Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (11 page)

“If each of you could bring only one thing into the field with you, what would it be?” I asked.

Everyone’s answers were predictable. Holden said he’d bring a crossbow loaded with diamond-tipped platinum shafts, Melyn said she’d bring her spellbook, Fara said she’d bring
Virtus
(or courage), and Rafe just shrugged. But then he said:

“It depends on where I’m going. But if I were going to the Shallows, I’d bring food.”

The room got quiet. Not for any good reason either. It wasn’t as if my question was particularly controversial, nor was Rafe’s answer particularly surprising. Everyone knew the outpost settlers were usually starving. But, for once, Rafe seemed serious. His eyes reflected the glow of the candlelit chandeliers as he stared pointedly back at me. Was
he
lecturing
me
? After spending nearly two whole days slouching in his chair pretending to ignore the proceedings, I was surprised Rafe knew where any of us were going. But his answer would have been my answer.

Maybe Mr. TBD deserved a closer look.

“Okay, what else? What spells do you know that might be useful in an investigation, prosecution, or a trip to the Shallows?”

“What if I told you I knew the spell Clean Conscience?”

I tensed and so did Ari beside me. Fara Vanderlin sat up straighter and glared at Rafe. He ignored her and continued to stare at me. Suddenly, the rest of the courtroom vibrated with alertness.

“Do you?”

“Do you think it would help you?”

BANG!

Friedrich pounded the bench with his gavel. “Mr. Sinclair, answer the question.”

Rafe paused for a moment. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

Oddly, I was relieved. As if I were ever going to actually work with him and be tempted to let him cast it over me. But with Friedrich and his gavel backing me up, I couldn’t resist one final question, just out of curiosity.

“What spells do you know, then?”

“Um. Hmm . . . Let’s see . . . I think I still remember Bootstrap . . . Pat on the Back . . . Cup O’ Cocoa—”

BANG! BANG!

“Mr. Sinclair,” Friedrich’s voice boomed, “you have taken an oath of honesty.”

Rafe blinked innocently. “I know. Oh, I almost forgot. I also know Ladies Man, Lucky Charms, and”—Rafe winked at me—“Wet ’n Wild.” I thought Ari was going to go ballistic right then and there, but Friedrich and his gavel beat him to it.

*   *   *

A
fter a five-minute recess we returned to the courtroom. The day dragged on and I became increasingly irritated. In addition to a smashing headache brought on by Friedrich’s pounding gavel, my toes pinched beneath my sandal ribbons and my tailored tunic now felt two sizes too tight. I longed for soft baggy pants, bare feet, and a large cotton pullover. I wished we could make our choices and go home. I already knew who I was going to pick: Lambert Jeffries.

Ari leaned toward me and said in a low voice, “Don’t go for Jeffries.”

Instantly, I could feel my signature swell. I
hated
it when Ari did that. It wasn’t that he could read my mind . . . exactly. It was that he seemed to always know what I was thinking. And sometimes, I didn’t want him to know my thoughts. Or tell me what to do. I ignored him and, instead, asked Jeffries another question. This was the tenth question I’d asked him today so everyone probably knew he was my top pick. I asked him what spell he would use to subdue a hellcnight if we encountered them on the trip. As Rafe had earlier, he answered my question with a question. But this time, there was no gavel pounding. At least, not at first.

“You know what my specialty is, right?” Jeffries said to me.

“Yes.
Lex talionis.
”

“Do you know what that means?”

“It’s adjudication by the Golden Rule. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.’”

“No. You’ve got it backward. It’s ‘Do unto others as they’ve done onto you.’”

What did this have to do with hellcnights?

“There are a lot of people in Halja, Jeffries. That’s a lot of behavior to keep track of. Wouldn’t it be easier to just worry about one person—ourselves?”

“There are a lot of demons in Halja too. Are you saying keeping track of their behavior is too much for you?”

I suppose he was only exercising the Golden Rule—verbally pinning me against the ropes as I had him many times already today—but I didn’t like it. Especially since he turned what I’d said around to imply that I couldn’t do my job properly. Where was Friedrich’s gavel when I needed it? But Jeffries wasn’t finished. And when he continued, what he was saying just got worse.

“I don’t understand why you’d want to partner with me. We’re
nothing
alike.
Voir Dire
means ‘speak the truth.’ Well, the truth is I don’t want to be your Guardian. An eye for an eye is not just some charming colloquialism for me. I truly believe that if someone rips your eye out, you should get to rip theirs out too. Why did you run into Corpus Justica on Monday? Don’t you know that Jezebeth deserved—”

“Deserved to die?” I hissed. Finding out that Jeffries really was a poor choice for me, combined with the fact that Ari had tried to warn me about him earlier, made me exponentially angrier than I might have been otherwise. “I
should
know he deserved to die, right? I’ve only been told that a half dozen times or so by now. But you know what? I don’t go around chopping people’s heads off just because I’ve got a sword in my hand and someone spins me around and points me in the ‘right’ direction.”

“Onyx, you’re selfish and irresponsible. You don’t deserve the power you have. You should have taken the chance that Peter offered you last semester and pursued the Mederi path. In case it didn’t occur to you, there is no peacenik specialty here at the Joshua School. Holding hands and making nice is for the
women
down south.”

Until that moment, Ari had thankfully stayed out of it. But at this latest insult, Ari’s signature bloomed like blood in water.

BANG!

Ari and Friedrich both stood up, but before either of them could stop me, I shouted:

“Since we’re speaking the truth, the truth is I don’t want a Guardian. I don’t want to work with an Angel. The only Angel I’ve ever worked with, Peter Aster, betrayed my trust and stabbed me in the back. Literally? No, but he might as well have. He let two people nearly die so he could pursue his ambitions. And instead of kicking him out, the Joshua School made him
Scholar Excellentia
and sent him to finish his studies in the Archives at Satyr Hill. If that’s the Angel version of Retaliatory Justice, I want no part of it.”

BANG! BANG!

Instantly, the anger that I’d felt toward Peter last semester became white-hot, as if he were sitting in front of me instead of a box full of other Angels who clearly didn’t want to work with me any more than Jeffries did. Last semester, after Peter betrayed me, I’d burned off some of my anger by irreversibly destroying an inanimate object. But by repressing my anger, and my magic, in the time since, it had obviously grown. Retaliatory Justice? Ha! I was way beyond that. I wanted to punish Jeffries for all the unpunished pain Peter had caused me. I wanted to hurt Jeffries for all of the horrid things he’d just said to me. Suddenly, I wanted to brand
lex talionis
on Lambert Jeffries’ ass.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

My unshed magic was a palpable thing in the room. All of the waning magic users could feel it, and even though the Angels couldn’t, they’d worked with our side long enough to know what was going down.

Oh, Luck. Suddenly, I remembered my melted alarm clock.
T minus 4 . . .

Jeffries looked shocked and the tiniest bit scared. “You’re unstable, Onyx,” he cried, leaping out of his chair.

3 . . .

“And irrational. You’re not suitable Maegester material and everyone knows it.”

2 . . .

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

“With your permission . . . ?” Rafe Sinclair’s clear, calm voice cut across the chaos. “Now might be the time to let you know I do know Flame Resistant Blanket. Would you like for me to—”

“Cast a spell on me,” I threatened, “and you’ll be the first to go up in flames.”

1 . . .

As I’d done in the past, I tried to retract my intractable magic. But waning magic is slipperier than a silver coil coated with grease. I pulled back with all my might, but my efforts became more friction for the fire and my frustration became the spark that set the whole thing alight. For one horrifying second my magic became too hot for even me to hold. I let go and the tail end of its whip-like force lashed me across the cheek. Instinctively, I threw up a shield. It acted like a giant cast-iron pot lid, sealing off and smothering the source, but it did nothing to douse the flames that were already out. Dozens of fireballs swirled around the House of Metatron in ever tighter, increasingly faster, circles. Then, like a mighty cyclone collapsing in on itself, my magic converged in the center of the room and exploded. Metatron’s statue of Justica disintegrated in a shower of smoke, stone, and disbelief.

There was no more gavel pounding. Friedrich looked as transfixed by the scene as everyone else. The only person who didn’t seem completely blown away was Rafe Sinclair, who nimbly hopped the bar of the jury box where the Angels had been sitting and walked over to the pile of dust and sand that had once been Justica.

“Wouldn’t dream of casting a spell over
you
,” he said, laughing quietly. He picked up a handful of dust and ran it through his hand, mumbling the entire time. The falling sand reversed, looking disconcertingly like an hourglass run backward. In only twice the time it had taken me to destroy her, Justica was restored. Rafe threw the remaining sand over his shoulder as if it were salt that had been spilled on the table instead of dust from one of the Angels’ most valued possessions. He clapped his hands together and wiped them on his pants before heading for the door. He might as well have been whistling. On his way past me, he gave me a thumbs-up.

“Luck loves his own, firestarter. Never forget it.”

I turned back to the new statue and peered at her more closely.

Justica hadn’t been restored; she’d been recast. Gone was the stout matronly figure and her somber disposition. She was now a young warrior woman with a lithe shape and long limbs. Strong arms wielded a flaming sword, held tip to sky, and scales that looked more like a sling loaded with fireballs than something that might be used to measure. Her hair was unbound, and in the magic of the recently cast spell, it seemed to wreathe with fury. Worst of all, Justica’s blindfold was gone and we could now see her defiant, daring face.

It was mine, right down to the new searing-hot burn mark on my left cheek.

S
omehow I made it out of the courtroom and back to Megiddo. I was absolutely, amazingly mortified. Sure, I’d never really wanted a Guardian in the first place, but to have left
Voir Dire
under such ignominious circumstances.
Ugh.
I didn’t know how I’d ever show my face in class again. I slipped off my sandals, wincing as my tortured feet stepped onto the bare floor and hobbled over to my new wardrobe (my clinic client from last semester had burned my old one, just before he’d whisked me off to my Manipulation classroom to try and kill me). I pulled out old pants and my longed-for pullover.

I debated ordering food and just staying in, but I’d promised Ivy and Fitz I would meet them at Marduk’s, St. Luck’s underground pub, for dinner. And I couldn’t hide forever. I hadn’t even spoken to Ari before I’d left. I’d simply walked out. At least this time, I hadn’t run.

I grabbed cash, keys, and clear lip balm (I tossed that damned Daredevil Red lip stain in the trash can), and then locked up and left. I was at Marduk’s less than an hour after the whole incident had gone down. With any luck, news of it hadn’t yet reached this side of campus. I descended the stairs, swung open the door, and stepped inside.

The entire place erupted: catcalls, cheers, jeers, shouting, stomping. I stepped back in surprise and everyone rushed forward to greet me. Dozens of patrons in various states of inebriation wanted to congratulate me, punch me in the shoulder, slap me on the back, or buy me a beer.
Hyrkes,
I thought, mystified. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed this impromptu celebration was in honor of my stupendous loss of control. The fact that I’d made such a spectacular mistake must have made it seem as if I were more like them, Halja’s magic-less masses. Of course, it didn’t hurt that my little stunt had stuck a thumb in the Angels’ eyes. (Hyrkes tended to view Angels as the snobs they were.) I shook my head, nonplussed, and accepted the beer that someone foisted on me. It turned out to be Fitz. His hair was standing up on end as usual and his eyes were wild with excitement.