Chapter Thirteen Jordan
Thirteen
Jordan
Dinner still swims in my tummy. My father looms over me, his hand firmly on my shoulder, staring at the hunting grounds in front of us. My aunt signals to a small audience watching from the big house behind us. My brother stands in the window. When he sees me looking, he puts his palm on the glass.
“Over here, come along.” She leads me to a wooden platform between two others, where boys much bigger than me are guzzling down water and taping their wrists and ribs. My father follows, but Headmistress Perl stops him with a hand.
“You’ll make him nervous, Richard. Get back upstairs. It’s going to be a long night.”
My father’s lips thin as he departs, but my breath doesn’t come easier.
“Don’t worry about him,” my aunt says. “Just focus on the now.” She gestures to the thicket of trees, their tops glowing in the moonlight. “Master your focus, nephew. It is a weapon.”
“Yes, ma’am.” My hands shake in my pockets. She reaches in and grabs them. She holds them, and I try hard to be still.
“Everything that happens in the forest tonight is just making you into the person you were destined to be. Like the heroes in the stories. You get to be a warrior. Would you like that?” She pats my hand.
I can’t nod fast enough.
“This test is usually reserved for peers five or six grades above you. But you and Yagrin are in the family line: you should be able to handle it.”
I watch the other boys for confidence in their posture, some assurance that whatever we’re doing is going to be okay. But neither looks my way.
“Jordan, have you ever worked really hard to earn something but then lost it?” she goes on.
“Yes. A toy I’d earned from doing really well on my Latin lessons. But I haven’t been able to find it in a long time. I think my brother stole it.”
“And how does that make you feel?” she asks.
“Sad.”
“You are a bit angry with your brother about it, aren’t you?” She strokes my hair, and the gesture reminds me of my mother.
“I guess so.”
“It’s okay to be mad. Let yourself feel that. Use it to fuel your magic. That’s how the Order feels about magic. We’ve worked very hard to shepherd magic through the years so that it wouldn’t be lost. Our forefathers gave their lives to guard it. But there are people who would try to rob us of it or exploit it and control how we use it.”
Her eyes burn like a firestorm and I straighten. This is serious.
“Today’s test is like a game. A way to show us you can help protect what’s ours. That’s what your father does, what your grandpa did, what all Draguns do. Do you think you can do that?”
“I think so.”
She pinches my cheek, and I kind of hate it. But, I kind of don’t. “At the heart of the forest, near the old oak, you’ll find a bunch of things. One is an old family relic. Bring it—and only it—to me in one piece. You may use any magic that occurs to you freely; no one will stop you. You have until sunrise.”
A shiver finger-walks up my spine. That’s a long time to be out here alone.
“And one last thing.” The Headmistress checks her watch. “You will have to make choices along the way. But, Jordan, there are no perfect choices. Only ones that will help you retrieve the relic and those that will not. Choose properly.”
A howl splits the night air. “What’s out there?” I can’t stop fidgeting.
“Wolves and other things,” she says, her gentle hand on my back urging me forward. “But you have no reason to be scared.”
She taps my chest.
“Because they fear the darkness. And we fear no one.”
A horn blows, and she eases me off the platform. My feet thud on the ground and I feel the impact in my chest. The others sprint off, their legs twice as long as mine. I look back. Yagrin’s still watching. As I walk, my heart ticks like a timed bomb. How will my brother know how to find the oak tomorrow, or how to defeat the terrors that wait for us in the forest, if I don’t survive this first? I tighten my fists and close my eyes, imagining my face on the bodies of those glorious warriors in the stories I’ve read, with their fire broadswords and magical armor.
I open my eyes and dash into the forest at full speed. The old oak, I know: I can see it from my bedroom window. I head straight for it, at the heart of the forest. As I approach the clearing, something somewhere howls again.
I scan the woods but don’t see anything. I run faster. I should’ve found the oak by now, but everything is beginning to look the same. I switch directions, scaling sprawling tree roots. A coppery smell burns my nose, but I run and run until my lungs ache. I stop for a breath.
And spot glowing eyes in the brush.
I blink away the memory, and Headquarters bleeds to full color. I exhale and straighten in my chair. It’s been two days since I turned in my brother, and I still haven’t been able to sleep more than a few minutes at a time. Across the lobby, the Dragunhead’s office door is ajar, and Maei is still not there. It’s ridiculously early, but I had known the pile of reports on my desk would grow while I was away hunting answers about the Sphere. When I arrived this morning, on top was a note from the Dragunhead: Officium est honor volentis.
Duty is the honor of the willing. In other words, hurry up. The pressure to clear my workload before he arrives beats like a drum in my head. I’m usually always ahead on things, and he doesn’t need any reason to question the pendant that hangs from my neck. As swiftly as he gave it, he could rip it away.
Francis’s file is missing several pages. The samples I brought in to be tested are nowhere to be found. So I escalated his death to murder, but the Dragunhead hasn’t yet signed off on a formal investigation. I set the file aside, strumming my fingers across my desk, imagining I can hear the song they would play. But I pound an angry fist on my desk. With the Sphere’s worsened condition, any defenses it has will be weakened. I have to find Quell or get to the Sphere before she does. Not in a month’s time. Not in a week. Today.
But with no whispers of her anywhere, my only option—the second-best sun tracker in the brotherhood—is in a cell that I put him in.
I try to review a few raid reports, but a glimpse of the gold on my lapel drags my thoughts back to the night I earned my first virtue pin. We broke into the family Healer’s stores and had Yagrin ingest some dark stone to make him vomit, so he appeared too sick to go first. I took his spot and earned my pin, the youngest in Perl history to do so, then briefed Yagrin on everything to ensure he could do the same. But he failed.
I can still feel the lashing Father gave me afterward, but what I remember most is the way he looked at me. Like I didn’t deserve the duty pin on my chest. Like my very existence disgusted him because I couldn’t do the task he assigned me: ensure his precious firstborn pass with flying colors.
I stand and pace as I try to read another report. But no manner of distraction can smother the burning in my belly as the past nags my conscience. When we had showed up at Hartsboro’s doors with a tuxedoed Yagrin, he was ten, and I was eight. Though I’ve always been expected to behave as if I’m oldest. Expected to compensate for his childishness. That day he was supposed to be tested on what forms of magic he could show. But I knew he hadn’t unearthed any. I had unearthed two. And then my aunt stumbled upon me doing magic and begged my father to leave me with her at Hartsboro.
My mother cried. My father fumed. He told my aunt how I was a troublemaker, always getting into things that didn’t concern me. But she waved his warning away, and it was the first time I saw someone shut my father up. My aunt’s insistence felt like a warm hug back then; I wanted nothing more than to leave my father’s domineering shadow and become everything my aunt saw in me.
He agreed, only on the condition that I keep Yagrin on track: passing his Rites, earning his virtue pins, and securing the position of House of Perl Ward. But I quickly realized how impossible that was. Yagrin didn’t have any interest in magic, or the Order, or any of it. I did all I could to help him study: preparing all his note cards, reciting with him, giving up my own liberty time to ensure he was ready for his tests. I read texts aloud to him because he refused to do it himself. Sometimes my own performance suffered, but it didn’t matter to Father. Yagrin was the one who needed to succeed.
Perhaps I ruined him.
Memories of our childhood linger like a hungry ghost. I find myself at Maei’s desk and pick up the sentencing roster. How much time, exactly, does Yagrin have left? I open the folder to a long list of names, and Yagrin’s is somehow already close to the top. Ice skids down my spine. I flip the pages backward, trying to understand. These are endorsed executions, one after another.
The brotherhood took in more Draguns this past Season than it has in years. More Draguns means moving through the sentencing lists even faster . Over and over, I count how few names precede my brother’s, but the number doesn’t change. In the time I was gone to meet with Francis, there have been nine burnings. Sickness moves from my gut to my throat. Yagrin’s life hangs in the balance. Days… if he’s lucky. I close the papers on Maei’s desk and stare across the lobby at the pile of work I need to get back to. My brother is a sorry excuse for a Dragun. This is his own fault.
But I can’t move.
He never wanted this life. He did everything he could to avoid it.
“It is his duty!” I kick the nearby trash bin before raking a hand through my hair, grateful no one is in here to witness my petulance. I’ve done my duty. I’ve watched the light leave a person’s eyes; I’ve racked up a handful of bodies in the last two months. And yet my heart thunders harder now than it ever has. I thought he’d have more time. To think. To change his mind and cooperate.
If I do nothing and abandon him to his consequences…
By week’s end my brother will be a body on some other Dragun’s list.
I storm past Maei’s desk and slam the down button on the elevator. I can’t help him if he refuses to be helped. But if I ruined my brother, perhaps saving him is worth one more shot.
The underground floor where captives are kept stirs when the elevator dings open. The basement floor of Headquarters is a sweltering tomb of stone, and within a few steps I’m already sweating. I slip out of my House coat, the room’s elevated temperature burning my skin. I hate coming down here. Rows of cells run in either direction. Light from street-level windows slices through the darkness.
Each cell is closed by a veil of writhing shadows. Dark magic clings to a thin, translucent barrier made from some of the same material as the Sphere’s casing, creating a door that is impassable. The Shadow Cells are probably the Order’s most innovative and deadly use of toushana. I think of Francis’s papa. People probably died to make these, too…
My skin is slick with sweat. The prison is kept abnormally warm to keep captives from easily using toushana. I arranged for my brother to be in a well-lit area—a small kindness I hope he recognizes. I find him crouched on the ground, drawing circles in the dirt floor. The same motion, stroke after stroke. The trail of dirt forms tiny piles, and suddenly I can feel it all over my skin. I fill my lungs with air and hold it, shoving off the panic. I’m okay. I am not that boy anymore. When my brother looks at me, it anchors me to the present. He slips into Octos’s skin, the persona he used to trick Quell into trusting him.
“Yagrin.”
He doesn’t respond.
“I’ve come to talk to you.”
He still doesn’t move. Everything with him is a fight, I swear.
“Have it your way.” I unsheathe the fire dagger from the pocket inside my jacket and slice the door down the middle. The flames on the blade rip through the dark mist, parting it like a curtain, and I step through. I pull my brother to his feet. Octos stands a whole head shorter than me in ratty clothes. He smooths his greasy hair behind him. What did Quell see in him? A kindred spirit?
Quell. Her stare was like a dagger to my soul. She made a mockery of me then by lying about everything. And she makes a mockery of me now by evading capture. The sooner she’s gone, the better. The safer the Order will be.
“Your real face, Yagrin.”
“You look terrible,” he says. “Not sleeping again?”
“Enough of your games. I need you to show me how to track the Sphere.”
“My answer hasn’t changed,” he says, rubbing the tattoo marks on Octos’s skin.
“I’m trying to reason with you.”
The blue in Octos’s slanted eyes darkens to brown as a glimmer of Yagrin bleeds through.
“But it was you, dear brother, who brought me here.”
“For your treason. I’m done covering for you.”
“Then what would you call this request for help?”
“A chance for you to help yourself for once. Agree to help me track the Sphere so that I can—”
“Beg the Dragunhead for my life? I can practically hear him fawning over you now. Jordan, the best Dragun to ever live. Jordan , the epitome of honor. Jordan. Jordan. Jordan! ”
“After everything I’ve done for you, that’s what you think of me?”
“What are you after if not the Dragunhead’s approval?”
I can’t believe my ears. There was a time when my brother, even in his ambivalence, believed magic itself was deserving. That it was so special, and such a gift, that we should do all we could to ensure no innocent person had a reason to fear it. He’d still go through the motions when things got hard. But ever since they killed Red, he doesn’t seem to care about anything anymore.
“Deep down, you know that the Order should matter. And people like—” I drop to a whisper. “Our aunt needs to be dealt with.”
“The difference between us is you think it’s still possible.”
I shake him by the shoulders.
“You can’t eat a plum once it’s rotted from the inside.” A cocked smile splits his lips. “Quell was tickled when I told her that. She asked how I knew what a rotted plum tasted like. She did that laugh—you know the one, where she barrels over and snorts.”
I shove him.
“You feel braver in Octos’s skin. Being yourself reminds you that you’re still a scared little boy who never got Daddy’s approval?”
He shoves me and my back hits the wall hard. “No, that’s your job.”
Anger rises in me, for the years of standing in for him without recognition, or even matched effort, doing everything to keep him from his own fate. But I loosen my fists.
“You’re not going to destroy everything the Order built. I won’t allow it. You’re also not going to destroy yourself if I can help it.”
“The irony.” He sits on the hard floor, back against the wall. He traces the same marks from before into the dirt, and I dig a nail into my skin to pin me in the present. Closer now, I see it’s a letter. R . I sit beside him and his body shifts; Octos’s hunched shoulders narrow. My heart squeezes, hoping he’s come to his senses, hoping he’ll look me in the eye as himself , and gird up for what I’m asking him to do— care whether he lives.
But my brother’s face and body only shift to another persona in his repertoire: Liam, a childhood friend Yags had before we lived at Hartsboro. The only other time I’ve seen Liam’s persona was when our mother was ill and Healers were out of hope that she’d pull through. She did, but those were dreary days in the Wexton household. Even for my awful father.
Liam hooks his elbow up, dangling his arm and wiggling his fingers, pretending to play an air guitar. “I used to mess around on a real one of these with her.” He smiles. “She liked them.”
Red.
Quell.
It’s not quite the same, but I understand the acute pain of losing someone.
“I’m sorry. About Red.” I don’t know where the words come from, but I immediately want to shove them back down my throat. “Life has not been kind to you,” I add for reasons I cannot comprehend. “I wasn’t pleased to hear what they did.” Her body was never found—not in one piece, that is. If it had been, there would have been a report. I looked. There wasn’t one.
His smile is gone.
“I didn’t come here to fight. I came here to talk,” I continue.
He rests his head on the wall and hums some somber ballad. I don’t know how to get through to him when he’s this way, determined to avoid anything difficult. Then the song takes me, its melody familiar.
“I know this one.” A tune our mother used to sing. Liam hums louder. I listen as he finishes the bridge, and it takes me to a simpler time when, no matter how vicious our fights were, he was still my brother. Now it feels like there’s an entire world between us, a divide that cannot be closed. His choices brought him here, but I can practically see the blood on my hands. He’s my brother. The same brother who pulled out my first wiggly tooth because I was too chicken to do it myself. The same brother who stood with me in front of our mother when my father’s temper was bullish. The same brother who also survived our childhood.
“Yags. The Dragunhead will call you for sentencing any day now. It would be foolish to expect anything other than a death sentence. Help me sun track.”
He squints Liam’s small eyes. “You’ve aged a decade since the last time I saw you. Is it nightmares again? Have they changed since—”
“You’re as stubborn as Father.” I stare down at him and suddenly see little Yagrin, with his big eyes, the first time he saw Hartsboro and learned that he would be following in Father’s footsteps. He had trembled. I’d stood beside him. Together we had walked into my aunt’s house. If he could just follow me again now, maybe I could find a way through this mess.
“Maybe. But you’re as lost as he is.”
“ Give me something I can use,” I urge him. “Either help me with tracking or tell me something about your time with Quell so I can make a case to the Dragunhead that you’re valuable alive.”
His eyes suddenly light up, his mouth bowing in a sugary grin. “You remember that time we got lost in the bowels of Hartsboro? When that old batty butler almost peed his pants explaining to our aunt why he couldn’t find us. Oh, Brisby.” He looks right at me, and it hurts to think that hope is so painful that he must run from it this determinedly.
A voice cuts through the darkness. I didn’t even hear the elevator open. The Dragunhead is outside the cell with a few others.
“Sir.”
“Jordan? I assumed I’d find you at your desk. Your brother’s sentencing meeting is this morning. Is that why you’re down here?”
The world dents at its edges. Today? I thought there would be more time…
My brother, still wearing Liam’s disguise, pales. He looks at me and we may as well be kids again.
“I need this prisoner’s sentencing delayed. I require more time with him, sir.”
Yagrin’s heart rams in both our chests.
The Dragunhead’s gaze widens in surprise.
“He is going to help me protect the Sphere with knowledge only he has,” I add. “Which he’s now willing to share.” I hold still. “When I’m done with him, we can revisit the sentencing.”
For several moments there is only silence. “If you’re sure he is of critical use,” the Dragunhead says.
“I am, sir. He is cooperating. Which makes him valuable right now.”
“The Heart has spoken,” the Dragunhead tells the others with him. “Yagrin lives. For now.” He taps his watch before departing.