Page 62
The word struck. He hadn’t said dismissed, or expelled, or sent home in disgrace with my one duffel and my altered robe.
Linden heard himself say it, and I could tell that he hadn’t meant to let that much slip. But he didn’t take it back, and that was the part that scared me. He was a man who took things back, and he let that one stand.
“What do you know?” I asked.
He looked at me for a long time while the lamp flickered in the dark. “Enough to be afraid,” he said.
NINETEEN
Billie
The notice that had appeared on my schedule had made my stomach sink when I read it. In green ink it had appeared, replacing Professor Sallow’s lecture that afternoon. ‘Training in the Long Gallery.’
I knew where that was, Pippa had pointed it out on my first day. The hall had a row of glass windows on the upper level and was designed for students to practice their skills, specifically leaning toward combat, which made me wonder what exactly they expected us to fight at some point? No one had ever said, and at this point I knew I’d need to find the answer myself because asking wouldn’t get me anywhere.
The Long Gallery was designed for witnesses, and witnesses it had. When I walked in I wasn’t surprised to see faces practically pressed against the glass above me. The robes were mostly black though, not charcoal, which I’d come to understand meant that they were adepts or higher. It seemed the only real color differentiation was reserved for first years, as though if you made it past first year then you were accepted, but until that point you were considered an unknown quantity and to be treated much the same as a toddler carrying a knife.
The room filled and we stood around waiting for instruction but above us was activity that I swear looked like the adepts were placing bets on who won or maybe just survived. All I knew was that I was regretting showing up. It felt like classes were mandatory but I didn’t see Kit or Linden there and Pippa was talking to the other prefects so I stayed away.
“Welcome to Foundational Practice,” a small, hunched man wearing silver rimmed glasses called out, trying to make himself heard over the noise of the crowd. He was shorter than almost everyone in the room which was only part of the reason they all overlooked him. Eventually, the students quieted down and he continued, “Today we will be practicing just as you would in the training yards, however, you are expected to show more control as you are inside. This is a doubles match. Find a partner who has a different power than you, and let’s see what you can do.”
Chaos erupted as students rushed to find a partner. I stood still, knowing that no one would willingly pick me, and waited for the humiliation to find me. Only it didn’t because Vivienne Mallory found me first.
“Miss Lane,” she said, pleasant as a knife folded into a napkin. “Shall we pair?”
Every instinct I owned said no. Every face around us said they were already waiting to see whether I had the nerve to say it.
Suddenly, the professor was right there. He looked at the two of us and his whole face flooded with relief, the relief of a man who had been dreading dealing with the unclassified first-gen student and had just been rescued from having to. “Excellent,” he said. “Mallory, Lane. Begin with simple directed contact. Miss Mallory leads. Miss Lane defends or yields.”
Defends or yields, two options, neither of which I could do anything with. They both knew that I couldn’t defend against her so the only option I had was yield. After all, I had no power, or at least none that anyone other than Kit and Linden were aware of.
Vivienne Mallory smiled and stepped close enough that her voice dropped under the room, into the private register meant for me alone. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “I’ll be gentle.”
I heard the sarcasm in her tone and it made my metaphorical hackles rise. And then, because it always came to me at exactly the wrong moment, I heard my mother. Every office we had ever stood in together, the fluorescent hum, the clipboard, the man behind the desk deciding what we were. Look up, Billie. Make them look away first.
“That’s disappointing,” I said.
Vivienne’s smile thinned at the edges, just barely, and near the glass two students leaned in. Vivienne walked away until we were at least twenty paces apart and waited with one hand lifted, palm out, wrist loose, the whole gesture as elegant and rehearsed as a curtsy.
Other students were assuming their stances throughout the Long Gallery. Some were similar to Vivienne's, some were much different, looking more like they were about to do their rendition of the training montage from The Karate Kid.
“Begin!” The professor called out.
Vivienne wasted no time. The strike came fast.
Force.
I only knew that was her power because I had watched her shove a boy across the training yards without touching him. What hit me was a hard invisible shove, aimed square at my chest and calibrated exactly to put me backward on the polished wood in front of the glass and leave nothing behind but the memory of me landing. There would be no bruise anyone could point to, just the sound of me hitting the floor and everyone hearing it.
The prickle fired in my palms half a second before the strike hit. I didn’t choose it, and that part mattered, it would keep mattering to me long after it stopped mattering to anyone else at the academy. My hands came up on their own and I felt the muscle do it before the thought arrived, the way my arm would fly out when a glass tipped at the edge of a table.
The strike met my hands and opened. Not bounced or stopped but opened, the way a door opened, the way the fire had opened around me on the Walkers’ stairs. Vivienne’s power poured into me cold and bright, nothing at all like Kit’s fire, no warmth in it and no restless gold, no want or hunger leaning toward my skin. Just a clean hard edge, a polished blade of somebody’s will, and it went straight to the place in me that had taken the flame in the little cupboard reading room and found the same road worn smooth and waiting.
The circuit caught and I gave it back.
Doubled.
Green-edged.
