Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists)

by Giacomo, Jasmine

  But Calder spoiled his plan. “He passed. Of course he passed! And he had to work three times as hard as any of the rest of us to do it.”

  Bayan pretended to pout. “You only want credit for your tutoring.”

  “I do want credit for my tutoring. You’re an annoying student, always asking me why this and why that. Do I look like a history instructor to you?”

  “No. But you do look like the only person who was willing to tutor me, so the entire class didn’t get held back.” Bayan let his gaze slide across the other trainees. Most wore expressions of surprise or embarrassment.

  Eward approached Bayan and offered his hand. “Thanks, then.” He gave Bayan’s hand a shake. “It’s great to see you worked that hard. I’m not sure I’d have had it in me to learn all of that history from scratch. As a member of your class, and maybe a member of your hex, I want to say thank you. You’re a real team player.”

  Bayan smiled briefly at the Waarden boy, then turned back to Calder, who gave him a knowing nod. Taking his final trainee exams meant he was mere days from being allowed to use magic. In light of that approaching reality, Bayan finally felt something more intense than his anger: anticipation. Magic was his gift, and he’d been a fool to risk washing out before learning how to use it. If he couldn’t escape the campus, his only other option was to rank as high as he could and hope for an assignment in Balanganam. The prestige of being an Elemental Duelist would be more than enough to draw Imee back to him. Wouldn’t it? Wasn’t that what he still wanted?

  Bayan recalled Calder’s words and felt them apply to his longing for home. “Pretending until it’s real.”

  Spoils of War

  “Will there be anything else, Surveyor?” Lord Eshkin escorted Philo across the thick Pallithean rug to the threshold of his personal study, which was guarded by a pair of crane topiaries.

  Philo shook his fat blonde braids, and their brass end-hoops clinked against one another. “No, Minister. Thank you for taking the time to clarify our position on the new Means resolution with me.”

  Eshkin smiled. “It may be my duty to serve the empire in this regard, but I tell you, Philo, working with people such as yourself makes it a very light duty, indeed.”

  “Thank you, Lord Eshkin. I have always been proud to work in your Ministry, and I make a point to browbeat my assistants until they say the same.”

  Eshkin laughed. “Such initiative! You can see yourself out from here?”

  “Yes. Will you be back in the Kheerzaal office today?”

  “I think not. Some private matters are trying to lay claim to my life at the moment.”

  “Of course. I’ll speak with you on the morrow, then.” Philo nodded his farewell, descended the stairs, and made for the broad foyer of Lord Eshkin’s Akkeraad manor. His mind was already filling with a list of tasks he needed to delegate to Kipri, Cassander, and Gael.

  A series of glass display cases in a corner of the foyer caught his eye before he could leave, however. Despite his schedule, Philo felt his feet change direction.

  “May I be of assistance, Surveyor?” asked a wiry maid with a cap of tight iron-gray curls, who was polishing one of the cases. She tried not to stare at Philo’s wig.

  “I find my attention arrested by the contents of these cases.” Philo glanced at the organized collection. All of it was pre-Imperial Raqtaaq in origin, and some of the older pieces—vases, shields—appeared to be centuries old. Philo admired the bits of lapis jewelry, golden wax-press seals, finely wrought tooth necklaces, ceremonial helms, exotic quill pens, daggers, and far more. “Why are these being displayed?”

  “There’s a large ministerial event happening in five days’ time, and Lord Eshkin wants to have these out to represent some of his background for his guests to consider, if you see what I mean.”

  “I believe I do. He collected these during the Raqtaaq Wars?”

  “Yes. Spoils of war, I suppose, though he didn’t engage in any battles.”

  “Not the military or magical sort, anyway,” Philo mused.

  “Indeed, sir. Lord Eshkin’s war was of the political sort. Yet he still managed to get his hands on all this finery.”

  Philo stepped around to the side of a case, looking at the smaller bracelets and rings with a fatuous smile. Bending closer, he noticed that one of the sigil rings looked exactly like the vagary’s ring he’d lost in the Archive months ago. Disbelieving, he leaned around the side of the case, examining the ring for the nick Fabian’s sword had made in the gold.

  The nick was there.

  “Excuse me.” Philo couldn’t pull his eyes from the damaged ring. His heart thudded against his ribs. “I don’t mean to be forward, but are you quite sure this one ring belongs in the collection?” He pointed it out to the servant.

  “Funny you should ask about that one.” The woman took a chatty pose against a case and let her cleaning cloth hang idle. “I just found that ring up in Lord Eshkin’s office, while I was giving it a dusting. Well, I imagine he’d pulled it out to show to someone and forgot to put it back, so I done it for him. Too bad about that nick. You imagine it might have got there from some sort of deadly duel?” She shivered with macabre delight.

  “I should imagine you’ve hit upon the truth of it, dear.” Philo studied the ring’s sigil. It was Raqtaaq; seeing it among its brothers left no doubt. Had the vagary who attacked him been a war veteran? Or an opportunist who had moved from Nunaa to Marghebellen? Or someone else?

  Much more importantly, why had the honest, upstanding Lord Eshkin felt the need to steal this ring from Philo? For there could be no question that it had been stolen. Philo thought back. He must have seen the ring on my finger. He spilt the ring bowl in the Archive on purpose.

  A sudden, sinking feeling rushed into Philo’s stomach as he recalled a forgotten detail about the ring. Something had bothered him about it from the moment he’d picked it up—it felt lighter than a pure gold ring should.

  Over the last two decades, the Kheerzaal had dealt with several incidents involving insubordinate Raqtaaq elements forging imperial ducats. Eventually, the forgers had all been caught and either killed or castrated, as per the law. Could one of those men have drawn Lord Eshkin into a coin counterfeiting cell? The ring itself could be a symbol of identification among the counterfeiters, or perhaps it was a showing of talent. The ability to hide lesser, lighter metal within a golden exterior would be a required skill for forging ducats.

  He needed the ring. There was no help for it. Trying not to sweat from nervousness and ruin his powdered makeup, Philo made a point of studying every case and murmuring under his breath, throwing out some Aklaa city names he’d mapped a score of years ago as proof he was some sort of Raqtaaq expert. Eventually, the servant finished her polishing. She smiled, nodded, and excused herself, leaving Philo alone in the foyer.

  Before someone bustled in with some other task, before he could lose his nerve, before sanity could return, Philo lifted the heavy glass flap on top of the display case and thrust his hand down into the grouping of rings, delicately picking up the one he’d lost. He jammed it in a pocket and lowered the glass lid. Belatedly, he noticed his sweat-smeared fingerprints on the newly-polished glass, and he swiped at them with his fine linen sleeve until they blurred out of existence.

  Heart pounding like a charging bull, Philo forced himself to stroll outside, nod amiably to Nic, and enter his waiting purple carriage. As he sat down inside, he pulled the ring out of his pocket and stared at it.

  If the serving woman is lucky, Lord Eshkin won’t notice the ring’s gone missing anytime soon. Once he knows someone moved the ring, he’ll suspect everyone and everything, and that will include me, however careful I manage to be. I have until then to figure this puzzle out.

  And I’m not a careful person. I suppose I’ll just have to pull rank and press some less visible people into service until I can prove one way or the other just what Lord Eshkin has gotten himself into.

  But my first step must b
e alone. I need to visit Lady Eirene.

  ~~~

  Tuur Langlaren settled onto the ratty cushion he had placed on the flat stone thirty years ago, folded his hands on top of the sheet of paper in his lap, and waited. As time passed, the pupils of his hazel eyes dilated in the dim light filtering in from the outside.

  The diffuse blue glow finally arrived, illuminating the small, smooth-walled cave with a cool hue.

  “Staas,” Tuur said, by way of greeting. “I have brought the latest class list. All of them passed on the first try. But you knew they would.”

  The light brightened momentarily. Tuur set the sheet of paper, containing thirty-six names in alphabetical order, down on the cave floor. Then he closed his eyes, sensing the full presence of the sint filling the air around him. Warmth and a brighter light pressed on him for several moments. When it faded, Tuur opened his eyes and looked down at the paper.

  The names were rearranged into six groups of six, inscribed in a hand different than Tuur’s. Even the ink color had changed to a deep turquoise, a color he’d seen in the sea just off the coast of Kemada once, but never in any stationery shop. No trace of Tuur’s plain black ink remained anywhere on the page. Tuur lifted it from the floor and studied the arrangements.

  He placed a finger atop the names in the first group. “This is the strongest combination?”

  The light brightened once more, then went out. The sint was gone, and Tuur sat alone in the dimness.

  “Well.” He rose from the old cushion, paper in hand. “This’ll be an interesting semester.”

  ~~~

  “Why hello, darling,” Lady Eirene greeted Philo, stepping back from the open door of her workshop. “Autumn’s come early this year. Do come in out of that fog.”

  Philo stepped in and lifted his damp, lace-edged cape from his shoulders. He patted his pale blue wig, assuring himself that it was dry, and cast an eye over Eirene’s shell-strand headdress, the one style of headwear he could never wear.

  Eirene’s workspace was tidy, her table tops and shelves holding chemical or metal ingredients labeled in a neat hand. Three lamps burned brightly, illuminating the room against the dim fogginess outside. The smell in the air was reminiscent of Philo’s jewelry boxes, and it brought a smile to his face.

  “What can I do for the Ministry of Ways today?” The plump woman looked up at him from beneath the tiny, speckled cowries that marked the lower edge of her shell-laden fringe.

  Philo bit his lip as he shut the door to her workshop. “Actually, my dear, I have come on a matter of personal urgency, though it does relate in some way to my position.”

  Eirene’s golden-brown eyes gave him a sharp look. “Clear as mud, darling.”

  Philo fished out the ring he’d stolen an hour ago. Eirene’s eyebrows lifted.

  “I work with forged ducats, darling. That is not a coin.”

  “No. But I have reason to believe it is a fake. That it’s not pure gold.”

  She held out a hand, and he placed the ring on her palm. She closed her eyes and hefted the tiny weight of the ring a few times.

  “You may be right. Let’s test it to be certain.”

  She led Philo through a narrow doorway and into a large laboratory. Central tables held beakers of clear liquid and dark glass jars, as well as rows of small wooden boxes and short bits of various metals in wire, coin, and cube forms. Eirene stopped in front of a side table bearing a small set of scales.

  Placing the ring on one side, she selected a wooden box from among a set of several. She opened its lid, and Philo saw dozens of tiny golden weights within.

  As Eirene placed them, one by one, on the scale opposite the ring, Philo watched the scale begin to balance. When she had found the exact weight of the ring, she lifted both scales from their hooks and turned to a center table. A pair of identical narrow glass vials waited, filled to their brims with water. They were seated in slightly wider glass vials with markings on their sides. She gently slid the scales’ contents into the twin waters. Liquid spilled over the edges of the narrower vials and rose against the markings at the bottom of the wider set.

  Philo frowned. “What does the water tell you?”

  “That my vials are now wet.” She grinned, bending close to stare at the water in the marked vials. “The amount of water, now—that tells me the pure gold weights have a different density than the ring, though their weight was the same.”

  “It is a fake,” he said, shoulders slumping.

  “Indeed, darling. Care to tell me why that distresses you?”

  “I would, dear, if I knew what it meant. Have you seen disguised rings like this in association with coin-forgery groups in the past? As a sort of signifier that the wearer is a member of a forgery group?”

  “No. The good forgers would be able to afford the real thing, and they wouldn’t want to advertise their illegal work by wearing it. If anything, my darling little ducat forgers branched out into ring forgery, targeting poor merchants who want to appear wealthier than they can legally afford to be.”

  Philo made a sour frown. Lord Eshkin would not have stolen the ring to seem wealthier. Not least because he’d hidden it away in a drawer.

  She fished the ring out of the water and stepped over to a large, framed magnifying glass. “This sigil mean anything?”

  “It’s Raqtaaq. That’s all I know.”

  “The gold has worn thin in a few spots.” She turned it over and examined it further. “Whoever owned it had been wearing it for some while.”

  “Will knowing the inner metal be useful?”

  “It can be. Copper is a softer metal, like gold, but it often leaves a telltale green stain behind. Bronze or brass fakes are common enough. Ferrous coins are rarer, though, and tend to come from only a few parts of the empire, mostly in Shawnash’kote.” Eirene gave the ring a flick with her fingers, sending it rolling down the table top. As it neared the table’s far edge, it jumped sideways and clung to the flat side of a dark gray block of rock, joining a few other bits of metal there. “Ferrous. Looks like you’ve got yourself a Shawnash fake.”

  What would drive a highly respected nobleman to commit the petty theft of a bit of shiny war loot? Philo wondered, delicately nibbling on a fingernail. No, it’s not really war loot, is it? The Kheerzaal History Archive has no record of the symbol on the ring among their noble Raqtaaq sigils. So, if it’s not a memento and it’s not the symbol…

  It’s the ring itself.

  “What if it isn’t iron?” he blurted, heart stuttering into a faster rhythm.

  Eirene picked up the magnetic rock, with the ring still attached, and waggled it. “It’s iron, dear.”

  “There are other magnetic metals.”

  She frowned. “All right. Maybe it’s nickel or koboldt, but the sheer volume of iron in the empire simply dwarfs the chances of this ring being anything else. No other metals stick to lodestone.”

  “No other legal metals.”

  Eirene’s expression went from smug to cautious, and she set down the magnet immediately.

  Philo swallowed the spit that had pooled in his mouth. “Is there a way to test for iron versus steel?”

  Eirene sighed. “If there is, I know where to find it.”

  Hexlings

  Bayan stood with Calder and the rest of his class on the small, windswept plaza, damp from a brief spate of early morning autumn rain. Before them rose a stairstep of cozy, round buildings that climbed the mountainside, six to a row, six rows high: the hex houses. All the buildings occupying the same row had roofs of the same color, representing one of the elements.

  “Which element do you want to be in?” Calder eyed the various rows. Here and there, more advanced students stood on the tiny balconies in front of their buildings and looked down on the gathered students.

  “I don’t know. Does it make any difference?” Bayan asked.

  “Depends on whom you ask. Some of the avatar students say they manifested their first avatars in the element of their he
x house. What do you think you’ll be best at?”

  Bayan looked over at him. “Don’t think it matters much, do you? There isn’t a mud element.”

  Calder’s eyes bugged, and a delighted grin spread across his face. “Did you just make a joke?”

  Bayan snorted.

  “You did! You made a joke, and at your own expense, too! We’ll turn you into a duelist yet, Bayan Lualhati.” Calder clapped him on the shoulders with both hands.

  Bayan scowled. “If you’d said you wanted to turn me into a Waarden, I’d have dropped you to the ground.”

  Calder didn’t even blink. “Aren’t you glad you’ve such a canny friend in me?”

  Bayan couldn’t help smiling at that. “Bhattara na. It seems I’m stuck with you.”

  The headmaster approached from a side path, a sheet of paper in his hands. The wind tugged at it as he paused before the students. “Congratulations again, all of you, on advancing in your history, meditation, and form training classes. I hear good things about many of you from your instructors. It is time to assign you all into your hexes. The hex is the basic military unit of the duelist army. Right now, of course, you aren’t expected to fight any wars, so the arrangement is partially ceremonial. But, should any of you rise far enough to begin training for the rank of Hexmagic Duelist, you will understand why we put you all in hexes from the start.

  “It’s a bit windy out here, so I’ll be brief. I know most of you are looking forward to examining your new hex houses. These gathering rooms will be yours for the remainder of your stay here on campus, and you may use them as often or as little as you like when you’re not required elsewhere.

  “So, will the following students please step forward for inclusion in a Wood level hex house: Katje, Jaan…” The headmaster continued until he’d named all the members of the first hex.