Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) Read online

  Theo put the Waarden crystal back and selected another, repeating his breathy chanting. Again, Bayan felt a high, ringing vibration. Again, his hand continued to ooze blood.

  “What if it doesn’t match any of the crystals?” a boy murmured.

  “He’s probably half mud. I hear they eat it down there. Maybe they can cram some into a crystal and try that.”

  Giggles ensued, and Bayan felt the darkness rising again. He clenched his teeth and stiffened his spine.

  “You know, I’ve heard Balanganese soil has some fine medicinal properties,” Theo interjected in a mild voice, not looking up from the third crystal. “I’d be interested to discuss that with you later, Bayan, when you have some time.”

  Bayan nodded, feeling some of the darkness’ pressure recede.

  Theo began chanting, and the wound in Bayan’s skin healed over nearly immediately. So did the small cuts in his fingertips, from feeding his pitcher plant.

  “Looky there.” Theo took Bayan’s hand and examined it. “As true a Southern Common as ever I saw.” He eyed some of the murmurers behind Bayan, giving them a sharp look. “According to my handy dandy magic crystal here, Bayan has the same blood as you, Kendesi.”

  A Shawnash girl among the older students glared at Bayan as if she suspected him of faking the crystal’s result. The murmurs quieted, and the others moved off.

  “Thank you,” Bayan said.

  “Fer what?” Theo winked. “I’ve been up and down near every stretch of land in this empire, son. Did a stint in Balanganam, even, back before the Danatu signed himself into imperial protection to prevent civil war. Ain’t no blood superior to any other, and ain’t no people lower than any other, despite what some of us Waarden think.” He lowered his voice. “And as to whether you have mud in your veins, let me tell you this: being at one with the land of yer people can make ya downright irresistible. Belike that’s your secret. I’ll see you boys around, now.”

  With another wink, the chanter left Bayan and Calder, both looking confused.

  “I think he’s saying he was in love with a Balang. But then, he is from Laarwyck, and that accent’s something to get used to,” Calder said.

  “You should hear yourself with my ears sometime,” Bayan replied.

  The room was emptying, but Bayan spotted one final person he needed to see. Telling Calder to wait for him, he caught up with Gerrolt, the Groundsmaster.

  “Excuse me, Groundsmaster?”

  The wiry man turned, revealing a white stubbly chin beneath his frizzy gray mop of hair. “Yes, lad, but Gerrolt will do.”

  Bayan offered him the pitcher plant. “My name is Bayan Lualhati. I brought this from Balanganam. My father said I should take a gift with me when I came to train.” As useful as giving a bag of gold to your jailer.

  Gerrolt looked down at the small pot, with its spindly cutting and oddly-shaped leaf. “Er. What is it, lad?”

  Bayan looked at the plant, assuring himself that it was all there and in good condition. “It’s a seerwine pitcher, sir. It’s just a baby, so its pitcher hasn’t turned red yet.”

  Gerrolt’s eyes bugged, and his face transformed with excitement. “A seerwine pitcher?” He eagerly cupped the small pot, lifted the plant to eye level and stared with glee. “I’ve never seen one in the flesh, er, leaf before.”

  His excitement drew several students and teachers. Bayan heard whispering again, but this time its tone was distinctly positive.

  “Do you, er, suppose you might show me how to raise it?” Gerrolt asked hopefully.

  Bayan smiled, feeling more comfortable than he had in a long time. “I’d be happy to. Right now, it’s still on a blood diet, but it’ll be big enough for maggots in another thirteen days. When the plant’s mature enough, I can help you set up drainage, and then you can spice the sap however you like before fermentation. I’m sure you have local flavors you prefer.”

  Gerrolt laughed. “Son, I’ve tasted seerwine but twice in my life. You could flavor it with all the maggots you like, and I wouldn’t know the difference. I’ll speak to the Headmaster about importing the right ingredients for the wine when it comes time to make it. In the meantime, we need to find a good spot to plant this, so it doesn’t die of cold. Hmm, I think I have an idea. Can you keep the pitcher warm in your barracks for now? I need to do a bit of construction. I’ll send for you, and we’ll plant this together.”

  Bayan smiled. “I’ve been taking care of it myself so far. Another few days won’t hurt. Much.” He waggled his newly-healed fingertips at Gerrolt.

  The man blanched and gave him an uncertain smile. “Right. Well then, off I go. Things to build.”

  Calder caught up to Bayan. “Don’t tell me he dinna want it.”

  “Oh, he does. He’s going to build it a house or something first.”

  Calder’s smile stretched his flame scar. “At least he appreciates the thing. No way I’m giving it any of my blood. The wine would taste like me.”

  “It would not. How many times do I have to explain that?”

  Arguing amicably, they headed down the hall and got in line to pick up their textbooks: History of Imperial Wars, Waarden Duelists Through the Ages, The Nine Empires of the Waarden, The First Seal and You, Meditation and the Void. Bayan balanced his plant atop his books, as he and Calder picked up several changes of sturdy blue workout uniforms as well as the lightweight everyday Academy uniforms.

  The uniform matron leaned over her counter after handing them each a bag full of clothing. “Those bags are for laundry. Have your clothes in it, and put it in the barracks’ washroom by breakfast every laundry day, or you’ll wear them dirty until the next. If you’re still growing and these get too small, bring them back for a larger size. And make sure you wear the iron bracelets all day, every day. They’re for identification as well as strength training.”

  Intimidated by her low bark of a voice, Bayan nodded and backed away, bumping into Calder and nearly toppling the pitcher plant from its precarious perch.

  Out in the hall, a voice called to them. “You! Newniks. Over here.” An older student, built like Calder but with straight black hair, full lips, and a bit more height, gestured imperiously to them.

  “You’re the last, so I’ll walk over with you to the barracks. Don’t want any newniks getting lost, do we? I’m Taban. I’m in the class ahead of yours. Already practicing magic and getting to do the fun stuff. You keep up, you two might be as amazing as me someday.”

  Calder and Bayan exchanged an amused glance.

  “We’ll do our best, Taban,” Calder said.

  “Oh, another Dunfarroghan, then.” Taban peered at Calder. “You like fire, do you?” He smirked as Calder looked away.

  “He’s lucky to be alive,” Bayan said.

  “Aye, well, be that as it may, someone that clumsy wouldna be welcome in my hex,” Taban said airily, turning and leaving the Hall of Seals. He led them through the tunnel on the left, along the raised wooden walkway. Their footsteps echoed through the rocky cavern. “Boys’ barracks are through this tunnel; girls’ barracks are through the far tunnel. The central tunnel leads to more classrooms and the Chantery. All the arenas are accessible by either path or tunnel from any of these three areas. There’s other stuff around, like Peace Village, the meditation solitaries, and the sint caves, but you willna have any need for finding those alone.”

  “What’s in Peace Village?”

  “Villagers. History students, the cooks, laundresses, everyone who’s not got magic. We call everyone else in the empire villagers too. I’ll warn you now,” Taban continued, “in case you’ve got ideas about some girl you just saw back there. Absolutely no fraternizing of any sort on campus. That can get you expelled.”

  “What? Why?” Calder asked, so quickly that Bayan wondered if he already had his eye on a girl.

  “You’ll learn more about this in your meditation classes, but let me put it this way. Love can kill you if you’re a duelist—messes up your magic. The Academy
can’t allow that, so there’s a no fratting rule which is strictly enforced. Don’t even try to get away with it. There’s nothing as embarrassing as being potioneered when you’ve still got all your limbs.”

  “What’s a potioneer?” Bayan asked.

  “An apothecary. What we become if we wash out of duelist school. I hear they use some ancient torture process to make duelists into potioneers.” He flashed a dark grin and stopped near the end of the tunnel. Behind him loomed a tall building similar in construction to the Hall of Seals, with stylized fingers on the corners.

  “Nobody gets out of being a servant of the empire until they’re dead.” Taban held up his fingers, ticking them as he spoke. “Either you’re an Elemental Duelist, an Avatar Duelist, a Trade Duelist—with time served—or if you’re very lucky, a Hexmagic Duelist. Or else you’re a potioneer, stuck making potions for the uncaring masses who every day look down on you, because they know that you could have been something greater. By imperial law, there are nae other options for us.

  “Most potioneers wash out of here because they blew off a limb, either in the arena or in an illegal duel. Chanters can only heal so much. Others crack, canna take the pressure. But some, the unluckiest of them all—they fall in love. So don’t let that happen to you. Those girls way over there in the other barracks, they’re just classmates, hexmates. They’re not lovemates. We don’t get those, not in this life.”

  Bayan was aghast. “What, never? Not even after we graduate?”

  Taban laughed. “Left someone back home, did we, Balang? Well, if you’re lucky enough to get assigned anywhere close to her, then aye, you can give it a try. But by then, you’ll probably have realized that if you had to choose love and death or solitude and life—and that’s exactly what you’ll be doing—you’d probably pick the solitude.”

  He continued onward, leading the silent new trainees down to a grassy sward surrounding the barracks. Though it was less bulky than the Hall of Seals, the barracks, built with its back wall near a sheer cliff of smooth, pale rock, was taller, dominating its tiny valley like a kalabao in a pen built for a goat. The only access to the building’s little vale was via the series of tunnels dotting the rock wall.

  This place is a maze, and a half-buried one at that. I can see why they built up here after getting sacked; the barracks seem impossible to penetrate.

  They entered through a pair of doors which opened upon a large, curving staircase and a wall-mounted water fountain in the foyer. Bayan instantly felt warmer in the heated building. Calder halted abruptly, though, and Bayan slowed down, wondering if Calder was having a reaction to the heat.

  “Don’t worry, newniks, I’m not going to make you climb all the way to the top level. That’s reserved for Hexmagic Duelists, of which there are exactly three right now. You grubs get the first floor, in here.”

  Taban led them through another pair of doors. They entered a large, circular common room with a ring of bunk beds. A low, grated area in the center radiated heat, and Calder froze entirely.

  Bayan looked closely at it. “That heat’s not made by fire,” he said, both for Calder’s benefit and for his own. “What’s making the heat?”

  Calder stepped behind Bayan and looked curiously over his shoulder.

  Taban snorted. “Newniks. Wouldna know magic if it bit you on the arse. One of the Avatar Duelists comes down from level three—that’s one above me, on the hex level—and heats the stone block with his Flame avatar. It’s good Idling practice for him, and it keeps you poor newniks from freezing to death before you can learn to be useful.”

  Bayan looked around the room at the other trainees. There were less than a score of them, though there were bunks for twice that.

  “I thought the classes always started when there were thirty-six trainees,” Bayan said.

  “They do. But the Headmaster never knows how many will be boys and how many will be girls. Also, the newnik classes drag on and on until the instructors are sure everyone is smart enough to pass. Or too stupid to pass no matter how long they wait. So it’s happened now and again that there will be two classes in here at the same time. Now quit pestering me, newniks, and go find somewhere to make your little nests and sleep. You’ll need it, and I’ve more important things to be doing.”

  Taban left. Calder stared at the hot stone block beneath the open grate. “I canna decide whether it scares me or not,” he confessed in a whisper.

  “Then it doesn’t scare you.” Bayan thought back to the vagary attack, and how his fear had completely consumed him. “When you’re scared, it’s all you can think about.”

  Calder nodded. “Makes sense to me,” he said, though his voice was faint. “Besides, I need to live in here for the next while, don’t I?” He looked away from the hot block. “Where do you want to bunk?”

  “With you.”

  Calder turned to him, looking pleasantly surprised.

  “I don’t know another soul in the empire proper. I’d rather stay around you—you can translate it all for me. I’ll pay you in food, of course.”

  Calder gave him a quick, lopsided grin. “Now you’re speaking my language!”

  “I… thought I always had been. Isn’t this Waarden?”

  Calder jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow and darted past him toward an unused set of bunks. “I call top bunk!” he cried. Bayan set his new clothes and his duffel from home on the sturdy blue quilt on the lower bunk. He found a spot for the pitcher’s pot on the top shelf of a small bedside stand.

  “Fine with me.” He started to put away his things. “Waarden beds are too high anyway.”

  That earned him a few dark looks from the other trainees. Calder leaned over the edge of the upper bunk and murmured, “Hsst, a word of advice? Don’t ever insult anything wisp. They think they’re the kitten’s whiskers at everything.”

  Bayan hadn’t considered that. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I did warn you I know nothing about imperial life.”

  “Aye, you did at that, but I dinna think you meant it!” Calder shook his upside-down head in apparent disappointment.

  Bayan turned back to his things, sorting out his own clothes onto the shelves next to his uniforms. He placed his shoes next to the edge of his bed, then bounced experimentally on the mattress. He still felt too high off the floor, but the bunk was better than most of the inn beds he’d slept in on the way there.

  Well, Father, I made it here. Now I guess it’s just a matter of seeing which rank I achieve, or whether I blow off a limb and have to stir potions until I die.

  Beneath the Ministry of Ways

  Philo walked into his spacious office, resplendent in a pink sash over his creamy lace-laden robes, pink pearl ropes, and a black wig with a pink pearl net. He breathed deeply of the perfumed air, examined his manicured, beringed fingers against the dark green wood of his desk, and smiled. It was good to be home.

  Three young eunuchs stood before his desk in a patch of sunlight from the high window, hands behind their backs. Kipri was on the near end. Beside him stood blond Cassander, sporting sleek braids that framed his round face, and on the far end, Gael managed to loom despite his sleight frame. He smiled at the sight of his last three assistants in Balanganam and was selfishly pleased to see that Cassander and Gael had not received permanent assignments before he and Kipri could return. They were still his assistants, until otherwise assigned.

  He strode to his desk, opened a drawer, and fished out a large, black iron key.

  “You lads always complain that I never take you anywhere nice. Besides Balanganam. Well, today, that is going to change. Before I begin creating any new maps, I must examine what already exists. And that means…”

  “We need to visit the Cartography Archive,” Cassander said.

  “Exactly so. Lord Minister Eshkin is in this morning, so we must get him to donate a few minutes and a second key to pass into the Archives. I will need all of your help, including his, in fact, if I am to get a proper map of Balanganam created for
His Majesty.” After picking up a map case and a list of Balanganese landmarks, he swanned out the door, his crickets in tow. They walked along the pale marble hallway of the first floor in the Ministry of Ways building, stepping over its sigil—a crossroads—every few paces, on their way to the stairwell.

  Lord Eshkin’s offices occupied half of the building’s uppermost floor. After negotiating past two secretaries, Philo finally stood before his employer.

  Wateyo tes’Eshkin was a particularly tall man, considering the usual height of his Shawnash and Waarden ancestors. His skin was light for a nobleman, giving him the look of a healthy Waarden who had recently seen a lot of sun and happened to have straight black hair. He stood and nodded to Philo as he entered the room.

  “Good morning, Philo. Still glad to be back home?”

  “Yes, my lord, though a very large part of my heart—and, I confess, my stomach—still belongs to Balanganam, and I pray sints it always does.”

  Eshkin smiled. “What do you need?”

  Philo held up the heavy iron key. Eshkin’s expression went blank and slightly pale, then he frowned and cleared his throat. “You, ah, need a second key, do you?” Before Philo could answer, he pulled open a drawer in his desk, retrieved a similar key, and stepped toward his office door. “This should be entertaining.”

  “What should be entertaining?” came a new voice, rich with amusement and curiosity.

  Philo straightened in surprise and recognition and bent forward in a courtly bow, praying his assistants did the same without gawping.

  His Imperial Majesty Jaap voorde Helderaard stepped through Lord Eshkin’s doorway. He was still a young ruler, with carefully styled curls and a blue and white robe opened to reveal a simple white tunic.

  “My liege.” Eshkin sounded flustered. “I was just accompanying Surveyor Philo on a trip down to the Cartography Archive. Would you care to accompany us?”

  “I believe I would.” The emperor smiled. “I think the last time I was down there was when Caspar and I stole a pair of keys and snuck in, looking for treasure maps. I even received just such a map years later as an anonymous gift, and for months I thought my brother was still…”