She finally knocks on the door then pulls it open. To my surprise, waiting inside are Irene and her perennial cohort of attendants. I clench my teeth into a tight smile, despite knowing she must have heard every word I just said about her son.
I mentally kick myself. I shouldn’t care what this woman thinks of me anymore. And if she believes I’m still the meek Morgan she knew before, then I’m going to show her she’s wrong.
“Irene,” I say with mock enthusiasm, enjoying how she has to crane her head up to look up at me. “To what do I owe the joy of your lovely presence this time?”
Irene’s severely-lined eyes remain fixed upon me, unblinking. “You may think you’ve won,” she says, “but once I take this up to Camaaloth, you’ll sing a different tune. Especially once people find out you abetted a dangerous prisoner in his escape.”
“I have no idea what camel-sloth you’re talking about,” I say, causing Keva to cough loudly next to me. “And Nibs escaped on his own, while I’m stuck here having to deal with your PMS.”
This time, Keva seems to have succumbed to a frightful case of croup3 and has to excuse herself for a moment.
“And we all know the jail door can’t be opened from the inside,” a calm, collected voice says behind me. Lance walks in, his chiseled features placid as always. “The question then is who?” he says, going to stand behind his chair at the round table. “It could be a servant, as a number of them have disappeared since the wards fell down. Or, much more likely, someone from the outside slipped past our sentinels now that the wards are down.”
“I told you to have the remaining servants bound to the school itself,” Irene retorts, “before they all flee to join that stupid rebellion of theirs. They know too much about the school and our Order to be considered safe otherwise.”
Lance nods. “The President is taking it into consideration,” he says in his inflectionless tone, “but right now he’s got more pressing matters to attend.”
“Is his conference over then?” Irene asks. “I’ve got a number of—”
“Matters that don’t concern the Board,” Lance adds, cutting her off.
Irene’s scowl deepens. She opens her mouth then closes it again without speaking a word—a rare occurrence, and one I’m gratified to behold. Then, with a contemptuous sniff, she sweeps out of the KORT room with her disgruntled entourage.
“Always a pleasure,” I say, unable to hide my grin as the heavy doors slam shut behind the last of her retinue.
“Welcome back, my jolie4,” Gareth says, emerging from behind the heavy velvet drapes that cover the passage to the scrying mirror. “We have missed you.”
My smile slides off my face as the other members of the student council pour out behind him, each and every one of them a witness to my little scene. And apart from the cousins and Percy, none of them looks pleased to see me.
Unnerved, I avoid their baleful looks by staring instead at the darkness that lies outside the arched windows. Here and there are little pinpricks of light, the distant fires of the guards posted around the school, and I catch myself wishing I’d made it out with Nibs.
“I’m sure you’re aware who Morgan is,” I hear Arthur say, “but formalities…. In any case, I hereby present you with my new squire, Morgan de Cornouailles.”
I let out a small gasp of surprise at the mention of that mystical name. My father’s…. Mine now.
“This is a travesty,” a guy says, standing up. He waves at me like I’m a big, fat turd that needs to be scrubbed off. “We can’t have a half-Fey occupy such an important position as that of the President’s squire where she can exert her evil influence!”
“You’ve made your case quite clear once already, Hector,” Arthur says, rubbing his eyes reddened by fatigue. “Going over the same arguments again is a waste of time, and we’re already short on it.”
“But she’s used EM!” a girl with short black hair says. “What if she uses it against us?”
“Well that’s just not sayin’ much, is it?” Percy says in his slow, southern drawl, his voice holding an unusual edge. “One of the prereqs for bein’ a squire is to be able to use EM.”
“It’s not the same!” the knight says.
“It isn’t?” Arthur asks, steepling his fingers before him.
“Of course not,” Hector says. “We need to have oghams to be able to control the elements. Whereas she… Well, we all know she doesn’t need them.”
“’Cause she’s got her own,” one of the squires lining the back wall sniggers.
“Which is mighty useful, I’d say,” Percy says, balancing precariously on the back two legs of his chair.
Next to him, Gauvain nods. “She wouldn’t have to worry about any malfunctions,” he says. “Which could be crucial in any battle. Especially since some of our own have proved somewhat unreliable of late.”
“That’s right,” Gareth says, trying to cross his arms over his bulging pectorals and giving up at the sound of tearing fabric. “She protected Lance and Arthur both against cette sorcière de5 Carman.”
“Looks like the changeling’s already affected their brains,” the girl knight says in a clear undertone to Hector.
“And now they’re bringing a traitor into the fold,” Hector says in the same manner.
Arthur slams his fists on the table, making everyone jump. “I will not have slanderous comments said in my presence about anyone at this school!” he barks. “Is that clear?”
The knights’ faces turn scarlet and they look at me with unabashed hatred.
“Now that’s settled,” Arthur continues, his composure regained, “I want to make sure everyone’s on the same page. There is to be no hazing of the new recruits, or anyone else for that matter. We need to devote all our time to preparing for another attack”—there’s a collective intake of breath from the squires at his words—“because we all know it’s coming. We just don’t know where or when yet. Squires, we’re counting on you to help us with our responsibilities as KORT members. That includes watching over the pages, especially since so many of them are still too young to fully understand everything that’s going on.
“Finally, and I can’t stress this enough”—he gives me a pointed look—“the moment you spot trouble, go fetch one of us. Immediately. There is no place here for people who want to play the lonely hero. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” the row of squires intones, standing straight and proud, Keva among them.
“Very well,” Arthur says with a satisfied nod. “Meeting dismissed.”
As people brush past me on their way out, I tense up—not because of all the glares and whispered curses I’m getting, but because I’m to be stuck with Arthur again. Alone. And I’m not sure I can stop myself from throttling him.
A soft breeze drifts in through the windows, lifting the brightly colored heraldic flags that hang high from the grey walls. Finally, the two of us are the only ones left in the trapezoidal room.
“I suppose you have some questions for me,” Arthur says, letting himself slump in his seat, his face pale from lack of sleep.
I would be tempted to take pity on him if all I’d had to go through wasn’t still fresh in my mind. But it is, and he being one of the greatest culprits, I take pleasure at the sight.
“No,” I say.
Startled, he looks up at me. “You don’t?”
“Listening to you would be like listening to the serpent in Paradise,” I reply, “poison to my ears and bound to lead to my fall.”
Arthur’s face turns a shade paler and his lips thin out. He looks like he’s about to argue, but then he sinks further down into his seat and closes his eyes. “Very well,” he says in a defeated manner. “Get out.”
I escape from Arthur only to find Keva waiting for me outside the KORT room. She raises her eyebrows questioningly, but I shake my head—the last thing I want to do is talk. Facing both Irene and Arthur has left me drained, both physically and mentally.
As we climb up the dark
staircase, I’ve only got one thought in mind: sleep in a soft, warm bed. But as I make to go up to the last floor, Keva holds me back.
“This way,” she says. “We’re squires now, so our quarters have shifted.”
“Right,” I automatically say, shuffling after her down the deserted fourth floor, past empty classrooms, then all the way down to the last room in the dormitory section.
“I’ll miss having the place to myself,” Keva says, heaving a sigh as I beeline for the unclaimed bed.
I collapse onto the soft mattress, grab one end of the cover, and wrap myself in it like a giant caterpillar, then let the sounds of Keva puttering about our dorm room lull me to sleep.
But the moment she turns off the lights, I fling my eyes open in panic at the sudden darkness. I’m halfway out my bed before I remind myself that I’m no longer stuck in the school’s dungeons, that I can now sleep peacefully and know that in a few hours’ time I’ll be waking up with the sun’s rays caressing my face.
Yet no matter how many times I tell myself that everything’s fine, my heart keeps pounding at a thousand beats per minute, and the same nightmare that have been plaguing me for the last week comes back to assail me: Carman coming to kill me, Dean dying before my eyes, Irene throwing me in jail….
I toss over onto my other side with a loud sigh.
“Are you sleeping?” Keva whispers from her bed across the room.
“Yes,” I reply, slowing my breathing down in a vain attempt to calm myself down.
“Did you really use EM like they said?” Keva continues, louder.
“Yes,” I sigh, struggling to get my arms free from my cover.
“Without using any oghams?” she asks again, sounding more excited. “Other than your own, I mean.”
I open my eyes again and stare sightlessly at the ceiling, remembering my attempted escape. “I suppose,” I say at last, forced to contemplate what I’ve been avoiding since then, something that I’m forced to admit scares me more than having to face Carman again: That I’m no longer human.
Yet I can’t really consider myself Fey either. I’m just someone stuck between two worlds, rejected by both except for those few who see a way to use me.
Like Arthur and his stupid, never-ending war. How does he expect me to join it now, when he knows I’d be going against my own people? Against, perhaps—I swallow with difficulty at the thought—against my very own mother?
“So what kind of powers do you have then?” Keva asks in the same excited tone she uses when talking about shopping.
“I don’t know,” I say, “and at this moment I don’t care.”
“You should, you know,” Keva says. “I heard Kyle say, who heard it from Saba, who heard it from Sophie, who’s Jennifer’s squire as you know, that it proves you’re the one who committed all those black-vein murders.”
My hand clenches around my pillow in a burst of anger. “I didn’t do it,” I say. “I didn’t even know I could make fire until a few hours ago.”
“I know,” Keva says, sounding more certain of this fact than I am.
“You do?” I ask, too shocked to realize I’m still holding my pillow over my head, ready to throw it at her.
“Yeah,” Keva says. “I mean, your dad was killed the same way, and unless you were some super-evil baby from hell the minute you were born, there’s no way you did it.”
“Where did you hear about that?” I ask.
Keva shifts in her bed and I have the distinct impression she just shrugged. “Arthur mentioned it the other day, among other things,” she says.
“What other things?” I ask, sitting up again.
“I don’t remember,” Keva says, stifling a yawn. “Why don’t you ask him yourself tomorrow? You are his squire now, after all.”
I lay back down as the bloated, black-veined bodies of Agnès and Rei flash before me, just like my father must have looked almost twenty years ago….
Somehow, Arthur knows more about all of this than he’s admitted. No surprise there. The question now is: How am I going to make him talk?
I jerk awake as a pillow slams into my face.
“Wake up, you sloth. It’s time for mass.”
I crack an eye open to check the windup clock set on the windowsill. “But it’s only three in the morning,” I say.
“And we’ve got a lot of extra cramming to do,” Keva retorts. “We’re at war, remember?”
I dutifully roll out of bed and grunt as my feet hit the floor, blinking in the incandescent light provided by the salamander up on the ceiling. I look back at my bed wistfully.
After Keva’s revelation last night my mind wouldn’t shut up. It isn’t until it conjured an image of Arthur, tied down to train tracks and screaming like a damsel in distress, that I finally conked out, sometime after the Matins6 bells.
Without a word, I follow Keva down the flights of stairs, and out the Northern Door. The courtyard’s gravel crunches like a gazillion chips under the feet of dozens of knights as we rush to church. But when we finally step inside, I suck in my breath.
“It’s gotten a little more crowded since you left, hasn’t it?” Keva says. “It’s amazing how fear makes people more pious. That and the Board’s finally bothered to send some extra knights over to help out.”
She motions me forward and I follow her down the nave, catching snatches of conversation as we pass the benches filled to bursting with people.
“Look,” a woman says, elbowing her neighbor in the ribs, “that crossbreed’s dared to show up here.”
“I still don’t see why Arthur picked her,” an older man says, pulling on his saucer-sized earlobes. “There are plenty of suitable young squires around who could benefit from his patronage and deserve it so much better than this filly.”
“Shh,” his neighbor says. “She’ll jinx you if she hears you speak like that! I hear her kind always jump at the first opportunity to do evil. Who knows what she’d do to you if she got angry?”
Ears burning, I rush to our pew, forcing some new, wide-eyed pages aside to let me slide in next to Jack.
“Long time no see,” I whisper to the boy, his blue eyes gigantic behind his wire-framed glasses. “Where’s Bri?”
“Uh,” he starts, pushing his glasses up the ridge of his nose, “you’re not supposed to be here, you know.”
I feel my blush spread to the rest of my face at the unexpected rejection from one I’d considered a friend. I bite down on my lip to hold back the unbidden tears, surprised at my own reaction, when Jack points behind me. Turning around, I find Keva glaring at me across the nave, waving furiously for me to join her behind the KORT pews.
“You’re no longer a page, remember?” Jack says with a timid smile.
“Oh, right,” I say, returning his smile before I make my way to the other side, feeling immensely relieved.
Even if everyone else hates me, it’s nice to know that I’ve still got a few people who have my back.
I sit down right as the choir starts its procession down to the altar, carrying the thurible7, the cross, and a pair of lighted candles. As they spread out around the chancel, Father Tristan emerges from the sanctuary like a disjointed scarecrow in his black cassock. He looks gaunter than he did yesterday at my trial, as if he’s the one who just came out of jail instead of me.
The greeting is barely over when Father Tristan throws himself into another one of his long, fervent sermons, one that makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end, and I find myself slouching over in my seat to avoid the reproving gazes that are bound to find me.
“And remember Saint Paul’s words,” Father Tristan’s clear voice intones, his words reverberating around the church, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the forces of evil descended from the heavenly places. Therefore you must not only prepare your bodies for this war, but your minds as well, that you may not fall into their traps a
nd lose yourselves in their false promises.
“It is with this in mind that I urge you to strike now, before the Fey have had the time to gather around Carman, before she herself has garnered her full strength back. Because, mark my words, if they do so, they will march upon the world and there will be no stopping them.”
A long silence pregnant with fear follows his words. One of the pages lets out a muffled sob before being shushed down.
I see Father Tristan’s somber face break into a small smile, as if satisfied with the result of his homily.
“Boy am I glad I’m not in your shoes,” Keva says, pretending to be in earnest prayer next to me. “First Jennifer, then Father Tristan, and now you can add that woman to the list of people who bear a grudge against you.”
She tilts her head towards the south transept where the professors sit, and my jaw clenches shut as I encounter Irene’s cold stare, her dark eyes fixed upon me like I’m a threat that needs to be obliterated.
“She needs to take a pill,” I say, ignoring the chill spreading down my spine. “She always knew that I was…what I am,” I add, the word ‘Fey’ getting stuck in my throat. “It’s not like I chose to be this way.”
“No, but you’ve made it public knowledge that her fiancé of the time had you out of betrothedom, so to speak,” Keva says. “Then you turned her son against her. Not to mention that her creepy lawyer turned out to be working for Carman and used you to free her. That’s like three strikes against her right there.”
“Dean didn’t work for Carman,” I say more loudly, still finding it difficult to hear anyone criticize the man who cared for me in place of my parents. I lower my voice again, “He was her son. Besides, that has nothing to do with me. Why would she be angry at me for that?”
Keva shrugs. “He’s Fey, you’re Fey.” She holds up her hands as if weighing both Dean and me. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“It’s not the same,” I say, getting more strident with every word. “I’ve never hurt anyone, which is more than I can say about most people here!”
Heads turn our way, and the murmurs of whispered prayers hush. I hold my breath, only now realizing everyone must have heard what I’ve said. Any second now, people are going to dive for me, drag me outside and burn me at the stake like they burned all those Fomori!
Rise of the Fey Page 6
