“But I still don’t see …,” Meghan began.
Alex’s eyes lit up. “So, if Ms. Octavia, or anyone good enough to draw in 3-D, painted the same set of theater doors somewhere else in the mansion, Simber and Florence could simply push them open and walk right into the theater, through those painted doors, without using the tube. Right?”
“Exactly!” cried Lani. “Just as if they were walking through any real door.”
Meghan’s clouded face began to clear. “But … why have the tubes at all, then?”
“Think about it—all those doors that would have to be painted in everybody’s rooms—there would be no room for them all! We’d have to move our beds around to get to them. And this way,” Lani said slyly, “Simber can’t get into the lounge.”
Alex sat up, his stomach twisting. “So, a 3-D magical drawing of any real doorway, anywhere in the world, would lead you into that room? No matter where you are, or where the doorway is?” He leaned forward, holding his breath.
“Yes!” Lani said. “Isn’t that cool? But they’re really hard to paint. I can’t understand why Samheed would think he could draw a closet of defense in a hurry—it would take hours. Days, maybe.”
Alex’s mind whirled. All I have to do is learn to paint in 3-D, he thought.
“Wow!” said Meghan. “I’m going to go tell Sam anyway. Maybe it’ll help with their project.” She went over to the tube and disappeared, leaving Alex and Lani quite alone in their corner of the lounge.
Alex looked up and cleared his throat. “You’re really smart, Lani.”
Now it was Lani’s turn to blush. “Yeah,” she said. “I like to read.”
Alex glanced at her latest spell book. “Do you have any advanced spell books? Not like the history of killing spells like you were reading the other day at breakfast. But, like, ones with … with lethal spell components actually written in them?” He almost whispered the last part.
“No,” Lani said.
“Oh.”
“Why?”
Alex remembered what Ms. Octavia had told him about the scatterclips spell. And he thought that if he ever came across the High Priest Justine in a real battle, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. “No reason, I guess. I mean …”
“Well,” Lani said, “if I find one, do you want to know about it?”
“Yes. I mean, I guess so. It wouldn’t hurt.” Alex looked down at the carpet for a long time. “So, um, about that other thing, with the kiss?”
Lani blushed hard. “I think you’re smart enough to know what I meant.”
He bit his bottom lip, and then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, peering at her, remembering when they first met. “Hi,” he said softly. “I’m Alex. It’ll go quickly.”
Lani blinked at him, surprised that he remembered that first day. “Lani,” she said. “And no, it won’t.” They both smiled at the grim memory.
“Do you—,” they both said at the same time, and laughed. “You first,” said Lani.
“Do you ever think about them? Your father? Your family?” Alex asked.
Lani’s eyes hardened. “Never. Only my younger brother, who Mr. Today promised me he’d try and save.”
Alex regarded her thoughtfully. “Mr. Today can do that?”
“I guess he can try. He told me he helps the High Priest Justine decide who the Unwanteds will be. He said when my father wanted to send me to the Purge before I was thirteen, he helped convince Justine to do it.” Her eyes clouded.
“Wow,” Alex said, a bit shocked. “I didn’t know. Mr. Today must have really wanted you here.…” He trailed off, lost in thought.
“And my father must have really wanted to get rid of me.” She shrugged off the hurt. “What about you? Do you think about your parents or your brother?”
He was quiet for a long moment. “No,” he said, finally. “I never think about them at all.”
Windows and Doors
One day per month the first-year students met as a group and visited various instructors for their Magical Warrior Training. It enabled them to perfect new spells based on the instructor’s specialty, thereby rounding out their arsenals.
In Ms. Morning’s class they had learned singing charms that could lull their targets to sleep or make them weep and collapse in misery. They had also learned slash singing, which would cause an enemy to tear himself to shreds. They each whittled a small pipe instrument that, when played, would cause the enemy to go insane. Meghan had a variety of other instruments she kept in her arsenal as well, but most of them were too difficult for those less musical to learn properly.
Mr. Appleblossom had spent his day teaching slam poetry and stunning soliloquies to the students. Both required an ability to think on one’s feet, for the words uttered had to fit the situation. For example, if there was an attacker in a vehicle, one could aim an explosive slam at the tires to make them blow up, and then follow up with a singeing slam to the driver, setting his hair on fire. Lani was especially good at slams. And Samheed excelled in soliloquies—not just stunning kinds, but opposite soliloquies as well, which would make the enemy do the opposite of what he’d intended to do. Samheed planned to use that one a lot, should they go to battle. He felt that if he could get several opposite soliloquies going at once, he could make his foes turn their weapons on themselves.
Today’s lesson was with Ms. Octavia, and Alex arrived in her classroom feeling chipper, despite having dreamed about Aaron yet again during the night. But he tried to push it aside and focus on the class, for Ms. Octavia was going to let Alex introduce a new spell he had created. She said he could teach everyone how to cast it. After all he’d done to catch up to the others, Alex was proud to have this chance to prove that he had succeeded.
When all the students had arrived, Ms. Octavia called Alex to the front of the room.
“Alex, tell us about your spell,” she said.
From the pocket of his component vest Alex pulled out two tiny balls of clay. He rolled them between his fingers to warm them up as he sauntered to the front of the class. “The new spell I created is called trapping clay. You aim it at the arms, legs, or neck you wish to trap, and it hardens immediately upon impact, trapping the target in place.” Alex hid a wicked grin and called Lani up to be the victim.
Lani flashed him a suspicious look, but slowly made her way to the front.
“A larger ball of trapping clay can encase an entire person. Like this,” he said. He picked up a larger ball, wound his arm back, and said, “Full body cast!” He flung the clay at Lani.
“No!” she squeaked, but it was too late. The clay found its mark and spread to cover her entire body, sticking her to the bulletin board. “Alex!” came a muffled cry from inside, followed by a reluctant, hollow chuckle. “I guess I deserved that.”
The students laughed. Alex smiled. Revenge, at last. After a moment, though, he tapped on the hard shell cast and released the spell. Lani took a deep breath of fresh air and punched Alex playfully in the arm. “You got me,” she said. “Clever.”
Alex blushed. “You took that awfully well.”
“That’s my way of making you feel bad.”
“It’s working,” Alex admitted. “Okay, everybody,” he said to the class. “Give it a try, if you can find a willing partner. You can call out ‘shackles’ if you just want to chain somebody’s arms and legs, or,” he said, and his eyes lit up, “‘dog collar’ is a fun one too.”
They spent the morning trying out the trapping clay, and after lunch Ms. Octavia gave them a painting lesson to calm them all down. Each student sat with his own easel and practiced defensive painting, which would allow them to quickly paint themselves out of any precarious situation.
Alex was already a professional at defensive painting, so he went to the corner of the room where he kept his easel. He picked up where he’d left off the previous day.
“May I join you back in your little corner, Alex?” Lani asked.
Alex looked at her suspiciously. “Is this a trick?”
>
“No. Don’t be a jerk.”
Alex tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “You have a suspicious history, Ms. Haluki.”
Lani rolled her eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t done anything to you in positively months. I’m done. Okay? Get over it.”
“Hmm. I guess that’s true.” Alex was quiet. He turned back to his artwork and began daubing thoughtfully with his brush.
“What are you painting?”
“A window,” he said. He shrugged in the direction of the nearest open window. “That one, there.”
“Why?”
“I’m practicing my 3-D art. If I do this right, by the time I’m finished, I should be able to tear this sheet off, stick it to the wall, and put my arm straight through it to the outside.”
“Cool,” Lani said. “Is it hard to do?”
“Very,” muttered Alex. “I haven’t been able to do it yet.”
“Why do you want to make a 3-D window, anyway?”
“I don’t. Windows are just easier than doors. Ms. Octavia told me to start with this. I’ve been trying for weeks, and it’s getting really boring. But I think this one might work. You really need to shade and layer and get all the colors and textures right.”
“So why do you want to make a door? Where do you want to go that you can’t use the tube to get to?” Lani shook her head slightly, puzzled.
“Oh, I dunno,” he said lightly.
Lani narrowed her eyes. She put her paintbrush down and gripped Alex’s arm. “You want to go to Quill, don’t you?” she whispered. “Why would you do that, Alex? You’re going to wreck everything!”
“Shhh!” Alex said when Ms. Octavia glanced in their direction. “I don’t want to wreck everything. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You want to see your brother! Oh, Alex, why? He’s not like us! He’s evil!”
“Keep your voice down! Sheesh, Lani. Aaron is not evil. He’s exactly like us. He did artistic stuff too—only I took the blame for it. He should be here!”
“It’s not right! You’ll put Artimé in danger. What are you thinking, Alex?” Lani shook her head in disgust. “It’s too late for him. Maybe he should have been here too, but it’s too late. Did you tell Mr. Today about him?”
“No! And you’d better not either.”
Lani sighed and slumped in her chair. “Please don’t do it, Al.” Alex sighed too and stared at his painting of the window, shaking his head. Then, he ripped it off the easel and tore it into little pieces, disgusted. “At the rate I’m going, you have nothing to worry about.” He sighed and rested his head on the window ledge.
When he looked up through the glass, he saw Will Blair walking across the lawn in the distance. Will stopped and stood for a moment; then he turned toward Ms. Octavia’s classroom, raised his hand impatiently, and pointed to the library. Alex’s stomach clenched. Why would Will Blair want Alex to meet him at the library? Alex turned quickly to see if anybody else saw, but Lani and the rest of the class were focused on their work. All except for Samheed, that is, who stood at an easel at the back of the class, looking out the window. He nodded, his face serious. Then he packed up his things quietly, and when Ms. Octavia was involved with another student, Samheed slipped out of the room.
The Library
After several visits to Mr. Today’s office, Alex had Aaron’s dorm room door memorized, right down to the knots and scratches in the wood.
Every evening, as Alex worked privately in his bedroom to perfect a 3-D doorway to Aaron’s room so he could save him, he couldn’t stop thinking about Will and Samheed sneaking off to the library. They did it at odd times, sometimes during assemblies and sometimes during large group training. Sometimes late in the evening. Once, Alex tried to follow them, but when he tubed into the library, they had disappeared. What could they possibly be working on? At first Alex didn’t care—he was just glad that Will hadn’t actually been gesturing to him that time in Ms. Octavia’s room. But he grew more curious as his long, lonely nights of drawing and painting wore on with no one but Clive to talk to.
And Clive wasn’t making life easy for Alex, either.
“What are you doing in there?” Clive would ask every ten minutes or so. He obviously hated that Alex worked in the cramped sleeping area between the bed and the wall, rather than out in the open living room where Clive could actually see for himself what was going on. And ever since the “episode,” as Clive liked to call it, he hadn’t left Alex alone.
“I’m not doing anything!” Alex would always say, growing more exasperated all the time with his nosy blackboard. “Leave me alone, will you?”
“No-o,” sang Clive cheerily.
After one such episode Alex, frustrated, rolled up his paper, tucked it under his arm, and stormed out of his room, as stormy as one can be when entering a tube and pushing a button. He didn’t want to give Clive the satisfaction of knowing where he was storming off to, so he pressed lounge, and then when he got to the lounge, he stayed in the tube and pressed library instead. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Meghan and Lani at a table having milk shakes, but then he was gone again.
Inside the library he roamed to all of his usual workstations, but all the big tables were occupied, and he needed a big table to spread out his 3-D drawing. He moved to the seldom-used stairwell and walked, rather than tubed, up to the second floor and then, seeing more stairs, up to the third, where he’d never been before. In fact there was no button for the third floor in the tube—he’d only thought there were two floors all this time. There was an old-looking sign that said ARCHIVES on the stairwell wall next to the door. Alex went in. It was dark inside, but little lights popped up as he traveled down the rows of books, charts, and maps. It smelled musty and old. His stomach flipped as the door clanked shut, and he ran back to make sure he wasn’t locked in. He wasn’t. With a sigh of relief he meandered between the shelves to a large table in the back corner, perfect for what Alex needed. His rolled-up doorway drawing bumped a seven-foot-tall tiki totem pole statue with three stacked faces. The middle face opened an eye, scowled, and then closed its eye again.
“Sorry,” Alex whispered. He unrolled his paper and, when he spread it out, said, “I wish there was more light.” The table lit up with a bluish-white light that shone through the paper. Alex, surprised, looked at his drawing, each line now feeling very individual and defined, the blueness of the bright light pointing out the flaws that had kept the drawing from working the way it was supposed to work.
Alex whistled under his breath as parts of the drawing deepened before his eyes.
Inevitable
Mr. Today looked away from the long row of blackboards when he heard a growl outside his office. “Come in, Simber,” he said. “Florence, welcome.”
A moment later Claire Morning and Ms. Octavia arrived, and the group arranged itself comfortably around the large office. Simber sprawled on the floor, Florence eased into a sturdy-looking, grotesquely oversized floral love seat as if it had been fashioned just for her, and the two instructors sat in office chairs near Mr. Today’s desk.
The mage shuffled papers on his desk and set them aside, then looked up at his guests. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Simber, what news?”
“Alex has discoverrred this hallway,” Simber began. “He’s been herrre thrrree times, as farrr as I know frrrom my view at the doorrr. Once with the boy Samheed, late at night. Twice durrring Tuesday lunches.”
Mr. Today nodded. “What about Will Blair?”
“I haven’t seen Blairrr, but he could be using an invisibility spell to enterrr, now.”
“Thank you, Simber. Octavia?”
“All seems well with Alex. Still melancholy, but such is the life of a painter. He’s working on three-dimensional paintings.”
“What sort?”
“Windows and doorways, that sort of thing. Quite ambitious.” Octavia looked over her half-glasses and down her long snout.
“Hmm,” Mr. Today said. “How
close is he to getting it right?”
“Not terribly close, but he’s getting better. It’s a very difficult procedure, as you well know.”
Florence cleared her throat. “I’ve spoken to the girrinos down at the gate. Arija says the Blair boy is acting suspiciously. He’s been to the gate twice in the past week. And the ostrich statue in the library reports that Blair has convinced young Samheed to help him on an art project.”
“Samheed’s working with Blair?” Mr. Today asked, a hint of concern in his voice.
Florence shrugged her massive shoulders. “Looks that way.”
Claire interrupted. “What is Will Blair’s issue? I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.”
“It’s a bit complicated,” Mr. Today said. “You see, Blair’s father is the general of the Quillitary. Blair’s been bitter since he arrived here three years ago, because if he had been Wanted, he’d naturally be sitting in Aaron’s place right now by default of his heritage. Will has gotten more bitter since he discovered Aaron has clearly ‘stolen’ his seat of honor.” Mr. Today pointed to the blackboard of the palace. There, in the High Priest Justine’s own private office, sat Aaron, in earnest discussion with the ruler of Quill herself. “Aaron’s made quite a name for himself. Gunnar reports the boy has just been appointed assistant secretary to the high priest. No one so young has ever held so high a position.”
Mr. Today turned back to face the group. “Will is extremely jealous, seething so hard he no longer sees things as they are, but as he wants them to be. When he reunited with Samheed, his former neighbor and friend, they began to talk about Quill. Will found out that Aaron was the one who reported Samheed’s infraction, which put Will over the edge. He’s become obsessed with watching this screen, watching Aaron in the palace having lunch with the High Priest Justine and with Will’s own father, General Blair himself.”
The room was silent for a moment before Claire spoke. “So he wants revenge on Aaron?”
“Yes.”
“How?”