Watercolour Smile

  “No.”

  “And yet… you’re living with the sons of the Voda and you go to a Zevghéri school. The Klovoda has been trying to contact you for months. Someone has been blocking them at every turn. Silas is denying involvement, but the Klovoda is well-aware that he plays by his own rules. It’s the very thing that makes him so valuable to them. Why are the Adairs and Quillans hiding you from the Klovoda?”

  “They’re not hiding me.”

  “No?” His expression finally shifted, revealing a small, humourless smile. He turned to his computer and pressed a few buttons on his keyboard before turning back to me again. “I drafted a message earlier excusing you from lessons for the rest of the day by special request of the Klovoda. It has now been sent to all faculty members. I’m expecting Miro Quillan is about to storm into my office at any second, would you refute my assumption?”

  “No.”

  “Then you are aware that they are hiding you from the Zevghéri?”

  Before I could answer, the door opened and Quillan stepped inside. Principle Webber sat up a little straighter, his small smile appearing again. “Why, Mr. Quillan,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you this morning.”

  Quillan rolled his eyes. He shut the door carefully and then picked up a chair from against the wall and set it beside mine. “We have her phone bugged, Bill.”

  “Ah,” Principle Webber’s expression changed. “Of course you do.”

  “Wait,” I fumbled with my phone, pulling it out of my pocket, “you do?”

  Quillan silenced me with a look, and I stuffed the phone away again. I’d just asked a stupid question, apparently. But… bugged? They were listening in on all my conversations?

  “Which Klovoda representative is being sent to meet with her?” Quillan asked Webber.

  “The only one who can control a Zevghéri who hasn’t yet sworn in,” Webber said as Quillan leaned forward and picked up the photograph with the message scrawled over it.

  “Jayden,” Quillan surmised, his brows drawing together. He folded the photograph in half and put it in his pocket. “Still,” he mused. “He’s a little young to be acting on behalf of the entire Klovoda, isn’t he?”

  “They need him,” I answered, before Principle Webber could. “It’s the only way they’ll see my mark.”

  “So it’s true.” Webber sat forward again. “I hadn’t seen a mark on you myself, but the eyes…”

  “Yes.” Quillan watched me, but I didn’t understand his expression. “It’s true. She has a mark.”

  “You must know who her pair is, or you wouldn’t be guarding her so cautiously.”

  If Webber was looking for confirmation, Quillan didn’t provide it.

  “I trust you can curtail the rest of your questions, Bill, until the representative arrives. It would save Seraph having to repeat herself.” His eyes finally switched from me to the Principle as he spoke.

  There was silence for a little while, and then Webber stood up. “You might be in line to be the next Voda, but I’m still in charge at this school. You should remember that.”

  “Of course.” Quillan stood and tapped the arm of my chair. I stood beside him. “Where will we be meeting?” he asked Webber.

  “The indoor basketball court, I’ve cancelled all classes in the Sports Centre for the day and Jayden’s men will be here any minute to set up security. The meeting is at ten.”

  “We’ll meet you there.” Quillan opened the door and I moved out ahead of him.

  “Just one more thing,” Webber called out, bringing us back in from the hallway.

  He held out his hand, and Quillan stared at his open palm for a moment, before slowly extracting the folded photograph from his pocket and handing it over. After that, Webber shooed us out and closed the door in our faces.

  The school was alive. It surged and teetered with the mass of whispered anxiety contained within. I could almost see the whispers travelling from ear to ear along an invisible cord, tying all the bodies together and turning their heads to stare as one. They were fascinated with the Klovoda agents that had infiltrated the corridors—a feeling that I felt I could understand. I assumed that the agents were making at least a passable effort to blend in, as they weren’t wearing aviators and gun-belts—though perhaps they never wore aviators and gun belts. I didn’t know much about Klovoda agents, because predictably, the guys had told me absolutely nothing.

  They stood out nonetheless. Many were posted beside doorways, spaced out in regimented intervals. They shuffled around on occasion so as not to be mistaken for stone-faced gargoyles, but no more than two or three steps at a time, and they always seemed to return to the exact same spot. They would peer into the room that they stood outside of, and then lean against the wall before shuffling again.

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine… ten steps, another agent. Ten more. Another.

  Their eyes pierced me with the practised efficiency of a well-oiled machine—but not the brain-washed, mechanical kind: the kind of machine that hurt, the kind that packed ammunition and forced you to stare right down the barrel of all things superior until your every hope is made foolhardy and your foolish fear is given wings. They knew who I was, and at the same time they wondered exactly who I was. I debated briefly whether they were here to investigate me, or to protect us all from the messenger. I sincerely hoped that it was the latter; after all, that was why we were here in the biggest Zevghéri-run school in the country. The messenger was one of them, and they might just be the only people capable of stopping him.

  Maybe an average school would have been in the middle of an emergency evacuation by now, but not Hollow Ground. It seemed to be common knowledge that there was no safer place than inside these walls—even though said walls had been surrounded by explosives only a few hours ago. Some of the kids were even talking about camping out inside the school until the current ‘security breach’ passed. They didn’t seem to know about the bomb thing. Probably, they would feel differently if they knew—but keeping secrets must have run in the Zevghéri blood, because nobody seemed likely to tell them.

  “It’ll be fine,” Quillan said quietly, not for the first time.

  He was walking two steps behind me, and Noah and Cabe were nowhere to be seen.

  “I only have so much blind faith,” I replied. My tone was so low that Quillan may not have even heard me, and a part of me almost wished that he hadn’t, but his hand caught my arm, just below my elbow.

  My feet stilled in their slow march forward, and Quillan paused too.

  “Jayden is one of us,” he said. Again. He had repeated the same thing for the last half an hour in his office—offering the words up at every glance of my resurfacing panic: it’ll be fine. Jayden is one of us.

  “How?” I ground out the word. “How is that possible? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I wish I could tell you more, but information is dangerous, Seph.”

  “Argh!” I tore my arm from his grasp and ate up the remaining distance to the building entrance.

  Our strange bond was fraught with tension, but it only made me feel him more keenly, and that annoyed me. I knew that he was exactly two steps behind me, matching each of my strides. It was unlikely that he would run into me even if I stopped suddenly; he would probably feel the pause in my limbs before the action of stopping had even been carried out. Even so, my feet had barely cleared the steps before I was turning about, my hair whipping into my face and my fist crashing into his chest. He faltered for a moment, still standing on the last level of the entrance steps, and then he moved, manifesting directly before me.

  I didn’t want to see his expression, or examine my own feelings, so I took to comparing our shoes instead. His were pointed at the end, a clean brown leather boasting a matted shine: just dull enough to seem well-worn, but lustrous enough to belong to the wealth of his remaining outfit. His pant-legs were obviously tailored, because they ended at the perfect spot despite Quillan being taller than most men. I
frowned, my eyes travelling the short distance to my own shoes. It was like standing in a dessert as the sun disappeared behind the dunes in the distance—I was no longer confronted with the perfect amount of shine, because the golden sand had turned shapeless with blotched light. My shoes didn’t fit properly. The laces on the right may not have even matched the laces on the left, and the colour of each second inch of faded fabric was utterly indiscriminate.

  My hand is stinging, I realised. I need to learn how to punch properly. It was surprising that Quillan had ended up on the receiving end of the physical manifestation of my frustration, but then again, he was definitely the safest recipient for it. I had fought with Silas… but it wasn’t an experiment that I was keen to repeat. Once was enough. Once was a little like poking a bear through the bars of a cage, while twice was a little more like flinging open the cage doors, and three times would make me a bear’s meal. I glanced up to catch Quillan rubbing at his chest absently. Definitely not a bear.

  “You’re angry,” he stated.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He moved past me to take the lead. “You’re quick on your feet when you’re angry. You’ll need that, since I can’t tell you what to do in there. Not that I think you’ll need your feet. We’re not running anymore—at least not from the Klovoda. You’re about to get offered the job you’ve been asking for.”

  My mouth was hanging open and I was staring after him, too shocked to properly react. I hadn’t expected such an unemotional response from Quillan. Reflexively, I started to follow him, but my mind lagged behind, snagging on every step that I took.

  There were two men standing at the doors to the Sports Centre and they patted us both down and ran a metal detector over us before allowing us entry. A small desk had been set up with a chair on either side, right in the middle of the empty basketball court. Principle Webber and Jayden both stood to the side of the table, watching us. I didn’t feel confident about this, but Quillan was right—my anger was rising to the forefront of my mind, shoving everything else behind it and mustering up a battle-stance. Quillan, Silas, Noah and Cabe had taken on an impossible task; they took me where I would be safest from one enemy, even if it was right beneath the nose of another—and they had managed to keep me out of the clutches of both.

  Until now.

  Now, their resources had been exhausted, and it was time for me to start planning for my own safety. I had to start acting like a Zevghéri. I had to start playing their games. I wasn’t the same girl anymore. Despite their best efforts, I was well aware that the volume of information in my head was already reaching a dangerous level. If Weston were to get inside my thoughts, he would see more than enough to ruin us all. I understood why information was dangerous in the era of the Weston dictatorship, as Clarin had so labelled it, but I didn’t regret what I had learnt. My ability to shield my mind seemed to be an anomaly, and that changed things. Information wasn’t as crippling to me as it was to other people; instead, it was empowering.

  If there was one thing that this year had taught me, it was that Zevghéri society was a two-headed beast, and the face you were shown depended entirely on how you fed it—or, more importantly, what you fed it. I was an Atmá; a tasty morsel bred specifically for Zevghéri consumption, only I had been starving the beast. And now? Now… it had come for me.

  “Jayden,” I said.

  “Seraph Black.” He smiled, and it seemed to reach his eyes, if only for a moment. “Take a seat.”

  “Actually,” I clenched my fists tighter, “we all know why you’re here, so why don’t we just get it out of the way? Give us a little privacy and I’ll show you my mark.”

  “I’m here for many reasons,” he countered.

  When I didn’t reply, his smile melted away, and he turned his finger in the air. I suspected that it was more for show, because he hadn’t needed a hand gesture when he had controlled me on our last meeting. Every person in the room suddenly turned to face the walls.

  “Is that enough privacy?” he asked.

  I blinked at the back of Principle Webber’s head. His arms were hanging loosely by his sides, but I could almost feel the tension that formed starchy creases in his suit-jacket. Quillan had been standing beside me, so I could still see the side of his profile.

  “Some things are starting to make sense,” I said, almost offhandedly.

  “Hm?” Jayden narrowed his eyes, his expression toting subtle inquisition.

  “Your position in Zevghéri society is determined by blood, because blood can’t be faked, right?” I returned to examining what I could of Quillan’s face. “You’re a suspicious people—you prefer to put your faith in the obvious, the tangible. The power.”

  “You can hardly blame us.” Jayden sounded amused. “We are a people that work from the shadows, it would hardly be possible to remain unsuspicious in such an environment.”

  “Still, blood can only determine a power, the person that comes with that power is a bit of a gamble.”

  Quillan’s mouth twitched, but I returned my attention to Jayden.

  His smile was back in place, his head inclined by the slightest degree. I wondered if he had found his pair, and if they were fighting like Aiden’s pair did before they all died. I stepped forward so that even Quillan was blind to my actions and I quickly tugged up my skirt, raising the side hem of my underwear to reveal a faint white pigmentation mark between my upper thigh and hipbone. It probably didn’t even look like a proper mark, but it had definitely been the most awkward position that I could come up with on such short notice.

  “I understand why you didn’t want to show Lord Weston.” Jayden’s eyebrows arched for a moment, and then he strode forward and pulled something out of his pocket—a magnifying glass, it looked like, though it was barely the size of his thumb. He dropped gracefully to his knees, his hand hovering in the air beside my thigh. “Do you mind?”

  I shook my head. He brushed his finger over the mark, frowning. Probably checking to make sure I hadn’t painted it on with makeup. He set the magnifying glass over it and bent close enough that all I could see was the top of his head. He had brown hair, dusted with ashen strands. It had a sweep to it, and fell to the left side of his face as though he often pushed it out of his eyes with his right hand. The first touch of his fingers on my thigh almost sent me jolting out of my skin. His fingers were cold.

  He glanced up at me, and I got my second biggest scare of the day.

  Liar. His mouth formed the word silently and then he simply knelt there, seemingly on the verge of laughing at me.

  “I don’t like it when people touch me. It makes the valcrick act up.” I blurted the words, at a complete loss for what else to say.

  He pulled back, tucking the magnifying glass away and allowing me to put my clothing back to rights.

  “I’m not surprised.” He sat down, acting as though he hadn’t jut caught me out, and motioned the chair across from him. “You haven’t fully formed a bond, so it will be straining you—”

  “How do you know that I haven’t fully formed a bond?”

  “Aside from the fact that you told Lord Weston yourself?”

  “If there is an aside—”

  “There is. You can’t have a mark. You’re a different breed of Zevghéri, Seraph. At the time of your birth, there wasn’t a single mark on your body at all. The mark on your thigh is not a proper pairing mark, so I can only assume that the pair is still being decided. Naturally, you can’t be bonded if your pair is still being decided.”

  “Wha—” Quillan’s voice was smothered before he had even muttered a word, and I narrowed my eyes on Jayden, seeing that his hand was once again raised.

  “But of course, that information is classified,” he said. “Forget it.”

  I continued to stare at him, my confusion reaching new boundaries, but he seemed to be concentrating on something else entirely. His eyes were fixed intently on the back of Quillan’s head, his hand still stuck in mid-air as though he had forgo
tten that it was there. After an elongated moment of silence, his eyes flickered to Webber, and then he straightened, his smile back in place.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now… where were we? Ah, yes. The Klovoda is very interested in your valcrick, Seraph. The Voda has informed Director Kingsling about what happened in the graveyard with Silas. I must admit… if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d think it a myth.”

  My brain was still stuck several seconds behind the conversation. I couldn’t believe that Jayden had tampered with Quillan’s head right in front of me.

  I plonked down in my seat, my mind reeling with a single recurring thought as the other occupants of the room were all released from Jayden’s command. Quillan spun around the fastest, his eyes landing on me and then quickly flicking away to Jayden. Principle Webber was red in the face, but neither of them were showing a proper reaction to what Jayden had said about me being a different breed of Zevghéri.

  Jayden had taken away their memories… it was only a moment—a sentence—but it was enough. Would Quillan still be so sure that Jayden was on our side if he knew?

  “Is it so unbelievable?” I questioned. “My ability is nothing, compared to yours.”

  “We’ve never seen anything like your healing valcrick, actually.” I waited for him to say more, but he merely watched me. Eventually, he leaned forward, grasping the edges of the desk. “Perhaps your pair—whether the bond is fully formed or not—are the ones taking those pictures of you?”

  “Whoever is taking those pictures doesn’t want me anywhere near Noah or Cabe,” I said. I was confused about why Jayden was still alluding to my pair, even though he had declared me to be a different breed of Zevghéri, one without a mark. Even though he had known that I was bluffing when I showed him the fake mark. Was it for Quillan’s benefit?

  “So you really don’t know who is taking the pictures?” he asked casually.