by Jill Archer
My first reaction was that it looked like a bigger version of some of the Etincelle estates. Lots of heavy, clunky, gothic architecture with an emphasis on pointed arches, flying buttresses, and gargoyles. But there were a lot more people milling around here than there would be on a private estate. And there were more buildings. The campus took up at least five city blocks. That seemed about right, I thought, mentally checking off the buildings I’d read about in the orientation materials—Megiddo, Abaddon, and Infernus (dormitories), Marduk’s (eating hall), Corpus Justica (library), Lekai Auditorium, and Rickard Building, where the main classrooms were. There were probably a few I’d forgotten. On the other side of the courtyard from where I stood was the Joshua School, where Peter went. But he wouldn’t be arriving for a few weeks so, for now, I was on my own. I trudged into the Warenne Tiberius Rhaetia Administrative Building in search of the student affairs desk. Someone there would be able to tell me where my dorm room was and who I’d be sharing it with.
On the way, I checked out my new surroundings. For the most part, everything was exactly how I’d imagined it. The lounge at student affairs looked pristinely comfortable, with deep couches, overstuffed chairs, and large tables. The walls were a freshly painted beige and the furniture had been recently reupholstered in tastefully coordinated patterns of honey, russet gold, and burgundy. Thankfully, there were no plants. I hadn’t expected to see any in a school where they trained future Maegesters but I was relieved nonetheless. Students were milling about in small groups. More than half of them seemed to be paying more attention to the people around them than the group they were with. I hurried through the room, wanting a hot shower and a dry pair of shoes more than anything.
The Hyrke working the student affairs desk had a cold. A box of tissues, a bag of throat lozenges, and a bottle of aspirin lined her desk like charms. If the charms were supposed to ward off students, it wasn’t working. The line was at least six students deep when I took my place. The woman in front of me mumbled something under her breath to the man in front of her. He turned around to reply and caught me staring. I didn’t want to be rude and was just about to look away when he winked at me and then said to the woman in front of me, “Ivy, she’s ill, for Luck’s sake. Give the woman a break.”
“Like Hell,” Ivy muttered. “That bottle of aspirin has been sitting there since summer and those lozenges look so old they’re probably from the pre-Apocalyptic days.”
A few of the other students snickered. I gathered from their collective impatience they’d been there awhile. The man in front of Ivy interpreted my staring as an invitation to chat. He pushed past her and extended his hand to me.
“I’m Fitz,” he said.
“Noon,” I replied, shaking his hand. His grip was firm and quick. The woman named Ivy turned around. With flaming red hair, a mottled complexion, and light green eyes, she looked every inch a Mederi. And with that name I had to wonder… but what would a Mederi be doing in law school? They were all about healing and growing.
“This is Ivy, my cousin,” Fitz said. The family resemblance was strong, although Fitz’s hair was a few shades deeper and his complexion ruddier.
“So, what section are you in?” Ivy asked. All first years were in one of three sections. You did everything with your section—took classes, studied, ate, and even slept in the same dorms together. The orientation materials had made it sound as if your section was a fishbowl. You’d be able to see the world around you but you wouldn’t be living in it. The only people who were going to share your life during the next year were the people in your section. I had the feeling my answer to Ivy’s question would determine exactly how much longer this conversation would last.
“Section three,” I said.
“Us too,” Fitz said, grinning.
Ivy’s expression changed from impatient annoyance to one that was half-interested, half-wary. I was now someone who mattered, an academic competitor who would have a direct effect on her future. I wanted to reassure her that my only goal was to live in the fishbowl without being eaten by the cat but since saying something so revealing was out of the question, I settled on asking if they’d heard anything about our professors.
“Ben Copeland teaches Sin and Sanction,” said Fitz. “He’s young. Overcompensates for it by being overly strict. Any perceived slight and you are on the outs for the whole semester. Darius Dorio teaches Council Procedure—”
“A real performer,” Ivy cut in. “Turns every class into a show.” That could be interesting, I thought, provided I stayed part of the audience.
“Promises and Oathbreaking is Telford,” Fitz said, rolling his eyes.
“Ah, yes,” said Ivy. “The professorial equivalent of Dionaea muscipula. He lures students into a false sense of security by repeating test questions every year. He even puts the questions and the answers on file in the library. But every now and then—and you never know when—he asks entirely new questions. So you have to study everything anyway or risk complete failure.”
“For Evil Deeds, we’ve got Sarah Meginnis,” continued Fitz. Listening to the two of them was like listening to two simultaneously played dueling piano performances. My head bobbled between them, trying to keep pace.
“Very dusty,” Ivy said, flipping her hair and taking a peek at the front of the line. There was only one more student in front of them.
“She’s ancient and has been at St. Luck’s forever,” Fitz said. “Rumor has it she just went straight to teaching without any time in the field. She’s out of touch with real practice, but since evil deeds haven’t changed much since Azazel first defined them in the hundred days following Armageddon, she’s still teaching what we need to know.”
I nodded, acting like some of this was old news and the rest was of no concern, but inside I was sweating. Forget about my concerns over training to become a Maegester. Studying to become an ordinary Hyrke Barrister was starting to sound near impossible too.
“Who’d I leave out?” Fitz asked, stepping up to within sneezing distance of Lady Lozenge. He was next in line.
“Erdman for Analysis and Application,” Ivy said. “We don’t know much about her, except she’s new. I did hear that A and A is a lot of case briefs, though, endless reading and a lot of writing. The only other first year professor is Quintus Rochester. But he’s a Maegester and only teaches Maegester classes.”
I hoped my cheeks weren’t burning. It was so much easier playing Hyrke at Gaillard where no one talked about stuff like this. Was I imagining the hush in the room? Mercifully, Fitz was called up and Ivy, naturally, went with him. I knew they were cousins but they acted like siblings. I watched as they poked and prodded each other, trading little barbs back and forth while Lady Lozenge pulled up their info. A few seconds later, all three of them turned toward me.
Oh no.
“Are you Noon Onyx?” Lozenge asked.
“Yes,” I said. Now I knew I was not imagining the hush. The room had gone deadly silent.
“You’re not signed up for Manipulation,” Lozenge said.
“Manipulation—?” My voice squeaked and I refused to look around at anyone else. What was she talking about? How stupid was I for not even reading the Maegester part of the course catalog. I’ll bet even the Hyrkes who were training to become Barristers did that.
“I need to know where to put you.” Lozenge said, exasperated. “Are you here to train as a Barrister or a Maegester?”
Up until this moment, I’d managed to avoid situations that put me in awkward positions such as this. Positions where I’d have to lie outright about who and what I was. Oh, I’d omitted the truth a countless number of times. But I had never stood in front of an administrator at a demon law school and denied being something the demons valued. The demons might view it as stealing. That’s why Maegesters had to declare themselves by Bryde’s Day of their twenty-first year. A Maegester’s adult life was either spent serving the Council or it was spent… not at all. I cleared my throat.
Would Peter be able to find the Reversal Spell? If so, when?
“I’m…”
“Apparently, you’re my new roommate,” Ivy said, staring at me. She gestured behind her with her thumb. “She said you’re in Megiddo. Room one twelve, same as me. You did know that the Hyrkes here have roommates, right?”
Oh. Right. Of course. Only a handful of students would have the necessary magic to become Maegesters, but hundreds of Hyrkes were here to become Barristers. The school would have to assign roommates or they’d never be able to house them all.
I nodded and Ivy smiled.
She turned away and walked over to the exit with Fitz. I stepped up to the student affairs desk wondering what other info Lozenge and I had to exchange. I still wanted a warm shower and dry boots but I would gladly have traded those for some new friends. Lozenge and I wrapped pretty quickly—my bill was paid, my room assigned, and my status no longer in question. I was free to go. I squished over to the door.
Fitz and Ivy were still standing there.
“We’re headed to Marduk’s for lunch. Want to come?”
Marduk’s was as warm and cozy as you’d expect an underground pub in Halja to be. The windows were at street level so the light wasn’t natural. Little spots of yellow glow hung suspended over each heavily scarred wooden table. Bench backs were high, tablecloths were nonexistent, and the walls were exposed brick. But for all its age and roughness, Marduk’s felt like an old pair of canvas trousers, comfortable and well-worn. We chose a table near the back, by a huge fieldstone fireplace that was blazing with heat and orange light.
I ordered a large bowl of potato soup and a small meat pie with mushroom sauce and both Fitz and Ivy ordered some sort of salad and a blueberry crisp. I had to be careful around salads and fresh fruit. It wasn’t that someone with waning magic couldn’t eat fresh produce, but you wouldn’t want to hold it in your hand for too long before eating it either. Cautious as I was, well cooked, heavily smothered in sauce food was a habit I’d had since I’d cut my first tooth. When the food came we hungrily tucked in until there was nothing left but the crust of my meat pie and a few radishes on Ivy’s salad plate. I pulled out the unoccupied fourth chair and put my feet up—it seemed like the kind of place where that was more than okay—and undid my laces, hoping my boots would dry better closer to the fire. Neither Ivy nor Fitz seemed inclined to leave, and the place wasn’t crowded so we ordered some coffee.
Ivy was short for Ivana Jaynes and she was here to study riparian rights and the law of navigable waters. Her family owned and operated a whole fleet of ferries, the flagship of which was the Alliance, a sturdy double-decked vessel that took mechanized cabs, as well as passengers, to the outposts up and down the length of the Lethe. She was well educated and well traveled. Fitz’s education and experience, on the other hand, seemed a bit more piecemeal. He had grown up on the Seknecai estate, one of the very few Host estates here in New Babylon. His mother—Ivy’s aunt—was the housekeeper for Waldron Seknecus, the dean of demon affairs here at St. Lucifer’s. I gathered from the looks exchanged between them that Seknecus might have pulled some strings to get Fitz accepted here.
Both Fitz and Ivy were unbelievable gossips. They had the goods on everyone. But nothing they said was malicious, and they seemed genuinely interested in me, as I was them. I made sure to keep my answers vague though, although I soon found myself wishing I could confide in them. They were as warm and comfortable feeling as the place they’d invited me to for lunch.
I had just finished lacing up my boots when I started to feel the prickly, skittering feeling along my arms and back like this morning. This time Peter’s spell doused my magic faster but left my half-digested meat pie feeling like a mound of red-hot lava rocks searing through my stomach. I have to get out of here, I thought. I stood up to go and that’s when I saw him—Ari, the Hyrke who’d saved me from drowning in the Lethe not two short hours ago.
What was he doing here?
He looked better than I remembered. Here in the underground warmth of Marduk’s, his strong features looked even more ruggedly handsome. In this small space, the bulk of his body appeared twice as big. On his arm was a tall, statuesque woman with hair the color of Ivy’s. But that’s where the similarities ended. This woman was a showstopper, a real knockout, with pouty red lips, porcelain skin, and sky blue eyes. But just above her sternum were two nasty red burns—two wounds the size of thumbprints pressed into the slender hollow of her throat. Immediately behind her was another woman, a pretty brunette with ash-colored eyes and a dimple in her chin.
“Ah,” said Ivy quietly, following my gaze, “That’s Ari Carmine.”
“I know,” I said, slumping back down in my seat. Her eyebrows shot up.
“You do?”
“Uh-huh. We shared a ferry ride across the Lethe this morning.”
“He always dates the beauties—powerful Mederies from the Gaia Tribe,” Fitz said, looking over with a frank look of half-admiration, half-envy.
Ari and his companions slid into a booth along the wall near the front. Ari reached for the redheaded beauty’s hand in a gesture that was all too familiar. The sick bubbling feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away.
How had she gotten those burn marks? And what was Ari doing at Marduk’s? Was he a student at St. Lucifer’s too?
If so, it was surprising that it hadn’t come up during our discussion this morning, but then I’d steered purposefully clear of any talk about where we were headed after the crossing. More surprising—and infinitely more disappointing—was my reaction to seeing him with the beautiful Mederi. It irritated me. It irritated me even more that it irritated me at all. I sat in the half darkness at the back of Marduk’s stewing. I grudgingly realized that Ari was even more confident than I’d given him credit for. Handsome, charismatic Hyrkes dated Mederies, sure, but not many from the Gaia Tribe.
“The redhead was attacked by a rogare demon two days ago,” Ivy said.
Surprise turned to outright shock. “Here? In New Babylon?”
Ivy nodded. Fitz grimaced.
In Halja, demons came in all manner of sizes, shapes, ages, classes, and types, but there were really only two kinds. The regulare demons, who loved rules and the adoration of their followers more than they loved anarchy and chaos, and rogare demons, who didn’t.
“Did they catch the demon who did it?” I whispered, my throat suddenly dry at the thought of what it would be like to have a demon grab me by the neck.
“No,” Ivy said. “Not yet. But the Council’s been alerted. I heard that some of the upper year Maegesters-in-Training here might help track it down.”
I said nothing. All of my focus was on trying to keep my breathing steady and my hands from shaking. Knowing Halja was full of demons was one thing. Seeing one’s brutal handiwork was quite another.
“What was he like, during the crossing?” Ivy asked.
“Who, Ari?”
“No, the captain,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes and grinning. “Of course, Ari.”
“He was nice,” I said, finally tearing my gaze from Beauty’s burn marks.
“Nice,” Ivy repeated flatly.
Fitz barked out a laugh. “You just called one of your dad’s demon executioners nice.” He laughed again.
My blood turned to ice. “Demon executioner?”
“Yeah, you didn’t know?” Ivy said, frowning. “That’s how he pays for his education. He executes rogare demons. Last fall he declared and chose to train at St. Lucifer’s to become a Maegester. Lucky us.” She spoke the last two words completely without sarcasm. And from the way she was looking at him, she meant it.
“So he’s Host, not Hyrke,” I said, confused. “But I’ve never heard of him. Where did he come from? Was he spawned from Lucifer himself? Members of the Host don’t just pop up out of nowhere. They grow up in Etincelle.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as my new friends processed my mildly profane outburst. Then Ivy said, “Well, he didn’t.”
>
“I know,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “He said he grew up in Bradbury.” There had to be a mistake. They had to be talking about someone else, although the remaining sinking feeling in my stomach told me otherwise. I risked another peek toward the front and wished I hadn’t. My gaze suddenly locked with Ari’s and he stilled. My cheeks flushed and I looked away, embarrassed to be caught staring.
“He said he had a younger brother,” I mumbled, turning back toward Ivy and Fitz. “Who’s considering going to Gaillard.”
“Right,” said Fitz. “I heard that too. Or at least about the younger brother. He was raised by an adoptive Hyrke family somewhere in the southwest. So Bradbury fits.”
Ivy kicked my chair. “He’s coming over,” she hissed.
Every emotion I’d had—petty jealousy over the beautiful Mederi, incredulity over Ari’s surprising background, irritation over my own attraction—suddenly turned to liquid fear. If Ari was training to become a Maegester, I could have nothing to do with him. Those with waning magic could sense it in others. Peter’s temperamental cloaking spell now made perfect sense. But bolting now, while Ari was on his way to the table, would only call more attention to me. So I sat, forcing a bland smile, hoping he didn’t already suspect.
“Hi, Noon,” Ari said, smiling down at me. “I had a feeling we’d see each other again.”
I shrugged. “You didn’t mention you were a student here.”
“Neither did you,” he said pointedly, his smile disappearing. “Did you get your room assignment yet?”
“Megiddo,” I said, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief. He’d be over at Infernus on the floor reserved for the rest of the Maegesters-in-Training. At least I wouldn’t be seeing him walking to the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. “This is my roommate, Ivy, and her cousin, Fitz,” I said, motioning to them, wanting his attention directed anywhere but toward me. He turned toward Ivy first and extended his hand.
