“You should stay here,” Sanrin said. “I’ll have Claude and Brand arrange for a security detail to be stationed outside the cottage. If there’s another attack, they’ll respond within seconds.”
“I’ll stay here, too,” Hagar said. “We’ll be safer together.”
“We’ll be safer where the assassins don’t know how to...” I stopped, frowned, then glared at Sanrin. “You want me to stay here as bait.”
“That is such a crude term,” Sanrin said. “I prefer to think of you as a lure. I have no intention of letting the assassins get their jaws on you. When they make another attempt, we’ll catch them. Our interrogation of their assassin will get us that much closer to cracking open the heretic network. And then we can put an end to this whole sordid chapter of Empyreal history.”
That sounded incredibly dangerous to me. It also sounded like a way to speed things along and get the elders to focus on finding my mother.
“If I do this,” I said, “then you’ll start looking for my mother, right away. If she’s out there and someone knows who she is, then she’s in danger.”
“You have my word,” Sanrin said.
Something about the way he said those words made me hesitate. There was a strange evasiveness in his tone, as if he knew something he didn’t want to tell me just yet.
We eyed one another warily. Then I nodded.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
The Garbage
THE ELDERS WANTED ME to keep my usual schedule. If I suddenly went into lockdown mode, whoever had sent the assassins would be much less likely to send another killer after me. Since the elders wanted the bad guys to take the bait, I continued to attend classes, spent time meditating with Rachel, had meals with my friends, and pretended I wasn’t worried about another attempt on my life.
And that’s how I found myself underneath the School of Swords and Serpents alongside the rest of the students in my Intermediate Alchemy class. Professor Ardith and Headmistress Cruzal had taken us down there on what they referred to as a “field trip,” but the rest of us were quickly realizing it was an unpaid maintenance detail.
This,” the headmistress said, “is the containment area for the School’s waste disposal system.”
“The garbage dump,” Clem said, much to the delight of the rest of the class. “Honored Headmistress, I’m not sure what this has to do with our Intermediate Alchemy course.”
Professor Ardith clapped his hands and tutted at the chuckling students gathered around him in the narrow, damp, and somewhat sticky stone corridor deep beneath the School’s main campus.
“Quiet,” he said. “That includes you, Ms. Lu.”
Rachel giggled at Clem’s statement, and was much slower to get her laughter under control than the rest of us. She fidgeted next to me, hiding her face behind her hands, her shoulders heaving as she struggled to stifle her amusement.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, at last. “Please continue, Professor.”
“The School has need of your assistance, students,” Ardith said, pacing back and forth in the small space like a strutting rooster. “The containment vessels are currently filled with waste aspects. We need to transfer those aspects into transport vessels so they can be disposed of properly. This is not pleasant work, but it will give you all practical experience in handling dangerous aspects.”
“Now we’re garbage men,” I muttered, setting Rachel off into another burst of choking laughter. She elbowed me in the ribs as Ardith glared at her.
The professor was clearly unamused with Rachel’s laughter, and he pointed one slender finger at her over the heads of our classmates.
“Since it appears that Ms. Lu cannot control herself, she will be our first volunteer,” he said. “Headmistress Cruzal, please step over here, beside me, and we will begin.”
With his boss out of the way, Ardith raised his hands toward the opposite wall of the hallway. Thin threads of jinsei sprang from his fingertips to the faint outline of a design inscribed into the stone. Silver light poured through the complicated pattern, eliminating edges that had been weathered and rounded by the centuries. Despite its great age, the scrivening etched into the wall had no missing links or loops and appeared as sound and strong as the day it’d been created.
A few moments after Professor Ardith activated the scrivening, the intricate design faded away to reveal an open archway into a silo-like chamber. I saw a cluster of tall, thin cylinders through the opening, and caught a glimpse of the much larger room past them. It was impossible to say for certain how many aspects those vessels could contain. If I had to guess, I would have said they held several million aspects.
“Ms. Lu,” Ardith said, “please step into the chamber. The silver vessels are for containment, the copper vessels behind them are for transport. You will find a small spigot at the bottom of each containment unit, and a focusing funnel at the top of each transport unit. Your task is to transfer the waste aspects from the spigot to the funnel. I suggest you open the spigot very slowly and very carefully. You may begin when you are ready.”
“Hey,” I said and caught Rachel’s arm. “Just crack the spigot a tiny bit. Cycle your breathing, transfer the waste aspects through your aura, then purge them into the funnel. Don’t try to rush.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Rachel said and squeezed my hand. Then she stepped away from me and marched into the garbage dump.
Ardith’s eyes flicked from me to Rachel, and his lips twisted into a smarmy smirk. Of all our professors, he was the one who wore his clan allegiance on his sleeve the most clearly. He didn’t think anyone but his beloved Resplendent Suns were capable of performing even the simplest of actions, despite the fact that I’d shown repeatedly that there wasn’t anyone in the school better at handling aspects and raw jinsei than I was. Even without my core, the experience I’d gained working with Hahen put me far, far ahead
