Bayan looked at her page of notes. Next to a notation on the ethics of purposely throwing a duel, she’d sketched a figure performing her favorite spell, Sky Embers, with its elbows out and its fists aimed at the sky. Next, she drew little inky flames raining down on it. In true Tarin style, the ink flames alighted on the duelist until it was covered with stylized blue fire.

  Bayan squinted. For a moment, the little ink figure seemed to move. One of its blue flames appeared as a necklace with a single bead on it. Then all was as before: an ink figure in inky fire. Bayan’s eyes widened along with the concept that suddenly blossomed in his head. “That’s it!” he cried, drawing the class’s—and Master witten Oost’s—attention.

  The sturdy older man wearing an ornate version of Bayan’s standard blue workout uniform paused in his lecture. “You wish to add something to our discussion, Bayan?” Master witten Oost smiled.

  “N-no, Master.” What had the instructor just been saying? Bayan raked his memory. “I was just wondering whether… whether you supported the sharing of facts a duelist might learn about their own employer with the opposition duelist.”

  “Ah.” The master duelist nodded approval. “That action has its own rewards and pitfalls. And,” he added, glancing off into space, “we will discuss that very topic tomorrow, for the bells are about to ring. You are all excused for lunch.”

  Bayan gathered his notes, shoved them between two random pages in his book, and exited the classroom with his hexmates and a handful of other hand-picked students—including the arrogant Taban Solahan—just as the bells rang out, signaling the end of class time.

  As the four of them strolled together from the warm late-summer sunshine into the chill dimness of a tunnel on the way to the dining room, Tarin nudged Bayan’s shoulder. “What did you really mean, then?” she demanded in her lilting Dunfarroghan accent.

  “Bayan’s likely become as psychic as Master witten Oost?” Calder guessed. “He could tell the bells were about to free us from the rich and perfumed prison that is Advanced Tactics.”

  Bayan shook his head. “No, even better than that.”

  Calder and Eward exchanged glances. “Do tell,” Eward encouraged. But Bayan said it would have to wait until after classes.

  His hexmates pestered him the rest of the afternoon, trying to dig up clues, but Bayan remained firm. He knew that once they knew what he had learned, they wouldn’t be able to think about anything else. And he didn’t want any extra witnesses to what he had to say. Knowing the way the modern imperial rules of duelism went, it was probably a potioneering offense to explore ways of improving one’s magic.

  ~~~

  “It’s just a matter of embracing an emotion instead of embracing the void,” Bayan concluded. He’d leaned toward the hex house’s fire pit for some while as he explained Sint Koos’s message, leaving his nose a bit crisped. His hexmates wore various expressions of excitement and puzzlement.

  Calder shifted in his chair. Though he’d mastered his terror of fire, his seat always rested further from the central fire pit than anyone else’s. “Do we have to hold hands and sing, too?”

  “I know you have an aversion to holding Bayan’s hand,” Tarin told him, “so you can hold Eward’s instead.”

  Eward and Calder both eyed her. Bayan sighed. “Listen. This is straight from Sint Koos. I’ve been trying all summer to teach you how to become Duelists Savant, and it hasn’t been working. I went to the sint for your sakes. But if you’re afraid of success, we can call it a night and go polish up our Tactics essays.”

  Eward looked abashed. “You’re right. This is exactly what we’ve needed: a little help. I’ll go first, Bayan. What do I need to do, exactly?”

  Bayan focused on the memory of the necklace the illusory duelist had worn. “You need to decide which emotion is the strongest in you. Not the one you wish was the strongest, but the one that actually dominates you. That will drive your Savant casting. I’m not proud of my anger, but it makes me a stronger duelist.”

  Eward nodded, staring at the bright coals in the fire pit with a vacant expression. Bayan and the others waited, and after some brow furrowing and lip gnawing, Eward said, “Hope. I think it’s hope.”

  “Hope? What sort of half-arsed emotion is that—ow!” Calder winced as Tarin punched his shoulder.

  “I hate not knowing how things turn out, so I just hope for the best. All the time. Since the day we were formed into a hex, I’ve hoped and wished and tried to help everyone do their very best. I want all of you to be the best duelists you can be. I guess… I’ve sort of turned you into my substitute family, since I don’t have one of my own anymore. Not really, anyway. All I’ve got in the world is here in this room, except for Kiwani. As long as all of you keep doing well with your magic, I feel that I can, too.”

  Bayan exchanged a glance with the others. “That’s why Kiwani’s leaving has bothered you so much. You’re worried she won’t recover her focus.”

  Eward let out a slow breath. “I try not to think about it. It throws my magic off if I do.”

  Bayan rocked back in his seat. All this time, he’d never fully understood the odd fluctuations in Eward’s magic. Now that he did, he realized that the hex was in a much more precarious position than he’d previously thought: if anyone showed signs of topping out, it seemed Eward might lose hope and top out too.

  The same idea reflected in Calder’s eyes across the fire as he met Bayan’s gaze. “Good thing we’re looking to Savantism, then, aye?”

  Eward smiled and nodded. “Makes me feel better just thinking about it. So, what do I do next?”

  Bayan cooled his nose with his fingertips. “First, you have to do what I did that night outside the dormitory, when my magic tried to kill you. You have to decide to be in control of it. I think that part will be easier for you because you didn’t start out as a wild, crazy Savant the way I did. But you have to make the decision every time you’re going to cast a spell. Make it part of your Elemental Invocation when you start to open yourself to magic. Hang onto that feeling while you cast. The sint’s duelist image started off invisible, but as it ran through all our spells, each one shaded it with a little more emotional color. When it finished, the duelist’s magic had fully meshed with its emotion.”

  “So, we have to do every spell we know?” Tarin frowned. “We know a lot of spells. When are we supposed to do this?”

  “Aye, especially when no one else is looking!” Calder added.

  Bayan blew out his cheeks. “Let’s worry about that later. You all know what my emotion is. You two need to figure out your strongest emotion, and then we’ll think about how we’re going to blend them with spells.”

  Calder spoke first, after a glance at Tarin. “No surprise here, either, I’d wager.” He touched the flame-lick scar that pulled at the skin on his
right cheek. “Some days I still canna believe I let myself sit this close to a fire. That’s all Bayan’s doing. He saved me from my total, abject terror. But I still feel fear. Every time I see a fire, I check myself for distance and flammability. Every time I let loose my Flame spells, or set my beautiful Firedust loose in the Flame Arena, I remind myself that I actually do know what I’m doing. Every time.”

  Bayan leaned forward, eyes intent. “No wonder you’re so good at Flame spells, Calder. You’re a Flame Savant.”

  As Calder grinned in happy surprise, Tarin threw her arms around him and gave him a quick hug, followed by another punch to the shoulder. “Just you wait, Calder Micarron. I’m the Mistress of Flame around here, and one day I will hand you your toasty, crisped arse in the arena.”

  Calder’s grin broadened, and he glanced at Eward. “I think everyone but me would enjoy seeing that.”

  Eward barked a laugh. “Your turn, Tarin.”

  Tarin’s demeanor turned hesitant, and her skin flushed pink. “You know how I love to compete with you, Calder—with everyone, really. But I also love to feel the wind in my hair. I love orangeade, just pints and pints of it. And telling jokes with Kiwani, laughing ourselves into oblivion, until far after we should be asleep. I just love doing things; I love being alive. I guess… you can call it passion.”

  Calder lifted his eyebrows suggestively. “Passion is good.”

  Tarin blushed deeper than Bayan would’ve thought possible. “Not on this campus. My Avatar training has gone very well so far. But I know that eventually I’ll top out somewhere. Sometimes that stresses me out, and I… ”

  Bayan felt a memory surface: Tarin confessing to him that she’d sought intimate physical contact with another student because she felt overcome by worry. “You need someone to help you handle the stress,” he finished, meeting her eyes.

  Tarin nodded, then looked down at the fire. “I haven’t needed to ask anyone for help for a long time, but I know I’ll want to, sometime. And what calms me would only throw your emotions off-balance, so I can’t even ask my hexmates for help.” Tarin’s voice grew fainter, until her last words were mere whispers.