Hereditary (2 page)

I wished that she were here now. I didn’t know how she would manage to spin the task I had ahead of me into something good, but she would have managed it all the same.

Chapter One

Little Sparrow, on the Straight and Narrow

I stared at the clothes tossed all over the small room. Up until now, I had been allowed private tutors, but after the sixteenth candidate walked out… well, I guess we were just out of options. The truth was, nobody knew what to do with me. My powers were completely out of control. Not in a too-strong-for-me-to-handle kind of way, but in the less glamorous, I-lack-the-finesse-of-control kind of way. One day I could summon an outpouring of water large enough to drown myself in, and the next I’d be sure to die of thirst if left up to my own abilities.

Up until my sixteenth birthday almost two years ago, they had been mostly dormant, only a few muted abilities, sort of like a sampler of each. But then, the day after I turned sixteen to be exact, they all just suddenly manifested. I didn’t know how to deal with the intensified sound and feel of the world; vines snaked out and tripped me where I walked, trying to connect to me, and without meaning to, I often managed to summon the elements while I was deep in sleep. A few times I woke up just as my blankets caught fire, or a gust of wind pushed me right out of bed.

According to the sixteenth tutor, I was developing ‘too many’ abilities, even for a synfee. I snapped back at him that he’d never even seen a synfee. If he had, he wouldn’t be alive. Of course, that’s what finally cost me my last tutor, and earned me a place at the Academy. I had agreed to the idea mostly because I had no real expectation that they would accept me. I thought my father would receive a flat-out refusal. So of course, I was taken aback to learn that they had not only accepted my application, but that they also wanted me to start right away.

The first and strongest of the abilities to manifest has also been the most harmless so far, though it is apparently the most rare. Tutor number fifteen had believed it to be somewhere under the White Caste of non-race specific rarities, which was the Healer caste, and I could sort of understand why. There was no real classification for this ability, and while it was also essentially useless, it was my favourite. It was—for lack of a deeper understanding—a connection to the energy in whatever flora surrounded me.

When I walked through the grass for instance: if I were feeling particularly happy, then it would not be uncommon for daisies to spring up in the places my feet touched. Likewise, if I were particularly unhappy, the grass would wilt. Sometimes I even felt as if I had only tapped the surface of the connection, and that I could control the elements through it in a different way to how I did outside of the link. It felt as if the world darkened around me when I was upset, or that it overflowed with bubbling life when I was happy. The rains wept when I did, and the sun burned punishingly hotter as my temper flared. Of course, that’s why tutor number fifteen left. He simply thought I was insane.

I sighed again, and snatched the plain wrap-tunic atop the pile on my bed, pulling it over my head and turning to the mirror hanging down the inside of my wardrobe as I secured the buttons along the front. It ended below my knees, and was relatively shape-less. Exactly what I wanted. I usually avoided taking any kind of care with my appearance at all, but today I would need to do the best I could to discourage the synfee stereotype.

It was the same process that I went through whenever I had to go into the kingdom with my father. He thought that I was being ridiculous, because he didn’t know a single other person who had ever even seen a synfee, so where would they get their stereotypes from? Unfortunately, I knew only too well that people would be prejudiced against me, whether they even knew what a synfee was supposed to look like or not. They knew that synfees were evil, and tricked you into thinking that they were beautiful just so that they could drag you off to whatever dirty cave they lived in and start munching on your limbs. And that was all they needed to know to ensure that I couldn’t be trusted.

I continued to stare at myself, the expression on my face quickly turning to disgust, the unnaturally perfect, pinkish bow of my lips cringing down in a scowl. I was unadorned, my hair tugged into a boring ponytail, my face scrubbed clean.

It’s not enough. It never will be.

I had waist-length hair that looked as if it might have been curly, if it hadn’t been weighted down by sheer thickness. Instead it was almost wavy, and a shade of colour that constantly annoyed me, because even though it was glossy and silky-looking, the reddish tint to it made me feel garish and over-the-top on a good day, or positively lurid on a bad day. My mother had boasted hair of the most enchanting burgundy, and my father’s was a very human red, almost orange. So, lucky for me, I caught something in-between. The red was very dark, almost brown, and yet, in some lights, there were sections that shone golden. Several times I had tried to cut it all off, but only awoke the next morning to find that most of it had grown right back overnight. Coupled with the violet-blue tint of my eyes, and the golden tan of my skin, I was basically a walking, colourful freak-show. One who had no chance of ever being able to coordinate her clothes with all the different shades already adorning her body. The tunic, as if demonstrating that inability, was a bleak shade of off-white.

The walk to the Academy was agonisingly long; had I not already learned to control my first ability fairly well, there would have surely been a trail of dead grass leading all the way from my village to the kingdom gate by the time I arrived. My father being who he was, we were required to live inside the walls of the kingdom’s Market District, but once my powers began to manifest, I had been moved to a cottage much further away, though thankfully not as isolated as the one I had grown up in, as this one was still on the verges of one of the surrounding settlements.

The Read Empire consisted of eight main districts, including the Market District, and its two, connected cities, the King’s Blockade, and the Harem District. The Market District contained the castle itself, along with all the administration buildings, barracks, academy buildings, and, as the name would suggest, it was also the kingdom’s main trade district. Further east were the Twin Tiered Cities, stepping down from the gradual incline that led to the kingdom gates, bordered to the East by the River City and its bridged companion, the Upper River City, as well as the Walled District. The mostly unmarked territory to the north and east had been divided up into four settlements, each of which boasted no official name. I lived in the third settlement, referred to by most of the locals as ‘Sparrow’s Settlement’.

The cottage I had inherited had belonged to a great-aunt who had since passed away, and whom I had never even met in the first place, as most of my father’s family had avoided him because of my mother. Sometimes my father stayed with me, but still technically lived in the Market District, not that it would have made much of a difference, as he usually was off on some mission anyway. I knew he was uneasy with me staying alone, with no protection, but I had been training with him long enough now that he at least had the peace of mind to know that I was able to protect myself.

“Name and purpose,” asked one of the guards at the gate, sounding bored and breaking through the thoughts swirling around in my mind.

This was the first time I had been stopped at the kingdom gate, but then again, it was also the first time I had ever entered the kingdom without my father. Even so, I would have thought my purpose to be obvious, with the books piled in my arms.

“Bea Harrow, the Academy.”

I looked up when I received no answer to that, and realised that both guards were staring at me.

“I thought the Black Commander’s daughter was supposed to be locked up,” said one of the guards, talking to his partner, though he still stared at me.

His partner took a step closer, cocking his head at me, and I stood there, looking as unthreatening as I possibly could, something I had learnt to do a long time ago. As they continued to ogle, I felt an odd moodiness well up, and sighed loudly without thinking. 

“Are you waiting for me to try and take a chunk out of one of you or something?”

They seemed surprised that I could even talk, even though I had already demonstrated such. I supposed most cannibalistic monsters weren’t often thought of as particularly articulate.

“It jokes. Cute.”

“It
is also late for class.” I waved at the gate, the uncharacteristic flare of temper that had momentarily seized me beginning to fade already, to make way for my usual weary timidity.

The second guard snorted on a half-laugh. “You were late before you even got here. The gates closed for students an hour ago.”

“Oh.”

The first guard motioned for the gate to be opened, and jerked his head toward it.

“Don’t be late next time—you’re gonna have to be a lot prettier than even a synfee for me to break the Academy’s cut-off again.”

I quickly skipped through, picking up my pace along the dirt road and throwing a hasty acknowledgement over my shoulder as I went. The guards hadn’t seemed to know who I was until I supplied my name, but, as I arrived, I began to feel as if the whole Academy had been waiting for me, and knew exactly who I was the moment their eyes fell upon me. I mostly just kept my head down, my eyes on the path ahead as I followed the map given to me by the fae woman in the Academy office. It turned out I had already missed my first class, so I made my way straight to the second, silently cursing my father. For a man who could kill silently—and without a mess to leave behind—in a matter of seconds, he really was hopeless with the trivial stuff.

My second class was
Domestic Manipulation of Common Specialties
, and was held in the strangest building on the Academy grounds. On the outside it seemed to be made of brick, but as soon as I stepped inside, I felt a sudden chill settle over me, and I immediately looked around for the source. The walls were silver, and I remember reading somewhere that the Academy had developed a type of metal that was resistant to most of the magical elements. It seemed as if the whole building had been coated in it from the inside. There were several doors along the inside corridor, with numbering above them, and I moved further into the building, looking for the right door, the feel of the smooth metal strange beneath my boots.

I knocked on the door once before pushing it open. In theory, the professor should have admonished me for being late, or assigned me a seat. In reality, she turned to stare at me, and a dumbstruck look passed across her face. I wasn’t sure how the students were acting, as I refused to even look at them, but the silence in the room was painful. She was very tall, and human, it seemed, though I assumed that she must have been a shape-changer, as her hair was a bright, peacock blue. She was wearing a rich black robe, edged in faint, purple satin—which meant that she was a Senior Professor—and her nails were blue to match her hair.

I cleared my throat hesitantly.

“Ah, sorry I’m late Professor…”

“Hectarte,” she quickly supplied, apparently getting over her shock with the sound of my voice, “take any spare seat Miss Harrow, and don’t be late again.”

I nodded and finally turned my gaze to the rest of the class. It was even worse than I had been prepared for. The looks they were throwing at me were more than surprised or curious, they were hostile, and suspicious. A girl in the front row with short, dark hair actually flinched when I accidentally made eye contact. I spotted a spare seat up the back of the room, and hastily made my way to it. It was harder for people to stare at me back here, but somehow they managed, and I was so uncomfortable throughout the first half of the lesson that I didn’t even realise the professor had been speaking to me until she was staring at me too.

What was her name again?

“Umm… sorry Professor… what?”

“Professor Hectarte,” she reiterated, “Not Professor. What is your specialisation, Miss Harrow?” she spoke with a slight frown marring the patient tone of her voice.

I hadn’t expected this question to come up so early, but I supposed I was the only new girl here.

“Which one Professor?” I said without thinking, realising a little too late just how arrogant that must have sounded. I ducked my head, staring at my desk as the blush spread along my cheeks, staining my face red to match my hair.

“It’s Professor Hectarte, Miss Harrow.
Hectarte
. How many have you specialised in?”

Now I was just confused.

“Specialised?”

“Yes, specialised, are you saying you haven’t even been tested yet?”

“Er, I guess not.”

At the long-suffering sigh, I finally looked up, but the woman was walking back to her desk to scribble something down.

“See me after class, Harrow.”

I looked back down at my desk, flushing deeper, as a few scattered snickers sounded about the classroom, and the rest of the lesson passed—for me, at least—in a mortified haze. I was lucky that Hectarte didn’t call on me again, because I don’t think I heard a word of what she said the whole morning. Once the class ended, I stayed seated until everybody else had left, though some lingered expectantly. I bundled up my books and approached Hectarte.

“What class do you have next?” she asked, without looking up at me.

“Ahh,” I quickly pulled out the timetable and scrolled to the right square. “History.”

“I’ll send a message to Barlow and let him know you won’t be attending. You should have been tested as soon as you started developing—really this is a substantial oversight.”

“I’m sorry.”

She flicked a look up, and I realised her eyes were the same peacock-blue as her nails and hair.

“It’s not your fault, Miss Harrow.”

She finished scrawling a note and then turned to a cage behind her desk, which housed a mechanical bird—perhaps a sparrow—that twitched around just as any real bird might, tilting its head at me and blinking blank, bronze eyes. It had a small wooden scroll-case clenched in its metal talons. Hectarte flipped the case open and slid in her rolled-up note.