The idiot girl left Quenti alone in her—their—room shortly after she had thrown her bag down, not even bothering to change. Quenti had to bite her tongue to stop herself from commenting on the stench of l’lama on the other girl’s clothes. She doubted she smelled much better.

Once Alara was gone, Quenti found herself slumped on the other girl’s bed, her mind racing and body tense with anxiety. She went over the conversations between the councilwoman and Alara again in her mind.

She may have a prison guard for a roommate, but it seemed her guard wasn’t even that good at using her powers. No, it was more than that. This girl didn’t even like to use her powers. A stupid girl, indeed. If the councilwoman—Senya Emaru, Quenti recalled her name—thought Alara was going to be able to keep Quenti under control, then she was just as foolish as Alara.

Quenti fingered the gold cuff bracelet that rested on her wrist. Senya Emaru had genially locked the damn thing on her arm, as if Quenti wasn’t aware she was effectively being cuffed by this woman.

“Don’t worry,” Senya Emaru had said. “All magites wear this at some point in their careers.”

As soon as the metal had closed around Quenti’s wrist, a pressure settled in her gut.

Now, looking at the bracelet, it was unassuming and simple in design. It stretched about two finger lengths in width, with a small piece of quartz acting as a clasp where the ends met. There didn’t appear to be any specific locking mechanism, and yet as Quenti fingered the metal, she couldn’t find a way to open it back up. The metal held tight against her wrist, too tight to slip back over her hand.

Grimly, Quenti reached for her magia, her fears realized as she felt the weight pressing against her. She could still touch it, grasping it lightly and tugging it them in her mind, but it felt weakened and clunky as she manipulated it.

Quenti waved her hand toward the small basin of water that sat in an alcove in the corner. The clear water rose up in small droplets and Quenti let them spread out through the air, covering the room in a mist. With a sharp jab that seemed to take more energy than it should have, the cloud swirled and condensed again into a small funnel of water, hovering and dancing through the air. She couldn’t help the small bubble of relief that hummed through her as the water danced around the room. The bracelet seemed to dampen her strength, but she still had her powers.

In an ironic twist, even with her abilities dulled, she was, for the first time in her life, free to use them without fear. Back in Hurazon, she had always used them in secret, with one eye focused on her rear. At every turn, she expected to be caught—by a peer, another villager, by—

Quenti stopped her thoughts there. Dwelling on the past wasn’t going to get her out of here any faster, and neither was making pretty patterns with water.

She had just sent the water splashing back into the basin when there was a knock on the door. She immediately jumped up, back straight, like a child caught stealing sweets.

“Um…come in?” Quenti sneered slightly at the waver in her own voice.

The door swung open silently and Quenti saw a mage—no, a magite—a few feet back from the door, their arms completely full with some type of roll.

“I got a bed for you. Well…a mattress, anyhow.” The young boy said, shrugging. “They said they would get a frame in here for you by tomorrow.”

Quenti nodded and vaguely waved her arms to invite the boy in.

He took two steps into the room before spinning on his heels and looking around, an eyebrow raised.

Quenti scrunched her own face up as she took in what he was noticing. The entire floor of the room was littered with clothes, books, and literal weapons. A long spear was peeking out from under a rough woolen dress, the bronze tip blinking sharply in the torchlight of the room. Quenti had been so caught up in her own head to notice the state of Alara’s quarters.

“Where… do you want it?” The boy said, just as Quenti snapped, “What the hell does she do in here?”

He let out a small snort of laughter.

“You’re rooming with Alara, right?”

“Or a tornado. I forget.”

“I don’t think she’s ever had a roommate before, and she’s been here longer than anyone else I know.”

“I got as much,” Quenti said. She gave a small huff and began shoving clothes and books aside in one of the corners with her feet, attempting to clear a spot large enough for a bed roll.

“My name’s Ander.”

“Quenti.”

The young boy—Ander—was quiet for a few minutes as she cleared a space and motioned for him to put the roll down. Her eyes widened in surprise as he opened his arms and sent the roll into the corner with a gust of wind. It hit the wall with a small thud and landed slightly crooked.

“Impressive,” Quenti said. “Unnecessary, but impressive.”

The boy blushed slightly at this. He looked to be about twelve or thirteen and he was wearing a pale yellow tunic over cream trousers.

“Sorry. I try and practice as much as I can.”

“So you’re a wind mage?”

“Magite.” His eyes widened slightly. “I still have six years until my terminal exams.”

Right. All that stupid nonsense. Quenti looked the boy up and down. She never understood how the Haven could take children at such a young age.

“How long have you been at the Haven?”

“I was sent here about four years ago,” he said. “You should have seen me before. My parents didn’t know what to do with me.”

Quenti saw the fond smile that crossed his face as he spoke. She felt her chest tighten slightly.

Brainwashed.

“I remember one morning when I got angry at my little sister and I accidentally sent her flying out the window. My mom didn’t know whether to ground me or jump for joy. She sent for the Council the next morning to have me tested.”

“Do you ever get to go home to visit your family?” Quenti asked, voice warm and mind already calculating how much movement there was of magites in and out of the Haven.

“Once we start going on missions, we get to spend some time at home, but not until we get our powers under control. Without control, we’re a danger to our families and villages.”

Yup. Brainwashed.

Quenti’s jaw clenched and she kept silent, knowing she’d probably say something she’d regret if she did open her mouth. Ander’s lips tightened slightly, and Quenti blinked, trying to wipe any telltale sign from her face. She’d usually spoken her mind, but even if she didn’t, her face usually spoke for her.

The boy’s shoulders suddenly shifted, and the tightness in his face melted away. “This is for you, too.” He shrugged off the bag he was holding that Quenti hadn’t noticed until now. “It’s your uniform.”

She took the offered bag and looked inside at the contents. A tunic, dark blue, pale trousers, and a long black woven piece of fabric.

“Blue for water. When we gradate, our aguayo,” he motioned toward the black scarf, “is exchanged for the color of our powers. Mages wear the black tunics and the colored aguayo. You’ll learn all about it in your basics class.” Suddenly his face twisted in a look of bemusement. “At least all the littles learn it during their first classes.”

Quenti recognized what the issue was, “Ah. I imagine I am older than most… littles.”

“I didn’t mean—I’m sure—” he stuttered out.

Quenti laughed at the blush in his cheeks. “I just hope the desks aren’t too small for me.”

He smiled and relaxed once more. “I should go. Senya Cruz wanted to see me after I dropped these off. Oh! And she said that you’re to meet at Senya Emaru’s office tomorrow after first meal to get your schedule.”

The young boy practically ran out the door, leaving Quenti to fall gracelessly onto the bedroll.

***

Quenti was sitting on her mattress, eyelids heavy, body buzzing with anxiety, when Alara walked in hours later. The other girl’s eyes narrowed slightly as she took in the corner Quenti had set up for herself, but she didn’t say anything as she marched in and dropped the shawl she was wearing onto the floor beside one of the spears.

“Do you usually store your weapons in the middle of your room?”

Alara crossed the chamber without speaking and picked up the two spears Quenti had seen earlier, as well as a set of bolas, a long wooden staff with a bronze star at the end. The girl may not have been good at using her powers, but she held her weapons with a confidence and ease that made Quenti not want to be on the other side of an attack. Alara set them against the shelves near her bed.

The room was silent and Quenti was still, watching the girl as she bundled up fresh clothes in her arms and marched back out of the room. It appeared Alara was about as angry as Quenti at having the girl stuck in her room. She almost—almost—empathized with her. But then again, one of them was angry for being kidnapped from her home, the other because she had a new roommate.

She can deal.

Quenti let out a growl of frustration, her head landing heavy on the hardened wall behind her. The pain did nothing to ease her anger, but she took a few breaths and tried to get herself to just think. She didn’t have many options right now in terms of avenues for information. Apart from Ander, and whatever the Haven might actually store in the library, it seemed Alara was her best bet.

The girl may have been terrible at using her abilities, but she’d lived in the Haven for practically her entire life. If there was a way out of this place, Alara would know.

The question was how to pull the information from the dumb girl.

When Alara returned to the room, clothes fresh and wet hair plaited down her back, Quenti swallowed back a snarky comment and pasted on her best smile.

“I hope the corner I chose for my bed is okay?”

The other girl froze and gave Quenti a slightly startled look. “Oh… I mean, yeah. It’s fine.” She smiled weakly. “Have you settled in well?”

“Yes, unpacking my single bag of clothing was exhausting, but I managed,” Quenti said without thinking. Alara’s smile faltered and Quenti gave a slightly over the top flinch, “Sorry, I’m just tired.” And kidnapped.

Alara bit her lip. “It must be hard. I barely remember coming to the Haven, so it’s not really something I ever had to worry about. You probably miss your dad.”

Quenti ignored that last statement, schooling her face not to react. “You were that young when you came here, then?”

It seemed this was a topic that Alara didn’t want to talk about either. She simply shrugged, busying herself cleaning away the clothes that littered the floor.

“Did you get your schedule from Emaru yet?” Alara asked, collapsing heavily onto her bed, the clothes now thrown into a large pile in the corner. Apparently, that was what she considered clean.

Quenti shook her head, “No, I think I’m going to be thrown in with the six-year-olds though.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“I’m trying not to be too offended.”

“You have to learn the basics,” Alara said before pausing, “but then again, you seemed to know how to use your powers a bit already.”

Quenti’s heartrate spiked slightly, her face frozen for a second. But no… Alara wasn’t a mind-walker. She was a mind-stalker, and a poor one at that. Plus, even if another mage had tried to read her thoughts, Quenti would know; the touch of another mind had always been familiar to her, like the soft touch of a hand on her arm.

“So you’re a fire mage?” Perhaps changing the subject was safer anyway, and Quenti wanted to start to get to know her… captor.

“Um—yeah. Well magite. As you heard, I haven’t quite passed my tests yet.”

“Well, you’re clearly not stuck with the seven-year-olds, so you can’t be that bad”

“That’s not quite Linda’s—Emaru’s—perspective.”

“She seems a bit like a stick in the mud.” Quenti said, eyeing the other girl’s reaction.

Alara’s eyes widened and she let out a small snort. “El’dyo, never let her hear you say that or she’ll send you flying.”

Well that was one way out of here, Quenti thought grimly.

“Show me!” she said. She sat up and leaned toward Alara, putting on her best curious face—not that she wasn’t actually curious to see how bad the idiot girl actually was.

“I’m starting to think an excited Quenti is a dangerous Quenti.”

“Come on. Show me what you’ve got,” Quenti challenged again.

“No, thank you.”

Quenti jumped across the room and landed with a thud onto Alara’s bed, “Come on! You’ve got to be better than me if I’m stuck with the babies.”

“No. Really.”

“Maybe the councilwoman’s right. You won’t ever be a councilguard with that attitude.”

Quenti could see she had hit a nerve. Alara’s dark eyes flared and her cheeks flushed. For a moment, Quenti almost thought she could feel the heat of Alara’s powers like a mind-stalker.

“Fine,” Alara snapped. The girl’s eyes didn’t leave Quenti’s as the few torches that lined the room suddenly flared fully to life, flames shooting to the ceiling, sparks crackling angrily as they jumped about.

And then the heat was gone and Alara’s eyes widened with alarm.

“The rug!”

Quenti turned to see that some sparks had landed on a rug centered in the room—a rug that had previously been hidden by piles of clothes. It was smoldering, fire eating away at the woven pattern at its center.

“Well, put it out,” Quenti said looking puzzled at Alara.

“I can’t! I don’t have water.”

“With your powers, stupid!” Quenti was caught between annoyance and utter confusion.

“What!? I don’t know how to do that.”

“Seriously?”

Alara just gave her a helpless look.

Sol help us…

Quenti turned to the fire and felt the cool wave of her magia rising up from somewhere deep in her body. The water in the basin that she had been playing with earlier gracefully twirled into the air and landed onto the rug, steam and smoke hissing.

Quenti turned back to Alara grinning. “You are an absolutely amazing disaster.”

And I won’t even mention the fact that you could have used the basin yourself to put out the fire.

Alara flinched.

“Do you even realize how powerful you are?”

“You just called me a disaster.”

“A powerful disaster, don’t get me wrong. You barely even batted an eye and almost caught the entire room on fire.”

“I’m confused if you think almost burning my room down is a good thing.”

“If that’s you with these stupid cuffs and out of practice,” Quenti shook her cuffed wrist in Alara’s face, “I wouldn’t want to be on your bad side when you learn to use your powers.”

“Those are to help magites as they get used to their powers,” Alara said, completely guileless.

“Ha. Help. Right. So do you all wear these until you become mages?”

“No, most take them off once they get far enough into their training to have some basic control.”

“So you’re still wearing yours because…?”

Alara ignored the question and laid back on her bed, eyes closed.

Quenti was still sitting on the edge of the bed as she examined the girl lying completely defenseless before her. Defenseless in more ways than one. This magite actually believed in everything the Haven stood for, and seemed to assume everyone else did too.

“So where can a girl get dinner around here?”

Alara didn’t move from her position on the bed, but her stomach betrayed her with a loud rumble.

“There’s a dining hall for the students.”

“Anywhere we can go where I won’t be stared at by a bunch of magites?”

“The market will likely still being going on in the central cavern. If you have a few bronze pieces, you can get some great fresh produce from the north region.”

“Does it look like I have any money?” Quenti didn’t mean it to come out peevish, but she knew her annoyance was evident.

Rolling off her bed with a groan, Alara slipped on her sandals. She didn’t seem to notice or care about the bite in Quenti’s voice. “You’ll get your allowance soon enough. Come on. I’ll buy tonight.”

***

The market hadn’t quieted down from that afternoon, and Quenti’s eyes were wide as they wandered around the aisles, taking in the selection of food. The air was heavy with spices, roasting fish, and corn. In all her life, in all her trips to the markets near their town, she had never seen so much food. She counted nearly twenty varieties of potatoes at just one booth and saw another one piled high with enough dried meat to feed a family of seven over the entire dry season.

Before long, Quenti’s arms were piled with fresh fruit, three types of roasted potatoes, and two ears of corn. They ate at the benches along the edge of the canal and Quenti was happy to finally fill her stomach. The corn was smoky, salty, and sweet, and she felt an ease settle over her shoulders as she savored the final bites.

“So do you just spend all day ’n night in this mountain?” Quenti asked, swallowing her last bit of corn.

Alara shrugged, “You can wander out to Cielo on free days, but most the time magites just stay around here. The Haven is its own underground city.”

“No wonder you are all so pale.”

“Some of us, yes. It’s usually how you can tell a blameless from a mage out of uniform.”

Quenti shook her head. “Sol, how do you do it? I’d miss the sun—the forest—the animals.”

Quenti saw the small wince and she wasn’t sure it was from the curse or the sentiment. Her mom had raised her under the old religion, but she knew it was all but forbidden in Sombria to speak of Sol and the Many gods. If Alara caught the slip, she seemed willing to ignore it…for now.

“I can take you around to the back of Cielo the next day we have off. The city terraces don’t wrap all the way around, and the cloud forest climbs right up the side of the mountain. It’s only broken by the occasional window. It’s quite peaceful.”

A small spark of hope jolted through Quenti and she bit her lip to hide a smile.

Alara finished off her own roasted potatoes with a contented sigh. “We should probably head back soon. Curfew will be starting soon. Magites are expected to be back in the school an hour after sunset each night, though there is no curfew on being in our rooms.”

Quenti got up without complaint, stuffing an extra granadiya in her pocket for a snack later.

Alara led them back through the tunnels toward the dorms. Quenti found herself slowly falling behind the girl, shortening her steps and slowing her pace purposefully.

Despite the heaviness in her eyes, she wasn’t ready to fall asleep just yet. She wanted to see more of the tunnels that twisted under the mountain. To her left was one that led to a set of narrow steps disappearing down, deeper into the mountain.

“Quenti!” Alara voice was sharp behind her.

“Where does this go?” She was already partway down the tunnel.

“Not to our room!” Alara said, her voice growing clear as she followed Quenti with short, irritated steps.

“I want to see more of the Haven,” Quenti said, mostly honestly.

“It’s just about curfew.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t any curfew.”

“There is for the Haven, just not our rooms,” Alara huffed. “And you’ll be starting class tomorrow. Don’t you think you should rest?”

“Oh, please. I’ll be dancing circles around those little children tomorrow, even with this stupid cuff.” Quenti jangled her wrist above her head as she continued down the steps.

“We’re going to get in trouble.”

“Emaru said you needed to get a little out of control!”

“I don’t think that is what she meant!”

“Yeah, but we can always play dumb.” With that, Quenti quickened her pace, taking the steps in twos and smiling to herself as she heard Alara’s footsteps behind her.