فصل 20

Chapter 20

TAMARA JUMPED UP and looked around the room like she was expecting something to leap out at her from the shadows.

Aaron’s expression turned wary, but he stayed seated. “Call,” he said. “Is that coming from your room?” “Uh, maybe?” said Call, trying desperately to think of some explanation for the sound. “It’s my … ringtone?” Tamara frowned. “Phones don’t work down here, Callum. And you already said you didn’t have one.” Aaron’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you have a dog in there?”

Something crashed to the floor and the barking increased, along with a sound like nails scrabbling over stone.

“What’s going on?” Tamara demanded, walking to Call’s door and yanking it open. Then she screamed, throwing herself back against the wall. Oblivious, the wolf bounded past her out into the common room.

“Is that a —” Aaron stood up, his hand unconsciously going to the band at his wrist, the one with the black void stone in it. Call thought of the dark curling around the wolves the night before, taking them into nothingness.

He ran as quickly as he could to block the pup with his body, his arms held out wide. “I can explain,” he said desperately. “He’s not bad! He’s just like a regular dog!” “That thing is a monster,” Tamara said, grabbing up one of the knives from the table. “Call, don’t you dare tell me you brought it here on purpose.” “It was lost — and whimpering out in the cold,” Call said.

“Good!” Tamara screamed. “God, Call, you don’t think, you don’t ever think! Those things, they’re vicious — they kill people!” “He’s not vicious,” Call said, sinking to his knees and seizing the pup by the ruff. “Calm down, boy,” he said with as much firmness as he could summon, bending so he could look into the wolf’s face. “These are our friends.” The pup stopped barking, staring up at Call with kaleidoscopic eyes. Then it licked his face.

He turned to Tamara. “See? He’s not evil. He was just excited from being cooped up in my room.” “Get out of my way.” Tamara brandished her knife.

“Tamara, wait,” Aaron said, coming closer. “Admit it — it is weird that it’s not attacking Call.” “He’s just a baby,” Call said. “And scared.”

Tamara snorted.

Call picked up the wolf and turned it on its back, rocking it like a baby. The wolf squirmed. “See. Look at his big eyes.” “You could get kicked out of school for having him,” Tamara said. “We could all get kicked out of school.” “Not Aaron,” Call said, and Aaron winced.

“Call,” he said. “You can’t keep him. You can’t.”

Call held the wolf more tightly. “Well, I’m gonna.”

“You can’t,” said Tamara. “Even if we let him live, we have to take him outside the Magisterium and leave him. He can’t be in here.” “Then you might as well kill him,” said Call. “Because he won’t survive out there. And I won’t let you take him.” He swallowed. “So if you want him out, tell on me. Go ahead.” Aaron took a deep breath. “Okay, so what’s his name?”

“Havoc,” said Call immediately.

Tamara lowered her hand to her side, slowly. “Havoc?”

Call felt himself blush. “It’s from a play my father liked. ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.’ He’s definitely, I don’t know, one of the dogs of war.” Havoc took the opportunity to burp.

Tamara sighed, something in her face softening. She reached out her other hand, the one without a knife, to stroke the pup’s fur. “So … what does he eat?” It turned out that Aaron had a bunch of bacon in the back of the cold storage, which he was willing to donate to feed Havoc. And Tamara, once she’d been drooled on and watched a Chaos-ridden wolf roll onto its back so she could pet its stomach, announced that they should all fill their pockets with anything vaguely meaty that they could get out of the Refectory, including eyeless fish.

“We need to talk about the wristband, though,” she said as she tossed a wadded-up ball of paper to Havoc, trying to get him to fetch. He took the paper under the table and began instead to tear off small pieces with his tiny teeth. “The one Call’s father sent him.” Call nodded. In all the uproar about Aaron and Havoc, he’d managed to push the realization of what the onyx stone meant to the back of his mind.

“It couldn’t have belonged to Verity Torres, right?” he asked.

“She was fifteen when she died,” Tamara said, shaking her head. “But she left school the year before, so her wristband would be Bronze Year, not Silver.” “But if it’s not hers —” Aaron said, swallowing, not able to say the words.

“Then it’s Constantine Madden’s,” said Tamara, with tight practicality. “It would make sense.” Call flashed hot and cold all over. It was exactly what he’d been thinking, but now that Tamara had said it out loud, he didn’t want to believe it. “Why would my father have the wristband of the Enemy of Death? How would he have it?” “How old is your father?”

“He’s thirty-five,” Call said, wondering what that had to do with anything.

“Basically the same age as Constantine Madden. They would have been at school together. And the Enemy could have left his wristband behind when he escaped from the Magisterium.” Tamara pushed herself to her feet and started to pace. “He rejected everything about school. He wouldn’t have wanted it. Maybe your father picked it up, or found it somehow. Maybe they even — knew each other.” “There’s no way. He would have told me,” Call replied, knowing even as he said it that it wasn’t true. Alastair never talked about the Magisterium except vaguely and to describe how sinister it was.

“Rufus said he knew the Enemy. And that bracelet was supposed to be a message to Rufus,” said Aaron. “It had to mean something to your father and to Rufus. It would make more sense if they both knew him.” “But what was the message?” Call demanded.

“Well, it was about you,” Tamara said. “Bind his magic. Right?”

“So they’d send me home! So I’d be safe!”

“Maybe,” said Tamara. “Or maybe it was about keeping other people safe from you.” Call’s heart gave a sick thump inside his chest.

“Tamara,” said Aaron. “You’d better explain what you mean.”

“I’m sorry, Call,” she said, and she really did look sorry. “But the Enemy invented the Chaos-ridden here, at the Magisterium. And I’ve never heard of a Chaos-ridden animal being friendly to anyone or anything but another Chaos-ridden.” Aaron started to protest, but Tamara held up her hand. “Remember what Celia said that first night on the bus? About how there’s a rumor that some of the Chaos-ridden have normal eyes? And if someone was born Chaos-ridden, then maybe that person wouldn’t be blank inside. Maybe they’d seem normal. Like Havoc.” “Call isn’t one of the Chaos-ridden!” Aaron said loudly. “That stuff Celia was saying, about Chaos-ridden creatures that look normal — there’s no proof that’s even real. And besides, if Call was Chaos-ridden, he’d know. Or I’d know. I’m one of the Makaris, so I should know, right? He’s not. He’s just not.” Havoc bounded over to Call, seeming to sense that something was wrong. He whined a little, eyes pinwheeling.

Alastair’s words echoed in Call’s mind.

Call, you must listen to me. You don’t know what you are.

“Okay, then what am I?” he asked, leaning against the wolf, pressing his face into the soft fur.

But he could see in his friends’ faces that they didn’t know.

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As the weeks wore on, they had no new answers, but it was easy for Call to let the questions slip from his mind so he could concentrate on his studies. With Aaron not just training to be a mage but also training to be a Makar, Master Rufus had to split his time. While they mostly trained together, Call and Tamara were often on their own, researching magic in the libraries, looking up histories of the Second Mage War and looking at drawings of the battles or photographs of the people in them, chasing around the various small elementals that populated the Magisterium, for practice, and finally learning how to pilot a boat through the caverns. Sometimes, when Master Rufus needed to take Aaron somewhere or do something that would last the whole day, Call and Tamara would join up with another Master.

The excitement of Aaron being a Makar had been slightly overshadowed by the news that Master Lemuel was being forced to leave the Magisterium. Drew’s accusations had been heard by the Assembly, and they determined that Master Lemuel could no longer be trusted with students, despite his steadfast denials and Rafe’s speaking up on his behalf. His apprentices were split up among the other Masters, landing Drew with Master Milagros, Rafe with Master Rockmaple, and Laurel with Master Tanaka.

Drew got out of the Infirmary a week after the news about Master Lemuel broke. At dinner, he’d gone around the other tables, apologizing to all the apprentices. He apologized several times to Aaron, Tamara, and Call. Call thought of asking what Drew had been trying to tell him in the hallway that night, but Drew was seldom alone and Call didn’t know quite how to phrase the question.

Is there something wrong with me?

Is there something dangerous about me?

How could you possibly know what I don’t?

Sometimes, Call felt desperate enough to want to write to his father and ask him about the wristband. But then he’d have to confess that he’d hidden Alastair’s letter from Rufus, and besides, he hadn’t heard anything from his dad except another care package of gummi candies and a new wool coat, arriving at Christmas. It had a card with it, signed Love, Dad. Nothing else. Feeling hollow, Call stuck the card away in his drawer with the other letters.

Fortunately, Call had something else that occupied a lot of his time: Havoc. Feeding a growing Chaos-ridden wolf and keeping him hidden took single-minded dedication and a lot of assistance from Tamara and Aaron. It also required overlooking Jasper’s telling Call that he smelled like hot dogs day after day as he snuck food out of the Refectory in his pockets. Plus, there was the matter of sneaking out through the Mission Gate for regular walks. But as winter turned to spring, it was clear to Call that Aaron and even Tamara had come to think of Havoc as their dog, too, and he would often come back from the Gallery to find Tamara curled up on the couch, reading, with the wolf resting on top of her feet like a blanket.