“Yes,” I said. “If you heal your core, you’ll be free to leave the school. But, I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe at home. The Church is very angry with me, and they’re likely to be with you, as well. There’s another way, though.”
I was worried about these kids. If they took me up on the offer to become chaos cores, they’d be outside the Grand Design, too. The ones who went back to the labor camps would be snatched up, or the inquisitors might just kill them. The choice they made today would affect the rest of their lives. I wanted them to know that.
“What’s the deal?” Christina asked, her eyes narrowed into suspicious slits.
“If you heal your cores, I can get you a visit with your parents, but not for long.” I raised my hand at their protests and waited for them to come back down so I could continue. “Then you’ll have to go away again.”
“For how long?” Ricky practically wailed.
“I don’t know the answer to that.” I shrugged. “As soon as you’re safe, I’ll let you go home. But, I promise some of the best teachers in the world will train you in the meantime.
“And you’ll get to see some dragons.”
That had been one of the hardest negotiations of my life. Even Sanrin had been stressed by my idea, but we’d finally convinced the Scaled Council that our plan was in the best interest of everyone. After Elushinithoc’s betrayal, the dragons had been shamed and disgusted by the conspiracy. They saw this as a way to redeem themselves and heal the wounds between humans and dragons.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Christina asked.
She stared at me with dark eyes, tears trembling on her lower lids. She was terrified, and she didn’t know what to do.
“It’ll work,” I promised her. “Trust me.”
And, surprisingly, they did. One after another, all twelve of those kids let me stitch the Machina to their hollow core.
By the time I’d finished, I was exhausted. It had taken far more work than I’d imagined, stitching someone else’s core. Still, it had gone off without a hitch. None of them was hollow any longer.
They were all healed.
And, as I watched them take their first true cycled breaths, as jinsei flooded into their cores and stayed there, I knew that it had all been worth it.
The Farewell
THE LAST DINNER OF the school year was exactly the kind I liked. My friends and I had all gathered in the dining hall at our usual table. We stuffed ourselves on roast beef, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, and, for the first time, we sipped glasses of wine provided by the School. We weren’t kids anymore, we were adults.
We laughed and teased each other about our summers. As a scholar, I wouldn’t be going anywhere. My days and nights would be spent here at the School, studying with the librarian who’d drawn the short straw and had to stay behind to keep an eye on me. I looked forward to it. I had a lot to learn, and not much time to do it.
Finally, as the last of our food disappeared and the other students drifted away, I leaned in toward the center of the table and gestured for my friends to do the same. Hahen and Niddhogg sat on either side of me, hunching forward conspiratorially to hear what I had to say.
“I need to ask all of you something,” I said quietly. “And if you don’t want to answer, or you don’t feel comfortable by what I ask, then just say so. No hard feelings, okay?”
As I’d hoped, that cryptic introduction to my little speech lit sparks of curiosity in all their eyes. They leaned in even closer and nodded for me to continue.
“When I won that challenge,” I said, “the Flame told me something.”
I spilled the whole story to them. How the Design had been corrupted by interference from humans and dragons. How the Flame had asked me to find its replacement. And, most aggravatingly, how it hadn’t told me how I was supposed to do that.
Hagar leaned back in her chair when I’d finished and blew out an exasperated sigh.
“You’re putting me in a hard position here, Jace,” she said. “I want to help you. But you haven’t told the elders any of this. You know what I have to do.”
I reached out and took Hagar’s hand in mine. We squeezed each other’s fingers.
“Things have changed,” I said. “We don’t know that we can trust anyone outside this group. I don’t think the elders would oppose us, but I don’t know that for sure. Do you?”
My clanmate shifted uncomfortably in her seat and pulled her hand away from mine. She looked down at the table in front of her, as if the wood grain held some secret knowledge she needed to make her decision.
“I’m not telling my parents, either,” Clem said. “Though I probably should. The Adjudicators rely on the oracles, and knowing what I know now, we can’t trust anyone who says the Flame speaks to them.”
“Jace,” Eric said. “I don’t know, man. I have training, a future with the prizefighting circuit. I can’t jeopardize all that for whatever this quest turns out to be.”
“Jace would never let that happen,” Abi chided his friend. “I know this is all very frightening to hear. I’m the son of a preacher. But I’m with Jace. The world is changing, and not for the better. I think we have to do this. No matter the cost.”
Hahen let out a disgusted grunt. He shuffled forward, then turned to face me and rapped me on the tip of my nose with his cane.
“You know you’re talking madness,” he said. “We cannot redesign the world.”
“Not the world,” I said. “Just the Design.”
It was hard to explain how I felt about all of this. I’d been nothing when I won the Five Dragons Challenge. That victory had pulled me up out of the muck
