Beasel wagged a finger at her and chuckled. They resumed their walk.
“As I was saying, the threat of war has inspired a subtle though widespread paranoia which has led to certain changes in the culture of the city in which I reside—quite comfortably, I might add. I’m talking about changes in my industry of choice. Entertainment.”
“So, people aren’t going to beauty pageants like they used to. Times have changed.”
“Oh, it’s much worse than that,” Beasel said with a weary sigh. “Our audiences are losing interest in women of classical beauty dressed in large, elegant dresses, with crowns sparkling in their hair. Instead, they flock to the coliseums to watch gladiators re-enact ancient battles.”
Calista shrugged. “Gladiators are fun. Beauty queens are boring.”
“I beg to differ.” He sounded more excited now and gestured wildly as he spoke. “The beauty pageants of Valestaryn are events of historical significance reaching back to the time of legends. These ceremonies must be preserved. Not to mention the fact that I’m losing money hand over fist. If people don’t buy tickets to see my queens, then girls like you will find other means of supporting themselves. I’ll be out of a job.”
Calista finally put the pieces together. “So you came out here looking for something different to sell more tickets?”
“Not something. Someone.” He stopped and turned to face Calista fully. “I need a girl who’s fierce. Lean. Aggressive. A young wildcard who looks like she would rather tear the head off a weedviper and drink its blood than go out shopping for a new purse.”
Calista flinched. “That’s gross. And besides, I like purses. Good place to store loot.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “When I look at you, I see a girl destined to live a life of mediocrity in a town where no one, and I mean no one, has ever thought to wear jewelry on their tail.”
“Jewelry? You mean, like the jewelry you were wearing a minute ago?” She stood there shaking her head.
She laughed as Beasel lifted his tail to find it naked, all the jewelry gone.
“Rats,” he said, looking around for the thief. Calista’s laughter proved to be infectious, and soon Beasel joined her.
HIS PLAN WAS SIMPLE. With the help of his makeup crew and specialized tailors, Calista would undergo a transformation as drastic as any human phasing into animal form. She would crack open her boring, small-town shell and emerge a fiery, sensual, dangerous beauty of the Valestaryn jungles.
Without a doubt, Calista would win the first round; such was Beasel’s influence over the small-town judges of Peleros (not to mention the big-city bribes he was willing to pay them). She would then progress to the pageants held in his home city of Ralleigne on the coast.
The bribes would be necessary at first. Her townsfolk would never elect a beauty like the one Beasel was seeking. But in Ralleigne, he assured her, Calista would become famous.
“It’s all a game,” he explained after Calista complained about the bribes not being fair to her fellow contestants. “The girls get a chance to dream, the audience gets an excuse to drink in the streets, and the judges take home a fat paycheck at the end. Who cares about ethics?”
Calista was pleased by one aspect of it—her costume would include a longbow and a quiver of arrows with actual steel tips. Beasel said it would add authenticity and a thrilling sense of danger to her performance.
When Beasel told her how much she stood to receive—a staggering sum to a girl from her origins—Calista’s first thought was of Artemis’s bakery. That kind of money could save him from bankruptcy, which was exactly where he was headed, thanks to his deal with Keldran.
“My cut is seventy percent of the winnings,” Beasel informed her casually, as if the demand should come as no surprise.
Still, it was a lot of money. And Calista stood to make a lot more if she won in Ralleigne. Maybe she could even pay Keldran to release Artemis from their contract.
“We split it fifty-fifty,” she said. “I have a friend I need to help out.”
“Very kind of you. I can go sixty-forty. Keep in mind, it’ll be my investment paying for your glamorous costume, not to mention shipping a team of world-class tailors and makeup artists to this little podunk tow—”
“Fine, fine,” Calista agreed, and they shook hands.
Keeping her partnership with Beasel a secret from everyone else, Calista began to lead a dual life. She trained with the baker every other night while spending her free evenings with Beasel and his team of fashionistas to prepare for the upcoming pageant. They experimented with a variety of styles and makeup combinations until—in less than three weeks—they narrowed it down to a style everyone felt was a winner.
The longbow and quiver from the original idea had stayed. Everything else about the costume had been reimagined. At his hotel one day, flanked by Beasel and his team, Calista approached a standing mirror tall enough to give a full view of her body.
“This is crazy,” she said immediately, tossing the longbow to the ground and crossing her arms. “I won’t do it.”
And yet, she couldn’t turn away from her own reflection. Her costume would be the talk of Peleros for years to come—and not in a good way.
Beasel’s face appeared above her right shoulder, then drifted to her left, eyes narrowed above a syrupy smile.
“You’re a thing of beauty,” he whispered into her ear. “The people of Peleros will love you. They’ll never stop loving you.”
“I don’t care about them.”
“Then think of the money. Think of how much you could help your friend. You don’t want to be selfish, do you?”
Calista wished she had never mentioned it. With a sigh, she picked up the longbow, nocked an arrow, and struck an aggressive pose.
“Thattagirl,” Beasel said, leading his team in a round of applause.
CHAPTER 22
“He’s not here,” Oscar said, searching the courtyard in disbelief. “He left.”
“Maybe he thought you wanted to be alone,” Emmanuel said.
Oscar turned away from the magician to hide the tightening sensation around his eyes. He couldn’t let himself cry. Not here. Not in front of the magician, who might tell the others.
“Are you okay, Oscar?”
He swallowed his self-pity and let anger take its place. “I do want to be alone. Away from you, my father, and everyone in this stupid school.”
He heard the magician breathe deeply and release. “Don’t let idiots like Dean Sethanel get to you. There are other options. I’m going to enroll you in the academy’s Core Studies program. You’ll learn science, history, technology, engineering, weapons maintenance—and in your second year, you’ll be allowed to choose a career concentration in whatever interests you. Many influential people have come out of Core Studies, Oscar. It’s a noble path.”
“If that was true, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince me.” Oscar gave the magician an icy look. “Just like you tried convincing the dean.”
Emmanuel had put his sunglasses back on, those shady little circles hiding his eyes as if he had secrets he feared others might glimpse in them. “I would never lie to you,” he said, “and I won’t let you lie to yourself. Remember what I said about limits in this place. Only you can—”
“I don’t care about limits,” Oscar said, breaking into a heated stride away from the magician. “I wish everyone would stop trying to make me feel better.”
“Oscar, wait.” Emmanuel had to jog to keep up. “Enroll in the Core program. In your free time, I’ll show you techniques from the Rogue Tail program.”
“That’s not what you said on the shuttle. You said you had to leave and find the Champions. You’re a liar!”
He broke into a run before Emmanuel could say more. There was no way the magician would be able to keep up with him now. The wind roared in his ears. It was the only voice that told him what he wanted to hear, the only reassurance he needed.
“Where are you going
?” Emmanuel called after him, sounding small and distant now.
Wherever I want, came the response in Oscar’s mind. How’s that for not having limits?
Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes, cold against his face. He wasn’t crying. It was just the wind. But the tears didn’t stop, not even an hour later, when he had climbed up the side of a twelve-story building in downtown Theus and stood looking over the edge, watching the ant-like people filling the sidewalks below.
His next words came out in Spanish.
“I miss you, Mom,” he said, and then he closed his eyes and prepared to join her in a place without pain, without regrets.
CHAPTER 23
C alista was fired from her job at the fruit stand.
She had been spending her days preparing for the beauty pageant with Beasel and his team. To prevent her mother from noticing any sort of change, she resorted once more to stealing food, but the added pressure took a toll on her. She was slower and made more mistakes during her training sessions with Artemis until the baker worried it was his fault and shortened each session by twenty minutes so she could get more sleep.
Two weeks before the Carnival of the Vale, she arrived at the bakery to find a scene she hadn’t expected.
“Hello? Artemis?”
She locked the cellar doors behind her, fearing the worst, and made her way into the basement, where countless training sessions had left their mark in the form of targets drawn on walls and straw scattered around dummies riddled with arrows. Artemis usually cleaned the place every morning. Not today, apparently.
She found him sitting on a chair in the same exact spot where Kellan’s men had beaten him. His elbows rested on his knees, and his head hung over his joined hands.
She ran over and knelt in front of him. “Are you okay?”
He raised his head. Dark grooves under his eyes indicated he had slept little, or not at all, the night before.
“When those men were beating me,” he said, “do you remember what they wanted?”
She nodded. “They said something about a safe.”
“That’s right. You never asked me about it. I thought maybe you’d forgotten.”
“I thought they meant the safe room. The weapons.”
Artemis shook his head slowly. Though his eyes were dry, Calista sensed he was weeping inside. It frightened her to think that. Nothing scared Artemis.
“They meant that one,” he said, “right over there.”
He tipped his head toward the wall to Calista’s right. She turned to see a grimy safe in the corner that hadn’t been there two nights ago. A trail of dirt and a shovel told her it had been buried outside all this time.
“Open it,” he said.
Calista hesitated. The baker’s grave expression left her no choice. She had to know what was troubling him. She crouched in front of the safe and carefully eased open the door.
“Gods.”
She sprang to her feet and took a step back. Inside the safe was a brown, fibrous sack that looked like the bloated carcass of a dead raccoon. She collected herself, took a deep breath, and studied the bag, which appeared to be full of something too amazing to believe.
Gold coins. There must have been hundreds of them, spilling over the side, a few having dropped to the floor of the safe. Each one was valuable enough to feed a family of four for a whole month. Calista was speechless. She could only stare at Artemis in utter bafflement.
“It’s my life’s savings,” he explained. “‘Always invest in gold,’ my father used to tell me. ‘Everything else is just paper with a promise stamped on it, and men can be fickle when it comes to promises.’ Smart man, my pa.”
“The bakery,” Calista said. “You told me it was going under, but…”
She plucked a coin out of the sack and held it out to the baker in accusation. “You had these all along?”
“Things have changed, Cali. If you had come around the front, you would have seen the sign on my door. Out of business. Show’s over.”
Calista shook her head in confusion. “But why?”
Artemis rose from the chair. “You told me once that you wanted to get out of Valestaryn. Those coins are your ticket out of here. You and your mother and sister. You can tell them you found it, stole it, whatever it takes for them to believe you.”
“Why are you doing this? Why now?”
“You’re not ready to fight just yet. If I send you to the battlefield, you’ll die before you know what hit you. I care about you too much to let that happen.”
“Then why not stay and train me until I’m ready? Why not finish what you started?”
He shook his head. “I received word from my contacts in the Forge. It’s worse than I thought. The war we’re about to face…” He breathed a harsh sigh. “I realize now that it was a mistake to put you in the way of such danger.”
“No!” She threw the coin across the room. It hit a straw dummy in the face and rolled behind a box of arrows. “I won’t let you give up on me.”
Artemis squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, Calista thought she saw a glint of moisture.
“They need me,” he said. “But they don’t need you. Your family does. You have a future, Cali.”
A fearful look had come over him. Calista suddenly understood what was happening; he was giving up on the hard logic of the soldier, giving in to the soft emotions of a father too afraid to let go of a daughter.
She hadn’t failed him. He had failed her.
“Go to Theus,” he said. “Use the gold to start over with your family. Leave all thoughts of war and violence here, in this basement. That’s an order, if those words still mean anything to you.”
“Apparently, I’m not a soldier anymore, so no, they don’t.”
Calista stood with her shoulders squared. Artemis made no motion to force or comfort her, but she couldn’t stand to watch him sulk.
“Come with me,” she said. “You can at least do that. We can look out for each other.”
“No,” he said sternly. “I’m re-enlisting. The Forge needs fighters with experience. If there’s one thing I won’t need anymore, it’s money. Hell, those coins would only slow me down. That’s why they’re yours now.”
“Well, I refuse to take a single one. If this is goodbye, then come right out and say it.”
He nodded, calmly and without emotion.
“Goodbye, Cali.”
“No.” Calista whipped her head from side to side, sobbing now. “You coward.”
She pushed past him and ran through the cellar doors, phasing into her cat form before they fell shut again. The shadows swallowed her up as she darted into an alley.
There was only one person who could bring her any measure of comfort now, and it wasn’t Artemis or even Lance. It was the one person who could promise her a future that made sense.
Beasel.
CHAPTER 24
Surprisingly, Milo and Lily made it to class only two minutes late, despite having to stop twice to ask for directions.
“This is it,” Lily said, turning into Room 305.
There were about fifteen students inside—a mix of first- and second-years, judging by the two different colors of uniform. They were seated around a large, conference-style table with a glass dome in the center—probably a projector of some sort, though Milo had no idea how it might work. The seats had armrests and gray cushions and were large enough to swallow the body of each person seated. They rested on half-dome bases that gave them freedom to swivel in every direction.
The other cadets gave him and Lily casual glances as they took seats next to each other. Milo looked around the room and saw that it was huge, with a high ceiling and several feet of space between the backs of the chairs and the surrounding walls. A massive whiteboard took up most of the wall to his right, its surface blank except for a crude drawing someone had made with a marker in the bottom right corner.
The artist either lacked talent or had been short on time. It looked li
ke something a child might draw and depicted an overweight man with a grumpy expression (the eyes and mouth were mere squiggles) and a belly that jutted out from his midsection like a balloon. In his right hand, he gripped a roasted chicken leg with a bite taken out of it.
Lily pointed out the drawing and whispered to Milo, “It’s almost like being back at the ranch.”
Milo smiled at the memory. “All we need now is for Sevarin to walk in twenty minutes late.”
“And Owen and Gunner to shoot spitballs at him so he’ll get angry and make a scene.”
As he and Lily pulled out notebooks and pens, Milo noticed an odd thing. Two first-years seated across the table were staring openly at him and Lily as if the two orphans had just grown a pair of noses on their foreheads. One was a boy, the other a girl.
“You’re Milo Banks and Lily Breezewater,” the girl said in a meek voice. She had orange hair and was covered in freckles.
The other student, a chubby Asian kid in glasses, opened and closed his mouth several times before finally finding his voice. “You were in the Battle of the Ranch in Taradyn. You fought Iolus Magnus and managed to get away. He killed your mother, Zandra, right in front of you. She was a Champion.”
The girl frowned and dug an elbow into the boy’s side, making him flinch.
“Quorin, I can’t believe you just said that.”
Quorin blushed, his head sinking a bit closer to his shoulders. “Sorry. Please don’t fry me with a spell, you guys.”
Milo forced a humble smile to show Quorin he thought nothing of it. But in the back of his mind, he pictured the way Iolus’s floating sword, Aikon, had pierced his mother’s midsection, the blade red-tipped as it slid out of her belly. He looked down at his notebook.
He could feel the eyes of the other cadets studying him. A few were even whispering to each other behind cupped hands. His stomach tightened and his breathing became shallower.
“It’s okay,” Lily whispered to him.
He hadn’t even noticed the way he was scraping his name onto the page, over and over, like a crazy person.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 62
