Stained Glass Monsters (9 page)

The problem was that the Arkathan was
the wrong place to start. It was an advanced school, taking snotty
nobles and the very cream of other young mages just when they were
getting ready to summon their first focus, and grooming them for
the Hand, or the Sentene, or to be scholars of the Art – or just
too powerful for their own good. It didn't matter whether Kendall
had potential or not; she hadn't passed any of the stages required
to enter the Arkathan. She hadn't been learning sigils along with
her letters, and could barely sense power, let alone understand how
to
use
it. The Head had given her a couple of books and told
her to memorise them, found her a uniform and an empty bed, and
left her to kick about on her own.

She didn't fit with the people either,
of course. Not all of them were as bad as Lydia, who talked with a
built-in flounce, but plenty had made it clear that they didn't
like having a village girl shoved in unasked. Not just because she
wasn't rich or titled like many of them, but because she hadn't
earned
the right to be there. Studying at the Arkathan was a
privilege, a prize to be won or bought, while Kendall was some girl
whose only qualification was that her home had been destroyed by
the Grand Summoning. And when Kendall had chosen to feign ignorance
of anything beyond that, she'd failed to even be a good source of
gossip.

Like the Kellian girl, Kendall found it
simplest to avoid the other students as much as possible. She
shared a room with these five, only saw the rest at the dining
hall, and concentrated on memorising ugly, crosswise sigils. With
the dormitory no longer quiet, she took her book and headed to the
only place she'd found to get any real privacy.

The Houses of Magic were set on a
jutting section of Aliace Hill, within the circle of the palace but
separate from it. Six buildings, three large and three lesser,
stuck out around a thick central tower where the Grand Magister and
the library were located. Each main building belonged to a
different House, and the smaller ones held shared kitchens, stables
and infirmary.

The infirmary was between the Arkathan
and Sentene House, and outside that was a not very interesting
garden which looked north-east to where the hill fell away. A stone
balustrade guarded the drop, and Kendall had found that if you
climbed over this there was a useful rock shelf a few feet down. It
was sunny in the morning, and out of sight of annoying people. She
slid down to it with a sense of relief, only to meet the startled
eyes of a boy maybe a year older than herself.

"Guess I'm not the first person to
notice this spot after all," the boy said.

Kendall hesitated. Thin, with very black
hair and eyes, and wearing a loose set of pyjamas and a blanket, he
looked worn and ill, slumping back against the rock as if he
couldn't sit up properly.

"Are you hurt? Do you want me to get
someone to help you?"

"Fel, no. I've had enough of being
peered at." He paused, glancing from her shapeless black and blue
smock to her book. "Are you one of the students here?"

Something about the way he tilted his
head brought recognition. "Do you – do you have an older
sister?"

The boy's face brightened, then his wary
expression came back in force. "You've met Rennyn?"

"I don't know what her name is, though I
guess she must be the one everyone is saying is a
Montjuste-Surclere, come back to fight the Black Queen. She came to
Falk."

His eyes widened, then for some reason
he went red. "Are you the shed girl?"

"My name's Kendall," Kendall said,
flatly. 'Shed girl' indeed.

"Ah, um. I'm Sebastian. I guess you have
met my sister, then." He shuffled his feet and glowered down at
them, adding in a stifled voice: "I owe you an apology."

"You do?" Kendall couldn't begin to
guess why.

He nodded, then met her eyes. "I told
Ren she shouldn't have done it, you see. Saved you. We were
supposed to keep everything we did a secret, we weren't supposed to
be noticed at all. But because Ren sent you away, the Sentene found
out about us. And I'm – sorry I said that."

Kendall thought about being angry, but
he looked so crumpled and unhappy that she decided it was no use
yelling at someone who belonged in a sickbed. "Sounds like you
should be telling her that, not me."

"I know. She must be furious with me.
After saying that to her, what do I do but end up here. They knew
Ren existed, yes, but–" He paused, and bit his lip. "Now it seems
like everyone knows about us, and that's my fault."

"How?" When he just chewed on his lip
more, she added persuasively: "If it's things everyone knows, it's
not going to hurt to tell me, is it?"

"Maybe not. I wish I'd had a chance to
talk to her before she left, so I knew just what she'd said. What
are people saying about us?"

"Well, I hadn't heard anything about
you
," Kendall said. "Your sister apparently did something
impressive in the middle of the Night Stalker invasion and saved
the city. I'm not real clear on what. And she's going to do what
Prince Tiandel did, and stop the Grand Summoning just before it
finishes. But she's vanished, and no-one knows where she is."

"She's supposed to come back today. Is
all that really common gossip? I was hoping it at least wouldn't go
beyond the Sentene and the Hand."

"They had a debate about it in Council.
Mainly about the Montjuste-Surclere right to the throne."

That won an incredulous stare. "How
stupid."

"So, what was it you did? I've not heard
you mentioned at all."

"Small mercies. I was – I followed Ren
to where the incursion would be. She's the one that has to take all
the danger, you see, while I'm just supposed to keep myself safe
and out of the way. I wanted to at least see what she had to face.
So I went there and hid myself on a roof, made myself invisible.
Then – well, you know that the incursion was huge beyond belief.
The Eferum-Get went everywhere, and the Sentene were chasing them.
A building near me caught on fire, and some people came out. There
were no Sentene near, and they ran straight into some Irisian –
they're like poisonous scaled monkeys. I couldn't just
watch
."

"But you got hurt?"

"I didn't get the fourth one quickly
enough. So now I'm stuck here, and Ren's in
more
danger
because it sounds like the entire Kingdom knows exactly what she's
doing."

"Wouldn't she have helped against the
monsters anyway? Even if you weren't there?"

"Maybe. But me getting clawed by an
Irisian left her with little choice about how to deal with the
aftermath." He fidgeted restlessly, still slumped against the
rocks. "You joined the Arkathan? Can I see what you're
studying?"

Kendall handed over her boring book,
noting how much trouble he had keeping hold of it. He flipped
through the pages clumsily, then shook his head. "You've no
background, right? What have they given you except this
dictionary?"

"There's another one, but it's just more
of these squiggles."

"What exercises have they given
you?"

"Exercises? I've got to memorise all
that first. I get tested on how well I know the sigils, and then
they start to tell me how to make them work."

"You're reading a Sigillic dictionary?
End to end? No exercises at all?"

"Don't I need to know the sigils to
cast?" Kendall asked warily. "Like knowing the alphabet before I
can write?"

"Since sigils are words, not letters,
you'd only need to know the words that you're going to use, not the
entire book. This doesn't even explain how sigils are structured.
And you don't use words for Thought magic – that's the entire
point. It's just raw will and power. Try moving that pebble."

"What? But–"

"Did they really just give you that book
and tell you to teach yourself how to be a mage? What a stupid
school this must be. Look – you can sense casting, right?"

"I can smell it."

"Do you ever feel anything when that
happens?"

"My nose itches."

"So, look at that pebble. And
concentrate on the smell. That's a bit like, um, if you're baking
bread. When you're cooking, you can smell it. But the bread, the
dough, smelled like something before that, just not as strong. So
try and imagine what it smelled like before."

Uncooked thunderstorm? Kendall shook her
head helplessly. "That doesn't make sense to me."

"Efera's everywhere, all around us,
leaking into this world from the Eferum. Mages just happen to be
able to tell that it's there, know when it's being worked. And have
a kind of muscle that allows them to do things with it. So all the
time you're smelling raw Efera, and you're only noticing it
properly when someone does something to it." Sebastian lifted a
hand and a fist-sized rock rose from the hillside. "Do you feel the
change?"

"Maybe," Kendall said, doubtfully. She
hadn't even known you could cast without using sigils.

"Making the link between sensing power
and actually doing anything with it is the biggest and maybe the
hardest step. When you start casting Sigillic, you'll push the
power into the path charted by the sigils. Thought magic is more
basic: there's a rock and you want it to move. You know it's
surrounded by Efera, so you push the Efera at the rock, wanting it
to move."

"But – push it with what?"

He grinned, and flipped her book open
again. "That's the hard bit. You know that there's Efera here. You
know that you've got a muscle that can work it, a muscle that you
can use by
wanting
. So move the pebble."

"You're not a very good teacher."

"And you didn't even try." He turned his
head toward the rock still hovering in the air and this time
Kendall knew a moment beforehand as the stone broke into dozens of
little pieces. "Thought magic exercises. Both for precision for
when you need to Thought cast, and for strength that you'll
eventually be able to push into Sigillic casting. Sigillic casting
is for complex, more permanent things, but don't neglect Thought."
He turned a page, not even watching the stones spiralling above his
head.

"
And
a show-off," Kendall
muttered, but glowered obediently at the pebble, trying to picture
herself surrounded by mysterious forces which she could reach out
with an invisible arm and poke. Nothing happened, of course, and
she began to suspect he'd been playing games with her.

"So why the shed?" he asked, after she'd
been glaring at the pebble a while.

"What?"

"Why were you living in a shed?" He
flushed at her expression, but continued: "We've lived in a few
places, and the hardest thing was getting people to leave us alone.
Always expecting us to help out with something, or trying to
arrange things for us, and gossiping endlessly. I can't imagine
getting away with living in a shed. The Holier-than-the-Dawnbringer
types would have kicked up the hugest fuss."

"Trying to take you over," she said,
understanding. "I lived there because it was mine. When Gran's
house burned down, a lot of them wanted to take me in. Some of them
wouldn't have been so bad, but it wouldn't be mine, not a place I
belonged. And they would have thought it gave them the right to
tell me what to do."

"Don't people do that anyway?"

"I suppose." Kendall sighed. "I bet
no-one tells your sister what to do."

Sebastian laughed. "All the time. But
she doesn't often listen."

"I'd like that kind of power. To be able
to do what I want, not what other people want me to."

He looked at her, then slowly closed the
book and handed it back to her. "She does that sometimes, I
guess."

The rock shelf had moved into the shade,
and no longer felt so comfortable. Kendall frowned, fingering the
worn cover of the book. "Is there really a conspiracy to kill
you?"

"A conspiracy?" The glance he gave her
was wary. "I don't know. Queen Solace is definitely returning, and
I'm sure she doesn't want us to stop her. And someone did kill our
great-grandfather, so we have to assume that there's someone
willing to help her, and avoid giving them the chance."

"Do you think you're safe here?"

"No. Yes and no. There's an awful lot of
people who pass through these buildings. The Sentene guard the door
to the infirmary, but – can they really be sure of everyone? I've
been testing my food for poison."

"You don't believe what they say about
the Kellian, then? That because the Kellian were created by the
Black Queen, they consider her their god, and are secretly loyal to
her?"

Sebastian ran a hand through his tangled
hair, shifting uncomfortably. "We thought of it, of course," he
said, after a moment. "It would be stupid not to at least consider
the question of their loyalties, and it's one of the reasons we
were planning to avoid the Sentene. But – a Kellian killed the
Irisian that was attacking me. And they've had plenty of chances to
kill me since. My father used to say that the Kellian are the last
people who would want the Black Queen to return."

"Really? Why?"

"Why would the children of slaves want
the slave-master to return?" asked a light voice, and Kendall
looked up to see Sebastian's sister leaning on the balustrade
gazing down at them. Worse still, she was flanked by two tall
figures in the black uniform of Sentene.

"Ren!" Sebastian, face alight, floated
abruptly upward. "Are you all right?"

"Better than you'll be if I find you've
been levitating yourself out of any more windows."

"You wouldn't have stood a single day of
it, Ren. Being gawked at like a bear in a menagerie."

"I'm sure. But still, you won't recover
properly unless you work your body against the effects of the
poison. You can use a cane, but not magic, in any further escape
attempts."