“You really think Prentice wouldn’t want to be healed?”
“I . . . don’t know. But how would you feel waking up after all those years and finding out your wife was dead?”
“I don’t have a wife.” His voice had turned thick, his face twisted with emotion—though Sophie doubted even an Empath could translate it.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“It’s not . . . And I still . . . Not that it matters . . .”
She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her anymore. His gaze had turned distant, like he’d fallen deep into a memory. And as she studied his face, she realized Master Leto was much older than he looked. His ears weren’t pointed, but he had ancient eyes.
The bells chimed their intricate peal, drawing him out of his trance.
“You’d better go,” he reminded her.
He didn’t follow her as she headed up the twisting staircase. And when she glanced down a few floors later he was still standing there, staring into space, looking even more confused than she felt.
Lady Cadence gave her a week’s worth of lunch detention for being late—which wouldn’t have been such a horrible punishment, if she hadn’t also informed Sophie that she’d be the Mentor monitoring detention—and that she had a fresh batch of curdleroots for the prodigies to peel and juice.
Sophie had reeked of the rancid, squishy tubers for days after the last time she’d worked with them. But at least Stina would have to suffer with her.
“Now that you’re done wasting my time,” Lady Cadence said, knotting her raven black hair behind her head with a silver pencil, “let’s get on with today’s lesson. You’ve proven your aptitude with languages, so it’s time to test your mimicking.”
Sophie sank into the room’s only chair—which was so cold and hard she was sure Lady Cadence had chosen it specifically to make her miserable. “Mimicking?”
“Don’t tell me you thought we’d just be studying languages?”
“Well . . . the session is called linguistics.”
“Yes, and if they wanted to simply teach you a few sentences in dwarven and troll they could’ve given you any Mentor. But they gave you to me, which I can only assume is because we’re both Polyglots—”
“Wait—I thought you were a Conjurer.” Sophie had seen Lady Cadence snap her fingers and make things appear or disappear several times.
Lady Cadence let out a slow sigh, like the mere thought of how much Sophie had to learn made her exhausted. “Polyglots often have more than one ability. And properly speaking a language is so much more than memorizing words. You must master the accent and pronunciation—sometimes even the tone. It’s what makes Polyglots so remarkable. And also what allows us to mimic. For instance”—she cleared her throat and took a shallow breath—“I’m sorry I’m late. It won’t happen again.”
Sophie felt her mouth gape as she realized Lady Cadence had done a flawless impersonation of her voice.
“That’s crazy.”
“There’s nothing crazy about it,” Lady Cadence told her, mimicking Dame Alina. She followed with an impression of Alden’s crisp accent that was so spot-on, it sounded like she was lip-synching to a recording.
“And I can do that too?” Sophie asked.
“With practice. So let’s find your starting level, shall we?” She snapped her fingers and a golden gadget that looked somewhat like a metronome appeared in her hands. She flicked a lever and the needle swung back and forth. “Repeat after me, and make sure you say it just like I do: Someday I will return to Ravagog and continue my research.”
Sophie repeated the sentence, trying to clip the words and emphasize the Ts the way Lady Cadence had. Instead, she sounded like a grumpy Mary Poppins.
Lady Cadence sighed as she clicked off the gadget. “Three million, four hundred thousand, seven hundred and fifty three. I’ve seen toddlers with higher ratings.”
They tried the same sentence three more times, and each time Sophie’s rating fell lower.
“Well,” Lady Cadence said, shoving the gadget into a pocket in her simple blue gown. “I suppose this is why they felt you needed my assistance.”
Sophie doubted the Council could’ve known how horrible she’d be at mimicking. But she had a better question. “What was it like, living with the ogres?”
Lady Cadence leaned back, pulling the pen from her hair and letting the long, straight strands cascade around her face. “It was . . . very different from what I expected. They’re so much more advanced than I’d realized they would be—their cities full of so many unknown wonders. There were unpleasant things, of course. The smell alone.” She shuddered. “And they can be the most despicably violent creatures. But . . . there’s shocking intelligence under all that brutality. So much drive and determination. I will never understand them—and I will always want to bathe them—but I have also learned to respect them. More important, they learned to respect me, and even to trust me. They were teaching me things no elf has ever learned before. That’s what I miss. Knowing that the work I was doing could ensure the lasting peace between our people, as opposed to wasting hours teaching skills to a little girl who’s already too smart for her own good.”
Sophie couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult. Either way, she let it go. “So, knowing the ogres as well as you do, do you think they would give the rebels one of their stalkenteene trackers? Or would the rebels have to steal it?”
“Wait,” Lady Cadence said, sitting up straighter. “Did you find one of their devices?”
“Yeah. Yesterday I found one tangled in Silveny’s tail.”
Lady Cadence scooted back like Sophie had the plague, muttering something under her breath as she snapped her fingers and made a tiny silver vial appear in her palm.
“Hold out your hands,” she ordered, removing the stopper and sprinkling the fine silver powder over Sophie’s skin.
“Please not red,” she whispered. “Anything but red.”
Sophie counted the passing seconds as they both stared at her hands. After one hundred and twenty-nine she was pretty sure nothing was going to happen.
But at one hundred and thirty, her skin glowed bright red.
SEVENTEEN
WHAT DOES RED MEAN?” SOPHIE asked, not sure if she should scream or flail or run to the nearest bathroom and wash her hands with an entire bar of soap.
“It means you need to get to the Healing Center. Does Elwin keep piquatine on hand?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Lady Cadence sprinkled the silver power on her own hands and rubbed it in. “It’s an acid, second in strength only to alkahest, so it should be strong enough to remove aromark. Honestly—have you learned nothing in alchemy?”
Alchemy had been Sophie’s worst subject—by far—and she’d barely managed a passing grade. But she did remember that alkahest was the universal solvent, able to dissolve anything.
Wood.
Metal.
Flesh.
“What’s aromark?” she asked, more than a little afraid of the answer.
Lady Cadence held her nonglowing hands up to sniff them. “Something I’m very thankful not to have on me. It won’t hurt you. Not by itself, at least,” she added when she noticed the way Sophie had started to tremble. “But you must get rid of it—quickly. Did anyone else handle the device besides you?”
“Alden and Keefe. And Jurek at the Sanctuary. And maybe some of the Councillors. Plus it was tangled in Silveny’s tail, so I’m sure it touched her.”
Lady Cadence rubbed her temples. “They’ll all have to get tested.” She handed Sophie the vial of powder. “Have them sprinkle this on their skin. Anywhere that glows red has to be purged. And if you need more, let me know. I have plenty of reveldust with my supplies.”
“Reveldust?” Sophie repeated, trying not to think about the word “purged.”
“It’s a special type of spore that reacts to various ogre enzymes. It doesn’t get rid of them. But it’ll let
you know they’re there.”
Sophie studied her glowing hands. “How come Alden and Sandor didn’t know about this stuff?”
“Because they never asked. And most of the reports I sent the Council seemed to vanish into some sort of void, never to be mentioned again. I sent them all kinds of information about what I discovered of the true nature of ogre technology. For instance.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a necklace with a round silver pendant. “This is a Markchain. King Dimitar, the ogres’ supreme leader, gave it to me when he finally granted my residency in their capital—which was no easy feat, I can assure you. He told me I had to wear it at all times if I wanted to remain safe, and for years I thought it was a gadget, like the registry pendants we wear. But I was wrong.”
She rubbed her finger along the edge of the sphere and held out her hand. After a few seconds, her fingertip glowed green.
“That’s the essenseal reacting with the reveldust still on my hands,” she explained.
Sophie shook her head, struggling to keep all the weird names straight. “What does that have to do with aromark?”
“Because they’re both enzymes. That’s the ogres’ true brilliance. Their technology is actually quite simplistic. But their biochemistry! I had no idea until I knocked over a vat of reveldust while I was working, and walked through the cloud it created. My skin glowed bright green everywhere my pendant had touched me, and I realized that the Markchain is actually an ecosystem. A tiny, self-sustaining world of microorganisms.”
She dangled the silver pendant in front of Sophie’s face, pointing to the nearly microscopic black holes that covered the outside like tiny pinpricks. “Essenseal is an enzyme secreted by the colony of microorganisms living inside this sphere. As elves we can’t see the enzyme, smell it, or taste it without reveldust. But the ogres can. And if they don’t detect it on someone walking through their city, they know they’re dealing with an intruder.”
Sophie frowned at her glowing red fingers. “If the scent is so strong, why didn’t Sandor notice it?”
“Goblins are the ogres’ greatest enemies—aside from humans. Of course their defense mechanisms evade goblin detection. The fact that elves can’t see or smell them is just a bonus.”
Sophie had to agree with the ogres’ logic—though once again she found herself wishing that Sandor’s goblin supersenses were a lot more super.
“So then what does aromark on the tracker do?” she asked, bracing for the worst possible answer. Still, nothing could’ve prepared her.
Lady Cadence held her green finger next to Sophie’s red ones. “Green would mean it’s a tracker, Sophie. Red means it’s a homing device. All of their weapons—and they do have them, though they’re supposedly for ‘defense only’—use aromark as their targeting system. As long as they lock onto the enzyme, they’re guaranteed a direct hit.”
“You’re sure Lady Cadence said piquatine?” Elwin asked as he searched the shelves of tiny bottles that lined the largest wall in the Healing Center.
He cringed when Sophie nodded, removing his iridescent spectacles and resting them on his forehead, amidst his wild, dark hair. “Well then. I’m going to have to prep your skin.”
Nothing about that sentence sounded good.
“Relax, Foster,” Keefe said as he flopped back in the bed across from her. “I swear I’m feeling more stress vibes from you than from Gigantor over there.”
He pointed to Elwin’s office, where Sandor was pacing back and forth, using his triangular-shaped gadget to convey the newest information to the captain of his army. The thin wall that separated the office from the larger treatment area muffled most of the conversation. But Sophie could still hear the tremble in Sandor’s squeaky voice.
“I look like I’ve been dipped in foxfire,” Keefe said, wiggling his glowing red fingers. “Think Dame Alina would give me extra credit if I told her I did this for school spirit?”
“I think Dame Alina is more worried that we might have gotten aromark somewhere else,” Sophie told him.
The entire Foxfire campus was currently being swept with Lady Cadence’s supply of reveldust, even though Lady Cadence had assured Dame Alina that ogre enzymes only transferred when they were freshly released—like how ink only smeared when it was wet—and only stuck to living skin through direct contact with the aromark’s source.
Sophie, meanwhile, was much more concerned about getting in touch with Alden, so he could arrange for Silveny to get treated. Once again, Alden was “out of range.” Same with Jurek and Grady.
Keefe kicked the edge of Sophie’s mattress, making Bullhorn—Elwin’s pet banshee, who must’ve been sleeping under her bed—streak across the room with an angry hiss. “If you keep squeezing your Imparter that tight, you’re going to crush it.”
Sophie loosened her grip and took a deep, calming breath.
It didn’t help.
“Why aren’t they answering?” she asked, fighting the urge to fling the useless gadget across the room. “And how can you be so calm? There could be ogre weapons aimed at us right this second. Or at Silveny. Or Alden. Or the Councillors. And if they lock onto this”—she held out her glowing fingers—“they can’t miss.”
“Yeah, but if they did that, they’d be starting a war,” Keefe reminded her.
“A war they’d lose, by the way,” Elwin chimed in. “Don’t be fooled by our peaceful methods, Sophie. If anyone is foolish enough to attack, we have ways to shut them down—quickly. And the ogres know that. We’ve made sure all the intelligent species know it. Why do you think they signed our treaties?”
He sounded so sure. And Sophie almost believed him.
But she doubted the rebels—or ogres, or whoever it was that put the homing device on Silveny—would’ve gone to so much trouble if they weren’t willing to pull the trigger.
“I think it’s high time we get rid of that nasty stuff, don’t you?” Elwin asked, placing a flat silver bowl in each of their laps and warning them not to spill.
Sophie gagged when she caught a whiff of the clear liquid inside.
“Yeah, trust me, you don’t want to know what that is,” Elwin told her. “Just soak your hands in there until I tell you to stop. Oh, and plan on it feeling strange.”
“Strange how?” Sophie asked as she dunked her hands in the bowl—but then she knew what he meant because the liquid seeping into her skin was equal parts fire and ice. It didn’t hurt—but it didn’t feel good either. Mostly it made her sweat and shiver and itch like crazy.
“Just hang in for ten more seconds,” Elwin said, starting to count down.
Ten seconds had never felt so slow, and when he finally got to one, Sophie couldn’t pull her hands out fast enough. Elwin took their silver bowls away and handed them each a green silky cloth.
“Whoa,” Keefe whispered, dropping the towel into his lap. He clapped his hands a few times, then pressed them against his face. “It’s like, I know my hands are touching me, but I can’t feel them doing it.”
Sophie was just as numb—though she didn’t find it nearly as entertaining.
Doctors only numbed someone if they were prepping them for pain.
“What’s that?” she asked as Elwin pulled two small red vials out of the satchel he always wore across his shoulders.
“Last step—and it won’t hurt, I promise.”
Sophie stared at the hopping jackalopes on Elwin’s tunic and reminded herself that she trusted him as he positioned her arms so they were straight out over the floor.
“It’ll be less messy this way,” he explained, which wasn’t nearly as reassuring as he wanted it to be. “And don’t freak out when you see what this does. It’ll be over in a second.”
Sophie had to force herself to hold still as Elwin poured the thin red liquid onto her hands. She couldn’t feel the shiny fluid as it coated her palms, but that didn’t make it any less horrifying when the top layers of her skin shriveled up and melted, dripping onto the floor in a slimy puddle of peach go
o. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, making everyone gag as Elwin wrapped their hands in wet purple cloths.
“That might be the creepiest thing I’ve ever done,” Keefe said quietly, staring at his soggy purple dressings. “I mean, it was also awesome. But dude. You should warn a guy before you melt his skin off.”
Sophie hated that Alden would have to endure the same process. And Jurek. And—
“Oh no,” she mumbled, struggling to grab her Imparter with her purple mummy hands. “They can’t do that to Silveny. She’ll be traumatized for months.”
“Hey, easy,” Elwin said, gently pinning her shoulders. “You need to finish your treatment or it won’t heal right. And I’m sure they’ll sedate Silveny. I actually thought about doing that for you, but I know how you feel about sedatives and—”
“I might’ve volunteered to be knocked out,” Keefe interrupted.
“Even if it meant spending the night at school?” Elwin asked.
“Oh—a slumber party! Definitely count me in for that.”
“Yeah, well, somehow I doubt your parents would’ve wanted that—which was the other reason I kept you awake.”
“You must not know my parents very well. They’re always happy to be rid of me.” Keefe said it with a smile, but Sophie knew him too well to buy it.
Elwin must’ve noticed too, because he dropped the subject. “Huh,” he said as he unwrapped Sophie’s hands. “I thought for sure this would’ve been gone.”
He traced his finger along the star-shaped scar from the Black Swan’s healing.
“It must sink too deep,” she said as Elwin snapped his fingers to form an orange sphere of light around the scar.
He squinted through his iridescent spectacles, turning her hand from side to side. “But that doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s Foster’s trademark,” Keefe reminded him.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Elwin flashed a green orb instead, frowning when he noticed her wrist. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a burn?”
“It’s not a burn, it’s a bruise,” Sophie corrected. “I just used the wrong ointments to treat it and made it worse—and before you give me a lecture, I didn’t come to see you because it wasn’t a big deal. My skin just got a little twisted while someone was squeezing my wrist.”