The Quad

by Todd Fahnestock

  The pretty white horses that pranced in front of her had bonded. They’d found their power and now they’d have no further need of her. They’d leave her behind as the white horses always did. Vale had read about replacement students being brought in to bolster a Quad that had one failing member. A white horse would fit nicely here. But not Vale. Vale was never intended to be the fourth.

  So, only because her instincts nudged her to follow them did she do so. She trusted her instincts. They were the reason she was still alive when so many others were dead. She didn’t know what she would find, but she would follow her instincts until they told her to bolt. Or attack.

  Of course, it was a farce that she had to bond with others—especially these others—in the first place. From the first moment, she loathed the idea of helping the pretty white horses achieve their dreams.

  If Vale was going to help anyone, it should be the people in the mud, the people that the perfect princess, the righteous giant, and the reckless boy walked all over while they were twisted up in their own problems. Vale wanted to help the dark horses—not the white ones. She wanted to live by Mother’s final words.

  Make them brilliant...

  Mother had told Vale all about the white and dark horses. Even now, Mother’s words burned in Vale’s mind as she trailed after her Quad mates, wondering how she could get from them what she needed without helping them. Perhaps a student could become a Quadron without a Quad somehow. Just because the masters said it couldn’t be done didn’t mean it couldn’t. The masters were white horses, too. And the white horses lied all the time.

  Make them brilliant...

  Vale’s last memory of her mother was of her corpse bobbing to the surface of the Lioch, the lake near Torlioch that gave the town half its name. Whenever those final words returned, Vale could see Mother’s filmy eyes swiveling to look at her, Mother’s pale, dead lips forming the words.

  Make them brilliant...

  Vale had discovered that words were meant for lying, mostly. They were made to say what someone wanted to hear in order to get what you needed, but not Mother’s final words. They had meant something that went deep into Vale’s bones. They had become her sole purpose. They rose in her mind whenever Vale reached a crossroads, like now: where her Quad would leave her behind and she must strike out on her own again.

  That was why becoming a Quadron was so important. As a Quadron, she would never have to beg again. No one would ever cast her aside again. She’d never have to steal, never have to flee in fear.

  She left the marble dormitory a dozen paces behind the white horses. The morning sunlight struck them first as they stepped onto the lawn of Quadron Garden.

  Each of her so-called Quad mates was destined for renown. It was written on their faces and in their privileged upbringings. Each considered greatness their right. They had been pampered and petted and well-fed their whole lives. They had never spent a night shivering in the cold, their stomachs twisted into knots with fear and hunger. They didn’t know what it was like to be despised by everyone, to be kicked aside like a rat.

  But oh, the white horses tossed their heads when something didn’t fall their way. They stamped their pretty hooves at supposed slights, all the while never once having tasted real injustice.

  Oriana was the worst. The perfect princess had been given everything she’d ever wanted from the moment she was born. She wore as many fine dresses as Vale had fingers, each garment made of deftly woven cottons and silks, sewn with fancy patterns and sometimes even jewels. Any one of those jewels could have fed a dozen of Torlioch’s urchins for a week. To see them so brazenly worn for decoration made bile rise into Vale’s mouth.

  Oriana had never worn a pair of sack pants or a patched tunic, had never piled garbage on herself at night to keep from freezing. And outside of the Champion’s Academy, the princess wouldn’t have noticed Vale except to raise her nose and sniff. To Oriana, Vale was just a dirty stocking lying by the side of the road, and the stocking had somehow been tossed into the princess’s Quad.

  Royal, for his part, had tried to pity Vale, had used his picture of Vale’s life as a brick in his fortress of ideals. See how good I am? See how I stoop to give help to this wretch...

  The righteous Fendiran tromped around, trying to intimidate everyone with his giant, well-fed body and his condescending ideals. A man like that saw himself as oppressed when he knew nothing about it. A man like that thought hunger was the growling in his belly after he’d missed a meal.

  He didn’t know hunger. He’d never felt the dangerous, insidious listlessness of starving to death. He’d never felt the bones coming closer to the surface of his skin because there wasn’t enough meat in between.

  His righteousness made her want to stab him in the eye.

  And Brom...

  She didn’t want to stab him. No, she wanted to...do other things with him, and that made him the most dangerous by far.

  She watched him as he walked ahead of her, the lean cut of him, the relaxed way his hands swung at his sides. Her gaze lingered on the nape of his neck beneath his short, wavy black hair.

  Often, when Brom looked at her, it was with a mixture of wariness and interest. And whenever his glance had passed over her, she’d wanted to look back. She was drawn to his dark eyes, to the errant curls of hair that fell over his forehead. She was spellbound by his wide mouth, often found herself waiting for him to speak. She wanted to touch those cheekbones, run her finger along his square jaw.

  At first, she’d been ready to knife him just as she’d knifed Royal, but Brom had kept his distance, as if he knew what she was thinking. He’d never approached her except to offer a pleasantry or to occasionally, carefully, relay a snide comment about Oriana or Royal. It was almost as though he...respected Vale.

  No, Brom was something of a mystery, and she’d spent most of the year trying to determine his agenda.

  Then, not long ago, she’d realized he was actually trying to see her, that he didn’t have an agenda. He didn’t seem to want anything from her except to understand her. That’s when the floor had dropped out from under her. Since then, every time he’d looked her way, she’d felt a strange lightning bolt of pleasure.

  After that, she had found herself wishing he would come closer. She dreamed of receiving a compliment from him, a casual touch of the hand. When she was alone in her room, she dreamed of him lying next to her, his naked skin against her naked skin...

  And that was exactly what made him the most dangerous of her three Quad mates. She had violently stuffed her feelings down inside herself. It was a weakness, and weakness killed.

  If she’d met Brom on the streets of Torlioch...if he had been one of the urchins she’d known, she would have quietly knifed him in the night. That was how one dealt with weakness. Cut it off. Cut it away. Make sure it couldn’t ever hurt you.

  But she wasn’t in Torlioch. The rules were different here. Knifing Brom would get her expelled from the academy, and she might as well die if that happened. She was never going back to the streets. Not in Torlioch nor any other place. Not ever.

  Her education grew here every day, revealing more of what existed beyond the life she’d known, beyond stealing food and clothes. She’d learned to read. She’d learned more about the two kingdoms than she had ever dreamed existed. Already, she had elevated herself, and she wanted to continue rising. She wanted Oriana’s life, Royal’s life, even Brom’s life.

  She needed to succeed at the Test of Passage at the end of the year, needed to be given permission to study here a second year. Even one more year could make a huge difference in her life. Becoming a Quadron... Well, that would solve every problem she’d ever had.

  And then she could truly fulfill Mother’s dying request. She’d have the power to help the dark horses. All of them.

  Make them brilliant...

  Vale had been seven years old when her mother died. In her last moments, Mother had lain in the little alley outside The Wayward Inn, wracked with
the mud fever and hacking up bloody chunks of her lungs. Vale had held Mother’s cool hand while, just a thin wall away, travelers and locals laughed and drank by a warm fire.

  “Why won’t they help us?” Vale had asked her, scared of the mud fever, scared of being alone. The wealthy of Torlioch looked at Vale and her mother like rats. They weren’t seen as people, just something vile to avoid. Make a face and kick it away.

  Vale had already gone into The Wayward Inn, tried to get someone to come help her, but a man had kicked her in the side so hard something had cracked, and now it hurt every time she moved. “Why do they hate us?” she had asked.

  “We are the dark horses,” Mother had told her, her face as pale as a noble and as gaunt as a skull wrapped in skin. Vale’s instincts had glowed hot. She’d known, in that fated moment, that her life was about to change forever. She was going to lose Mother. Mother was going to die and Vale was going to be alone.

  “No one...” Mother had begun, then coughed. The cough had turned into three coughs, then into a wracking fit. For a breathless moment, Vale had thought those would be Mother’s last words, that she would die before finishing. But the spell had subsided, and Mother had continued in a thin whispery voice.

  “They are the pretty white horses. They feed and brush each other, but not us, not the...dark horses. But...the dark horses...are special.”

  “Special?”

  “When they catch the sunlight... When they catch the sunlight just right...they flash more brilliantly than the whitest horse ever could. That is you, my little Vale. It is you and all the other dark horses. You must...catch the sunlight. You must make yourself brilliant. And when you do, you must do the same for all of us...all of the dark horses. Because they never will. They never will...” Her voice had begun to fade. “You could be the sunlight, Vale. Shining upon the dark horses. Make them brilliant...” And then Mother had stopped talking. Her hand had gone cold, and that was the end.

  Vale hadn’t had a shovel, and she hadn’t known how to dig a grave, so she had dragged Mother’s corpse to the Lioch. She considered giving Mother their only weapon—a metal spoon that had been sharpened on the thin end—to fight the Ragged Man during her trip to the afterlife, but Vale had guiltily kept it. Instead, she’d given Mother a pointed piece of hardwood, put it in her curled, cold fingers, then slid her body into the water. At first, it had seemed a simple and elegant burial, but the body hadn’t stayed down. Mother had floated to the surface and caught in a thatch of brambles just off the shore. Vale had stood transfixed, horrified by the corpse.

  She’d heard Mother’s last words again as though she’d awoken to speak them one more time.

  Make them brilliant.

  Vale had fled and had never gone back to the Lioch. Not until the Quadron had come to town, of course, had changed Vale’s life by leading her here.

  Make them brilliant, Vale. Vale... Vale...

  “Vale.”

  Vale’s head snapped up. Oriana and Royal had stopped on the lawn and turned back to look at her. Beyond them, other students played athletic games in the sun or sat in the shade of trees.

  Brom had come back for her.

  Vale stood in the dormitory’s shadow, right at that line between darkness and light. The beautiful white horses, of course, stood in the sunshine.

  Jealousy raged inside her. She shoved it down.

  “You’ve all opened your Soulblocks,” she said tightly to Brom. They were the laughing, drinking, callous patrons of The Wayward Inn all over again. They were kicking her to the side like a rat. “You’ve used magic. All of you.”

  “Yes,” Brom said. He extended his hand, and it crossed from light into shadow.

  She twitched, but she didn’t take it. Her belly got fluttery at the very thought of touching him. Instead she gripped her dagger, hidden beneath the folds of her first-year uniform. She almost drew it, almost stabbed his hand, but she didn’t. Her heart raced as if she were fleeing Jondry and his malevolent street gang back in Torlioch.

  “Vale,” Brom said softly, as though reading her mind. “We have to trust each other. That’s the key. Trust us. Just this once, and you’ll see.”

  The truth twisted inside her. She’d seen the change in Oriana and Brom, in the way they looked at each other. They’d found that trust. And then Oriana had done the same with Royal, striking a spark that Royal had made into a flame.

  “You’re going to replace me,” she said, waiting for Brom to lie to her, to sling soft words of comfort and ask her to calm down.

  “No,” Oriana interrupted with authority before Brom could answer. She strode forward, joining Brom at the line between darkness and light.

  Vale flicked a glance from one to the other as Royal came up, his hulking form looming behind Oriana.

  “Is that so?” Vale sneered. “You think I don’t see how you look at me? You’d happily cut me from this Quad like a bad limb.”

  “No. You are my Quad mate,” Oriana said firmly. “And I will not give you up.”

  “Nor will I,” Royal echoed in his deep voice.

  A pleasant warmth spread through her, and she hated herself for it. Oriana’s arrogant words, Royal’s thundering declaration—they should have made her sneer. But both of their gazes were earnest. Those gazes promised protection, promised to stand between Vale and those who would hurt her.

  But it couldn’t be real. They were white horses, so they had to be lying. The white horses didn’t care about the dark horses. They weren’t like her.

  “They made a mistake, Vale, throwing us together,” Brom said softly. She looked up into his dark eyes. “They thought they’d make the worst Quad in the school. But they made the strongest instead. And not in spite of you. Because of you.” He gave a little wiggle to his extended hand, which she hadn’t taken yet, and he invited her again.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  Trust them? Kill them? They were everything she hated, what she’d sworn to always hate. White horses like these had let her mother die.

  And now, of all times, her instincts had gone quiet. They didn’t tell her to flee. They didn’t tell her to attack. It was as though this was right where she was meant to be. As though, miraculously, this one spot was safe.

  She had never felt so lost or afraid. She desperately wanted to become a Quadron. But to bond herself to these, the worst of the white horses? They would betray her. As sure as the sun rose, they would cast her aside. It was inevitable.

  “I-I don’t know...” she said.

  “I do,” Brom said. “Take my hand.” She’d have to step to grab it, step into the light.

  His words from a moment ago floated in her mind, refusing to go away, like they were important somehow.

  They made a mistake, throwing us together. They thought they’d make the worst Quad in the school. But they made the strongest instead.

  The princess, the Fendiran, the builder’s boy, all enemies...

  The Collector had done this on purpose. He’d thrown them all together, never thinking they’d succeed, never wanting them to succeed. He had sabotaged this Quad, taking the powerful and turning them into misfits...

  Taking the white horses and turning them dark.

  Her view of her Quad mates pivoted so abruptly she gasped, and she saw them with new eyes. Not a perfect princess, but a broken one. Not a righteous giant, but an impotent one. Not a reckless boy, but a frustrated one.

  They were the dark horses. All of them were.

  Make them brilliant...

  She stepped into the sunlight and grasped Brom’s hand.

  Her Soulblock burst open inside her, spilling magic into her body. With a cry of joy, she flung her magic out at them like a whip. She felt Royal’s honest conviction. She felt Oriana’s adamant determination and Brom’s giddy excitement. Their emotions flooded through her, and for the first time in her life, she felt that flash of sunlight that her mother had spoken of, that flash that made her brighter than all the others.

 
“Brilliant,” she gasped, and tears slid down her cheeks.

  “Brilliant!” Brom laughed.

  “Brilliant!” Royal roared, putting his giant fist over Vale’s and Brom’s clasped hands.

  Oriana gave a tiny smile, the first smile Vale had ever seen on the princess’s face, and she put her long slender fingers over the mass of hands. “Absolutely brilliant,” she said.

  The Quad had formed, and Vale hadn’t been cast aside after all. She was part of it. They were bonded.

  Their training could begin at last.

  Now the only question was: Could this fledgling Quad learn fast enough to keep from getting expelled in three weeks?

  Vale didn’t know the future, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep or eat for those three weeks if that’s what it took. She felt the same determination radiating from each of her Quad mates like heat from a fire.

  They were all going to be Quadrons. They were going to do it together.

  Or they were going to die trying.

  About The Author

  Todd Fahnestock

  TODD FAHNESTOCK is a writer of fantasy for all ages and winner of the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age Award. His bestselling The Wishing World series began as bedtime stories for his children, and his epic fantasy series include: Threadweavers, The Heartstone Trilogy and The Whisper Prince Trilogy. His time travel novel, Charlie Fiction, was a finalist in the Colorado Authors League Best Science Fiction of 2019. Stories are his passion, but Todd’s greatest accomplishment is his quirky, fun-loving family. When he’s not writing, he teaches Taekwondo, goes on morning runs with his daughter, wrestles with his son, and plays board games with his wonderful wife.