Tessili Academy (11 page)

No. The scenthounds would do that.

Behind them, in the darkness, a bay rose up
at the base of the outer cloister wall. Jey glanced back and saw
the bobbing light of lanterns. More bays joined the first as more
hounds picked up the trail. She heard a shouted command and knew
they were nearly out of time.

In front of them reared the wall, black and
monumental in the night. They reached its base. Jey’s eyes searched
frantically for the small crack. Terror gripped her heart when she
didn’t see it immediately. What if she’d come to the wrong place?
Or what if it had been discovered and repaired since the last time
Liam had been able to bring his class here?

Heart pounding, she stooped behind the rose
bush, fingers groping along the rough stone. The hounds bayed
again, their voices high and clear, excited and keen.

At last, Jey’s fingers found the crack. They
snagged on its irregular mouth. Inside, she felt the smooth lining
of the shieldstone she’d painstakingly made. It had taken so long.
She remembered all the hours she’d spent here, mind focused down to
a point, extended deep within the wall. First she had chipped out
the passage, then she’d transmuted a thin layer of stone. It had
gotten more difficult as she’d gone deeper and deeper into the
wall.

But it was finished. She’d completed it in
the spring. She could feel the breach in the magic. It was a narrow
crack, but it would be enough. She let her breath out with a relief
so great it was almost painful.

The hounds were coming. They were visible
now, mottled shapes moving across the dark lawn. Jey spoke into the
night “Kae, go.”

Later, Jey would wonder why she chose to
send Kae first. Perhaps it was because Kae had seemed the most
decisive, the most angry, the most ready to leave. Perhaps she
hadn’t had any reason at all. If she’d had time to think about it,
she might have realized the one who went first was taking a risk.
The tunnel hadn’t been tested. They had no way of knowing, for
sure, that it was safe to use.

In any case, it was not safe to stay where
they were. They had to go. Jey, in that split second, had two names
to choose between.

She felt a brief squeeze on her shoulder,
saw Kae’s tessila dart towards the crack in the wall. There was a
shower of stone fragments and the quick sound of Kae’s breathing as
she scaled the wall. The guards who stood on top stared out towards
the lanterns of the group of orderlies who had now reached the dead
dog. They had no idea how close they came to death as the lithe,
angry Kae passed between them.

Suddenly, there was a hound. It came running
down the lawn, nose to ground. It stopped by the rose bush. It
raised its muzzle and let out a long, high howl. “Now you,” Jey
said to Elle. Another brief squeeze on her hand, another darting
movement as the purple tessila clawed its way into the crack. And
Jey was alone.

It hadn’t been difficult for Nylan to figure
out where the girls would come over the wall. The guards made it
obvious, the way they gathered together, shouting and pointing.
Nylan had known better than to think they would let him back into
the academy after his little show of temper a few nights before.
But he’d be damned if he would see that girl, J114, destroy all
he’d worked for. He had given too much. He’d sacrificed his freedom
and gone without the most basic comforts and pleasures for years
now. He hadn’t minded. Not really. He’d had a goal. He’d been
making steady progress. Until J114 had come along.

Nylan had already been in a deployment block
when the academy had burst into sudden, noisy chaos. He was
preparing to send a student on a vital opportunity. It was one he’d
intended for J114, but now it was too dangerous to use her. He’d
been informed all the seniors were unstable. They’d have their
silly graduation ceremony in the morning.

And then, Nylan would kill them.

Which meant tonight he’d had to settle for a
greener student – M215, who hadn’t developed to the level of
proficiency Nylan would have preferred for the night’s work. It
was, Nylan thought, the great flaw in the way the academy was run.
As soon as the girls became effective weapons, they became too
dangerous to be allowed to live.

So, Nylan was already worried and frustrated
when the academy exploded into frantic activity. No one came to
tell him anything, of course. But Nylan wasn’t the type who enjoyed
being told what to do, anyway. He’d always been independent, quick
to act of his own volition.

When he’d realized what must be happening,
he’d grabbed a stunrod and strode out of the deployment block.
Torches lit the darkness. He walked towards the place of most
concentrated activity on the wall. As he walked through the
clamoring night, the activity increased. He broke into a jog.

He reached the wall and looked around,
suddenly wary. Up on top, all the guards were looking in the other
direction, looking inward.

Nylan was no fool. He knew one of these
girls could kill him as simply as he could crush the little beasts
that gave them all their incredible potential. But he also knew
J114 was broken – mind muddled by drugs, fragmented by flashnodes,
limited by the strange, artificial life she had led. She would be
scared tonight, and perhaps careless. Perhaps it would be possible
to take her by surprise.

So Nylan tucked himself into the shadows at
the base of the wall. There, he waited.

It was the tessila that gave her away. It
appeared suddenly, as if out of thin air. It darted in a frantic
loop, a blur of movement in the night. Nylan saw it. He did not
hesitate. He didn’t know how it had gotten over the wall. It was
not relevant to the situation at hand. He would figure that out
later.

Fortunately for Nylan, he had plenty of
experience destroying the little monsters. He knew how they moved,
knew the patterns they tended to fly. He saw its flickering motion
out of the corner of his eye, tracked it for an instant, and did
not wait. He lashed out with his stunrod. The weapon barely
connected, but he felt the kick in his hand as the magic within
triggered.

The tessila, stunned, began to fall. Looping
flight interrupted, it tumbled out of the air to crash land onto
the soft grass.

There was a gasp in the darkness, a shimmer
on the air. The girl materialized not two feet away from Nylan. It
was not J114, but one of the other seniors. That surprised him to
stillness for half an instant. He could see in her face that she’d
been coming for him. He’d been an instant away from his own
death.

But her creature now lay in the grass,
stunned. The girl’s eyes had gone blank with fear and pain.

Nylan took one step to the side, lifted his
booted foot. He stepped down, hard, directly on top of the fallen
tessila.

Jey had just sent Phril into the crack when
she heard the scream.

The dogs were upon her now. She’d blasted
two of them to death, knowing that doing so revealed to the guards
where she was. More and more guards were gathered atop the wall
now. They stood shoulder to shoulder, short swords drawn, staring
down into the darkness. They formed a barrier of metal and flesh
between Jey and her freedom.

The remaining dogs were hanging back from
the rosebush now that several of his companions were dead, but the
orderlies were almost there. And they would have stunrods. Beyond
that, Jey’s ability to hold her passive echo spell was wavering. It
would fall soon, whether she was prepared to be seen or not.

Jey blasted the life out of one more dog,
then turned to grope for the handholds Kae had made in the wall.
Again, she cleared her mind. She focused herself down to her grip
on the stone, the need to climb, quick and sure.

It was possible the scream saved her
life.

Jey had nearly reached the top of the wall
when several things happened at once. First, she realized she could
go no further. There was no way onto the top of the wall with all
the men there. Second, a whole pack of orderlies reached the base
of the wall and began beating at the rosebush and the surrounding
air with their stunrods.

Third, the scream. It came from the other
side of the wall. It was high and eerie in the night. Every guard,
every orderly, every hound went momentarily still when they heard
it.

The guards all turned and ran to the other
side of the wall. Jey hauled herself upwards. As her arm reached
onto the top, she lost her hold on her passive echo spell.

Below her, an orderly shouted. There was a
sharp crack near her head and a spark in the darkness. She realized
with sudden terror the man had thrown his stunrod. It had missed
her by inches.

If one of those hits me, I will fall.

The thought galvanized Jey. She had no time
to worry about the scream. She had to save her own skin.

With one final heave, she made the top of
the wall. Several more stunrods clattered and sparked on the stones
around her. She lurched forward, never pausing, to crash into the
backs of two guards who were staring down over the other side of
the wall. She knocked them aside before they could register her
presence and threw herself out into the darkness beyond.

Elle was not much prone to anger. Of the
three seniors, she was the least deadly. While Elle excelled in
situations that required diplomacy or deceit, violence had never
come naturally to her. Her specialty was passive persuasion and
other spells of the mind.

She’d climbed the wall quickly, avoided the
guards, and leapt off the other side without stopping for a moment
to consider what might be waiting at the bottom. None of them had
thought beyond getting past the wall. It was a mistake Elle would
regret for the rest of her life.

Elle held her passive bearing spell on the
top of the wall, allowing her to land softly. Her tessila, Shai,
darted like an arrow through the night. He came straight from the
wall to cling to Elle’s braid. As she transferred the brillbane
bundle from where she’d gripped it between her teeth back to her
hands, she felt their mingled relief at being together again.

She hadn’t noticed Nylan. He’d been standing
so still and quiet, tucked into the shadows at the base of the
wall. She’d been preoccupied with the sounds of the baying hounds,
the shouts of the guards.

Kae’s tessila had always been the most
aggressive of the three – the fastest to anger, the least inclined
to sit still. While Elle’s tessila clung to her body, heeding
Elle’s instructions to stay near and stay quiet, Kae’s was a blur
of movement in the dark night.

Elle saw Nylan as he stepped out of the
shadows and struck. She saw Kae’s tessila tumble out of the sky,
saw Kae appear as her passive echo spell failed.

And she saw Nylan bring his boot down on top
of her friend’s tessila.

It had all happened too fast. In that
instant, there was nothing Elle could do to prevent what happened.
There was that horrible thump. Then, Kae crumpled. She collapsed
into a limp heap on the grass.

She was dead. As dead as her tessila.

Elle screamed. The sound ripped out of her
mouth in a kind of animal fury. She suddenly understood how Kae
must have felt most of the time. Anger blasted through her like a
hot tide. Her vision seemed to go red at the edges. Rage filled
her, making her body tremble. She lost her hold on her passive echo
spell. The look of terror in Nylan’s eyes as she strode towards him
made her smile.

Jey fell through darkness. The torches atop
the wall were smears of red light at the edges of her eyes. One of
the guards gave a shout and pointed. An arrow sailed through the
air towards her, but the aim was off. It had no chance of
hitting.

Jey worked a passive bearing spell as she
tumbled, but she could feel her fatigue. She’d drawn too hard on
her reserves tonight. For one mad moment she thought the spell
would fail. After all she had overcome, she would break her neck
and back because she hadn’t been able to contain the force of her
own fall.

As it happened, Phril clawed his way free of
the crack in the wall and flew to her as she fell. He caught onto
her wrist. The small warmth of his body against her skin gave her
new strength. She managed, at the last instant, to right herself.
She landed heavily, but not fatally, in time to see Elle charge
towards Nylan.

It took Jey a moment to grasp the situation.
First, she saw Kae’s body. The girl in the pale night dress was
collapsed in the grass, as thoroughly dead as the orderly whose
neck the girl had broken at the beginning of this insane night. Jey
gave a silent gasp and froze in blank horror.

Kae was dead. Kae was dead, and even Jey,
with all the advantages Phril gave her, could do nothing to change
that fact.

Another arrow whizzed through the air,
thrumming down to embed itself in the turf beside Jey with a hard
thud. Jey tried to cast another passive echo spell, but she was too
tired.

“Elle, come on.” She barked the words as she
started forward, casting a passive disruptor spell that knocked
several more arrows off course.

But Elle wasn’t listening. Jey turned to see
her stalking Nylan like a cat. The Handler held a stunrod in one
hand and a long, cruel knife in the other. He was taking careful
backwards steps, facing Elle as she prowled towards him.

“Elle,” Jey called again, “there’s no time.
We have to go.”

Elle moved then. For a moment, Jey was
transfixed by the sheer, fluid beauty of her friend’s form. Elle
darted in. Nylan swung the stunrod. The series of movements that
happened next was too fast, too precise, too lovely to
comprehend.

Elle blocked the swing. She did not use any
magic. She stopped Nylan’s wrist with her hands and broke it with a
quick twist. Nylan gasped as the stunrod fell. But he still had the
knife. Even as his face went pale with pain, he drove the weapon
towards Elle’s exposed side. Like Jey, her friend wore only the
pale slip of her night dress.