by Sever Bronny
Thinking of his parents always reminded him that his father had murdered his mother, which had left a stain on his soul that had sunk to permanence like an old enchantment. That stain was the catalyst for various wars inside him. The past versus the present. Love versus hate. Courage versus fear. Mindfulness versus recklessness. Perhaps one day he could broker peace between these conflicts.
Augum finished washing up, dressed in his night clothes, wandered through the plush men’s common room with a giant roaring hearth and walls crammed with pennants and trophies and paintings and tapestries, climbed a set of stone steps to his room, and collapsed onto a cot. The room was cold and simple, small and unlit, for warlocks were expected to light their own path; Augum hadn’t bothered. A battered desk and chair stood in a corner. The cot was made from pine so old it was amber. The mattress was coarse hay and covered by a blanket embroidered with the academy crest. Above the bed, an arched leaded-glass window looked out onto the sprawling city of Blackhaven, its torch lamps twinkling in the night. That window was as invisible to the outside world as he wanted to be. The room and entire Arcaner dorm floated above the academy, but were invisible to all observers. Ancient arcanery at its finest.
Jez had moved a few things onto the arena floor where she would sleep, grumbling she would much prefer an inn and a fat goblet of wine. The girls had their own dorm, a mirror of the boys’. There was also a communal room. All three rooms were circular and connected by a central hallway spoke, the walls of which held a giant Arcaner crest and numerous portal etchings. From the top down, the whole thing looked like a giant clover.
Bridget, Laudine, Alyssa and Leera took up residence in the women’s dorm, along with Sir Pawsalot, who had sniffed the corners of Leera’s room before curling up at the foot of her cot, while Jengo and Olaf stayed with Augum in the men’s dorm, in their own rooms.
Augum found it difficult to enjoy the thrill of sleeping in the Arcaner dorms, for two wonderful friends had perished that day, and he missed them very much. And although the words of Isaac’s father sat stagnating in his heart like a swamp, Isaac’s and Caireen’s smiling faces nonetheless shone through the quagmire like lamps in a fog.
* * *
The morning brought with it the review quint—the first of four straight days of review classes that came near the end of every term. The friends lined up with other academy students in the courtyard to pay their daily tithes from a quickly diminishing stash of crowns. Then they attended History class, headed by a stern Arcanist Gonzalez, who refused to so much as glance the trio’s way. It was the same in their Heraldry and Arithmetic classes; arcanists were terrified of watchful overseers and ignored the trio. It would become a pattern for the whole quint. Augum suspected the Canterrans were threatening their families. Either that, or arcanists didn’t want to put the trio in more jeopardy than they were already in.
The trio did some academy review, but mostly spent their time searching Rivican, Canterran, and Solian histories for clues about the Heart of the Colossus, as well as reviewing notes for their Arcaner classes. They also stole naps whenever possible, something easy to do in silent classes where the remaining students had their hoods up, heads buried in books.
Days flew by. Arcaner training grew more arduous as the challenge of fitting eighty hours into a tenday took its toll. There were arguments and mental breakdowns and numerous near-fatal injuries, as well as multiple visits to Arcanist Ordrid, who helped them stave off total exhaustion with a healing spell or two. But it was Jez’s steady and supportive presence that enabled the friends to avoid a total breakdown. She brought food and wit and love and watched over them like only a doting mentor could.
Jez kept quiet about the Royal Armory quest, constantly telling them the time wasn’t right yet, probably because overseers followed The Grizzly wherever he went. Meanwhile, the trio and their friends rapidly grew in skill, particularly in Combat Reflex class, so much so they could often pivot to deflect or block two near-simultaneous bow shots, or fluidly block a spell and immediately counter with a spell of their own. The training was repetitive but it worked, and they steadily grew quicker and quicker, that quickness tempered only by sheer exhaustion.
One thing they learned in the Honor class that meant a lot to Augum was the Final Valediction, an ancient Arcaner tradition spoken to a slain opponent. It went, “May your soul find the peace together we could not reach.” It reminded Arcaners that violence should always be a last resort. Another thing they learned was that an Arcaner had the right to lawfully declare war on an entire enemy force, allowing them to dispense with time-consuming traditions prior to duels, and to attack when presented with an opportunity, something that rather surprised the trio. They also learned that the types of offenses that dimmed a shield had to be consciously egregious, and that there was leniency in the code of honor.
When they ran out of money, Augum was forced to beg Cry for an emergency infusion of crowns from his father, which luckily Cry assented to—no small thanks to Haylee, who had lobbied Cry as well. She seemed to look upon him in a new light since he had published his piece about her womanhood ceremony. Olaf and Alyssa, who worked in their occupations during the day, had to cease when assassins attacked them. From then on they slept and trained as Arcaners with the others in the academy. All the friends but Alyssa and Olaf applied for a deferment on their exams, though all wondered if the exams would even take place.
Meanwhile, the situation in the kingdom steadily worsened. The heralds painted a rosy portrait of the kingdom and its true masters, the Canterrans, declaring it was only a matter of time until they were seen as family. In the academy, students were escorted off to work for the Canterrans while others returned sapped of morale and exhausted from digging. Other students turned up traumatized that their families and friends were being taken away to work, as the Canterrans kept digging in new locations. Ordinaries were oft worked to death, but warlocks were usually spared. An overseer was overheard muttering to a colleague that they were running out of places to dig and it was all a “gigantic waste of time.” As for the friends, they were mostly left alone to pursue their quest for King Samuel, who seemed content—if not amused—in allowing them a fair chance to find the Heart of the Colossus.
Every day Katrina interrogated Augum, demanding he swear on his shield if he had found the artifact, and every day she was disappointed when he honestly answered that he had not, for the friends’ research had turned up nothing substantial thus far. Augum, usually too exhausted to defy her or think straight, went with it, knowing that as long as he did not antagonize her she would wait patiently. He and the girls did, however, have the wherewithal to always cast Unconceal or Reveal after meeting her, just in case she hid something on them.
Katrina bathed in his low morale, hinting that their beloved kidnapped friends from Arinthia were struggling to serve the Canterrans. She also loved to needle Augum about how she and her aunt were making buckets of money by renting out the Trainers in the castle.
As for Brandon, he privately expressed his sorrow to Augum that Isaac and Caireen had perished, then lingered in depression. Perhaps he was aware that Olaf was spending a lot of time with Bridget, or perhaps he simply missed his friends, and knew he could not join them on the Arcaner Path, for he was morally compromised. After his humiliation at Katrina’s hand, he was a shadow of his former self. Few spoke to him because he still had to wear The Path Disciple’s robe, though he did so with no enthusiasm. Carp, on the other hand, became a sadistic convert who enjoyed doling out fines and flexing the meager power he had, particularly enjoying ordering women around.
On the morning of the seventh day, they found a beaming Jez with deep rings under her eyes from lack of sleep. It didn’t take long to pry out that she and The Grizzly had at long last undertaken the “Royal Armory Heist,” as she jestingly referred to it.
“Felt like a teenage bandit doing it,” she said giddily, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper to an enthralled crowd. “Abe and I met Ol
af outside the armory and while he kept a hyena-like watch out—” She nodded her thanks to Olaf, to which he nodded back, cheeks cherry as he stood holding Bridget’s hand. “—Abe went to speak to the guards. Because it was the former Lord High Commander and he had secret authorization from the king, they stood right down, and get this—even helped us move the equipment!”
Her crowd of apt listeners ooh’d excitedly.
“I had already scrounged twenty of the largest coal carts I could find, which I had positioned at the entrance to the tunnel. We loaded them up with about five suits of armor each, strapping them down for good measure because let me tell you, those piles teetered like pines in a gale! Anyway, we managed four trips, me snickering the whole way like a little ditz, before Abe spotted suspicious activity in the tunnels.”
“Where’d you hide them all?” Augum asked.
“You know where the entrance to the coal tunnels is?”
“Yes, in the servants’ quarters of the catacombs by the secondary entrance.”
“We hid them right there, in an ancient storage room. Four hundred suits for when we need them. We put the overseers watching the entrance to sleep—not that they needed prompting, mind you. Whole thing went off flawlessly, which Abe and I celebrated by—” Jez cleared her throat as Alyssa snickered, and instead dug something out from her robe, handing it over to Bridget.
“What’s this?” Bridget asked.
“The key to the storage room. We want you to hide it in the safest place in the academy—the Arcaner dorms.”
Needless to say, everyone wore a smile for the rest of that day. And the Canterrans failed to catch wind of the entire endeavor, having gotten complacent in their absolute authority over the city.
By the time the ninth day came, the trio were seventy-six of eighty hours into the Arcaner course, and had already spent eight straight days sequestered in the academy, with their friends doing well but lagging well behind in their own training as Arcaners. Everyone’s nerves were frayed. Not only would the countess demand her money today from Augum—which he did not have—but they would undertake the Arcaner trial in the morn. Upon concluding that trial and becoming dragoons, the friends hoped to gain knowledge of what and where the Heart of the Colossus was, so they could give it to King Samuel and save a quarter million lives. Everything came down to these last two days.
That afternoon Jez, the trio and their friends sat in the center of the arena after a hearty lunch of beef broth and humble pie, with a side of strawberries and titan grapes. Sir Pawsalot stalked around their satchels, which sat in a pile on the lowest tier of bleachers. A copy of the Blackhaven Herald lay between them, wrinkled from reading. The news that morning was all about tomorrow’s Canterran Day of Remembrance. The word “reckoning” was used more than once, sending a collective shiver through the group when Bridget had read it aloud.
“… and I believe the Arcaner spirit will allow us to find the Heart of the Colossus,” Bridget mused thoughtfully. “The Arcaner spirit is about honor and justice and goodness, and part of that means sacrifice for the good of all. What good would keeping the Heart of the Colossus be to the order if a quarter million lives perished—” She stopped speaking as the door opened. In walked what had to be twenty overseers, Prince Darby, the Lady High Inquisitor and a slew of brown-robed warlock inquisitors, as well as Katrina and Ethios Kamagant. Katrina, with her hand in the crook of Darby’s elbow, flashed a triumphant smile upon seeing Augum. Sir Pawsalot hissed at the intruders and took off to hide in the bleachers.
The friends stood. Everyone, not just the women, kept their eyes low. Everyone but Augum, who stared daggers.
“So this is the fabled Trainer,” Darby said as he and his retinue made their way down to the arena. “I have been meaning to visit for a while now.” He and Katrina stopped in the center, flanked by two imposing overseers and The Butcher. The other hooded overseers spread out in a circle surrounding the arena floor. There were so many they obscured the friends’ satchels. All kept their arms limber, and some even cracked their knuckles threateningly like schoolyard hoodlums.
“And who is that pretty thing?” Darby pressed, eyeing Dragoon Pelagia. “Eyes down. Hey, did you not hear me, you daft woman? I said, eyes down!”
“She’s a ghost,” Augum said. “She will only respond to Arcaners.”
“A ghost.” Darby scoffed. “Typical. Father did say you would be courting ghosts of the past.”
Augum stared straight into Darby the Coward’s golden eyes. “Are we under arrest?”
“Are we under arrest, Your Highness. Go on. Repeat yourself.”
Augum, whose nerves had long frayed past common sense and whose exhaustion picked away at his soul like a miner in search of a nugget of gold, rebelled against the command by saying nothing.
Darby only smiled. He idly rubbed a cheek with his thumb as he spoke. “I have good news, and I have bad news. Which will it be first?”
“Oh, sweetie, you need to raise their hopes first,” Katrina sang. “Start with the good news.”
Darby patted Katrina’s hand. “As you wish, my love. The good news is my father has granted an extension of your debt to the countess. You may pay tomorrow instead of today. However, if you come through and find the Heart of the Colossus, he will pay the debt himself.”
“But it was adorable needling you over such a petty thing,” Katrina sang.
Augum kept his face blank, or as blank as he could make it.
“I rather thought you would be grateful for such additional incentive,” Darby said.
“Tell him the other good news, sweet prince,” Katrina whispered, eyes dancing.
“You will not be required to pay tomorrow morning’s tithe.”
Augum wanted to scoff in the bastard’s face.
“No, the other, other good news, silly prince.”
Darby forced a thin-lipped smile. “Very well, my love. Princess Katrina Southguard Von Edgeworth and I … are getting married. We hope you will attend the ceremony, which will be announced soon.”
“Together we will rule the kingdom,” Katrina said with unrepressed exuberance. “My new father, King Rupert, will be forced to step aside, of course. Anyway, I thought you should hear it from us first. How excited are you?”
“Congratulations,” Augum said.
“Oh, how about we show a little more enthusiasm than that, hmm?” When Augum’s face did not change, she added, “Really now, you are a poor sport, Augum. A poor sport indeed.” She tugged on Darby’s elbow. “Tell him the bad news, sweetums.”
Darby tilted his head and smiled at Augum, drawing out the tension.
Augum gritted his teeth. Out with it, coward.
Darby nodded at the Lady High Inquisitor, who opened a scroll. “ ‘Upon His Majesty’s edict, the Arcaner order is hereby declared a radical and incendiary organization whose principles directly contravene The Path. The following are to be placed under immediate arrest for aiding said organization. Haylee Tennyson, Laudine Cooper, Jengo Okeke, Alyssa Fairweather, Olaf Hroljassen—’ ” The woman looked up. “ ‘—and Jezebel Terse.’ ”
“I bet you’ve been waiting for this day a long time, Malignant Mel,” Jez spat, fists balled.
“It brings me no pleasure to do this, Terse.”
“Lying sack of—”
The Lady High Inquisitor ignored her and resumed reading. “ ‘Failure to comply will result in the immediate execution of said individuals, as well as those individuals from Arinthia already in custody.’ ”
“Why don’t you at least let them finish the Arcaner trial?” Jez pressed.
“I would remain silent if I were you, Ms. Terse,” the Lady High Inquisitor said coldly. “And keep your eyes down.”
Jez glared mutinously, but dropped her eyes.
Darby looked at Augum with an imperious air. “You must understand we only allowed your friends to continue to aid your morale. Truth be told, that was Father’s thinking, as I wanted to put them to work from day one.
Nonetheless, this is merely a precaution. Father believes it will further incentivize you to find the Heart of the Colossus. Do not worry, your friends will be treated fairly … so long as you three follow through.”
Augum almost did not want to know the answer to his next question. “And should we fail in securing the Heart of the Colossus?”
Darby gave a limp shrug, which told him everything he needed to know.
Katrina stepped before Bridget. “Or you can save us all the trouble and attack us now. None of us think you will actually find the Heart of the Colossus. So what say you, how about an old-fashioned warlock scrap, hmm?” And to emphasize her point, she slapped Bridget across the face. The smack was so pronounced it echoed against the walls. “Come on, hit me back, I know you want to, you trumped-up goodie-goodie, you teacher’s minion, you pretentious know-it-all.”
Bridget, cheek red and smarting, said nothing, though her jaw flexed as she stared at the sandy floor.
Katrina stepped before Leera. “What about you?” She readied her hand before Leera, hoping she’d try to stop her or flinch, but Leera stood straight and proud. Katrina slapped her, hard. “Hmm? Where’s that brazenness now, huh?”
Leera did and said nothing, chin returning level, eyes defiant.
“Ooh, I like this game, sweetheart,” Darby said, and stepped before Augum. But his slap was weak and ineffectual, barely registering a sting. Augum glared at Darby, loathing him for his cowardice. His breathing quickened as his hands balled into fists. His enemies tensed. But then Jez stepped before him, placing her hands on his shoulders.
“I have been fortunate enough to watch you grow into the young man you are, Stone.” She drew him into a loving embrace, whispering, “You go on and do your best, you hear? Do it for Eric and Isaac and Cai. Do it for Solia.”
Augum embraced her back. When they parted, she placed both hands on his cheeks, drying his tears with her thumbs. “You’re one brave monkey.” Then she hugged the girls while Augum’s other friends came to him, one at a time. For whatever reason, Darby and Katrina allowed this to happen, watching with malevolent amusement.
