Chapter 10
Bek
Year One
The class hurried along the length of West Corridor, to the great iron door at the end, none of them wanting to be late for their first lesson with Kindness Marta.
They stood before the door, still in the clothes in which they had arrived at the Academy.
Still spattered with the days-old blood of Lucia, the general’s daughter, who had been killed by one of their number on the first night, and then again, collectively, on the first morning after breakfast.
The lesson turned out to be far less traumatic than Kindness Undu’s.
Packed into Creed Hall, the first years had been treated to a simple discourse on the world in which the Academy found itself—a world partly shaped by the deeds of the Academy’s alumni over the many decades since its founding.
To those possessed of even a basic education it was old news, and the main challenge was staying focused so as not to provoke the Kindness’s ire.
Bek supposed that many of the class came from even deeper poverty than she had, and hadn’t had the advantage of having a scribe—however poor—as a father.
Even so, the depth of some of the girls’ ignorance surprised her, and worse, she was shocked to find that Mollandra knew less than any of them, quickly attracting the Kindness’s disapproval.
Mollandra had seemed sharp enough back in the dormitory’s gloom, but under the glare of Kindness Marta’s questions it seemed that she knew almost nothing.
The Kindness eventually released them to the central courtyard.
She watched them leave like a fox eyes hens when deciding on its next meal.
The girls emerged blinking into the freshness of the day, the sky above them a hungry blue.
The high walls were studded with patient crows drawn by the Academy’s carrion stench and seemingly waiting for calamity to strike among the acolytes below.
The Year One girls had been told they would be permitted a short recreation period before Instructor Suni summoned them to her class again and continued to teach them how to break each other with fists and feet.
“We need to help her.” Bek kept at Einsa’s side while Mollandra hurried out of the walls’ shade.
“Or let nature take its course while we start thinking about a replacement.” Einsa said it without malice and with a certain resignation.
“Helping her can’t hurt. Tutoring her will help us too, you know.
My father says that teaching someone else something is the best way to understand it yourself…
” Bek paused. Mentioning her father put a sour taste into her mouth.
Maybe he hadn’t had any good choices. But out of the bad options, he’d chosen the one that exchanged her for coins.
Einsa shrugged her broad shoulders. “Shrimp!” She shouted after Mollandra, nodding to the side where a flight of steps up to the formal entrance hall made for good sitting. Mollandra arrived as Bek planted her backside on the cold stone.
“You don’t know much, do you?” Einsa repeated Kindness Marta’s point.
“I know lots of things,” Mollandra answered neutrally. “They’re just different things from the rest of you.”
“You know who rules the city, then,” Einsa said.
“Baron Ha…” Mollandra furrowed her brow. There had been a lot of names in the lesson. “No, Prince Co…Conner?”
“Prince Cormac and his lovely bride Princess Scalla—the man eater. Out of Regon. Princesses being the primary export of Regon on account of their ‘king,’ Handelf, only sowing girls in his wife’s furrow, but lots of them. Prince Cormac is our king’s younger brother.”
“Cormac…Scalla,” Mollandra repeated, committing them to memory.
“Don’t forget the heir, Sunder, the pretty princeling,” Einsa added.
Bek twisted her mouth, studying Mollandra more closely.
“How far did your father bring you?” She could imagine Mollandra being raised in some broken-down farm on the outskirts of a peasant hamlet, but such people were unlikely to travel any great distance, even for the Academy’s copper.
She surely had to have come from within the borders of Abrona, and yet here she was struggling to remember the name of the king’s own brother. “What was the nearest town to yours?”
“I…” Mollandra looked more uncomfortable than when Instructor Suni had made her face up to Thurli, a solid girl nearly twice her weight, and told them to fight until one of them was bleeding. “I come from the city.” Her hands closed into the same fists that had bloodied Thurli’s nose.
Einsa stood up, towering over Mollandra.
“That city?” She pointed through the courtyard walls in the direction of Tandra-ah, just a few miles away.
The city walls, along with the spires jutting over them and the low town sprawled beyond their limit, could all be seen from the Academy’s bell towers. “Is that the one you came from?”
Mollandra nodded, eyes narrow.
“What’s it called?”
Bek snorted. Einsa had made a joke to break the tension, a question so laughably easy that Mollandra would grin, and they could start to fill in some of the gaps in her education.
“T…” The girl struggled, as if willing the name onto her tongue. “Tandar.” She spat it out quickly, her voice muffled.
“Tandar?” Einsa asked.
Mollandra nodded.
“You think Tandra-ah, Abrona’s second city, the place where you were born, is called Tandar?”
“That’s what I said. Tandra-ah.”
Bek put her hand to Einsa’s thick upper arm. “It’s what she said.”
“Huh.” Einsa folded her arms and sat back down. She shook her head. “You, Bek, are too kind to be a Kindness.”
Bek opened her hands helplessly. “I can’t be what they want, so I may as well be what I want.”
Einsa growled, as if trying to manufacture the anger she needed in order to break with them and go her own way.
“She’s not going to repay you, you know that?
Even if we do help her. Even in the unlikely event that she does survive the year and become a half-decent acolyte.
She won’t save you when you need saving.
None of us can look out for anyone else. Not if we want to survive.”
“It’s true.” Mollandra’s small voice broke into the silence that followed Einsa’s challenge. “I’m not a good person. I will let you down. Again.”
“Again?” Bek tried to ask, but Einsa surged to her feet, her growl louder than before.
“Teach her yourself, Saint Bek. The stray’s just going to get you killed.” And with that, she stomped away.