Chapter 32 Baz
THE FIRST BICENTENNIAL CHALLENGE SAW participating students divided into teams of four, each member representing a different lunar house.
Their respective tidal alignments were written on badges pinned to their shirts.
Clover, whose badge read Healer, was on a team made up of an Amplifier and a Memorist from Aldryn College, as indicated by their school badges, and a Soultender from Ilsker College, the more illustrious of Trevel’s two magical establishments (both of which paled in comparison to Aldryn, according to academic snobs).
Sixteen teams sat at tables that had been pushed into the middle of the assembly hall.
The gathered crowd of students and professors and foreign dignitaries alike stood along the walls of the hall, craning their necks for the best view.
Baz, Kai, Cordie, Thames, and Polina had managed to find spots at the front, right next to Clover’s table.
Clover winked at them with a confident smile, his eyes lingering on Thames.
Aldryn was playing host to five other colleges.
Karunang was the only school from the Constellation Isles, with the largest number of students present.
“Easier for us to blend in,” Kai noted. Not all its students were participating in the games; most of them were in the crowd, along with someone Baz assumed was their dean—a short man with a graying beard who wore a navy silk tunic embroidered with the emblematic Karunang owl in silver and gold thread.
Some students wore similar clothing traditional to Luagua, while others were dressed in fashions more common to Elegy and Trevel.
Then there were the two rival Trevelyan colleges, Ilsker and Sevstar, with as many students between them as those from Karunang alone.
On one side of the assembly hall was the Ilsker crowd, all of them dressed in burgundy robes thrown over their straitlaced suits and gowns.
The emblem pinned to their robes depicted a wave weaved through with the eight phases of the moon, curved around a droplet of blood.
On the other side of the hall were the Sevstar students in similar robes of teal, their emblem a quill and dagger over a spiral conch.
The rival deans, two pompous fair-skinned men in stuffy cravats and refined suits the colors of their respective colleges, glowered at each other from across the room.
And finally, two tiny groups from the Outerlands: Frons, a college found in the frozen north, and Awansi, hailing from the far southern plains.
The Frons dean, a pale, austere-looking woman in a fur-trimmed robe, stood with one of her students in the crowd; only two more were participating in the games proper.
They were recognizable by their white frocks adorned with intricate silver buttons, and their delicate emblem that portrayed the four lunar flowers sprouting from the pages of an open book.
The Awansi students—the four of whom all seemed to be participating in the games—wore kaftans in colorful, patterned fabrics, their emblem composed of the eight moon phases connected by geometric lines and symbols, with a blazing sun in the middle.
Their dean, a woman with rich dark brown skin wearing a kaftan threaded with beads and patterns that echoed the Awansi emblem, smiled proudly at her students from the sidelines.
Each participating team received a specific moon phase and time of day—these were written on a sign at their respective tables, and each set was different.
At first no one knew what these meant, until a student moderator from Aldryn explained that the teams would need to solve a problem using only the magic at their team’s disposal without resorting to bloodletting, which meant they needed to find a way to work around the specific lunar and tidal circumstances of their table.
“For example,” the moderator said, “if you’ve been given a full moon at an ebbing Lightkeeper tide, and the problem you must solve is, say, finding your way on a treacherous path in the dark without slipping and falling to your death, how do you use the magic at your team’s disposal to succeed?
There is only one rule: bloodletting to access your magic outside of the particular lunar and tidal alignment set you’ve been given is not permitted.
You have an hour to solve your challenge. Good luck.”
“Wait, that’s it?” Baz asked Cordie. “This is all the games are?” This sounded a lot like what Aldryn had planned for the Quadricentennial—not a dangerous event with the potential to end in death.
“This is only a warm-up to the real games they’ll face over the next month,” Cordie explained. “It’s a way to give some insight into what the actual games will require.”
Clover’s team was given a complicated ward to break through as their problem. But none of them were Unravelers, and none of their abilities, even if they had been allowed to use bloodletting, would be able to decipher the ward.
Baz’s gaze traveled to the other tables, his brain working to make sense of this as if he were participating himself.
Though if that were him up there, he’d most definitely let panic overtake him with all these eyes on him.
But in the anonymity of the crowd, things were easier and plainer to see.
Which is why, about twenty minutes in and with multiple dead ends encountered in his head, the solution finally came to him.
“They have to help each other,” he said under his breath. “To show that magic is collaborative.”
He might have imagined the way Clover caught his eye at that very moment, as if he’d heard him—or read his mind.
Clover looked around at the other tables’ sets of lunar and tidal alignments.
The same realization seemed to dawn on him.
He stood up, chair grating so loudly on the floor it made everyone jump.
Clover ignored his teammates’ confused looks—and the scowl that Wulfrid, who was also participating, gave him from where he sat at a nearby table.
Clover made his way to a team whose set of lunar and tidal alignments read New Moon, Rising Healing Tide.
“I’m guessing your problem requires some sort of healing?” Clover asked them.
“Yes,” a girl from Sevstar College said warily. “But none of us are Healers.”
“No, but I am.” Clover pointed to a Karunang boy whose badge read Unraveler. “And you’re what my team needs to solve our problem.”
“And?” the boy said gruffly.
Clover smiled. “There’s no rule against switching teams.”
The boy blinked, then shook his head. “That would be cheating. I’m no cheater.”
“No, he’s right,” the girl said. “There is only one rule: bloodletting isn’t permitted. If there’s only the one rule, then anything else goes.”
The boy still looked uncertain, though he seemed to reconsider when the nearby teams started whispering among themselves and looking at the other tables’ placards, having clearly overheard this exchange and wondering if they should go for it themselves.
Clover made a shooing motion with his hand. “Go on. We wouldn’t want them to solve it first, would we?”
The boy darted toward Clover’s group. Clover sat down at his new table and read over their problem. He quickly solved it. The moderator declared his new table the winners, and the crowd burst into applause.
Kai shouldered Baz. “You’re the one who should be up there.”
“You know me.” Baz shrugged. “The limelight’s not where I shine.”
“I pity those who don’t get to see you shine in the shadows.”
Baz met his gaze, unsettled by the intensity in it, the sentiment behind his words.
Before he could respond, the moderator called on Clover.
“Since you were the first to solve this challenge’s riddle, you have earned yourself a small advantage for the actual games.
The lesson here was that of collaboration.
Over the next month, you will have to solve a series of real problems such as these.
The first leg will require you to be in pairs.
The details will be given to you by our dean of students in a few moments.
But before that…” Turning to Clover, he said, “You get to have first pick of your partner. Who will it be?”
Clover made a show of thinking it over as murmurs rose all around him, everyone speculating on what the challenge would entail and who might be his best pick. At last Clover declared: “I choose Baz Brysden of House Eclipse.”
Baz felt the ground tilt beneath him as confused and shocked whispers filled the assembly hall. Clover met his gaze with a wink. “If he feels up for it, of course.”
The moderator gave a nervous laugh. “An Eclipse-born, you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“But… there is no Baz Brysden here among those who signed up for the games,” the moderator said, looking over a list of names. “There is no Eclipse-born on here at all.”
Clover lifted a brow. “Did you really expect any of them to sign up when we all know the sort of hardships your administration would have put them through if they did? The extra measures you would have them take to restrict their magic? The vitriol they would face from fellow students?”
The moderator sputtered as he tried to come up with an answer.
Clover spared him as he continued: “It was a hard-fought battle for Eclipse-born to even be allowed to come to the Bicentennial, much less partake in its games. After two centuries of this college denying them the same opportunities as the rest of us, you can’t fault them for their mistrust now.
Baz Brysden is one of only two foreign Eclipse students who decided to brave coming here despite our strict rules.
If he wishes to take me up on my offer, then perhaps he can show you all that Eclipse-born are nothing to fear—and that indeed they might just surpass us all. ”
His eyes found Baz again. “Do you accept?”