Empire: Book 2, The Chronicles of the Invaders (The Chronicles of the Invaders Trilogy) (32 page)

CHAPTER 59

T
he special classes for the gifted Blue Novices were not suspended, nor would they ever be. Every day they met, and when they’d finished the inevitable excited discussion of the coming ball, describing their gowns to each other in swooning detail, Ani honed her psychic skills. With the encouragement of the other Gifted and her tutors, she felt herself making progress. While her physical clouding dexterity developed slowly, still some way behind Dessa’s talent, her ability to toy with minds, to make others think they were seeing something that wasn’t there, was causing even Thona to pause and look again at what she’d initially thought to be merely a silly Earthborn Novice with wan gifts.

It was the day that two Tanits appeared in class that sealed it.

Tanit had arrived sometime earlier with Nemein, Dessa, and Sarea, smiling broadly, and was now quietly watching Sarea warming up by pulverizing the carcass of a small mammal. The mercifully long-dead creature bucked and reared on the table before Sarea as she twitched its slack muscles and defunct organs with her mind. Nemein was helping, which meant she would name a body part—“Liver! Sternum! Eyeball . . . Ass!” upon which she and Dessa fell about laughing—and then Sarea would attempt to isolate and crush the chosen internal structure. She wasn’t laughing, though; she rarely did nowadays. Instead her eyes were steely, her features set, her jaw a foreboding line of determination. The only thing that seemed to give her joy at all was pleasing Tanit, and causing damage. A flicker of satisfaction briefly lit her fine features as she broke the animal’s ribs one by one, each with a satisfying crack, as if she were running her finger along the keys of a piano.

That’s when Tanit stalked in, looking livid.

“Sarea! Nemein! Dessa!” she spat. Instantly the rabbit-creature flopped back down and fell still as her three friends spun around and stared at their leader, slack-jawed. “I told you to wait for me outside the dining hall. Where were you?”

“But . . . but . . . Tanit?” Sarea turned around slowly and stared at Ani, sitting on the chair behind her, exactly where she’d seen Tanit only a split second before, her legs crossed neatly at the ankle, her hands folded meekly in her lap, just as Tanit’s had been. She and Nemein looked between Tanit and Ani again, clearly baffled, but now Dessa started to laugh.

“Oh dear. Oh goodness, I can’t believe I fell for that.”

Tanit strode toward the chuckling Dessa and grabbed her face between her fingers.

“You laugh at me, Uludess? You? At
me
?”

“No! Not at you, Tanit—never! I was laughing because of what Ani just did. She clouded! She became you. She was so convincing . . .”

Thona materialized next to them then, and immediately Tanit let go of Dessa’s face, but there were telltale pink fingerprints on her cheeks: in her rage she had scorched Dessa’s flesh.

“What is the meaning of this?” said Thona.

“It’s Ani,” said Tanit, turning and staring at the younger girl. “Apparently she pretended to be me.”

“You did what, Ani Cienda?” Thona asked, her voice thick with incredulity.

“I clouded, Sister Thona. I made them think I was Tanit.”

“Why? You know that it is against the rules to practice unsanctioned on one another. Explain yourself.”

Ani looked mortified. “Well, it’s just that if the others are expecting me to cloud, I can never fool them. I wanted to see if I could do it when they weren’t expecting me to.”

“You little lowlife,” said Sarea. “Who do you think you are?”

“How dare you impersonate Tanit?” interrupted Nemein, elbowing Sarea aside. “You! A mere first year, pretending to be Tanit. I’ll deal with you.”

“Step down, Nemein,” said Thona loudly. “I am in charge here. I shall take the necessary action, thank you.”

She turned to Ani, who was shrinking into herself on the chair, pale but defiant. “Ani, come. We must report this incident to Grandmage Oriel immediately. She will be most interested to hear of it.”

“But it’s not fair,” said Ani, her voice catching. “How can I improve when you’re always all blocking me? How can I demonstrate what I’m capable of when you won’t let me? It’s not like I did any harm. In the real world, out of this classroom, no one’s going to be blocking me. They won’t even know I’m doing anything.”

“Ani, come!” said Thona.

“No,” said Tanit. “Wait, Ani’s right. Of course she is. We’ve had so much practice blocking clouders, thanks to Dessa. And we’re always primed to block Ani before she begins. It’s not fair on her—she barely gets a chance.”

“But she pretended to be
you
, Tanit,” said Sarea.

“Of all people,” added Nemein unnecessarily.

Quietly, Thona stepped to one side and folded her arms, watching her students curiously to see how this would pan out.

“I’m aware of that, thank you very much,” said Tanit. “It was audacious of her, granted, and I’m a little affronted by her cheek”—she looked at Ani sternly as she said this, and Ani turned away, her ears reddening—“yet I also think it was a stroke of genius. After all, she made those I am closest to believe she was me. Does that not show remarkable skill, which has only been revealed now that she allowed herself to spread her wings? Wings we’d clipped, I might add. I’m rather proud of her actually. And I suspect this skill could be put to very good use. I, for one, will find it most helpful.”

“How so?” said Sarea, pouting.

“Well, I’ve always wished I could be in two places at once. Now I can be, or at least I can appear to be. How can that not be a blessing? Think about it, my beloved bone crusher. Just imagine what you could get up to in private if everyone thought you were elsewhere.”

“You mean like this?” said Sarea, her voice harsh, and the rabbit-creature behind her was instantly torn in two. Dessa, who was
closest, squealed as a smattering of yellow gore splashed across her robes.

Tanit smiled. “Oh, Sarea, don’t feel bad. I suspect I also would have been fooled had she pretended to be you. She’ll just have to promise never to impersonate any of us again without our permission. All right, Ani?”

Ani looked up eagerly.

“Because if she does, then we may decide to use our skills on her without her knowledge too.”

Tanit stepped past Nemein and looked down at Ani, her face a benign mask, but Ani felt a burning heat rising from the base of her spine.

“You do understand, don’t you, my dearest Ani? Please say you do. After all, I have grown so very fond of you.”

“Yes, I do, Tanit. I’m truly sorry.”

The burning faded away, and Ani wondered if she’d imagined it as Tanit bent down and embraced her, folding her soft and warm against her body.

“It’s okay, darling,” Tanit whispered. “I couldn’t stay angry with you, because you know I just love you to bits. And I certainly want you on my side—that was some mind trick!”

And this time the warmth Ani felt rising inside her was definitely not pain, but pure pleasure.

“Okay. Everyone, back to work,” said Thona, moving forward again, nodding in satisfaction. “You sorted it out among yourselves, which is just the sort of teamwork we like to see. Thank you, Tanit—you proved yourself to be a wise mediator, yet again. Ani, you can stay here. I shall of course report everything that has transpired to Grandmage Oriel immediately, but I suspect she will feel as I do on the matter: that valuable lessons have been learned. While I am gone, continue to practice among yourselves, please.”

The rest of the class passed in a blur of shaky pleasure for Ani. Sarea and Nemein seemed willing to forgive her at Tanit’s command, and Dessa kept grinning at her and squeezing her elbow conspiratorially.

“Wait till you tell Syl—she’ll be so pleased,” she whispered under her breath.

Ani wondered aloud if she dared.

“Of course you must,” said Dessa. “It’s important that she feels included.”

•  •  •

Later that day Ani felt the warm glow fading as she faced her oldest friend in their quarters, and she found herself growing angry and wishing she hadn’t taken Dessa’s advice.

“But I have genuine talent,” she protested as Syl stared at her balefully.

“And they know that now—and they know what to expect from you too,” said Syl. “Don’t you see? You show them all your cards and there’s no way you can win the game.”

“Really, Syl? Is it necessary to be quite so trite and annoying?”

“I’m just saying that maybe you should be more careful, Ani. We don’t know what we’re up against yet.”

“I think what you mean is that
you
don’t know what you’re up against. I know precisely what I’m doing.”

“Do you really?” snarled Syl.

“Yes. They’re my
friends
. They support me and encourage me. But you—you just want to flatten me.”

“It’s not like that. I just don’t want you to be used by them.”

“What? Any more than I was used by your precious Meia? If she hadn’t taken advantage of me like she did, forcing me to cloud the minds of guards, none of this would ever have happened.”

“But she was using you for good! She was saving Paul and Steven from execution.”

“No, saving them was merely incidental to her. She was playing her games, and we were just pawns. I can’t see how you don’t see that?”

“Her aims were pure, Ani, whatever her methods. But we know the aims of the Sisterhood to be much darker than that.”

“Do we really? I thought we wanted to find out what was going on, but it seems to me that you made up your mind long before we even got here.”

“Oh, Ani, have you really forgotten?”

Ani was enraged now. “I’ve forgotten
nothing
, Syl. I remember every moment of it. I dream about it at night. But by day I want to move on—to make the most of myself and my talents—and you don’t. And you won’t.”

Her voice assumed a self-righteous tone. “Sometimes I think you’re just jealous of my abilities, because here I’m seen as the special one. Not you.”

“Oh, really?” exploded Syl. “Is that what you think of me, Ani Cienda? Here, then—”

She tore into the kitchen and took a plate from the cupboard. Ani watched, mystified, as Syl slammed the plate down in front of her and put her hand on it.

“Go on,” she said, “make me burn.”

“Syl?”

“Just do it. Please.”

Ani shuffled in her seat, her lips set in a stubborn line.

“Now, Ani. I’m begging you. Please. Make the plate hot. Or can’t you?”

“Fine!” said Ani finally. She sat up straight and glared at Syl, her eyes steely. “But remember, you asked.”

Syl felt the plate beneath her hand grow warm. She stared back at Ani, her features blank. The plate turned cold. She watched her oldest friend squinting with concentration, and the veins in her temples stood out, but still the plate was cold. Finally, a trickle of blood spilled from Ani’s nostril.

“No!” she said, distressed, trying to cover her nose, and her eyes filled with horror as blood flowed faster onto her robes, becoming a dramatic spurt that had her grabbing for a discarded towel and holding it over her face.

“Maybe,” said Syl softly, “just maybe, Ani, other people have skills too.”

Ani looked at her over the towel, her eyes wide with hurt. After some time she pulled it away, smearing blood across her cheeks.

“You have skills, Syl? And you didn’t tell me?”

Now Syl felt angry with herself. This was her secret, her trump
card, and in her anger and pride she’d behaved rashly. At least Ani had only seen the surface, and not what lay beneath. Not the horror that lay beneath.

“Well, not really skills,” she said, looking down so that her hair covered her face, fumbling for words, finding the right lie. “But I can sort of block people a bit, you know. Just a bit.”

Ani sniffed loudly once more, and then she found her smile, and she reached for her friend’s hand.

“But that’s wonderful, Syl! You have skills! I always hoped you might if you just opened yourself up to them. What else can you do?”

“Nothing much. That’s it, really.”

“Oh, Syl, why don’t we tell them? You may have hidden gifts too! I’m sure with practice and the right teaching you could enhance your skills. You may find that you’re capable of much more than you think. I mean, look how far I’ve come. Look what I did today! Imagine what we could do together.”

In her peripheral vision Syl could see the cold plate spotted with Ani’s blood, and she felt wretched. This was so like Ani, to be delighted that Syl might be able to join her in her rarefied world, eager to include her and build her up. If Ani only knew the half of it . . .

“No, Ani, I can’t do that. Please don’t say anything. I’m here to investigate the Sisterhood, remember, not to help them. And I could never be on the same side as Syrene, or Tanit and Sarea. They’re something else. They’re not like me, and I don’t believe that they’re like you either. And we still don’t know what the Sisterhood plans to do with you all, do we?”

Ani snatched her hand away. “I guess it’s too much for you to believe they’re just making us into the best we can possibly be?”

“Ani, I think that’s too much for anyone to believe. If Elda was still among us, I know she’d back me up. But please, as my best friend—as my only friend in this wretched place—keep this to yourself, okay? You have to hide this from them. You have to conceal it behind a cloud.”

Ani tutted.

“Oh, if you insist. But I’m really not convinced they were involved
in whatever happened to Elda. It doesn’t make sense, and if you only saw how kind Tanit can be . . .”

She remembered again how Tanit had embraced her and said that she loved her, and she gave a pleasurable shiver at the memory—and yet it was so very complicated loving two people who seemed bent on destroying each other. Syl and Tanit were like different sides of the same coin: so close, yet never really seeing each other. It drove Ani demented with distress.

“But Dessa is your friend too, isn’t she?” Ani continued, casting around for positives. “She was so excited for me today, and for you to hear about it.”

“Yeah, well, Dessa doesn’t seem that bad.”

“None of them are, really. Sarea and Nemein are a bit difficult, but once they like you they’ll do anything for you. Maybe you’ll get to know them all better at the ball.”