by C. R. Grey
As Taleth purred and sat down on her haunches, Bailey tried to concentrate on the nature around them, the way that Tremelo had taught him in the fall. He could smell himself, faintly, the way Taleth smelled him: something comforting and foreign about the damp wool of his winter coat, and unmistakably human about his hair and skin. But that was all—as though the humming inside him was set on a low dial.
Bert the iguana shuddered inside Bailey’s coat and tried to crawl up onto his neck.
“This is Bert,” said Bailey awkwardly as the lizard poked his head out of Bailey’s lapel. Bailey couldn’t be sure whether speaking to Taleth had any effect on her at all. The tiger leaned forward, sniffing. Clouds of wet breath rose from her nostrils. Her whiskers twitched as Bert craned his scaly head out of Bailey’s coat, and touched Taleth’s nose with his own.
“Bert’s nothing like you,” Bailey said—or maybe he only thought it. Taleth stretched and paced past Bailey to sniff him from all sides. She nudged him again, butting her heavy head against his upper back. All at once, Bailey could feel exactly what she felt—her relief at seeing him safe, her delight that she’d found him, her sadness that he couldn’t stay here in the woods with her always. It was not like seeing through her eyes, but as if she’d left a trace of her emotions on him.
“I know,” he whispered. His own breath rose into the crisp air and dissipated. “I wish I didn’t have to stay away. It’s not fair.”
Bailey tried to hold on to this strange feeling. But the sensation waned, and he was left with only his own sadness, his own relief.
Taleth perked her head and looked over Bailey’s shoulder into the trees. She was more worried now; Bailey could tell by her twitching ears. His heart began to beat a little faster as he followed her eyes around the edges of the clearing. Anyone could be watching them at that moment. He put his arms around Taleth’s neck, just as he’d wished to when he first saw her.
“I have to go,” he said. “It’s the only way to keep you safe.” He felt the enormous tiger purring—a rumbling that nearly shook his whole body. But if what he’d experienced a moment before could be trusted, he knew that underneath that purr, she was also sad, and that he was the only person in the world who could know that.
Bailey, Phi, and Hal sat together in the dining hall on the first morning of classes, in the company of some other Year One members of the Scavage team. Bailey had left Bert behind in the Towers—the lizard had looked so cozy underneath the heated electro-current bulbs Tremelo had lent him to keep Bert warm. “Basking,” Tremelo had called it. Tall windows by their table looked out over the sloping, snow-covered hillside that led down to the Scavage field. Inside the hall, students chatted excitedly about their breaks as they ate egg-and-spinach tarts and bowls of steaming oatmeal with jam made from last year’s berries. The morning seemed comfortable and pleasant, but Bailey felt ill as he listened to group’s the most prevalent topic of conversation: the unexpected death of Ms. Sucrette.
“I heard she got sick,” said Terrence, a boy from Bailey’s Scavage squad, who sat a few seats down from Bailey and Hal. “And the school sent her to a specialist in the Gray—but by the time she got there, it was too late.”
“She was murdered, you idiot—same night that visiting Parliament member died,” said Arabella, captain of the Blue Squad, before shoveling a forkful of egg tart into her mouth. Across the table from each other, Hal and Bailey traded worried looks. Arabella was referring to the Elder.
“Parliament, what?” said Alice, a Blue Squad Squat.
“Some old man,” Arabella said. “Had a meeting with Finch, and died the same night. Heart attack or something like that. There was a funeral and everything.”
“But that had nothing to do with Ms. Sucrette,” said Alice.
“Unless the same person was out to get them both!” interjected Terrence.
“But who would want to hurt Ms. Sucrette?” asked Alice. “She was so nice! Phi, you were in her class, weren’t you?”
Phi glanced at Bailey before answering.
“We all were,” she said, nodding at Bailey and Hal. “She was…sweet.”
Bailey poked at his breakfast. His appetite had disappeared. He hated thinking of Ms. Sucrette—as a teacher, she certainly had pretended to be nice, and done a convincing job of it. But as an agent of the Dominae, she’d been ruthless. As he listened to the others trade theories, he couldn’t help picturing her: not only how she’d looked as she advanced on him with a knife in her slender hand, but also how small her broken body had appeared afterward, when the animals she’d dominated had killed her. That image had woken him up at night in the Lowlands, shivering.
The doors to the dining hall opened with a clang, and Headmaster Finch, a skinny, beak-nosed man in a brown plaid suit, entered. He was followed by Mr. Nillow, Bailey’s History teacher, who was as round as Finch was tall. Tremelo entered behind them, wearing a thinly masked scowl. He strode over to a corner by the announcements board, and folded his arms in front of his chest. The two other men stood before the rows of tables, and Finch raised his arms in greeting.
“Students, students!” Finch said, though he could barely be heard above the chatter. Mr. Nillow stepped up behind him, put his fingers in his mouth, and whistled harshly. The hall went quiet.
“Thank you, Nillow,” Headmaster Finch said, pulling at his plaid waistcoat anxiously. Finch always seemed to Bailey to be both nervous and angry, as though he was afraid of water getting dumped on him, but was ready to punish whoever would do it.
“Many of you may already have heard the whispers about the coming week’s exciting events,” he began. “And it is my task to make those rumors official—we will be hosting an important guest next Friday: Viviana Melore of the Dominae party, which is making quick work of cleaning up the political system of our fair kingdom.”
Bailey fought the urge to snort angrily. It was clear that Finch was a Dominae supporter. From the eager whispers in the hall, it seemed many students were, as well.
“Miss Melore will tour the school during morning classes, and we will host an assembly at three p.m.,” Finch said. “Afternoon classes will be canceled that day.”
Bailey looked over at Tremelo in his lonely corner. Tremelo glared at Finch. Bailey could only guess at how he felt—even though Viviana was the enemy, she was also Tremelo’s sister, and he was about to see her for the first time in twenty-seven years.
“Miss Melore and her accompanying associates from the Dominae party have been invited to stay at Fairmount for a full weekend,” Finch continued, “so that they can take in the whole of what the school has to offer—including our very first Scavage scrimmage of the new year!”
A cacophony of cheers erupted around Bailey as his Blue Squad teammates pounded on the table. The Gold Squad, across the room, let out a round of celebratory whoops.
Finch cleared his throat for silence.
“A more serious matter: I know that many of you are still recovering from the loss of Ms. Sucrette,” he said. “She was not with us for very long, but she was a much-respected presence while she was here. It’s my hope that the news of Miss Melore’s visit will shine a ray of light into what seems to be a dark time for our school. And I also hope,” he added, with a newly sharpened edge to his voice, “that you will exercise your most sparkling behavior during her stay!”
Finch finished his announcement, and the dining room chatter resumed as students exchanged exclamations about the big news.
“Can you believe that?” Hal said. “Finch was nearly salivating, he was so excited!”
“No wonder Tremelo can’t stand him,” Bailey agreed.
They turned to look across the dining hall at Tremelo, but he was gone.
As Bailey searched the room, a loud pop broke his concentration, and a bright, blinding light nearly obliterated his vision.
“Ow!” he heard Hal cry out, followed by mocking laughter.
He rubbed his stinging eyes to see Taylor, Hal’s older brother
, accompanied by his usual gaggle of Year Three Scavage athletes. The semester before, he’d teased Bailey endlessly about his lack of an Animas, and had even stolen his bag, with Tremelo’s precious book in it. Taylor didn’t know it—but his antics had almost gotten Bailey killed.
“Yes! Point for Gold Squad!” Taylor crowed. A mean-eyed tortoiseshell cat rubbed her arched back against Taylor’s shins.
“Those are my stunners!” Hal shouted, pointing at the small pouch in Taylor’s hand. They were weapons Tremelo had given Hal to use the semester before, in the battle against Sucrette. “How did you get those?!”
“Let’s just say, maybe you shouldn’t leave your knapsack lying around on the rigimotive,” said Taylor.
He tossed another stunner down onto Bailey and Hal’s table, where it exploded with a bang. Students all over the dining hall craned their necks to get a good look at the commotion. Bailey felt his cheeks and ears turning cherry red.
“Give them back to Hal,” he said.
“Like ants, I will,” said Taylor. “Could be useful on the Scavage field.”
Taylor deployed another stunner, causing everyone at the table to hide their eyes and shout with irritation. Then he slipped the pouch back in his pocket and stalked off, motioning for his friends to follow. As Taylor and his friends passed through the doors, Bailey saw another teacher standing there, watching them exit—but this was no one Bailey recognized. Bailey felt the skin along his arms prickling at the sight of an unfamiliar face. The man wore a long tweed cape and a scarf bundled around and around his neck. He was very short, with a hooked nose and small eyes. A gray cat stood beside him by the door, where it stopped to touch whiskery noses with Taylor’s tortoiseshell. The man met Bailey’s stare, and Bailey quickly looked back down at his breakfast, now cold.
“Who’s that?” he whispered to Hal. “Over by the door.”
“I don’t know,” said Hal. “Figures there’d be a new teacher, though—to replace Sucrette. He doesn’t look very happy to be here.”
Bailey turned in his seat to catch another glimpse of the new teacher. The man’s nostrils flared as he looked around the room, as though he’d smelled something very unpleasant.
“I guess Finch decided to go with something other than ‘sweet’ this time,” said Hal.
In homeroom, Tremelo had posted a “pop quiz” on the chalkboard that consisted of a series of riddles, such as “What animal keeps the best time?” and “What type of horse only goes out in the dark?” Hal finished his quiz first, and leaned over to see Bailey’s paper.
“Hmm, that’s what I got for the first one too,” Hal said. “The ‘nightmare’ one’s the hardest.…” Bailey nodded and scribbled down the answer, though he knew Tremelo wouldn’t actually be grading the assignment.
When it was time to head to Latin, Tremelo pulled Bailey aside.
“Where’s Bert?” he asked.
“Oh, ants!” said Bailey. “I forgot him!”
“It’s the first day of classes,” chided Tremelo. “The most important time to establish that he’s your kin. First impressions are crucial. Go and get him!”
Bailey dashed back to his dorm instead of heading to Latin.
“Some first impression,” he mumbled, as he roused the sleepy iguana, and shook another patch of skin off his fingers.
By the time he arrived to class with Bert curled up in his knapsack, he was already late. Hal and Phi were there; Tori had been lucky enough to place out of second-level Latin, and was taking Classics instead. Phi’s falcon, Carin, stood calmly on the edge of Phi’s desk. Bailey entered just as the teacher at the front of the class—the man he’d spotted in the dining hall earlier—finished writing his name on the chalkboard with a flourish.
“And again, that’s Doctor Graves, not Mister, thank you,” the man said in a clipped, businesslike tone.
Bailey took the opportunity of Dr. Graves’s turned back to hurry from the door to an empty desk by his friends. But in his rush, he slammed his knee into the chair of a fellow classmate, a curly-haired girl, who shouted in surprise.
Dr. Graves turned around and surveyed the room with a grimace, as though the students in front of him were covered in slug slime. When he saw Bailey, still standing in the aisle, his small eyes narrowed into slits.
“You’re late!” Graves snapped.
Bailey felt his ears turning red for the second time that morning. Everyone was looking at him.
“Sorry, sir,” he said. He turned to the empty desk.
“Stop right there,” ordered Graves. The diminutive man stepped down from the raised teacher’s platform before Bailey even got a chance to sit.
“Hardly the example one wants to set on the very first day of a new semester,” Graves said, looking Bailey up and down. “I suppose you think you can just wander in whenever you like!”
“No, I don’t. I said I’m sorry,” said Bailey.
“I heard what you said, boy, but I’m not interested in your apology. There are consequences to certain behaviors! Perhaps you’d like a few lines to copy, since you don’t feel the need to keep up with what the rest of the class is doing.” The gray cat Bailey had seen earlier rubbed against Graves’s ankles, then hissed up at Bailey.
Graves’s eyes became fixed on Bailey’s knapsack. Bailey looked down, and saw Bert wriggling out of the closed flap. He stretched his claws toward the hem of Graves’s tweed jacket.
“What is this?” Graves asked. Bert clutched Graves’s jacket, and before either Graves or Bailey could do anything to stop it, took a hearty bite out of the hem.
“Gah!” Graves exclaimed, stepping back quickly and waving his hands to bat Bert away. A thumb-size scrap of brown tweed dangled out of the lizard’s mouth as he clutched Bailey’s knapsack, chewing.
“Sorry!” said Bailey.
“I could see you were a troublemaker in the dining hall this morning,” Graves said. “And I’m never wrong about these things—look at my coat!”
The other students had begun to laugh. Bailey glanced at Hal, whose eyebrows were raised in a mixture of amusement and concern.
“I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you,” said Graves, wagging a finger at Bailey. “And your revolting kin.”
“He’s not revolting,” said Bailey, before he even knew what he was doing. “He just thinks you should back off.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Bailey saw Hal cover his eyes with his hand.
Graves was the type of person whose face became red very easily, Bailey learned. The man was barely taller than him, but he drew himself up into a tweed tower of righteous, sputtering anger.
“You will take. Your. Seat. This instant. Insubordination! Cheek! I will have you know, young man, that—”
“Ahem.” A quiet but firm voice interjected itself between Graves and Bailey, and they both turned toward the door. Standing there, a wombat rolling at her feet and her glasses slightly askew, was Ms. Shonfield, the dean of students. A young man stood behind her with a clipboard, staring at Bailey and Graves through a slim pair of brass spectacles.
“Good morning, Dr. Graves, Mr. Walker,” she said, nodding to each of them. “I see you’re settling in.”
As she pushed past them, Graves nodded crisply, and Bailey suppressed a small laugh. The spectacled assistant smiled too, and as he crossed to the front of the classroom with Shonfield, he gave Bailey a quick wink.
“I wanted to say a few words to you students about the passing of your dear teacher, Ms. Sucrette.” Ms. Shonfield sighed. “Please know that my door is always open for a chat if you’re in need of one. My assistant Jerri and I are happy to answer any questions.” She gestured to the young man with the clipboard, who nodded. “We’re told her death came at the hands of a group of roving bandits in the neighboring woods, and our policy remains firm that no students are allowed in the Dark Woods at any time. Still, I want to assure you that you have nothing to fear. As of now, the school is taking measures to have the bandits cleared out, and our camp
us borders are as safe as they’ve ever been.”
Bailey felt a tingling at the back of his neck as Ms. Shonfield spoke. The story about Sucrette’s death was completely false, but the Velyn were real—were they the bandits Shonfield mentioned? And what did she mean, “cleared out”?
He glanced across the aisle at Hal, who stared straight forward, trying a little too hard to look completely uninterested in this news. Bailey attempted to do the same. Tremelo’s advice played in his mind like a song on the gramophone. Be normal, act normal, don’t draw attention. But he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. The Velyn might be hurt or captured, which meant his kin was in grave danger. Pretending to be normal, when an unread prophecy linked him to the fate of the entire kingdom, was already proving to be a difficult task.
I CAN’T GET OUT—I can’t get out!
A child’s small hand fumbled with an ornate bronze doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. Across the room, flames licked their way up the sides of the window—the only other means of escape was a gaping maw of fire, and a four-story drop to the gardens below. Help me, the child cried. Tears fell down his round cheeks.
Trent! He heard a voice on the other side of the door. Trent, I’m going to get you out!
Viv! Please help me!
The doorknob rattled as Trent pressed himself against the carved wood of his nursery door. He wanted to curl up as small he could, like a little mouse, so the fire wouldn’t find him.
It’s stuck—Trent! The door is stuck! His sister’s voice was heavy with fear. I can’t open it!
Don’t leave me, he cried. Viv, don’t go!
The fire crawled toward him like a beast to its prey. Smoke had begun curling against the ceiling and slipping through the edges of the doorframe in eager wisps.
Don’t go away, he sobbed again, but Viv’s only reply was the sound of footsteps, growing fainter.
Tremelo awoke. His heart beat wildly. He sat up in bed and lit the oil lamp on his bedside table—so much more reliable than the second-rate electro-current that was allotted for the teachers’ quarters. Fennel the fox padded in from the sitting room, where she had been curled on the armchair, dreaming her own dreams.
