Volinette's Song (13 page)

“How do you do that?” Baris finally asked, managing to regain his composure.

“Do what?”

“Make it sound like you’re singing with a host of angels?”

“Oh stop,” she snapped at him. She didn’t need his embellishments embarrassing her in front of Master Jotun. “I just sing. It’s nothing special.”

“On that score, dear girl, you are most decidedly wrong,” Master Jotun said, getting to his shaky feet. “You are very special, indeed. Young Baris, I am indebted to you for bringing this girl to my attention. I suspect this will not be the last I hear of her.”

“So we can go to the tower?”

“Aye lad,” Jotun said with another wink. “I’d say you’d paid the admission in full. Come along. You know the drill.”

Baris bounded to his feet
and crossed the room to where Jotun was standing before a massive bookcase. Lending his young shoulder to Jotun’s guidance, they pushed the furniture out of the way, revealing a tiny door behind it. Jotun took a key from his pocket and turned it in a little lock. The door sprang open.

“You know the rules, Baris. Half an hour, no more.”

“Yes, Master Jotun, thank you.” Baris crouched down and stepped through the tiny door, turning back to Volinette. He beckoned to her urgently. “Come on! We don’t have much time.”

Chapter Thirteen

“I don’t understand what you hope to gather from this investigation,” Olin said, rifling through a drawer of clothes. He picked up a few items, subjected them to a cursory inspection, and dropped them back, closing the drawer with a sigh.

“Which is why I am Grand Inquisitor, and you took the Fourth Level Inquisitor trials three times before you passed.”

“Now listen here—”

“No,” Adamon interrupted, his voice barely above a whisper. “
You
listen. We already suspect that Volinette is innocent of these crimes. We likewise suspect that Janessa, the daughter of two
highly
ranked Masters on the High Council, is guilty of stealing an artifact of immeasurable power. An artifact, I might add, that we have yet to recover.

“I intend to have every shred of evidence possible to possess before we take the girl into custody and return to the Head Master. Am I making myself plain?”

“What does it matter?” Olin shot back. “Why not censure them both and be done with it.”

“And
that
is why you failed the trials. Sometimes the blade of justice should be a healer’s blade, not the dull bludgeon of, well, whatever you are.” Adamon’s eyes lost the far-away, glassy look that indicated a mage split between the realms of the physical world and the Quintessential Sphere. “There’s nothing to find here. To the other rooms.”

The dormitory being empty assisted in their investigation. The apprentices were supposed to be in class, but Adamon doubted if Janessa and her ilk would have bothered with something as petty as class on the day after stealing the Prism of Transcendental. He would check with Master Casto later, but he suspected he already knew the answer to his inquiry.

Though Olin’s mood was sour, no doubt due to Adamon’s near constant needling, the man knew how to perform a thorough physical search. As a team, they made quick work of search the rooms of Volinette, Syble, Nixi, and Halsie. No trace of the Prism, either physical or ethereal, existed in any of their rooms. A short walk down the hall led them to the larger room that served as Janessa’s quarters. The preferential assignment of room was, without question, attributable to the girl’s parents.

Adamon could feel it before they even entered the room. The tingle of power that danced just over the surface of his skin, moving like an insect with a hundred thousand legs with a feather light touch. They’d find what they were looking for in Janessa’s room. He was sure of it.

Olin entered first. He went stiff as the residual power of the Prism washed over him. He shook it off and moved further in. Adamon followed. He didn’t even need to consult the living memory of the Quintessential Sphere. There was no doubt that the Prism had been here, but wasn’t any longer.

Adamon slipped into sphere sight, cringing at the jumbled mass of mangled memories that confronted
him. Whoever had tampered with the ethereal evidence in the Hall of Wonders had performed the same spellcraft here. Although the living memory of the Quintessential Sphere would reassert itself over time, it was a slow process. Adamon didn’t want to wait.

Closing his eyes, he blocked out the intrusions of the physical world. He focused instead on the Quintessential Sphere and the wounds that had been inflicted on it. His fingers plucked at the edges of the memories like a phantasmal harp. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Olin complaining that they didn’t have time for this. Adamon shut him out, ignoring everything but the progress he was making setting things to rights within the sphere.

Each healed wound weakened the cohesive power of the spell used to scramble the memories, making each successive pass easier and faster. In less time than he would have imagined, Adamon had reconstructed the memories that Janessa had tried to obscure with her clumsy command of the Quintessential Sphere. It was Janessa who had tampered with the living memory of the sphere, and it was Janessa who had stolen the Prism and hid it here in her room, in the chest by the foot of her bed. Adamon opened his eyes, snapping back to the here and now, and facing Olin’s impatient gaze.

“The Prism was here, but isn’t any longer,” Adamon said.

“I could have told you that,” Olin replied at his driest. His gesture indicated a room that he’d turned inside out while Adamon was communing with the Quintessential Sphere.

“Perhaps, but now we have the evidence we need to take the girl into custody. Between what we’ve found
and the witnesses, we can bring a solid case against Janessa and ensure that justice is done.”

“You mean censure,” Olin said.

Adamon shrugged.

“The sentence isn’t for me to decide. I make my recommendations, and the High Council will have their say.”

“How many times have they gone against you?” Olin snorted.

“Not many,” Adamon conceded. “But how many times have we brought the daughter of two prominent Masters before them?”

“Fair point.”

The men retraced their steps through the rooms, down the corridor, and out into the courtyard beyond. Long strides carried them with urgent purpose, so urgent that they nearly ran down the very girls they were searching for. Janessa stood before them, her fists jammed against her hips, her chin lifted at a haughty tilt.

“What in the nine hells is going on in here?”

“You have impeccable timing, Apprentice,” Adamon said. “We were just coming to retrieve you.”

“Retrieve me? For what? Do you have any idea who my parents are?” Janessa demanded.

“I do indeed, and I should think that they will be very curious why the daughter of two such powerful Quintessentialists, who sit on the High Council, could possibly be so stupid as to steal an artifact that she doesn’t understand and can’t hope to control from the Hall of Wonders.”

“I stole nothing,” she spat. “You can’t prove it.”

Nixi, Halsie, and Syble murmured their agreement. Adamon turned his glare on them and the girls quickly fell silent.

“I can,” Adamon countered, taking Janessa by the arm. “And I will.” He turned his gaze to the girls who were still hovering about. “The three of you leave, now. Before I decide to put you all in the dungeon and leave you there.”

Without waiting for them to reply, Adamon guided Janessa along the path, toward the Great Tower. When the girl began to struggle, Olin stepped forward and took her by the other arm. Although he could have managed on his own, Adamon was thankful for the assistance. Olin may not have the skills that he had, but he was a good inquisitor, nonetheless. Perhaps even good enough to be spared the sharp edge of Adamon’s tongue…at least for a time.

As they proceeded toward the tower, they crossed paths with a patrolling guard. Adamon stopped him with a word.

“Yes, Grand Inquisitor?”

“Please send a message to all the gate guards. I’m looking for an Apprentice and an Acolyte. They’ll be outside the Academy grounds. When they return, I want them to report to the Great Tower at once. There is a matter of importance they must attend to.”

“Of course, Master Vendur. Shall I have them escorted in?”

Adamon considered that. Volinette and the boy were young enough and unjaded by the power of prestige to be tempted to dawdle when summoned by the Grand Inquisitor. The fear of reprisal would be enough to keep them moving.

“No, that isn’t necessary. Just pass along the message.”

~~~

Dark, narrow, and rickety, the stairs leading up to the tower were barely wide enough for a grown man to climb. They spiraled up in darkness
. Volinette would have thought twice about going if it weren’t for the fact that Baris was ahead of her, urging her to hurry. He stopped short and she ran into him from behind.

“Hey!” she groused. “A little warning?”

“Sorry. Hold on.”

There was a bang, a screech, and a groan as Baris did something she couldn’t see. Then a flood of light poured down from above them, dazzling her eyes. Baris took her hand and led her up the last few steps and out onto a planked platform that was only just large enough for both of them to stand on.

Volinette had never felt particularly afraid of heights. In fact, she rather enjoyed the brief view of the city she’d gotten from the Head Master’s office, but this was different. The tower was old and not well maintained. The thin railing that circled the four posts that held up the pyramid roof didn’t look like it would withstand a strong wind, much less someone using it to keep from plummeting to their inevitable death in the courtyard below.

While it wasn’t close to as high as the Great Tower, it was high enough to loom over every other building in the city and give an unrestricted view of the Academy grounds. Volinette could see the fountain in the courtyard where she liked to read. It looked like a
craftsman’s model, and she very much wished that she were perched on the edge of the fountain rather than standing where it felt like she might fall at any moment.

“It’s pretty, Baris, but I want to go down,” she said in a tight voice. She swallowed against the lump in her throat, determined not to glance down into the courtyard a second time.

“We can see what’s going on at the Academy from up here. Don’t you want to know if they find Janessa?”

“Can’t we just do that with your cube?”

Baris ducked his head. “Naw, Adamon took it from me as soon as we left the Head Master’s office. He said I’d get it back, but…”

He shrugged, indicating what Volinette already knew. There was no telling when Baris would get the bauble back.
Adamon was going to be occupied for the foreseeable future.

“Hey, look,” Baris grabbed her by the arm and dragged her far too near the railing for her peace of mind. As her eyes followed where he was pointing, her fear of being up in the tower evaporated.

It wasn’t hard to decipher the scene that was taking place outside the girls’ dormitory. Adamon in his traveling cloak and Olin in his robes were confronting Janessa and the girls. They were too high and too far away to hear what was being said, but Olin was visibly angry. He moved his arms in quick, short motions that conveyed his frustration, even over the great distance.

One
Inquisitor took each of Janessa’s arms and marched her, quite against her will by the way she was struggling, toward the tower. Still, as powerful and wily as Janessa was, she was no match for two fully grown men who had rid the Imperium of rogue mages and other threats to the Orders. They disappeared into the tower, and Volinette let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Yeah,” Baris agreed. “I wouldn’t want to be her right now.”

“What do you think is going to happen to her?” Volinette gnawed at her lower lip. Although she didn’t want to take the blame for what Janessa did, she wasn’t sure she wanted to think about what the consequences of those actions would be.

Baris rounded on her, his eyes wide.

“Are you kidding me? You’re worried about what’s going to happen to HER? SHE almost got you thrown out of the Academy, Volinette. What’s wrong with you?”

“She hates me enough already,” Volinette fired back, just as angry as Baris had been, if not more so. “Maybe I just don’t want to add fuel to the fire!”

“Unbelievable,” Baris muttered, turning back toward the tower. “You need to learn to stand up for yourself. No one else is going to.”

“You did.”

Baris sniffed, but said nothing. He continued to look out at the tower for several long minutes before he said anything else.

“I won’t always be around. Besides, you’re way more powerful than I am. You heard what Master Jotun said.”

“That was just singing.”

Baris glanced at her and shook his head. “That’s just it, Vol. It
wasn’t
just singing. Something happened to you. You changed. Your voice…the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end, and Master Jotun looked more alive than I’ve ever seen him. He’s right when he says you’re something special. I just don’t know what.”

“Well, I don’t know either,” she snapped, her exasperation with his fawning reaching its breaking point.

“Don’t you want to find out?”

“Of course I do! I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I’ve only dreamed of becoming a Master for my entire life.”

“Then don’t let anyone else make that decision for you. Not Janessa or anybody. Not even me.”

Baris was rarely this serious
, and his demeanor was making Volinette more uncomfortable than what they’d seen. She wanted to get back to the dormitory. If she could just get one good night’s sleep, maybe all of this would seem less dire.

“Okay. Can we go back down now?” She shivered as she spoke, her teeth knocking together. She couldn’t understand how Baris wasn’t frozen solid. “I’m cold and I want to go back to the Academy.”

They descended from the tower, stopping only long enough for Baris to pull the trapdoor shut at the top, and move the bookcase back into place at the bottom. Master Jotun had abandoned his office, leaving them alone in the dimly lit space. Without his paternal presence, the room seemed much more foreign and cold.