The Queen of Blood (13 page)

Merecot exhaled so heavily that it sounded as if she were deflating.
“Yes. Exactly. You can't fault me for that. I'm not ‘unethical.' I'm driven.”

Headmistress Hanna studied them both. Under her gaze, Daleina felt as if her skin were peeled back and her innards examined. The silence stretched for longer than a comfortable moment. “Merecot, you admit that Daleina was not involved?”

“She had no idea,” Merecot said.

Daleina opened her mouth and then shut it. She didn't know how to defend Merecot when all of that was true. She'd had no idea, not even a suspicion, that Merecot had been stealing her work and copying her exams. Scooping up the pages, she saw more similarities—papers that looked nearly identical, research that matched point for point, analysis that followed the same logic. She'd spent hours and hours on all of this, and Merecot had just taken it, without ever asking or telling her—

“Then, Merecot, I have no choice but to insist that you repeat these courses, or leave this academy,” Headmistress Hanna said. “I cannot permit you to be chosen until this is rectified. You will also report for specialized ethics training, since those lessons in particular seem not to have made an impact.”

“Repeat
all
the courses? From two years?” Daleina clutched the papers. “You can't delay her like that. Look how incredible she already is. She'll make an amazing queen! With her as queen, we'll all be safe.” She was aware that she should be promoting herself, that she was supposed to see Merecot as her competition, but it wasn't fair!

“With her as queen, we'd all suffer.” Headmistress Hanna's eyes were fixed on Merecot. “Do you understand, child?”

“I understand,” Merecot said stiffly.

“I don't think you do. But your obedience will suffice for now. You are both dismissed.”

“Wait, surely there can be some kind of compromise.” Daleina made herself put the exams down, neaten them, then straighten them again. “She could do a special study with one of the teachers. She could retake the exams, on her own, and then you could judge. She could—”

Merecot laid a hand on Daleina's shoulder. “It's all right. Let's go.”

“But, Merecot—”

“She dismissed us.” Merecot pulled her toward the door. “And the morning bells have already rung. You're going to be late for class.”

Daleina hadn't heard the bells. But dawn was streaming through the once-broken window and spilling onto the floor, shadowy lines in the light marking where Merecot had healed the breaks. She let herself be led out of the headmistress's office, though she swore to return later, after class, and argue again. It wasn't fair to ask Merecot to retake all of the classes. She was the best in the academy, albeit maybe not in coursework . . . “Why didn't you ask me for help? I could have, I don't know, tutored you. We could have studied more. . . .”

“It doesn't matter,” Merecot said. “I don't regret what I did. I only regret that the headmistress blamed you too.”

“You've helped me plenty. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. I could have helped you!” If Merecot had asked for help in their other courses, Daleina would have given up sleep to help her. She could have had a separate study hour for her.

“You
did
help me. You just didn't know it.” Merecot quirked her lips into an almost-smile. She hooked her arm through Daleina's as they climbed down the stairs. “I want you to promise me something: you won't believe what the masters say about you, what I say about you, what you say about yourself. We're all liars. You have power within you. Enough power.”

“Not like you,” Daleina said.

“The way they teach here . . . It's not right for me. I realized that a long time ago, but I thought I could stick it out, fool them, and focus on what I needed. I was wrong about that, I guess. But, Daleina, it's not right for you either. You need to find what works for you. Practice as much as you can, even if it means burning down your room a dozen times. Don't do what's expected. Don't just follow the rules. The spirits don't follow their rules. Why should we?”

The other students were spilling out of the bedrooms and heading toward their classes.

Merecot stopped at their bedrooms and took Daleina's hands in hers. “You might even do amazing, once you're not in my very impressive shadow anymore.”

Automatically, Daleina began, “Your shadow's not that—” She stopped. “You're leaving? Merecot, you can't! After all the work—”

“I've gotten as much as I can get out of this place. It's time to move on. Learn someplace else. Someplace that will appreciate me more. Someplace that needs me.”

You can't leave!
Daleina wanted to yell at her, shake some sense into her, but Merecot was wearing her most mulish expression—which was saying something. There was no arguing with her.

She hugged Daleina, and Daleina hugged her back. And then with a smile that on anyone else would look forced, Merecot headed for her room.

Following her, Daleina watched her pull clothes from drawers and her cache of personal weapons, the ones she'd arrived with, from under her bed and stuff them all into a pack. “Wait, you're going
now?
Right now? Don't you want to say goodbye to everyone?”

“I'm not good at goodbyes. Tell them for me. Consider that paying me back for stopping your fire from completely destroying the academy, which you'd think the headmistress would have brought up as more serious than my academic issues.” Merecot shook her head. “She doesn't have her priorities straight. But that's no longer my problem. Try not to make it yours. And, Daleina, try not to die.”

Daleina felt tears in her eyes. “You too.”

B
y the end of her third year at the academy, Daleina could summon all six kinds of spirits, as well as sense them at distances up to a quarter mile. By the end of her fourth year, she could control them. Sometimes. If she worked at it. And if she chose small, weak, not-so-smart spirits. Merecot had been right: without her acting as a safety net, Daleina was pressed to work harder. And she had. She passed her exams, year after year, and so did Revi, Linna, and Mari, as well as the others who had joined their study group: Zie, Evvlyn, and Iondra. Every night, all seven young women crammed into one bedroom after dinner to discuss magical theory, argue about the history of Renthia, and agonize over the next hurdle the teachers wanted them to leap. In the spring, that hurdle was their largest yet: champions looking for potential heirs were spotted at the academy. Two, to be specific, Champion Piriandra and Champion Cabe. Daleina had caught a glimpse of them as they were greeted by Headmistress Hanna.

“Details, please,” Zie begged as the usual study group crowded into Daleina's room.

“Both of them look strong.” That had been Daleina's first, albeit brief, impression: contained strength, like a coil held in tension. “Champion Cabe's muscles have muscles. And Champion Piriandra is just skin on top of muscles.”

“And bones,” Linna corrected primly. “The expression is ‘just skin and bones.'”

“I don't think she has room for bones with all the muscles.” The champion had also been alert, her eyes snapping to every corner of the room. She'd spotted Daleina instantly. She was the kind of champion that Daleina wanted—smart, aware, serious. Someone who could take Daleina's training to the next level. After four years, all of them were chafing to be out in the world. Others their age were marrying, having children, running shops, becoming journeymen and masters—in other words, living their lives, not still preparing for them.
It's our turn now
.

“There will be tests tomorrow,” Mari said. “My mother had caretakers washing our uniforms, even though they weren't dirty. She had strict orders about the stains.”

“Your mom thinks stains are a personal insult,” Revi said.

“So what do we do to prepare?” Linna asked.

“Everything that we've done for the past four years has been to prepare,” Iondra intoned. She was always intoning, proclaiming, or decreeing things. She was from the forest canopy, the daughter of a drummer and a singer, and she treated speech as if she were performing.

“Best thing we can do is get a full night's sleep,” Daleina said.

All of them looked at her. Revi raised one eyebrow. Daleina felt her lips twitch. And then they all burst out laughing. She waved them silent. “Obviously we'll practice. Air spirit? Who wants to start?”

Concentrating, Mari summoned a tiny air spirit into Daleina's bedroom. It danced on her sheets. As they took turns commanding the creature, they compelled it to create a gust of wind that blew papers around the room like birds. The spirit flew with the papers, spiraling up the ceiling, then darting out the window. Next: an earth spirit, which crawled, oozing with mud, up the stairs and into the room. At Zie's command, it shaped itself into a snake and then a salamander, sprouting legs of mud. They ended with a fire spirit, causing it to light and then douse all the candles on their level of the spiral staircase.

When all the candles were out and the fire spirit dismissed,
the others shuffled off to bed, leaving Daleina alone in her room. Lying on her bed, she told herself to go to sleep. She had to be well rested for tomorrow. Two champions to impress. Two chances to be chosen. Two chances to make all of this worthwhile, to prove she could do this, to have the opportunity to do something real with her power, not just practice and study.

She wished Merecot were here. Not for the first time, she wondered what had happened to her friend, if she'd found a new academy, if she'd been chosen by a champion, or if she'd gone home to her family—wherever and whoever they were. She hadn't realized until after Merecot was gone how little she'd truly known about her. Because of that, Daleina had made even more of an effort to get to know her remaining friends beyond what kind of students they were. Zie was a middle child and had never left the capital. Revi had scores of cousins, all city-dwellers too, plus two mothers, who visited constantly. Mari was the youngest of ten, the only child who had shown enough power to enter the academy. She was convinced her family would never forgive her if she failed. She wanted her mother's approval so badly that it hurt, but Caretaker Undu never wanted to show favoritism. Evvlyn was the daughter of border guards and had been born while her mother was on guard duty, alone, in the middle of winter. She often said that nothing she could ever do could match the fierceness of her birth, but she wasn't going to stop trying. As well as having famous musical parents, Iondra had an older brother who was renowned as a canopy singer, a baritone, who had never been to the forest floor, considering it a place of wolves, bears, and ruffians. Linna was a courtier's daughter, the first in her family to braid her own hair and not wear silk. She'd been raised primarily by a governess, who quit when she discovered her charge playing with spirits. Since she'd enrolled in the academy, Linna hadn't seen her parents once.

Daleina wished she saw her own family more. It had been a month . . . no, two months. Three? Had it really been that long since she'd seen them? Arin grew taller all the time. Last visit, she'd been past Daleina's shoulder, and her cheeks had lost the baby pudge. She was braiding her hair now, festooning it with
flowers, and talking about the baker's boy who made her laugh. Daleina wondered if they knew the champions were searching for candidates and imagined telling them the news she'd been chosen . . . and then she imagined telling them she hadn't.

The door creaked open, and a wolf trotted inside.

“Close the door behind you,” Daleina told Bayn.

He nudged it shut and then jumped onto Daleina's bed. Daleina scooted over to make room as he settled his furry bulk next to her. Bayn didn't always come. Often he was with Master Bei. But he must have known somehow that Daleina wasn't going to sleep well tonight.

With the wolf beside her, she did.

S
HE WOKE TO THE CALL OF THE MORNING BELLS
. S
PRINGING OUT
of bed as if she'd never slept, she bolted to the bathing room, washed, dressed, and then headed for the practice ring. She skipped past the dining hall, too keyed up to eat. Inside, Iondra was stoically eating a plate of poached quail eggs, while Mari picked at a piece of toast. Seeing Daleina at the doorway, Mari waved. Daleina waved back but didn't stop. She'd go to the ring early, settle herself, maybe practice more.

She wasn't the first to the ring. Two students were already there: Cleeri and Airria. Nodding to Daleina, the two didn't stop their summonings. Cleeri was skilled with water spirits and currently had three of them splitting the waterfall to irrigate the flowers that were growing at the base of the spiral staircase. She was thin, with white-to-the-point-of-nearly-translucent hair, and was missing one arm below her elbow. She'd lost it in a training exercise in her second year, when she'd summoned an earth spirit too large to control. It had taken an earth master plus the combined efforts of six senior students to subdue it. As far as Daleina knew, she had no family—at least none that had come to visit her while she was in recovery.

Airria was known for her precision in summonings, and in everything else she did. Her hair was always neatly pinned into a bun, and her gold-tinged skin never seemed to bruise or even get dirty. She was halfway up a tree with an air spirit perched on
her palm. She was from midforest, like Daleina, but from a larger town, closer to one of the cities in the south. Daleina liked both of them, though they weren't part of her usual study circle.

She scanned the practice ring, looking for a spot to settle in, trying to decide if she should work with the earth spirits this morning or the wood spirits. She was best with wood spirits, but she could use—“Youch!” Airria leapt down from the tree. “It bit me!” She put her finger in her mouth and sucked it.

“Need a bandage?” Daleina offered. She kept extras in her room.

Airria glared at the spirit, which was cavorting on a branch as if it had done nothing. “Just a flyswatter.” To the spirit, she held out her hand. “Come. Now.”

Its wings drooped, and it flew to land on her hand. A second later, Airria threw her hand upward, and the spirit launched itself into the air. It flew up, high up, until it reached the window to one of the storerooms and disappeared inside. Daleina watched, glancing at Airria, whose eyes were focused on the window, staring as if the spirit's disobedience were not an option.

A second later, it burst out, with a round object in its thin arms. It plummeted down, its wings flapping fast to slow its descent. Straining to control its flight with the object in its arms, it veered erratically, like it was fighting with the air. It swooped through the tops of the trees, and then, shakily, aimed at Airria. She held out her hand imperiously.

It landed on her hand and released the object—a woundberry.

Airria picked the purple berry up and squeezed it. White goo oozed out, and she smeared it in her cut. “You may go,” she told the spirit, and it fled, its wings buzzing so fast that they were invisible.

It was all so effortless.

With Daleina, it was never effortless. Yet Airria had executed a string of commands and had them obeyed, without her breaking a sweat. Like it was easy.

Movement caught her eye, and she glanced to see one of the champions, Champion Cabe, standing at the base of the spiral staircase. He nodded approvingly at Airria, and she beamed
back. Daleina felt her heart sink. She tried to muster her shreds of self-confidence, as the second champion, the other senior students, and several teachers filed down into the practice ring. The two champions led them through the day's exercises.

B
Y THE END OF THE DAY
, C
HAMPION
C
ABE HAD CHOSEN HIS CANDIDATE
: unsurprisingly, the prodigy Airria, after she flawlessly executed commanding a wood spirit to speed the life cycle of a flower. She presented the flower to the champion by having an air spirit carry it to him as he emerged to congratulate her.

Champion Piriandra ended the day without choosing anyone, which gave Daleina hope that maybe she had broader requirements for a candidate than just power. Over dinner, the students speculated about whom she would pick, whether she'd even stay, or whether she'd switch to another academy and choose one of their students. There was no rule that a champion had to choose any of them—or anyone, for that matter. The champions could wait for years for the right candidate to train.

I'll make sure she doesn't want to wait,
Daleina told herself. She'd be chosen tomorrow. She was sure of it. Again, she woke early, bypassed breakfast, and prepared herself for the day.

Daleina pushed herself harder than she ever had, focusing on every task, calling spirit after spirit until her muscles shook and her hair stuck to her forehead and cheeks. But it didn't matter. At the end of the second day, Champion Piriandra chose Linna.

Helping her friend pack, Daleina told herself she'd have other chances. Linna would make an excellent candidate and an even better heir. Champion Piriandra must have seen that and known they'd make a good fit. “I'll be back,” Linna promised. “Champion Piriandra is taking me for deep-woods training first. But next semester, I'll split my time between training with her and classes here. She says the academy is a valuable resource, and I've still a lot to learn that is better done in a controlled environment. Oh, Daleina, she's taking me outside the capital! She believes in practical experience.”

“That's wonderful,” Daleina said, trying to put as much enthusiasm
in her voice as she could. She was happy for her friend, truly. “You'll do great.”

“Don't worry, Daleina,” Linna said, hugging her. “You'll be chosen. We'll face each other in the trials. And someday, we'll be side by side at the coronation ceremony.”

“Of course we will,” Daleina said.

Stepping back, Linna surveyed her room. “It looks like I was never here. Do you think they'll put another student here, or keep it for me when I come back?”

“I don't know,” Daleina said. “Ask Mari.”

Linna nodded. “I can do this, right? I'm ready?”

“Absolutely.”

A knock sounded on the open door. Champion Piriandra filled the doorway. She was dressed all in dark green that hugged her body, showing the many knives and weapons that she had attached to her hips, thighs, and upper arms. She carried a slim pack as well. “Your belongings will be put into storage. I will provide the supplies you need, and we will sustain ourselves with food the forest provides.”

“Oh!” For an instant, Linna looked disconcerted. Even after all their survival classes, Daleina was sure that Linna hadn't truly thought about what it meant to leave the safe cocoon of the academy. A week with Champion Piriandra would fix that. That was part of what the training with the champion was for: to take them out into the world, to change what had been theory into reality, before the fate of everyone depended on them. Daleina wished with every scrap inside her that she'd been the one going out to learn all that the champion could teach her. Linna plastered on her smile again. “Let me say goodbye to everyone, and then I'm ready!”

As soon as the champion inclined her head granting permission, Linna scampered out the door, leaving Daleina alone with the champion. Silently, the champion studied her, as if cataloguing her faults and failures. Daleina searched for something to say. “You chose well. Linna deserves this.”