Chapter 15 #2
The one who panders to the like of Dray and Oliver, hoping for a job one day, a connection that will elevate them in life.
So I laugh as he’s poisoned by the stardust, the literal pulverised elements from meteors and asteroids. Heard it makes the bowels lock up for weeks, even with treatment.
But Wealdwine isn’t amused.
She hums a curt sound, and it carries through the whole room. She drags her pen over the paper latched onto the clipboard, and it’s a clear ‘X’ she marks next to his name.
A fail.
It’s only a practice exam, but the fallen look on his face should pull on heartstrings—if it wasn’t so funny that his sorrowful face is literally glittering.
He drops his head, and waits.
Dragana has found her object.
Her hands are cupped around a golden ball of sorts, encrusted with ruby jewels, but there’s something in it.
Her thumb slides along the edge, then the lid of the ball pops open—and reveals a dark grey stone. A nugget of the universe.
Her lashes shut as she brings it to her mouth… and it looks like she’s kissing it, closed-lipped but still, my face twists.
Master Wealdwine walks the podium, slow and soft steps at the edge of the raised circle.
Over the trolley, the view to the pews across the room is clear—and so are the two faces angled our way, faces carved from angel stone with such delicate, loving hands.
Asta and Dray are alphabetically paired on the pew. Sinclair and Strom, they sit side by side, but while they look a pair made for each other, there’s a palpable distance between them.
Dray’s chin is turned, and he watches Dragana inhale a steady breath, like she’s sucking the life source out from the space debris—but Dray watches it happen like this is actually interesting to him.
Asta is angled away from him, her knees shifted, her chin lifted—and she looks across to the other rows of pews.
I trace her gaze… to Eric Harling.
He doesn’t look at her.
He doesn’t look at anyone.
His face is buried in his hands, practically folded over, and his pentacle rests on his lap.
That in itself is strange, since no pentacles are to be used in the exams, practice or not.
Dragana’s sharp breath cuts through the room.
In her hands, the stone turns to dust, then falls away. And she loosens a weighted breath.
But nothing else happens.
Absorption isn’t very impressive. It’s all too common and mostly useless.
In a coven, someone with absorption would be best paired with an amplifier, then the stardust she just inhaled could be used to amplify the coven’s power even more.
But solo, she just has more magic in her, and it’s temporary, so the scattered applause is unenthused.
The next are called up.
“Mikhail Ivanov and Oliver Craven.”
The human embodiment of fatigue moves beside me. A sigh ribbons out of him as he pushes up his weight from the bench, then side-steps out of the row.
The trolley is still planted in the middle of the stage, rich with instruments, ornaments, wooden boxes, pentacles, empty bowls, and dishes full of water.
Oliver and Mikhail take their places on opposite sides of the trolley.
Wealdwine orders, “Turn wine to water.”
Purification.
The corners of my mouth dig into my cheeks.
It’s a small task.
Oliver can create gold itself from any metal, and Father can create gold from water.
Oliver isn’t quite there yet, but he will be.
Today or in a decade, it doesn’t change that this task before him now, wine into water, is menial.
That’s probably a relief for him, since that migraine has his lashes almost shut over his eyes. He’s quick about the task, lazy almost.
He lifts the glass chalice from the trolley before Mikhail has even spotted his own.
Crimson liquid sloshes against the glass, and in the silent anticipation from the audience of seniors, the wine pales.
And pales.
And pales.
Until it’s as clear as the stream I visit.
Face blank, Oliver sets down the chalice—and doesn’t so much as smile as the applause rips through the seniors.
Master Wealdwine marks the parchment on the clipboard. An obvious tick, but even that doesn’t change Oliver’s sour mood.
He takes a step back and waits for Mikhail to finish, but he is only just now holding his chalice.
The applause settles, scattered and faint, before the renewed silence returns—thick with that tense anticipation.
Mikhail is a fallen gentry, an elite whose family line once stood with the power of the aristos. But then they went and started breeding with lesser, lesser bloodlines, lesser prints, the weaker of our kind—and their power waned.
There is a reason aristos stick together.
Mikhail is the only other alchemist student in all of Bluestone, in all of Europe—and he’s rubbish.
I doubt he can manage anything to do with the metals yet, lead or gold or iron, and forget diamonds, that’s out of the question.
Because he’s up there on the podium, struggling to turn wine into water.
‘Child’s play,’ my father would call it.
Oliver used do this backwards.
Water into wine out in the gardens, when all the families were together.
I, of course, wasn’t included when the others snuck off. We were all only twelve or thirteen, and they would go drink alchemised booze deep in the hedges.
Started with wine, finished with hard liquor.
I only remember because I was excluded—and I remember the stink of them when they would come back from the gardens.
It always annoyed me that none of the adults said anything about it, but of course they knew. It’s hard not to when all the kids stink of liquor, can hardly stand up straight, and are falling into each other with laughter.
My mouth puckers, sour, and I will Mikhail to fail just that bit harder.
How can he, this washed-out gentry, have such a power, alchemy of all prints, while I have nothing?
Even if he’s bad at it, it’s better than deadblood.
Oh.
My mouth turns down with a frown.
Maybe I wished too hard, and that’s my secret print coming to life, because he does fail.
More than that.
The chalice slips from his trembling hands—and just as the wine softens into a faint pink liquid, he collapses.
Some shouts of concern arch over the room, coming from the pews, but mostly it’s murmurs and chuckles.
Mikhail is carried out by a master.
Oliver wears no ego as he returns to his seat. He settles beside me, forearms braced on his thighs, and he shuts his eyes—like he’s going to powernap through the rest of the day.
And it is all day.
Artificery is next up.
That’s Courtney and Piper.
They each select items from the trolley to enchant.
Artificers are the reason we have the drapes around our beds in the dorms that silence any noise beyond, the reason we have pentacles to channel a chaotic power into something steady and workable.
It isn’t a rare print.
In fact, it’s so common that interest in the room has faded to murmured chats and, beside me, Oliver is half-asleep.
Piper and Courtney pick out small wooden chests, petite enough to fit in the palms of their hands. Their task is to enchant the boxes to decay when it is touched by another.
The first part goes well.
Then they swap boxes.
The moment Courtney’s is flat on Piper’s hand, it starts to blacken—and I sit up a bit straighter, lift my chin that touch higher…
And nothing.
It only blackens, like it’s been charred.
But it doesn’t decay.
Piper’s does.
Firm in Courtney’s hand, the chest bubbles and rots and darkens until it starts to cave in on itself.
My brows raise—and not a moment after, the box explodes. Literally explodes, shrapnel spitting through the room.
A collective shout rips through the room.
Front-row seniors flinch and throw themselves off the pews, onto the laps of the students behind them.
On the bench in front of me, just two students along, Landon’s back jolts with his laughter. The dark curls of his hair rustle as he shakes his head in disbelief.
Courtney and Piper head back to their seats, and Witchdoctor Urma is quick to rush to Courtney and pick out the splinters from her sweater.
I wince at the sight of it, and I have to look away.
The next is called.
Brews.
It is the longest practice print test so far.
Landon gets a fresh trolley to share with his opponent, and they have thirty minutes to make a fast-acting burn salve. No instructions are provided, they are just to go off instinct, and the room falls into a lulled quiet as it goes on.
My attention drifts back to Courtney, one section over from me. I lean forward on the pew and look around Teddy to find her.
Her scraped and torn hands are gripped tight on her lap, fingers twisted and wringing together. But that’s nothing compared to the attack on her bottom lip—she chews and chews and chews it raw.
Courtney has made it clear we aren’t friends anymore, maybe that we never really were, but there’s a bud of sadness in me for her.
The mark on the clipboard was so obviously a cross. She failed her practice test.
And it is just a practice round—but they are run for a reason. To highlight the progress made or the progress that still needs to be made.
Courtney is behind.
Piper failed, too, sure, but for Courtney it’s different.
She’s a made one.
Her twin has a complex print, a great gift, and compared to him, she’s rust.
I wonder something terrible.
If James didn’t have the print he does, would he and Courtney have been approached to join the Videralli?
Her print isn’t exceptional, and so many others with artificery magic are vastly better at it than she is, so really, would she be worth the bother?
The cost alone for the schooling of the made ones takes a lot of fundraising among the aristos throughout Europe—and that’s not even considering the cost of their lives at The Home for the Misplaced.
Made ones are an investment for the Videralli.
Courtney is a failed investment.
At least, she obviously feels that way.