Firebreak, p.4
Firebreak, page 4
She leaned in behind Bahati and said, in a breathy voice, “You already know.”
Bahati jumped up and squealed, hauling Anahera into a tight embrace. Anahera chuckled, patting Bahati’s arm until she let go.
“If you didn’t know, we wouldn’t be tapping you. All the same, ritual must be upheld.”
She placed her hand on Bahati’s shoulder and gazed into her eyes.
“Bahati, the Sept of Cups requests your presence. Accept or reject?”
“Uh, accept. Absolutely. Like, totally.”
“Very good.” Anahera turned to the others. “May I steal her for a bit? I will bring her back, I promise.”
Dalton waved her off with a flourish and a bow of his head. “Go and do…whatever it is you people do. And if you two fine ladies need any company later, a possible respite from your studies…”
Bahati grinned and took Anahera’s hand. “Got it, ‘Ladykiller on Wheels.’ Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
He clasped his hands over his heart and gave her puppy-dog eyes. “Don’t keep me waiting all night, beautiful.”
After that, nothing much happened. There were no more invitations. Not for them, at least. Amy watched as members of the Septs filtered among the clumps of second- and third-year students, inviting a lucky few, leading them off to the tables closest to the crackling hearth.
“Remember what I said about not getting discouraged?” Vail murmured in her ear.
“I know.” Amy’s shoulders sank. “I just…I know.”
Still.
They lined up to return their plates and mugs to the serving window and then headed for the dorms. At least they were on the second floor this year, so they enjoyed bigger rooms with bigger windows and a view of the sprawling forest beyond the Academy’s gray stone walls. The showers were still wonky and the class bells still didn’t work, but an upgrade was an upgrade.
But at the foot of the staircase, a pair of students moved to block their path. They were upperclassmen. Brass medallions etched like ornate compasses were pinned to their blazers, and they’d eschewed the school-issued Oxfords in favor of well-worn hiking boots. One, a muscular young man with a square jaw and a scent like warm, spicy cologne, stepped forward and placed his hand on Amy’s shoulder.
“Amy Nettle, the Sept of Coins requests your presence. Accept or reject?”
Her jaw dropped. She closed it, fast, trying to keep her composure, and nodded like a bobblehead. The two possibilities for her future suddenly collapsed into one beautiful reality. Travel. She was going to travel.
“Yes! Definitely yes.”
“Great! I’m Clarke, by the way, and this handsome specimen at my side is Emile. C’mon, come up to the fourth floor with us, you can meet everybody and…well, we can get your vibe, and you can get ours.”
“Sounds good, but…” Amy trailed off. Expectant. Clarke looked confused.
“Yeah?”
“Is there…anyone else?” she asked, casting a glance at Vail.
Clarke checked a scrap of paper in his hand, then shook his head. “Nope, you’re the only second-year getting the nod this time around. You must have really impressed somebody.”
Amy had hoped for this so many times, but suddenly she realized something was missing. She’d entertained countless daydreams of getting the keys to the multiverse, of traveling, of seeing and understanding it all. Until this moment she hadn’t thought about the most important part.
All her dreams had Vail in them. With her, sharing the ride.
“Hey.” Vail squeezed her arm, reading the whole story in her eyes. “Go.”
“Vail, I don’t have to—”
“Shhh.” Vail pressed a finger to Amy’s lips. “None of that. It’s not like we’re not going to hang out anymore. Go. Have fun, and when you get back to the room tonight you can tell me all about it.”
***
The heart of the Saunders Academy was a Gothic mountain of cold gray stone, and the central staircase wound all the way up to the crest of its grand buttresses. Clarke and Emile led Amy up the curling stair, past the second floor, past the third, to the floor reserved for fourth-year students. But they soon had company. Jellica and a pair of her Blades, coming the other way, stopped them cold on the fourth-floor landing.
“What is this?” Jellica locked eyes with Amy, reached out one pale hand, and pointed a single fingernail, painted the color of fresh-fallen snow, toward the floor. “Down. Now. Fourth floor is restricted to upperclassmen only. Which you aren’t, and judging by your performance in that training operation this morning, you will never be. At least if I have anything to say about it.”
Clarke nodded to one side. “Step, Jelly. She’s with us. Newbloods are allowed up with an escort.”
“That’s not an official school rule. Quite the opposite, in fact. Just because the faculty look the other way for the sake of convenience doesn’t mean she’s allowed to set foot on this floor. Am I going to have to administer some discipline here?”
Clarke rubbed the back of his neck, making a show of thinking hard about it.
“Well, gosh and golly, Miss Barnes. If we’re going to be strict about the rules all of a sudden…I guess those two third-years you’ve got living in the Blades dorm are going to have to pack up and move downstairs. Tonight.”
“Same rules for goose and gander,” Emile said, stone faced. He enunciated carefully through a melodic accent that sounded South African to Amy’s ears, though she knew the Academy’s translation enchantment was just approximating his words into English for her benefit.
If looks could kill, both boys would have been dead on the spot, and Amy vaporized in the blast along with them. Jellica took a slow, deep breath, steadying herself, and closed the distance. She stepped toe to toe with Clarke, leaned in, and put her lips to his ear. Her voice was an icy whisper.
“If you ever call me ‘Jelly’ again, I’ll roast your chestnuts over an open fire. And make you eat them.”
“Noted,” Clarke said. Defiant — but he didn’t repeat the insult.
Jellica nodded and stepped back. She sneered at Amy.
“Enjoy your brief visit to these lofty heights. You will never belong here.”
With that, she stalked off, her cronies prowling behind. Emile rested a slender hand on Amy’s shoulder.
“Little dogs ought not bark at big ones, ‘less they’re willing to get bit.”
“I would hardly call Jellica a ‘little dog,’” Amy said, nervous.
“I wasn’t talking about her.”
He gave Clarke a pointed glance. Clarke grinned and shrugged.
“Hey, I just can’t stand hypocrites. You know she literally stole furniture from the third-floor dorms, right? Anyway, relax. We’ve been doing this dance for three years now. I know how far I can push her.”
“You have a good head,” Emile said. “I prefer it attached to your shoulders. Much more handsome that way.”
They led her down the austere, wood-paneled hallway. Giddy laughter bubbled from behind a closed door. Clarke knocked twice, paused, rapped the door a third time, then turned the brass knob and pushed it wide.
Amy stayed quiet and small, as if part of her was convinced she’d been brought up here by accident and the second someone noticed the mistake, they’d send her away again. The second-year dorms were a marked step up from the cramped, dusty rooms they’d bunked in when they first arrived at Saunders, but these were downright luxurious by comparison. Six double beds with plenty of space between them, separated by a mismatched collection of privacy screens. One was lacquered wood, adorned with elaborate carvings of dragons in flight. Another, oddly enough, was a panel of gray fabric that seemed to have been scavenged from an office cubicle farm.
Shelves above each bed bore trophies and memories of years at the Academy. Tiny glass orbs, and crystals, and boxes of cards, and ribbons, and furled scrolls — a trove of stories. Instead of the dour, uniform drabness of the rooms below, the beds were appointed in a riot of colored quilts and jumbled pillows. A few stuffed animals kept watch over the hoard.
Amy recognized the circular jumble of chairs at the head of the room from the classrooms on the first floor. Apparently Jellica wasn’t the only senior student who appropriated furniture when needed. Above them dangled a flag, bone-white paint upon black silk, depicting a crude skeleton with a cutlass and a splash of scarlet dye to represent its bleeding heart.
A handful of students sat upon floor pillows, huddled around some kind of game involving antique cards and a rainbow pile of clay chips. They collectively groaned as a big, curvy girl tossed a card down. She scooped half the chips toward her growing pile.
“Shenanigans,” another said, tossing up his hands. “I call shenanigans.”
The big girl grinned toothily and answered with a Cockney twang, “Prove it, plonker.”
“We have a guest, my worthy hands,” called a delighted voice from behind the lacquerware screen. “I expect you all to be on your worst behavior tonight.”
She stepped into view: a rail-thin young woman whose eyes glittered like a crow’s behind green-tinted John Lennon-style glasses. She wore tall leather boots with her school uniform, and a leather baldric hung like a sash over her blazer. A small, thick book rode in a custom-tooled scabbard on her hip.
“Amy Nettle, in the flesh,” she purred. “I’m Kinzie K, and this band of picaroons, scallywags, and scoundrels are my hoard of Coins.”
She held one hand high, twirled her fingers, and snapped.
“Spread out the circle, make some room, and somebody get this girl a pillow and a drink. We’re going to get to know each other a little better.”
Chapter six
Amy found herself perched on a tasseled purple pillow, the youngest girl in the room, and a little starstruck. Someone pressed a cold aluminum can into her hand.
“Wet your whistle with this,” Clarke told her. “We just snagged a case from Pt-8.”
Amy cracked the tab, listening to the familiar hiss of carbonation. She suddenly realized that she hadn’t had a soda since she’d been summoned to the Academy courtyard. It had only been a year, but it felt like a lifetime ago.
It tasted like… “Violet?” she said, squinting at the can. “It tastes like the color violet.”
The Coins burst into laughter, two of them sharing a high-five.
“Synesthesia in a can,” Kinzie said. “Just a taste of what’s out there. Literally.”
“And ‘Pt-8’ is…?”
“Each charted parallel world gets a number. The t, in this case, stands for tangent; those are weird little pocket worlds, artificial constructs, accidents of magic. Pt-8’s a fun one. It was created by this astoundingly powerful psychic kid raised on a diet of superhero comics and film noir.”
Clarke snorted. “Fun? We nearly got stomped by a giant robot.”
“That’s a great Friday night, in my book.”
Amy took another sip of violet, trying to keep a hundred questions from spilling out all at once.
“You said your last name was…K?” she asked. “Is that short for something?”
Kinzie chuckled and shook her head.
“On my world, when you leave your family home, you slice your name. You keep one letter, to honor where you came from, but the rest goes. It’s a sign that you’re no longer a child, and you stand on your own feet now.” She held up a finger. “Not that you stand alone, though.”
She leaped to her feet, flashing a feral smile.
“Who’s the bosun who keeps our candle lit and our gear tight? The navigator who never cracks under pressure?”
“Emile!” the Coins cheered. Clarke threw an arm around Emile’s shoulder, yanking him close and rubbing his knuckles across the other boy’s scalp until he shoved Clarke off, laughing.
Kinzie twirled one hand above her head. “Who’s our lady of the shadows, the raven-cloaked crooner who can snatch a pirate flag right off the pole and leave ‘em all confounded and grounded?”
“Miryam!” sounded the cheer. The target of their admiration, a slight, pale girl with a spill of curly jet-black hair, ducked her head and waved them off. A faint blush colored her cheeks. Amy couldn’t help but look up at the pennant on the wall, the skeleton on black silk, with new eyes.
“Is…is that a real pirate flag?”
Kinzie strutted around the circle and winked. “And we stole it fair and square, too. Hey! Who’s the quartermaster who gives no quarter, the beast of barter who can make a Racani squeal for his last bent copper?”
“Clarke!”
Clarke puffed out his cheeks and held up his hands. “It’s just math, guys, it’s all just math. If you bothered to learn some, you’d know.”
Kinzie’s hand trailed along the shoulder of the girl who had been winning at cards when Amy first arrived.
“And who’s that maiden of malice who can tear down a palace, the girl whose dice always come up nice? When Lady Luck needs a loan, she goes to—”
“Lola!”
Emile cupped one hand to the side of his mouth and leaned close to Amy, conspiratorial.
“Only because the dice are loaded.”
Around the circle Kinzie went, spotlighting each of her Coins, singling each out for the praise that was theirs and theirs alone. Soda cans were raised high, the air filled with laughter, and Amy’s heart pounded like a jackhammer. She felt tiny, insignificant, outclassed, and out of place. There was a bond here, a camaraderie that wasn’t hers to share, and joining in the cheers felt like stolen valor. She sat silent and frozen through it all.
Then Kinzie spun on one heel, looking to Amy.
“I’ve got one question for you, newblood,” she said. “Do you think you can hang with us?”
Amy swallowed hard, feeling a sudden lump in her throat.
“I…I don’t know. I want to. I’ve wanted it since my first navigation class with Professor Kamaka. But I feel like I’m still so new here, and I don’t know anything at all. I don’t know if I can measure up to…all of this.”
Kinszie dropped to the floor, landing on all fours in a crouch, eye to eye with Amy and grinning. “I like the honesty. Do you know why we tapped you?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t baffled.”
“Skills can be taught. Even magic can be taught; this school is living proof. Know what can’t be taught? Potential. You’re brimming with it. I heard Professor Mallory’s been giving you extra lessons on muffling your light, to keep the Corpse from sniffing you out.”
A winter chill ran down Amy’s spine. Firebreak Island stood alone, the only landmass in a world of dark water, its depths filled with monsters. Carnivorous mermaids, blind leviathans in the deep, and worse. Like the Corpse. It was vast, ancient, and starving, and it made its deathless lair just off the island’s coast. As it had been explained to her, the Corpse couldn’t raise its massive bulk off the ocean floor, and its tentacles couldn’t quite reach the surface…but it was very old, and very terrible, with a mind that contained worlds of its own. It could smell the students at the Academy, and it hungered endlessly, seeking out the brightest lights and flooding their sleep with nightmares.
Months before Amy’s arrival, one of the professors had fallen prey to the Corpse’s whispers. He walked into the sea to die, offering his flesh and his soul to the beast. The first time Amy meditated in Professor Mallory’s class, she had done more than accidentally sense the Corpse — it had opened one colossal yellow eye and stared right at her.
“It’s…not a big deal,” Amy said, glancing down and shifting on her pillow.
“She also challenged Jellica Barnes to a duel,” Clarke said.
“This is the rookie who challenged her?” Lola said, gaping at Amy. “I wish I had been there to see it. How bad did she kick your arse?”
Amy buried her face in her palm. “Don’t ask. Please.”
“Heard she gave you a scar to remember her by,” Kinzie said.
Lola pointed. “Show us!”
Amy tried to demur, but a chant of “Show us! Show us!” went up, flooding the room. She reluctantly undid the top two buttons of her uniform blouse and tugged back her collar, showing a bit of the long, fish-belly-white scar that ran along her shoulder and disappeared under her bra strap.
The chant boiled over into a cheer, and feet hammered the floorboards like thunder. She blinked, confused. She’d seen her rash decision — challenging Jellica after the white witch bullied a young student through the Arch of Resignation — as an utter failure, her scar as a reminder of her mistake. But they were treating her like some kind of champion.
“I don’t get it,” she said, buttoning back up again. “I failed. I lost.”
“Of course you lost,” Kinzie said. “Jellica Barnes is a monster, and I say that with full respect on her name. No way in a century you would have come out on top.”
“But you did it anyway,” Miryam said, the pale girl’s voice almost whisper-soft yet still carrying across the circle. “You did what you thought was right, knowing you’d pay for it. Then you faced the insurmountable and got out alive.”
“That’s how you end up with a story,” Lola added. “And a solid boast or two.”
Kinzie poked Amy’s shoulder.
“Don’t you dare be ashamed of that scar. Be proud of it, because it shows that you stand for something. You want to know why we tapped you? That’s why. You’re not a badass, Amy Nettle, but you’ve got badass bones. You’ve just got some growing to do.”
Lola pushed herself up, slipped around a screen, and rummaged in a bedside table.
“Just need some wind in your sails and a tiny taste of plunder.”
She came back holding a big foil pouch, about the size of a bag of chips, the front adorned with no logo or branding beyond a glossy lime-green monogrammed L. Whatever it was, it drew sudden murmurs of appreciation, even a little spontaneous applause.
“You tart,” Emile said.
“Only on days ending with a y.” Lola gave her hips a little shake and settled back onto the pillow before ripping the top of the bag open. The air suddenly filled with the aroma of rich cinnamon, making Amy’s mouth water.
