Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists)

by Giacomo, Jasmine

  “Taban, what’s—”

  Taban angled toward her as his avatar leaped over her head and kept running. His breath came in ragged gasps. He staggered to a stop before her, and she steadied his arms so they wouldn’t lose the arc that sustained Sem and his unconscious passenger. “Who’s hurt?”

  “Cormaac. Attacked. Bear, I think.”

  Alarm shot through her veins. Kiwani glanced around and spotted a pair of newniks on the roof of a nearby classroom building, replacing worn cedar shingles. Invoking her Wind avatar, Stratus, she cast a quick voice-carrying spell and demanded that one trainee should fetch the members of Taban’s hex from the girls’ barracks and direct them to the Chantery, and the other should report to her for further instructions.

  “I’ll have him tell Master witten Oost that a student is injured. You hurry to the Chantery.”

  “Thank you.” His stressed tone evinced surprise and gratitude.

  It had been Taban and Sem who had escorted Odjin to the edge of campus after Taban’s hexmate, Braam, had blown his leg off last year. Sints only knew how bad Cormaac’s injuries were. “You were there for Odjin. I’ll be here for Cormaac.”

  Without another word, Taban sprinted after his avatar. Kiwani turned her attention to the plump newnik running up to her. She vaguely recalled that his name was Tammo. She told him what little information Taban had given her, then ordered him to inform the headmaster. He hesitated for a split-second, pouting, then did as he was told. Kiwani squinted after him, marking him in her mind as an insubordinate little newnik. She let out the tension that had filled her over the last few seconds all in one breath. She had far more important things to focus on.

  Attacked by a bear. Kiwani searched her thoughts as she jogged after Taban. Something Bayan had said about Treinfhir tugged at her memory. The outlander had told Bayan that he felt safe even up in the isolated cold house, because he knew that there weren’t any large predators on the mountain. She couldn’t trust him completely because of his previous association with rebels, but on the other hand, who would know more about nearby creatures than an anima caster?

  In the Chantery’s clearing, she saw other students gathering around Taban, who had let Sem vanish. The black-haired duelist sat on the Chantery steps, head in his hands, not answering anyone’s worried questions. From the other students’ conversations, she picked up that Cormaac had already been whisked inside, and that Diantha and two other healers were doing their best to save all of him.

  All of him. As if some parts were in more danger than others. Oh, sints, not again. Please.

  Kiwani looked around, but she didn’t see either Kendesi or Breckan yet. She slipped through the crowd and sat by Taban’s side. Seeing his pinched face, his empty stare, she slid her hand into his. He squeezed hers hard and said nothing. Kiwani felt a fountain of guilt rise in her chest as she remembered the last time she’d been at the Chantery for a serious injury. That time, she’d been coarse, rude, superior, and Odjin had left the Academy hating her. This time, she knew that all that mattered were the connections between people. Magic could kill, magic could heal, but only trust and friendship could make living with magic worthwhile.

  ~~~

  Bayan couldn’t make sense of the garbled facts the newniks at Kipri’s classroom door were gabbling at him. All he could make out was that Kiwani was involved in something at the Chantery. Fearing the worst, he apologized to Kipri, pushed through the younger students, and ran across campus, abandoning the talk he was about to give to the second wave of fresh new faces on campus.

  His relief was complete when he arrived at the Chantery steps and found Kiwani whole and unharmed. Still, he found himself stuttering the first parts of several questions at once, even as he reached for her shoulders to assure himself she was unhurt. She drew him aside from the other gathered students, explained the little she knew about a supposed bear attack, and told him Taban and his hexmates were inside. She murmured a detail Bayan himself had forgotten until then: that there were no bears on the mountain, according to Treinfhir.

  “Do you think Treinfhir was telling the truth?” Kiwani asked.

  Before Bayan could answer, Calder, Eward, and Tarin jogged up. “We heard.” Calder’s face was a thundercloud. “It was him, wasn’t it? Treinfhir.”

  “What?” Bayan asked. “What in Bhattara’s name makes you think that?”

  “Don’t play the fool, Bayan. The man is dangerous!”

  “Calder, you couldn’t be more wrong. I was just with him before Kipri’s class began. I took him supper. He was in the cold house, as always. Nothing was out of the ordinary.”

  Calder crossed his arms and raised his chin. “And you’d know anima magic invocations if you saw them, aye? How do you know he wasn’t doing magic right in front of you?”

  Bayan paused, stymied. He briefly racked his brain for some applicable detail from one of Instructor de Rood’s anima lectures last year, but could recall no mention of whether a cold house would block anima magic the way it did elemental magic. Bayan had just assumed that it would. Calder was right. None of them had any idea what anima magic invocations and spells looked like. Bayan didn’t even know whether anima magic used invocations.

  “See? You have no idea. Bayan, we canna keep protecting this man. He’s an enemy of the empire. We were there, for sints’ sake!”

  Bayan fully recalled the terror and chaos of the Battle for the Kheerzaal. It rankled to have Calder try to prove his point using Bayan’s own famous success. “It doesn’t make any sense for someone to drag him away from his death sentence, though. Something more is going on, and it involves Kiwani.”

  Calder took an aggressive step forward. “You’re not the only hero in the hex, Bayan. I’m looking out for Kiwani, same as you. I’m looking out for all of us. Especially you, who’ve gotten so blinded by some fun little puzzle in this outlander’s life that you canna see the threat he poses. Canna you see, Bayan, how he’s drawing you in? Getting you on his side? He’s turning you against us, for whatever his dark reasons are.”

  “That’s not true, and you’d know that if you only—”

  “Stop!” Eward’s voice was ragged. “Stop, please. I can’t—”

  Bayan felt a sharp stab of guilt and worry. Eward’s sensitivity to the hex’s well-being directly impacted his magic ability, and here Bayan and Calder were fighting in public in front of the Chantery, where Cormaac lay gravely injured from a mysterious attack, no less. Ashamed, Bayan said, “You’re right, Calder. I have no proof of Treinfhir’s innocence. But I’ll get it. And if I can’t, I’ll admit I was wrong, and we’ll all deal with him together. But give me time. We still don’t know who took Kiwani. We can’t let them know we suspect anything.”

  Calder’s lip curled. “Aye, fine. But don’t go alone. Take someone with you to watch.”

  Bayan nodded assent, and the hex split up, going their separate ways. Bayan gave the Chantery one last glance as he entered the tunnel to the barracks. It disturbed him how such a pleasant-looking building could, on occasion, loom larger and more evilly in the mind than even a dozen screaming Aklaa suicide rebels.

  ~~~

  Late that night, Bayan remained awake in bed, wondering if Treinfhir had indeed been fooling him all along. He heard a soft tread pass the door and slid from bed to peer into the hall. Taban moped along, eyes cast downward to the smooth wooden planks of the corridor, but he turned back at the sound of Bayan’s door opening.

  Bayan caught a glimpse of him in the dimness. The shadows that played across his face only emphasized his grief.

  “Is Cormaac…?”

  Taban’s voice sounded uncharacteristically small. “They took him down the mountain just now. His hand was… Diantha couldn’t save it.”

  “I’m so sorry. Can I ask, did he say anything about the attack?”

  “What? No. He never spoke to me. I found him lying on the trail in the middle of… of far too much blood. He only woke after the healers did all they could, and when
he saw his disfigurement, he… he had nothing to say then, either. Does that satisfy your macabre curiosity?”

  “No, it’s not that at all. I’m just not sure there are any bears up here.”

  “No bears? You’re worried about the bears, while my hexmate gets packed off to stir stinkpots for the rest of his life? The second hexmate I’ve lost, at that?” Taban advanced on Bayan with a bitter rage rising in his voice. “Aye, fine. Maybe it wasna a bear. A lion, a mountain jaguar, something else. You dinna see the way I found him, Bayan. Flaps of his skin flayed open, lying in a pool of his own blood. The marks in his flesh—only claws make that sort of damage! What does it matter, anyway, what attacked him? He’s gone. He’s gone, and he canna ever come back. Just leave it be. Leave me be, too, you nosy muckling.”

  Bayan absorbed the insult harmlessly. Taban was clearly reeling emotionally. He let the older student go back to his room. Bayan realized Taban was its only occupant, now that Cormaac had left. Bayan glanced back inside his own room, where Eward and Calder were sleepily questioning his yapping in the middle of the night, and tried to imagine what he’d feel if they were suddenly ripped from his life, never to be seen again. Just contemplating the idea hurt him deep inside. With a last glance down the hall to Taban’s door, Bayan reentered and climbed back under his blankets.

  ~~~

  Kipri headed back to his small house in the campus village clearing, obsessing over whether or not he’d see Tarin later on. She’d been reluctant even to walk next to him around campus, and he feared that whatever sort of relationship they had built together was falling apart. To his dismay, he found that the thought shook him more deeply than he’d expected. He had no experience with love. It wasn’t something any eunuch reasonably expected to achieve in life.

  Pushing the thought of Tarin away, he tried to think of other things. He’d heard that Cormaac, one of the Avatar students, had been suddenly injured and left campus, and couldn’t help thinking of the myriad fates that awaited his young charges. He made a note to mention the tragedy to Philo in his next letter.

  Philo’s last few letters to Kipri had been longer than usual. They’d been full of fascinating details of high-level imperial politics and commerce. The emperor’s negotiations with Karkhedon for the whereabouts of its rebel son, Isos, were stalled. A merchant in Nunaa had been stripped of her family name and exiled for protecting a rebel organization with her store front. More Balanganese farms were investing in seerwine pitcher plants as the demand for the rare drink escalated among the merchant class.

  Philo was certainly busy. But then, so was Kipri. He’d partnered the first-wave newniks, who had been on campus for just over sixty days, with freshly arrived second-wave newniks in a format that he hoped would translate well when they were placed in hexes: three older students and three newer ones, forming a pseudo-hex. It seemed to be working for now. But eventually, these uncertain young teens would be slinging magic at each other, and inevitably some of them would be injured. Kipri shuddered, glad he had no magic in him.

  “Did you hear that?” Bayan suddenly fell into step with him, wearing a grumpy look.

  Kipri only twitched a little at the duelist’s stealthy appearance. “Hear what?”

  “The headmaster, at supper.”

  “I ate early. I had some activities to plan out for my newer students. What did I miss?”

  Bayan’s lips formed a silent snarl. “No one is to go anywhere on campus alone or unsupervised after dark.”

  “But, it’s dark now.”

  “That’s why I’m with you. You’re staff, and you can walk me back to my barracks. Please?”

  Kipri sighed, changing direction. “Of course.” Maybe this escort service could work in his favor with Tarin.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that someone is just toying with you?”

  Kipri glanced down to hide his surprise. Was he trying to tell Kipri something about Tarin’s state of mind? “Sometimes.”

  “As if they either don’t know or don’t care that what you’re after is an impossibility.”

  Kipri let out a mirthless laugh. “Some things just seem doomed to fail, no matter how hard we want them to succeed.”

  “And no one else can give you the answer either, because they can’t even understand the question. Ay, Bhattara.” Bayan lifted his hands and let them fall helplessly to his sides.

  “All that passion, and it doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Even Kiwani couldn’t find any books that old—what?”

  “What are you talking about?” Kipri asked.

  Bayan’s face crinkled in incomprehension. “What are you talking about? What passion?”

  Kipri sighed. It seemed Tarin hadn’t told even her closest friends about her involvement with him. “I suppose that answers my question.”

  Bayan narrowed his eyes in confusion. “What question?”

  “Here’re your barracks. Good night, Bayan.” Kipri turned and trudged back across campus, leaving Bayan to stare after him from the porch. All the torment in the world at the hands of angry young eunuch bullies couldn’t hold a candle to the pain he felt in that moment, knowing he was truly in love, and that Tarin wasn’t.

  A small distraction awaited on the floor of his front room. He’d been so distracted by his relationship with Tarin that he’d forgotten it was royal mail packet day. Someone had thoughtfully slipped his latest Philo letter under his front door.

  Grateful for any news that didn’t involve wrenching his heart open, Kipri scooped up the cream envelope and broke its matching seal, then settled into his padded green and white chair to read it.

  Three paragraphs in, Kipri gasped aloud.

  I won’t speculate, lad, whether you’re already aware of this tangle and have been protecting her, or whether this somehow slipped your notice, despite its obvious origin at the Academy. There’s no shame in missing a secret, even one this dangerous. The key to good information networking lies in guessing the shape of a thing you cannot see, and such skill is only acquired with years of experience.

  Nonetheless, you can see as plainly as I that this particular secret, now loose, will cause significant damage to the emperor. I say “will cause” because its existence has not yet become public knowledge, even here in Akkeraad, City of Rumor. But it will, and soon.

  I urge you to warn her. There will be repercussions, especially among the few nobility on campus. And be wary. Something shifts across the empire, like ripples in a pond. I can feel it, but even I cannot yet guess its shape.

  Ripples in the Telling

  “Teach me your magic, if you can.”

  Treinfhir looked up at Bayan in surprise. His hands were full of barbecued ribs dripping onto his lunch plate. “Why do you ask me this?”

  “My friend says that you attacked one of the students on campus with your magic, while I was here with you two days ago.”

  “I didna!”

  “And I believe you,” Bayan said. “But you need to show me how your anima magic works so I can prove your innocence. I need to see how your invocations look. Or… whatever you do to make your magic work.”

  Treinfhir hesitated. The man was constantly nervous and not a little paranoid. Would he see that Bayan was endangering himself on Treinfhir’s behalf, that such a venture was risky for them both? Bayan hoped so.

  “Can someone who knows elemental magic learn anima magic?” Bayan pressed.

  Treinfhir frowned and nodded. “I believe ‘tis so, aye. But if I doona?”

  “Then my friend will eventually report that you’re up here. That’ll bring all sorts of bad things. Please, I’m not trying to threaten you. I’m trying to help.”

  Treinfhir sniffed, then dug a bit of meat out from between his teeth with his tongue. “Aye, all right, I could show you a bit. What do you want tae know?”

  Bayan settled down against the far wall, a mere two strides from where Treinfhir sat. “Is it possible to make a predator attack someone when you can’t see either of them
?”

  Treinfhir bunched up his thick lower lip in thought. “Aye, ‘tis doable. Lifeseeker can find any beastie you like in the surrounding area. But you canna control a creature from a distance unless you’ve bonded with its kind before, up close. Even then, it can refuse.”

  “Refuse? An animal can refuse?” Bayan frowned. That seemed to go against all the teaching he’d received regarding anima magic. How would such a refusal even happen? It doesn’t seem possible.

  Treinfhir seemed offended. “What do ye take me for, lad, some depraved monster? Such fiends are put tae death among the Tuathi! What do they teach you in this place?”

  Bayan pressed his lips together in frustration. “Not much, apparently.”

  “Ach, for the love of breath. Here, ‘tis like this now: you canna go aboot, dragging animals into your service. The hand of evil, that is. You must respect the animal’s wishes. If it doesna feel threatened—as you should before you ask its help—it willna agree to help, and should be left tae its life. Anima magic is natural defense, noothin more. A man among his fellow beasts, fighting back with coordination of effort and concentration of weaponry.”

  “Weaponry?” Bayan briefly envisioned marmots with daggers, birds with garrotes, bears with swords.

  “Aye, lad. Claws, fangs, spines, poison, venom, anesthetics. Weaponry.”

  Bayan’s vision morphed to a mangled monstrosity bearing all of the weapons Treinfhir had just mentioned. The look on his face must have spoken volumes, for Treinfhir threw up his sauce-coated hands in despair.

  “Love of breath, lad. You’ve got tae get over your terror of whatever rumors this campus has jammed into your ears. Else you too will be condemning me, right along with your friend.”

  Chastened, Bayan met Treinfhir’s eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Will you teach me from the beginning?”

  Treinfhir smiled. “Aye. I’d not mind dying whilst doing a bit o’ good in the world, yet.” He offered Bayan his plate, which still held a few uneaten ribs. “If you’re staying, you should eat.”