Magisterium

21

More soldiers were cresting the hill. Aamon curled his hand around the edge of the boat and pushed it away.

“Go,” he said. “Don’t stop. Just keep going!”

“Aamon!” Glenn called, but he was already running for the shore.

The current bit into the boat’s hull and swept her and Kevin away. As they sped up, the boat fishtailed wildly until Kevin grabbed the pole off the bottom of the boat and dug it into the riverbed, steadying them and pushing them out of sight of the shore.

“Kevin! No! We have to turn back!”

Kevin ignored her, pushing the pole into the water and driving them down the dark river. Something inside Glenn screamed for her to get up, to stop him, but she saw Aamon’s bloody face and his bloody hands and she sat there, frozen and helpless as they slipped away.

Behind them were the sounds of clashing metal, then there was a terrible roar, followed by screams that went on and on.

Sometime later, Glenn took the pole from Kevin and pushed

them on through the night. To either side of them was a wall of ivy-choked forest nearly twenty feet high. In places it grew so thick that the trees joined over the run of the river and it was as if they were sailing through a black tunnel.

Once they left Aamon it was quiet except for the rush of the river and the sporadic crack of branches and crunching of leaves beyond the shore. Glenn and Kevin drew inward with every crash, refusing to acknowledge them, refusing to consider what might be responsible for them. It was as if they could make a castle out of their silence.

Glenn wondered if she would be able to feel what was hidden out in those woods if it weren’t for the bracelet. Could she muster up enough control to lift them both up and take them out of there? Would she know what had happened to Aamon?

Glenn jammed the pole into the water, relishing the pain that shot up her arms and pushed that sick guilt out of her mind. Aamon pushed them away, she told herself. Made them promise to keep going no matter what. They had no choice. After all, what could they have done to help him?

Glenn felt sure they had done the right thing, but if that was true, then why did she keep seeing Aamon’s face as the boat slipped away?

And why did his face always seem to fade into her father’s as she dug her heels into the ground and threw him into the arms of the drones?

Glenn poled them down the river as the cold night wore on and the first reaches of dawn, orange and yellow, lit up the water. Sunlight arrowed through the gaps in the woods, and the trees were trees again, winter gray trunks and thin branches. The sounds lost their menace as well. There was just the sluice of water against the boat’s wooden sides and the rhythmic chirp of frogs and insects. Overhead, the dark shapes of birds tumbled about in the sky.

Glenn collapsed into the stern, balancing the pole across the boat and letting the current carry them forward. Kevin was up front, his back to her, leaning over the water. He looked so alien in his drab Magisterium clothes, a brown leather fleece-lined coat and thick rust-colored pants. If it hadn’t been for the wilted shock of green hair, she would have barely recognized him. He had said hardly a word the whole night.

Restless, Glenn opened the pack Aamon had thrown in the boat before they left. She hoped to find a map, but all that was there was an earthenware jug filled with water, some food, spare clothes, and a purse filled with odd bits of metal. Glenn pulled out the jug and took a long drink. The water was ice-cold and tasted metallic. She sat, turning it in her hands, staring at Kevin’s back as the current passed them by.

“You should have something to drink,” she said.

“Not thirsty,” Kevin said without moving.

“There’s food.”

Kevin adjusted his position at the bow but said nothing.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Glenn said.

Kevin turned to her, his dark eyes narrow. “Didn’t have a choice about what?”

“Aamon,” Glenn said, perplexed. “Those men were coming. He

pushed us away. You did the right thing.”

Kevin stared down at the murky water flowing by. “Yeah,” he said. Something dreamlike and distant in his voice sent a chill through Glenn. “You’re right. We had to.”

He turned away, his hand hovering up by his chest where he had tucked away whatever it was Opal had given him. His lips began to move low and fast as if he was whispering to himself. As if he was praying. Glenn shuddered at the thought of it, at the feel of that ghost within him.

Glenn wedged herself deeper into the stern and pulled her coat tight, watching him, amazed at the seed of fear that was unfurling inside her. Afraid of Kevin Kapoor? It should have been laughable, but there it was, undeniably real.

The day passed as they searched for a path neither of them ever saw. The sun arced above them and again began to fall.

“This is useless,” Kevin grumbled. “Aamon has been away ten years. Whatever road he was thinking of could be gone by now. We should just start walking.”

“Walk where?”

Kevin didn’t respond. However vague Aamon’s directions had

been, one thing was clear: They should have stopped hours ago. At this point, the river could only be taking them farther from where they wanted to go. As much as she hated it, Kevin was right. There was no time for stubbornness. Glenn put the pole into the river and fought her way out of the current. Once the bow crunched into the rocky shore, Kevin jumped out and pulled the boat up onto the bank. Every muscle in Glenn’s body ached, but she reached for the backpack, ready to sling it over her shoulder. Kevin’s hand got there first.

“It’s okay,” Kevin said quietly. “I got it.”

As Kevin leaned over the pack there was a clatter of metal

underneath his coat. He threw the pack onto his shoulders, then took off into the woods above the shoreline without a word. Glenn watched him go, then, seeing no choice, followed, her white breath puffing out before her. Soon, the rush of the water faded and the trees thinned, giving way to a long empty field that stretched to the horizon. Glenn hoped they’d at least be within sight of a town or a road, but there was nothing but twilight-shadowed hills everywhere she looked. It was all so alien. So empty.

“That way.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just … seems familiar.”

“Kevin, you’ve never — ” But then Glenn understood. Cort. He was saying Cort had been here before.

They set off. He moved quickly, barely pausing to examine the rough terrain as he led them through the woods and out onto a road that was pitted with what Glenn took to be wagon tracks. Glenn’s exhaustion was a heavy fog that wrapped around her body, dragging her down. Her legs ached. Her back was a nest of burrs and knots.

Far worse than the pain, though, was Kevin’s silence. She never thought she’d miss his babble but now the absence of it haunted her, as did the way his hand rose to his chest over and over to steady whatever it was Opal had given him. As they passed pilgrims’ waymarkers Glenn let her fingers brush against them, wondering if praying to Kirzal could make Kevin be Kevin again.

Hours later they stopped in the middle of the road, Kevin

squinting off into the darkness.

“What?”

Kevin pointed straight ahead. There, peeking out from the trees, ghostly yellow lights danced just above the ground. Glenn thought back to the man and the swan woman in the forest and wondered what the Magisterium might bring them next.

Slowly the lights resolved into small yellow points. Candlelight in windows. It was a town, ten or fifteen small buildings arranged on either side of the main road. Most of the structures were low shacks, little more than dark boxes barely lit from the inside. There was one larger building, the only two-story building in the town, and it sprawled the width of three or four of the other shacks. Firelight and candlelight poured out of it, and Glenn thought she could also hear the barest trace of music.

“An inn?”

Glenn shrugged and peered into the town, trying as hard as she could to not see the shapes of giants and ogres in the plain lines of the houses.

“Give it a try?”

Glenn was pretty sure she couldn’t walk another step. It was fully night now and the temperature still seemed to be dropping. Glenn nodded wearily and started to press on, but Kevin took her hand and pulled her back down.

“I need you to do something for me first. Before we go.”

“What?”

Kevin reached into Aamon’s bag and pulled out a dark blade with a scarred wooden handle. Glenn started, but Kevin flipped the knife around so the handle faced Glenn, the tip of the blade pointing at his own heart.

“What do you want me to do with that?” Glenn asked.

Kevin’s smile briefly returned as he pushed his fingers through his green mane.

“Think it’s time for a trim,” he said.

As they walked out of the woods and into the town, Glenn

couldn’t stop looking over at Kevin. He was right — his green hair would have drawn far too much attention to them. But still, Glenn hated it. Almost more than his silence, turning to her side and seeing the stubbly gleam of his nearly bald head, made Glenn feel like she was walking with a stranger.

As they approached the larger building toward the end of town, the thin strains of music drifting out of its windows started to become clear. A flute, Glenn thought. Maybe a violin too? Whatever they were, they were being played fast and cheerful, lightening something in her as they stepped up onto a small porch and neared the door.

“There’s money in there, right?”

Kevin was looking at the pack that was now over Glenn’s

shoulder.

“Yeah,” Glenn said. “I think.” She slipped off the pack and dug through it until she came up with the small purse. She opened it and produced a handful of metal coins of various sizes. Kevin snatched them away and reached for the door.

A welcome blast of light and heat from a large stone hearth hit them as soon as they opened it. The room was smaller than Glenn would have guessed, and packed tight with about ten rough wooden tables, each of them surrounded by four or five men and women leaning over tankards and pipes and games of cards. The men were dressed in well-worn but sturdy-looking clothes — farmers or hunters maybe — and were big-boned and bearded, with wide shoulders and hands like dinner plates. Daggers hung from their belts.

The air reeked of smoke and food and unwashed bodies. The

music was coming from the far corner where a woman, heavyset and rosy faced, sat on a stool blowing into a wooden flute. Beside her stood an exceedingly thin man with long gray hair who drew a bow across an old violin, quick and precise. The music soared and reeled around them, and after the quiet hours of their hike Glenn became distinctly uneasy.

She turned to Kevin, reaching for his sleeve — maybe staying outside wasn’t so crazy after all — when someone shouted from the back of the room.

“Close the door! You want to kill us all?!”

It was followed by gales of drunken laughter. Glenn took a step back and the door slammed shut behind her. She expected to see the same fear that she felt on Kevin’s face, but he was already striding deeper into the room toward the bar, searching through the faces as he went.

Glenn’s head spun, overwhelmed, as she made her way through the crowds. Before she knew it, they were standing near a bearish-looking man with red hair and an enormous handlebar mustache, pouring something frothy and amber into two metal tankards from a ceramic pitcher.

“Excuse me,” Kevin called. “Is this Armstrong?”

The bartender wiped up a spill. “I’ve got one room,” he said. “It’s thirty-five. Comes with dinner. Kappie stew and beet root. You have money?”

Kevin fumbled with the coins, dropping a spread onto the bar.

The barman picked through them, pocketed some, and pushed a few coins back.

“Room’s upstairs at the end of the hall.” He raised his eyebrows over to their left. “Table’s over there. Maggie will bring you something.”

Glenn stepped toward the table but then realized that Kevin was still at the bar with his hands on the shoddy wood, the barman looking down at him.

What is he doing?

“You need something else?” the barman asked.

Kevin seemed eager to say something, but when he saw Glenn

was still standing behind him, he quickly said no, and fled.

“What was that?” Glenn asked.

“Nothing,” he said, taking her arm and pushing her along. “Come on.”

Kevin dropped the pack against the wall and fell into a wooden chair at the table. Glenn sat across from him. Sitting was a miracle.

And it was such a relief to be out of the cold with the promise of food on the way that her spirits buoyed despite Kevin’s strange behavior.

Moments later a barmaid dropped two plates and two of the metal tankards down in front of them and scuttled off. The plate was covered with a slop of reddish brown, a stew composed of thick-cut potatoes, carrots, and what Glenn was pretty sure were hunks of meat. She realized how hungry she was as the stew’s smoky tang wafted up to her, but a sick lump weighed in her stomach at the thought of it.

“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.

“There’s … meat in here.”

Kevin pushed his spoon through the stew. “So?”

Glenn stared across the table. Land in the Colloquium was at such a premium that raising animals for meat was almost impossible.

“I’ve never eaten meat before,” she said. “And neither have you.”

Kevin dug into the mess on his plate and lifted a dripping

spoonful. Glenn winced as he shoved the food into his mouth and chewed. His eyebrows lowered, puzzled, as his jaws worked at it.

“How is it?”

Kevin chewed a while longer, then swallowed it with effort.

“Tough,” he said. “And kind of, I don’t know, bloody-tasting?”

Glenn’s stomach turned. “Uck.”

Kevin’s face darkened, the muscles of his jaw tensed. He shook his head. “We probably still have a lot of walking to do,” he said as he dug in. “Who knows when we’ll eat next. Don’t see how we can be choosy.”

Glenn poked through the stew. The bloody wildness of it rose to her nostrils. Glenn pushed the bits of meat and gristle to the side of the plate and ate the vegetables and broth as quickly as she could, washing it down with gulps from her tankard.

“So, what do we do next?”

“Stay the night,” Glenn said. “What else would we do?”

“And tomorrow?”

“Wait for Aamon and then go.”

“And if he doesn’t come?”

Glenn’s spoon hovered over the mess in front of her. She saw the horde of men rushing toward them. Aamon’s wounds.

“He’ll come,” she said.

“But — ”

“If he’s not here in the morning, we keep going to Bethany. He’ll find us there. Then we destroy the bracelet and go home.”

Glenn glared until Kevin looked away. He pushed the food

around his plate, then turned to watch the room behind them. When he was done, he leaned across the table toward Glenn.

“Maybe Opal can help you,” he said. “She told me what the

bracelet could do to the Magistra. Maybe she’s right, maybe you could use it to help people instead of — ”

“Kevin.”

“You saw what Garen Tom did to that boy. He did that because of her. The Magistra. And Opal’s son and his friends. That’s all because of her.”

“I know that.”

“If we had a way to stop her — ”

“I said no!”

A ripple of quiet went through the room around them. Kevin

stared hard at her, his lips a thin line. Finally he shook his head and attacked what was left of his food.

Glenn pushed her plate away to get rid of the smell of flesh as the musicians started up another song, this one even louder and faster than the first. When Kevin had cleaned the plate, he sat back in his chair with his arms crossed, a smear of the bloody stew on his chin.

The waitress appeared at their table. “Can I get you anything else, dears?”

“Sure,” Glenn answered, getting up from the table. “Slaughter whatever you have in the kitchen and toss it on his plate. Don’t even bother to cook it.”

Glenn left without a backward look and trundled up rickety stairs to the second floor. Her fingers fumbled along the walls, automatically searching for a light switch. She pulled them back with a frustrated grunt and kept going.

The landing she came to was dimly lit with candles placed in little alcoves along the walls. Glenn snatched one up, hissing as a molten bit of wax singed her fingers, and made her way through the smoky murk to the only open door she could find.

The glow from her candle illuminated a mostly bare room with just a window and a small wood-frame bed and table. Glenn lit a few other candles she found and sat on the mattress. It crunched beneath her, releasing a musty, haylike smell. The noise from downstairs came up through the floorboards, garbled but no softer.

Glenn longed for a shower. She was nearly entombed in sweat, river water, and dirt. Her muscles ached. All she needed was hot water and soap and steam to make them unfold. How did people live like this?

She pulled off her coat and fell back onto the bed, looking up at the plain wood of the ceiling. She tried to see galaxies of stars in the swirl of the wood’s grain, planets in its knots, but the image wouldn’t hold. She longed for the feel of Hopkins nestled beside her, his small body vibrating as he purred, but thinking of him only brought to mind Aamon’s face and a fresh stab of remorse.

“Hey.”

Glenn bolted upright. A man was standing in the open door, a dark figure illuminated in the candlelight. It took a moment for Glenn to realize it was Kevin. “Oh,” he said, leaning back into the hall.

“There’s only the one bed. I can sleep outside.”

“No!” she said quickly. No matter what she felt about Kevin she couldn’t imagine being left alone in that strange place. “One of us can take the floor. It’ll be fine.”

Kevin stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Well …

you should take the bed.”

“No, you can — ”

“Hey, who’s the jerk who let you pilot that boat all night? Take the bed, Morgan. Seriously.”

Glenn settled onto the mattress as Kevin crossed the room and sat down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. He pulled his boots off, then collapsed against the plaster wall with an exhausted sigh.

His face was ashen and deeply lined. He yawned and brushed the stubble on his head back and forth under his palm.

“Guess I cut it a little uneven, huh?”

Kevin shrugged. “I keep expecting it to be there, I guess.”

“How’s your side?” Glenn asked.

“Better. Opal gave me some different stuff. Wouldn’t have made it this far if she didn’t.”

“Good,” Glenn said. “Maybe without you constantly whining

about your gunshot wound we’ll actually be able to make some time.”

Kevin looked up at her, surprise quickly growing into a wide smile and a small laugh that Glenn was happy to echo. His face lit up, so distinctly Kevin. In that moment there didn’t seem to be a trace of Cort in him.

Maybe it was never even there, Glenn thought. Maybe it was all in my head.

Below them, the violinist finished the song with a flourish, and the patrons of the inn shouted their appreciation. Heavy treads moved from the tables to the bar and back again. The front door opened and closed and the bar grew more silent in stages.

“Look,” Glenn said. “Downstairs and all — the fighting — it’s stupid. We’re just … we’ll be fine. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

Kevin pulled a spare blanket off the end of the bed and lay down on the floor. Glenn drew the covers aside and laid down too. The mattress was thin, but the blankets were heavy and warm.

It struck her how close they were, him lying just inches from her.

Glenn leaned over the side. Kevin was flat on his back, cramped in the tiny space, his eyes shut. She saw him as he was only days ago after she had stayed after school to help him study and they’d tramped through Berringford Homes together, and then as he was sitting at a train platform, a haze of snow blowing between them.

It struck Glenn how their whole life had been made up of such little things. Homework. Teachers. Tests. Names of bands. The sound of each other’s voices bouncing back and forth between them like a game. How when he looked at her, his body close, his brown eyes black in the dark, there was a swell in her chest that she had to force down, terrified it would rise up and overtake her.

Were they really little things? she wondered. Or am I just seeing them from far away?

“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

It was Glenn’s own voice, but she barely recognized it. Her arm snaked out and drew the covers back. Kevin lay motionless in the dark.

“It’s too cold,” she said. “And we need to rest. Come on.”

There was a rustle. The blankets rose and fell and then, after a long pause, there was Kevin’s warmth filling the bed next to her. She was on her back and he was on his. A narrow corridor of air was all that separated her body from his. Glenn thought of a line of surface tension resting on top of a lake, a thin membrane riding between air and sky on one side and the dark shifting depths below. She remembered placing her hand on the flat of Opal’s wall that night and seeing that illusion for what it was for the first time.

Nothing is separate, she thought. Everything is one thing.

Glenn wondered what it would be like to push against the tension, to feel it as it flexed and bent and broke. How warm it would feel to be on the other side. To feel arms around her, Kevin’s chest underneath her head.

The noise from below subsided. All that was left were scattered voices and the clatter of tin as plates and tankards were gathered from tables and returned to the bar. Footsteps creaked up the stairs and down the hallway as people moved into their rooms for the night. Quiet settled throughout the inn.

Drawn by an island of warmth, Glenn’s hand moved beneath the covers to Kevin’s chest. She was only inches from him when he shifted and there was a faint metallic clatter beneath his shirt. His hand fell on whatever it was and stilled it.

“What did she make you promise?”

“Nothing,” Kevin said. “Just … that I’d be safe. That’s all.”

Glenn waited for more, but moments later his breathing became slow and regular. She turned and stared up at the ceiling, wondering why, for the first time in his life, Kevin Kapoor had just lied to her.

Late that night Kevin pulled the blankets aside and slipped out of bed. Glenn watched out of half-closed eyes as he dressed quietly in the dark and then disappeared into the hallway. His footsteps whispered along the hall and down the stairs.

The inn was quiet except for a low murmur that rose up through the floorboards beneath her. Soon Glenn could make out at least three separate voices — two that were deeper and older, and another …

Glenn lowered her head and focused. The third voice was higher and talked fast in a short, clipped cadence. Kevin.

The wood floor creaked as she put her weight on it. She froze, but there was no change in the voices below. Glenn eased out of bed and crept to the door.

There was a shaft of light coming up the stairway down the hall.

Glenn dropped to a crouch at the edge of the staircase. She kept her body hidden in the darkness, leaning forward just enough so she could look down into the inn.

Kevin sat with his back to her at a table by the fire. Across from him sat the bartender and the violin player.

“Is he here or not?” Kevin asked.

“We’re still not sure who we’re talking to,” the bartender said.

His clawlike hands were on the table, half curled into fists.

“A friend,” Kevin said.

“Prove it.”

Kevin’s hand dropped below the lip of the table and beneath his coat, where he had hidden whatever it was Opal had given him. He pulled it out and placed it flat on the table, but Glenn still couldn’t see what it was.

The bartender turned to the violin player, but the older man remained still, staring across the table at Kevin.

“Can’t imagine where you got that,” the violin player said.

“It was given to me.”

The bartender scoffed. “Might have killed the old bag for it.”

“What do you want?” the violin player asked.

“To talk to Merrin Farrick.”

“About what?”

Kevin said nothing. The bartender shifted in his chair, but the violin player didn’t move. He was an older man with slate gray hair and a heavily lined face covered in short steely whiskers. His eyes, narrow and sharp, were hard on Kevin. Glenn was sure Kevin would crumble under that glare, but he sat deadly still, staring back at them until, as if by some strange magic, the two older men grew smaller and Kevin

larger.

The violin player glanced at the bartender and then out toward the front of the bar. The red-headed man pushed his chair back and quickly walked away from the table. The front door opened and shut, leaving Kevin alone with the musician.

“I’m Merrin Farrick,” the man said. His voice was different now, deep and full. He sat straight in his chair and his eyes were clear as ice.

“How do I know that?”

The man smiled ever so slightly. “There aren’t many people

lining up to lay claim to the name,” Farrick said. “Not with Her Majesty’s spies about. So. The spider is still kicking. What does she want?”

“There’s something here that’s very important. Something that the Colloquium wants.”

“I have no interest in what the outsiders want.”

“This object could threaten the Magistra as well.”

Glenn looked down at the metal band on her wrist and a thick lump grew in her throat. Merrin Farrick sat back in his chair, silenced.

“Gather your people outside Bethany,” Kevin said. “I’m

responsible for obtaining the object before anyone else. Once I have it, your people will take it.”

“And then?”

The fire crackled. Glenn held her breath as Kevin leaned across the table, taking hold of the object that sat between them.

“And then,” Kevin said as he lifted a shining golden dagger over the table, “death to the Magistra.”

Glenn stepped onto the inn’s porch before dawn to find a town transformed by a new dusting of white. It lay thin over the street and the porches and roofs of the buildings, giving the place a motley look.

Glenn’s cheeks burned. She huddled in her coat to try and block the cold out, but its fingers always found a way in.

When Kevin came back to the room, Glenn pretended to sleep.

She lay there, rigid with fear, watching him out of her half-closed eyes as he sat at the edge of the bed, head in his hands. Finally he lay down to sleep. As soon as Glenn heard his breathing go soft and regular she crept out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs.

The innkeeper pointed her to a trader who said he could take her halfway to Bethany for a price. Glenn had eagerly accepted, and after paying him off, she used the last of the money she had to buy food and loaded it all into the backpack.

There was a low squeak of wheels and the jangle of the horse’s tack as the trader eased his old wagon alongside the inn’s porch. It was a small flatbed with uneven lengths of timber tacked on the sides, cracked and ill fitted.

Glenn turned back to face the inn. Already candles were being lit in the windows and fires stoked as people rose from their beds. Soon Kevin would turn over to find her gone. What choice did she have?

Coming to this place was no accident. Clearly, Opal had shown him the way. And Kevin had lied to her. Kevin Kapoor had lied.

“Let’s go if you’re going.”

Glenn stepped into the wagon. There was a crack of a whip, and then the horses pulled away, leaving dark ruts in the snow. Glenn watched the inn and the town fade into the gray of early morning.

There was something heavy lodged in her chest, like a breath she couldn’t exhale.

The land passed by, great expanses of fields — winter fallow -

set with isolated clusters of domed houses and lone stands of trees.

There were a few roadside temples just like the one Aamon had prayed at on their first day in the Magisterium, but they were broken too, shattered and burned. The emptiness of it all was striking. If she was in the Colloquium, all of it would have been filled with the marble white lines of train tracks, towering stacks, and the din of skiffs zipping through the sky.

Glenn had the sudden thought that what she was seeing all

around her wasn’t the Magisterium at all. Not really. The Magisterium had been where her mother had grown up, a place that survived until years later when she returned to find that Merrin Farrick had murdered her family.

My grandparents … Glenn thought distantly.

Glenn wondered what the Magisterium had been like then, when the temples stood in their marble and gold and the Miel Pan moved freely through the world. When Affinity crackled in the air. What would it have been like to grow up in a place like that instead of the Colloquium? What would she have dreamed of instead of 813? Who would she be? Glennora Amantine, maybe, the granddaughter of the Magister? A princess, Affinity swirling around her fingers? Would she have learned to pray? How would it have been to grow up surrounded in that bone-deep wonder? In magic?

For the first time, Glenn wondered not why her mother had left them, but why she had ever left the Magisterium in the first place.

What would drive her away from such a place, and what would make her return only to destroy it?

She ran her fingers along the simple gray curves of the bracelet resting in her lap.

I could ask her now, couldn’t I?

“This is as far as I go.”

The wagon had come to a halt. The landscape around was empty prairie, fields of dirt and weeds and snow. There was a scattering of small houses in the distance. A thin dirt trail branched off the road they were on and led to a series of foothills that gave way to a small range of low mountains. Glenn was surprised to see that the sky was darkening quickly. Lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed the passing hours.

“How far is it to Bethany?”

“Straight on, you’d be there tonight, but only a fool would go through those hills at night. Best you head that way,” the man said, pointing to one of the scatterings of houses to their left. “Some family will take you in ’til the morning.”

Glenn thanked the driver, grabbed the pack, and dropped from the wagon into the snowy dirt by an intact pilgrim stone. The reins snapped, and slowly the wagon groaned off on its way. Glenn listened to the low whistle of the wind as it blew a fog of white between her and the trader. Before she knew it, the man had disappeared and she was alone.

The distant farmhouses huddled together against the cold. If Glenn had to guess, she’d say it was two hours or more to get to one of them. Then she’d have to talk her way inside and then … what? Lie in some barn for another night, accomplishing nothing?

To her right was a collection of low peaks whose gray slate seemed almost blue in the wintry haze. The path was a straight shot into the foothills, but then she lost its course as it wound up and around the rolling crests.

If she pushed, she could be in Bethany that night. And if it was Bethany tonight, could it be home tomorrow?

Glenn’s hand brushed the pilgrim stone as she shouldered her backpack. Her fingers lingered over the split circle carved on its face.

Let Aamon be there, she thought and then set off down the road.

The trail narrowed and grew steeper as it snaked into rocky knolls. Every other step seemed to fall on loose gravel and dirt, made all the more treacherous by a veneer of snow and ice. Glenn’s legs were aching, her ankles shook with the strain, but still she climbed. She picked her steps carefully, bracing herself on the rock wall that grew up to the right when she faltered. To her left, the path dropped off to a boulder-and scrub-covered floor far below.

As the sun slipped farther toward the horizon, night drifted in like a fog. Glenn stopped and peered into the gathering dark, but there was nothing to see, just the narrow path ahead of her, its edges fading in the gloom. Glenn took a step forward and faltered on a patch of slick gravel. One foot slipped off the path and into the air. She tried to balance, but the awkward weight of the pack threw her off and gravity yanked at her heels. Glenn panicked, throwing herself violently to her right until her shoulder slammed into the rock wall.

Glenn drew several deep breaths to calm her pounding heart.

When the shaking in her legs ceased she peeled herself off the wall and moved up the path.

The hours passed and the darkness grew. Cold bit at her, and at times the winds that came screaming down the narrow path seemed as if they could blow her away. Glenn’s feet were slowly going numb. A light snow began to fall. Panic revved inside her, but she forced herself to push it down, to set one shaking foot in front of the other and keep going.

“Alnitak,” she whispered, stuttering, into the dark, imagining points of light appearing on her bedroom ceiling. “Alnilam. Mintaka.”

Glenn began to take another step, but stopped when the gravel down the path ahead of her shifted. She froze and listened. Nothing.

Just the wind. Glenn raised her foot, but there it was again, followed this time by a shower of dirt and rocks that tumbled down the hillside only feet from where she stood.

There was something waiting in the gloom ahead of her.

Glenn raised one foot and set it down behind her, but then the same sound came again. This time, behind her. She was trapped. Her hand slid up the wall to her right. At first there was only cold stone, but then her fingers discovered a crack. The ground shifted again in front of and behind her, closer this time, faster.

Glenn leapt, found another crevice for her left hand, and pulled herself up, her feet kicking at the smooth rock until they hit shallow depressions and took hold. Looking up, she could barely make out a series of short plateaus and crevices. A few deep seams, deeper areas of darkness, ran the wall’s length. The gravel below shifted again. Glenn pushed off and her fingers grazed a chink in the rock. A fingernail snapped as she dug in but she didn’t let go, she groped for another handhold, finally pulling herself up and away from the path. Glenn clambered up until she hit a narrow shelf, just wide enough for her to rise up onto her knees. She dared a look back to see what was coming for her.

It was as if the darkness below had congealed into two deep shadows. Both of them were tall and thin, like shifting smoke, and moving fast toward the same wall she had scrambled up.

Glenn’s heart flipped. The two figures were already on the wall, but they didn’t pause to find holds. They slid up, their hands flat on the rock, as if they were sticking to it. Glenn threw herself against the stone, finding two more handholds and yanking herself up. When she made it to the hill’s moonlit crest she rolled up onto it, then ran across the uneven rock. The two creatures came over the lip of the hill. They were faceless, freakishly elongated and thin, with tendril-like arms and legs.

Wisps of their dark bodies trailed behind them as they glided across the stone. Glenn fled up a short rise, leaping onto another hilltop that curved away to the right. She took off again, moving down a narrow corridor of rock.

She made it only a few feet before what she saw ahead pulled the last breath out of her lungs and crashed her down onto her knees. There, dark silhouettes against the deep blue night sky, were four more of the smokelike creatures. They stood in a semicircle at the edge of the cliff, their bodies wavering in the wind. Beyond them was sky and, to either side, high rock walls.

Glenn knew if she turned around she’d see the other two right behind her, cutting off her escape. There was nowhere to run. Even if she could fight, there were too many of them.

She had only one choice.

Glenn pulled back the sleeve of her coat and her fingers found the edge of the bracelet. Her breath caught in her throat as she tore it off and the dull metal hit the ground.

Glenn was aware only of the cold rock below the soles of her boots as she advanced toward the faceless creatures at the other side of the hill. She halved the distance between them and stopped. A gust of wind blew across the mountaintop. Removing the bracelet was like waking up a little at a time. The world began to pulse around her, becoming more vivid, fuller. High up on the mountain, there weren’t as many voices coming at her, just the smoothness of stone, the deep night, and the creatures that stood before her.

Without the bracelet to block them out, they were like places where the night, weighed down by some infinitely dense hunger, collapsed in on itself. They reached out for her, tugging at her, eager to press in through her flesh and fill her body. They wanted to devour her.

Become her.

Glenn’s knees started to buckle, but she threw her head back.

Above her the moon was huge and brilliantly white. It was transfixing, so cool and clean. Its light filled up her arms and legs and chest and drew her upward. Soon Glenn was aware of being high above the mountains, barely able to feel the shadowy things below.

The thin air seemed to fill with music the farther she drew away from the earth. She heard bells and horns and the tinkling of crystals.

The moon grew enormous. Glenn began to pick out the forms of the planets and the curve of solar systems. She could feel the universe like a bolt of silk gliding through her fingers, smooth and cool. Glenn urged herself higher, starving for more. Could she walk across the moon’s dusty surface? Could she go farther? Out to Orion? Out to 813? Opal had said that people once walked from world to world. Maybe she could too.

But then a sound rose up from below, followed by a jolt of animal terror that hit Glenn like molten iron. Below her was a small figure being surrounded by those cold, starving things. They were pressing in toward it. Glenn floated there, watching, but soon she turned away, rising back into that sea of music and light. Soon she would be a part of it.

“Glenn!”

The voice ripped through the air and was like a hand seizing Glenn’s ankle. There was something about the shape of it that fit like a key in her mind.

“Morgan!”

Something snapped. Glenn plummeted down out of the sky and

crashed onto the ground between a young man and the approaching shadows. They had formed a tight circle and were closing in. Glenn felt their tearing hunger as if it was her own.

She gritted her teeth as the darkness flooded her. The creatures pressed in closer, their wormlike arms reaching out. Their featureless faces yawned wide, opening up huge, dark mouths. She tried to push them away, but what were they and what was she? What was the difference? She knew there was something she was supposed to do, but it was fuzzy and indistinct in her head. She was so hungry. A deep moan, a sigh of misery, resounded through her.

A hand took hers, the fingers pressing into her palm. Glenn turned. A spike of heat came from the boy on the ground. She was sure she knew him, but no name came to mind. He was small and thin, but there was something in him, something that burned and pushed the darkness back. Glenn snatched at it and pulled it within herself until it grew into a raging fire.

Glenn leapt again into the sky as the light and heat welled up in her pores and exploded outward, scouring the cold stone. She was a sun, and the creatures screamed as they fled from her, the light tearing at their smoky bodies, rending them apart.

Their cries doubled, keening pathetically. Words bubbled up through their screams. They came from everywhere, from each of them at once, clawing at her.

We are not these things, the voices said as their arms reached out to her. We are trapped. This is not who we are.

Glenn loosed another wave of light. It burst from her and pushed the creatures away, but still their cries surrounded her. Glenn dropped to the ground. A cluster of them was at the edge of the cliff, cringing with their dark arms wrapped tight around one another. Their moans still echoed in Glenn’s head. She strode forward, her body burning.

“Stop!” someone shouted distantly, but it meant nothing. Glenn burned hotter and brighter, ready to blast them away into nothingness.

The power was glorious.

A hand suddenly clasped her wrist. Glenn turned just as the young man yanked her toward him. There was a gray circle in his hand and he slapped it onto her wrist. Soon there was a great contraction and Glenn crashed to the ground.

“Glenn? Glenn!”

She was pulled into someone’s lap and cradled into their chest.

Her head lolled back.

His face was covered in ash and there were streaks of burn marks on his cheeks and on his shaven head. His eyes were luminous and strong. Glenn raised her hand up toward his face and he took it in his.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re going to be okay. They don’t want to hurt us.”

Glenn looked out toward the edge of the cliff, but the creatures were gone.

In their place lay a man, a boy, and two women, horribly thin and dressed in rags. Their skin was waxy and pale. One of the women drew herself up from the ground. A girl, really, not much older than Glenn.

She touched the others reassuringly. When she turned to look up at Glenn, her eyes were huge and bright blue, her hair a greasy, matted blond.

“Thank you,” she said through the aching wreck of her voice.

“Thank you for freeing us.”

“What’s your name?”

The girl with the blue eyes stared down at the rock floor. In the light of their small campfire, her pale face seemed nearly translucent.

She had led them here, to a small cave cut into the hill below where they’d stood only minutes ago. She said they came here when they weren’t out hunting. Her voice had trembled when she said it.

While Glenn waited for an answer, she raised the flat of her palms in front of their small fire. Even now, in the haze that came once the bracelet was back on, it seemed strange that she was separate from the fire. Something about it made Glenn ache, like she was missing a friend.

On the other side of the fire, Kevin sat with his back to her, talking low and encouragingly to the others. The woman would listen to Kevin a while, but inevitably she turned away, slipping glances out the mouth of the cave into the night, her face slack, as if she had lost something but couldn’t remember what. Each time the man noticed, he would whisper to her and she would nod and turn back toward Kevin. It was never long before the whole process started again.

The boy seemed worse off. As soon as they’d reached the cave, he’d ignored the rest of them, slumping down outside of the fire’s glow and muttering to himself. Glenn kept expecting the older man to say something to him, to reach out to him in some way, but he only glanced at the boy without emotion or recognition.

“Margaret,” the girl said.

The girl was twisting the ragged end of her sleeve in her fingers.

Dust fell from it as the old fibers tore. Her brow was furrowed in concentration.

“I think my name was Margaret.”

“Is Margaret,” Glenn corrected. “Your name is Margaret.”

Margaret stared at Glenn as if she was struggling to translate her words into another language. The tip of her finger had gone a tortured white where she had turned the frayed cloth of her sleeve tighter and tighter around it.

Glenn reached for her pack and rummaged around inside. There wasn’t much left: a crust of bread, some cheese. Glenn tore the bread in two and held a piece out to Margaret.

“You should eat something.”

Margaret looked at it strangely.

“Go ahead,” Glenn urged.

Her fingers trembled as she reached for it. Margaret set the piece of bread in her mouth and held it there for a time before slowly working her jaw around it and then swallowing. Glenn handed her another.

“Do you know what happened to you?” Glenn asked.

“I think … we came here. I don’t know how long ago it was.

My …” She searched for the right word. “Parents. They were …

scientists?”

“You’re from the Colloquium?”

“Colloquium,” Margaret said, balancing the word on her tongue.

“Yes. We came because of an … idea my father and she — my mother

— had. We came to see if their idea, if it was real.”

“What was their idea?”

The girl didn’t answer. Glenn wasn’t sure if she had heard her.

“Margaret …”

Margaret’s eyes narrowed on the ground in front of her as if she was trying to will the pieces of a particularly complicated puzzle into place.

“Do you know how … when there’s a tree? A tall one? An oak?

First there’s a seed. And then there’s a tree, but once there’s a tree, you can’t … you can’t make it into a seed again. Is that right? Is that true?”

Glenn didn’t know what to say. Margaret stared hard, searching, then shook her head.

“It’s … there’s now, and then there’s what was before now. We weren’t these people then. We were other people. I remember yellow paper on the walls and … a table. Blue. And chairs. But then … we were here and those other people were gone and there was just us.

These people. Now.”

“What happened when you came here?” Glenn asked.

“Margaret?”

Margaret stared out into the darkness beyond the fire. She pulled at a thin layer of flesh on her arm, pinching it cruelly between her fingers.

Glenn held out another piece of bread, but Margaret ignored it.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t — ”

“We had been here … it was a while, I think. Tommy and me thought it was fun. There were birds and horses, but the people wouldn’t talk…. Dad said they were superstitious. He laughed. Scared of their own — what was it? Shadows. We lived in the woods near a village. A camping trip, Mom said. A holiday. Dad wanted to teach the people, give them … something. I don’t know what it was. Something to make them better? It was our duty to show them how life could be better. Then one family finally talked to us. They told us to leave before” — Margaret’s breath hitched in a small gasp — “the man said there was a woman.”

Something cold spread through Glenn as she said it. Margaret leaned farther into the fire.

“A woman in black. He said we had to leave before she came. No outsiders, he said. Dad … he always … he was so happy, he always laughed. ‘Send for her. Let’s meet this woman in black.’ Mom laughed too. But then she came. The woman. Very beautiful. She was full of birds. My dad raised his hand and said hello and she raised hers and she said some things and there was a sound like something cracking open. I thought it was the world, but really it was us. We were dropped into the hunger, and then time turned without us in it. People crossed our paths and we … pulled their hands and their faces and their breath into us until they weren’t anything anymore. We took them and we made them into us. Just so we could be warm. But it was never enough.”

It was silent in the cave when Margaret finished. She sat poised over the fire, her eyes locked onto the night outside. Glenn fought to make a wall that would hold Margaret’s story at bay. How could she stand to hear more of her mother’s horrors? When she closed her eyes, she saw lapping waves and her mother’s pale skin shining in the sun at the edge of a lake. Glenn took a stick from the pile of scrap wood and poked at the edge of the fire. It flared and settled.

On the other side of the fire, Margaret’s parents were lying down on the stone. Her father’s arms were wrapped around her mother’s. His eyes were closed. Hers were open and staring blankly at the ground.

Tommy was lying on his side, his hands splayed out in front of him, twitching like birds.

“Maybe you should try to get some rest,” Glenn said.

“I don’t sleep,” Margaret said.

“Maybe you can now.”

Glenn waited, but Margaret made no sign that she had heard. She sat against the wall of the cave and stared over the top of the fire and into the dark.

Across from them, Kevin shook open a small blanket from

Glenn’s pack and laid it over Tommy. He whispered something in the boy’s ear, but there was no response. Kevin left him and went to stand out by the mouth of the cave.

He said that the innkeeper told him she had gone, and he had been able to find a ride with a hunter not long after she left. Other than that, they had barely even looked at each other since that moment on the hilltop. Every time Glenn did, she saw a stranger wielding a golden dagger.

Glenn left Margaret, edging around the fire toward Kevin, trying to ignore the churning in her stomach.

“We have to get them home,” she said.

Kevin found a rock with the toe of his boot and kicked it into the dark. Glenn noticed bits of ash and waxy-looking burn marks on his cheeks.

“Kevin?”

“What does it feel like?” he asked. “To be able to do things like that?”

Glenn shuddered, remembering the mad rush of power.

“It’s like I’m not … me anymore,” she said. “I don’t know who I am, but I’m not me. I’m just … gone.”

Kevin stared at the rocky ground and slowly shook his head.

“You can’t destroy that bracelet,” he said quietly.

“Kevin — ”

“If you use it then maybe what happened to these people, what happened to Cort, won’t happen to anyone else. Let Opal teach you how to control your Affinity — ”

“So that’s why you followed me?” Glenn asked. “To take me

back to Opal?”

“I followed you because I woke up and you were gone,” Kevin said, raising his voice. “And you should be glad I did!”

“So it was all for me?” Glenn whipped his coat aside, exposing the gold dagger around his neck. “It wasn’t for your new friends?

‘Death to the Magistra.’ That’s what you said, isn’t it? I heard you plotting with your friends, Kevin. You’re not him. You’re not Cort!”

“I know that!” Kevin shouted. Then he glanced at the family behind them and stepped closer to Glenn, dropping his voice low and intense. “But I felt him die on that scaffold, Glenn. I remember it. I remember the walk to the gallows and how the rope felt on my neck and the sound of Felix crying and this feeling like …” Kevin struggled for purchase as his words slipped away. They were just inches from each other. Glenn could feel the heat radiating off him. “In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve spent every minute of every day thinking about myself, about school, about some stupid band, and I’m sick of it.

There are other things in the world, important things, and I want to think about them for once in my life. We can’t let her keep hurting people, Glenn. We have to stop her.”

“Kill her?”

Kevin paused, flames from the campfire washing over the planes of his face.

“Isn’t that what she deserves?”

The cave dropped into an aching quiet. Cort was no mere ghost inside him now. The person in front of her, even though he had Kevin’s eyes and lips and the sharp angles of his face, wasn’t Kevin Kapoor.

Kevin was gone.

Glenn took a cautious step away. How could she tell him the truth about who the Magistra was? Would he even care now that he was more Cort Whitley than Kevin Kapoor? Worse, would he turn on her as well?

“Look,” he said. “We can cross the border tomorrow morning

and you can give me the bracelet. All of this can be over for you. I know that’s all you really want.”

“All I want is for us to get our lives back. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. My father is sitting alone in some prison because of me, Kevin.

You were almost killed! I’m just trying to put things back the way they were.”

Kevin’s eyes sharpened on her. “Do you really think that if you destroy the bracelet Sturges will pat us on the head and send us back to school?” he asked. “That’s a fantasy, Glenn. And even if he did, I don’t want that life back. I’m not going to waste another year dangling from your string while you figure out how to get as far away from me as humanly possible.”

Glenn felt a sting in her chest. Her eyes burned. “I never meant to …”

“Do you know why I came to talk to you that day at my dad’s office?” he asked. “I saw you on the train one morning. You were surrounded by everyone we went to school with and all of them were running around like they always do, and in the middle of all that was you. Sitting there with your tablet, ignoring it all, reading about the stars. I thought, this is someone who knows who she is. You were just you and I thought that was so amazing, but now … that whole time, you were just scared.”

Before Glenn could say anything, Kevin turned from her and

swept out of the cave. Glenn stood and watched his silhouette leap from rock to rock down the trail until the night consumed him.

A sound woke Glenn late that night. Her eyes snapped open, but she lay still. The fire had fallen to a reddish glow, barely illuminating the cave. Tommy and his parents were asleep in their places, but Margaret was gone.

Glenn sat up in time to see a figure slip toward the mouth of the cave.

“Margaret?” she whispered.

The dark form paused, then stepped out of the cave and vanished.

Glenn forced herself up. She was hungry and tired, and her body ached from lying on the rock, but she dug her feet into her boots and pulled on her coat before stumbling outside.

As soon as Glenn left the halo of the fire, the cold rushed at her.

She jerked her coat closed and buttoned it up, cursing as she squinted into the dark for some sign of movement.

A jumble of black on black hills was crowded all around, like a surrounding army. The canyon floor, hundreds of feet below, was invisible.

“Margaret!” Glenn called.

Nothing.

Glenn was about to turn back. If Margaret couldn’t sleep and needed to get out, so be it, but then there was a tumble of rocks and dirt above her head. Glenn saw Margaret’s leg slip up over the edge of the hill, onto the stone landing they’d been on earlier that night. There was a glimmer of moonlight, but a girl like Margaret, as confused as she was, shouldn’t be stumbling around up there, no matter how used to it she might be.

Glenn found the narrow path up the hill and stayed low, feeling her way along as it snaked up the cliff face. After several minutes of painful climbing, Glenn threw her arms over the top.

She was at the turn of the path that led to where they had first encountered Margaret and her family. Now, higher up, the wind swirled around her, cold and knifelike. She couldn’t stay up here long.

“Margaret!” she called, but her voice was scattered in the wind, disappearing inches from her mouth.

Glenn hunched over, hands crammed deep in her pockets, and

started down the path, following it until the low rock walls at her sides fell away. The gusts were even greater once she was out in the open.

Glenn raised the flat of her hand to shield her eyes from the wind as she scanned the hilltop.

“Margaret! Margaret, where are you? You have to come down!”

Glenn swept her eyes across the plain. A figure stood dead center on the hill out by the edge. Great, Glenn thought. I’m going to freeze to death because she misses the view.

As Glenn fought her way forward, she could see it was definitely Margaret, standing with her back to Glenn, her arms hanging limp at her sides.

“Hey, it’s freezing out here! We have to go back. We — ”

Glenn took another step and was starting to reach out when she saw that Margaret was standing with her toes at the very knife’s edge of the cliff. There was nothing in front of her but air. A bad turn of the wind and she’d be gone. Vertigo swam through Glenn, imagining it, and she eased back.

“Margaret? You have to take a step back, okay? It’s not safe.”

Margaret just stared out into the dark air. Glenn wanted to reach out to her but was too afraid she might startle her and send her over.

“Look,” Glenn said, doing everything she could to calm the

shakes in her voice. “Listen to me. Okay? You can’t be up here now.

You have to take a step back, for me. Just a little one.”

Margaret didn’t say anything. She didn’t move.

“Margaret …” Glenn said, softening. “I know … I know it seems like things are all messed up right now, but you need some time.

Things will get back to the way they were before this all happened.