فصل 11

Chapter 11

THEY’D ALMOST MADE it back out into the hallway when the Masters burst into the guardroom, magic blazing in their hands. They were wild-eyed, ready to fight. At the sight of Tamara, Aaron, and Call, the crackling ball of white energy hovering in front of Master North slipped and crashed to the ground in a shower of sparks.

“Apprentices?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? Explain yourselves!” Master Rufus strode forward, grabbing Aaron’s collar in one hand and Call’s in the other. “Of all the reckless, ridiculous things you have ever done — this one, this one is the worst! You have put not just yourselves, but the entire Magisterium, in danger.” Tamara, not yet being hauled along by Master Rufus, dared to speak. “We thought one of the elementals might know who let Skelmis out. I know you made us promise not to investigate, but that was before Call was attacked!” Master Rufus turned a look on her that Call worried might actually scorch skin. “And so you broke into an Assembly member’s room and stole property from her locked safe? Property that could then be stolen from you? Did you consider that?” “Uh,” Tamara said, having no good answer.

“Oh, don’t be too hard on them,” Anastasia said, her voice cool as ever. She had to know they’d found her photographs and guessed her password, but she appeared entirely unruffled, as though she had nothing at all to feel guilty about or to fear. “It’s difficult to feel powerless when someone is hunting you. And they’re heroes, after all. It must be twice as hard for heroes.” Master Rufus twitched at the word hunting but didn’t loosen his grip on Call or Aaron.

Tamara was watching Anastasia. Call could tell she was tempted to say something about what they’d found in her room, but it was difficult to go against the one person on your side. Besides, she was still reeling from having seen her sister, locked up like just another elemental.

“We can’t let this slide,” Master North said. “Discipline is important for apprentices and for mages in general. We’re going to have to punish them.” Anastasia’s chilly hand patted Call’s cheek. He felt vaguely frostbitten. “Tomorrow is soon enough, surely,” she said. “I’m the wronged party, after all. I ought to have some say.” “I will personally escort these three back to their rooms,” Master Rufus said. “Now.” With that, he dragged Call and Aaron toward the gates. Tamara followed, probably happy Master Rufus had only two hands. Call looked back at Anastasia. She was standing with the others but not speaking with them. Her gaze rested on Aaron, watching him with a fascination that made Call’s stomach knot without quite knowing why.

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Call kept expecting Master Rufus to burst through the doors of their new sleeping quarters and yell at them for breaking into the elemental prison. He slept fitfully all night. He woke again and again, gasping, hand to his chest, out of a dream where something he couldn’t quite see was about to drop down on him.

Havoc, who had given up sleeping in the fourth bedroom, licked Call’s feet sympathetically each time he cried out. It was a little gross, but also kind of reassuring.

By the time the bell rang, tired as he was, Call was almost relieved not to have to battle sleep any longer. He pulled on his uniform, yawning, and stepped out into the common area. Havoc was at his heels, eager for a walk.

Tamara sat on an arm of the sofa in a bathrobe, a towel covering her head. Aaron was next to her, in his uniform, hair sticking up from sleep. With them on the sofa was Master Rufus, his face grave. They’d clearly been waiting for Call to emerge.

Well, he’d been anticipating this. He sat down heavily next to Aaron.

“You know that what you did last night was inexcusable,” Master Rufus said. “You broke into an Assembly member’s chamber and you sent the guard away from the elemental gate — a boy who, by the way, fell into a crevasse and broke his leg. If he hadn’t, I would have found you a lot sooner.” “He broke his leg?” said Aaron, looking horrified.

“That’s right,” said Master Rufus. “Thomas Lachman is now under the care of Master Amaranth in the Infirmary. Luckily, he was spotted by a student, nearly unconscious at the bottom of a dry ravine. As you can imagine, after his discovery, the Masters’ meeting was thrown into disarray. If we hadn’t been distracted, your little adventure in the elementals’ domain would have been cut even shorter than it was.” He looked coldly from one of them to the other. “I want you to know I hold you personally responsible for the boy’s injuries. Had he remained there longer, he might have died.” Tamara looked stricken. She was the one who’d given Thomas her guide-stone. “But we — we wander around the caves all the time and nothing ever happens.” Master Rufus’s expression grew even colder. “He wasn’t an apprentice here. Anastasia selected him because he was an outsider, educated at a different Magisterium, so he wasn’t familiar with the caves, while you are.” Unbidden, Call remembered his father’s warnings about the Magisterium and the caves: There’s no light down there. No windows. The place is a maze. You could get lost in the caverns and die and no one would ever know.

Well, they’d found Thomas. At least Alastair had been wrong about that part.

“We’re sorry,” Call said. He meant it, too. In a way that maybe Rufus wouldn’t understand, he was sorry they’d ever gone to the elementals’ caves. He wished he’d never heard Marcus say that the person trying to kill him was the best Makar of their generation. He wished Tamara hadn’t seen her sister, or at least what was left of her. She’d been horribly silent and tearless when Master Rufus had left them in their chambers after frog-marching them back from the guardroom. She’d slammed her way into her bedroom and locked the door. Call and Aaron had faced each other awkwardly for a moment before going to bed themselves.

“We really are sorry,” said Aaron.

“It’s not me you need to apologize to,” said Rufus. “Assemblywoman Tarquin has considered your punishment and decided that you must all pay a visit to her room and apologize to her personally.” He held up a hand, forestalling any comment. “I’d suggest you do it tonight. You are lucky to be getting off so very lightly.” Too lightly, Call thought, and not because of luck.

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When Call, Aaron, and Tamara entered the Refectory, a hush fell over the room. Apprentices who had been lined up to fill their bowls with lichen and mushrooms and spicy yellow cave tea froze in place, staring.

“What’s going on?” Tamara whispered as they hurried to their usual table. “Is it me or is everyone acting bizarre?” Call glanced around. Alex was looking at them from a table full of Gold Years. He gave a short wave and then looked down at his plate. Kai, Rafe, and Gwenda were staring — Gwenda was pointing at Celia and then at Aaron, which didn’t make any sense. As for Celia herself, she was settled at a table with Jasper, holding hands with him over a plate of what looked like wet leaves. They seemed to only have eyes for each other.

“I don’t think I even know what normal is anymore,” Aaron said under his breath. “Do you think they know about last night? That we broke into the elementals’ prison?” “I don’t know,” said Call. Under regular circumstances he might have gone and asked Jasper, but lovestruck Jasper seemed incapable of doing anything but staring at Celia, saying stupid things to Celia, and drooling a little.

Call wondered how long Jasper was going to be a lovestruck idiot. He wondered if whatever was happening to Jasper would have happened to him if he’d gone on the date instead.

“Let’s just sit down,” Tamara said, but her voice wasn’t steady. She was obviously shaken, in a way Call hadn’t seen since the day she’d discovered who he really was. He wished they were somewhere they could talk about her sister. He wished that everyone would stop staring at them.

“Tamara.” It was Kimiya, standing over their table with her arms crossed. “Why don’t you come and sit with me?” Tamara looked up sharply, her big dark eyes widening. She seemed stricken speechless at the sight of her sister. “I — but why?” “Come on, Tamara,” Kimiya said. “Don’t make me do this in front of everyone.” “Do what?” said Call, suddenly angry. Kimiya was acting like he and Aaron didn’t exist.

“I don’t want to move,” Tamara said. “I want to sit with my friends.”

Kimiya jerked her chin toward Aaron. “He’s not your friend. He’s dangerous.” Aaron looked shocked. “What are you talking about?”

“Your dad’s in jail,” Kimiya said bluntly. Aaron recoiled as if she’d smacked him. “Which is bad enough, but then you lied about it. To everyone.” “So what?” said Call. “You’re not entitled to know private things about Aaron.” “I am if he’s staying at my house!” Kimiya snapped. “My parents deserved to know, at least.” She glared at Aaron. “After everything they did for you —” Rage went through Call, white-hot; some of it was for Aaron, and some of it was at Aaron. Because he couldn’t quite shut up the nagging voice inside him that said What if, what if, what if, and he hated everything about not trusting Aaron. Including Aaron himself. He pushed himself to his feet, glaring at Kimiya.

“Your parents sucked up to Aaron because he was the Makar,” he snarled. “And now you’re acting like that means he owes you something? He doesn’t owe you anything!” “Stop it! Both of you, stop it!” Tamara whirled on her sister. “Did you tell Mom and Dad?” Kimiya looked offended. “Of course I did. They have a right to know what kind of person the Makar is.” Aaron dropped his face into his hands.

“Tattletale,” Tamara snapped at Kimiya, her face reddening. “Who told you about Aaron’s dad? Who?” “I told only three people,” said Aaron, his voice muffled. “Call and Jasper and you.” “Well, I didn’t hear it from any of them,” said Kimiya irritably. “Look —” “Jasper told Celia.” It was Alex, appearing behind Kimiya and putting a hand on her arm. “And Celia told everyone. Sorry, Aaron.” Aaron lifted his head. His green eyes were darkly shadowed. “What am I supposed to do now?” “Everyone’s wound up,” Alex said. “After what happened to Jen, and the elemental attack on you guys. They want someone to blame, and, well, you’re a Makar. It makes you potentially scary.” “I didn’t hurt Jen! And I’d never hurt Call,” Aaron protested. “Or anyone.” Alex looked sympathetic. “Just stick it out,” he said. “People will find something else to talk about. They always do. Come on, Kimiya.” With a reluctant sigh, Kimiya let him lead her back to the Gold Years’ table.

Tamara lifted her chin. “We go get food,” she said, “and if anyone says anything to our faces, we set them straight. If they whisper behind our backs, they don’t deserve our attention. Okay?” After a moment, Aaron rose. “Okay.” As they made their way toward the food tables, he spoke to Call under his breath. “Thanks for sticking up for me.” Call nodded. He felt bad for even considering Aaron might be the spy.

And yet, the thought of it wouldn’t go away.

By the time they got through the line for food, Call’s plate was piled high with lichen, mushrooms, and tubers although both Aaron’s and Tamara’s plates remained uncharacteristically bare. The three apprentices slid into their usual spots at the same table where Jasper and Celia were, but they took care to pick seats as far from them as possible. Celia looked away from Jasper long enough to glance in their direction with pity, but Call’s evil glare made her turn away fast. He’d always known she liked to gossip, but he’d never thought that she’d tell everyone something like this. Of course, Jasper had probably made Aaron’s family seem worse than it was, to impress her. Probably Jasper and Celia deserved each other. Call hoped they’d suck face for so long they ran out of oxygen and choked.

“We need to find the spy,” Aaron said, bringing Call’s thoughts back to the here and now. “None of this is going to go away until the real spy is caught. And we — especially Call — won’t be safe until then, either.” “Okay,” Call said slowly. “I mean, I’m in favor of that plan, except for the part where it’s more of a declaration of the end goal and not a plan at all. How are we going to find the spy?” “Anastasia must know something,” Aaron said. “I mean, given what we found, she has to be involved in some way.” “Her password is the name of the Enemy of —” Tamara began whispering and then stopped herself. “I mean, Captain Fishface. Her password is Captain Fishface’s brother. She has a picture of Fishface himself in her room. So she’s got to be on the side of his people. The only problem with this theory is that they’re not the people who want Call dead.” Call opened his mouth to object, but Tamara interrupted him. “Or at least they didn’t want him dead when Automotones was sent to kill Call. Even if Master Joseph’s changed his mind since then.” “Maybe she hates Master Joseph, hates the Enemy, and keeps that stuff around to remind her of her quest for revenge,” Aaron suggested. “Maybe she sent Skelmis after Call because she knows he’s really Captain Fishface.” “She doesn’t seem like that,” Call objected.

“Yeah,” Aaron said, his voice brittle. “That’s the same thing you said about Celia. Stop acting like the spy is going to be someone who’s mean to you or who you hate. You can’t just believe that because someone is acting like your friend, they really are your friend!” “Oh, really?” Call asked, letting Aaron’s words hang in the air.

Aaron sighed and put his head down on the table, cradled in his hands. “That’s not what I meant. That came out wrong.” “Maybe we should let my sister out. Maybe she could help us,” Tamara said in a small voice.

Call turned toward her, shocked. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t know,” she said, pushing at some greens on her plate with a fork. “I need to think more about it. After Ravan became one of the Devoured, everyone — my parents, her friends — acted like she was dead, so that’s how I thought of her. I mean, sometimes I tried to picture her happy, swimming around in the lava of a volcano or something, but I never thought she was trapped here in the Magisterium. And now, seeing her, I feel like everyone lied to me. I feel like we didn’t try hard enough. And I feel like I don’t know how to feel.” Tamara let out a ragged breath.

“If you want to get her out, we’ll get her out,” Call said, with feeling.

“But we need to be careful,” Aaron cautioned. “We need to know more about the Devoured. In our Iron Year, we promised you, Tamara, that we wouldn’t let you be drawn into becoming one of them. I think that promise extends to not letting you be drawn in by them. Once someone is Devoured, are they still themselves? How much of them is left? If it was a relative of mine standing there, I would want to believe it was really them.” “You’re right,” Tamara said, but she didn’t look totally convinced. “I know you’re right.” “We’ve got a morning class today, right? The first thing we need to do afterward is go to Anastasia’s room and apologize to her,” Call said.

“And if she is the spy, we have to make it out alive,” added Tamara.

“Master Rufus knows where we’re going to be, though,” Aaron said. “It would be crazy to attack us. She’d get caught.” “Depends on whether she’s going to stick around after,” Call said. His arm ached — he was still wearing both wristbands, even though he was extra conscious of the Enemy’s now. “Look, either she’s out to get us and she’s been nice to me to lull us into a false sense of security, or she’s in league with Master Joseph and she’s being nice to me because I’m Captain Fishface. Either way, she’s dangerous.” “You’re not Captain Fishface,” Tamara hissed under her breath.

“You know what I mean.” Call sighed.

“We’ll get in and out of her room fast,” Aaron said. “Eat nothing, drink nothing, stick together. We deliver an apology, then we go. And we stay on high alert the whole time.” Call and Tamara nodded. As plans went, it wasn’t the greatest, but with Tamara worried about her sister and the whole room whispering about how chaos mages were bad news, it was the best they were likely to come up with. Call couldn’t help remembering what he’d realized after the Collegium ceremony: that there was a problem with the Enemy of Death being considered officially dead and the war over — in this new world, where Makars weren’t desperately needed, they made everyone afraid.

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Call wondered how class would go that morning with Master Rufus when all three of them were in such a somber mood, but to his surprise, a special guest lecturer had been scheduled for their group.

To his even more extreme surprise, it was someone he knew: Alma from the Order of Disorder. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been trying to kidnap Havoc so she could add him to her massive stable of Chaos-ridden animals in the middle of the forest.

She still didn’t look like a dognapper. She looked like a kindergarten teacher. Her white hair was braided into a coil against her dark skin. She wore a gray shirt over a dark green skirt. Several long strands of jade beads hung around her neck. When she saw the three of them, her gaze went immediately to Aaron. She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, which remained deep and watchful.

“This is my old friend Alma Amdurer,” Master Rufus said. “She taught at the Magisterium when I was an apprentice and knew my Master, Marcus.” Call wondered if Alma knew what had become of Marcus. Her expression didn’t change at the mention of him.

“She knows a great deal about chaos magic. Far more, I am sorry to say, than I do. Call and Aaron, you are going to spend the morning working with Alma while I teach Tamara alone. I have been thinking a great deal about what Assemblywoman Tarquin said at the meeting of the mages and I’ve decided that, as much as I don’t like to admit it, she was correct. You need to know things, and I don’t believe I am the right person to teach them. Alma agreed to come here on very short notice, so I want you to be polite and listen very attentively.” The whole speech made Call more than a little nervous. Alma had been thrilled when Aaron had turned up at the Order of Disorder. She’d been dying to get her hands on a Makar. He recalled her trying to talk Aaron into returning to the Order of Disorder so she could experiment on him. Now, Master Rufus was practically handing him over.

“Okay,” Aaron said slowly, not sounding entirely enthusiastic.

“We’re going to stay here and work, though, right?” Tamara sounded as if she shared Call’s concerns and didn’t want to leave Aaron alone.

“We’ll be next door.” Master Rufus waved, and the stone wall parted, rock groaning and opening a crack, wider and wider, to clear a way for himself and Tamara. He turned back to Alma. “Let me know if you need anything.” “We’ll be fine,” she said, with a glance at Call and Aaron.

Call watched Master Rufus and Tamara step into the next room. They looked distant and faraway through the hole Rufus had made. Tamara was trying to communicate something to Call with her face — her eyes wide and her hands making a gesture that looked like a dying bird — when the rock slammed back into place and they both were removed from view.

Without any choice, Call turned to Alma.

“You both look very skeptical,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t blame you. Can I tell you something that might surprise you? Master Rufus didn’t tell anyone else that he was inviting me to teach you. Not Master North. Not the Assembly. Not anyone. The Order of Disorder isn’t exactly respectable these days and neither am I.” “You threatened my wolf,” Call said. “And my friend.”

Alma was still smiling. “I hope your friend here doesn’t take it personally that you mentioned the wolf first.” “I don’t,” Aaron said. “Call knows I can take care of myself. But neither of us trusts you. I hope you don’t take that personally.” “I wouldn’t expect you to.” Alma backed up until she was leaning against Rufus’s stone desk. She crossed her arms. “Two Makars,” she said. “The last time there were two Makars alive at the same time, it was Constantine Madden and Verity Torres. They wound up in a battle to the death.” “Well, that won’t happen to us,” said Call. Alma was starting to seriously get on his nerves.

“Two Makars in the same Magisterium, the same apprentice group — do you know how much trouble Rufus gets from the other Masters for that? They feel like he cheated them somehow at the Iron Trials.” She chortled. “Especially picking you, Call. Aaron was an obvious choice, but you’re something very different.” “Are we going to learn anything here?” Aaron asked. “Besides teacher gossip, I mean.” “You might just learn the most important lesson of your life, Makar,” said Alma sharply. “I’m going to teach you how to see souls.” Aaron’s eyes widened.

“You are each other’s counterweights,” she went on. “And you are both chaos mages. Each of you can work the magic of the void, and that is why you bear black stones in your wristbands — it is what, I would guess, everyone has told you since the moment you were revealed as Makars. But there is another magic you can work as well. The magic of the soul. The human soul is the opposite of chaos, of nothingness. The soul is everything.” Her eyes were burning with a fanatic light. Call glanced sideways at Aaron; he seemed fascinated.

“Most human beings will never truly see the soul,” she went on. “We work like the blind, in darkness. But you can see. Call and Aaron, face each other.” Call turned to face Aaron. He realized with some surprise that they were about the same height; he’d always been a bit shorter than his friend. He must have shot up an inch or two.

“Look at the other person,” said Alma. “Concentrate on what makes them them. Imagine you can see through skin and bone, blood and muscle. You’re not looking for their heart — you’re looking for something more than that.” Her voice had a lulling cadence. Call stared at Aaron’s shirtfront. He wondered what he was supposed to be seeing. There was a dark spot on the shirt where Aaron had spilled tea at the Refectory.

He flicked a glance up at Aaron’s eyes and found Aaron looking at him. They both grinned, without being able to help it. Call stared harder. What made Aaron Aaron? That he was friendly; that he always had a smile for everyone; that he was popular; that he made bad jokes; that his hair never stuck up like Call’s? Or was it the darker things he knew about Aaron — the Aaron who flew into rages, who knew how to hotwire a car, who had hated it when he turned out to be the Makar because he didn’t want to die like Verity Torres?

Call felt his vision shift. He was still looking at Aaron, but he was also looking into him. There was a light inside Aaron, a light that was a color Call had never seen before. He couldn’t describe it, the new color. It was shifting and moving, like a glow cast against a wall, the reflected light of a lamp that was being carried.

Call made a noise and jumped back in surprise. The light and color vanished, and he found that he was just looking at Aaron, who was staring back at him with wide green eyes.

“That color,” Aaron said.

“That’s what I saw, too!” Call exclaimed. They grinned at each other recklessly, like two climbers who had just made it to the top of a mountain.

“Very good,” said Alma, sounding pleased. “You two have just seen each other’s souls.” “This seems awkward,” said Call. “I don’t think we should mention it to anyone.” Aaron made a face at him.

Call felt giddy. Not only had he mastered the magic on the first attempt, but seeing Aaron’s soul had made his brief suspicions of Aaron seem ridiculous. Aaron was his friend, his best friend, his counterweight. Aaron would never want to hurt him. Aaron needed him, just like he needed Aaron back.

The relief was overwhelming.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Alma said. “You both did very well. Next, I want you to interact with souls. You’re going to learn the soul tap.” “I am not doing that,” Call said. “I don’t know what it is, but I won’t like it.” Alma sighed as though she thought that Master Rufus must be pretty long-suffering to put up with Call, which was pretty unfair since, before, she’d said other Masters wished they’d picked him.

“It’s a method of knocking an opponent unconscious without doing them any real harm,” she said. “Are you still against it?” “How do we know it doesn’t hurt them?” Aaron asked.

“It doesn’t appear to,” Alma replied. “But, as with all soul magic, there hasn’t been enough study for anything to be entirely certain. When Joseph and several others and I began our research, we thought that chaos magic held the potential for doing much good in the world. Because there are so few Makaris born into each generation and because chaos magic has always been considered dangerous, we just don’t know enough about it.” The greatest Makar of your generation. The words came back to Call, rankling him. He didn’t mind Aaron being better than him, but he didn’t like the idea of someone being better than Aaron.

Alma went on, warming to her subject. “You have to understand how exciting it all was. We were discovering entirely new things. Oh, chaos mages had seen souls before — a few had even learned how to rip souls from bodies. But no one had attempted to touch a soul. No one had tried to put chaos into an animal. No one had tried to switch a soul from one body to another.” “So did Joseph go crazy or what?” Aaron asked. “I mean, how come he didn’t stop Constantine before he killed his brother? Was he just excited by all the magic?” Jericho Madden. Call felt his head swim. Although all this was the distant past, it felt closer than ever. Lately, Call felt as though it was about to push him out of his own life, the way Master Joseph had wanted to push his soul out of his body.

Alma’s eyes clouded. “To tell you the truth, I look back on that day and I don’t know what happened. I’ve turned it over and over in my mind, and I can’t help coming to the conclusion that Jericho died because Joseph wanted him to die.” That got Call’s attention. “What?”

“Constantine was a young man. He had other interests than the study of chaos magic — or rather, he felt as if he had his whole life to study it. And, of course, Rufus was his Master, not Joseph. I think that Joseph wanted Constantine to be committed to the cause.” Call was horrified. “Master Joseph arranged for Jericho to die so Constantine would be more committed to the idea of using chaos magic to bring back the dead?” Alma nodded. “And so Constantine would hate the Magisterium, which he blamed for Jericho’s death. Of course, I don’t think Joseph knew he was creating a monster. I think he just wanted to ensure loyalty. I think he wanted to be the one who made the discoveries, wanted his name to go down in history.” Call thought of Master Joseph in Constantine’s tomb, the curl of his lip and the mad light in his eye. Call wasn’t so sure that Master Joseph hadn’t known, hadn’t wanted a monster.

“People remember the Enemy of Death,” said Alma. “But they forget the man who made him who he was. Constantine may have been evil, but he was also tragic. He wanted his brother back. Master Joseph, on the other hand, what he wanted was power. Just power. And those are the most dangerous people in the world.”