8. Arienne
8
ARIENNE
“Next, we go to the Senate.”
This was what Eldred, who had been silent since they’d left the school in the small hours of morning, said to Arienne as she dug into a crowd for warmth and anonymity. She had spent the rest of the night walking from the northern part of the Capital where the Academy was, and she was cold and tired. Her uncle, Lukan, wouldn’t be opening his tavern until the sun set this coming evening, and she planned to hide in plain sight until then, perusing the market and blending into the crowd until finding her way to her uncle’s establishment right before it closed.
“The Senate? Why there?”
Eldred couldn’t read her mind; his voice resounded as if from within her own head, but if she wanted to be audible to him, she had to at least mumble in her smallest voice. It was unlikely anyone would make out what she said over the bustle of the market, but she was conscious all the same of the many eyes and ears around her.
“You do know what the Circuit of Destiny is, I assume.”
The Circuit of Destiny was a device built by joining together multiple Power generators, and it was said to be able to predict the future. It was one of the greatest treasures of the Empire. In theory, it was her professors at the Imperial Academy who would have been designing and maintaining a machine like this, but in all her years there, she’d never heard it spoken of in an official capacity. Some rumors said that it was housed in the basement of the Senate, others that it was kept in the underground dungeons of the Office of Truth. And still others, of course, claimed that it was just a lie, made up by this Imperial ministry or that to scare the enemies of the Empire.
“I know what they say it is. But it really exists?”
“I have business to attend to with the Circuit.”
Of course you had your own agenda, Arienne thought. Eldred had promised her freedom and the chance to learn real sorcery, but for now, getting somewhere safe had to take priority. If she was caught, she would be promptly turned into a Power generator herself for her transgressions, shut away for eternity in a lead coffin, a worse fate than if she’d not run away in the first place. She didn’t know what that would mean for Eldred, who was hidden away inside her mind, but he didn’t seem as worried as he should be.
“One false move, and I—we!—will be caught. I have to get out of the Capital and as far away from the Imperial heartland as possible.” Despite having just said this, she had no idea where she would run.
“Are you not a sorcerer yourself? Running away is easy, and it won’t be too late to leave after having dropped in on the Senate. A Phaidian shapeshifter could turn into a bird and fly away. A death priest of Thiops could become a shadow. A Cassian geomancer could shrink the earth and leap over it. A high amrit of Varata has prodigious strength and is virtually impervious to weapons. You’re young, and I know that school of yours teaches nothing worthwhile, but surely you have a few tricks mastered on your own by now?”
Arienne didn’t reply. She knew the names of all the provinces from her geography classes, but she didn’t recognize the words that presumably referred to old-magic sorcerers of those lands. To her, the feats Eldred listed were only the stuff of storybooks.
“Maybe such spells are too sophisticated for you. In which case I hope you’re a fast runner, and a good killer. But there must be something you know how to do.”
“I can light fires.”
“Pyromancy. The Farovian art. A talent as useful as it is common.”
“No, I mean, I can… light candles.”
“And?” Eldred’s voice was filled with suspicion.
“I can make someone who’s sleeping go deeper into sleep. That’s it. And that other thing you taught me.”
In the room inside her mind, Eldred, wrapped in his bandages, raised his head.
“Is that all you’ve learned during six years of school? I know you failed three of them, but…”
Arienne had nothing to say to that. She’d come to think of her division at the Imperial Academy as just storage for warm bodies—a place that trained young sorcerers how to best take care of themselves, ahead of their eventual task of becoming Power generators in death. Their education, if you could call it that, was largely to do with keeping your body and mind in a certain state, with some knowledge of the manufacture and maintenance of gen erators thrown in for variety. There was no benefit to the Empire for sorcerers to learn combat spells, or really anything that would become useful in an escape situation.
After a silence, Eldred said, “You can create and maintain a room like this in your mind, so you are clearly a sorcerer of talent. Perhaps not a great one for the ages, but at least a bit better than most. If there is nothing else you have learned, I shall teach you a thing or two. It will help us both with the task ahead.”
A Power generator that should have no thoughts or a will of its own was offering to teach her sorcery, and had actually taught her some already. Were the memories from his life intact? How? And how much of them? The basic facts of the dead sorcerer’s life would have been engraved in the lead coffin, per regulation. Arienne regretted not having time to take a closer look before they’d had to flee.
“So. Are you able to learn if you’re taught, little one?”
Arienne waited until a passerby was out of earshot.
“Yes. I am.”
“Good. For you shall not be of much use to me as things are.”
Eldred lowered his head and was silent once more.
Arienne recalled the broken skeleton at the foot of the spiral staircase in the main hall. The remains of someone who hadn’t been of much use to Eldred five years ago. Arienne had been only a year into her education at the time but vaguely remembered hearing about a student who had supposedly escaped that year. She could not remember their name, as hard as she tried.
What was Eldred going to do once he got to the Circuit of Destiny? Arienne imagined him standing in a white room, wrapped in bandages, scores of coffins spread out at his feet. She did not actually know what the Circuit of Destiny would look like, or whether the room would indeed be blinding white, like the corridor she’d crossed to reach Eldred, or impossibly black, like the hole through which he’d entered the room in her mind.
Arienne continued to picture the Circuit of Destiny, and in her mind envisioned a tea shop waiter with a silver platter in hand, winding his way around Powered coffins as he approaches Eldred. Arienne is standing by his side, watching him. A folded piece of paper rests on the platter—“Your prophecy, sir,” says the man as he presents the note to Eldred with a little bow. Eldred nods and unfolds the paper and reads it. His bandages begin peeling off. He is very thin, his skin as dry as a parchment and looking like it would crumble if she were to reach out and touch him. As Eldred reads the prophecy, a satisfied smile cracks his face. Then, he turns to Arienne and says, “Now I shall have my revenge.”
Arienne was surprised by her own imagination. Revenge. Why did that word, of all words, come to mind?
But just then, a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts, rising over the noise of the market and coming from the other side of the square.
“Arienne! Arienne!”
It was Duff, the custodian of the dorms, pushing through the crowd to get to her. Following him were students in Academy robes. Arienne suddenly remembered she was still wearing her own robes and was very noticeable to those who would be looking for her.
She hadn’t expected to be found out by the Academy this quickly, but seeing as it was just Duff and some students, they must not have reported her to the Office of Truth just yet. Maybe the Academy did not want a public incident on their hands. It occurred to Arienne that there was a slight chance that if she got caught now, all she would have to endure was a scolding and two months’ detention in her dorm room. Shivering and bone-tired as she was, the vision of her bed and having no reason to leave it was so tempting it momentarily overwhelmed her senses.
But such a fate would never do—she could not go back to the days of feeling like a living corpse. She would not accept the fate of being wrapped in bandages and enclosed in a cold lead coffin for eternity; she’d pour oil over her body, set herself on fire, and become a handful of ash before allowing herself to be dragged back to that life. That would be a warmer, quicker death.
She turned and ran as fast as she could in the other direction. Duff used his large bulk to push aside the marketgoers, making way for the robed students and paying not an iota of attention to the curses that followed him.
“But think of what a good student you are—”
Duff, although out of breath and panting between words, was getting closer and closer. Something tugged at Arienne’s robe, tearing it, but when she looked back it wasn’t Duff but a nail on a cart that had snagged her.
“Stop, I say! Let’s talk!”
But as he said this, there was a flash of violet light and a crate of apples broke open behind Arienne. The fruit seller stepped back in surprise, and Arienne, glancing over her shoulder, saw Duff step on an apple and lose his balance. He yelled out to the students following him.
“Idiots! Are you trying to catch her or me?”
The exploding crate must have been Titus, a fourth-year who always bragged about how he knew a real combat spell, when all he could do was break a chair leg or a wooden bucket. When she had pointed this out, he argued that he could kill everyone on a speeding carriage if he broke a wheel spoke.
Duff liked his drink and was on the heavyset side. His face had already turned bright red from exertion. Despite this, the distance between them was closing fast. Arienne did not bother to look back anymore and concentrated on running as fast as she could through the crowded market square.
“Why are you running like an ordinary girl? Act like a sorcerer!”
She shouted back at Eldred, “Then why don’t you do something yourself!”
Suddenly Arienne’s robe was pulled taut from behind and she nearly fell. She looked back to see Duff holding on to a handful of her hem, the length of his body against the ground. The sorcery students, the Academy-prescribed exercises not designed to do anything for their physical performance, were panting as they pushed through the crowd, still a distance away. Duff gave her a murderous look as he caught his breath. “You wicked wench, your running away will kill us all!” His panting words came out as a mist in the cold air.
Duff tried to get up but fell again. Arienne used this opportunity to twist and kick him in the head, almost falling down herself. Duff grunted but held on to her robe. Normally taking off the student’s robe would be as easy as throwing off a used towel, but Duff’s pull turned the garb into a tight lasso. The exhausted students behind her started to run once more.
“You can do it,” Eldred said. “Cut off your clothes and run, even you can do this.”
She could feel Duff’s hot breaths on her heels, and the eyes of the people of the market gathering around them. Instinctively, Arienne focused on the robe she had put on for every day of the past six years, trying to imagine a single thread that might or might not exist, a single thread that held the whole robe together. Then she imagined the words, the words that had never before passed her lips, syllables that she had never even known existed. The incantation escaped her mouth and a strength came to the tip of her tongue. An unseen knife sliced through the imaginary thread.
The front of her robe split like the carapace of an emerging cicada, and she slipped out of it in the white linen dress she wore underneath.
Duff, exhausted, could only grasp at the abandoned robe and try to catch his breath. Arienne fled into the maze-like alleys.
Once she had shaken Duff and the students off, Arienne hid in a dark alley by Lukan’s tavern and waited for the customers to leave. It was a good thing she had left behind her school robe, but now she was freezing with only the linen material of her dress to shield her. She was so afraid of being spotted she dared not enter any establishment. She had not eaten all day or slept the night before during her escape from the Academy, and her dress and shoes were filthy from wandering the city’s dirty alleys.
Why hadn’t she realized that the customers who were going to and from the tavern would pass by her in this alley? They looked her up and down, this loiterer in her unseasonable outfit, some deranged woman who was surely the talk of the tavern by now. A stupid choice, thought Arienne grimly.
The Academy must’ve given up on trying to handle this quietly and reported her to the Office of Truth by now. If the Office noticed the absence of the Power generator, they would eventually realize that Arienne hadn’t run away on her own. The inquisitors would be after her then.
She imagined herself tied to a rack and being tortured by the inquisitors. The rack in her imagination was cross-shaped. The inquisitors wore black headcloths and held tongs, the kind used in fireplaces. What the inquisitors would ask and how she would reply, she couldn’t think up. How little she knew about the situation she found herself in, a situation ironically of her own making.
The Office of Truth did not generally approve of sorcerers—dead sorcerers were useful as Power generators that would contribute to the glory and prosperity of the Empire, but living ones were rather less controllable. At the Academy, the inquisitors of the Office were spoken of as if they were ghosts. They came silently, and people would disappear, never to be heard from again. Arienne didn’t know a single sorcerer who had been taken by the Office of Truth. Somehow, this ignorance spawned even more terrifying imaginings.
To get away from the torture chamber and inquisitors of her imagination, Arienne focused on the old room she had in her mind, entering it and closing the door behind her. Her consciousness was in the room, where it was warm, but the cold of the reality around her body didn’t abate one bit, which gave her an odd feeling. Eldred sat on the edge of the bed with his head down, just as before.
She stood before the shelf her mother had made for her and took down a book, an adventure story she had read as a child. She couldn’t even remember the name of the main character. She started reading it, her childhood memory coming back as she retraced the daring deeds of an Imperial merchant. But if she had forgotten all about the book, how could she have imagined its contents? Puzzled, she put the book back and noticed there was a book with a yellow leather cover lying on the bed beside Eldred.
The Sorcerer of Mersia. That was the title stamped on the cover.
Mersia. The province that had declared its freedom from the Empire only to be extinguished by a legendary Powered weapon. A weapon called the Star of Mersia. But that had been a hundred years ago, and felt more like a myth than a real piece of history today. Had such a book existed in her house? There was a smaller title stamped below the big one, but the gilt had flaked off and it was difficult to make out. Arienne stared at it, trying to make sense of the remaining letters.
Then, in the real world, something tapped her shoulder. She almost jumped out of her skin.
Before her in the dark alleyway, where she was cold and crouched and in only a dirty linen dress, was a man of perhaps twenty-odd years of age, wearing spectacles. Since escaping the school, Arienne hadn’t seen a single person wearing spectacles. The man had a fresh wound on his chin and looked serious and a little nervous, but there was an air of curiosity in his gaze as he stared at her.
“Excuse me—”
“Go away!” spat Arienne. “You have the wrong person. Go!”
Her gestures only seemed to elicit further fascination from the man, who studied her as if she were some rare bird he’d come across.
Then he said something unthinkable. It wasn’t what he said really, but how he said it—in Arlandais, a language Arienne hadn’t heard or spoken for years.
“ T’lie Arleshe? ”
Arienne was so startled she replied in Arlandais. “ Yehre. ” She glimpsed Arlander clan markings on the man’s throat. Her own must be fully visible, without her robe.
The man’s serious expression broke into a smile.
“ Aidee. Mia Cain. ”
“ Aidee. Mia Arienne. ”
She forgot the cold wind blowing through the alley. She forgot that she needed to be hiding her real name.
“ T’li bidan. ”
The man named Cain held up a finger, pulled a paper bag from his inner pocket, and handed it to Arienne. He continued speaking to her in Arlandais. She understood most of it, although she hadn’t uttered a single word since coming to the Capital. Cain spoke quickly, omitting words and contracting phrases every so often. He was clearly from Kingsworth, the largest city in Arland. Arienne was a little intimidated and could hardly answer him, but Cain’s face brightened as he spoke on.
The bag was warm from having come from his inner pocket. When she opened it, the scent of olive oil and bread wafted out from inside.
“ Tandas, ” answered Arienne.
“ Ni yehre. ” Cain gave Arienne’s shoulder two light pats and headed into Lukan’s tavern.
Arienne devoured the warm, oil-dipped bread. Cain was likely to say something about her to Lukan. Maybe tell him her name. Then would Lukan come out and look for her?
She no longer had a reason to wait until he closed for the night. She turned the corner and walked right into the brightly lit tavern.
Everyone’s eyes fell on Arienne as she entered the doors. Half of them were people who had passed her in the alley. They all wore grimy clothes and hard expressions, but compared to Arienne’s state of disarray, they were positively genteel. Her face grew red.
Cain was sitting at the bar, watching her approach. Walking over, she sat down next to him, feeling the gazes of the other patrons falling on her back. The warm tavern was humid and smelled of cooking vegetables. She gulped.
Lukan had stopped wiping down the bar and was looking at her as well. His lush beard, his braided hair, the blue cords interweaved into his braids—he looked exactly the same as six years ago.
“Someone you know?” Lukan asked Cain, not recognizing his own niece.
“Only just. Her name is Arienne, and she’s an Arlander.” Cain nodded at Arienne and said to Lukan, “She looks like she’s been cold and hungry for a while, though. Got something for her to eat?”
Lukan glanced quickly at Arienne’s t’laran and scratched his own neck tattoos as he turned to Cain. Cain tapped his chest. The sound of metallic clinking was heard from it. Only then did Lukan look at Arienne and smile.
“Oh, I didn’t notice your t’laran. A girl from the old country. I have a relative, something like a niece, who’s also named Arienne. I haven’t seen her in a while, but she ought to be around your age. She’s studying at the…” His smile disappeared. He leaned over the bar and stared squarely at Arienne’s clan markings, eyes widening in realization and horror. He whispered to her, “What are you doing here?”
Fear was mixed in his voice. Arienne also bent low over the bar and whispered, “I ran away from school this morning. I’ll tell you everything soon, but please don’t attract any more attention.”
Lukan’s face hardened. Cain seemed to sense something was wrong as well. He glanced at Lukan and then back at her.
Finally, Lukan managed to get ahold of himself, and without a word, ladled some soup into a bowl for her. It was almost completely broth. Arienne also did not say a word as she gulped it down, feeling its warmth spread through her body. There was a bench in the corner with a gray blanket that was singed in places from lit candles past. Arienne went to the bench and wrapped herself in the blanket as if she had just crawled out of the surf after a shipwreck.
Time passed. Customers left. Arienne noticed Cain taking note of every person who came and went. Lukan signaled for him to leave as well, but Cain shook his head.
When it was just the three of them, Lukan closed the door and bolted it. He snuffed out every candle and lamp save one.
Before Lukan could say anything, Arienne quickly asked, “Has anyone come looking for me?”
Lukan sighed. “It’s the dungeons of the Office of Truth for you and me. They didn’t come today, but by tomorrow the inquisitors will certainly be knocking at my door.” He shook his head. “To think my only relative so far away from home is a runaway sorcerer.”
Cain glanced at Arienne, his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles, but otherwise did not show any surprise.
Lukan poured himself a drink and drank it in one gulp.
“Look,” said Arienne, “I’m going to leave the Capital, I just need to hide for a little while, just to rest and—” She gestured to her dirty white shift. She would draw attention anywhere dressed like this. “I have some money, Uncle. I just need some clothes and to prepare myself for travel—”
“Six years without so much as a visit, what makes you think you can make these demands!”
Arienne flinched, tightening her grip on the blanket around her.
“Lukan, be quiet,” Cain said in a whisper. Arienne hadn’t noticed that Cain was by the doors and had his ear against them.
“Is someone there?” Arienne asked, her grip on the blanket tightening.
Cain shook his head and stared worriedly at Lukan. “I don’t think so. But if you shout like that, they’ll hear you all the way up there in the Office of Truth, one way or the other.”
Lukan sighed. Silence followed.
The situation was getting out of her control. All Arienne had thought of was to ask Lukan for help, to give him some money, get new clothes and travel gear, and escape the city. She had no idea she would be treated like an unkempt fugitive by her own blood, or would accidentally involve a stranger who had nothing to do with her save for their shared homeland. She had made quite a mess, and she was angry at Eldred.
Arienne couldn’t trust Cain completely either; all he’d done was give some bread to a person he pitied. To him, it must have been like throwing a coin to a beggar.
But this man looked serious. Cain wasn’t blaming Arienne. He wasn’t panicking or showing regret, instead just making sure no one was listening in on them.
Arienne looked at Cain again. The man’s demeanor made him look older than when she first saw him in the alley. She recognized the type, not from real life, but from the stories she liked to read, a protagonist wise beyond his years, thanks to a hard life on the mean streets. He even had dark, tired eyes behind his spectacles, like many such heroes.
“That one looks useful.”
Arienne jumped at the sound of Eldred’s voice. With everything happening, she’d almost forgotten she was playing host to a long-dead Power generator. She opened the door inside her mind to see Eldred sitting up, his bandaged face turned in her direction.
“Ask that one for help,” he said, referring to the man who’d given her the bread. “This uncle, while a blood relation, seems only keen on saving his own neck. I would be relieved if he didn’t do anything more than report you.”
The tavern was quiet and both men were looking at her, so she couldn’t respond.
After inspecting the windows, briefly opening each of them to peer outside, Cain nodded in their direction. Lukan poured himself another drink.
Cain said, coming back to the bar, “Look, she is family—”
“ You don’t have family, that’s why you would say such a thing,” shot back Lukan. “Look at what the one family I have in the Capital is doing right now.”
Cain turned to her and said, “If you really have no one else, I can try to help you at least.”
She didn’t know what to say. Cain’s offer was like sweet rain in a long drought. After a moment’s thought, she said, “I would need a place to sleep for a little while, some clothes, and if you could help me get ready to travel…”
“I know a place you can stay for a couple of days. The rest I can get for you tomorrow. I’ve some business all day and it’ll be evening by the time I come back, but you should probably leave at night anyway.”
“He’s putting himself forward, this is good,” said Eldred. “But you don’t know how he’s going to turn. Tomorrow I shall teach you a spell that can kill a man in a second.”
It disconcerted Arienne how Eldred could say such horrifying things, when all he had talked about in the Academy were hopes and promises… What would happen if she failed to learn the sorcery he was willing to teach? What was he capable of, sitting there in the room inside her mind?
But that was not something to worry about right now. Her priority was to leave the Capital. Arienne nodded at Cain. “Thank you.”
Cain shrugged.
Lukan lifted the glass to his lips, but stopped as if he remembered something. He said, with suspicion in his voice, “This girl has the nerve to expect things from me because I’m family. But why are you volunteering?”
Cain rolled his eyes behind his spectacles, as if he wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. But she needs help, right? And I can give it. I know I needed whatever I could get when I first came to this city.”
The street hero, just like in the books, Arienne thought again, as she caught a glimpse of sadness briefly disturbing his calm face. Did he have a troubled past as well, just like those heroes?
Lukan emptied another glass and turned to Arienne. “I won’t report you.” He took out a metal box from under the bar, counted out a handful of silver coins, and shoved them in her direction. “You’re going to have to run far if you don’t want those Office of Truth bastards to catch you.”
And how far could these few coins get her? Arienne grabbed the coins, gratitude, anger, and shame warring inside her.
Lukan must’ve also been embarrassed at his own stinginess as he cleared his throat and said, “Leave by the back door. Take a good look to see if anyone is watching you. And if the Office inquisitors come looking for me—”
“Tell them she was someone I came in with,” interrupted Cain, “and you have no idea who she was because you didn’t recognize her after all these years.”
“You want me to mention you as well?”
“There are limits to how much you can lie convincingly, I’ve noticed.”
Cain turned to Arienne and took her hand. “This way.”
Arienne allowed herself to be led to the door, where Cain peeked out for a moment before stepping out ahead of her. The streetlamps flickered their blue lights, a sign that the Power generator in this neighborhood was old. Was there an end, even for dead sorcerers in lead coffins? It was oddly comforting to think that. Still covered with the blanket, she took off her shoes so they wouldn’t make a sound on the cobblestones and walked the cold ground on her bare feet. The door of the tavern closed silently behind them.