Chosen (9781742844657)

by Morgansen, Shayla

  ‘Yes, it was a vital clue,’ he said, much more open with me and friendlier now that I’d gained his approval. ‘It gave Renatus and myself a few pointers and helped us to narrow down our search. We’ve been trying to retrieve Peter’s body for a week.’

  I assumed that Qasim’s search method of choice was scrying, which impressed me even more deeply.

  ‘It must be really useful, being able to find lost things by scrying,’ I said, sitting down on the arm of a two-seater. Something occurred to me. ‘When you’re scrying, if you’re looking for something, are you able to pick things up and move them around?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Qasim asked, his fascinated and proud expression growing slightly quizzical.

  ‘Can you pick things up?’ I was thinking of the books in the office. I hadn’t quite touched them, so I hadn’t even known if I’d be able to feel them or if my hand would just go straight through them. I hadn’t fallen through the chair, door or floor so I was still subject to the basic rules of physical space, but did the same rules apply if I wanted to relocate something? If I’d been able to take a text from the bookshelf, and Renatus still hadn’t been able to see me, would he have freaked out to see the book floating out of the bookcase unassisted?

  ‘Aristea, scrying is entirely observatory,’ Qasim reminded me. ‘You just watched an event. Do you mean, if you scry yourself, can you still interact with objects around you? I’m sure I’ve told you about passive scrying. You learn to scry and carry on with daily activities simultaneously.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said patiently. ‘I mean, while I was there, I was going to pick up some books. I didn’t get the chance to, so-’

  ‘When you were where?’ Qasim asked, a little sharply. I frowned a little. What have I been talking about for the past two minutes?

  ‘In the office,’ I said.

  ‘You weren’t there. You saw it.’

  ‘No, I was walking around,’ I corrected. ‘I even ran to the door when you all left to meet Lord Gawain. Nobody could see me.’

  Qasim’s excited expression slowly slipped away. He said, ‘You were there? Actually there?’

  ‘Yes, I just turned up beside the window,’ I said. Something about this wasn’t right. ‘Why?’

  ‘Did you actively scry?’ Qasim demanded, a new expression slowly spreading over his features. It was darker, and I already didn’t like it.

  ‘No, I was trying to sleep.’

  ‘Did you or did you not travel into that office as a whole entity?’ he said, his voice getting louder and angrier with each word. I shook my head slowly, uncertain of how to answer. Whole entity? I didn’t travel anywhere. I’d been sleeping. ‘Aristea! This is serious. Active scrying is an illegal activity. You could be excluded from the school or arrested.’

  My heart skipped a beat, and I blinked in horror. Then I didn’t do it, whatever it is…

  ‘But I didn’t mean to,’ I said reasonably, ‘so it wasn’t active at all.’

  ‘That’s a technicality,’ Qasim said tightly, glaring at me now. ‘Active scrying is highly dangerous. It is what some people call astral travel and others call Haunting – your soul leaves your body unattended to walk around. Most practitioners report a floating feeling beforehand. Does this sound familiar to you, Aristea?’

  It did.

  ‘No,’ I said. The air around me flickered with my lie. Qasim’s glare narrowed and I wanted to run away. I hadn’t meant to do anything wrong. They wouldn’t really expel me, would they? I imagined going home to Angela and having to tell her I’d been expelled already.

  ‘Luckily, there’s a simple way to be sure,’ Qasim said in a tightly controlled voice. He continued to glare at me, and I felt the silky tendrils of his mind begin to enter mine. He was going to take a look at the memory. Could he tell from that whether I’d really been there or just viewed the scene? Of course he could – from the part when I looked down at my pyjamas, or when my hand reached out for the old books.

  In a flash, I thought of Emmanuelle, crying her eyes out, clinging to Renatus. I shouldn’t have seen any of that – it wasn’t mine to share. I hadn’t said it, so I wasn’t going to let Qasim see it, either.

  ‘No,’ I said forcefully, and as I said the word, I fought back with my mind, clamping down on Qasim’s presence as I’d not known I could do. I threw him out and raised my hands, instantly building up a dozen wards all around my mind. I felt his anger – I felt him trying to get in. But my wards were strong.

  ‘Aristea!’ His voice was a furious one, and I felt terror coursing through my blood. How much trouble was I in now? ‘Let me see the memory.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now, Aristea!’ Qasim shouted. ‘If you’ve committed a criminal act, it’s in your best interest to cooperate. Now, show me the memory of what you’ve done.’

  ‘No, it’s mine,’ I said, feeling childish. I snatched out my wand, intensely threatened. ‘You can’t just break in and look around.’

  Qasim stared at me, and I wondered whether he was going to hit me. Oh, god, oh, god…

  ‘I can’t,’ he repeated, nodding to himself. He grabbed my wrist roughly and pulled the door back open. He dragged me through it, into and along the hall, where my classmates were lining up. They watched on in curious silence. I met Xanthe’s eyes. Would I see her again? Was I about to be literally chucked out?

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked. My voice was small and high – I was terrified. Qasim would not look at me. I could feel the fury emanating from him in waves. I asked again, louder. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To speak with the headmaster,’ he said harshly. ‘I mightn’t be able to break in…but he can.’

  I tripped on an uneven floorboard. Renatus could break through my wards?

  We stopped at the heavy oak door with no doorknob. Qasim knocked. It was a hard, urgent knock that the occupant couldn’t ignore. After a moment, the door swung open. Giving my wrist an unnecessarily hard tug, Qasim pulled me inside after him.

  I froze, staring around the room. It was exactly as I’d seen it in my dream. Exactly the same, except that now it was day time. The bookcase, the huge desk, the papers piled up neatly. I stumbled slightly as Qasim pulled me forward so that I was standing in front of the desk.

  As he had been the night before, at the desk sat Renatus, placidly writing something.

  ‘I have honestly only just sat down, Qasim, so this had better be important,’ he said without looking up. His voice was low and smooth, with only a hint of impatience.

  ‘Aristea scried you last night,’ Qasim said in the angry, harsh tone that scared me. Renatus looked up. ‘She scried you in here.’

  ‘She what?’ the headmaster asked, looking from the Scrier’s face to mine. His gaze was very intense, but I couldn’t look away. He’d seemed kind of nice with Emmanuelle last night, but Qasim didn’t bring me here for Renatus to be nice to me. Was he going to put a truth spell on me? Was he going to force his way into my mind and rip through my thoughts? Was he going to expel me? Arrest me?

  Was Emmanuelle’s dignity worth all that? I barely knew her.

  I began to shake.

  ‘She Haunted you, Renatus,’ Qasim said angrily. ‘She broke the law.’

  Renatus regarded me a little longer before turning back to his colleague.

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked, his tone cool and expressionless.

  ‘She described the events of last night, and everything that was said inside this room. There’s only one way to scry into this office.’

  Renatus’s violet eyes flickered to me briefly.

  ‘Have you examined her memory to be sure?’ he asked. ‘Active scrying is a serious charge, Qasim.’

  ‘I was about to when she refused me entry and drew her wand,’ the Scrier spat, pointing at my right hand. My wand was still clasped tightly in my trembling fingers, hanging limply at my side. I wished now that I hadn’t taken it out. I had already broken the law �
� I didn’t have to make it worse by drawing a weapon on a White Elm councillor. ‘She put up wards and I can’t get through.’

  Renatus nodded. I tensed nervously – was he about to smash down my hasty wards and break into my thoughts? But I felt nothing. He gazed at me for a while, and then turned back to Qasim.

  ‘Those are good wards, too,’ he commented. Qasim’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘We need to know the extent of her crime,’ he said in that tight voice he had used earlier. It sounded as though he was struggling to control a lot of ugly emotions. ‘Then we need to inform Lord Gawain. You can get through.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Renatus said, placing his pen down on the table, in line with the other pens. I swallowed, but my throat was dry. ‘I can, but surely it would be easier to examine the memory with Aristea’s permission.’

  ‘Aristea has already refused,’ Qasim said, dropping my wrist and folding his arms.

  ‘Then I refuse, too,’ Renatus said smoothly. Qasim stared at him.

  ‘You refuse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You refuse to follow up a charge as serious as this? Where is Lord Gawain?’

  ‘Lord Gawain will not be back here until Sunday,’ Renatus answered, folding his hands together neatly. ‘He left straight after the funeral. He has asked me to fill out summaries of important incidents for him to read upon his return. He is working today, tonight and all day tomorrow as a mortal in court, and this weekend is his wife’s birthday. He does not wish to be disturbed except in urgent circumstances.’

  ‘I think this counts, Renatus,’ Qasim said coldly. ‘A student has performed an act of illegal and highly dangerous magic-’

  ‘Aristea,’ Renatus interrupted, as smoothly as ever, ‘did you intentionally and actively scry last night, transporting your consciousness into my office, with the intention of causing harm and knowing that it was unlawful?’

  I quickly shook my head. My throat wouldn’t have worked, anyway.

  ‘Well,’ Renatus said, turning back to Qasim. ‘I don’t think there was anything particularly important said last night, anyway.’

  ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse!’ the older sorcerer snarled. ‘Her intention is irrelevant. What she heard or saw is not important. The fact is that she was here! She witnessed private White Elm business. Lord Gawain must be contacted, and Aristea must be excluded from the school, as it is stated in the form she and her guardian signed.’

  ‘Actually, I believe that the form states that a student who acts in an unlawful manner may face exclusion from the school, at the discretion of the headmaster,’ Renatus recited, ‘or something to that extent. As that’s me, I don’t think that we need to discuss this any further.’

  ‘You’re not expelling her?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ the headmaster said.

  ‘I’m going to speak to Lord Gawain about this,’ Qasim said after a long moment of stunned silence. ‘He has a right to know.’

  ‘Well, Qasim, he’s asked not to be disturbed,’ Renatus reminded the Scrier. ‘There’s nothing he can really do about it for you, either, because you all put me in charge of the school, which makes my word final on all matters relating to the students and their enrolment here.’ He held up a blank sheet of paper. ‘This is the report I’ll give Lord Gawain on Sunday when he visits. Anything I deem important enough for him to worry about will be written down on here. You may be the next Lord, Qasim, but you’re not there yet. I’m still one step ahead – and so it is me who will decide what Lord Gawain needs to know, and this is not one of those things.’

  I didn’t dare look at Qasim right then. I felt his anger and thought he might implode if he tried to hold it in any longer. He had brought me here, intending for Renatus to back him up and beat a confession out of me. Instead, Renatus had pulled the rug out from under his feet and taken my side, completely out of the blue.

  The tension and silence that followed was horrific. Eventually Qasim turned away, muttering loudly in an unfamiliar language, and strode out of the office, fuming. His pride was damaged; I’d gotten the better of him, and I knew he’d hate me for it.

  But at least now I’d be around to be hated.

  Right then, my legs gave out beneath me, and I collapsed backwards into one of the stiff-but-comfy armchairs. Relief made my head feel light. I wasn’t expelled.

  Renatus, I noticed, was watching me. I swallowed twice, trying to make my throat work.

  ‘I’m really sorry for all this,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I honestly didn’t mean to do anything. I didn’t know I could scry like that.’

  ‘I’m not angry,’ he said, and I relaxed a little more. ‘I would, however, like to know what you saw last night.’

  I swallowed again and said, ‘Everything, from when Emmanuelle came in. I was standing there.’ I pointed to the space in front of the window.

  ‘I take it then that you heard our conversation about Peter.’ It was a statement, not a question, so I said nothing. He asked, ‘What else?’

  ‘You talked about Lisandro, or mentioned his name, and then talked about Peter and the funeral,’ I answered, shrugging uncomfortably. I had recounted most of what had been said to Qasim because I had wanted to prove I was there; recounting the same information to Renatus was discomforting. For one thing, I now knew that I’d been performing illegal magic and didn’t want to further incriminate myself to the one person who could cancel my enrolment. Secondly, Renatus had actually been there. It felt odd to be telling him stuff he already knew.

  ‘What else did you see?’ he asked.

  ‘You were there, you should know,’ I said before I could stop myself. I looked down at my lap. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re not in trouble,’ he responded, ‘and nothing you say will get you into any trouble, provided that you are honest with me.’

  ‘I saw Emmanuelle kiss you,’ I muttered, avoiding his intense gaze and wishing my cheeks wouldn’t feel so warm.

  ‘Did you tell Qasim everything that you saw last night?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said pointedly, looking away. I didn’t like talking about this. I did not want to discuss my teachers’ personal lives with them. I wished I’d never scried myself into this office.

  ‘Why not?’

  I stared at him, disbelieving.

  ‘Because it was none of his business,’ I said strongly, but then looked away, less confident. ‘It was none of mine, either. I shouldn’t have been here and I shouldn’t have seen anything. Neither of you knew I was watching.’

  Renatus reclined slightly in his chair, regarding me.

  ‘Emmanuelle doesn’t need the entire council and student body to know that she made a mistake – especially one that she couldn’t control. It would embarrass her, and that’s not something I want to do. Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m very grateful for your respect thus far, Aristea,’ Renatus said sincerely. ‘Emmanuelle has suffered a great loss – she has just lost a friend that might have been her soul mate. Your discretion is appreciated, as is your determination to keep this secret from Qasim. You are correct – it is none of his business, or anyone else’s. To that end, I suppose we can agree that what you saw will not be shared with anyone else, by either of us, and perhaps that it never even happened?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and stood so I could shake his hand when he offered it. His skin was cool, as if his blood had more important things to do than warm and oxygenate his hands. I released his hand after shaking it once, but his long fingers held on.

  ‘If nobody hears about what you scried, then technically, nobody else on the council needs to know that you scried at all,’ he said, holding my gaze in his.

  ‘Qasim knows, and he’s going to tell Lord Gawain,’ I reminded him, my stomach clenching. What would happen when Lord Gawain found out?

  ‘Qasim won’t tell anyone anything,’ Renatus said dismissively. ‘He’s just blustering. He’s angry
and his ego is bruised. He won’t want anyone to hear the full story, in which he didn’t just catch a student out for misbehaviour, but also had his authority overstepped by me. He already dislikes us both. Today has made that worse. He will be very, very angry if you are not punished. He could make life very uncomfortable.’

  I swallowed once again, nervousness flooding back.

  ‘To avoid that,’ Renatus said clearly, ‘it needs to seem to him that you have been punished. I am issuing you three weeks of detention, to be served in the evenings of weekdays, in my office, for one hour a night. There will be no chores or lines or scrubbing of floors – only time spent here. Does that sound fair to you?’

  I nodded, too relieved to say anything. I had expected some kind of suspension or removal of privileges. An hour a night lost for three weeks was a thousand times better than writing to Angela to say I’d be coming home early, or watching my friends attend classes while I sat in my room, banned.

  ‘Perhaps you can spend the time practising scrying properly so that you can get back into Qasim’s good books,’ Renatus continued. His hand still grasped mine across the desk. ‘If you are serious about becoming a Scrier for the White Elm, you’ll want to be able to go to him for advice. So, you will serve three weeks of detention with me, and because the rest of the council and the students aren’t to know that you ever illegally scried, you will tell anyone who asks that your punishment is for refusing to follow an instruction given by Qasim. You argued with him over whether or not his technique was correct. It was a silly argument and you don’t even remember why you said it. The council knows his tendency to overreact and his love of discipline, so nobody will think twice.’

  It took me a moment to realise that the headmaster was inventing a story for me to tell anyone who asked for it. Was he was asking me to lie to the White Elm?