Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) Read online

  Bayan looked again, belatedly recognizing the distant student as one of those in Taban’s hex.

  Redheaded Tarin breezed by. “That’s Instructor witten Oost. He’s a Hexmagic Duelist. He teaches avatar and hexmagic classes, and he has special invite-only classes, too.”

  Diogenes stared after her. “That hair—it’s amazing.”

  “It’s pretty,” Bayan agreed. “No one has red hair where I come from.”

  “Imperials, they don’t have red hair,” Diogenes replied.

  “What? Then how did she get hers?”

  “It’s not hennaed, if that’s what you’re asking. Her mother, she’s a Dunfarroghan, and her father’s an Akrestoi, like me. Children of those two cultures, they sometimes get red hair. Seeing her, it’s like seeing a pearl turtle.” Diogenes continued to stare after Tarin.

  Bayan shook his head. “We have pearl turtles everywhere back in Pangusay. They swim up the Mambajao to lay their eggs in the dry season.”

  “Never on a Firstday morning!” Diogenes cried.

  Bayan stopped, alarmed at the boy’s outburst. Then he saw Diogenes’ interested grin, and realized his words had been some kind of Waarden idiom.

  “Yes, they do,” he replied, relaxing. “We collect the shell fragments after they hatch and sell them to traders.”

  “Really? Those shiny bits, they’re from eggs? I always thought they were from the turtle shell itself.”

  “No. But I can see how you’d think that. The merchants probably tell people that on purpose. Pearl turtles’ back shells are just a pale green color. Their belly shells can be pearly, especially if they’re young.”

  “Are they good to eat?” Calder asked.

  “Definitely,” Bayan replied. “If you can catch one.”

  “You’re not as weird as the others say you are, you know,” Diogenes said, as if imparting some big secret.

  “Um. Thanks.”

  “Call me Odjin. My other friends, they do. I’ll see you later?”

  “Can’t help it, really.”

  Diogenes chuckled and caught up with another trainee as they trekked through the tunnel along the wooden walkway.

  Calder clapped Bayan on the shoulder. “Look at that, now. You’ve gone and doubled your friends from one to two, and it only took you four holidays by the calendar.”

  “Shut it.”

  “Oh, I see how it is, then. You like him better than me.” Calder pretended to pout.

  Bayan snorted. “He has less cheek.”

  “Ooh! Look at the Balang now. He’s learning Waarden idioms. What will he think of next?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bayan replied, “but it will probably involve itching powder and your sheets.”

  “Ah. Thanks for the warning. Good thing I pulled yours back out of the laundry pile this morning. You’ve been sleeping cheek by jowl with some musky little weasel or something?”

  Bayan knew his friend was teasing, but sometimes Calder’s fun was too similar to the insults the other students threw at him. “Yes. You.”

  Several other trainees burst out laughing at Calder’s expense. He laughed right along with them, seeming to enjoy Bayan’s joke even though he he’d been the butt of it.

  Bayan pasted on a smile. How does he do that—not take things personally? When others teased him, he always thought they were serious. Was he overreacting? Were some of them simply making jokes? Could he learn to laugh it off like Calder did? If he did, what would that do to his pride? It’s not right to insult people. My little sisters are better behaved than these trainees.

  As Bayan filed in with the other boys to change clothes before supper, he felt he was the only one in a foul mood. The fact that he’d been the one insulting Calder didn’t help dispel his grumpiness, and he wondered if others felt this unsettled when they insulted him.

  ~~~

  Bayan simmered with anger as he stalked into the dining hall. He’d been late to turn in his history assignment because he hadn’t written it beforehand, so de Rood had made him stay after and write it out. He was the last of his class to get to lunch. Half of his classmates had already finished their meal and left the hall.

  Calder was still in the hall, sitting next to Eward. He waved at Bayan, but Bayan turned away and reached for a wooden trencher to hold his food.

  “Bayan, I dinna realize you were on the menu. What’s eating you?” Calder stepped over from his table.

  “I don’t want to be here, Calder. I don’t care about the empire’s history. I was kidnapped and dragged here against my will. I had a life, a girl, and now I have nothing but you!”

  Calder’s face registered confusion and hurt. “Dinna realize you liked planting bulbs so much.”

  Eward joined them. “The empire kidnapped all of us, Bayan.”

  “And you think that’s worth smiling about?” Bayan glared at Eward’s upturned mouth.

  “No, but you see, we’re all in this together. We’re not your enemies. We’re in the same boat you are.”

  “We might be a few seats closer to the bow,” Calder said, with an annoyed quirk to his lips. “For some of us, this is as good as it gets.”

  Eward tsked at him, then turned to Bayan. “We’re all empire orphans here, even the teachers. We have to be each other’s family now. Don’t turn against us. We’re more alike than you think.”

  “A shame most of you won’t admit it.” Bayan shoved past them both toward a kitchen server, who waited with raised eyebrows.

  Just as Calder murmured that they should leave Bayan alone, the elemental students’ class began queuing behind Bayan. Apparently Braam, at the front of his class, wasn’t keen on waiting. “Move over, muckling. The clean people want to eat.” He pushed Bayan out of the food line.

  Bayan stumbled to a stop. His pulse pounded in his ears, but hunger made him step back in line.

  “I said,” Braam began, nudging the back of Bayan’s knee with his toes, “move aside for your betters, newnik.”

  Bayan’s darkness rushed into his skull so fast he felt lightheaded. He whirled around and looked up into Braam’s eyes. “I would, if there were any here. But all I see is you.”

  Quiet gasps and snickers came from behind Braam, whose pale skin flushed. The older student’s nose twitched as he hissed, “You move aside and let me eat, or I’ll—”

  Bayan’s darkness flashed out through his eyes and fingers, and wrapped the pale bricks of the floor around Braam’s legs, attaching him to the floor with twisted stone manacles. Braam’s voice stuttered to a stop as he stared at his imprisoned feet.

  “Shut. Your. Mouth.” Bayan barely recognized his own voice.

  “Bayan!” Calder called.

  But Bayan couldn’t stop his magic. It grabbed the wooden counter and shredded it, sending wood fragments whirling into the air. Several small whirlwinds swirled around Bayan and shot splinters like arrows across the large room. Students cried out and ducked beneath tables and behind benches.

  The darkness sang to him. A sweet melody flowed through everything he saw and felt and smelled. The magic was delicious, and he wanted more. But as he embraced it, he felt shoved to the corner of his own mind. His limbs barely responded to him. He clutched his head, feeling like his skull was about to explode.

  Then Staasen and Wekshi were there. Together, they dispersed the whirlwinds and freed Braam from the bricks’ grip.

  “It’s a rule violation! You all saw it,” Braam shouted. “He attacked me with his magic!”

  “He hasn’t learned any, Braam.” Staasen escorted him to an empty table and sat him down. “It just got away from him. And it did so because you provoked him. You’re lucky it didn’t snap your feet off. Next time, tell your stomach it can wait.”

  Wekshi waved her arms in an unfamiliar pattern, then clasped Bayan’s arms, holding him still.

  “My avatar will escort us out, Bayan,” she said. A disc of wind manifested beneath her feet, then grew large enough to support Bayan as well, lifting them both off the
floor. Air blasted Bayan’s face and dragged at his hair as they zoomed outside, and then the disc vanished. Bayan staggered onto the damp grass, dimly realizing he had flown a hundred strides from the dining hall.

  Wekshi shook him. “Bayan, snap out of it. Let the magic go.”

  “I… can’t.” Bayan grimaced, struggling to contain his rage, which seemed as slippery as water.

  “Then come with me to a cold house.”

  Bayan could only nod. Blackness shaded his vision, and he fell into his own personal twilight beside Wekshi as they rode the swift disc of wind up the side of a cliff and through a tunnel to an area he hadn’t yet seen.

  She took him to a small, stone structure with rounded edges, one of a cluster that sat on a hill beyond the campus’ edge. “You need to focus before you enter the cold house. Do a few Invocations and Revocations.”

  Bayan complied, struggling to perform the simple gestures, barely able to see his own limbs through the dark haze. After Bayan performed one last Invocation, Wekshi unbolted the door, pulled it open, and helped him inside.

  “It’s not cold in here,” he said.

  She sighed through her nose. “Do you listen in any of your classes? If your magic gets away from you, one of these little rooms will stop it cold. Hence the name.”

  Bayan became aware that the dimness inside the tiny room wasn’t caused by his shuddering rage, but by meager light through a small window. His darkness had fled. He sat down on a padded chair next to a small stone table that protruded seamlessly from the wall. The stone chair’s legs were anchored to the floor, and its back grew out of the wall. In addition, the room also contained a single lamp and a tiny stove.

  “Don’t try to leave the cold house until a teacher releases you. I’ll send Doc Theo over to look at you right away.” She shut the door and bolted it.

  Guess I’m not leaving. First I’m out of control, and now I’m empty. How can the duelists live like this? It’s painful. It’s embarrassing. I can’t live normally, not even here.

  Some while later, a knock came at the door and Doc Theo, with his curly gray hair and weathered skin, entered.

  He looks like a Skycaller.

  “I hear you had a spot o’ trouble today. Mind if I check you over with my crystal?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The man pulled out a crystal the length of his hand and chanted for a few moments as he held it above Bayan’s head. Then he quieted and put it away.

  “You’re fine, no harm done. Physically, anyway.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Bayan, rage ain’t good for you. Not as a person and especially not as a duelist. It’ll throw off your magic—”

  “I didn’t ask to come here!” Bayan flared his nostrils, but the blackness stayed away. “All I want is to go back home. Going to class, pretending I like it here—it’s driving me mad. Better if I just let them kick me out. Whether it’s for fighting or for failing, I don’t much care.”

  Doc Theo frowned. “I see. Well, it sounds like you ain’t quite thought that plan through to the obvious conclusion. Or belike it ain’t obvious to you yet.”

  Bayan looked away. He already knew about potioneers.

  Doc Theo continued. “If you cain’t pass your classes, learn to control your emotions, and perfect the sacred motions, Bayan, you’re gonna wash out of the Academy and get potioneered. And you know what’ll happen after that?”

  “I get to run away to Balanganam?”

  “Not even close. You’ll have your magic stripped out of you when you wash outta the Academy. I hear tell it’s on the gruesome side, as rituals go. From the moment you leave this campus, you’ll be tracked by the empire and assigned to this town or that town. If you don’t appear for your annual report to the potioneer department ’cause you runnoft, the emperor will send duelists to hunt you down and drag you back. And they’ll getcha, sooner or later.”

  “Then what? They kill me?”

  “No, worse. They put you back in your assigned town and make sure you stay there. No matter what you try to do, Bayan, you cain’t ever escape being a potioneer. Trust me, you think the teasing Braam gives you is bad? Being a potioneer is a dozen times worse. A hunnert times worse for one that tries to escape. So if you ever wanna have the freedom to return home, Bayan, you gotta play by the rules. You gotta wrestle that anger under control. You gotta pay attention in class. At least enough to pass at semester’s end. If you wash out before even being placed in a hex, you’ll be the lowest of the potioneers. I know you don’t want that sort of life.

  “I’ll leave you with that thought and clear you to leave the cold house. When you’re ready to return to class, you go ahead. But no more outbursts. You gotta control that anger, not the other way around, or I guarantee you’ll never lay eyes on Balanganam again.”

  The man smiled, but Bayan did not feel encouraged. Though Doc Theo left the small door ajar as he left, allowing Bayan to see a sliver of the thick grass and cloudy sky outside, Bayan decided to sit in the cold house awhile longer.

  A Solitary Night

  Kipri ascended from Philo’s storage room in the Ministry of Ways basement, clutching yet another collection of map cases. This time, Philo wanted maps of a trade town called Buugolog, whose well-maintained roads sprawled around the southern end of the Darannagh Mountains.

  The glamour of Kipri’s position as assistant to the famous Surveyor Philo had long worn off among the other eunuchs and palace staff. Whenever he was out of Philo’s presence, Kipri braced himself for their subtle reminders of how they felt about having a ragtag in their midst.

  Kipri reached the tiny foyer above the Archive. As he turned toward the main hallway he bounced off a sturdy body.

  “Hoy, ragtag plum, watch where you’re treading,” said a high voice.

  He looked up into the face of Bion, an Akrestan eunuch who worked in another office on the main floor and favored a long, feminine hairstyle. Two smirking eunuchs stood behind him.

  “Apologies,” Kipri murmured, lowering his eyes. As he walked away from Bion and the others, he was followed by delicate snorts of laughter.

  Plum, they call me. All they ever see is a Waarden pretender in the dark skin of an Aklaa. Doesn’t help that my father was executed for rebellion, either. I try so hard to follow every rule, copy their mannerisms and phrases and attitudes, but it never gets me anything more than “plum.” They smirk and whisper, just waiting for me to go on some killing rampage and slaughter a few people so they can be proven right.

  Kipri entered Philo’s perfumed office with an irritated sigh. As he set the map cases down on Philo’s large work table, Cassander looked up from his discussion with Philo.

  “Everything all right, Kip?” the blond eunuch asked.

  “Everything’s just plummy.” Kipri worked the end off of a map case.

  Cassander made a rude noise with his lips. “Was it Bion again? He’s such a whore.”

  “Now, there are some very fine attributes to plums.” Philo rose from behind his large desk. He wore no wig, but sported a fine net of beaded silk strands instead, which left glittering red stone beads dangling just in front of his ears and along his nape. “For instance, they make a lovely sauce over braised fowl. I’ve also had the pleasure of sampling several stellar plum wines in my lifetime.”

  Kipri, on the verge of getting truly angry, relaxed when he realized Philo was trying to cheer him. Naturally, food and drink would be Philo’s topic of choice.

  “Take it as a compliment, son, no matter how they mean it. Who says you must accept their definition of ‘plum’, or of anything else they care to hurl at you? I see no reason to listen to people who don’t take the time to know you before they judge you. Do you?”

  “Well, no. But it happens all the time, everywhere. There’s always someone who says something. The whole campus hates me.”

  “Poppycock. I happen to know that you just received a recommendation in your file for your work with me in Balan
ganam, and it was enthusiastically approved by Lord Eshkin. And trust me, Kipri Nayuuti, you always want powerful friends to look out for you. With the Minister of Ways on your side, you should be smirking at your naysayers. Let them wonder what you know that they don’t.”

  As Philo riffled through the many maps, sketches and reports he’d logged for Buugolog, Kipri mused on the differences between their perspectives. To ignore everything everyone said about him behind his back sounded good, but then Akrestoi didn’t suffer prejudice like the Raqtaaq did, and Philo’s many years amidst the turbulent histrionics of the Kheerzaal eunuch environment had no doubt jaded him.

  Philo leaned over a map, and the beads next to his cheeks spun and caught the light. Kipri frowned. Though there were other eunuchs who took liberties with fashion, Philo was by far the most flamboyant when it came to style. Many unused to working with eunuchs were confused or offended by his oft gender-crossed appearance when they met him for the first time. Yet he bulled blithely forward, and wore whatever he wanted, ignoring his critics. Kipri wondered if he should emulate Philo’s attitude, though to change one’s wig and clothing was easier than to change one’s skin. Who knew? Maybe he’d go wild and try a feather clip in his hair, too.

  ~~~

  “Now, let us close our eyes, shutting out all visual distraction,” Instructor Jurgen said, his voice low and smooth.

  Bayan shut his eyes, but he didn’t bother trying the breathing technique Instructor Jurgen described. The man had explained the steps for it yesterday, and Bayan was still as uninterested as he’d been then.

  Bayan’s stomach growled. His neck itched. Even the darkness within him seemed bored and restless. He rubbed his bracelets together but found the faint noise unsatisfying.

  Upping his subversive tactics, he lolled his head to one side and released a quiet snore.

  No one seemed to notice. A few moments later, he snored again, slightly louder. Next to him, Calder stifled a snicker.

  A third snore, longer and interrupted by a snort, earned a full ha from his friend and a couple of giggles from nearby girls. His fourth snore was interrupted by Instructor Jurgen calling his name irritably, which for some reason made Calder burst into laughter.