Tessili Academy (5 page)

Jey let out a short sigh of relief. Around
her, the other girls had collected their tessili. They moved in a
vague stream towards the doors that opened onto the quad.

Later, Jey would never quite understand what
made her do it. It wasn’t something she decided. It was simply
something she did. As she turned from the table, she noticed no one
was watching her. In an instant, she let her hand trail over the
last holdstone on the line. With a smooth, slow movement, she
curled her fingers around the small, warm rock. She tucked it into
her palm and left the hall.

Five minutes later, Jey almost ruined
everything. She arrived at Professor Liam’s classroom a minute or
two early for her next class, having tucked the holdstone into a
broken brillbane husk on her way through the quad. It was the best
she could manage. Her white dress had no pockets, no folds, no
hidden compartments. It was plain and smooth, with skirts that fell
softly past her legs. She wore a soft under shift as well as a pair
of silk skivvies. The holdstone was too heavy to stay put in any of
her clothing.

She had thought of tucking it into her
slipper. But her footwear was soft and delicate as well. She was
afraid it would shift and click when she walked.

Hiding it in a husk had seemed her only
option. She’d paused, reaching into the pod to pry free a seed
sack. As the sack fell into her hand, she tucked the holdstone back
into the husk, behind the other pods. Then, she’d given the seed
sack to Phril.

It wasn’t a perfect hiding place. Other
girls might see the broken husk and stop to provide their tessili
with a snack. But Jey hadn’t had time to come up with anything
safer.

Now she walked into Professor Liam’s
classroom, feeling a slight lessening of the tension that had been
riding her shoulders all day. She wasn’t sure why, but she liked
Professor Liam. And he, after all, had told her to cast the spell
on Phril. Walking into Liam’s classroom the day before was the
first thing she could remember – the beginning of the path that
started out of thin air.

That couldn’t be a coincidence, Jey was
sure. So she walked into the classroom again today with a hopeful
sense she might learn more.

Later, it would eat at her, how close a
thing it had been. She strode into the room with too much purpose,
too much knowledge on her face. But it was that first, small
mistake that saved her from a worse one.

Professor Liam was at the top of the room,
leaning against his desk. The two observation orderlies were in the
corner, like always. As the door behind Jey fell closed, Professor
Liam asked the question she’d been anticipating all day. “Ah, Jey.
Good morning. Tell me, how is our little experiment
progressing?”

Jey almost told him. The words were there,
in her head, ready to speak.

It was his face that warned her. After he
asked the question, he seemed to see she would answer him. His eyes
widened in sudden surprise. Then, his hand, which was resting on
the edge of the desk next to him, made a sudden, quick flick to the
side. It was the hand that was on the opposite side of his body
from the orderlies at their desk.

Jey didn’t know what the gesture meant, but
she caught the words she’d been going to say. A wave of fear-filled
uncertainty washed over her.

Heart pounding, Jey forced the muscles in
her face to go slack. She let her head tip to one side. She stared
at Professor Liam without saying anything. She’d observed other
girls do this, when asked a question they did not know an answer
to. They didn’t come up with guesses, they didn’t answer back. They
only stared, as if the words had not been words at all, but some
unintelligible, vaguely unpleasant sound.

Professor Liam drew in a quick, shallow
breath. “Jey,” he prodded, “you remember our lesson from yesterday,
don’t you?”

Jey let her brows draw together. She turned
to stare out the window. In doing so, she noticed the orderlies.
Where usually the observers sat in attitudes of studied boredom,
these two today carried a different air. They both sat straight at
their polished table, staring at Jey with bright, focused eyes.
Though they both wore tan robes, one had purple piping along the
collar and seams.
High Orderly Fras
. Jey recognized the man,
but she had no idea when she’d ever seen him before.

Professor Liam went on. “Professor Straph
said you were distracted while sparring yesterday. He said you
attributed that to me.”

Jey, feeling she’d been silent too long,
said, “Yesterday.” She let the word come out in a slow, wondering
tone, as this was a concept she’d encountered before but did not
understand.

“Enough, Liam, you’ve made your point. See
what she knows with help from the holdstone.” This came from the
High Orderly. He looked annoyed, as if Liam had said something
insulting.

Professor Liam gestured to a desk with a
holdstone set on its corner. Jey moved forward in slow but easy
obedience. Phril was perched on her shoulder, gnawing at the
brillbane seed sack. She lifted her hand to him. He stepped onto it
willingly enough, holding his seed in his mouth. She then moved her
hand so he could step from her skin to the warm stone. He did so
without hesitation, crouching again once he was in place so he
could continue to work on his sack. Jey settled into her seat.

The room was huge and silent. Sun spilled
through the high windows. Jey had to fight the urge to look at the
dim corner where the High Orderly sat. “Now,” Professor Liam said,
“Tell me, how is our little experiment progressing?”

Jey let her eyes slide halfway closed. She
felt a strange stirring in her mind, a sense of large shapes moving
in darkness. She could feel so many intent eyes upon her. “I …” she
faltered. This was much harder than feigning pure ignorance.
Clearly, they expected her to know more now that Phril was on the
stone. But how much more? “I lost the spell,” she finally said
after a long pause. She let the words trail out of her one by one.
“Some time. After I left. I’m not sure.”

Professor Liam looked disappointed, but High
Orderly Fras rose to his feet as if satisfied. He was a large man,
tall, with a round barrel of a chest and soft, smooth cheeks. As he
swept towards the door, he spoke. “No more unorthodox experiments,
Liam. Particularly not on this one.”

Elle’s hair was dark and silky. The other
girl rested against Jey’s legs in languid peace as Jey leaned
against the arm of the couch. On the other side of the large room,
Kae stood in front of an easel, holding a brush and palette. Around
the outside of the round space with the flashnode at its peak, ten
alcoves indented into the exterior wall. Jey had counted them when
she and her roommates had returned to their dorm after dinner. Only
three of them held beds and small tables. The other seven were full
of potted brillbane.

Elle was humming as Jey brushed her hair.
While the other two girls seemed easy and content, Jey was boiling
with frustration. She’d tried to ask her two friends about what
they’d done today. While they’d both answered easily in vague
terms, when she pressed she couldn’t get them to tell her anything
specific. For instance, the question, “What did you think of the
new dance?” got her nothing but long silences and troubled frowns.
And worse, every time the flashnode went off it reset her friends,
completely erasing their memories of the conversation they’d been
having.

For the moment, Jey had stopped trying. Both
Elle and Kae had seemed to be growing a little agitated. It had
seemed the flashnode was going off with increasing frequency. Jey
had stopped asking questions. Her friends had lapsed straight back
into quiet contentment.

Jey hadn’t managed to retrieve the holdstone
until after dinner, and she’d done so at some risk. She’d drifted
towards Professor Liam’s classroom, pretending to follow Phril with
mild irritation as he’d gone for the broken husk again in search of
another seed sack. Other girls had drifted around her as they
headed to their dorms for the night. She’d felt exposed and
conspicuous, walking on a line different from the others.

But she’d retrieved the holdstone, tucked it
into her palm, and given Phril another seed. She’d made her slow,
quiet way back to her dorm. She’d tucked the holdstone into a small
notch in the wall. It was behind her bedframe – a place where one
of the stones of the wall had crumbled away to form a small pocket
large enough to hold a few small items.

Now, as Jey brushed her friend’s hair and
listened to the low tone of her humming, her heart began to pound
as she considered what she knew. Her memories started with that day
in Professor Liam’s classroom – the day he’d asked her to cast a
passive shield on Phril. Since then, Jey could remember.

Elle’s purple tessila was stretched out on
the girl’s thumb, wings drooping in content relaxation. Jey
experienced a strange feeling of déjà vu as she looked at him,
convinced she’d lived this scene before. Not once, but many
times.

Phril was perched on a brillbane stalk in
the corner, gnawing on his seed with furious enjoyment. Jey sent
him a mental nudge, a suggestion to make his way beneath her bed
and climb into the crevice where the stolen holdstone lay.

He went with some reluctance, carrying his
seed in his mouth and glaring at her. When he was settled, Jey
tried to relax. She set the brush down and began to braid the long,
fine strands of Elle’s hair. Jey imagined Professor Liam’s deep,
gentle voice saying, “Cast a passive shield on Elle’s tessila.” Jey
had gotten so used to holding Phril’s passive shield she almost
forgot she was doing it at times. And now, with Phril on the
holdstone, she found it was easy to weave another spell just like
it. She summoned several strands of magic, knit them together with
the proper weave, and snugged the spell over Elle’s tessila.

The diminutive purple creature sat up with a
sudden start. Like Phril, Elle’s tessila had liquid black eyes set
into a narrow face. Unlike Phril, Elle’s tessila had a set of
spikes that formed a sharp fan around the back of the skull. Now,
although the animal was small enough to perch on her friend’s
thumb, Jey felt a sudden shock of fear as Elle’s tessila fixed its
sharp eye on her and let out a fierce, angry hiss.

Jey’s hands forgot about the braid. She
concentrated. She could feel the tessila was resisting her desire
to secure the spell into place.

Elle opened her eyes. She looked down at her
hand. Jey couldn’t see her face, but she could imagine the small
frown creasing her forehead. She moved her other hand, bringing it
in to stroke her tessila along the jaw. She said, “Quiet down now,
love. Everything is all right.”

Elle, unaware of what Jey was doing, could
only have meant to sooth in general. But the tessila seemed to
apply the words to the situation at hand. Still glaring at Jey, the
tessila quieted. Jey felt the animal stop resisting the spell.
Hurrying so as not to let her moment pass, Jey finished the
weaving, snugged the spell into place, and let go.

The tessila settled back down on Elle’s
thumb, broadcasting a mild, disgruntled air. Jey returned her
attention to the braid. She suggested to Phril that he could leave
the holdstone, if he wanted. He emerged from beneath the bed a
moment later, a darting red arrow returning to his perch on the
brillbane bush.

Jey tied off the braid with a golden ribbon.
She leaned down to say, very softy, next to Elle’s ear, “Elle, I
need to explain some things. I think, from now on, you’re going to
be able to remember.”

Jey had just finished her explanation when
the door to their room opened. She was unable to prevent herself
from jumping at the harsh click of the latch and the way the door
swung in with enough force to bang against the wall.

Fortunately, both Elle and Kae startled too.
Elle sat up in a quick jerk to gaze towards the door with wide
eyes. Kae froze in the act of reaching brush to canvas. Her
tessila, which had been flying lazy loops around her head, darted
down to cling to the shoulder of her dress.

Two men stood in the open door. One of them
spoke in a tone of frustrated impotence. “We always enter their
rooms quietly, Nylan. Particularly the seniors. Startling them can
have consequences.”

The speaker was an orderly. Jey recognized
him as the one who’d guided her forward after the flashnode had
gone off outside the dining hall – the older of the two whose
conversation she’d overheard.

Jey hardly registered his words. She
recognized the other man, and that name.
Nylan.
She felt a
shock in her sternum, accompanied by a frantic desire to run.

But she couldn’t run. For one thing, the men
were blocking the door. For another, running would give her
away.

The orderly was still speaking. “I must
insist you wait. There must be at least two orderlies present any
time students are with a professor or a handler.”

Not heeding the orderly, Nylan stepped into
the room. His eyes sought Jey and settled onto her. “As High
Handler, that rule does not apply to me.” His tone was unpleasant
and sneering. He strode into the room, filling the space with
violent, bristling energy.

He strode straight to Jey, who jumped back
from his approach, cringing and flinching in spite of herself. The
orderly came in as well, trailing behind in ineffectual
persistence. His voice was higher and smoother, but no less angry.
“Perhaps not in the deployment blocks, but you have no such
clearance here.”

Nylan appeared not to hear. He followed Jey
as she backed away, pressing forward until she bumped into the
stone wall between two alcoves and could retreat no further.