Chapter 50 Fourteen Years Ago #2
Eventually, the boy became entirely resistant to Tarth’s orders. He could no longer be compelled into compelling. For a time, he worried this would render him obsolete, a research endeavor that had run its course, but Tarth made no moves to evict the boy from the estate.
In fact, it seemed the mentor had grown rather fond of the beggar he’d plucked from the streets, a familial texture knitting between them, and so Tarth turned his attention to a more rounded education.
Enchanting, brewing, several hideously executed attempts at wielding, plus a woefully inaccurate session of foreseeing that predicted a foreign species would rise from the shadows of the world and take over all central forms of government.
When his mentee was seventeen, Tarth enrolled him in a set of local examinations, and the boy emerged with a Mage Practer certificate—having intentionally botched his compelling tasks.
On the day the certificate arrived in the post—along with a ludicrously luxurious black cloak, now that the boy was fully grown and his mage class was set in stone—Tarth took the boy to the finest parlor in the house and asked him, over a pot of ambertea, what he planned to do with his life.
“I don’t want to use my compelling.” The boy’s voice was rough and gravelly now, more brusque than he usually intended. He cracked his knuckles in his fists; a nervous habit. “Ever.”
Tarth took a sip of too-hot tea through pursed lips. “I did not ask what you don’t want to do with your life. I asked what you do want.”
Want.
That impossible word. The one that still caused the boy such immense turmoil.
“Why did you rescue me, all those years ago?” The question he had longed to ask for over a decade. “It can’t just have been academic curiosity.”
A nonchalant shoulder jerk. “An endeavor can start as one thing and end up as quite another.”
“Tarth,” the boy sighed. “Answer the question.”
It was not a command, but it had the timbre of one.
“You were just a project.” Tarth softened his voice, his usually rigid posture. “And then I grew to love you.”
The boy bowed his head, willing away the tears beading at his waterline.
He’d never told his mentor about his life in the Havenwood, about that fateful night in the Bank of Almere.
Perhaps if he had, the mentor would never have allowed that love to take root.
He had tricked yet another person into caring for him.
But it was finally time to come clean. To tell Tarth everything.
And so he did.
Then, when he was finished, he added, breathless, “Maybe that’s what I should do with my life. Stop things like that from happening. The thievery, the murder. To make the world a little bit better for my presence.” His voice hitched. “Not worse, as it has been.”
Tarth let the revelations roll over him, draining the last of his tea and pouring himself another cup.
“Crime prevention. I can see that.” A genuine smile. “The Silvercloaks, hmm? There’s only one problem—the Academy recently changed their entry requirements. Applicants require a specialist mage classification to join their ranks. And since you intentionally wrote off your compelling exam…”
The boy’s chest sank, sensing a dead end approaching, but there was a twinkle in his mentor’s eye.
“As you know, I lecture at one of the hallowed institutions in Novarin. But it is not one of the universities, as you have likely assumed all these years. It is the military college. I teach during term time, spend semester breaks conducting immersive exercises for the cadets. Though I’m mostly retired from active duty, I’ve been deployed twice in the time you’ve known me.
” Tarth cleared his throat. “I do prefer the Professor moniker to Colonel, however. Less ostentatious, don’t you think? ”
Something fluttered behind the boy’s ribs. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“There is another way into the Silvercloak Academy—the military track.” A loaded shrug, as though something he had long hoped for was finally coming to pass. “My name goes a long way. I could get you onto it in a heartbeat.”
The boy considered this. There had been little in the way of war on the continent in the time he’d been alive, so he’d be very unlikely to actually fight. He could pass through the military academy, spend however long he needed in active service, then transfer to the Silvercloaks.
“Would you tell the military about my compelling?”
Tarth shook his head. “Not without your blessing. The way you ride a steed is enough to get you into the axelcavalry.”
“Maybe the infantry. I think if an axelmare was slain beneath me, I’d perish of sadness there and then.”
“Very well. The infantry, then.”
There were a few moments of amiable silence, the library scented with old books and the north’s favorite tea.
The boy studied his mentor—the now wrinkled face, the sprays of gray in his black hair, the gold-rimmed reading glasses—and finally allowed himself to feel the rush of gratitude and affection he’d suppressed for so long.
The love he’d always suspected was a trap.
“Thank you, Tarth,” he whispered, a little choked. “For everything.”
“Now, Sebran. You’re about to enter into my scholarship, are you not?” A warm smile, shot through with pride. “You’d best start calling me Professor Vertillon.”