A Student's Dream (Twisted Cogs Book 1)

by Hemmings, Malcolm

  “You saved me,” Elena managed to say around a tongue that was too thick. Cross dragged her back onto the roof with a series of grunts, then held onto the back of her shirt as she led Elena across the rooftop to the ladder.

  “Of course I saved you, what was I supposed to do, let you fall to your death?” Cross snapped. “Maybe I should’ve, considering how bad I’m going to be punished for this.” Elena clung fast to the ladder. “Echo, can you get her back to the studio?”

  “I can,” Ele responded shortly, as Elena slowly descended, clinging to the ladder with every rung, “but I have questions, I want to know what’s going on-”

  “You have no right to question me right now, after what you two just did,” Cross said with venom, “just...just get out of here.”

  Elena touched the ground and started to run, but quickly slowed as the ground rolled beneath her. With one hand on the wall to steady her, and Ele murmuring encouragement, she made her way out of Studio Gritti.

  ***

  The dizziness and disorientation lasted almost the entire trip back to De Luca’s studio, and Elena would’ve gotten turned around several times if Ele hadn’t pointed her in the right direction. Her stomach roiled with nausea, the exhaustion she had felt all night pounded in her head, and she couldn’t even begin to process what she had learned. By the time she reached the door of the studio every part of her hurt.

  It had been a bad idea from beginning to end. It certainly didn’t feel like a victory, even though she had managed to keep Cross from shooting her friends, and by all rights had scored a win against a studio that...that what? That De Luca was at war with? That had attacked them? Were they at war with DaRose’s studio as well? Why had Cross seemed so friendly with them when she was about to shoot other De Luca garzoni, and why had she acted like Elena had broken some kind of code by retaliating?

  “This was supposed to tell us everything, and I have more questions than I started with,” she bemoaned quietly as they walked through the outer halls that led to the courtyard.

  “I might have some idea...but it’s too much to think through, I need your help,” Ele said, “things will be clearer in the morning, it’s obvious you’re not in a good state to think about important things right now.”

  “I’m not in a good state to think about anything right now.” Elena opened the door to the courtyard, pausing for a moment to let another wave of nausea pass. “I’m just glad I don’t have anything that needs thinking about before the morning...”

  Her words trailed off as she stepped into the courtyard. Directly in front of her in the middle of the courtyard stood Niccolo, Nicci, Vittoria, Vi, Frederica and Fred, clearly waiting for her to return. Waiting behind them, with arms crossed and a frown on his face, stood Master De Luca.

  Chapter XXIV

  Elena’s Storm

  De Luca’s office seemed much more imposing lit by lantern in the middle of the night. The flickering of the dim light gave the large room an air of mystery, and the pale yellow tint made it seem somehow more scholarly, and all of the books and papers in their neat, orderly stacks seem more profound. It was hard to forget that she was speaking to one of the most influential Masters of Milia in that room.

  “How did you know?” Elena mumbled, “did you check my room?” She was so tired that her eyes stung, but even in her exhausted state she could feel the prickles of worry like ice in her stomach. For all she knew, following the garzoni to Gritti’s studio was enough to get her kicked out, or perhaps De Luca wouldn’t care. There was no way she could gauge the extent of her crime, and that alone was terrifying.

  “Elena, I did tell you that we would put measures into place to warn us if you were out of bed at late hours,” Bea said gently. “Vittoria has a gift when it comes to watching out for people, and she saw you leave Gritti’s studio. She would’ve seen you enter it as well, but she was a touch distracted.” The gentle tone worried Elena almost as much as the freely offered information. There was no need for gentleness if Elena wasn’t going to be punished, and they’d always guarded their secrets before.

  “Are you...are you going to kick me out of the studio?” she asked, unsure if she wanted to hear the answer.

  “That depends,” De Luca sat at his desk with his fingers steepled. The answer and the ease with which he said it made Elena feel as if the wind had been knocked out of her chest, and the adrenaline alone served to wake her up a little.

  “What does it depend on?” Ele asked for her as she reeled.

  “It depends entirely on how I can think of you from now on.”

  “You can trust me sir, I’ll-”

  “It has little to do with trust and more to do with...how to put it? I am a man who loves procedure. I enjoy processes and rules and very stark definitions. Breakfast time is like so, dinner is like so. Servants are treated in one way, students another way. Provisional garzoni are like this, full garzoni are like that. I’m sure there exist masters for which your indomitable curiosity would be a joy, Elena, but for me all it does is blur the lines and ruin the distinctions which I like to keep in place.”

  Elena glanced from De Luca to Bea who stood by his side. She had been glad when he’d sent the other garzoni to their rooms, glad that they wouldn’t see her scolded like a child, but now she wished there was someone else to give her a facial reaction or a clue. The Master and his Echo were studying her so carefully, and yet in the flickering lantern-light she couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of what their expressions meant.

  “I...I’m sorry, Master De Luca,” she said finally, “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, child. I’m not interested in fostering any hybrid-halfway-special-case nonsense. Right now you are one such case, and I don’t intend to see you leave this room until I’ve decided into which category you fall so that you may be treated accordingly. You are either a provisional garzona who knows far too much, or you are a full garzona who has been here for less time than she should.”

  “Wait...you’re promoting me to full garzona?” Elena felt almost as disoriented as when she fell from Master Gritti’s roof, although at least then the only danger had been falling off of the roof to her death. Being kicked out of the Studio would be far worse.

  “He’s saying we know too much about what’s going on for him to treat you like a provisional, but not enough for him to treat you like full a garzona,” Ele translated quietly.

  “You know, some scholars say that a Stormtouched and their Echo are always nearly identical in their level of intelligence?” De Luca said conversationally. “I’ve never found that to be the case.”

  “Then...if that’s the problem, you could tell us what’s going on between the studios, and make me a full garzona,” Elena ventured, but De Luca was shaking his head before she even finished the sentence.

  “That would be promoting you to full garzona, and would be unfair to Lorenzo, Leanarda, and Mella. Indeed, it would be unfair to all of the provisional garzoni over the years who have ever worked hard to become full garzoni at this studio. Now in your case,” De Luca stabbed a wrinkled finger in Elena’s direction, “you’ve worked hard too, but you’ve worked in a different, roundabout direction. I’m not sure yet how well that has paid off for you, but we’re about to find out. Tell me, Elena, what, in your words, ‘is going on’ between the studios?”

  “I..I don’t know,” Elena said. It was overwhelming, too much to handle, and she couldn’t think hard enough or fast enough to manage any of it. As soon as she had a thought it seemed to slip through her mind like sand through fingers, and it was all she could do to even follow what De Luca was telling her.

  “In that case, I have no choice-”

  “Have you wondered why I recommended you, Elena Lucciano?” Bea held out a hand in front of De Luca, as if she would rest it on his shoulder if she could, and De Luca paused. Her voice was severe, but there was something strange in her eyes, something that Elena couldn’t quite identify. “You’re the first Fabera we’
ve let in this studio in more than a decade, why do you think that is?”

  “Because...” Elena strained to remember, “you said I impressed you on the tour of the studio?”

  “So why don’t you sit down, think carefully, and try to impress me now.”

  “But I can’t-”

  “Just try.”

  Elena obediently sat in the seat in front of De Luca’s desk, her mind racing and sluggish at the same time. Bea continued speaking.

  “Were you using your Storm, Elena, when you spied on the garzoni?”

  “Using my Storm?” The idea of pausing to focus on building something in the middle of the rush of confusion in Gritti’s studio was ludicrous. Even if she had managed to build some sort of weapon, it wouldn’t have told her anything new about what was happening. Elena looked to Ele to explain, but he looked just as confused as she was. “No...I didn’t need to build anything, why would I use my Storm?”

  “You didn’t need to build anything when you were on the tour either,” Bea replied, “and yet you knew things about the Studio that I doubt the full garzoni realize. You realized something even Bernardo and I hadn’t noticed before, when you noticed the studio has an ice chest.”

  “We have an ice chest?” De Luca asked. “I assumed the cooks bought ice from the market every morning.”

  “I just figured that stuff out because I was thinking of what I would need to start my own studio,” Elena mumbled, “I thought I wasn’t going to be allowed in. I was thinking of what I’d do-”

  “You were building it, in your head. Well then. Your Master is asking your a question about the city, Elena. You had better build a city.”

  “Enough help,” De Luca leaned back in his chair, folding his arms and fixing Elena with a look that was neither hostile nor friendly, “either she figures it out on her own from here or she’s not the garzona you thought she could be. Elena, I’ll ask you again, and I warn you now that if the answer is ‘I don’t know’, you will be be finding another bed to sleep in tonight. What is ‘going on’? What do the full garzoni know that the provisionals do not?”

  Elena turned helplessly to Ele, to find him deep in thought, brow furrowed.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Trying to build a city in my head,” he replied. “It’s hard, there’s way too much to even consider.”

  The panic was threatening to well up in her head, but Elena pushed it back down. When she replied to Ele, her voice came out shakily.

  “What’s there to consider? There’s a city with eight studios on eight streets named after colors, dedicated to beauty and art, collecting the most talented artists in the world. Oh yes, and sometimes in the dead of night they go out and attack each other for no reason.”

  “Why do they have to be named after colors?” Ele asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

  “Because they’re named after colors! Yellow, green, red, blue, grey, white, purple, black, those are colors!” The frustration and anxiety of the night was beginning to bubble over, and although she couldn’t snap at Master De Luca, she could snap at Ele. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how Milia is laid out.”

  “We’re building a city, and I don’t think they should be named after colors. Our city, our choice,” Ele pointed out, “can we please just try this, Elena? Unless you’ve been holding out on me and actually know exactly what’s happening. What have we got to lose?”

  For a few moments Elena didn’t know whether to help Ele or clench her teeth and scream. His eyes were closed, his arms behind his head, and his head tilted back towards the ceiling. After a few deep breaths, Elena closed her eyes as well, and focused.

  “Fine, eight studios, not named after colors. They are supposed to be dedicated to art, but for some reason they’re not,” she said, her voice somewhat bitter.

  “They are,” Ele corrected, “this is our city, and we want them to be, so they are. Art and beauty to all of Italoza. The highest courts commission the studio Masters, and the most talented of Stormtouched and Mortalis flock to them for guidance.”

  “Beautiful. Perfect. End of story.”

  “Stop being petulant and think.”

  Elena pouted, but let her mind run over the foggy city in her mind, indistinct except for the eight studios that shone like diamonds. She began filling in spaces of the city in general terms: places to live, to work, areas to support the city itself, shops and imports to support the studios. After a while the map became muddled in her head, and it was easy to see why.

  “As long as we’re making an imaginary city and we can do whatever we want with it, I probably wouldn’t have eight of them,” she noted. “Let’s say four studios.”

  “But each studio is run by one master,” Ele pointed out, “that means only four Master artisans in our city.”

  “Four studios with their own group of garzoni would produce plenty of art, and still keep healthy competition going amongst themselves. The culture of the city will grow without strangling it.”

  “But more competition means only the best will survive! If four studios produce art and beauty, eight will produce twice as much, won’t they?”

  Closing her eyes wasn’t helping Elena’s fatigue. Her temples were buzzing uncomfortably, and she snapped at her Echo irritably. “It’s not feasible, Ele! A city can’t support eight studios, there wouldn’t be enough supplies to go around, there wouldn’t be enough market for their art, and it would be impossible for them all to remain in equilibrium for long anyway.”

  “But, Elena-”

  Even though it was uncomfortable and distracting enough that she wasn’t quite sure what they were arguing about, the buzzing in her temples was at least keeping Elena awake and alert. “The best students would join the best studios, so eventually the rest would have nothing left. They would close, so why bother starting with eight when either way we’ll end up with less? No, it’s my city, I say we’ll start with four studios. Eight is unsustainable.”

  “Elena, Milia has eight studios. It’s had eight studios for decades.”

  Elena opened her eyes and stared at Ele, off-balance for a moment. She had forgotten that they were talking about a real city.

  “Milia has eight studios,” she repeated dumbly. “How?”

  “It...it can’t,” Ele faltered. “Like you said, it’s unsustainable. There’s not enough resources to go around.”

  “It can’t, but it does, so how does it?” Elena tried to follow it through, even tried to force the Storm back through her temples again, but the buzzing had stopped no matter how much she strained.

  “If the city isn’t running naturally, then something is keeping it moving, some sort of system,” Ele was on his feet now, pacing back and forth across the office, “a system held in place by law, so that all of the studios follow it.” Elena glanced at Bea and De Luca, but neither of them seemed to mind Ele’s pacing, watching the interchange carefully.

  “What kind of system?”

  “I don’t know...” Ele trailed off, looking at her sharply. “Build one.”

  “How am I supposed to-”

  “Just try. Congratulations, you’re the new Princeps of Milia. Your city has eight studios in it, not enough resources to take care of them all, and half of them won’t have enough students to stay open next year. Build a system to fix that.”

  Elena closed her eyes again. She knew what Ele was doing, trying to spark her Storm into working again, but it seemed to be working. She could feel the prickle of it as she began.

  “On the one hand, some studios will have to get less resources than they need. They’ll be barely scraping by, but at least the better-off studios won’t be allowed to take everything. The less-well-off will get a portion. That applies to materials, but also to students as well.”

  “You think Milia is forcing some garzoni to join the less-well-off studios?” Ele asked.

  “Yes! Milia would have to force them to, otherwise... otherwise...” Elena struggled as the buzzing of her Storm beg
an to fade. Her train of thought faltered, and she tried to pick it up again. Milia could do any number of things, how was she supposed to know what they had done? She didn’t know a think about the royals of Milia, how was she supposed to think like them?

  No...I’m not trying to think like them, I’m trying to build laws. With great effort Elena tried to think of it as her system, as something she was building, and as soon as her thoughts coasted in that direction the Storm returned, buzzing a confident answer in her mind.

  “No. We can’t force garzoni to serve in less successful studios, they would be miserable and leave. We can place restrictions on the more successful studios,” she opened her eyes, “restrictions like ‘you’re only allowed eight garzoni at a time’, for instance. The more successful studio gets the eight of their choice, and those students who weren’t accepted...well they’d naturally apply at other studios, wouldn’t they?”

  “Like Arturo,” Ele said, “when he was rejected from De Luca’s Studio he applied to DaRose’s.”

  De Luca’s face remained mostly impassive, but a slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It was as good a confirmation as any.

  “I don’t get it,” Ele said, “why would you get rid of four garzoni every year? If you’re allowed eight, why not take on eight and keep them with the studio?”

  “He’s not allowed eight, which is why he doesn’t have eight,” Elena answered, “he has four ‘provisional’ garzoni, but I’ll bet we aren’t legally considered real garzoni, are we?”

  “But none of this explains why we were attacked, or why we attacked Gritti’s studio,” Ele said.

  “A system like this keeps the ‘lesser’ studios open, but it wouldn’t keep them happy,” she barely had to think about it now, the system of laws forming in her mind as if she had been drafting them all night, “who wants to be the least successful Milian studio forever? No, our laws need a way for a studio to advance, it needs a way to move up in the pecking order. The studios fight to build reputation, don’t they? They use that reputation as a currency to move ahead...and,” the thought struck Elena like a thunderclap, and she dug in her pocket and fished out the coin Cross had given her, “they use actual currency as reputation.”