Chapter 5 #2
“Don’t look so surprised, Fresh Meat.” Thal nudged her with his elbow, holding yet another olive in his hand, ready to plop into his mouth. “You sure have some magic yourself, or you wouldn’t have ended up here.”
Images of people being whipped, being executed in public for their magic, flashed through Lory’s mind as she stared at Thal’s square face, the mischievous grin on his lips, the short black curls bouncing on his head as he cocked it, knocking on the table with the knuckles of his free hand.
“Anyone home up there?” He gestured at Lory’s head.
“But they…” Deep breaths were the only thing keeping Lory from panicking all over again.
“They what?” Ricca prompted, genuinely curious as she followed the cascade of emotions crossing Lory’s features.
“Ulder hates magic. He executes magic wielders by the dozen every day.” It was a challenge not to scream the words.
“Our king doesn’t hate magic. He just can’t allow magic wielders to roam freely. It would create an imbalance in a world of hard-working men and women,” Ricca explained, her eyes practically glowing with conviction. “He needs to eliminate those who aren’t willing to serve the greater good.”
“The greater good.” Something must have broken in Lory’s head, or she wouldn’t have kept repeating what the others said.
“You know… The survival of the kingdom, the welfare of its people,” Brycon said like he was citing from a book.
Magic. They all came from families with magic evident in their bloodlines. And they were alive. Despite everything that was happening on the streets of Dunai, there were actual magic wielders in this very room, and none of them seemed afraid of the king who openly prosecuted all magic.
Out of fear, all her life, Lory had stayed as far away from magic as possible, let alone considering there could be a spark of its own within her. But now that she was here?
Why would they bring her to Ashthorn, a street rat with no history of any such abilities?
Lory lowered her head, focusing on the plate of food before her rather than the fact that she was surrounded by people holding a power that cost dozens of Dunaii their lives each week. “They all end up here—I mean, the ones who aren’t executed?”
“One way or the other. That is, all but the Flame-born, of course,” said Tabi, her face as smooth as before, and a knot formed in Lory’s stomach all over again. “King Ulder can’t risk another uprising.”
She didn’t need to say that holding fire magic would be a death sentence even inside these walls.
“Are there any non-magical students at Ashthorn?” Because Lory hadn’t shown even a flicker of power, and if Ashthorn ever found out she didn’t come from a magical bloodline, they might kill her after all.
So, no matter how overwhelming her curiosity, she didn’t give in to the urge to ask the others what sort of magic they had.
Anything would be better than admitting she didn’t have any.
“Not after ashlings are elevated to thornlings,” Brycon explained.
“If we survive the first year, we’ll move up to thornling rank.
Statistics say that the majority of us won’t survive the first two months, though.
” He delivered the news like he’d made his peace with it, and judging by the expressions on everyone’s faces, Lory could guess they were all wondering which of them would go first.
“When you say survive—”
“I mean actually survive, not kicked out or retired or anything fancy like changing your career track. There are only two ways you leave Ashthorn: as an ashmarked or in a body bag.” Brycon’s hazel eyes shimmered with a wealth of knowledge Lory would have loved to tap into, but something told her that her every move was being monitored, and when she lifted her gaze to the front of the room, Captain Falcrest was studying her over a cup of some steaming brew.
Lory wanted to, but she couldn’t look away, wondering if his cold, stoic expression was the effect of years in a brutal environment or if he was just a naturally born prick.
“Don’t hold your breath,” Ricca said, following her gaze, and something told Lory that the woman had spent too much time appreciating the man’s looks.
“Captain Falcrest might be one of the highlights in this place, but he sticks with leadership, even when he’s barely older than the graduates leaving this place. ”
“He’s the youngest captain the common military has ever seen,” Brycon added in that neutral, schooled tone Lory began to recognize as his standard voice.
“People say he excelled at everything within the first year of training and participated in field missions long before he left military training.”
On the dais, Falcrest was talking to Observant Eye, but his gaze bounced back to Lory, his brows slightly raised as if to ask what she was looking at, and the light from the stained-glass window, illuminating him in a corona of colors, made it difficult to see anything else in the room.
“How did he end up here?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but something about the way he was holding her gaze made her wonder if he was waiting for the moment she’d fail and be executed after all.
He knew she didn’t have magic. He’d been there when she was brought in and questioned and sentenced to death. He’d carried her from the butcher’s block to Ashthorn for all that she knew.
If the indifference defining his face was anything to go by, he couldn’t be too interested in her survival.
“He’s a transfer from common military, obviously. The Triad brought him in.” Tabi’s casual tone told Lory this wasn’t a secret.
“The Triad?”
“Guardians, do you know anything at all?” Ricca interjected, and to Lory’s surprise, even Frost growled his agreement. He’d been so quiet she almost forgot he was there at all.
“Not about a super secretive military academy, no.” Lory picked up another piece of bread and peeled her eyes away from Captain Falcrest.
“The woman at the center of the dais?” Tabi subtly gestured at Gray Braid.
“That’s Nefetari Brunn, Master of Veils at Ashthorn Ward.
Her resort is espionage, disguise, and infiltration.
Then you have Vesren Ycken, Master of Steel.
” She pointed at Observant Eye. “He oversees martial combat training and is responsible for tactical leadership. He’s the equivalent of a general in the common military, and to the outside world, he’s known as General Ycken. ”
Lory’s eyes slid to the man who had caught her in the streets. Had she only been smarter about whom she’d rob, she might be sitting at the outskirts of Dunai right now, eating a meager breakfast and counting a few coins that would help her get by. She’d be safe.
The lie in her own thoughts rang through her like the obnoxious bell announcing it was time to eat or die. She’d never been safe on the streets, and she wasn’t safe in here; that much she was certain of.
“Who’s the third in the Triad?” she asked instead of confronting herself with the inevitability of her situation.
Ricca eyed Lory like she was a piece of dirt under her boots, while Frost sipped from the steaming herbal brew in his mug, face stone-like.
“Espetto Lenya, Master of Whispers.” Brycon took over. “None of us has seen him yet. Some of the thornlings say he only drops in once a month since he’s so busy with missions.”
“What does he do?”
Brycon gave her a conspiratorial glance, shifting in his seat. “He controls intelligence networks, psychological warfare, and interrogation.”
Swallowing the bite of eggs in her mouth, Lory’s eye bounced back to Falcrest, but the captain had left the table.
Breakfast was followed by formation in a large courtyard, where the roughly four hundred students fit by standing nearly on each other’s feet. The sun was just rising over the high walls enclosing the space, burnishing the limestone pyramid to the west in glistening light.
Ashlings had been called to the front of the group, where they stood in several rows of thirty people each, behind them the thornlings—not even half of their numbers, and at the very back, a single line of tested, the final rank within the Ashthorn before they graduated as ashmarked at the end of the year.
“Don’t worry,” Observant Eye called out, addressing the student body from yet another dais, where he stood, feet casually braced apart and his hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip.
“There will be plenty of space in a month or two.” He laughed at his own joke before accepting a notebook from a woman with a silver square insignia on her shoulder.
To Lory’s left and right stood Tabi and Thal, both of them at attention like they’d been training for this moment their entire lives, while Lory still struggled to keep a straight posture.
“Now they’ll split us into colors.” Tabi had barely finished speaking when Observant Eye flipped open the book and started reading.
“Ashen, Nyla. Blackroot, Taren. Grivor, Maes.”
As the Master of Steel called out thirty names, Lory’s head flipped left and right from her position in the last row of ashlings, marking how people shifted and straightened. After over thirty names, he finally looked up, scanning the crowd with disapproval. “Red.”
Before Lory could realize what that was supposed to mean, he lifted his hand, and a murmur ran through the first few rows of formation as on those over-thirty shoulders, a red-framed gray square appeared.
Observant Eye was already reading again, another thirty or so names he sorted into green, repeating the procedure with the hand-lifting and insignia appearing, only this time, the named students got a green-framed gray square.
Lory adjusted her stance,
“Bellmont, Aiden. Grivor, Jarek. Dray, Ronan. Heener, Thalric.”
Thal squirmed a little but held his head high.
“Moonfell, Eira. Ngala, Tabitha.”