by W. J. May
In a lot of ways, it fit his teacher to a ‘T.’
Jason was the only one thus far who didn’t flinch when the ink was copied from him. He merely rolled his sleeve back down and paced a few steps backwards, waiting for Simon to make the first move.
“From the side, like I showed you,” he instructed as Simon lunged at him with blinding speed. He dodged easily, but nodded his head, looking pleased. “Good. That’s good, Simon.”
“Thanks.” Simon grinned, inadvertently re-opening his split lip from his and Tristan’s death match just a few nights before. “I’ve been practicing.”
“Not on Brick, I hope. The guy would eat you alive.” Jason paced forward to begin again, but stopped short upon seeing the blood on Simon’s face. “Wow! Tris got you bad, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he did.” And now that Simon thought about it, he couldn’t help but suspect that’s what Jason had intended the entire time. “Even broke my nose.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Jason asked with a grin. “Your ink is only as good as you are.”
Simon actually dodged one of his kicks, and flipped back around with a scowl. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He swiped at Jason, but Jason caught his arm and spun him onto the floor.
“Arrogance is a dangerous vice, Simon.” As Simon tried to get to his feet, he kicked his arms out from under him and stood back to watch. “I’m trying to prepare you early.”
“Prepare me for what?” Simon demanded, when he was finally able to stand. “And where the hell is all this coming from? You’re the one who said the warlock—”
“Yeah, but this isn’t about your warlock, Simon; it’s about you.” Jason took a step back and surveyed Simon up and down. “Your warlock only lets you copy other people’s abilities. So far as we know, it doesn’t provide an ability of its own.”
“So what?” Simon snapped defensively. “The ability to use any tatù on the planet as long as I touch the owner? That’s a hell of a lot better than some stupid—”
“Listen to what I’m saying,” Jason said patiently. He had an uncanny ability not to be rattled by anything around him, Simon’s occasional tantrums included. “So you take Tristan’s ink. What then? You have it for the next few hours. He’s had it for his entire life.”
The weighted truth to the words settled on Simon hard. But Jason wasn’t finished.
“So you can use my ink. So what? Do you think, even for a second, that you can use it better than me?”
Simon’s face fell. No. The answer was obvious. No, he could not use Jason’s ink better than Jason, any more than he could use Tristan’s ink better than Tristan. The warlock may be the key to opening every door, but he still passed through them as a beginner. It didn’t change that.
“You need to be better than everyone. Do you get that?” Jason demanded with sudden fierceness. Simon looked up in surprise at the tone. “You need to be able to protect yourself, from anyone and everyone who would ever mean you harm.”
Simon’s eyes drifted to the little hole in the wall. Even though he knew it was too far away, he imagined he could see it clearly.
“You have the ability,” Jason concluded. “The ability to have all the abilities. Now you need the skills to use them. And while you’re at it, a little damn humility wouldn’t hurt either.”
Keeping his eyes locked on his teacher, Simon nodded slowly. There were implications to what Jason was saying that he was only just beginning to understand. That he was only just beginning to be made aware of himself.
“Now—again.”
This time, Simon went on the offensive. Using a move that he’d seen Jason do once or twice, he slid down at the last minute, and caught his teacher off-balance. Without a second’s hesitation, he body-slammed Jason halfway across the room. “Shit—I’m sorry!”
The words echoed in a quiet room as Jason slowly picked himself back up and started the long walk back over. As usual, it was impossible to tell what was happening on his mentor’s face, so Simon didn’t even try. Instead, he just looked down incredulously at his hands.
He had never realized it before—he thought of the falcon tatù strictly in terms of blinding speed—but using Jason’s ink, it took absolutely no effort to throw him. Next to nothing to render him dangerously hurt.
All the cuts and bruises Simon had trudged back to the dorms with day after day? All the complaining he’d done to Argyle about how his teacher had been beating him into the ground? He realized now that Jason had been handling him like glass.
It made him feel strangely grateful. Protected. It also made him wonder what sort of damage the guy could actually do…
“I’m sorry,” he said again, when Jason finally made it back to him.
There was a darkened strip of angry inflammation rising up on one of Jason’s wrists, but his face melted into an honest smile. “Don’t be sorry. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Every ability comes with its own set of quirks. Every set of ink has a key to unlocking it. It might not be fair, but Simon, you need to master them all. If you don’t, then you’re just another guy carrying whatever tatù you happen to have at the time. But if you do, if you work with each of them and commit yourself body and soul… there’s really no limit to what you can do.”
Simon dropped his eyes to the mats. He was touched. Deeply touched. And damn excited, too. Jason wasn’t just saying it to guide him or to pump him up; he was saying it because it was true. Unlike every single person who had come before him, Simon had the chance to become a master of all ink. Of every tatù under the sun.
The sky was indeed the limit. And one that he intended to push with everything he had.
“Again?” Jason quipped, rubbing his wrist with a rueful grin.
Simon raised his arms, adrenaline coursing through his veins, but a second later he dropped them back to his sides. There was something important they had to talk about first, and he didn’t have the strength or nerves to put it off any longer.
“Actually…” his voice dropped hesitantly. “…I was wondering how your investigation was going.” He looked up at once to see if the question was permitted, and was encouraged to see that it was, but discouraged by the look on Jason’s face.
Jason pulled out the band for his ponytail and ran his fingers back through his dark hair with a tired sigh. Nope, things weren’t looking good at all. “I trained this guy once, a couple of years back. He was coming back to London from a job in Verona when he got jumped in this alley, bled out before he could even call for help. Turns out, the man who attacked him was the brother of the target my guy had just killed.” He glanced up to see Simon staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes. “The target was a gun-runner,” he explained quickly. “Trust me, it’s no great loss that she’s dead. The point is…that’s the kind of anecdote I can understand. Brother avenging sister. Killed on the way back from a mission. But you?” He shook his head with frustration. “You’re just a kid, Simon. You haven’t done anything yet. You don’t even know how to work your fucking tatù.” He fell silent suddenly, staring at the door with angry, troubled eyes.
Simon watched him for a moment, before bowing his head. “So…no leads?”
“Did you accidentally bite anyone when you were a dog?”
“No.”
“Then, yeah. No leads.”
Simon’s face fell and Jason was quick to clarify.
“Yet. Simon. No leads yet.” His eyes flashed with dark anticipation. “But I’m going to get this guy. You can be sure of that. I gave you my word.”
If it was anyone else, Simon would have dismissed that outright. But Jason Archer’s ‘word’ carried a bit more weight than your average promise.
As if reading Simon’s mind, Jason tilted his head with a little smile. “You want to know how many times I’ve broken it?”
“None?” Simon guessed.
“No, a few. But this won’t be one of those times.” Against all the odds, this got Simon to smile. Jason nodded with satisf
action. “Now go—play. Find a coloring book. Ride a bike. Do whatever a sixteen-year-old boy is supposed to do.”
There was a brief pause.
“You want me to work with the spears again today?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” As Simon trotted off, Jason called to him once more. “And Simon? Wear a helmet.”
Simon spun back around with a chuckle and headed over to the wall to pick out his weapon.
So Jason’s investigation wasn’t going well? It was no matter. Simon had a lead, and as of last night he had an official partner in crime. While placing Jason’s caution against arrogance firmly on the back burner, he picked out the tallest javelin he could find.
Perhaps it was time he took matters into his own hands…
Chapter 5
“So I had this great idea—”
Simon burst into Tristan’s dorm room without even taking the courteous precaution to knock. He had never been inside—truth be told, he’d had to ask one of the boys down the hall which room it even was. But his head was so over-saturated with thoughts of the failed investigation and the prospect of launching his own, that he didn’t even notice.
Tristan noticed, however. He noticed right away.
“Simon! What the hell are you doing?” He sprang lightly off the bed, landing in the center of the floor. His more formal school slacks were draped over the chair at his desk, but he wasn’t wearing training clothes either. He was somewhere in between, casual, as if he might go into town.
On the other side of the room, Tristan’s roommate Isaac got slowly to his feet, staring at Simon like he was crazy. His shaggy black hair swung back and forth as he shook his head, casting a sudden resemblance between him and the wolf into which he shifted, but when he looked at Tristan for guidance Tristan merely rolled his eyes at the ceiling and cocked his head towards the door.
Simon had seen the silent conversation but he was too immersed in his own world to clue in. It was like he was walking around with his head in a book, completely oblivious to the world around him. “It came to me right after we got back from the library. Well, after I got back from a training session after the library. You see, Jason hasn’t…” He trailed off suddenly as Isaac slipped a coat over his shoulders and made his way over to the door. “Oh, hey, Isaac. Sorry; I hope I’m not intruding.”
Isaac shrugged with a grin. “It’s cool, man. Tris said you’ve been going through a sort of mental breakdown lately. We’re all supposed to cut you a little slack.”
Simon shot Tristan a vicious glare, which was returned with a small smile.
“Anyway,” Isaac slung his bag over his shoulder, “are you going to be in biology today, or should I make up some excuse for Professor Renley?”
Tristan cocked his head towards Simon with a curious grin. “I don’t know. Am I?”
Simon grew nervous and suddenly unwilling to share his schemes with Isaac still in the room, but he had come there for a reason. His face flushed red as he dropped his eyes to the floor and shook his head quickly back and forth. No. With any luck, Tristan would not be in biology that day.
Tristan’s eyes flashed as if he apparently found the entire thing hilarious, and he waved Isaac off with a bit of a nod. When he and Simon were alone, he shut the door and locked it for good measure before slowly turning around.
“So you told them all I was having a breakdown?” Simon accused in a rush, before he had the chance to say anything. It might not have been far from the truth, but he was still hurt. He’d thought they had bonded a bit more than that back in the library.
Tristan looked completely unabashed. “Aren’t you?” In a casual blur of speed, he leapt across the entire room and settled back in the center of the bed. It didn’t even disturb the sheets. “I didn’t say it because of the attack, Simon. I said it because of all the other stuff. Everything you’ve done since getting your tatù.”
Simon paused, a little thrown off course. “What do you mean?”
To his great surprise, Tristan threw back his head and laughed. “This.” He gestured around his room, still chuckling. “What the hell is this, Simon? You burst in here without even knocking, expect to commandeer my day at the drop of a hat? You remember that you’re the one who did this, right?” He waved his broken arm an inch or two in its sling. “Twice.”
Simon blushed and looked at the floor. “Well, yeah, but…”
“You crash my table in the cafeteria, almost get us both caught by busting into the library!”
“That part wasn’t my fault,” Simon rallied to defend himself. “The only reason we almost got caught was because you refused to reset the coffee-maker, so the both of us fell asleep—”
“The point is, we could have gotten expelled,” Tristan interrupted. But even when he raised his voice to be heard over Simon’s, he didn’t look angry. In fact, he still looked rather amused.
Simon didn’t know what to make of it. Tristan might be the school’s golden boy, but he was by no means a saint. In fact, over the last few years he’d developed quite a reputation for bending the rules to suit his whims. Was he saying that Simon wasn’t yet ‘one of the guys?’ A friend for whom he’d be willing to take such a risk? He might be Simon, but he was no Isaac—kind of thing?
“I know,” Simon exhaled in one huge breath. His fingers ran back through his hair, wincing as they passed over one of the spots where Tristan had punched him. “I’m sorry.”
All at once, he had no idea what he was doing in the room either. So he’d come up with a plan. Great. He could do it himself. Or better yet, he could get Argyle to come along. Even though he wasn’t sure if his law-abiding friend would be up for the challenge.
“I don’t care,” Tristan said flippantly. Simon looked up in surprise, and he stretched out his good arm with a shrug. “I told you in the cafeteria, we’re cool. I’m just talking about the rest of the guys. Your little…existential awakening needed an explanation. I figured a full-on nervous breakdown fit the bill, given the fact that you were just shot at and all.”
Simon let out a bark of laughter. Considering how vapid and predictable he’d thought Tristan was over the last few years, the guy was full of surprises. Not only did he have a startling streak of that strange empathetic acceptance, not the usual baseline for a jock, but he and Jason were the only ones to talk about Simon’s near-death experience with a hilarious lack of sensitivity.
As counter-intuitive as it might seem, it was a quality he appreciated greatly. “And drag-racing around London was already taken?” he quipped with a grin.
Tristan chuckled. “Yep. Already used that one. Had to move on to another.”
“And the guys? They just accepted that at face value, did they?”
“Would you believe they did?” Tristan cocked his head to the side with a sarcastic twinkle that made Simon grin in spite of himself. “Didn’t have to sell it at all.”
“You’re a bastard.”
“Right back at you.” Tristan grinned, and gestured for Simon to sit. His desk, like the rest of the room, was a cluttered testament to the lack of organizational skills inherent in teenage boys. He and Isaac apparently had a rather lax system, where as long as things were technically clean they could be as messy as they pleased. It was a strange juxtaposition, the smell of citrus disinfectant in the chaotic wreck of a room.
Simon wondered where they’d even found the furniture to clean. He shoved a pile of books onto the floor and perched upon the chair beneath, wondering how to go about phrasing his masterful plan. He’d still been nailing down the specifics as he made his way over here, and now that he and Tristan were face to face it seemed like a rather big favor to ask. His eyes flickered to a picture sticking out of a book, and he stalled for time.
“Who’s this?” He flipped the book open and found himself staring at the photograph of a beautiful girl. An abnormally beautiful girl with startlingly bright blue eyes and tumbles of brunette hair. She was staring at the camera with a strained grin, as if this was
the hundredth picture for which she’d been asked to pose, and Simon couldn’t help but think that the image had been placed there intentionally, to both protect it from damage and to hide it from the outside world. “She’s really—”
But before he could finish that sentence, the book was closed. His hair swished past him, as if he’d been standing alongside a train, and by the time he looked back up Tristan was already settled back on the bed, the book tucked safely in his hand.
Oh. So that must be the elusive Mary. “Sorry,” Simon mumbled, folding his hands awkwardly back into his lap.
Tristan said nothing, watching him with sparklingly attentive eyes while setting an unspoken boundary all at the same time. Some things were allowed. Some things were not.
They weren’t that close yet.
Simon caught on quick and cleared his throat, hoping to ease them past the awkward moment with the casual introduction of his plan. He might not be permitted to ask certain things, but he could ask others. “So about my great idea… Do you happen to have a car?”
* * *
“Did I happen to mention the time-sensitive nature of my request?” Simon demanded, squinting impatiently at the bright morning sun.
Tristan sighed with strained patience. “Oh, only about four hundred times, Simon.”
“We should have just left yesterday afternoon when I told you. I should never have let you talk me into—”
“Hey, you want to introduce yourself to a set of grieving parents looking like someone just took a chainsaw to your face, you go right ahead.” Tristan pushed open the door to the infirmary and marched inside. “Some of us were raised better. I’m seeing the doctor first.”
He had a point, and some understated part of Simon knew this. But when it came down to his investigation and plans, Simon had been developing an increasing tunnel-vision against the matters at hand. As well as an increasing insensitivity to those who got in his way. “Yeah,” he muttered as they paused in the lobby, “I’m sure your dad would be really proud.”
