Aki

“If you two were ready a month ago, why take the test now?” I asked as my friends and I walked back to our dorms from the mundane building. We’d spent our free day making sure we were free from worrying about our mundane assessments.

“Same reason we haven’t taken the others,” Sil offered.

“Boredom,” Dako added, his grin rendering his answer a jest, though, seeing Sil flinch, there must’ve been some truth to it.

“Maybe for me, but you?” Sil asked. “If Aki hadn't dragged you with him to the library every other night, I doubt you’d have passed.”

Dako waved her comments away. “ What did you expect? I’m a graduate of a Bainan compound after all. We’re expected to breeze past the mundane assessment without the help of tutors.”

Sil waved away his excuses. “So, how did it go?” She asked me.

“Well enough,” I said. I’d inhaled and ingested more than the required amount before the end of the first month saw our second week of mundane classes.

Sil and Dako continued speaking. As far as my mind was concerned, their words were but a meaningless arrangement of syllables, for my thoughts had stagnated on seeing the deceptively sweet-looking child who watched me some ways off.

I stopped where I stood. A tapping on my shoulder tore my eyes from the woman who birthed me.

“What’s wrong?” Dako asked.

“N-nothing,” I said. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“Is that wise?” Sil took an exaggerated look around. “Don’t you think it's best one of us stay with you?”

“Trust me, right now, no one would dare.”

Sil shrugged. “If you say so.”

Dako stepped closer to me. “No. I go where you go.”

“Dako,” I said. He drew back from the severity of my tone. “Leave.”

“But—”

Sil wrapped her arm around Dako’s and gently pulled him away. “When have you known Aki to lie? If he says he is safe, he is safe.”

Dako failed to resist her pull, unwilling to bear his greater strength to do so. “But—”

“Or do you not trust him?” She released his arm then, knowing the question would crush his resistance.

“Be careful,” he said to me, his eyes not leaving mine as he trailed after Sil. “And quick.”

I watched my friends enter and disappear behind the walls of our dorms, only then turning to greet her. I bowed, my mind frantically building a wall of innocuous thoughts. “An honor, Mother, to have the privilege of your visit.” Even stood leaning against the dorm walls twenty strides away, I knew she heard me.

She pushed off the wall and the space between us melted, warping the distance to a fraction of what it was, reality itself bending to her will and turning twenty strides into one.

“Son,” she said, the affection in her voice as undeniable as it was untrue, “if there is anyone who deserves my attention, it is you.” She smiled at the unasked question that flittered across my thoughts. “Yes, indeed, I’ve been made aware of your potential. It gladens me to find you have more depth to you than I supposed. Pinnacle in all the arts. Nothing of the sort has been seen since my youngest brother was born.”

“High praise, coming from such as you, Mistress Lor—”

She waved the title away. “Call me Mother. That is what I am, after all: your mother.”

I bowed again. “As you wish, Mother.” I thought calling Kalin ‘Sir’ bothered me. Calling this being ‘Mother’ sickened me well enough to almost break my armor of fabricated thoughts.

“Tsk, tsk,” she said, wagging her finger. “Careful. You almost lost it there.”

“Almost rarely counts.” I was cold once more. Indifferent. Detached. It came easier in her presence, my dire need for its stilling grip spurring my motivation.

“But almost is always telling. I see you are one of those who hears it speak.” Her ability to sense the smallest fluctuation in my mind was uncanny.

I shrugged. “Perhaps.”

My cheek suddenly stung. The slap made no sound, nor stirred the air, just came and went without evidence, the pain the only reminder it was ever there.

Lorail was frowning. “Modesty is not a trait I wish you to possess. Discard it.”

I gave her a nod, slow, as though the coldness of my mind hindered the movement. “As you wish.”

“Good. Now, how exactly are you planning to escape notice?”

I looked around. North Guri, the curved street that ran between the mind arenas and the northern half of the dormitories, wasn’t packed, but nor was it empty. I noted we were unnoticed. An odd thing considering those whose path led them our way somehow knew to give us a wide berth.

My other cheek stung. My cold shell almost cracked, curiosity having distracted my concentration.

“I grow bored of punishing you this way.” She was, being shorter than I, staring up at me. Somehow it didn’t feel like I was looking down at her.

I touched my cheek but failed to rub away the pain. “I was told the assessors seldom converse with masters from other Houses.”

Disappointment wrinkled her face. “My estimation of you is quickly fading. Yes, they rarely talk of students they’ve not yet enticed, but that is not the greatest threat to the dissemination of your harmonies.”

“I know.”

She narrowed her eyes and stared intently at me. Then, quick as can be, she reforged that dangerously affectionate smile of hers. “You are so very good at that, you know. Not even my oldest could match you. Go on, then. Tell me what it is you know.”

I took a deep breath, concentrating so that the thoughts I wished to speak buried those I didn’t. “I know masters often collaborate for the sake of research and a passing remark between them might unravel my secret. I know being seated among the higher tier in every class will set me apart. I know the assessors whose arts I do not pursue at the end of the year might find my choice suspicious enough to investigate. I know—”

Lorail started giggling. “Good, good, good. You aren't as foolish or as naïve as I’d nearly suspected. Let us return to my earlier question. How exactly are you planning to escape notice?"

I paused, resisting the urge to squirm. “Well, would it disappoint you to know I have no idea?”

Lorail shrugged. “Not in the least.”

“Then I have no idea.”

Her hand rose and gently patted my chest. If she meant to soothe my concerns, she’d failed—only the cold of my indifference kept me from leaping away from her touch. “It is why I’m here.”

She took back her hand and somehow fished a scroll from beneath her inappropriately tight dress—the blue, lacey, revealing thing didn’t seem suitable on a body so young.

I reached out and took the scroll, doing my best not to notice the disturbingly sexual way she wielded her boyish figure. “What is it?”

“Instructions.”

“On?” I began to unfurl the parchment.

“How to obfuscate your harmonies.”

I looked up from the scroll. My brows would’ve been furrowing in confusion if I weren't too busy hiding my thoughts. “But it’s blank.”

She shook her head, an amused smile tugging at her lips. “Of course. I’d rather the matrix wasn’t discovered by wandering eyes. I’d created it just for you. Only your sensus can reveal the scroll’s content.”

I did what she suggested. Lo and behold, a matrix diagram burned into view, complex and elegant and with a beauty and symmetry that made it seem like art.

I looked back up and nearly forgot why I did. She was gone, leaving behind a nagging feeling that kept telling me she was never there to begin with. I shooed the pesky thought away.

Collecting myself and releasing the frantic grip I held on my mental defenses, I turned and headed to the dorms. Dako was waiting by the gate.

“So?” he asked.

“So?”

Before the silence stretched into awkwardness, dejected, he said, “I see. Another tale for another time, then.”

We began our walk, going past the broken statue, through the dorm’s double doors, and up to the top floor where Sil’s room was.

“Who were they?” She asked as we entered.

Dako joined her on the bed. It was the only place he could sit comfortably. “Who’s who?”

Sil was silent, her eyes not leaving mine.

“You saw?” I asked, pulling out the chair from underneath the desk and sitting down. “How? No one else did.”

“I didn’t see,” she said, smirking. “I deduced.”

I sighed. “And now you know for certain. Clever.”

“I’m nothing if not clever,” she said, the self-praise lacking the arrogant tone that usually came with boasts. “If you thought no one would dare attack you, it stands to reason there was someone there to make sure of it.”

“Combat or matrixes?” I asked. The question served two purposes. Firstly, I wanted to change the subject. Refusing them the answers they sought was fast becoming something I hated. Secondly, whether they chose combat or matrixes, I’d get a chance to go back to my room, and, once there, finally read the letter Knite had sent me.

“So you’re asking us to choose between fun and work?” Dako asked. “I vote for fun. After the sludge of boredom we had to crawl through to pass the assessment, I reckon we deserve a little fun.”

I laughed, doing my utmost to ignore Sil’s stare. “I half suspect the fun you speak is spending the night battering me black and blue.”

Dako grinned. “A little. But seriously, you’ve become a rather competent opponent of late.” He waved an arm my way. “Your body seems to have finally realized you’re a man.”

Standing, I said, “Well, I’ll meet you guys in the refectory in a half a turn for the midday meal. We can go to the Duros chambers from there.”

The letter was where I’d left it. I pulled on my desk drawer, lifted the false bottom I’d carved from firewood, and took the folded paper. Hesitantly at first, but soon in its more natural rush, sensus infused the expensive parchment, lighting up two lines: ‘IF YOU REQUIRE SOMEONE TO TRUST, TRUST BRITTLE KIN BAINAN. IF YOU REQUIRE AID, SEEK OUT ILLORA KIN LIRA’

I stared dumbfounded. I’d met the first and knew enough about the second to think the advice poor. Was the letter a fake? Unlikely. No one knew enough to formulate such a trap. Was Knite mistaken? Doubtful. The only mistakes he tended to make were those he’d made on purpose. Then how? How did he recruit his enemies’ daughters? One a Fiora, a Leaf. The other a Seculor, a niece of mine. Yes, exactly, a niece of mine. Weren't Knite’s enemies linked to him by blood? Weren't mine? Then the question is why. What drove my assessor for Pondus arts and The Mindbreakers daughter into aligning with the fallen prince?

It took some time for me to process the revelation and come to the eventual conclusion: The why and how didn’t matter, only the truth of the what. And so, trusting the man my friend had turned into, the one he’d always been, I burned the letter but chose to keep the words they held in mind.