by Mana Sol
“What is it you need help with, Professor?” he asked, and her slender eyebrows slid up with such painfully slow grace that a cold sweat gathered on the back of my neck. Funny enough, Zed must have experienced the same thing, because he amended his words with a wise about-turn. “…But I am available this weekend.”
She continued to stare over my head at the doorway. “Wonderful,” she said, coolly regal and somehow sharp and smooth at the same time. “And I’ll be asking you to take some time to assess our three merit transfers’ abilities in the field since they’ve had no such prior experience. I’ll be away to tend to Citadel affairs again along with the Headmaster, and Professor Octavius will have his hands full corralling all of you as it is. I hope you don’t prove to be as…fragile as Ravonne when she discovered what it is I wanted. She seemed very sure she would be feeling unwell by then. Quite the fortune-teller, she is.”
An awkward silence filled the office. Merit transfers - us, she meant. The humans. Figured that Ravonne would beg off of having anything to do with the girls and me yet again; she’d already made Zed pick up her slack yesterday while giving us the tour of the school.
“I’ll be available this weekend,” he said again after a lengthy pause. “But I can also speak with her if you’d like.”
“Absolutely not. If she cannot live up to my expectations, then she will have to face the consequences herself eventually. You know this well.”
“Yes.”
“I have high hopes for you. Always have. Now if you could see to letting Professor Octavius know I’ll need you for remedial combat training?”
He must have nodded and left. I wasn’t going to turn around to check, but I heard the heavy latch of the door closing shut, and the woman settled down in her high-backed chair with a graceful sigh. So that conversation was over, then. My turn in the hot seat. My pulse quickened, and her cool stare made me forget for a moment that they’d just been talking about combat training. Combat training. I didn’t want to believe it.
“Hello, Blair,” she began, and although she addressed me by my first name, I sensed an arctic distance between us I hadn’t felt with Professor Pompey when she called me ‘Miss Kaine.’ “I should have been here yesterday to receive you, but a sudden change in plans made that impossible.”
“I understand.”
“Good. Now, I’ll be speaking with Addison and Genie individually as well, but as I understand it, you’ll likely have the most trouble adjusting.”
I almost choked. Me? I was the one who would have the most trouble? It was a terrible thought, but I wondered for a second if she had gotten our files mixed up or something; how could she possibly think that? Genie was unstable, Addy had temper issues. And I was in advanced courses and -
“I’m well aware of your academic prowess. What I’m speaking of is more relevant than that. And pressing.” She watched me as I held my emotionless expression, and something in her gray eyes told me she could somehow tell exactly what I was thinking. “Blair,” she said. “Are you aware of the purpose behind the Arcane Institutes? Behind Jupiter Gate Academy?”
“To preserve knowledge and further the advancement of society -”
“That’s a lie,” she interrupted, and I shut my mouth instantly. “The true purpose of the Arcane Institutes is to raise soldiers for the war.”
14
I paused, schooling my features into calm emptiness and nothing more. My heart had leaped into my throat and rendered me silent, but I needed to say something soon: my response here mattered more than I dared to think. The woman waited for my answer with searching eyes - testing me. “To train soldiers,” I repeated. “For what war? We haven’t had war since the Cataclysm, there’s no one to war with. I know the Citadel hasn’t been peaceful lately, but tensions aren’t to the point where we need to be raising militias…” I decided not to specify the obvious: the tension I spoke of existed between humans and the other races, those we called Otherkind, but what could we even do about it, anyway? They would slaughter us within days; they would run right over us. Fighting was pointless.
“You misunderstand. Our war isn’t inward,” she said. “It’s outward.”
“Outward? You’re not talking about the creatures outside the Citadel, are you? I know they can be dangerous, but we can hardly call it an actual war…with all due respect, Deputy Headmistress.”
Olisanna frowned. “Haven’t you ever wondered how we hold the Citadel’s borders when the Wastes continue to grow and encroach on them?”
“Our Wall’s enchanted. And we have guards to patrol it.”
“Magic is weak against other magic, you know this. And many of the creatures outside are imbued with Nether magic in particular.”
“Nether magic? It’s magic?”
“Another well-kept secret, yes. You’ll know all you need to shortly, but know this, also. If they ever truly attacked en masse, our Wall made of stone and wood would fall like a house of cards. The scouting parties we send out every day aren’t truly scouting, Blair. They’re meant to destroy anything that comes close to the Citadel before they ever reach us, as much as they can. Every day, the Nether miasma comes closer and closer, and one day soon it’ll reach us. We lose ground daily.”
Nether, Nether. All this time, it had only been a word to describe the things that existed beyond the Wall, but now it was some type of magic I’d never studied before. And since when was the Citadel losing ground? We’d been here for more than a hundred and fifty years; surely someone would have noticed something was amiss. But then again, it seemed the things she was telling me now were meant to be kept from us all along. A question lingered: who were the people who did know of this secret? It couldn’t be that only humans were the sole exclusion. If all Otherkind knew, someone would have blabbed eventually and we would have found out.
“There are beasts out there beyond your imagination. Thinking ones, dangerous ones we have to use our best resources against. Resources that have been draining with time. We are losing the fight. These are desperate straits we wade in.”
I stared. As far as I’d known all my life, the Wastes were nothing but overgrown land filled with large, dumb, dangerous animals, and the only things we had to worry about were the occasional wild dingo packs we could hear yapping crazily from behind the Wall. “I don’t understand,” I said. “If that’s true, why is it hidden from us? To stop us from panicking? And is it only the humans who don’t know this?”
The Deputy Headmistress frowned. “All people are prone to panic. Only those attending the Arcane Institutes, carefully selected and trained, are aware. Our Citadel leadership knows, of course, but they are the ones who established this system. Our schools were not built to raise scholars with vain studies for the embellishing of society. We were built to raise soldiers to preserve it. Entering students know nothing, but we test their abilities and how receptive they are to the workings of the system. If they prove themselves, then upon graduation from First Form, we show them the truth. The ones unfit never make it that far.”
“That’s why you picked us.” I sat back in my chair, holding my expression still so she wouldn’t see how stunned I was. “That’s why you chose transfers into Second Form. You need soldiers, now.”
“As I said, our resources run slim. And this is also why I spoke with you first - I doubt Addison Dorne and Genie Watts will be very opposed to the idea. They may be surprised, but -”
“I don’t fight. I’m a Thaumaturgist.”
“Precisely. But now I tell you that you were chosen specifically because we require you on the front lines. We’ve lost outstanding men and women over the last eight months. Things are changing suddenly and quickly, so all those ideas you had about leading a wealthy life in the Inner Citadel, you’ll have to give up on them. Promptly.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “I don’t have a choice now, do I? Since you’ve told me everything.”
“You do not.”
“My family…”
“
They must know nothing, of course. We will allow supervised leave when you earn it, but soon you will begin rotations. A few months but no more, likely in the spring semester, because unfortunately, with how many losses we’ve sustained, we have to make use of our reserve forces as well.”
“Reserve forces. You mean us, the students.”
“Indeed.” Her grimace softened fractionally. “Yes, it’s very dangerous. You’re immensely valuable, but compared to our experienced Thaumaturgists, you are more expendable. You will be closer to the front lines than they are in most cases, but you will of course first undergo proper training before that happens.”
“How come no one’s noticed if you’ve lost so many people?”
“They have. But I expect the division between humans and Otherkind is such that you and your peers would rarely hear of our troubles, especially something that’s only confirmed in rumors.”
Right. Who would confide in us lowly humans, after all? “The Arcane Institutes have less than eleven hundred students between them all,” I said. “Is that our entire force in training?”
“Yes. Except for the First Form students who have yet to prove themselves. And if you’re as informed as I hope you are, you know that only two-thirds of them make it to Second Form at all.”
“What about your actual soldiers?”
“Our main force numbers in the considerable thousands, but sadly, the majority are no longer fit for service. The Nether creatures grow too strong, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
I needed to think. I needed time, space, silence. Deputy Headmistress Olisanna had all but conscripted me into an army and now I couldn’t hope to see my family again - my family, who I’d come here for in the first place. I raised my head and found her still watching me. “So, what are my chances?” I asked. “I’m sure you all have something figured already.”
If I sounded bitter, she didn’t seem to notice. “If you survive your first three months out in the Wastes, you are likely to make it an entire year. But the odds of you surviving longer than that are quite narrow. You have a constitution and temperament unfit for extended warfare.”
Great. I’d come here to graduate with top marks and get a government job, and now I was being consigned to death. “If I’m unfit, then why choose me?”
“Talent, Blair. You’re very talented. And if not here, you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else with it, anyway. In the Citadel, as a human, there will always be a ceiling you cannot breach over your head. You must have known this no matter how optimistic.” She laced her fingers together over her desk. “But if you serve with us, that could change. There’s no nobler expression than laying down your life for a cause.”
“…What’s going to happen to my family if I don’t make it?”
“They’ll be taken care of. They’ll live in comfort for the rest of their years, if the Citadel stands long enough.”
My head throbbed. Addison, Genie - when they found out, what would they say? I wanted to talk to them now and vent all my frustrations and confusion this very second, but they didn’t know anything yet. “All right,” I said. “I understand.” Might as well cooperate. Nothing I said, nothing I thought mattered here.
“Good. Then that is all. Addison is likely on her way. I trust you’ll keep this to yourself until I have a chance to properly explain to both of your fellow transfers first.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
With a cool wave, she dismissed me, and I excused myself from her office.
15
Numb. I passed by Addison on the way down the winding steps, and when she tugged on my sleeve to get my attention, I gave her only a brief nod before moving on. Once the Deputy Headmistress told her everything she needed to know, we would have more than enough to talk about, but right now all I wanted to do was go back to my room and sleep until afternoon classes began. I had no appetite and would have gladly skipped lunch, but I wavered for a guilty moment thinking about Genie waiting alone where we were all supposed to meet. I was hardened against such things since I’d done my fair share of eating alone at school, but I couldn’t do that to someone else. I checked the closest wispy-looking spectral clock I could find and decided I had enough time to meet Genie and let her know I was going back to our dormitory wing. At least that way, she could decide whether to come with me or stay there.
But when I reached the corridor, I saw no sign of Genie. Maybe she had already been called to speak with Olisanna and was waiting elsewhere instead.
I frowned. When I saw the girls next, what was I going to say first? That I wanted to leave and go back to my old school, that it had been a mistake to come here? That we had been conned and used and we had no choice but to put our lives on the line for people who didn’t even care about us? Most Otherkind wanted us dead or at least simply gone, irrelevant forever. And yet here we were, told to fight to preserve a way of life that had pressed down on us for the last hundred and fifty years. We weren’t even going to be allowed to go home without chaperones watching out every step, our every word. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to punch the wall. All of this was just a pretense, and Jupiter Gate’s seeming capitulation to pressure to accept humans was a sham, too. This wasn’t about equality, and being accepted to Jupiter Gate hadn’t been a victory at all. The only reason they’d accepted us was that they were running out of expendable bodies to throw into this secret war with the outside, with the so-called Nether or whatever it was she’d been talking about.
If I weren’t worried about running into certain unfriendly people, I would have slid down the wall right there in the empty hallway and had a good wallow, but I wanted a bed, my covers, and at least half an hour of a dead sleep with no disturbances. My last chance to block out everything that had happened to me and pretend my world hadn’t turned upside down.
Because after that, I was going to figure out how to set it right again. No matter what.
* * *
Addison barged into my room, breaking the lock clean off and making me shoot up in my bed so fast my vision went black. She was upon me like a hurricane, eyes wide and hair wild like a lion’s mane as if she’d come running here all the way from the North Tower. She probably had.
“That’s why you were coming down from there!” she shouted. “I thought she was just going to give us some talk about being new and that they were going to help us or whatever!”
I rubbed the sleep out of my blurry eyes. “Can this wait.”
“No! Are you kidding me!”
“We should wait until Genie’s back before we talk.”
“She was just going in when I left! It’ll be too late by the time she gets back.”
I checked my clock on the nightstand; it was almost a quarter to one. She was right. By the time Genie and the Deputy Headmistress finished speaking and she came down here to meet us, we would have scarcely more than a few minutes to ourselves. We couldn’t be late for our next class, either.
“Still. We should wait until Genie’s here so we can share our thoughts.” My voice was far calmer than I felt, and I could see it was fooling Addy well enough. She looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “I’m serious. We’ll wait until we’re all home for the evening, and we can eat dinner together in here while we talk. Olisanna has to know we mean to do that, anyway. So just hang on and…just hang on.”
“We’re prisoners,” she said. “They’re not even going to let us go home.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We can, we’ll just have ‘supervision’ so we say nothing they don’t want us to say.” As I watched, though, Addy shifted her weight around on her feet by my bedside, and I narrowed my eyes. “What? What is it?”
“Well - I might have said some things and yeah, originally she was going to let us go home for a week’s leave over the wintertime, but, um…”
“You lost us our winter leave?”
“Look, I was mad, and everyone has a right to know if they’re in danger. Hiding this is wrong and you know it!”
“Right
and wrong isn’t the problem here! That was our one chance to get out and now it’s gone? We have to stay here?”
“We were already prisoners!”
I buried my face in my hands, and a headache throbbed behind my eyes as Addy continued to rant away above my head. Whatever she had done to get our leave privileges revoked, it was too late to change that. Though maybe if we were well-behaved enough or our preliminary performance impressed… “Did she tell you about this weekend?” I interrupted. “Something about combat or training?”
“Uh - maybe.” She paused, still slightly out of breath but steadily calming down since I wasn’t feeding into her frenzy. “I think I was talking over her most of the time, so not sure.”
Well, that would do it. Talking? Probably more like yelling. No wonder. “It’s going to be that Nephilim guy with us,” I said. “Zedekiel.”
“Ugh! Why?”
“Form Representative, whatever that means.” I frowned. “There’s a lot we don’t know. I still don’t know what it is exactly he and Ravonne do that’s so important. Student council can’t be all that powerful here if the system is just a military drafting scheme in disguise. But he’s the one that’s going to be there, in any case. Just please, be on your best behavior…”
“You’re going to accept this? You’re not even going to try to fight back?”
I shot her a glare. “I have my reasons. Which we’ll discuss tonight - after classes. I don’t see a point in going over them now if I’ll have to do it again later when Genie’s here.”
“My God,” she said suddenly. “What do you think she’s going to say? When the Headmistress tells her.”
I didn’t know. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be as volatile as Addy had been, and we’d see her again in a few minutes. Maybe. “Just wait,” I said. “Nothing we can do for now. But we’ll figure something out.”
16
The afternoon session passed like cold syrup on fleece. I had to nudge Addison awake half a dozen times during our History of the Citadel class and suffer her alternating dirty glares or innocent, affronted looks, and I had no choice but to give up with Genie. She simply lay her head down and stretched her arms out over the long curved table that took up our row, and that was that. There was no waking her, not even with a hefty pinch on her thigh. The professor was either too blind to notice or didn’t care. We were sitting only three rows back in a class of scarcely over eighty or ninety students; there was no way Genie’s slumbering went unseen. Or maybe our professor was wary of a literal meltdown, who knew?
