by S. W. Clarke
Ever since I’d become a guardian, one thought was always in the back of my mind: at any moment, the horn could sound. At any moment, we’d be responsible for other people’s lives.
It hadn’t sounded yet. But it would.
Umbra had forbidden anyone at the academy from leaving. We weren’t to use the leyline, and no one had. Not since that day Umbra and I had passed through it. And even though she had managed to cure the corruption, the Shade had seen me part the veil. She’d seen the forest I had stepped into.
Even if she couldn’t see the academy, she could leave her creatures in wait in the woods. They didn’t seem to sleep or eat or want anything except to do what she commanded. And it would only take one slip for someone to be caught or killed. I had the moonstone and my enshroudment, but the other students had nothing.
Umbra didn’t want to take that risk. Not when she had another option.
Parity.
When the time came, she explained, she would use her staff to part the veil from inside the academy and send the guardians through. When the mission was done, they would return the same way, fixing their focus on the staff as a point of power so that when they parted the veil, they would step through and find themselves under the enchantment’s umbrella.
It sounded like a fine plan. I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about it, anyway.
On the third morning, I sat in the library with Aidan studying a 1500s map of Edinburgh. We had laid it out over the entirety of the table, and our noses were only a few inches away, our fingers tracing the streets. Back then, the city had been smaller—just the central road they called the Royal Mile, and offshoot streets and alleyways, many of which the Scottish called “closes.” Streets that were once open to the sky, but now lay under the city.
Most of them didn’t even have names back then. At least, they weren’t recorded on this map.
As an American, I’d never conceived of such a thing. Ancient streets, long buried. Long hidden. Even old homes, closed off from the world, lay in the darkness under the modern city. Somewhere in all of this, a five-hundred-year-old orichalcum blade waited for me. And once I had it, the weapon would be complete.
We’d pulled over a second table, and on that one lay a modern map of Edinburgh we sometimes referenced. The city sprawled atop an underground tangle of streets, tunnels, vaults.
Beside me, I had a notebook where I’d written down the names of every close that still existed—not demolished, just built over.
There were dozens of them.
Plague victims had died in them, sealed in. Murderers had been walled off. Ghosts were said to wander. And soon they’d have a witch down there, too.
“This one,” I said to Aidan, my finger jumping between the ancient map and the modern one. “It’s still there.”
He had a book about Edinburgh’s streets flipped open, which he consulted, turning pages. When he found what he was looking for, he read down the page. Then he shook his head. “There’s no entry point.”
Another one without a way to access it. That was the fourth.
I’d half-crossed that one off my list when I stopped. “Aidan, what if—”
Someone stepped into my periphery, arms folded. Above me stood Liara Youngblood with raised eyebrows on me. “Clem.”
I sat back in my chair. I knew exactly why she’d come. But what I said was, “Either I’ve done something wrong, or Chef Vickery’s coffee was lacking this morning.”
Liara’s eyes trailed over the spread between us. Back to me. “Did you completely forget about our leaders’ training?”
I lowered my pen. “I would never.”
She swept a hand out to indicate the maps and books and Aidan, her expression an obvious, *So what’s this, then?*
I gathered up my things, stood. “Listen, Youngblood,” I said, low, “when you’re the subject of an ancient prophecy, then you’ll understand the difficulty of time management.”
She rolled her eyes, turning away in a swing of silky hair. “Don’t make me drag you along, Cole. It’s unbecoming in front of the first-years when I pull you by the ear.”
My gaze snapped to Aidan. “Tomorrow, same time?”
“Until we solve this,” he said. And then he tapped another book—one about the history of enchantments as a school of magic. “And this.”
He was referring to the mystery of Maeve Umbra and her mastery of enchantments. I’d relayed everything she’d told me when I’d visited her home earlier in the week, and he was even more fascinated and perplexed.
My gaze also fell to his satchel, which brimmed with two more fat books from the Room of the Ancients. We weren’t supposed to take them out of the library at all.
When Aidan noticed where my attention had gone, he flipped his satchel shut. And ignored my narrowed, suspicious gaze.
He was up to something.
As Liara and I left the library and started toward the meadow, she said, “What’s the progress on the blade?”
“Not much. We’ve figured out that Edinburgh has lots of hidey holes.”
She glanced at me. “Why don’t you ask Umbra?” Over the summer, I had told Liara that Umbra was aware of the prophecy and everything I had done to fulfill it. She knew the headmistress was training me to find the last piece of the weapon.
“What would she know about Edinburgh?” I asked.
“It wasn’t always a formalist stronghold,” Liara said. “Don’t you know anything about magical history?”
“My bad. I should have signed up for that class in regular human high school.”
She made a noise that sounded like disdain. “The formalists only rose to power in the last twenty or so years. Before that, Edinburgh was liberal. Less rigid. Someone like Maeve Umbra would have traveled there regularly.”
“Doesn’t mean she’d know anything about the blade.”
“But,” Liara said, “it does mean she’d know a thing or two about its streets.”
She had a point. As we arrived at the meadow, Umbra turned to face us, her head dappled by the sunlight through the leaves of the tree above her. One hand went up in greeting, and in it she held a strip of black cloth.
Chapter Eleven
We high-stepped our way through the grass out to Umbra, who stood at the edge of the meadow in the shade. As we neared, her eyes surveyed us. “Well,” she said. “You’re both late.”
Liara and I jerked our thumbs at each other in the same moment, and before we could start in on our explanations, Umbra began laughing. “It was both of your faults and neither, is that right?”
“Something like that,” Liara said.
The headmistress shook her head. “Ah, you’re far too alike to co-lead easily. Why in the gods’ names did the other guardians want you two?”
We exchanged a glance.
I shrugged. “They said they trusted us.”
“Only the gods know why,” Liara said.
Umbra smiled. “Well”—she extended the black strip of cloth toward me—“let’s see what we can do with the two of you.”
I accepted it, twirled it in the wind. “I don’t usually wear blindfolds outside, but I’ll make an exception for you, Umbra.”
“Oh, just put it over your eyes,” the headmistress scoffed. “And tie it tight, child. I won’t have you cheating.”
I set an aggrieved hand to my chest.
Liara’s expression changed at once. “The enchantment magic you’ve taught us doesn’t work that way. It’s only aural.”
“Is it?” Umbra reached over to lift my thumb and waited for Liara to present her forehead. “Perhaps you should tell that to Clementine.”
When my thumb met Liara’s forehead, I sent my magic through, into her, establishing the connection between us. If I wanted to, I could speak into her head.
“Now,” Umbra said, impatiently plucking the cloth from my hand and tying it around my head herself, “Clementine, you’ll sit. Liara, go where you will. Fly, if you wish. Fly far.”
&n
bsp; I sat cross-legged in the grass, the sun warming my head and shoulders through the canopy. Around me, I heard the sounds of Umbra moving, and of Liara taking off from the ground. Her wings beat so softly they melded with the swishing grass before they disappeared, and I was left alone with the headmistress.
I sensed Umbra seating herself across from me with a small grunt. “Now, tell me what Liara sees.”
I sat there, staring into nothing. “Trees, probably.”
“Not probably. Precisely.”
“I would tell you, but there’s the small problem of the cloth you put over my eyes.”
I could hear Umbra’s soft breathing. “Your magic gives you a connection to Liara. The training you’ve done with me over the summer has strengthened your ability to sustain your magic, to enshroud—and, conversely, to see.” She paused. “Can you feel the thread of your magic to her?”
The thread. Was there a thread? I had never considered the idea.
“I don’t feel any thread,” I said.
I could hear Umbra patting the grass. “Remove the blindfold.” I did so and found Umbra’s fingers tented at either side of her. “Beneath us lies a leyline. Can you see it?”
I shook my head. I had never seen a leyline—not here or anywhere.
She traced her finger back toward the central grounds, beneath where we sat, and straight off through the center of the meadow. “It runs right through the center of the academy, and it glows a beautiful color.” Her eyes shifted back to me. “Once you can see this leyline, you’ll be able to see the thread of your magic as it connects to Liara.”
That was the end of our lesson for the day. The next day, Umbra only asked me to return. I wouldn’t be ready for the next step until I could see the leyline, she said. And so we sat in the grass on that day, and the next, and the next, as Umbra tried to teach me the most basic concept of seeing a leyline.
It wasn’t dissimilar to seeing a magical place, as Eva had taught me years back. There was a certain amount of belief involved, of imagination. But I still couldn’t see what Umbra could see. I wanted to see. I wanted to believe, but I couldn’t.
Until on the third day, it finally clicked.
“Unfocus,” Umbra instructed me. “You’re all tensed up, wound tight. Allow your shoulders to fall, your lungs to open. Don’t stare so hard at the ground, child. Allow the shifting angle of the sun to do its work. Haven’t you heard the expression of a watched pot?”
“That so doesn’t apply here,” I said, but did as she asked, relaxing into my seat. And as the sun moved through the sky, angling differently over us as it did, I began to see it.
The sun on the grass. It shone differently where we sat. And as my lidded eyes trailed across the meadow, they followed a soft, glowing line of magic.
It was beautiful, shimmering, iridescent.
“That’s how I felt the first time, too,” Umbra murmured.
The next day, Liara and I returned together. We repeated the blindfold exercise, Liara disappearing through the meadow and into the trees, and Umbra once more asked me to focus on my thread of magic to her.
And as soon as I did, I sensed it. An invisible spider’s thread of my flames stretched off from where I sat, weaving its way through the meadow and into the trees…and to Liara.
There, some small portion of it surrounded her.
With this realization, I straightened. “I feel it.”
“You see,” Umbra said, “the connection isn’t you speaking into her head so much as you whispering into her ear.”
Even though—or maybe because—Liara couldn’t respond, I said to her, I’m going to find you, wherever you are. Followed by a soft, sinister laugh…right into her ear.
“Focus, child,” Umbra snapped.
“What makes you think I wasn’t?” I said.
“You smirked. Quit taunting the fae.”
I reduced my smirk to half of one. “But she’s so easily taunted.”
“Coalesce your magic around her ears,” Umbra said. “Hear what she hears.”
I did so—well, the coalescing, at least. But I didn’t hear anything through the thread of my magic. I made a face.
“You’re focused on the magic,” Umbra said. “Focus on her. Be her ears.”
Be her ears? The concept seemed strange, but I tried, as best I could, to do what Umbra asked of me. To be Liara’s ears. I focused on her. On layering my magic over her ears, both outside and inside. And as I did, the sound of water came to me with crystal clarity.
A fish had just jumped, splashed back into it.
Except in the meadow, there was no water to hear.
“She’s by the pond,” I whispered.
“Good,” Umbra said. “Quicker than I expected. Now be her eyes, too.”
She wanted me to be both at once. I was already sweating from the exertion of following the thread of magic through the meadow and into the trees, shaping it over Liara’s ears. I was already struggling not just to sustain the connection, but to trace my way along the thread at all. The longer I did it, the more jumbled everything felt. Like I was becoming disconnected from my own body. My hands and feet had begun to tingle, my ears ringing.
A few seconds later, I lost it. The thread disappeared, crumbling, and my connection with Liara disappeared.
I was seated in the meadow with the blind over my eyes, sweat dripping into the cloth from my forehead.
Umbra leaned forward, pulled the blind down, revealing a stunningly brilliant sky. “Rest, child. You’ve overdone it.”
“Overdone it? I did what you asked.”
“Yes, and you so rarely do exactly what I ask.” With a flick of her fingers, Umbra conjured a small picnic basket and glasses of lemonade with ice inside. She lifted one of the glasses, passed it to me. “Liara,” she called across the meadow, “fly back to us.”
I took a long sip from the lemonade, feeling shaky. And tingly. And unwell.
When Liara had returned, seating herself between us, Umbra passed her the second of the three glasses. “Did you feel Clementine’s magic?”
Liara took a long sip from the glass. “In my ears, for a moment.”
“Soon enough she’ll be in your eyes.” Umbra winked at her, opening the picnic basket to reveal a bunch of goodies inside.
“Should I head back out then?” Liara asked.
“Of course not.” Umbra began to unpack the basket. “That’s it for today.”
“But”—Liara lowered her glass—“we only trained for twenty minutes.”
“Look at her, child.” Umbra nodded at me. “Look at her and tell me she could go another twenty minutes.”
Liara did look at me. Her eyes narrowed, then softened. She sighed. “But how are we supposed to co-lead at this rate?”
“Clementine can follow your progress from the guardians’ globe,” Umbra said. “She can speak to you, though she won’t be able to hear what you hear or see what you see. Not until she masters this. She’ll still be a boon to you.”
Liara didn’t say any more on the subject. But as I drank and ate and began gradually to regain my strength, I wondered if what she was teaching me out here was simply to help the guardians.
This was powerful magic. It was magic linked, part and parcel, with what she had been teaching me to do all summer. Umbra was simultaneously training me to enshroud myself and to see.
Two days later, Eva and I were seated side by side on a log near the pond just after lunch. She was tangibly manipulating a large piece of olive-green cloth with a needle and thread. The whole of it was draped over her knees, and she wouldn’t tell me what it was. “Elijah and Isaiah evaluated me,” she was saying, “and they recommended me as a guard.”
I tossed a stone into the pond, where it skipped once before sinking. “Good call.”
“You would have picked that for me?”
“Because it’s what you are.” My Eva was nothing if not the fae who looked out for everyone else. “And nobody can heal like you.”
Earlier in the week, I had trained and evaluated the two humans—Maise and Paxton—to determine their roles. I had an idea before I’d watched them ride across the meadow, but after, I was certain. Maise rode like Fi: watchful, ready to raise the earth at the first sign of Noir and me galloping in from the side. She took point on keeping Paxton safe from the witch.
Paxton rode with his eyes ahead, rushing toward the dummy I had set up at the meadow’s far end. He would spear its head off with a massive shard of ice if it was his last act.
She was a guard. He was a chaser.
“I’d kind of hoped to be a chaser,” Eva said, her needle pausing in midair as her eyes lifted to the water.
I turned to her. “Really?”
“It’s what my parents were.”
I nudged her. “The roles aren’t set, Eva.”
“Aren’t they?”
I swept a hand out. “We’re at the academy for just a few years. It isn’t forever. You want to be a chaser after we’re out of here? Follow your sweet fae dreams, Evanora.”
She half-smiled, resumed with the needle and thread. “If the world still exists after we graduate.”
“Oh, it’ll exist.” I picked up another stone, tossed it. “Just maybe not in the form we’ve grown used to.”
“Clem,” she began. “About Edinburgh…”
The distant sound of the horn cut into whatever she was about to say. We had both straightened when Umbra’s voice spoke into our heads. And I knew now it was her magic tickling the inside of my ear, whispering to me. Acapulco. A boy, seventeen. That was followed by the brief image of a nighttime street in the city, where palm trees swayed under the moon.
As we stood, I wondered for the first time at how Umbra could place an image before my eyes. It must be her magic coalescing in front of my pupils, in the same way she’d asked me to thread my magic into Liara’s ears.
If we could whisper, then we could also show.
Just as quickly as the thought entered, it disappeared. I pointed toward Umbra’s office. “Get to the headmistress. Elijah and Isaiah will prepare you. I’ll be there in a minute.”