Out here, though, beyond the academy walls, they did have a choice. Jey and Elle could come to different decisions about things. They could even part ways.
The thought sent a shiver of fear snaking up Jey’s spine. She didn’t argue Elle’s point, but she couldn’t help making one comment as she stooped to tie on her boots. “We won’t be truly free, Elle, until we rely on no one. Not even Lokim.”
The words hung in the dawning room. Elle said nothing. A few minutes later, they left to start their day.
◈
Elle moved down the busy street, marveling at the easy flow of the crowd. There were so many people in Deramor. All her life, Elle had lived in quiet seclusion. The academy had been vast and mostly empty. Now, life at the cheesery was removed from the thrum and bustle of Masidon’s capital. That was one of the reasons she and Jey had chosen it as a place to go to ground.
One good thing, Elle reflected as she stepped around a woman who had stopped to collar a straying child, was the fact that the other student who tracked them back to this city could hardly give the academy much more of a lead in finding them. Deramor was the only city of any size in the entire country (she had learned this fact from Lokim the night before). The expanse of Masidon’s land, between the two seas to the north and south, the mountains to the west, and the sands to the east, had been all but depopulated by the Two Wars.
Thinking of all they’d learned from Lokim the previous night, Elle felt a tremor of unease. At the same time she felt a little thrill shoot through her, as so often happened when she thought of Lokim. She pulled her hood forward a little further, glad the biting wind gave her an excuse to hide her face.
Shai was tucked inside her wide sleeve, clinging to the inside of the fabric and watching the street with keen eyes. For the first time in weeks, he felt content to hold still.
Elle reached a crossroads and turned right, winding her way further into the heart of the city. As she continued, the streets grew broader, the buildings larger, more ornate, and statelier. At last she stopped before a wide building with the words, “LANDS & ESTATES” etched into the stone above the door. Next to the door hung a painted sign – the same one that had caught her eye months ago:
Land Grant Opportunity
Any citizen possessing the necessary capital and avowed by a tradesman of having mastered a food-producing skill may apply for leave to occupy an abandoned estate. Inquire for details within.
Elle’s heart gave another lurch as she read the sign again. She let out a quick breath and pushed through the large wooden doors.
The space behind the door was dim and vast. Citizens stood in a line, waiting for the attention of one of three clerks who sat behind the wooden counter. It was quiet in the room. The citizens who waited did so in silence.
Elle looked around, searching for the clerk she’d spoken to the last time she’d been in. She felt a surge of relief when she recognized him. She got in line and waited, keeping at least part of her attention on Shai the whole time to help ensure he didn’t do anything rash.
The line was slow and the wait dragged. Around her, people coughed and shuffled their feet, and Elle’s mind strayed again to Lokim.
He was such a mystery. Even after what he’d told them the night before, about coming from a hidden valley, Elle couldn’t wrap her mind around what his life must be like. Did he have friends back in the valley? Parents? Siblings? A girlfriend? He had such nice eyes. They were deep and dusky, kind of like his voice. She wondered how old he was.
“Next, please.”
The clerk who had spoken was not the one Elle wanted to talk to, but Elle looked up with surprise to find herself at the font of the line. Flustered, she pretended to consult the documents in the leather case she carried. She turned to look at the man behind her. “Go ahead.” she suggested. He gave her a puzzled look but moved around her to the impatient clerk.
Elle, cheeks blazing, found herself standing with a pounding heart. She looked around the room for something to keep her thoughts more focused, but there was little enough to look at. The shield and crest of Masidon hung on the wall above the clerks. The wall by the door contained posters and signs of various shapes and sizes, none of which were close enough for Elle to read.
At last, a woman walked away from the counter. The young clerk Elle had been waiting for looked up with an expression of expectation. She lifted her chin and stepped forward.
The clerk was a slim man with delicate hands, pale skin, and light hair. His body had none of the firm look of use that Lokim’s had. He looked at her without much interest as she moved forward and leaned against the counter. “How can I help you today, miss?” His tone was pleasant, if bored.
Elle opened her folder and drew out the missive she’d come to deliver. She handed it across to him. “My cousin and I applied for a land grant a few months ago. This is our endorsement from a tradesman.” She struggled not to blush as she said the words. As much as Holdam liked her and Jey, there was no chance he ever would have endorsed them as cheese-making professionals. She’d magicked him into doing it – a fact for which she felt guilty.
The clerk took the document, glanced at it, and set it on a pile to one side. “Thank you,” he said, tone brisk now, as if to imply all was done. “You’ll receive a summons when it’s time for you to deliver your capital and receive the grant.”
It was clear he expected her to step aside. Elle, faint with anxiety, reached out and set one finger on his delicate wrist. The young man froze, looking at her. Elle wove a small spell – a small thing to make him more tractable. “Please, I was wondering,” she said, trying to keep her voice light and innocent, “if there was any way we could hurry the process along. My cousin and I are anxious, you see, to start our new life.”
The man looked at her. He squinted as if having trouble focusing his eyes. He blinked once, slowly, and looked again at her finger on his wrist. She wove another little passive persuasion, releasing it into him gently.
He sat up a little straighter. “Yes, of course,” he said. Then he leaned forward and said in a confidential tone, “Some of these sit here for weeks before anyone looks at them. Bureaucracy, you know. Delari knows, it’s slow because everyone’s lazy. I’ll see yours goes straight to the top of the pile.”
He winked. Elle managed a queasy smile. She withdrew her hand, thanking him and moving off so the next citizen could approach the desk.
As she headed towards the door, she pulled her hood back up, letting her eyes wander over the array of people who waited in line. All of them had dreams, she supposed. Some of them might be in situations as urgent as her own. And she’d cheated her way in front of everyone else.
With a small sigh, Elle slipped out the door, moved down the shallow stone steps, and blended back into the jumble of bodies outside.
She didn’t notice the slender girl who stood in the shadow of a doorway across the street, hooded and cloaked, and watching her.
◈
The black goat butted Jey in the chest with its flat forehead. Jey grunted. It was a friendly gesture, she knew by now. But still. The goat had a remarkably solid skull.
Jey sidled around the cluster of goats, bearing her pitchfork. They lost interest in her as she began to sift through the scattered straw inside their enclosure. She picked out damp spots and spread bedding that had collected into drifts. When she ran out of that occupation, she wandered over to the skewbald half draft horse who stood dozing in the corner. Holdam kept him for pulling the cart. He was a docile giant with feathered feet and a kind eye. She gave him a pat on the neck, then moved behind him to finger-comb his tail.
Throughout her time in the pen, Jey jumped at every sound. She glanced frequently towards the gate in the wall of the side yard, waiting for it open, letting her know Elle had returned unscathed. She did not like it when Elle ventured into the city alone. Elle’s aptitudes were more subtle than Jey’s. She was accomplished at the sorts of interpersonal manipulations Jey tended to blund
er, but she wasn’t nearly as effective when diplomacy failed and it came time for violence.
Jey left the horse, retrieved her pitchfork, and reversed it in her hands. She used the end of the handle the chip away at the remains of the ice in the water trough. She was stalling. The pen had a good vantage of the gate. Jey wanted to watch the gate until Elle returned, in case she was followed.
They took precautions against this, of course. They never walked openly back to the cheesery after spending time in town. They always headed first in some random direction, ducked into an alleyway, cast a passive echo spell, and retraced their steps.
But passive echo spells were not foolproof. Jey herself could see through them sometimes, if the conditions were right.
The red goat wandered over to sniff at the hem of her skirt. Phril bristled. He was tucked into a crease at her waistline. He hissed at the offending animal for coming too near.
The goat paid the tessila no heed. Jey lifted a foot to nudge the animal away. She’d learned early these creatures could do a terrific amount of damage to a set of skirts in a small amount of time if she let their inquisitive nibbling go unchecked.
As Jey was looking down at the goat, she heard the telltale click of the gate’s latch. She turned, heart going still, and saw nothing. The gate swung open enough for a slim person to pass through. It closed again just as quickly.
Jey, relieved, made her exit from the pen. She tossed the soiled straw into the compost heap, hung the pitchfork on its hook, and hurried across the yard. She could hear Holdam whistling as he worked the churn. She knew Biala was in town, making deliveries. Elle had been making deliveries as well, fitting the extra errand around her other duties.
Jey went to the gate, intending to peek out into the quiet lane to ensure no one was out there. She approached the wall, glanced behind her to make sure Holdam was out of sight, and reached for the latch.
The gate hit her as she extended her hand. She jumped back with a quick curse. Heart pounding with sudden terror, she reached for the small knife she kept tucked in her bodice. It was a tiny thing, by necessity. But Jey could inflict a lot of damage with a small, sharp blade.
The gate clicked closed. No person was visible. Jey narrowed her eyes, watching for signs of someone cloaked in a passive echo spell. Her knife was in her hand, her every sense strained for evidence of the intruder.
The ground was damp. As she watched, she saw the soft earth depress under the weight of a boot.
“Jey, it’s me.” Lokim’s voice was a hard whisper near her ear. It startled her so badly she almost lashed out with the knife. Phril, goaded by her agitation, hissed again, barely containing his desire to fly out of his hiding place and attack.
Jey contained herself with some effort. Her heart was pounding. Phril’s desire to fight was a heat behind her eyes. Her voice grated out in a harsh whisper. “I thought you weren’t coming back until tonight.”
She was still watching the ground. The depression where she thought Lokim’s boot was eased a little, another appearing nearby. His voice was slightly further away when he replied. “I followed Elle. And someone followed her.”
Jey moved along the wall, ducking behind the pump house, trusting Lokim to follow her. She heard the swish of his trouser legs and saw some dry grasses bend as he passed near them.
When they’d made it around the corner of the pump house, they were concealed between the cheesery wall and the corner of the building. Jey said, “Who followed her? Did they track her back here?”
It was annoying, Jey decided, to talk to someone who was invisible. In spite of knowing where he was, Jey couldn’t penetrate Lokim’s spell. His words drifted back to her, low and unhappy.
“It was another girl. Not the same one as before. She was watching the Lands & Estates office. Elle lost her when she went into a sweets shop, out into the alley, and cast her passive echo spell. The girl waited outside the shop for a while, checked inside, then headed out of town. I came back here. Is Elle here? Is she safe?”
Elle appeared, then, as if summoned by her name. She came strolling out from the main residence where Biala and Holdam lived, carrying a broom, her hair pulled back in a scarf.
Jey chewed her lip, not sure whether to be annoyed at Lokim for continuing to dog their heels or grateful for the intelligence. She didn’t have time to decide. Hearing Elle, Holdam poked his head out the cheesery doors. “Girls,” he called in his friendly voice. “Time to pack some curds.”
Jey shot a look in Lokim’s general direction. “You stay out of sight,” she warned him, as if he wasn’t doing that already. Then she sighed, turned, and stepped out from behind the pump house.
◈
“They were watching the land office.” Lokim said the words with a kind of desperation. He’d said them several times already as he paced around their small chamber, filling it with his restlessness and that smell of wood and smoke and earth.
Jey was in the chair, Elle sitting on her bed. The three tessili had darted through the stitchring the moment Lokim had pulled it from his shirt. Jey found it a little hurtful that Phril thought so little of leaving her. But she pushed the feeling aside. She had more important things to worry about.
“Yes, Lokim.” Jey was having trouble containing her annoyance. He’d been at them since the moment they returned to their chamber, arguing, prodding, trying to get them to leave. He felt they were no longer safe at the cheesery, that it was only a matter of time before the academy’s forces descended on them. “But they didn’t track us here.”
Elle was the most subdued presence in the room. She sat on her bed, the soft wave of her hair falling to conceal most of her face. She seemed to feel it was her fault they were in jeopardy.
Lokim’s voice had gained a desperate edge. “I have been in Deramor for a year now. Before I found you, I spent my time learning the politics of this place. Some of the Tessilari believe it’s time we came out of hiding. I left my people to learn who we might need to influence to change the laws that condemn all who practice magic. I have spent months coming to understand the different sects in the government, the groups who oppose one another in public, and those who collaborate behind closed doors. Do you know what I have found? Your academy doesn’t exist. The government does not oversee what happens there. But the church does know, and it is using the academy to its own ends.”
The young man paused, glancing from Elle to Jey and back again. When neither one spoke or betrayed any surprise at his statement, he continued in a rush. “Did you never wonder, Jey, how I knew to wait for you in that lord’s chamber the night I hurt your arm? I was waiting there because all the members of the House of Laws had been slowly changing their minds, one by one, about an issue all of them should have adamantly opposed on principle. I put two and two together and began to shadow that man, thinking I’d uncover who was bribing or threatening his peers. Instead, you appeared, and I finally understood. That is what you were there for that night, wasn’t it? To change the way that man cast his vote?”
Jey hesitated, feeling unmoored all of a sudden. The information Lokim had just dumped on her felt too large, too overwhelming to process. She only said, “Yes.”
Lokim went on. “The church uses the academy to push its agenda, and so it has become tremendously powerful. You’ve left a paper trail, leading straight back here, and they now know where it starts. They will be here any minute now. We should have left already.”
Jey closed her eyes. She was so tired. She was tired in so many ways. She hadn’t had enough sleep in days. It seemed she was always having to make choices, to weigh options, to decide on the safest path forward. And the stakes were too high. One mistake could mean death.
“The clerk said he’d hurry things along.” Elle’s words were soft, the first contribution she’d made to the discussion in some time. “It should be soon, Jey. We should be able to go soon.”
Jey looked at her friend for a moment, noting the droop in her shoulders, the blank look
in her usually bright eyes. She was tired too.
Lokim turned to glare at Jey. For some reason, he was directing the full force of his arguments at her. “Not quickly enough. Don’t you see? They will be here tonight. What do you think will happen if they find you here? You might escape, but what about these people who have taken you in? Would you bring death down on their heads?”
Jey stirred, her conscience pricked. Elle looked up as well, voicing the reality Jey hadn’t spoken. “Lokim,” Elle said. “We have nowhere else to go.”
The comment hung in the dim room. It seemed too still and somber within those stone walls without the tessili dancing on the air to liven things up.
Lokim let out a frustrated breath. “I’ve been telling you, I can take you to my people.”
Jey shook her head. During their longer conversation the night before, Lokim had told them much. He’d explained about the War of the Diods, the Betrayal, and the systematic extermination of the tessili. He’d explained about how the realm had descended into near chaos for a time and how the three house system of government now worked.
What he’d said very little about was himself and the hidden valley of the Tessilari. The things he had said (hidden, secret) sounded too much like the academy for Jey’s taste. It sounded like relinquishing the freedom she’d fought so hard to gain. She would not go there, she’d already decided. Not if she could help it.
“No,” Jey said, interceding before Elle could say anything. She looked up at Lokim. For a moment she tried to let all the fatigue, all the fear, all the uncertainty she was feeling show in her face. “I don’t trust you yet, Lokim. I’m sorry.”
A look of annoyed indignation came onto Lokim’s face, but it faded. His dark eyes seemed to soften. He let out a long, weary sigh. He spoke in a voice that was low but earnest. “I sometimes forget what you’ve been through.”
The flame on the desk danced. Outside, the night was still and cold. It would have been a good night for the kind of opportunity Jey used to be sent on for the academy. No one stirred out of doors in this kind of weather unless absolutely necessary.