Gravity's Revenge (8 page)

8

Dream Laboratory

If only I could sleep for three days straight,
Hiresha had often thought over the years,
then I’ll free myself of this weight of fatigue. I’ll be cured, awake, and wide-eyed as the other girls.

Once, she had tried it. After gaining her first enchantress gown she had received a windfall of independence. She had taken the luxury of keeping her bed company for three days. The sun had dawned and set without her notice. She had abandoned her covers only long enough to tend to the necessities, for Maid Janny to ply her with a few mouthfuls of milk and rice. Returning to her pillows, she had dedicated herself to the sleeping cure.

On the fourth day, she had lifted herself from bed. She had stretched, yawned, and felt as tired as if she had not slept a wink. If anything, she had felt even more exhausted.
I should have tried sleeping for four days…or five?

So it was that even after the Lord of the Feast’s claim that her most sacred and secure of places had dropped an enchantress to her death, she had no trouble sinking into slumber.

The Provost of Applied Enchantment dreamed of her laboratory. A dream of mirrors and jewels. Hiresha floated above a glittering dais, her magic buoying her into the air. Enchantresses could not cast spells while awake, but here her power pulsed as near as the green and red garnets floating by, each glowing with its own nimbus of color.

Mirrors orbited the domed ceiling of a round room of black rock. No doors or windows cluttered the laboratory, except for one skylight opening on constellations of pink and blue gems. The mirrors showed Hiresha in a sleek dress of spiraling amethyst designs. Her breath leaked from her lips as wisps of grey, but even in the frigid air and wearing a single, backless dress, she did not shiver, not in this dream she ruled.

“Lord Tethiel must have forged the writ of admittance,” she said to herself.

“Not by himself,” a reflection answered her. The woman in one mirror looked similar to Hiresha, except that she wore a yellow dress alight with topazes. Where Hiresha appeared upright and composed in the other mirrors, this reflection leaned forward with a grimace, wriggling her yellow-gloved fingers. “Bright Palms broke his hands, remember. He couldn’t hold a quill.”

Hiresha accepted the fact that most of what her reflection said would be pointless. Provost Hiresha had isolated the distracting elements from the rest of her consciousness into a mirror, but she was still relieved to have someone else in her dream to talk to.

“The pertinent questions are what is he doing here—”

“He came to see us.” The reflection held one hand over her heart, and the other clutched her throat.

“—and can we trust his word of Enchantress Miatha’s fall?”

Hiresha could remember the woman’s name now, in this lucid dream. One mirror flashed, opening as a portal into the enchantress’s memories. The image within the glass shifted to a remembered scene of Miatha being awarded her green gown, with Hiresha half-dozing among the faculty.

“What if,” Hiresha said, “Lord Tethiel knew of Enchantress Miatha, and he cast an illusion to make me see her falling. That is why none else noticed. Perhaps she is not dead but kidnapped.”

“We like to think so.” The reflection bunched her hands into glittering fists. “No, we changed our mind. Why would Tethiel want to trick us?”

“To shake my belief in the Academy, perhaps.”

Hiresha made herself focus on another mirror. It displayed memories from earlier that day. In the glass portal, the falling Enchantress Miatha gazed back, framed by an unforgiving blue sky.

“She was dazed, disbelieving,” Hiresha said.

“We agree with Tethiel. She didn’t jump.”

“Probably,” Hiresha said. “Note the detail in her clothing, the fluttering ribbons. The wind interfaces with them in a most realistic manner. If this was illusion, Tethiel must have crafted the masterpiece, not Minna.”

“But it was day!” The reflection stretched her hands out of the mirror’s field of view. “Feasters can’t cast in daylight.”

“Anecdotal reports say the Lord of the Feast can,” Hiresha said. “I remain incredulous.”

The reflection pointed across the room to another mirror. “What about Minna? She was touching us, and she’s a Feaster. Maybe Tethiel worked his magic through her.”

“For a more direct link? A possibility.” Aches crawled through Hiresha’s chest. “Either the Academy’s magic is deteriorating, or Tethiel has a scheme.”

“Not good. Not good.”

A mirror showed Minna on the Skyway when she had dropped the fennec. Hiresha idly watched the scene play out while wishing enchantresses could better protect themselves from falling. Only spellswords could activate enchantments such as Lightening to stop a descent. Hiresha could save herself using her innovations in impact enchantment, a field of study by no means in the endorsed curriculum.

“We were so worried for Lord Black Toes,” the reflection said.

“I forbid you from calling the fennec by that name. His paws are white, besides.” Hiresha touched the amethyst bracelet on her wrist, the stones a match for those on the fennec’s collar. A warmth of thankfulness filled her that her magic had saved the fennec’s life.
Yesterday’s one redeeming moment.

With a wave of Hiresha’s hand, a mirror displayed the
Recurve
Tower
. Hiresha had no intention of stinting on her nightly contribution to empowering the Academy. A stream of jewels embodying her magic descended from the skylight to sink into the mirror’s glass and be absorbed by the building.

“Tonight I’ll give my dream tithe a hundred times over, in case the enchantments are in some manner weakening.”

“We can’t imagine why,” the reflection said. “Everyone else should be doing their part like always.”

“And the Academy keystones should overcompensate in the event of any temporary shortage of magic.”

“Chancellor Oily Locks won’t like us saying there’s anything wrong with the keystones.”

“Not when they are her responsibility, no.” Hiresha had to admit, Tethiel’s meddling seemed more likely than any failure on the Academy’s part.

Thinking of the Lord of the Feast made Hiresha consider the girl she had invited onto the plateau that day. Two mirrors displayed Minna. In one glass she covered her birthmark with a hand after Janny had taken away her veil. In the other, Minna stood without a mark or stain on her face, holding her hand mirror, grinning with the power of Feasting inside her.

Hiresha floated in her dream, and her hair bobbed around her as if she were underwater. Even so, she felt heavy with worry.

“I do enough wrong by condoning one Feaster’s visit to the Academy. Minna cannot stay here. Her presence alone will scare enchantresses from their sleep.”

“We can’t expel her.” The reflection clapped her hands against her chest. “Janny’s heart would break.”

“Shove the girl off a cliff,” a third voice said. Ten shards of black sapphire clicked against the inside of a mirror. They were the nails of a woman whose graceful hands were studded with jewels of purple and green to the point they looked colorfully scaled. “She needs to die. The maid will cry but won’t blame you for what looks like an accident.”

The yellow-gowned reflection shied away, refusing to look at the other woman in the mirror. Hiresha faced her. The enchantress rubbed her gloved hands together, feeling the garnets imbedded in her own fingers. She had shown great restraint with her jewel piercings compared to this third woman. The lady looked like Hiresha, except more beautiful, her smile so wide and sharp that it threatened to split open her exquisite face with gashes from chin to ears.

“Even more ruthless than usual,” Hiresha said. “I would think that you’d preserve a modicum of regard for a sister Feaster.”

Hiresha resented the elegant and deadly intruder, the essence of Feasting magic that had snuck into her consciousness and plundered a piece of her mind.

The black-clawed lady in the mirror said, “Feasters have no true sisters. Only competitors.”

“I should murder someone so like yourself?”

The Feaster gave the enchantress a pitying smile, the same an adult might give a child who was worried a cloud would fall from the sky and smother her. “You care for Minna because you think she’s like you. Flawed. Teeming with Feasting magic—”

“I have never once—”

“—but she is weak. When you begin Feasting, you’ll be strong.”

Hiresha had mastered her composure in her dream. Her indignation only showed in the sharp turns as jewels zigzagged through the air of the laboratory. “I have no intention ever to begin Feasting.”

“Truth.” The lady tapped a black-sapphire claw against the inside of the mirror. “You’ll not let me out until you see no other way. So Feasting always is, and it is freedom. Even if Lord Tethiel finds it fashionable to claim regrets.”

“‘Claim?’” Hiresha asked. “This is even more amusing. Do you not trust Tethiel?”

“Of course not,” the Feaster said. “He’s tricked you from the beginning. Now he’s come to your domain to take your everything.”

“No!” The reflection peeked out from the corner of her mirror, fingers of one yellow glove pressed against the glass. “Tethiel cares for us.”

“He only visited,” Hiresha said. “Likely, he has already left.”

“Would you care to make a wager?”

Hiresha scoffed at the Feaster. “Don’t tell me you want him murdered as well.”

“Pointless.” The lady tossed her midnight hair and gazed away. “You would never listen to me even to save yourself. That is obvious.”

“I would if you ever spoke reason.” Hiresha blinked, which ended the dream. Even as the laboratory dissolved upward into blackness, she realized exactly what she had said, and she was frightened.

9

Ceiling of Elders

Enchantresses craned their necks to watch the elders ascend on six wallways, black and white paths leading between columns of blue marble. Each elder enchantress towed a train of gowns. The ceremonial dresses were woven into each other, Lightened so they swayed and shifted behind the elders like multicolored tails of sea serpents. Hiresha had armored herself with her full entourage of dresses. To be taken seriously, she had even donned the official golden hump.

She had decided she had no choice but to voice her concerns for the Academy. The chancellor would denounce her for it, Hiresha assumed, and she rather hoped the Ceiling of Elders proved her wrong, even if it meant public embarrassment. Hiresha’s tongue curled in distaste. Her worries sat rancid in her mouth, and she had found no appetite for food that day.

Alyla would be one of those to see Hiresha’s disgrace. The enchantress had given the novice the fennec and the amethyst bracelet to hold. The fox chirped in rapid succession at Alyla, but even his antics failed to bring a smile to her deadened face. She could not stop blinking, and Hiresha had noticed the skin around her eyes was puffy and veined.

Minna scared her terribly last night. Alyla, a girl who finds speaking in public frightening.

With their swaths of clothing, the elders could not sit down with any degree of certainty. To avoid the awkwardness of having to reposition a store’s worth of gowns, no chairs awaited the elders. Instead, coiled silk hung between gilt posts, harnesses for the enchantresses to lean forward on in comfort. Hiresha stayed standing, as she feared to fall asleep.

On second thought, she gripped the rope. She hardly wanted the embarrassment of falling in front of all these women.

The chancellor, too, kept to her feet. Within the grotto of her oiled wig, her lips contorted in an expression directed at Hiresha that seemed to say the chancellor already knew what the provost intended and was thinking how best to ridicule her for it.

“This meeting,” the Chancellor of Precious Enchantables said, “was called to discuss the tragic, unfortunate, and undoubtedly self-inflicted deaths of Enchantress Miatha and a visiting lord.”

“Lord Tethiel died?” Hiresha’s hold on her purple lanyard tightened, the cord clumping into knots between her hands. She imagined Tethiel traveling down from the Academy, losing connection to the Skyway, and tumbling over the limestone cliff.

“The Ceiling does not yet recognize the Provost of Applied Enchantment,” the chancellor said. “For a point of clarification, the nobleman in question was Lord Yunderdones. In the midst of his tour two days previous, he slipped away from the other gentry. A witness report from Novice Emesea indicates that he ignored visitor guidelines and threw himself off the Academy Plateau.”

Balmy relief mixed within boiling worry in Hiresha.
Two deaths in one solitary week. Perhaps the novice was mistaken, and he too fell.

To Hiresha’s left, the rector made a sharp noise of disbelief. Her fingers fidgeted over the ornamental daggers decorating her belt.

The chancellor turned her squint on the rector and her triumphant dome of white hair, a frizzy peak enclosed in a mesh of gold wire. The chancellor said, “The grandeur of the
Mindvault
Academy
is the closest experience to the afterlife the living can attain. Yet it must not be associated with journeys to said afterlife. Any implication of acts of violence would distract potential donors.”

The elders faced each other over a granite surface patterned in four concentric spheres, the centermost green, and the outer a circle of red. On the other side of the design, an enchantress sighed, opening her hands to reveal mismatched gloves of clashing colors.

The chancellor nodded to her. “The Ceiling recognizes the Dean of Somnium Exploration.”

Brooches of jeweled flowers glittered in the dean’s grey dreadlocks as she spoke. “It is always students of hard enchantment who throw away the glorious gift of life. They—”

“The correlation does not equal causation,” Hiresha said. “The Grindstone’s students tend to have more debt than—”

The chancellor held up a hand. “The dean has the Ceiling.”

The dean cast a pitying look toward Hiresha and the weapon-strewn rector. “You must require your students to take more courses in the Somnarium, to reach the radiant oneness within.”

The rector’s column of hair tilted back as she scoffed. “Adding to an already overburdening curriculum would only—”

The chancellor closed a fist then opened her hand to another elder who was waiting with palms outward. “The Ceiling recognizes the Warden of Faceted Knowledge.”

Hiresha had opened her hands as well, but the chancellor had ignored her.
I have to tell them now.

Age had bent the warden so far forward that the golden dome that decorated her hump was higher than her head. The warden also wore a mask of onyx, and she spoke in a brittle voice.

“The Ceiling of Elders has thrice rejected measures to construct barriers around the circumference of the plateau. Three, eleven, and twenty-seven decades ago respectively, similar measures were blocked.”

Hiresha flexed her fingers open and closed. The rector rambled on, and the chancellor refused to acknowledge Hiresha.

“It was decided the implementation of walls would give a prison-like atmosphere to a place dedicated to the infinite. Barriers of chain or stone would be anathema to the….Oh, dear. I lost my thoughts. What were we discussing?”

“The prevention of further depreciation of the Academy’s reputation through irreverent suicide,” the chancellor said. “The Ceiling recognizes the Dean of—”

Hiresha spoke first. “I have reason to suspect they were not—”

“Provost, if you please. The dean has the Ceiling.”

Hiresha had no intention of following the conventions, which would have her wait until all those older than herself had spoken.
They must understand the danger.
She threw a glove in protest into the center of the circles of granite. The purple fabric grazed the stone then flipped into the air. It tumbled down from the Ceiling. An enchantress below caught it before its amethysts could strike the floor. The fennec yipped.

The elders glared, stared, or raised an inquisitive brow. Hiresha’s exposed hand tingled in the tower’s chill. A purple garnet dotted midway on each finger, embedded in the skin. Hiresha felt a flash of uncertainty.
I’m the youngest here. Could I be mistaken?
Though her heart thumped, her eyes felt heavy and weary.

She said, “The Enchantress Miatha didn’t jump by her own will. Perhaps the lord did not either.”

“Take care how you implicate the
Mindvault
Academy
with speculation.” The chancellor frowned at Hiresha’s bare hand. “The Ceiling remains to the dean.”

“The dean hasn’t a cohesive thought in her head.” Hiresha pinched her eyes shut then forced herself to speak. “The Academy dropped Enchantress Miatha to her death. The magics of Attraction may be weakening on the plateau.”

A chorus of gasps rose from the floor.

“She didn’t say what I thought, did she?”

“Blasphemy!”

Veins stood out in the chancellor’s neck. “The Ceiling will come to order.”

Despite the dismay, Hiresha felt relieved. She was still not certain if she had seen a true plummet or Tethiel’s illusion, but she now felt confident the following investigation would find the truth and save lives.

The Warden of Faceted Knowledge touched her black mask. “There have been no recorded incidents of—”

“Can you substantiate that, Hiresha?” the rector asked. She leaned toward Hiresha, and the woman’s black eyebrows jutted with stray white spines of hair. The daggers she wore on her sleeves flashed, more gilt scrollwork than blade.

For a moment of panic, Hiresha could think of no proof. Then her fatigue receded enough for her to find an answer. “I am prepared to take anyone into my dream laboratory, to view my memories.”

With a snap of silk sleeves, the chancellor passed the Ceiling over to the rector.

The dome-haired woman asked, “You saw the enchantress fall?”

“Not precisely, but given her facial expression—”

When the rector frowned, faint wrinkles crossed the liver spots on her ebony face. “Interpreting motive through expression is imprecise.”

Hiresha knew it was, but she had hoped that the Rector of Rarified Armament—a colleague of equally rare skill—would have supported her.

The dean flashed her mismatched gloves and spoke next. “Hiresha has an exquisite dream, even if it is monotonous and overly constrained. I trust she has reasons to think the way she does.”

Hiresha felt sick with resentment toward the condescension. Yet, she met the gazes of the elders. “If you won’t believe me, think back over these last days. Have you noticed any peculiarities in the enchantments? A slip? A misstep on the wallways?”

“You have been deceived,” the chancellor said. “The novices have tricked you with a prank. Had I known you would be deluded enough to cause this outburst, I would have forbidden it.”

“A prank?” The Rector of Rarified Armament wore frames of gold over her ears that extended in wing designs, and the metal was blinding in the sunlight. “This is hardly leaving her favorite chair on top of the Ballroom. Or tying her smallclothes to the side of the Grindstone.”

The frizzy-haired dean spoke next. “If a prank, does this mean Enchantress Miatha still lives?”

“Twice, a member of the convocation has feigned death by jumping. Both incidents led to expulsion.” The warden’s eyes widened within the holes of her mask. “Or were we discussing murders?”

“We most definitely were not,” the chancellor said, “because nothing so sordid occurs in the
Mindvault
Academy
.”

The warden opened her knobby-fingered hands for permission to speak again. Hiresha did not wait for approval. She said to the chancellor. “I didn’t mistake a dress stuffed with straw as a falling enchantress. Why would you call this a prank? What do you know of it?”

The chancellor’s eyes darted over the circle of elders then up to the floor below them where enchantresses clutched their gowns in distress. The chancellor pawed through the clutter of amulets emblazoned with baboons and scarabs on her chest. Her twitching fingers rested on her access amulet, painted nails tracing around its circle designs.

When she at last spoke, her voice was measured and calm. “I know nothing of this incident. Except that anyone would judge it more likely that Provost Hiresha has committed a misjudgment than that a goddess’s enchantments have gone awry. If it was a prank, those novices involved will be expelled without tuition remittance.”

A suspicion itched Hiresha that the chancellor knew more. Hiresha wondered how the novices could be involved.
Unless the chancellor knows Minna is a Feaster, who played a part in an illusion.
Hiresha tried again to speak. “This was no common deception that—”

“The Ceiling goes to the Minister of Orbiting Bodies. I trust her voice of reason will dispose of this nonsense.”

The minister adjusted the several scarves strewn over her throat. Her silk was embroidered with constellations.

Hiresha held her breath, knowing the minister’s assessment would be respected. She had never failed to predict an eclipse or a star storm. Renowned for her precision and level-headedness, she had been named Minister of Orbiting Bodies despite her suspiciously masculine features, her height, and whispers that she was, in truth, a man wearing a dress.

“This morning,” the minister said, “I surveyed the valley floor by farglass. One rooftop of Stonton was cratered, likely by a fallen individual. Nearby at
Half
Bridge
, the debris of the sleigh scheduled to arrive yesterday carrying Academy supplies was littering the streets. Children were sweeping the wreckage, and women wore the white of mourning.”

“The sleigh driver must have drunk overmuch wine,” the chancellor said. “He steered off the Skyway. Or the horse team panicked.”

The minister continued in her thready voice. “The fallen sleigh might be supporting evidence for Provost Hiresha’s theory, as unprecedented as the hypothesis may be.”