by S. W. Clarke
I stared at the layout. This was the map of the city Umbra had given me during that two-hour meeting last week; all of us had received identical, conjured copies of it. Between then and our mission, she wanted us to memorize the buildings, the streets, the intersections, the points of power.
“Loki,” I said, “are you paying attention?”
Loki opened one eye. “I’ve already memorized it all.”
I sat back. “The whole city?”
“Yes, the whole city. I’m much older than you, remember? I visited several times before it went to hell.”
Literally, I thought.
“Also,” Loki added, “I’ve got a mind like a steel trap. I’m the perfect infiltrator.”
I scratched under his chin, which lifted for me to get a better angle. “But you’re totally susceptible to fingernails.”
“We all have our weaknesses,” Loki murmured.
Meanwhile, Aidan ignored us, all business. “There’s another part of the city we haven’t looked at for the blade.” His pencil shifted to another section of the map, also on the Royal Mile. “The vaults under South Bridge.”
I refocused. “Why are you looking there? I don’t see any closes.”
Aidan tapped the map. “I read about these vaults in A Mages’ History of Scotland. They’ve been around since the city’s founding. Certain to be full of mystery and treasure.”
“Unless the treasure’s an orichalcum blade, I’ll pass.”
Saoirse, now a second-year, appeared at our table with a stack of books in her arms. She passed one down to Aidan, who half-stood to kiss her on the cheek. “This is the one you wanted, isn’t it?” she said through a smile.
“Just the one.” His hand went to her elbow. “You reshelving those? I can carry them for you.”
“I’m good, Aide.” Her eyes flitted over our map, then to me. “Hello, Ms. Cole.”
I hid my grin. “Call me that again and I will retroactively fail you.” I winked up at her. “How’s your bareback riding?”
“It’s coming along.” She straightened with her stack of books. “The quartermistress is teaching me to ride barrels.”
Barrels. Only the most advanced students made it that far.
Her eyes drifted over our table. “You studying old Edinburgh?”
“She’s Scottish,” Aidan said to me.
I shot him a No kidding look. “We’re looking for a specific close,” I said carefully. “An old one where a magical item might be buried.”
“Have you tried Mary King’s Close?” she said at once.
The tourist trap. Aidan and I had ruled that one out instantly; thousands of people were funneled through it each week. It was a real money-maker for Edinburgh, and thoroughly trodden and excavated.
Aidan and I exchanged a glance, both of us trying to keep our faces serious. “I think that one’s too touristed,” Aidan said softly. “I doubt they could keep anything hidden down there.”
Saoirse shrugged. “Afraid that was my best guess. Good luck Clem, Aide.”
When Saoirse had climbed to the third floor, Aidan sat back down, and I just set my elbows on the table, fingers steepled, grinning at him.
A wariness came over him. “Don’t.”
My eyes flicked to Loki, then back to Aidan, and my smile grew.
“Oh, just say it,” Loki said.
Aidan got flustered, sensing Loki had spoken, and knowing whatever he’d said wasn’t to his benefit. “Let’s just get back to work.”
“Okay.” I sat back, picking up a biscuit from the plate of them, snapping into it. “No problem, Aide.”
His hands went over his face as he groaned, and from the third floor, Saoirse’s face appeared over the balcony. “Everything all right?”
“Fine.” I waved my biscuit up at her. “Aide’s brain is just getting to be too big for his skull. It aches sometimes, you know?”
Chapter Fifteen
The end of September came and went, the days began to cool, and Umbra still hadn’t given us our mission. When I asked, she simply said, “It’s not yet time.”
I itched to cross through the veil, to be in Edinburgh. But Eva and Aidan told me to be patient, strategic, and they were right.
Still didn’t stop the itching.
Life at the academy achieved a humming pace. Weekday mornings Aidan and I met in the library, and sometimes we had nothing to talk about except life. We had run out of ideas for how to dig into Umbra’s mysterious past, and we’d studied the maps of Edinburgh to exhaustion.
I still didn’t know which close the blade could be in. We’d narrowed the options down to…forty.
Forty closes.
And each one had dozens or hundreds of nooks, crannies, secrets.
We met anyway, because it was our tradition to sit at the table on the second floor and eat cookies and drink tea. And it gave me a chance to keep an eye out for Milonakis, who still hadn’t returned.
After the library and breakfast, I taught my bareback riding classes, one and then the next, until the sun began to beat down. In the strangest quirk of my life, the first-years had collectively decided they loved me. Or maybe it was Loki they loved. He often showed up to our classes, sitting on a fence post as though he were watching us. Really I knew he just liked the angle of the sun at that time of day.
I usually took a quick lunch with Eva, sometimes Liara, sometimes Aidan, too, and then I struck off to the meadow. There, I trained with Umbra for three or four hours a day, depending on when I exhausted myself or she needed a nap. Apparently even headmistresses need naps.
We worked on the enshroudment, but also on tapping into the leyline running through the grounds. Feeling its power, and using it as a conduit to other places.
And after all that, I was left to myself. To my thoughts and my itching, and it was in that state I convinced Saoirse to let me take The Witching World from the Room of the Ancients.
She should have known better. But I also wasn’t about to disabuse her of the idea that letting the witch take the witching book out of the library was a good thing.
I hadn’t cracked this tome since my first year, when Aidan had to pull it from my clutches. It had sent me into an obsessive depression, and as soon as I touched it again, I remembered why.
Raven Murkwood’s book held some strange, latent power. But this time, I had power, too.
It was strange, sitting at the edge of the meadow in the sunlight, and knowing I held a book the Shade herself had held. She had written in this very one—the original version, according to the first page, and maybe the only one still in existence.
Funny that it would end up at Shadow’s End Academy.
When I began to read it again, I was surprised. Before I’d known Raven Murkwood was the Shade, I had read her book like an instruction manual, trying to glean everything I could from it. I hadn’t thought beyond the acquisition of power.
Now, I heard her voice in her words. I felt her character.
Raven Murkwood seemed ambitious, curious, sharp. Even witty.
I wanted to find evil in what I was reading, but she didn’t seem evil. If Eva or Aidan or maybe even Liara had read with me, they would probably have agreed.
This was a young woman, maybe in her twenties. Fire hadn’t corrupted her yet, because she hadn’t discovered how to harness it. She’d been an air witch when she wrote The Witching World.
She wanted to know about the world and what lay in it, especially during the 1500s, when, living in Scotland, she’d been surrounded by suspicion about what she was.
People hadn’t liked witches even before she’d become the Shade. In her chapter on how witches travel, she’d written, Early on a witch must discover her means of succor, for she will likely be pursued, perhaps persecuted, and always distrusted for what she is, and most of all, what she’s capable of.
I read for clues as to how she became the first fire witch. Before, I hadn’t cared so much about the origins of her magic—I’d just wanted to know h
ow to harness it.
In just about every chapter, I encountered one mention or another of her partner, Catriona. Catriona had accompanied her through the fae portal to one of their courts, and there they had taught Murkwood a rare fae magic, words she could imbue into the air to stop a man where he stood, to get into his head.
Hexes. The fae had taught her the origins of what would become the art of hexes.
Catriona, an air mage herself, had taught Murkwood about many things: conjuration, tangible manipulations, points of power. Things she should have learned the beginnings of in a magical academy like this one, but hadn’t.
Which meant Murkwood had been an outcast, deprived in some way. Maybe she’d lost her family. I couldn’t tell.
But it became clear to me that she and Catriona had known each other since they were very young, maybe even children, and it was because of that early affection that Murkwood had trusted Catriona, and Catriona had trusted her.
They’d had a bond.
I flipped back to the beginning of the book, found a dedication written in almost incomprehensible old script. I leaned closer, staring at it for a time, scrutinizing each letter until I could decipher each one.
And, finally, I understood it.
Catriona, for as long as you live, Murkwood had written, I’m eternal.
I sat up straight, squinting into the empty meadow, the book splayed open in my lap. Parts of me had fallen asleep in the grass, and the sun had moved from one spot in the sky to another entirely.
I felt like I’d been transported, and suddenly returned.
“Raven Murkwood,” I said as though the woman sat beside me, “you loved her, didn’t you?”
In early October, Umbra sat across from me, my magic swirling between us, enshrouding me. We were near the boggan’s cave, the dark shadow of it only a few feet from where we sat.
Not the most scenic place. But definitely distressing enough to test me.
“Headmistress,” I said into the silence.
Her eyes fluttered open. “What is it, child?”
“It’s Milonakis you sent to Edinburgh, isn’t it?”
“Hm.” One eyebrow rose. “And what makes you think that?”
“The library’s her fiefdom, and she hasn’t been in it for weeks.”
Umbra laughed, a pretty, rare sound. “Her fiefdom?” She wiped at one moist eye. “I suppose it is. We do get set in our ways as the decades go by. I shall have to tell her that.”
I half tilted my head with an expectant look. “When she gets back from Edinburgh, you mean?”
Umbra sent a sudden blast of lightning into the skein of my magical shroud, nearly piercing a hole in it. But the fire held. She gave a soft nod of approval. “Can’t catch you off guard any longer.”
“You’re dodging my question.”
She gave a great sigh. “And what difference does it make to you whom I’ve sent? Get to what you want, girl.”
“What I want”—I paused, then barreled on—“is to find Callum Rathmore.”
“Yes, yes. You’ve told me this. And certainly you want to find him and rescue him from his imprisonment, but I know that’s not all with you.”
She was right. It wasn’t all.
“I spent a summer training you,” she went on, tapping the side of her nose. “Every day. Hours. Don’t think I can’t read you, child. It’s one of my few talents.”
The magic went on swirling around me, though now I did have to divide my concentration. I was nearing a difficult subject, which of course was exactly what Umbra wanted. “Back on the tundra, Rathmore told me something. He said I would find my sister in the city.”
Umbra sat up straight, hands on her crossed legs. “Did he now? And I suppose in finding him, you hope he’ll lead you to her.”
“Wherever she is,” I murmured.
“And,” Umbra went on, “you hope Milonakis will have information on either or both of them when she returns.”
“So it is Milonakis.”
Her eyes slid into an elegant, annoyed roll. “Of course it is. Nance Milonakis is one of my most trusted professors, and quite good at sticking her nose in places it doesn’t belong.”
I snorted, and Umbra’s face warmed. “She’s been gone a long time,” I said. “Are you worried?”
“No. Not one bit. She and I have been in contact, and she’ll return sooner than you think. So why don’t we continue our training inside the boggan’s cave?”
“Have you heard anything from her about my sister?” I said, quieter, unmoving. “About Tamzin?”
“Believe me, child,” Umbra said. “If I had, I would have told you that very moment. Tamzin Cole disappeared almost a decade ago now, though that doesn’t mean Callum Rathmore is wrong about her. If he’s seen her, then that simply means your sister has become someone else.”
My jaw hardened at the thought of it. No more Tamzin Cole. Who was she now, then? “You know I’ll have to look for them both,” I said. “When I go there, to Edinburgh.”
She patted her hands on her lap. “If you’ve told me once, you’ve told me twice. Isn’t that the way with you, Clementine Cole?”
I squinted at her. Then, “You just called me a dog with a bone. But you said it so elegantly, I can’t even be offended.”
She half-smiled. “I know you will do what you must, as I’ve said to you before. I would prefer it if you were to stay here until you’re ready, and I would prefer it if you would be cautious and prudent in all things—as I would all my students—but trying to change any one of you would be like trying to enclose the wind in my fingers.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “Seeing as how that’s actually possible.”
“A poor analogy.” She paused, growing more intense. “You believe he’s been imprisoned by his father, don’t you?”
I nodded. “ He’s too powerful not to be.”
“Wise girl, and boy. Callum Rathmore is indeed one of the most powerful fire mages alive—which is why I hired the young man—and would need a particular kind of imprisonment.”
“Like what?” I asked.
She rubbed a thoughtful hand over her mouth. “I’m not sure what William Rathmore would need to do to keep his son from running back to you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Why does it always have to be so hard? And by hard, I mean impossible.”
“Because, child.” When I opened my eyes, Umbra was standing up and dusting herself off. “Things must be impossible before they are possible. Otherwise we’d be very fat and lazy mages indeed.”
“Do you have any idea what this impregnable place would be?” I asked.
“Gods no.” She reached out a hand to help me up. “If I did, I would have told you.”
“So you’re leaving it to the twenty-one-year-olds to figure out.”
She patted the dirt off my cloak. “It’s often the young who make the impossible possible.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nance Milonakis returned in the dead of night. I woke to a commotion outside, slipped out of bed, and stepped out onto the landing in time to see her being rushed inside Umbra’s office.
It was four in the morning, and it didn’t look like Milonakis was walking on her own. Two people helped her along, one of whom was Umbra, and the other I didn’t catch a glimpse of. Their voices were intense whispers, urgent.
I grabbed my cloak and started down the steps toward the clearing. By the time my bare feet touched grass, they were already inside. The double doors of Umbra’s office closed behind them, and I was left in silence.
For a half-second I contemplated not following, and then I shut that right down. What good was being a lying, cheating, cursing fire witch if I didn’t slip into places I wasn’t supposed to?
When I got to the doors they’d passed through and opened one six inches, the hollowed-out anteroom to Umbra’s office was empty of people—and a floor. As in, part of the floor was gone.
I stood at the doorway, staring at a staircase that descen
ded into the ground around the edge of the room, following the circular shape of the tree’s trunk. These steps took the same path as the steps up to her office—which meant this was one continuous staircase. I’d just never known the part beneath the earth existed.
Below, a golden light emanated up. Calling to me.
Umbra had secrets on secrets.
Whatever had happened to Milonakis in Edinburgh, I wanted—needed—to know. The itching had only gotten more intense, and now it was a feral drive that started me down the stairs.
The steps began as dirt and, partway down, became cold, narrow stone, the ground rising to my right, my hands trailing along the hard walls. As I left the anteroom, I followed the stairs down and down, feet tapping around and around, until I couldn’t see the blue light from the wisps any longer.
At the base of the stairs I found myself at the start of a hallway with magically lit torches set at intervals along it. The walls and ceiling were made of carved stone, probably crafted by an earth mage.
Down here, it smelled of earthworms and dirt and a strange scent I didn’t know, but it stuck in my nose and throat like cat pee.
And it felt old. Centuries-old.
Several closed doors peppered the hallway, which ended in an intersection some thirty feet from where I stood. And somewhere, voices echoed.
I approached the first door, stood close to it and heard nothing, saw no light under it. There wasn’t a doorknob on it but a very old-fashioned latch, and when I tried it, the door wouldn’t move a bit.
A voice cried out from down the hallway, jolting me stiff. Milonakis.
“Nance,” a muffled voice said from not far off, agitated. Umbra’s. “Nance, please.”
I turned, spotted shadows near the intersection of the hallway. When I came closer, leaning around the edge, the shadows came clear, as did a brighter light. They were in a room around the corner, the door partway open. The hallways off this intersection went on into darkness. The torches hadn’t been lit here, and I didn’t know what lay beyond them.