Wayward Page 6

  “Our would-be new members will be called one by one to demonstrate their spell for all of us,” said Helia from the dais, “but our guests are asked to remain quiet as we make our judgement. First, Aubrey Cai.”

  Aubrey looked just fifteen, newly eligible to join. He split away from the crowd by the windows, two or three guests attempted to clap. Cassia wasn’t one of them. She had been first of the cohort to take her test a year ago, and she remembered all too well the vulnerable, stark quiet as she stepped into the middle of the room, the only sound her own heels striking the floor as if marching blindly to her doom. Those who had wished to clap quickly disguised the movements, and Cassia felt them feel it too; the change in the air. All the jovial spirit of Helia’s speech was gone. What happened next was sacred.

  Sacred, and terrifying.

  Aubrey’s prop was an ordinary-looking candle. Inductees were not permitted to speak during their initiation, not to explain their spell nor to excuse why it went wrong, so no one could know what Aubrey was about to do.

  He placed the candle in the centre of the floor, removed a book of matches from his pocket, and lit the wick. It burned with a hiss, and released a thick plume of indigo smoke into the air. Aubrey crouched by the candle and his face went blank with concentration. He stared into the smoke, one hand outstretched, his fingers dancing slowly as if he were plucking the strings of a harp.

  “Oh,” gasped the man next to Cassia.

  She followed his gaze upwards, as everyone began to realise the magic was not happening before Aubrey, but above.

  Instead of dispersing as it cooled, the smoke was forming shapes. Wispy, midnight creatures were coming to life above the candle. Rabbits hopped through the air, streams of smoke curling in their wake as they descended, until they were among the legs of the audience, who laughed and shuffled aside as they bounded about the hall. Foxes prowled, tails swishing; cats pounced at one another. There were birds too, sweeping in magnificent arcs above their heads. A snake curled itself around a man’s leg as he watched it warily and tried to laugh along with his friends.

  Aubrey’s smoke menagerie only lasted a couple of minutes, after which the boy blew the candle out, crossed the room, and opened a window. With a gesture of his hand, his creations obediently flocked to him, and as they slipped through the window, they turned once more into smoke, and vanished in the air.

  Cassia could feel the observers around her resisting the urge to clap again, but she couldn’t share in their delight. None of them had to follow Aubrey’s act.

  “Members,” said Helia from the dais. “Aye or nay?”

  “Aye!” they chorused unanimously, and only then did the room erupt into cheers. The brief moment of normality and congratulations cut blessedly through the tension, but Cassia’s heart was beating hard. If she had to do that well in order to be cheered herself, she was doomed.

  The next inductee had no prop. She stepped into the centre of the room alone, and gave a twirl, the skirts of her blood-red dress fluttering elegantly. Once again, there was a silent, dread-filled tension as nothing happened and no one made a sound. But then she twirled again, and as the light caught the satin of her gown, it flickered yellow. With each twirl, her dress flashed another colour of the rainbow; orange, purple, green. Fuchsia, jade, cerulean. She ended the display with making her dress ripple in every colour at once, like a rainbow hitting the ripples of the ocean. When her dress was red again, she turned to the dais, and the assembled members before it.

  “Members, aye or nay?”

  “Aye!”

  And so the next two inductees were called. Every time, Cassia’s heart galloped at the possibility of hearing her name, and every time, she was left to slowly deflate, hands shaking as the rush of terror temporarily subsided.

  Only the penultimate hopeful, Clement, failed to impress. He was the boy Cassia had spotted toting a random jug, which he attempted to transform from glass into ice, breaking the unspoken rule about making one’s initiation a spectacle. Perhaps no one had told him. Clement’s jug frosted over, and his breath misted the air, but no one could be sure the spell had succeeded until one half of the jug disintegrated and sluiced onto the floor. Those nearest stepped back or lifted their skirts. A second later, the rest of the jug also melted into water, and Helia put him out of his misery with a hand raised. If Clement could be thankful for one thing, it was that he did not miss out on membership by only a few votes.

  “Nay!” came the resounding shout, almost before Helia had asked the question. The guests averted their eyes as Clement accepted his children’s spell book and returned to their side of the room with downcast eyes. Cassia estimated he was no older than sixteen; he would have other chances.

  “And on to our last inductee – Cassia Sims, if you would step forward.”

  The crowd parted to let Cassia into the centre of the room, where a junior member was magicking away Clement’s mess. To Cassia it was as if the hundreds of watchful eyes had reduced Clement to a puddle on the floor, and were about to do the same to her. The only way she could put one foot in front of the other was by looking at nothing but the spot where she would place her jar of soil.

  The silence became absolute as she did; a silence louder than the other hopefuls had suffered, she was sure of it. She was light-headed, her throat dry. She wondered if the nearest Successors heard her when she swallowed.

  One spell. Just one spell and everything would be different.

  A movement among the members dragged her attention. Jasper stood a little way from the others, at the edge of the room. He had moved into her line of sight to catch her eye and shoot her a smile. He wasn’t nervous for her, she realised. He thought she would succeed. She involuntarily picked out her grandfather in the corner of her vision.

  Well, at least that made someone here who believed in her.

  Cassia focused on the jar on the floor and nothing else. Her magic rose within her at a moment’s thought as the intention rang clear and firm in her mind. She was prepared. She had prepared for weeks.

  She reached a hand towards the jar, trying to ignore the way it trembled – just performance nerves; ordinary and expected – and called on her magic to flow to her as she thought: bloom and grow.

  She saw the roots first; little white shoots emerging from the soil and plastering the inside of the glass. Yes, she thought, as her relief manifested in a shaky exhale. Keep going.

  The rose cutting shivered momentarily, and then went still. This had happened during practice, she would remember later. Little pauses before another burst of growth, if only she kept her focus. Her breath stuck in her chest as she tried to picture one thing and her treacherous brain conjured another; smashed glass, spilled soil, ambivalent shaking heads. A realisation hit her, so obvious she wondered if she’d known it all along: a young Sorcerer needn’t be all that good at magic if only they had friends in the Society to vote them in.

  Focus, screamed a desperate voice in her head, and Cassia dragged the full force of her will back to the jar, pushing fiercely on her magic to make up for the lapse. As the thinnest, smallest shoot of the cutting sprouted its first delicate leaf, several things happened at once.

  Someone moved behind her. Helia, bored, summoning the members’ attention to call for the vote? But no, the members were on the other side of the room; it was just a guest shifting to get a better look. But in that second, Cassia became aware that she wasn’t – as she had told her magic – alone. She was in a room full of people who would momentarily judge everything she had or had not accomplished by coming back to the Heart. She tried to resist the urge to glance up at their faces arrayed before her, and failed. Her eye was drawn helplessly to the movement of a member’s hand as he raised it to cup his mouth and whisper into his friend’s ear.

  Don’t fail me, she pleaded with her magic as a cage descended around her, curious faces peering through. Please don’t fail me again.

  But it was already happening. There was no dramatic smashing of glass. No spraying soil or tangle of out-of-control branches. The pathetic handful of leaves on her sapling wilted. The roots shrivelled and went brown. Cassia did not choose to lower her hands. They simply fell in defeat.

  The sound of Helia’s question was a dull murmur against the pounding in her ears. Look down, and she would see her defeat sitting pathetically in the centre of the floor. Look out at the room, and she would see the eyes avoiding hers as they voted to exclude her. The only place she could look was at Jasper, which is how she knew he did not vote her in. His downturned mouth opened on a breath as the ‘nays’ resounded, but at the last moment, no sound came out. Perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps the vote he stopped himself making was the wrong one.

  As someone handed her the children’s spell book, Cassia realised, stomach swooping, that her eyes were wet. Blink, and she would be crying, in the middle of the gathering with everyone looking at her. But she might have time to make it to the door, so she turned on her heel and with nothing left to lose, she ran.

  Someone nearby barked her name as she reached the threshold. She tried to ignore them – her tears no longer cared if she blinked or not; the first were falling freely onto her cheeks, as insubordinate and wilful as her starsforsaken magic – but a firm hand snagged her by the elbow and she was swung around, right into the face of the High Sorcerer.

  “You would do better to stay and not disrupt the evening further,” he said in a low voice. He could be a hard man to read, and he had better sense than to draw even more attention to her failure by making a big deal out of it. But Cassia was very familiar with his disappointment, and she saw it in the way he looked through her, and not at her. She had had an opportunity to elevate herself in his opinion, and now that she had failed, her grandfather had gone bac
k to greater concerns, even as she stood before him in tears.

  “Network,” he commanded. “Not everything is magic.”

  Somehow, his complete refusal to acknowledge her tears pulled her above the tide of her self-pity. “Grandfather,” she began shakily, “I really would rather go home.”

  He leaned in close, lowering his voice even further. “You are at the Wending Place, Cassia.” He rarely used her name, and when he did, he made it sound like a reprimand. “For stars’ sake, socialise with your peers and have the decency to salvage what you can of this evening for yourself.”

  He didn’t mean for herself, and he knew exactly how much effort Cassia had already put into socialising with her peers; Cassia had overheard Jupitus and her mother discussing how unpopular she was on four occasions and counting. But Cassia was of his blood, and as far as her grandfather was concerned, that meant she had a duty to him and his reputation, and she had been given her orders.

  She was staying.

  As he saw her relent, he turned away, and she hastily brushed the moisture from her cheeks and lifted her chin.

  When all else fails, spite.

  The words belonged to another faction ruler in another life. Spite was what Hester Ravenswood, ruler of the Changelings, prescribed when there was nothing else left to draw from. Cassia had been seven years old, and the son of one of the Camden militia had pushed her over. She had run to her nanny with her grazed palms, and the woman had said that was how boys behaved when they liked you. This had made Cassia cry even harder; all she’d wanted was a pair of arms to wrap tightly around her and tell her they would protect her, and her nanny had not.

  Neither had Hester. Cassia doubted the alpha of Camden Town had it in her to comfort a crying child. When she’d seen her in the doorway, listening in on her nanny’s advice, she had expected Hester to shrink away from her tears with disgust. It would be about as much kindness as she had ever shown the little girl who was technically her ward.

  But Hester marched into the nursery and took Cassia by the wrist, so as not to hurt her injured palms. It was the first time she had touched her. Then she marched through the house with Cassia jogging beside her. They were headed for the garden, Cassia realised, back towards the vicious boy who had pushed her down.

  “No! I won’t play with him.”

  “No, you absolutely will not,” said Hester, command in her tone even as they agreed. “But you will play. You will play because that whelp can’t stop you. He’s pathetic, and beneath your notice, do you understand?” She knelt then, so that they were face to face. “Play to spite him, because he doesn’t have the power to stop you.” She had touched her again then, for the second time, placing two fingers under Cassia’s lowered chin and tilting it up. “When all else fails, spite,” she said with a wicked smile. “Understand?”

  And Cassia had understood. The thought of relenting to her grandfather’s wish that she stay and simmer in her humiliation made her throat close and her self-pity threaten to engulf her. She did not belong in this room, but she could lift her chin out of spite. She could manage that.

  The evening was moving forward; the space in the middle of the room had been closed over by bodies as the guests and members mingled near the dais. Jupitus was talking to the Secretary of the Society, whose job it was to unpin the gold President’s badge from Helia’s collar and pin it to its new owner.

  Jasper was speaking with another member on the far side of the room. His eyes no longer searched for hers, and Cassia found herself feeling equal parts betrayed and relieved. She didn’t know how she would face him again after he had failed to stand up for her.

  Lev caught her eye, then weaved through the guests to stand before her. He held her jar of soil.

  “I wasn’t sure if you wanted this back,” he said.

  Cassia mumbled her thanks and took the jar. “Next time, I’m sure,” she said automatically. She had heard the empty sentiment two dozen times after her last failure, and wanted to beat Lev to it. But she didn’t put enough false feeling into the words, and they came out too sharp.

  Lev smiled. “Oh, next time for certain.”

  She was spared more of his kindnesses when Jupitus stepped onto the dais and the grand parlour fell silent. The High Sorcerer’s reason for being here had arrived. He positioned himself behind the ballot box, which had been moved to the front of the dais.

  “Successors, old and new,” he said, nodding amicably to the new inductees he could pick out in the crowd. “Guests. The Society of Young Gifted Sorcerers has existed for five centuries to celebrate our place within this city and herald new magic, new talent, and the coming of age of our future minds and leaders. It is time now for the hallowed tradition of seeing in the new, as the Society elevates one of its members to the position of President. For the next two years, this individual will forge the path forward for you young members, and lead you towards the future. Who knows, they may even be High Sorcerer someday.”

  There was a generous swell of knowing laughter at this. Everyone knew Alana Sims was intended to be the next High Sorcerer. And after her? Cassia looked down at her jar of soil. If her grandfather found her face in the crowd at that moment, she didn’t wish to see what his glance held. Whoever took over the role from Alana, whether they were in this room or not, everyone listening knew that it would be a person of Cassia’s family’s choosing. That was the power they held in the Heart.

  “Could the candidates please join me on the dais.”

  Three Successors climbed the dais to a smatter of applause. They were joined by Helia and her second in command, Society Secretary Jan Lenniker, whose term also ended this evening. Cassia leaned close Lev.

  “Who’s expected to win?” she said, realising that, in focusing so hard on her initiation, the rest of Society business had escaped her notice.

  “Uh.” Lev hesitated, the smile dropping off his face momentarily. “I believe it’s all still to play for.”

  Cassia didn’t miss the way his eyes went to the door, where Virgil Pike leaned against the wall, his head low, his solemn eyes tracking the crowd. The Successors were always tumbling one another, coupling or uncoupling, everyone trying their hardest to be the biggest scandal of the season. Lev and Virgil were one of its few love stories. She wondered why they weren’t watching the election together.

  Cassia’s eyes followed Virgil’s through the crowd as they landed on a series of people. Lev was not the only one who looked nervous. Harland Wise was chewing his nails. Tan Medhurst was shifting his weight. Cassia was suddenly cognisant of a tension in the air that wasn’t quite excitement. The three hopefuls on the dais, plus Helia and Jupitus, were oblivious to it, but the intensity with which Jan stared at the floor threatened to burn straight through it.

  “Let us find out who your new President will be,” said Jupitus to the room.

  Traditionally, the High Sorcerer performed the famed spell to reveal the election winner, but Jupitus stepped to the side and waved Helia forward, triggering a silence so absolute Cassia swore she could hear the gulls over the river. No one would whisper that the High Sorcerer was getting old, that his strength was not what it once was. Not now, not later.

  Helia produced an enchantment of hazel wood paper and held it aloft, her other hand extending towards the ballot box. Cassia found herself pressing closer. She had never seen the spell performed, but she had heard it spoken of many times.

  As the hazel-wood enchantment burned, the ballot box unfolded like a mechanical flower, spilling its contents down a narrow trough; contents that had transformed from slips of paper into brightly coloured glass balls. As they cascaded down the trough, the ballot balls separated by colour and dropped into bowls that materialised below them; blue, orange, yellow—

  There were purple balls as well. A fourth bowl materialised alongside the others.

  “A write-in candidate!” someone nearby exclaimed. A murmur of excitement rippled through the room. Cassia cast an eye over the members again – some wore expressions of unease, others of delight – then at Lev, whose smile was hard to read. Virgil looked as serious as ever, and had not moved closer as the count progressed.