Chapter 16 Baz
BAZ TRIED TO CATCH HIS bearings as pieces of floorboards and other debris flew in every direction.
Roots had impossibly torn through the floor and were now darting toward the assembly hall’s heavy door to blast it open.
Students scrambled out of the hall in terrified confusion, screams filling the dusty air.
Baz pushed unsteadily to his feet. One of the Regulators who’d been after him mirrored the motion.
The Regulator lunged for him, but before he could reach him, vines encircled the man’s ankles and jerked him backward.
Baz looked around wide-eyed and bewildered, searching for who or what was doing this.
Nisha nearly barreled into him, yelling at him unintelligibly over the commotion.
“Did you do this?” Baz asked with stupefied awe.
“Yes, now run!”
Baz didn’t need to be told twice. Together they followed the frenetic students spilling out into the courtyard.
A dozen Regulators were running toward the assembly hall, no doubt alerted by its uprooting.
Baz whirled around to see Drutten making a beeline for him, eyes full of hatred. He knew he was done for.
But Nisha tugged on his arm, and before Drutten or the Regulators could close in on them, they managed to slip away into the crowd. It occurred to Baz that he did not know where they were running to, if there was even a safe place to hide at all, until Nisha veered toward Obscura Hall.
A place only Eclipse-born could access. The only safe place for him on campus.
“Where do you think you’re going, Eclipse scum?”
They were stopped beneath the cloisters by a group of three students who looked at Baz the same way Drutten had. Inflamed by fear of a Tidecaller and what that meant.
“Over here!” one of the boys shouted, calling on a nearby Regulator. “We found—”
The ivy growing thickly around the cloisters wrapped around the boy’s mouth, cutting his words off.
Before the other two could react, Nisha was pulling Baz toward Obscura Hall.
They nearly collided with another student as they reached the dark door that would lead to safety.
Hands shot out to grab Baz. He struggled to break free of the student’s hold, and just as Baz finally had the good sense to reach for the threads of time, desperate to make it to safety, a familiar voice cut through his fear.
“Brysden—it’s me.”
Baz stopped struggling. Kai was here, holding him steady, dark eyes boring into his with all the fear and anger and disbelief that Baz himself felt.
“What in the Deep are you doing here?” Baz breathed.
“No time for this—let’s go!” another familiar voice snapped. Professor Selandyn held the door to Obscura Hall open and was ushering them inside. Vera Ingers was there, too, helping a limping boy Baz didn’t know.
Baz set aside his questions as they all hurried into the elevator.
Just as the gate began to close, a Regulator burst through the door at the other end of the corridor.
Baz sped up time around them so that the gate closed before the Regulator had even taken a step toward them.
And then the elevator was shooting downward, accelerated by Baz’s magic.
Once they were past the wards, the Regulator wouldn’t be able to reach them. No one could come into Obscura Hall unless they were Eclipse-born—or unless they were accompanied by one.
Baz caught Kai’s eye. Both of them were breathing quickly. The unfamiliar boy that Vera had dragged in here was being fussed over by Professor Selandyn, who was trying to stop the bleeding from a gash above the boy’s eye.
“Who is he?” Baz asked brusquely.
“He has a name,” the boy replied, wincing in pain. He brought a tattooed hand up to his wound, making Baz relax slightly at the sight of his Eclipse sigil.
“Rusli’s a Luaguan student,” Kai explained. “I bumped into him on my way back here. He got jumped by Regulators who tried to put damper cuffs on him.”
Rusli gave them a slanted smile. “I fought back.” He motioned to his cut. “They didn’t like that.”
Kai chuckled darkly. “Welcome to Aldryn, I guess.”
Baz couldn’t help but notice the spark of kinship between Kai and Rusli.
He shoved down the hint of jealousy that flared inside him—now was not the time to dwell on what the Deep that even meant—and thought instead of all the Eclipse students like Rusli who had traveled here only to find themselves caught up in this horrible situation.
The elevator gate opened onto the illusioned field. Only when they were all in the safety of the Eclipse commons did Baz feel like he could breathe again. “Where’s Jae?” he asked, looking between Kai and Vera. “And how did you get here anyway?”
“Jae’s fine,” Kai said. “We split up at the train station. They went to warn the Eclipse-born in Threnody—and get a message across to your dad at the lighthouse, of course.”
Baz pulled at his hair. “This is bad. Freyia talked. The Regulators know about Jae, and it’s only a matter of time before they make it out to the lighthouse.” He eyed Vera. “How did this happen—how did she even escape?”
“We think it’s Artem,” Vera said. “He came into the Institute right before the Reanimator went missing.” She threw a glance at Nisha. “Your friend Virgil was with him. I’m assuming this has something to do with the Selenic Order?”
Nisha looked puzzled. “If it does, it’s news to me. Artem must have roped Virgil in at the last minute, otherwise Virgil would have told us.”
An inkling of doubt rose in Baz. He wanted to trust Virgil—did trust Virgil—but what if he was wrong?
“A Reanimator,” Rusli said, face pale. “So it’s true, then, what they’re saying about corpses running around town?”
“That wasn’t the Reanimator,” Kai said, avoiding everyone’s eye. “It was me.”
“What?”
“I accidentally slipped into Freyia’s nightmares last night and woke up on Dovermere Cove with an army of reanimated corpses at my back. I tried to make them disappear. Got most of them, but some got away from me.”
Rusli whistled a dark note. “Those are some gnarly nightmares to have.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Baz asked angrily.
“I tried telling you this morning.”
This morning. When Baz had all but shoved Kai out the door. He clamped down on a surge of guilt. “There’s no getting out of this mess, is there?”
Professor Selandyn let out a breath. “Obscura Hall will remain safe for as long as the wards stand. But you two”—she motioned between Baz and Kai—“need to leave. If they find out you’re Collapsed, there’s no knowing what they’ll do to you now.”
Baz’s gaze flickered uncertainly to the Luaguan student. Rusli had similar features to Kai, though his dark hair was cropped close to his head, and he was on the shorter side. He didn’t bat an eye at Selandyn’s admission.
“He’s good, Brysden,” Kai said tightly. “We can trust him.”
Baz was unconvinced. “Look, no offense, but—”
Rusli rolled his eyes. “You think you’re the only Eclipse-born I’ve met who’ve Collapsed? If this Jae you spoke of is who I think it is, then rest assured they’re a mutual friend of ours.”
Baz lifted a brow. “You know Jae Ahn?”
A nod. “I met them last year when they came to Luagua asking after a friend of mine who was in hiding after she Collapsed. Jae called her to Threnody a few months ago to help her deal with her newfound powers. If it weren’t for them…
” Rusli caught himself and cleared his throat.
“The point is, I don’t make it my business to rat out Collapsed Eclipse-born to Regulators.
As far as I’m concerned, we’re all on the same side here.
” He pointed to his wound to prove his point.
“We Eclipse-born have to protect our own.”
A sense of pride swelled inside Baz. This—this was what they were fighting for. Solidarity among their peers. The Eclipse-born coming together as one, unburdened by fear.
Limitless, and all the better for it.
But it was folly. All the ways in which things could go wrong swam in his mind, and Baz shook away the fancies that had started taking shape there, grounding himself in reality.
“They’re going to have Memorists look into all of our minds.
If you know we’re Collapsed, then they’ll know.
We’re done for. There’s nowhere to run.”
“There is one place,” Professor Selandyn said. “Somewhere no one will be able to follow.”
“The door,” Kai murmured.
Professor Selandyn nodded. “What Drutten said about Emory… If the world believes her to be the Shadow reborn, if they think she is the reason why the tides are acting strange and why we Eclipse-born are rising up, as if Emory has some kind of dark influence over us… then we need to bring Emory home. To show them all that she is not what they say she is.”
“So it’s true, then?” Rusli asked in wonder. “This Tidecaller… she’s real?”
“As real as a door to other worlds is real,” Vera said in a singsong voice, earning a look of confusion from Rusli. She ignored him, asking, “So when do we leave?”
Baz looked between all of them. They stared back at him expectantly. He laughed a little hysterically. “We can’t open the door, not without—”
“Oh, for Tides’ sake, Brysden.” Kai threw up his hands in exasperation. “We all know you’re capable of doing it. And before you say anything about risk, fuck the risk. We’re way past the need to tread carefully.”
Baz turned to Professor Selandyn, hoping she would talk some sense into all of them.
Instead, she said, “Things will only get worse here. All our fates might rest in Emory’s hands now.
In proving that this sickness spreading across the world is not due to her being a Tidecaller but something else.
A greater evil that perhaps she alone can stop. ”
Selandyn took out Clover’s journal from her pocket.
“Clover believed the disappearance of the Tides and the Shadow is what triggered the doors to close and fade from memory. As a result, this cutting off of worlds created a universal imbalance of sorts. Like organs being severed from one another and not being able to function properly because of it.” She flipped open to a page full of barely legible script.
“Here he predicts that a sickness would spread, affecting our magic as it worsens over time. The erratic motions of the tide, the slow decline of eclipses and, consequently, of Eclipse-born.”
Professor Selandyn turned to a passage that wasn’t written in any language Baz knew.
She ran a bony finger along the strange script, her expression unsettled.
When she spoke the line aloud, the words she formed were guttural and melodious all at once.
They made the hair on Baz’s arms stand to attention, slithering up his spine.
“I don’t know what language this is,” Selandyn said, “but it’s old and powerful.”
“What does it mean?”
“A Tidecaller must rise. Open the door. Seek the gods. Restore that which lies at the center of all things.”
Selandyn handed the journal to Baz. She gave him a weighted look, her meaning clear.
She wanted them to fix what was broken, the way Clover had intended.
“Go now,” Selandyn said, motioning to the door that would take them down to Dovermere Cove.
“Professor… what about you? You can’t stay down here forever.”
“Not forever, no. But there are other Eclipse students on campus, foreigners who came here for a month of academic celebration and instead walked into forced interrogations and brutality. They will need solidarity now more than ever. I won’t leave them behind.”
“But the wards… The Regulators are bound to make it past them eventually.” Even if they had to force one of those Eclipse-born to bring them down here.
“I’ll stay with her,” Nisha declared. “I can find the other Eclipse-born. Bring them here. Then we’ll slip away through the secret door and try to find someplace safe to hide.”
“The Veiled Atlas,” Vera said. “Aunt Alya will take you in.”
Nisha nodded. “Then it’s settled.”
“My dear, after what you did back there, the Regulators will be after your blood more than mine,” Professor Selandyn countered. “You all need to disappear.”
“Come with us, then,” Baz said.
Selandyn laughed at that. She patted his cheek gently. “Oh, Basil. I fear these bones of mine are too old for such an adventure. I’ll be of better use here. Like I said, I’m not leaving Eclipse students behind.”
“Then I’ll stay,” Rusli said. “I have some tricks up my sleeve that can help me pass unnoticed while I round up the rest of the Eclipse students.” His features changed before their very eyes, and suddenly he was not a Luaguan boy at all but a uniform-clad Regulator wearing Drutten’s face.
He winked at them, breaking the illusion, and touched his angry-looking wound.
“Besides, I still have a bone to pick with the Regulator who did this to me.”
Baz couldn’t deny the plan was sound, but he couldn’t make himself move, didn’t think he had the strength to.
For so long he’d been on the sidelines, watching those around him do the work.
But here was his chance to step into the story at last, to carve himself a role in it, however small.
Here was his chance to stand up and fight for Eclipse-born, even though it felt like he was running away from the fight entirely.
He could open the door, at the very least. The rest he could leave to the real heroes of the story.
And together they would fix what was broken.
They would bring Emory back to this wretched world and make it into one where she could live without hiding the truth of what she was—where all of them could.
He would be reunited with his sister again and mend their fractured family.
Professor Selandyn squeezed his hand, giving him the strength he needed. A wobbly smile stretched across her lips. “Go, Basil.”
Take heart.
Baz pocketed Clover’s journal and met Kai’s gaze. “I guess this is where our story begins.”