“You plan to go yourself,” Hax interrupted.
Yiloch took a sip of his wine, enjoying the flicker of impatience in her pale gold eyes. He knew his officers well enough to know when and how far to push them, when to be firm and when to be supportive. It was an art learning to maintain enough aloofness to remain their respected leader without letting them become distant enough to forget why they followed him.
“Why not? Dalce is capable of running things here and negotiations will go faster if the king is dealing with someone he considers more of an equal. Besides, I could stand to do a little traveling after being locked up for so long.”
She glanced at Dalce. The big man was as expressionless as a statue. Somehow, that appeared to reassure her. “Then I expect you’ll go,” she conceded.
He glanced around the table, giving the others opportunity to raise objections. No one spoke. Ian waited, his hand poised over the parchment. Yiloch continued.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Myriad butterflies fluttered in Indigo’s stomach when she entered the headmaster’s office. After a frantic morning spent working to catch up in accelerated classes, the smug smile he greeted her with grated on already frayed nerves. She had the appalling urge to slap him. Instead, she offered a stiff curtsy.
His eyebrows lifted. “Trouble at home?”
“What?”
“I thought that might explain your scowl.”
“I’m not scowling.”
He chuckled. “Shut the door.”
She knocked the door shut with her heel and sat across from him. At which point he stood, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, and motioned her to follow him. She stood, clasping her hands before her to keep from picking at her nails. Eldrian’s smile when he stilled her restless hands with a touch in the prison flickered through her mind. Straightening her back and lifting her chin, she followed him to the rear of the office.
With a decorative dagger from a nearby shelf, he pried a small square of paneling from the wall, exposing a hole with a lever inside. He raised the lever, replaced the panel piece then pushed the wall. A hidden door swung open upon a narrow hallway. He gestured for her to go ahead of him.
She peered down the dark corridor. Her feet didn’t care to proceed.
“Did you think we would train you in public classrooms?”
“I suppose not.” She swallowed and started walking.
He followed, carrying a candle from his office that made her shadow leap and dance ahead of her. The chill corridor led to a heavy iron banded door. He urged her on so she pushed it, shivering as it creaked open. The room beyond was dark and cool. She hugged herself against a chill and entered.
“Am I the only one?”
“No.” He shut the door. The bolt screeched when he slid it home. “There are other rooms. You won’t meet many others in the Order. If you don’t know each other, you can’t betray one another.”
He swept one arm out and candles flickered to life around the room.
The heat of excitement chased away her chill. “You did that!”
“Yes.” There was a hint of smug in his smile.
“Are you a creator?”
“No. My connection isn’t strong enough for true creation.”
The candlelight revealed a room twice as long as it was wide. A carpet ran most of the length, the colors and patterns long worn to a blur of reddish brown. Two battered archery targets bearing ominous scorch marks cowered in the shadows at the far end. A chair and table waited at the near end before shelves laden with books, weapons, and other more curious objects.
At the headmaster’s gesture, she sat in a chair facing the wall of shelves. The rest of the room skulked, its shadowy emptiness pressing against her back.
The headmaster perched on the edge of the table. “As I said before, ascard is a controllable energy that exists in everything. The ascard within you is your inner aspect. The ascard in everything around you is the external aspect. To control it you must be able to manipulate your inner aspect to form a link between it and one or more external aspects. The strength of your inner aspect and your connection to it are what determine whether you can control the ascard and to what level.
“In most people, their inner aspect or connection to it is too weak to manipulate. In some, it’s moderate and those individuals often make effective healers. Fewer still have the strength to become true adepts or creators.”
Novice information. Her attention drifted, wandering over to pick at titles on the shelves. Most were volumes that could get a person thrown in prison. Controlling Fire: From Flicker to Inferno. Basic Creation Theory. Some titles were in elegant Lyran characters. Ascard in Architecture. The Legacy of Yiroth. There were even titles in cryptic Kudaness and other written languages she didn’t recognize.
He slammed a hand down on the table, making her jump. “Do you see any other students here?”
She shook her head. A humiliated flush burned her cheeks.
“You, Indigo, have an extraordinarily strong inner aspect and connection. Given proper training, I believe you can become something truly remarkable, but you must pay attention. No getting lost in thought and no outside interference.”
She understood the last too well. “Jayce can be… protective. He likes to know what I’m doing.”
A flicker of sympathy touched his eyes, but his words offered none. “If you can’t handle your fiancé, then you aren’t strong enough for the King’s Order.”
She bit back a flare of anger. “I’ll figure it out.”
He nodded, the approval in his eyes irritating her more. “I know you will. Now let’s start with something easy.” He walked to a shelf. “A finesse exercise.”
He returned and set a brown, egg-shaped object on the table.
“Beneath the clay surface is an eggshell, its contents removed using the ascard so it won’t spoil. I want you to separate clay from shell without damaging the shell.”
“This is easy?” She considered the object. What if she wasn’t as strong as he thought? Worse, what if this were an elaborate setup to prove she was an untrustworthy lawbreaker like her father? Her nerves crackled like the air beneath a storm.
“There are lessons from your healer training that will help you.” He went to another shelf and picked up a book, then retrieved a chair from the shadows of one corner and sat down across from her. With a final nod to the egg, he commenced reading.
It was too late to turn back.
Healing required understanding of the patient’s body and the illness or injury they suffered from. In this case, the patient was the eggshell, so the illness would be the casing of fired clay. To solve the problem she had to break away the clay without injuring the patient.
She grinned. Maybe this was easy.
Wary of releasing the floodgates again, she opened a limited connection to her inner aspect and set a finger on the clay surface to initiate contact. Envisioning ascard as a liquid seeping from her finger into the clay, she advanced until she felt the ascard signature that identified the shell’s surface. When she had ascard energy wrapped around the shells surface, she used it to push out. The clay resisted. She focused more ascard, pushing out with greater force.
There was a pop. Fragments of clay sprayed out from the center of the table. The headmaster lifted the book to shield his face, apparently expecting this outcome. Then he lowered the book and regarded the ivory object on the table.
“That was decisive.” He picked up the shell and examined it. “Well done. Not a crack.”
She closed her eyes. Her head spun. Beads of sweat cooled on her skin. “If that was easy, I could be in trouble.”
A touch on her hand made her open her eyes.
“Your exhaustion is from lack of practice, not drain on your ascard energy. An inner aspect as strong as yours could do that all day without fading. Besides, that’s one of the harder beginner tests. I figured you would be less intimidated if I lied to you about it. You did well.”
“
Slipping in lessons on the art of deception already?”
“It’s never too early to start,” he replied, unruffled. “Take a minute to recover then we’ll try something else.”
The candles around the room drew her attention. The manipulation of fire had tremendous potential.
“Wasn’t lighting the candles a kind of creation?”
“No. That was simple borrowing. I was carrying a lit candle. It’s easy to borrow ascard from one flame and use it to light another.”
“But you lit,” she counted the candles, “twelve flames at once.”
“Practice. When you can reconstruct the ascard around you into something completely different, like starting a fire using ascard from water, then you’re a creator. Creators are limited though. A single working using that kind of ascard manipulation often requires the commitment of an adept’s full strength. The test with the clay egg would drain a dedicated creator. You will never be a creator.”
She picked at a spot of dirt under one fingernail. “Why not?”
“You’re not limited to one or even a paltry few chosen skill sets. You have the capacity to learn many skills, creation included. Now, if you have the energy for questions, you can try another test.”
She shifted in her seat. His confidence in her ability was unnerving. Perhaps Hadris and her father were right about keeping it hidden. What might the king want to use it for once she was trained? Would she be allowed a say in it?
“I’m ready.”
“Let’s see if we can get you past the need to touch your subject. That’s a dangerous and unnecessary handicap. The sensation of touching something with ascard comes from the interaction of your inner aspect with the ascard in that item.
“For example, the sensation of feeling the eggshell within the clay was the ascard signature of the eggshell being identified by your inner aspect. You can project your inner aspect upon anything you want to manipulate. Once you truly understand the relationship, it will take mere seconds to sort through thousands of ascard signatures to find the one you’re after.”
The candle on the desk went out. “Light that. Without touching,” he snapped when she lifted her hand.
She folded her hands in her lap and, remembering his words about borrowing, focused on one of the lit candles nearby. She visualized ascard closing in on the flickering flame.
The candle went out.
He chuckled and she set her jaw, focusing on the next candle along the wall.
Seven snuffed candles later, the room was much darker and she yearned to kick something, repeatedly.
“I can’t do it.”
The seven candles relit at once. “You’re trying to take the flame. You need to connect to ascard within the flame and split it, taking only part of it. On the positive side, you’re proficient at putting fire out.”
She ground her teeth.
“Let’s try something else.” He went to the shelf and returned with another clay egg. “Remove the clay without touching it this time.”
She rubbed her eyes.
Serivar looked expectant so she returned her hands to her lap and focused on the egg, visualizing ascard as she had before. After a brief mistaken connection to ascard in the table, she found the signature of the clay and sank through it to the eggshell. Then she wrapped ascard around its surface. She pushed out, increasing the outward pressure by tiny increments. A few cracks appeared. Then more formed, multiplying rapidly until the outer shell fell away.
Something akin to greed flickered in the headmaster’s eyes. “Good. You had perfect control this time.”
The effort left her breathing hard and sweating again, but she grinned, giddy with accomplishment.
They continued into early evening. The borrowing of flame continued to elude her. After countless attempts to light the candle, she dropped her head to the table and closed her eyes.
“Indigo.”
“No. I can’t do it.”
“Not yet, but you’ve done exceptionally well for your first day.”
She opened her eyes and sat up. Was he teasing? His gentle smile looked sincere.
“I have?”
He nodded. “Yes. You mustn’t practice any of this outside of this room yet. Do you understand?”
“If you promise to let me go home now, I promise not to practice outside this room.”
“Don’t test me. I’ll keep you here.” His smile hinted at humor, but she got the feeling there was some truth behind the threat. “Are you comfortable walking home alone at this hour?”
“It’s not far.” Passing through the fountain courtyard still put her on edge, but there would be no beasts coming after her now. Unfortunately, there would be no Lord Eldrian coming for her either.
He escorted her to his office. “Same time tomorrow.”
“Yes, Headmaster.”
Outside the administration building, she rubbed her eyes and succumbed to a yawn before starting her walk. Cool night air made her sluggish, her efforts to keep a swift pace undermined by exhaustion. Her mind drifted. At the Healer’s Courtyard, she stopped by the fountain and held her hand out into the cascade of falling water, transfixed by droplets that splashed on her skin. She was too tired for memories of the beast to unnerve her. Eldrian filled her thoughts, his silver hair shimmering in sunlight the first time she saw him.
“Lady Indigo?”
She jerked her arm to her side like a child caught stealing. Her heart raced, but she managed a smile when she turned.
“Good evening, Caplin.”
He flashed an uneasy smile. “You’re heading home late.”
“I’m doing therapy sessions after class. Trying to recover my memories.” How effortless the lie came, even with someone as dear as Caplin. Perhaps exhaustion made it easier.
“Any luck?”
She gave a tired shrug. “Not yet.”
“Might I walk with you?” He offered his arm.
Grateful for company to move her along, she rested her hand in the crook of his elbow. “What are you doing out so late?”
“Walking and… thinking.” He glanced sidelong at her. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“What happened between you and Jayce the night you disappeared?”
The question caught her off guard. She started to bring her free hand up to her healed lip and caught herself, dropping it to her side. Telling him the truth would only cause conflict between him and Jayce. She needed to figure things out on her own. “We were both moody and we had a little disagreement.”
“A little disagreement that drove you out into the streets?”
She made a show of a sheepish smile. “I wanted to get some air and cool my temper. I didn’t know it was going to lead to all of this.”
His brow pinched when he looked at her, dissatisfied with her explanation.
As I would be. She clung to her smile.
“You know how to find me when you’re ready to talk about it.” His look warned that they would discuss it again. “I wanted to ask you something else.”
“Go ahead.”
“Seeing as how you’re taken…” he grinned and she nudged him playfully with her elbow, “…and Andrea is a lovely woman from a respected family. Do you think she would…?” He trailed off.
She laughed as discomfort finished his thought for him. “Andrea would marry you in a heartbeat. It would be a fine match.”
He gave her a wary glance. “You think so?”
She shook her head at him. “Men can be so daft. Ask her, Caplin. You shouldn’t be alone. You need someone to keep you out of trouble.”
His arm relaxed under her hand, though she caught a glimpse of sadness in his eyes.
“I was planning a private supper at the manor for the proposal. Or should I use a dining room in the palace?”
“The manor. You don’t want to overwhelm her.”
“Yes. You’re probably right.” He retreated into fretful silence.
She squeezed his
arm. “Don’t worry. She’d marry you if you proposed in an alley by the Kilty docks. Whatever you do, she’ll love it.”
“Then it’s decided, unless…” They were outside her building now. He turned, taking her by the shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
“Unless what?” Again, that hint of sorrow. She searched his face for some hint of the cause.
He looked away. “Thank you. You’re a good friend.”
“And glad of it.” She gave up her silent inquest.
He kissed her on the cheek and struck out toward the palace district. She went to her rooms to find Jayce waiting at the table. She inhaled the delicious aroma of the meal laid out between them.
“Thank you. I’m famished.” He stared at her and she stared back, trying not to let weariness drive her to quick anger. “What’s wrong?”
“Will you be this late every night?”
She delayed, taking a bite of bread to quiet her nerves. After she washed it down, she said, “I don’t know. It depends on how much they want my memories back.”
His gaze drifted to her unadorned ring finger. “Did you remember anything?”
She shook her head and turned to eating. After a time, he ate too. He hadn’t raised a hand against her since the night she disappeared, but their relationship remained tense and repeated lies would only make it worse. She preferred to avoid conversation altogether.
Before climbing into bed, she sat at her vanity and brushed out her hair. Slipping off her shoes, she touched the top of one of the Lyran boots she had tucked into the shadows under the vanity with her toes. Her image faded from sight and she focused on Eldrian in her mind, smiling to herself.
“I think it’s brushed enough.”
The mirror showed Jayce watching her, his eyes hooded with desire.
She longed to refuse, but knowing another assault might be an unwelcome word away made her reluctant to do so. She forced a smile and joined him. He mounted her like a rutting deer while she clung to memories of the nights in the prison, letting past pleasure stop her tears.
Despite exhaustion, she stared into the dark long after he drifted to sleep, rubbing her finger where the engagement ring had been. What use was there in being powerful if she were doomed to this for the rest of her life? There had to be another option.
Dissident (Forbidden Things Book 1) Page 10
