“That’s assuming any of them would even pretend to work with us,” Eric said. “Most of them value their honor far too highly to lie to another school. They’ll just turn us down.”
“I have to try.” My food had gone cold, and I didn’t care. My appetite was dead. “It’s our only hope.”
The Threat
WE PUT THE WORD OUT that we wanted to talk to the members of the other schools’ teams. While we waited impatiently for their response, school life went on. We attended our classes, we trained with Song and Brand, when they were available, and we hatched one scheme after another to deal with the dragons if the other teams wouldn’t cooperate. And, still, we hadn’t received our reward from the second challenge or any word when the third challenge would take place.
Not knowing what was going on plagued my team with anxiety. We weren’t sleeping as well as we should have been, it was a struggle to eat enough to keep up with the physical demands of our training regimen, and our wounds were slow to heal. We were all ready to move on to the next challenge and get the Gauntlet over with.
The hollow initiates seemed just as anxious as I was. I’d convinced the headmistress to let me work with them more often, and for Hahen to take a much more active role in their training. I held my normal classes in the morning twice a week, while the students worked with Hahen on their cycling and basic techniques in the afternoons.
Unfortunately, even with the extra classes, the students hadn’t made much progress. Near the end of April, things finally came to a head. Cruzal met me outside the classroom, impatiently tapping her foot. She glanced at her watch, then at me, and crossed her arms over her chest. Anger and worry aspects flickered through her aura, and it was clear that she had a bone to pick with me.
“Good morning, Headmistress,” I said quietly. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Make progress,” she said. She glanced toward the door behind her, then grabbed my arm and guided me down the hall.
Or, she tried to. Her core was only a single rank higher than mine, and I spent my days training in martial arts and physical conditioning. Her attempt to drag me away from the door ended abruptly when I didn’t budge. Her hand slipped off my robe, and she glared at me impatiently.
“I don’t want the guard to hear what I have to tell you,” she whispered. “We need privacy for this discussion.”
That didn’t bode well. I followed the headmistress past the classroom and down a side passage where the walls were cold stone slick with moisture.
“The Inquisition is getting anxious.” Cruzal chewed on the pad of her thumb. “That makes me anxious. Where are we at?”
“The initiates can cycle. They can purify jinsei and store aspects.” I shrugged. “If you’re asking me if they’re healed, no. Most of them don’t even want to be healed.”
“That’s unacceptable,” Cruzal said. “If we can’t heal those children, the Church will take them.”
“And you’ll lose whatever money your investors have tied up in this?” I asked sharply. “That’s not why I started the outreach program. These kids aren’t tools. They’re not machines who can produce money for you at the drop of a hat. They’re people.”
“I know,” Cruzal snapped. “But both of those things can be true. If they leave the School, the people who funded your little experiment will not be happy. That puts the School in serious jeopardy.”
“They can hardly shut us down,” I said. “Empyreals still need to be trained.”
“But they don’t have to be trained here,” Cruzal said. “You have to look at things from a bigger perspective, Jace. If the investors can’t get their money back from this project, they’ll get it back somewhere else. Right now, the School is funded from a universal tax on all Empyreal income. What do you think happens if powerful people decide they don’t want to pay that tax anymore?”
This is what had been worrying Cruzal. She wasn’t merely concerned with making her wealthy patrons happy. This had become an existential threat I should have seen coming. My time with Tycho and Grayson had shown me that wealthy and powerful people could also be petty and shortsighted. They yearned for more money, more strength, even to the point of risking what they had. They didn’t care where it came from or whether it hurt anyone else.
That, after all, was where the labor camps had started. The weak slaved away in the undercities for the benefit of the powerful. We grew their food. We worked in factories, generated power, and did all the nasty, dirty things that they would never do for themselves.
Yeah, those were the kind of people who would crater the school to save oboli.
“Come with me,” I said. I was furious. The Empyreals I’d surrounded myself with were supposed to be bright and shining examples of what it meant to be the best among humans. But I kept seeing the cracks in the truth.
It was time for my students to see the same.
Cruzal hesitated for a moment, then chased after me as I stormed back to the classroom. I flung the door open and jerked a thumb at the guard.
“Out,” I said.
“Headmistress Cruzal,” he started, then paled when my glare locked onto him.
Black light blazed behind my dark eyes. I might not be as strong as I once was, but the Eclipse anger was always close to the surface. The corona of ebony light chased the guard out of the room. I waited until the door slammed behind him, then took a seat on the front edge of my desk. Cruzal stood awkwardly off to one side of the
