Chosen (9781742844657) (33 page)

Qasim opened the door from the inside and ushered us in without sparing me a glance. I sat down with Xanthe, as usual, and he taught his lesson just as usual, except that he treated me as though I were not present. He did not look at me; he did not address me, verbally or telepathically. I tried not to feel offended – it was probably the best treatment I could have hoped for, coming from Qasim.

Walking out of that classroom after two hours was like taking a breath of fresh air. I was delighted to have survived it, really, and to know that I would be allowed back again in future lessons.

So began another week at the White Elm's Academy of Sorcery. Although the content of Qasim's lessons was my favourite, the treatment I got from the other councillors was definitely preferable. Emmanuelle, though she'd become very subdued, was very pleased to see that I was already so adept at her subject – it was the only other field in which I was placed into the top class. We were learning about long-term wards, the kind you cast around yourself and keep there to protect you from mental attack or from being scried. I loved Emmanuelle's classes because I was good at producing wards; at the conclusion of each lesson, I could happily say that I'd achieved something. As well, Emmanuelle was always on speaking terms with me and my peers and she never held back a compliment or encouraging comment.

Lady Miranda was an excellent teacher of healing; Jadon's subject was still in its dull stage but he did what he could to make it worth our while; Anouk taught history so passionately that attending her lessons was almost like listening to a highly entertaining play. Now that we'd covered the theory, Elijah began teaching my class the basics of displacement. He was possibly the most patient man alive, because lesson after lesson, nobody in my class showed any signs of progress whatsoever. Obviously, I'd been placed in the lowest group – I'd suspected I would be, having never tried it before, but it was a little depressing that all of my friends had been placed in the other two classes. Hiroko was in the top class, and the rest of them were together in Level 2.

‘Try again,' Elijah encouraged after my thousandth failed attempt. ‘You've nearly got it.'

‘I just can't do it,' I argued, frustrated. He laughed lightly, and I looked away. Nearby, the British sorceress Willow had her eyes shut tight in concentration, leaning forwards unconsciously. As I watched, she lost her balance and fell over onto the wet grass.

‘Of course you can do it,' Elijah said to me as he went to help Willow up. ‘Give it another go.'

Displacement always left me feeling rubbishy. It always finished without any success, and the only person who was still optimistic at the end of each lesson was Elijah.

To counter these failures, it seemed, I began to make progress in Glen's class. By Wednesday's afternoon lesson, I found that I was able to alter my perception enough that I could see auras for more than half a second, and as more than simply a small, coloured haze.

‘Try again,' Hiroko said, more to herself than to me, after we'd been squinting at each other for about six minutes. She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, apparently to relax herself and clear away unnecessary thoughts.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself, also, to try once more. I looked directly at Hiroko and willed myself to
see
the energy I could innately sense around her. I could feel it – I knew it was there, because when I reached out to her with my own energetic fingers, I could touch it. I did exactly that even as I thought it, allowing my senses to brush over her aura. I picked up on her mood, her concerns, her frustration at this exercise, her ambition to perform well at everything she attempted, her reds and pinks and greens…

And something switched over in my mind and I could
see
her.

‘It's worked!' I told her enthusiastically. The Hiroko I knew was the nucleus of a swirling egg of coloured energy. The colours were intense, and sometimes obscured her. I didn't know much about colour symbolism, but that didn't matter, because
seeing
the aura and feeling it told me everything I needed to know. The reds, I sensed, were symbolic of Hiroko's ambitious and loyal nature, and also her frustration with this task. The pink and green swirls throughout her energetic field were indicative of her compassion, self-acceptance and her desire to help others. There was white, and there was purple – spiritual, magical colours…

I looked around as I felt my concentration starting to slip, as it so often did. The twins beside us glowed with auras so unalike that I had difficulty believing that I had managed any success at all in the first lesson, in which I'd deduced that their auras were single-coloured and only shades apart.

Had I only picked up on some basic energetic level that day? Perhaps a base colour or something? Kendra was a bright mix of creative orange, dynamic reds, outgoing blues, psychic purples and loved-up pink, while her sister's energy was softer, with various shades of compassionate pink and the greens of a healer. Kendra's aura also seemed to be swirling and changing rapidly. Sophia's and Hiroko's were less lively, more consistent.

Another instant and the colours were gone, but I'd done it, and when I concentrated, I was able to do it again.

‘I did it last week,' Hiroko said. She sounded a little glum. ‘This week, I am not so clever.'

‘It's not your fault,' Kendra assured her. ‘I can't see it either. Aristea just doesn't have an aura.'

‘Yes, I do,' I insisted, feeling a little defensive. Sophia had suggested the same thing in our first lesson, and after what Glen had said, I had almost completely forgotten about it, because it hadn't really bothered me. Now, however, Kendra and Hiroko were unable to see it, either. What was wrong with me?

Surprisingly, but without a doubt, the most interesting part of each day was the hour-long fraction that was spent sitting in silence in Renatus's office. Every evening, after prying myself from Sterling's annoyingness, I arrived at his door, which would open immediately for me. Each night he had a new book for me to read – how-to books and White Elm history books, mostly, though they were many times more riveting than anything I'd found in his library. So, night after night, I devoured this new knowledge, and if I didn't finish a book within the hour, Renatus allowed me to take it with me, and I would return it the following day. After each detention I would return to my room and be accosted by Sterling, for whom I would have no information except the contents of the latest book.

‘It's just not fair,' Sterling complained often.

The detentions continued like this until the second Monday. Today's book (this one about telepathy) was considerably shorter than those I'd read in the previous week, and I finished it before the hour was up. I closed the book and laid it on my little desk, and I began wondering whether I was capable of sitting in absolute silence for however long with nothing to do. Renatus, surrounded by a higher concentration of paperwork than usual, looked up at me.

‘Pull up a chair,' Renatus suggested, nodding at one of the cushy seats behind me. I got up and approached, curious. He indicated a growing pile of crisp envelopes. ‘Can you seal those, and stamp them with this?' He handed me a rubber stamp with the White Elm's seal and an ink pad.

I nodded and sat, and set about my task. The envelopes turned out to be of the kind that needs to be licked in order to be sealed, so I sat opposite my headmaster in his office, licking envelopes.

I had silently licked about thirty envelopes before either of us spoke again. I glanced at the addressee of one letter and wondered what Renatus was writing to them. What did people write to him in the first place? He responded so casually that I might have wondered aloud.

‘It's hate mail, mostly,' Renatus explained. ‘People seem to think we're not interested in their wellbeing. Others want us to adopt medieval policies on the non-magical population. It's mostly drivel like this. Have a read.'

So, I did. The letter's author was apparently not a fan of White Elm, or of correct English. A fan of both, I was positioned against him from the start. I had to read the opening line of the second paragraph three times to understand that the author wanted the White Elm to
amalgamate
with “Lisondo” (after all, emellgamit is not a word).

‘Why do you even reply to this?' I asked, mildly disgusted with the content and very annoyed with the effort expended on trying to make sense of the letter itself.

‘It used to be Glen's job,' Renatus said, ‘but I took it on when he started teaching classes. He thinks that sending a personal, handwritten reply will make the sender feel appreciated and will enhance their sense of our “humanity”. He thinks they'll be more understanding if they think we care what they have to say.'

I gathered from his tone that he did not.

Apparently I had been deemed trustworthy, because I was allowed to lick envelopes the next day, and the following day I was allowed to write out addresses.

‘Is that all he does, all day?' Sterling asked one night as we got ready for bed. ‘Write letters, replying to complaints?'

I shrugged and shifted Cedric over so I could get under my sheets.

‘There's heaps of other stuff on his desk besides letters,' I recalled. ‘He must do that work at a different time of day.' Because Sterling was waiting with an avid expression for any scrap of information I was willing to part with, I added, ‘He's really organised – it wouldn't surprise me if he allocates tasks to certain times of day.'

Sterling sighed, and flopped backwards on her bed to smile at the ceiling.

Pathetic was really the only word applicable.

Now, whenever I entered the office, my chair was already in place.

‘Is Qasim talking to you yet?' Renatus asked, without looking up from his work. I sat down and began addressing the envelopes piled before me.

‘No. He acts like I'm not there.' I tapped the pen against the desk as I scanned the first letter for a return address. ‘Is he the same with everyone he hates, or is it just me?'

‘He doesn't
hate
you,' Renatus insisted, sparing me a miniscule glance. ‘Qasim just doesn't
like
you. He's testing you. Don't worry too much. He doesn't like me, either.'

Qasim, I knew, wasn't the only one.

A question burned at the back of my mind – I longed to know why the White Elm council disliked Renatus so – yet I couldn't exactly just
say
that, could I? Renatus paused in the middle of writing a word, and although I hadn't made a sound, I strongly suspected he knew what I was thinking. I quickly searched my brain for something else to think about.

‘How long have you lived here?' I asked before he could say anything.

‘My whole life,' Renatus answered. ‘This house has belonged to my family for centuries.'

‘But now you live here alone?' I asked and immediately wished I hadn't. It was hardly my business, and of all people,
I
should be more sensitive towards people whose families were notably absent.

‘Yes, except for Fionnuala and her family.' Renatus looked up and gazed out of his darkened window. I'd hardly said a word but already I'd screwed up this conversation. I really regretted my stupid question, and looked around for topic-changing inspiration. A cracked shard of ceramic floating in a bubble several centimetres above the tabletop – how had I not noticed
that
sooner? – served my purpose perfectly.

‘What's that?' I asked. He turned back and regarded the object with me. 

‘I'm hoping to use the energy traces left on it to track someone. We recovered it from Emmanuelle's place after her house was broken into the other week.'

‘What?' I said, shocked that even White Elm councillors fell prey to life's many inconveniences, like burglaries.

‘Jackson – another of our former council members, I'm sure you know – was there, looking for something he suspects she has. She wasn't there; she wasn't hurt,' he added, noticing my worried expression and responding to my unspoken, burning question. ‘It was a bold move on his part but I know it was Lisandro's plan because Jackson just isn't that bright.'

‘What are…' I stopped myself before I could ask another inappropriate question. I rephrased. ‘Did he find what he was looking for?'

‘No. I don't even know how he knew to target her. But somehow he did, so that's why she's been here almost a hundred percent of her time lately.'

I had noticed that. I hadn't put much thought into it. I reached for a new envelope and, in my usual state of vagueness, bumped a neat pile of papers. The top half fluttered to the floor.

‘I'm sorry!' I exclaimed, horrified with myself. I jumped to my feet, wondering how angry Renatus would be – he had so much work to do and everything was so well-organised…had I just ruined his system? ‘I'm really sorry. Here, I'll just…'

I stooped to collect the papers, praying I hadn't angered him. We had been getting on reasonably well, and he had the power to expel me if I stepped out of line. But he simply tore his gaze from the ceramic shard and its creepy little bubble and glanced disinterestedly down at the mess I had made of his paperwork.

‘Don't bother,' he said, and went back to answering letters. I stood with all the papers in my hands, undoubtedly disordered. I felt really stupid, and opened my mouth to apologise once again. Renatus raised a hand to quiet me. ‘Don't apologise to me until you've done something to wrong me. Let's both hope you never have reason to apologise.'

I did hope that, because I really didn't want to get on the wrong side of him, of all people.

Now, I didn't mean to just go reading through Renatus's personal documents and files. I only glanced down at the sheets of paper in my hands to work out where to put them (to dump this messy collection of paper on top of the neat and tidy pile it had come from, or find somewhere else to put it?) and happened to notice the name
Aristea Byrne
in a short, handwritten list.